Summer Roundup (2024)
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.
Polymathematics is a blog and newsletter about trying to do many things well. The three things I am trying to do well are writing, music, and invention. Creative people in tech or practical people in creative fields tend to enjoy it most.
Additionally, every month I send a post with the best podcast episodes, reading, and coolest people and projects I discovered that month. My recommendations / curations have been applauded by very cool people such as Ted Gioia, Patrick O’Shaughnessy, Harley Finkelstein (Shopify) and more… which is awesome!
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Howdy! Each month I post a roundup post like this one sharing the best reading, podcasts, projects, and people or projects I’ve discovered from my month. This one covers the cool stuff from the summer (May to July) so it’s a bit longer than usual.
If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing so you get one of these each month and help this blog grow.
Podcasts
1.) Nate Silver, Tetragrammaton
What I expected to be a straightforward interview about political forecasting actually ended up being a fascinating introduction to the tactics and psychology of poker. Rick demonstrates the key skills of a good interviewer in my view, curiosity and naiveté.
“When you’re waiting for a card to come, do you wish for a certain card?”
2.) Ezra Koenig, Tetragrammaton
A two part conversation with Ezra that goes very deep on how he writes songs, makes demos, thinks about albums and what it means to be in a band, his relationship with fans and audiences, and tons of music history. If you make music, you will be grinning ear to ear while taking notes.
3.) Paul Bloom, Conversations with Tyler
“Do babies have a concept of good and evil?”, “would you kill 10 dogs to save a human?”, “would Tarzan be a polytheist?“, “was the rude customer service rep actually an AI agent?”
4.) Addicted to Distraction - Ted Gioia, How I Write
Ted is in top form here, weaving his personal history with his criticisms of much of modern media (and culture at large). He talks about how he only read books published before the 20th century until he was forty, how he learns new things, and his advice to young creative people trying to make sense of things. This is but one example of why Ted’s blog is one of the few I pay for at the moment.
5.) Mark Groden - The Future of Flying, Invest Like the Best
Mark and his company Skyryse aim to make small aircraft as safe as commercial flights (the safest mode of transportation in human history). This is an awesome introduction to how airplanes and their safety systems work plus a fascinating glimpse of the future from someone helping build it.
6.) Kelsey Piper - Reporting on tech, Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie
Let’s unpack the absolute chaos of the media over the last half decade or so and discuss the older models of how the press and corporations interacted. This is a great episode of Patrick McKenzie’s (patio11) new podcast, which is the conversation based version of his wonderful blog posts. I also recommend checking out his episode on betting markets and teaching trading to high schoolers.
7.) Bill Wurtz, HTML Energy
Anyone who makes things for a living will thoroughly enjoy this conversation with the creative force known as Bill Wurtz. Just go poking around Bill’s site if you’re not convinced. This episode is like a manual to “escaping the deserted island” of doing work you don’t enjoy for a living.
“if you're getting off of a deserted island, it's a pretty awesome thing to do and you're gonna want there to be a story about it.. And if you think there's any chance that you might make it out, you want to start documenting the whole thing because by the time you get out, that's gonna be super valuable.”
Reading
1.) Untangling the Tale of Ada Lovelace, Stephen Wolfram
A fascinating investigation into a deeply curious tinkerer woven with computer history, from a deeply curious tinkerer weaving the future of computer history. I read this after Tessa and I finished Bridgerton… so that may have helped.
2.) Always Already Programming, Melanie Hoff
Short and sweet meditation on the often blurry line between “users” and “programmers”.
“Everyone who interacts with computers has in important ways always already been programming them.”
3.) Sourdough, Robin Sloan
Finally got to read and finish Sourdough, Robin Sloan’s second novel, in preparation for reading Moonbound (his third and latest). Sourdough was a bit of a slow start for me, but once I got into it I flew through the back half. If you liked Penumbra, imagine very similar vibes but for the weird world of food! It was fun to see the connections forming between the two worlds too as I’d heard Moonbound further expanded the lore. Started Moonbound at the beach last week and am enjoying it so far!
