A Roundup (August 2023)
A collection of podcast and reading recommendations, cool people or projects I have found online recently, any new tools or tips, and some personal updates.
Howdy! Each month I post a roundup post like this one sharing the best reading, podcasts, projects, and people I’ve discovered from my month. Let’s get started!
Podcasts
1.) Derek Thompson, How I Write
A fantastic discussion about how ideas for new writing happen, how they are refined, and how Derek approaches writing on the internet.
2.) Andy Matuschak on Books and Learning, Econtalk
A wonderful discussion on new paradigms for education. Not sure if I’ve already recommended this piece by Andy (recommended below), but you should definitely read it!
Reading
1.) My Writing Education: A Timeline, George Saunders
Holy moly. A beautiful piece of writing about the importance of great teachers. This includes gems like the following:
On Doug Unger
“Doug gives me the single greatest bit of advice on writing dialogue I have ever heard. And no, I am not going to share it here. It is that good, yes.”
On writing
“A story can be a compressed bundle of energy, and, in fact, the more it is thoughtfully compressed, the more power it will have.”
On virtue
“It is as if that is the point of power: to allow one to access the higher registers of gentleness.”
“Note to self, I think: Live in such a way that, when neighbors walk by your house months after you’re gone, they can’t help but blurt out something affectionate.”
2.) Why Books Don’t Work, Andy Matuschak
Because of Printernet, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to make the reading experience the most enjoyable experience it can be. This has at times led me to think about making it more effective too. In these “notes” as Andy calls them, he brilliantly presents how information is obtained (or not obtained) through books and how we might innovate around this.
3.) What Screens Want, Frank Chimero
Every material has a grain, “a certain way they’ve grown and matured that describes how they want to be treated”. This is a wonderful (and non-technical) survey of the “grain” of screens: flux.
4.) Always Bet On Text, Graydon Hoare
Another gem on how text is the eternal medium for human thought and culture.
5.) The Pastry A.I. That Learned to Fight Cancer, James Somers
In Japan, a group of market researchers realized that pastry shops make more money when they increase the variety of pastries they offer. The researchers also realized when pastries are not wrapped, but instead snuggled together in baskets, they appear fresher and sell better as a result. So this research group put their findings into practice and opened pastry shops all over Japan with 300+ pastries to choose from and no packaging. This presented two challenges: training employees to visually identify 300+ distinct pastries as well as recall their prices was extremely difficult and the time it took to ring customers up (no bar codes) produced massive lines. This article is about the man, and his company, that was hired to solve those challenges. They did it brilliantly.
Twitter, Cool People + Projects
Here are some folks I recommend following on Twitter for incredible questions worth wondering about:
And for awesome stories, advice, and quotes from writers:
I also recently discovered Readymag, a fantastic website builder Tessa showed me. Readymag is like Squarespace but much cooler and more dynamic. Readymag takes to heart a lot of my ideas about creative programming and making the internet a cooler weirder place. Highly recommend playing around with it.
Personal Updates
Printernet has continued to gain momentum. August was a great month, full of orders and great reader feedback too. To celebrate, all Printernet issues are 10% off this month!
In case you don’t know, Printernet is a company I started that sends you a one-of-a-kind print issue with reading perfectly suited for you. You can either connect your reading list and your issue will contain five selections from it, or connect your Twitter + Substack and let us pick five selections we think you’ll love.
We got an awesome write-up from one of our reader’s David, made some great progress with Printernet for Kindle, and shipped our first issue created using the automation software I coded. That last achievement is especially big. Previously, I’ve had to use Canva or InDesign and manually build every issue, tediously copying the text from an article or essay directly from the original publication website. Now with my software, I can simply give it five URLs and out come five beautifully formatted essays in the Printernet style. This continues to be an extremely fun and fulfilling project to work on.
I also rebuilt my personal website this month! I decided I wanted to take it a more minimalist direction and am happy with the result, a kind of “bento box” style site wide organization method. Still have a lot to build out, including hosting all my blog posts here, but I am glad I got it out the door and looking good.
There’s also a fun surprise for those who attempt to access my site on a mobile phone. That was a fun bit of quirkiness to preserve the playfulness I want my site to carry.
And lastly, here are some upcoming posts you can expect from me:
Post on learning to program and knowing enough to build your own website
Post on reading + the core beliefs behind Printernet
Thanks for reading! You can become a paid subscriber to receive a post in this style every Friday instead of just once a month. It is $5.00 a month and also gives you access to the full archive of my writing. Appreciate your time!