Posts

2024

Joining Thrive Capital Sep 11

Good creative tools are virtuosic and open-ended Aug 8

What makes a good human interface? Aug 3

Instrumental interfaces, engaged interfaces Aug 1

A beginner’s guide to exploration Jul 29

A notebook for seeing with language models Jul 28

Create things that come alive Jul 22

Epistemic calibration and searching the space of truth Jul 7

The quotes on my wall Jul 6

Synthesizer for thought Jun 23

Prism: mapping interpretable concepts and features in a latent space of language Jun 22

Personalization, measuring with taste, and intrinsic interfaces Jun 14

Some applied research problems in machine learning Jun 9

In the beginning… was the command line May 27

Like rocks, like water May 24

Continuity Jan 1

2023

Notion, AI, and Me Jan 17

Backpropagating through reasoning Jan 11

2022

Build UNIX, not Uber Jul 16

Design with materials, not features Jun 20

Hyperlink maximalism May 21

Knowledge tools, finite and infinite May 19

Resonant May 17

Thoughts at the boundary between machine and mind May 5

Imagining better interfaces to language models May 1

Legal documents are pushing text interfaces forward Apr 30

On proving yourself Apr 11

A GPS for the mind Mar 10

Navigate, don't search Feb 3

Notational intelligence Jan 2

2021

Towards a research community for better thinking tools Nov 27

AI as a creative collaborator Nov 16

The web browser as a tool of thought Aug 10

The Generative Library Jul 28

Building Monocle, a universal personal search engine for life Jul 7

Note-taking in the wild: living with the Surface Duo Jun 28

Incremental note-taking Jun 27

Liquidity of skill Jun 16

Made of love Jun 10

Habitcrafting and tool-making Jun 8

How to commit to the few right things May 24

Capabilities × motivation × access May 18

Everything as processes May 9

What I've learned about good prototyping Apr 22

On Dorm Room Fund Apr 15

Surfing, hacking, and what they demand of us Apr 7

Welcome to New York Mar 31

Love, purpose, and creatorhood Mar 30

Controversy budget Mar 28

Designing a better thinking-writing medium Mar 10

Work, play, and motivation Mar 6

Why do we keep making music? Feb 27

Bet on the sprinters Feb 24

Find your own axis Feb 17

Good ideas on tool-making from the story of UNIX Feb 13

Taylor Swift: a venture investment thesis Feb 5

My role models, or, a few stories of others to live by Feb 3

"Write short sentences" is bad advice Jan 29

I'm joining Ideaflow to build a universe of better tools for ideas Jan 28

Creative shadow-casting Jan 18

The long future of artificial intelligence Jan 17

How to do impossible things Jan 17

On the edge of life and death Jan 10

My goals for 2021, interesting lives, and other considerations Jan 5

2020

Building Lucerne, a Twitter experience tailored to me Dec 26

Beyond customization: build tools that grow with us Dec 26

Laws of individuals, laws of masses Dec 22

Cloudchasers Dec 16

How I make music Dec 16

What would the next Y Combinator look like? Dec 13

