flâneur

Jasmine Wang

65 followers · 31 following · 1923 views

on the atlas — 93

highlights — 100

  • You might be right, but if you are, you won’t really know why; and if you’re wrong, you’ll be angry at yourself for deviating from what is true to your core. So just be yourself, and either you’ll be right, and it’ll feel really good; or you’ll be wrong. But at least you’ll still be yourself.”
    The New World - Colossus
  • Burnout is the ultimate agency-killer. This is so true that I’ve learned to identify a reduction in agency as one of the first signs of burnout, one that shows up even before I consciously realize what’s happening. A switch flips and I start looking for ways to rule out ideas and actions, to conclude they won’t work or aren’t necessary, rather than chasing better versions.
    How to be More Agentic - by Cate Hall - Useful Fictions
  • Beliefs are the world’s most powerful network effects. They don’t just explain the success of software products. The price of Bitcoin, democracies and dictatorships, capitalism, and the power of the church are all based on intersubjective realities. No moat is more durable than a shared belief.
    The power of defaults « julian.digital
  • What’s so striking about these examples is the discrepancy between market cap and NPS score. It would be amazing if we lived in a world where companies with terrible UX did badly in the stock market, but that is clearly not the case. The fact that you can build a successful business without a truly great product is a real testament to how strong of a moat belief-based defaults really are.
    The power of defaults « julian.digital
  • As I wrote in Is This Real Life?, identity is not monolithic but prismatic. Who you are on Facebook is different from who you pretend to be on TikTok. Your real name LinkedIn persona is not compatible with the pseudonymous identity you use on fringe Discord channels to shill shady new NFT projects. Google+ Circles and Facebook Lists always got this wrong: They let us change who we shared with, but not who we shared as. As a result, we see intense multihoming in the online identity stack. There might be clear winners in certain verticals (e.g. LinkedIn for “professional networking”), but “socia…
    The power of defaults « julian.digital
  • On each layer of the stack, companies are trying to create value and to capture value. The lowest layers of the stack are typically the most powerful. If you are able to take control of a layer, you can dictate the terms of most of the value creation and value capture that is happening in the layers above you.
    The power of defaults « julian.digital
  • If you think about it, it’s kind of amazing that the largest operating system humanity has ever seen only exists to protect an advertising business two layers further up the stack.
    The power of defaults « julian.digital
  • Along Kyoto’s Eizan Electric Railway is a section known as “Maple Tree Tunnel” (momiji tunnel, in Japanese) that is lined with hundreds of maple trees.
    The Rabbit Hole 🕳🐇 issue no.43 - by Patricia
  • An Earthship is a type of sustainable and eco-friendly home that is often made from both natural and recycled materials. These buildings are designed to be self-sufficient, utilizing solar and wind energy for power, rainwater harvesting for water, and natural ventilation for cooling.
    The Rabbit Hole 🕳🐇 issue no.43 - by Patricia
  • Life felt like a verb as opposed to a noun - never quite arriving, always in relationship, fertile in curiosity, and budding in purpose.
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • The campus is uniquely our generation’s contribution to communal placemaking.” When designed well, it should “promote community, allegiance, and civility, while at the same time encouraging diversity in discourse and vision.”
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • Without pausing, we lose access to the deep wisdom within us. Without communion, we can get stuck at a local maxima, running on prior scripts that have turned stale.
    cities and purpose - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say.
    🌻 tryhard - by Jasmine Sun - half-baked futures
  • Never spend time on something I’d end up regretting if it didn’t lead to the outcome I hoped for.
    🌻 tryhard - by Jasmine Sun - half-baked futures
  • I was the social radar, a good event planner, maternal, empathetic, a straight shooter, and not driven by money or fame. Think how far that is from the profile of the typical startup founder you read about in the press. Maternal? Since when was that an important quality in a startup founder? Let alone the founder of an investment firm. And yet it was critical to making YC what it is.
    Grow the Puzzle Around You - Jessica Livingston
  • i show up as ambitious but in reality, i am a fool with a powerful work ethic and this makes all the difference.
    arielle lok
  • The real villain here, however, is the chemist Fritz Haber (who died in 1934), who directed the programme of poison gas attacks that killed tens of thousands of soldiers in the first world war, an accomplishment that drove his disapproving wife to suicide. Haber also discovered how to harvest nitrogen and make the fertiliser that saved the hundreds of millions of people who would have died in worldwide famines at the beginning of the 20th century. All the same, in the end he was overwhelmed by guilt, “not,” Labatut writes, “for the part he had played … in the death of untold human beings” – ye…
    When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut review – the dark side of science | Fiction | The Guardian
  • I wanted to stress that the creative act can be acutely painful. The arena has glorious lore. It’s violent, spectacular, thrilling. It’s also deeply mythical, social, dynamic.
    the creative arena - trike harder by @katiewav