4.) The New Yorker Who Cracked the U.K’s Premier Quiz Show, David Segal (NYT)
The story about a young college student, Brandon, whose determination to be on (and win) the UK’s most exclusive televised collegiate quiz show sparked the assembly of the ideal four person team. The resulting strategy and practice regimen they took is a case study in deliberate practice and creative thinking.
5.) The Battle for Attention, Nathan Heller
What starts out as a semi-familiar discussion on the science of attention, social media and marketing quickly turns weird. Read about the secret society of Ornithologists, professors and other weirdos who use their attention to elevate the neglected parts of public spaces. Very Borgesian at times.
Cool Projects, People and Personal Updates
HTML Day 2024, Austin
The very first HTML Day meetup in Austin occurred on July 13th of this year! The idea was to meetup for an HTML freewrite but it happily became more of a hang session centered around conversations about computers. I loved seeing the photos of the other meetups around the world too. Looking to do more in person stuff with creative programmers, designers and artists in Austin… more to come hopefully!
Internet Phone Book
I recently discovered this awesome project from Kristoffer and Elliot aiming to print physical “internet phone books” with thousands of cool personal websites, their owners, and their URLs. Of course, I submitted jakeweber.net for consideration. Such a cool idea that resonated with me since I’d prototyped the Internet Payphone last year which let you call the websites you wanted to visit.
USB Club
“A social file exchange… for designers, artists, DJs, writers, musicians,
researchers, engineers.”
USB club and Printernet have a certain shared sensibility, and I am super excited that I’ve become a member. Basically you get a beautiful little USB of your own that lets you access the private net of interesting media from a club of curious and inventive creative people. Amazing!
Sarv’s lil guy
Sarv is whipping up something sweet over on Twitter! He’s been prototyping a “digital sidekick” that takes the best features of a phone while removing the hyper connectivity and dopamine slot machine of the modern smartphone. Plus he’s doing it with style, these prototypes are so fun (and adorable).
Writer’s Block, from Anu Atluru
Anu is a wonderful writer (follow her on Substack) in the work + creativity scene and recently started an experiment: cohort based month-long writing groups, with hand picked members sharing feedback with one another in a handmade web app. I participated in the 2nd round of Writer’s Block in July and thought it was very cool. I admit, my month of travel meant that my June ambition outpaced my July abilities (I was only able to get one, very long, draft up for feedback). However, I did get great feedback and got to read some very interesting drafts from other wonderful writers. I think these small, semi-bespoke software experiences will be very popular over the next few years. It reminded me of what School of Song is doing for songwriters. I think if Anu wants to, she can easily do the same thing for essays. She has the intentionality and skill to do it well. My piece from Writer’s Block is about Boredom and still needs work, but armed with wonderful feedback, I look forward to sharing it soonish.
Site updates
I’ve been making some fun updates over on my site this summer! New additions include: the list page (myriad fun lists), history of work page (the meaningful milestones in my creative path), history of desks page (my workspaces since 2011), the changes page to track site updates, finally adding decent mobile options, and more. As always, maintaining my own little home on the internet is so joyous! If you’d like to explore building your own, I’d love to help. I am actively looking to help someone build their site in September, so please reach out now if you are interested in chatting about it!
Printernet updates
Printernet continues to expand, have a ton of fun announcements coming soon. Over the last few months: we were featured on kottke.org (!), we’ve reached Ireland, added image support back in, and passed last year’s revenue in the first four months of this year! There are two frames I like for what I am up to with Printernet. The first is the ambitious version: bringing the magic of the internet to magazines to spark a print renaissance! The second, equally true, framing: a business trojan horse to have readers send me the most interesting bits of writing that exist online. Printernet readers keep introducing me to incredible writers and essays, which is a very special and personal perk of running Printernet.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading! As always I’d love if you dropped me a recommendation (podcast, reading, song, whatever) in my public rec box or in the comments here. If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing so you get one of these each month and help this blog grow.
In case you missed them:
Audiences: How I Think About Growth
Your offline picks (USB, phone book and printernet) are particularly interesting, I wonder how this growing longing for tangible offline media will play out going forward, similar to how vinyl records seem to be making a comeback.