Here is another roundup of the best reads, podcasts, internet people + projects, and anything else I’ve discovered the past month. This month is shorter, with just podcast and reading recs.
Here are the past Roundups: April, May, June, July, August, September, and October. In case you missed it, the October roundup post was a special “spooky” edition for Halloween. In it, I recommend 3 podcasts and 7 short stories to creep you out.
Subscribe to my blog (in the footer of this post) or Substack to get these roundups in your email inbox once a month.
Podcast Recommendations
1.) Very Bad Wizards on 2001: A Space Odyssey, With Sam Harris
A good discussion on Kubrick, art in general, and of course AI and the misalignment problem.
2.) Neil Gaiman, David Tenant Does a Podcast With
Never knew David Tenant had a podcast. Neil Gaiman is great here as always.
3.) Jacob Collier, Broken Record
Anyone who loves music or makes music has probably heard of the insanely talented Jacob Collier. I really enjoy Jacob’s ability to covey and explain the sometimes complex ideas he enjoys exploring in his music and the music of others. He is one of those people who gets you excited simply by how excited he is about the things he does.
Reading Recommendations
As always, you can keep up with what I am reading here.
For this month’s reading recommendations, I’d love you to check out my Reading This page. Reading This is a tool I built this week that lets anyone create, update, and easily share their current favorite top five reads. They can be books, articles, essays, blog posts, or really anything. I think of Reading This as Linktree but for reading recommendations.
I wanted a cool tool for reading recs since I am always sharing the best pieces I read each week on Twitter, Instagram, or in posts like these. This way I can constantly update and share my current favorites, and easily link out to them so others can read them.
I also just finished building a new page on Reading This that lets you view all the other things people are recommending on the platform.
I think this could be a fun site for people who spend a lot of time reading online. I’d love if you considered signing up and building your own by going to readingthis.net. Desktop and Mobile are now supported. More on this project soon!
In Case You Missed It
I posted a piece called Creative Machines about Artificial Intelligence and creativity earlier this month. In it I ask the question, “If you found out your favorite book was written by an Artificial Intelligence would that make it less special”? Especially given last night’s release of ChatGPT beta by OpenAI, I highly recommend checking that post out if technology and art interest you!
Next, I wanted to give a brief update on Printernet. For anyone who hasn’t followed it, Printernet is a project I launched last May. With Printernet, I send you a personalized print magazine with five reading selections from your reading list. I built a web app for users to build and maintain their online reading list where they can rearrange each issue as they like. This month, I launched a new experiment called Printernet x Twitter, where instead of readers building their own Printernet issue, they can connect their Twitter with Printernet and let us pick five selections for them based on who they follow and retweet. I sent the first issue using this new approach last week to our first international reader.
I think this approach is enticing due to the surprise element of not knowing what you will get in your issue, but still feeling confident the reading will align with your tastes since it is based off of your personal Twitter. I’ve also heard from previous readers that they get stressed making their selections, so I am happy to experiment with removing that friction (I can even envision my new project readingthis.net helping Printernet readers make selections, since they can view what others are recommending on one clean page). The trick will be to get very good at predicting five reading selections a reader will like, so that Printernet earns that trust. I am tinkering with automating this process by poking around Twitters API. More to come! If you want to try this out, you can order one here.
Finally, I wanted to share the good news that last week I received word that my short story The Crack in the Sidewalk is set to be published in the Spring 2023 issue of Door is a Jar magazine, and will be available at bookstores nationwide. This is especially exciting, since this will be the first time I’ve had a piece of fiction published. My last published piece was the essay Digital Infants, which appeared in The Broken City magazine in 2019.
That’s all for this month. You can subscribe to my blog here (in the footer of the page) or subscribe to my Substack to get these roundups in your email once a month.
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