  • When you're doing work that could be seen as either creation or discovery, err on the side of discovery. Try thinking of yourself as a mere conduit through which the ideas take their natural shape.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Whereas some of the very best work will seem like it took comparatively little effort, because it was in a sense already there. It didn't have to be built, just seen. It's a very good sign when it's hard to say whether you're creating something or discovering it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • One way to aim high is to try to make something that people will care about in a hundred years. Not because their opinions matter more than your contemporaries', but because something that still seems good in a hundred years is more likely to be genuinely good.
    How to Do Great Work
  • I think for most people who want to do great work, the right strategy is not to plan too much. At each stage do whatever seems most interesting and gives you the best options for the future. I call this approach "staying upwind." This is how most people who've done great work seem to have done it.
    How to Do Great Work
  • Octo is full of fun little lines that are punchy and resonant and saturated with meaning, and he knows when he’s delivering one of them too. Here’s one from a letter he wrote me before leaving for the airport that hurt just the right amount: “You are strong in ways you do not yet know.”
    what it's like dating octo
  • I think expecting your job to be your passion is tricky. That’s because your passion is purely selfish, it is something that you want or need. Once you inject your motives into a job that is meant to service others, there is an internal struggle that happens because any concession feels like your passion is dying. This will make you emotional, irrational, and it causes you to burn out quickly. I think we all want to believe that we have control over our passion but the way that our jobs are structured (esp for corporate/office), means that you are in service to the business and the customers. …
    Journal — ANGELA
  • friends who allow you to feel like your life can be lived in conversation, who influence your choices. You go through different life stages together, complain about work, go to restaurants together and talk about your partners, go on double dates, collaborate on projects together, try to have children who are close in age. You share the same weird vocabulary. I remember reading at 18, some advice that went “Your relationships are the number one determinant of your quality of life. If you have good relationships, don’t worry about anything else.” I thought, well I have good friends, but my life…
    friend groups - by Ava - bookbear express
  • I think it’s important to identify as part of a group, a phenomenon, a moment in time. When I feel unmoored, I’m reassured by the existence of my peer group: people who have similar opinions, live similar lifestyles, and find similar things interesting. I think my friends are smart and talented and fun; moreover, I think they’re good people. They shield me from cynicism—it was never possible for me to be contemptuous of technology or dismissive of SF because I always loved my friends. I would be so happy if my children turned out like them.
    friend groups - by Ava - bookbear express
  • It’s important to know how to scale back, as design falters without the “how” of implementation, but preemptively limiting your imagination is as equally a disservice as an ungrounded concept. I believe that design thrives when it looks into the future, and my hope with this project is to showcase my love for vision-making.
    Figma Desk — Jess Wang
  • The key thing feels like that recognition. Someone who sees you in a way that isn’t about convenience or status or even necessarily beauty. The person who would’ve loved you when you were down and out, the person who would’ve loved you even when the timing wasn’t right. Someone who understands the living essence of you. It seems obviously true to me that our lives are delicate, the possibilities branching. I met the people I love at the time I did, not before or after. All this is hypothetical. But it matters, I think, to believe in the sturdiness of your fate (as I often write here, I’m the m…
    timing - bookbear express
  • It's a common trope that courage isn't about being fearless, it's about being afraid but doing the right thing anyway. In the same sense, caring about the world isn't about having a gut feeling that corresponds to the amount of suffering in the world, it's about doing the right thing anyway. Even without the feeling.
    On caring
  • I’m willing to start over as many times as necessary. I’m willing to take care of you until I die. Are those two things irreconcilable? I am changed by what I keep in my life, and what I throw away.
    bookbear express
  • Words are my tool of choice, but they often feel so lacking, like friends turned strangers. Mastery of language comes in two parts: a commitment to the soul of each word, and an intuition for how they dance together. The more my commitment grows, the more I fear opening my mouth, knowing the ways my words fall short. Yet as much as I yearn to remain true to the world, every reference is a reconstruction, every story a retelling, every representation a misrepresentation. I've failed before I've even begun.
    honoring existence - by Spencer Chang - spencer's paradoxes
  • The writing that stays with me—the parts I remember in the endless stream of content—are not the ones with perfect structure and bulletproof purpose. They are messy, fractured, and even contradictory. Yet at the same time, they are tender, loving, fearless in exposing themselves to the world. They resent clear-cut boxes, demonstrate irrational belief, and dare you to come along for the ride.
    honoring existence - by Spencer Chang - spencer's paradoxes
