Observations from the wild, in pursuit of timeless ideas.

A beautiful profile of a man that illustrates the simple idea that a business should be good for its craftspeople and its customer. That there is beauty in the everyday pursuit of profit. A reminder that you can be both a humantarian and a capalist – that they’re one and the same. A good business is always good for humanity. You don’t have to direct your trade towards ever increasing profit margins at the expense of quality, human wellbeing, or the customer. You can make wonderful things and be a wonderful leader, while pursuing profit. Over a long enough timeline all that is left is the indelible mark you made on the lives of others.

Basically, what is human dignity made of? If we work together, say, and, even with one look, I make you understand that you are worth nothing and I look down on you, I have killed you. But if I give you regards and respect — out of esteem, responsibility is spawned. Then out of responsibility comes creativity, because every human being has an amount of genius in them. Man needs dignity even more than he needs bread.

Pairs well with DHH’s retort: man needs more than bread to survive.

Most technology breakthroughs start out looking like toys. This is true even when you’re spending $xx on playing with the new cool thing. Sometimes these find pmf (drones) and sometimes they don’t (web3, blowing through uber budget)

We live life in two modes
Colour: In the moment happiness, reflection, introspection, fun
Movement: Building things, learning, exercising

Not everything fit squarely in one bucket, but you can develop a general intuition to if you’re focused on colour (playing with kids) or a moment of movement (working)

There are many ways to think about the purpose of life, but the idea of choosing a good quest (as opposed to a bad quest or perhaps worse no quest at all) is something we should talk about more openly. I’m reminded by this idea often and again in a recent post by Packy at Not Boring.

“Then we got Agents, and we forgot the lesson. We decided that we needed to throw these pseudo-humans at everything, because everyone else was. Agents are great at some things, but they’re not the right shape for a lot of others.”

Engineers don’t know what to build because they don’t do the work. Most of the process-driven work we’re describing exists as a combination of written rules, which Agents can ingest, and then like 3,000 tacit rules and sub-rules that live in people’s heads, in offices around the country, far away from the engineers’ San Francisco desks. AI can only evolve what it can touch, which is why it’s been great at coding but has largely failed to do useful things in the enterprise.

Jony Ive, on designing the interior of the Ferrari Luce:

“I just love learning more than I love being right,”
“At the end of a project, there’s two products — there’s what you designed and what you learn.”

When you think about each component removed from its context, that each dial and knob should in itself be beautiful – not necessarily as an aesthetic pursuit, but because its beautiful in its essential form.

The purpose of life is novel experience.