I am trying a new type of post which is simply a hodgepodge of interesting things I’ve stumbled on lately and other somewhat random updates from my life. Let’s see if this is valuable to anyone (including me).
Podcast recommendations from the last few weeks:
1.) How I Built This with Guy Raz
Firstly, for those who are unfamiliar with Guy’s wonderful podcast, I’d recommend scrolling through the episode list and binging every guest that appeals to you. How I Built This is a podcast where Guy interviews founders, entrepreneurs, inventors, and other creators about how they got started and eventually found success with “their thing”. Guy highlights the lifechanging moments like a first sale or first investment, but also gets into the weeds on the intricacies of starting and running a business. Two of my all time favorites are his interviews with James Dyson and Jamie Siminoff.
But today I am here to recommend two specific interviews.
First: Matt Mullenweg, cofounder of WordPress / founder of Automattic. Matt is a well-spoken and thoughtful inventor, with a positive vision for the future of software and work. In this interview Guy and Matt discuss the origins of Matt’s interest in software, how he started programming, the early days of blogging, Matt’s leap into the Open Source world and the project that eventually forked into WordPress, and much more.
Second: Tim Leatherman, inventor of the Leatherman and founder of the Leatherman Tool Group. I never knew the history of the Leatherman or about Tim’s wonderfully adventurous life and tinkering spirit. This episode will appeal to industrial designers and other physical makers of any type, who toil with their hands and obsess over getting a tool or product right. Tim had a vision of a useful invention and didn’t give up even when it seemed like the world didn’t want what he had built.
2.) Tony Fadell on the Tim Ferriss Show
Tony Fadell is the engineer and designer credited as the inventor of the iPod and the iPhone (and much more, check out his wiki). This is his second appearance on the Tim Ferriss Show, so you may be interested in starting with the first for all the stories of early prototyping at Apple and how Steve Jobs hired Tony to build the first iPod. In this second appearance, Tony and Tim discuss Steve Jobs’ legacy and leadership style, best practices of product design and managing teams, some fun tidbits on General Magic, sustainability and carbon capture, Tony’s investment portfolio trying to save the world, and much more. I highly recommend following Tony on Twitter if you like seeing prototypes, knowing how things work, or hearing awesome stories of how iconic projects began. Also check out his latest book ‘Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making’.
3.) Very Bad Wizards, Your Outie Is Skilled at Lovemaking (with Paul Bloom)
Disclaimer! I am only recommending this to you if you watched the show ‘Severance’ on Apple TV. If not, it would be mostly pointless, because in this episode Tamler and David chat with Paul Bloom (Yale psychology professor and frequent guest of VBW) about the philosophical implications of severing yourself. When my younger brother Luke got our whole family to binge ‘Severance’, we were all instant fans. The storytelling, aesthetics and set design, and core concepts explored are all incredible. But this episode made me love the show even more. If wondering about things like dualism, free will, how memory defines selfhood, and all that crap interests you… listen to this episode. Just a heads up, the ‘Severance’ discussion starts around minute 47 of the podcast.
Here are some new Twitter accounts I started following recently that I’d recommend:
- @ilyasut: cofounder of OpenAI, who you may have heard about from the GPT-3 language model or more recently DALL-E. By the way if you haven’t heard of DALL-E yet, you’ve got to check it out. Basically you can give the AI any prompt (the more detailed the better) and it will create art for you.
- @TheBookie0: this is Clement, a fifteen year old designer and programmer who recently landed an internship at Replit. I stumbled on this account because Clement won the Made with Replit competition. I checked out Clement’s website and was super impressed with the curiosity on display!
- @chemifyX: this is the Twitter for Lee Cronin’s invention, the chemical computer. Lee and his team are trying to digitize chemistry, and with “chemputation” hope to make chemical reactions and material synthesis programmable with machines.
- @archaeologyart: A Twitter account that posts objects of history, like 3rd century Greek bracelets or Peruvian breastplates from 1000 A.D.
Credit to DALL-E (of course) but also Owain Evans.
My most popular Tweet of the week(s):
Would love to hear your answer to the same question!
Reading Recommendations
As always, you can keep up with what I am reading here. Here are some recent reads that stood out to me.
1.) Learning at Scale: An interview with Stewart Brand
It is no secret that I am a huge fan of Stewart Brand (creator of Whole Earth Catalog and author of How Buildings Learn, among a lifetime of other amazing projects). This is a wonderful brief interview from The Prepared. You may like this if you like exploring: DIY and building things, how the internet changed information forever, curation and trust in the media, architecture and urban design, how design impacts the environment, climate change solutions, and “moonshot” goals like bringing the Wooly Mammoth back from extinction.
2.) The Path to Better Thinking Through Puzzles and Riddles – A.J Jacobs
This is an excerpt from A.J Jacobs’ new book “The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life”. In this excerpt, Jacobs discusses the playfulness of puzzles and how introducing them into your life can improve your thinking in all areas. You may like this if you like: math puzzles, brain teasers, learning about ancient civilization games and culture, creativity and “out-of-the-box” thinking, the learning process, and tools and tips for problem solving. Also check out his recent podcast with Tim Ferriss if you like this.
3.) 103 Bits of Advice I Wish I Had Known – Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly (founder and “Senior Maverick” of Wired Mag and author of Vanishing Asia) recently turned 70 years old. To mark the occasion, he shared a list of 103 bits of advice that is packed with golden insights. Here are a few of my favorites, but I don’t want to spoil the list so go read them!
- Don’t ever work for someone you don’t want to become.
- It is the duty of a student to get everything out of a teacher, and the duty of a teacher to get everything out of a student.
- Speak confidently as if you are right, but listen carefully as if you are wrong.
- Half the skill of being educated is learning what you can ignore.
- Your best job will be one that you were unqualified for because it stretches you. In fact only apply to jobs you are unqualified for.
- It’s thrilling to be extremely polite to rude strangers.
- Don’t bother fighting the old; just build the new.
What I have been up to lately
Many of you saw that I launched my latest project Printernet last Friday. For those who didn’t, Printernet delivers you a beautiful print issue with five items from your reading list. You can build and manage your reading list with our web application, which queues up five items from your list to be printed in your next issue. Check out the announcement post for an overview of why I wanted to work on this and consider signing up and playing around with it at readprinternet.com. I may do a post soon detailing how I built Printernet, but for now am focused on getting and fulfilling orders, and working on an “Easy Add” feature so that users won’t have to paste links into their lists. Thank you to those who have already signed up or ordered your first issue!
I would love all feedback, feature ideas you may have, or pain points you’ve experienced with reading online. You can email me at jacobweber530@gmail.com or hello@getprinternet.com, use the contact form here, or the comments of this post.
Some highlights from launch day:
- We got featured on Product Hunt, received 30+ upvotes, reached the #10 product of the day, and got an upvote from Ryan Hoover, the founder of Product Hunt and a huge inspiration to me. Pretty sweet!
- I sold my first issue and reached five user sign ups! Slow and steady.
- Tessa got me a launch day cake!
- And lastly, I heard from so many of y’all sending love for the project, follows to our accounts, and more. So thanks a ton, super excited to see where this goes!
Here are some links to Printernet stuff:
polymathematics 
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