Creative paradise Dec 11

Honesty in craft Dec 11

You don't have to be busy to be prolific Dec 6

How to find focus Dec 3

How to kill the university Nov 22

Software, the boundless machine Nov 19

Extralinguistics Nov 16

Higher perspectives Nov 16

Reality whispers Nov 9

Name your ideas Nov 8

The job of a writer Nov 8

On networking Oct 31

Blackbird. Pixar. iPhone. Oct 31

Prolific focus Oct 25

Multidimensional tactility Oct 19

The future of community: a future for communities Oct 15

Communities are micro-economies Oct 12

Life as becoming Oct 10

Distance traveled Oct 1

What doesn't work yet Sep 27

Forgotten beauty, once known Sep 22

I'm Linus, and I'm from the Midwest Sep 21

To build a community, elevate the storytellers Sep 2

Travel tips for you and for me Sep 1

Tomorrow, the fog will lift Aug 29

History is momentum Aug 23

How to find your people, or, my story Aug 16

On leading change in the tech industry Aug 12

It's the programming environment, not the programming language Aug 12

Build tools around workflows, not workflows around tools Aug 4

A cellular theory of communities Jul 23

The courtyard and the public radio Jul 23

The hypertext Web is the real Metaverse Jul 17

Software is architecture Jul 17

On ownership Jul 17

Price of purpose Jul 13

Extremely difficult but not impossible Jul 8

Making Unim.press Jun 28

Experiments with word and letter frequencies in writing Jun 25

Lovecroft: a mailing list manager for static sites Jun 22

Finding it Jun 10

Trends in my writing over time Jun 7

The lexicon of justice Jun 7

Frieden: my personal availability calendar Jun 2

In defense of natural language Jun 1

Text as an interface May 24

How I write May 23

Build your own programming language May 21

Conservation of complexity May 14

Unbundling cloud May 13

A runtime for structured thought May 11

Interesting things about the Lua interpreter May 6

Software complexity and degrees of freedom Apr 24

How we measure time Apr 19

Technical sympathy Apr 18

Computing literacy is power Apr 18

My favorite projects Apr 8

When the quarantine ends Apr 4

Mira v0: my personal people notes app Mar 28

Moving forward Mar 24

Time spent thinking deeply is not wasted time Jan 16

Twenty-twenty Jan 1

2019

Where Cal founders come from Oct 18

Things I'm learning about in sales Aug 26

Thank you Repl.it, Hello Hack Club Aug 15

How I side project Jul 22

What to do if you’re a high schooler interested in a career in software Jun 12

Newsletters and blogs I'm reading Feb 27

Where, what, and why -- what creates powerful communities? Feb 11

2018

Winning the race Dec 18

A computer for the rest of us Dec 10

My goals for 2019 Dec 9

How to grow a budding startup community Dec 1

Hustling efficiently Nov 16

The Diversification Point, or what comes after Moore’s Law Aug 28

Learning from the deep end May 14

The alphabet of pixels May 11

Saying no to almost everything is the most important skill I was never taught Apr 8

