A Roundup (February 2023)

In these posts, I share the best reads, podcasts, internet people + projects, and anything else I’ve discovered the past month.

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.) The Tim Ferriss Show

• Wade Davis: this Indiana Jones type figure was the first person to bring the infamous Hatian “zombie poison” into the US. This is a wonderful conversation about Wade’s countless adventures, demystifying “zombies” and Voodoo, living your best life, writing well, and optimism.
• Professor John Vervaeke: This episode felt like I was plopped into a strange world with different rules than my own, and John was my tour guide. A fascinating exploration of flow states and the four ways of knowing. Recommend checking out John’s Twitter and YouTube series.

2.) Derek Sivers, The Pathless Path

• Derek has lived many lives from a musician to a startup founder. Like David Bowie, Derek believes in transformation as a means of evolution and personal growth. He is sincere and wise and here he explores the social scripts that set him on his life’s path and the joy of travel.

3.) Young Bill Gates, Founders Pod

• Listen for a very well executed and detailed overview of Bill Gates’ childhood tinkering and the eventual start of Microsoft. Many lessons in here, delivered in an entertaining manner.

4.) Tim Urban, Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• Tim Urban runs one of my favorite blogs Wait But Why? and is insanely good at framing complex ideas in simple and oftentimes hilarious ways. He uses minimalist doodles to illustrate these ideas. He just finished his first book What’s Our Problem? A self-help book for societies, which explores what has gone wrong in our society recently. In this episode, Josh and Tim explore some of the ideas in Tim’s new book.

Reading Recommendations

As always, you can keep up with what I am reading here. You can also check out my Reading This page to see the five things I am currently recommending.

1.) Are you serious? – Visakan Veerasamy

“As I got older it became clearer to me that not many people are really serious about anything. Some people go their whole lives without ever having met anyone else who I might describe as actually serious, so they find it hard to believe that anybody could really mean what they say, since everything everyone says is bullshit.”

So… are you actually serious?

2.) The Perils of Niching Down – Rob Hardy

“The problem with niche strategy, in a nutshell, is that it’s a reliable destroyer of the human spirit. It’s built on the assumption that we can segment ourselves, and turn one static aspect of the self into an economic engine that makes the rest of our life feel how we wish it’d feel.”

This essay explores many of the ideas behind this blog’s name, polymathematics. Highly recommend it.

3.) No, Teen Suicide Isn’t Up Because Life Got Objectively Worse – Eric Levitz

In the US, Teen Suicide and Teen Attempted Suicides have skyrocketed since the early 2010’s, particularly for young women. Why? Is it because of the rise in Social Media use? If so, then why don’t other nation’s with similar Social Media use see the same spikes in teen depression and suicide numbers? Is it that life is much harder today, that the economic situation for young adults is worse than in previous decades? Could it be the looming threat of climate change? This essay does a great job of navigating these questions sincerely and fairly. This conversation is crucial.

Twitter, Cool People, and Cool Projects

Personal Tweet I am still pondering

I don't want a Second Brain, I want a Second Neocortex.

— Polymathematics (@onlyfootnotes) February 24, 2023

There is a new wave of software tools that can be described as “Second Brain” applications. I think Tiago Forte coined the term. But these applications can be summarized as “idea capture” tools, like notetaking apps that make it easier to access the things you’ve saved in them. In the AI age, these tools will become increasingly valuable. They will help you riff on fragments of notes, improve your own ideas, and help organize the things you save in better and more interesting ways. But there is a fear around this that should be explored, the fear of outsourcing critical thinking to software. Like how people’s natural ability to navigate spaces has been shown to decline after the introduction and reliance on the GPS, could reliance on software for memory and idea generation reduce our own capabilities? Therefore, maybe it is better to want a “Second Neocortex”, a place to aid you in simple memory, rather than a full “Second Brain” to replace critical thinking and creativity. It isn’t a perfect split, nothing is when it comes to the brain, but it is something I am thinking about. I instinctively think the best approach to getting the best value out of these tools will be like a “debate partner”, “study buddy” or “tutor” model. Instead of relying on these tools to “do your homework”, use them to sharpen your thinking and discover insights through dialogue. In this way, they will be like a smarter friend who makes you smarter.

I considered using “Second Hippocampus” but it doesn’t sound as good and after some research on memory, the Neocortex seems closer to what these applications might do for us.

Cool People

• Kate Darling: technology / AI ethics. Recommend starting with this convo.
• Ross Anderson: Culture, technology, and politics writer. Recommend starting with this convo.
• Tinkered Thinker: “while there may be outliers who can change overnight, the large majority of us seem better served by a slower, gentler process.  A process that can often feel frustratingly slow for those yearning for change. Tinkered Thinking seeks to serve anyone who has this undertaking.”

Cool Projects

• Replit Ghostwriter + extensions Beta: I’ve started programming with Replit’s Ghostwriter (their AI coding assistant) instead of ChatGPT lately. What I really like about using Ghostwriter is that it is like having ChatGPT right in my coding environment. I can stay on one screen and really get into a flow without interruptions. I have noticed more limitations with Ghostwriter (wrong code, misunderstanding, etc) than I do when using ChatGPT but I am confident Ghostwriter will keep improving. I’ve also been invited to test the early version of Replit’s extensions builder and am going to build a cool extension for Replit users this month. If you have a cool idea, I’d love to jam on it. Two early ideas I’ve had are 1) speech to text for “talking” with Ghostwriter (codename Séance?) and 2) a “collaborator finder” based on the code in your Repl. Excited to take a crack at them.

Personal Updates

I am super happy to announce that my short story The Crack in the Sidewalk is set to be published in the Door is a Jar Literary Magazine this Spring. Look at that little cat! The issues are now available for pre-order here and will be available April 6th at Barnes and Noble or Books-A-Million nationwide. Would mean a lot if you checked it out and you’d be supporting an awesome independent literary magazine.

I am also so excited to say that Tessa and I have picked a wedding date and are chugging along with getting our plans finalized. It’s been a wild process but we found a wonderful plan that really feels like us. The space is amazing, the music we have lined up is perfect for our taste, and we can’t wait to be with family and friends this summer celebrating.

Last but not least, I am working on a new project currently called soon.

This is a software project involving making it easier to save podcast episodes that you want to listen to later in one accessible place. If you are a designer or engineer who is obsessed with podcasts I’d love to chat and maybe collaborate! I am already at the MVP stage where I am using the product everyday, which is awesome. I think this could really grow into something great.