  • Another thing I notice about this list is that it sounds like a list of the ways people behave on Twitter. Whatever else social media is, it's a vivid catalogue of ways not to be earnest.
    Earnestness
  • [1] It's interesting how many different ways there are not to be earnest: to be cleverly cynical, to be superficially brilliant, to be conspicuously virtuous, to be cool, to be sophisticated, to be orthodox, to be a snob, to bully, to pander, to be on the make. This pattern suggests that earnestness is not one end of a continuum, but a target one can fall short of in multiple dimensions.
    Earnestness
  • I discovered my preferences rapidly: I like spiky, authentic people. People who operate with devotion. With self-assuredness. Strong boundaries. People who are, for lack of simpler description, very themselves.
    who do you admire? - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • Attentiveness to conversation, to the world around them, to their own emotions and behaviors. I notice whether or not they let their ambition get in the way of their kindness and attentiveness towards others.
    who do you admire? - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • noticing can be a weapon of violence or an act of love
    is work worship? - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • I’m sure you know people who worship work, or at the very least the hazy, splendid notion of ‘ambition’. For some, it’s important to merge their life with their job. To maximize and fulfill their intelligence or potential. It’s a spiritual quest. And isn’t that the dream: to love what you do? Workaholism and actual interest start to blur at some intensity though, and it gets harder to tell if someone likes their work or just likes to work. Perhaps both.
    is work worship? - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
  • These were sad and difficult times in which we all learned that it is often impossible for us as individuals to save someone we love from the sum of their suffering, especially so when you’re ignoring your own needs in the process. But to extrapolate that reality into the idea that we shouldn’t want to tend to our loved ones, to receive them as flawed and imperfect people and care for them anyway, is a grave miscorrection. We all exist to save each other. There is barely anything else worth living for.
    no good alone - by rayne fisher-quann - internet princess
  • it insists that healing is a mountain to be climbed alone, and that relationships are the reward we get once we’ve reached the summit. When we insist that we could only ever effectively love someone who’s been perfectly “healed” — who will not struggle, accidentally hurt us, trigger us, say the wrong thing, do the wrong thing, or participate in any other uncomfortable display of humanity — we are reinforcing, and perhaps projecting, our own beliefs that we have to be perfect in order to be loved.
    no good alone - by rayne fisher-quann - internet princess
  • Only four cloud companies — Cloudflare, CloudStrike, Snowflake and Zscaler — are in that zone today, down from fifteen at the end of 2021 (!),
    Lessons from Peaches 🍑 - by Brandon Gleklen
  • In the current market, we suggest using APE (“ARR per Employee”) as a north star alongside growth.
    Lessons from Peaches 🍑 - by Brandon Gleklen
  • It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water.” “This is water.”
    This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
  • The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in.
    This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
  • teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master.”
    This is Water by David Foster Wallace (Full Transcript and Audio) - Farnam Street
  • Science operates best as a gift culture, not a commercial culture. Of course, companies and useful market applications come from new discoveries, but the heart of science is a communal celebration of our collective knowledge. The commercial side of science is undergoing a much-needed evolution, but financialization isn’t a cure-all. I’d argue the most important infrastructural advances in science in the past 20 years — Sci-Hub, Wikipedia, and arXiv — have been in the gift realm. So far, DeSci is trending in the wrong direction. Mind the $100B hurdle. In the US, the federal research engine is s…
    DeSci Musings — science better
  • Don't mistake a clear view for a short distance.
    DeSci Musings — science better
  • The function of writing is to proliferate the evolution of ideas. To write is to continue the bloodline of something that is important and true about the universal human experience.
    Good Writing vs. Great Writing - by Sherry - Pluripotent
  • As children, we experience much less interference between receiving ideas and internalising them. We accept new information with delight instead of making comparisons to what we already believe; we live in the moment rather than worrying about future consequences; we are spontaneous more than analytical; we are curious, not jaded. Even the most ordinary experiences in life are met with a sense of awe. Deep sadness and intense excitement can come within moments of each other. There’s no facade and no attachment to a story.
    compatibility and connection - by Isabel - Mind Mine
  • Taste requires originality. It invokes an aspirational authenticity. Writer George Saunders calls this “achieving the iconic space,” and it’s what he’s after when he meets his creative writing students. “They arrive already wonderful. What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their “iconic space” — the place from which they will write the stories only they could write, using what makes them uniquely themselves…At this level, good writing is assumed; the goal is to help them acquire the technical means to become defiantly and joyfully themselves.”
    Notes on “Taste” — Are.na