Five things high school didn’t teach me about writing Mar 10

Big problems aren’t better than small problems Feb 11

What are you the average of? Feb 2

2017

What's more important than STEM? Nov 28

Starting a company is the most educational thing I’ve done Nov 12

What ignited the fuel Oct 28

Do work that you are proud of Oct 28

5 ways that gap years will ruin your life Oct 4

Lessons from Google I/O and SPAN: getting more out of industry events Sep 21

Stay hungry, stay foolish. Sep 20

In praise of the analog world Aug 10

I flew a plane! Aug 6

The cost of a polarizing choice Jul 17

Two ways to become better Jun 5

Purdue has more entrepreneurs Apr 22

My information diet Apr 17

When failure is success Apr 9

Stay hungry Mar 26

Some small lessons from accidentally doing citations for 16,000 people Mar 15

Finding passion Jan 5

2016

My goals for 2017 Dec 31

How to buy what you can't buy Dec 26

What makes you Dec 11

What are YOU doing? Nov 21

What's left Nov 9

The value of the Gap Nov 1

Fear of being normal Oct 28

The art of living Oct 16

Lost in translation Oct 5

Design is not art Sep 19

Please forget my age Sep 10

Because you care Sep 5

Why Cafe Avant-Garde would never be a school club Aug 20

Terminal impact Aug 15

Three words Jul 24

On natural talent Jul 11

A broken stereotype Jul 3

No more newsroom Jun 1

Chasing time May 17

On powerlessness May 12

Connect the dots May 8

Micro-UX's Apr 28

The Maker's High Apr 24

World 3 Apr 23

Lemon juice Apr 18

Grade Point Identity Apr 15

Banning books into silence Apr 12

A look back Jan 3

2015

Elixir of mortality Dec 30

Taking a break Dec 19

Intoxication by ideation Oct 17

Taste fights excellence Oct 11

Holding gaze Oct 10

Run away Sep 28

Why I don't like school Sep 20

The democratization revolution Sep 15

Make Sep 14

Usain Bolt's creativity Sep 7

Splitting time Sep 6

Not quite Sep 2

Rebellious clocks Aug 31

The consumption culture Aug 20

The battle of choice Aug 18

Achievement factory Aug 17

The asking economy Aug 15

The Facebook birthday effect Aug 4

Internet 2.0 Aug 3

Once upon a time Aug 1

The gap Jul 28

The filter of authenticity Jul 22

Counting to 100 Jul 17

The blind spot Jul 15

Fixed in time Jul 12

An open letter to you, a human Jul 8

The finish line Jul 2

Double reality Jun 30

Beautiful strangers Jun 28

Falling upwards Jun 21

Without reason Jun 19

Dieting and education Jun 17

The paradox of Vegas Jun 12

Loyal dreams Jun 8

Missing out Jun 4

The price of speech Jun 1

Means of communication May 28

The new privacy May 27

The rights to become May 23

Victims of circumstance May 22

In the name of progress May 15

The artist's motivation May 13

The miracle of trust May 10

The eternal podcast May 4

You are alone May 1

The real war Apr 30

All arts, created equal Apr 23

The blip: chasing down social justice Apr 19

Change without change Apr 19

History on repeat Apr 10

Fences of transparency Apr 6

The future streams Apr 2

The speed of innovation Mar 29

Behind invisible bars Mar 23

Failure to fail Mar 19

The reflection bias Mar 16

Re-wiring the wheel Mar 12

Making the maker Mar 9

Living biographies Mar 5

The Jabberwocky mentality Mar 2

A tale of two stories Feb 26

The infinite staircase Feb 24

The Truman Reality Feb 19

Heads up Feb 16

The Union Feb 13

Resolved: debate is like Silicon Valley Feb 9

The rights to ... technology? Feb 5

The room for everyone Feb 2

In vivo silico Jan 29

The topic of debate Jan 26

The invisible eyes Jan 22

Broadcast yourself Jan 19

Schooling standstill Jan 15

We are the Capitol Jan 12

Facing forward Jan 8

The monologue Jan 5

A page turn Jan 1

2014

Thoughts for 2014 Dec 29

The blurred lines of intelligence Dec 25

The hashtag poets Dec 22

Code, the new second language Dec 18

The discrimi-nation's looking glass Dec 15

The global amnesia Dec 11

The formality paradox Dec 8

Your own Santa Claus Dec 4

The paradox of online dating Dec 1

Ferguson and the blind virtue Nov 27

The open-sourced future Nov 24

The ads and the tip jar Nov 20

Banning books from the Internet shelves Nov 17

Why aren't you doing it? Nov 10

The case on equality Nov 6

The evolution of communication Nov 3

Dieting and education Oct 30

Nothing fits in cages! Oct 27

Dear idle critics of popular culture Oct 23

Who grants us the rights? Oct 20

Learning in the i-generation Oct 16

Time-saving tips for the connected Oct 13

Shifting directions... Oct 9

A new UI for social change Oct 6

Changing rules of the Olympics Oct 2

Digital privacy: more than hacking Facebook Sep 29

Is there good art? Sep 25

The hidden colors Sep 11

The binary enlightenment Sep 8

Are numbers real? Sep 4

Heisenberg, quarantines, and the benefit of risks Sep 1

Not about the milestones Aug 28

The human factor Aug 25

How to make your ideas real Aug 21

Here's to the Crazy Ones Aug 18

Living in the future Aug 14

Teach yourself: 10 tips on how to un-school Aug 11

Meaning, not definition Aug 7

Complicated itineraries Aug 4

Connections and walls Jul 31