31 entries for August 2025

the hard thing about starting a habit is often unclarity on how to integrate, more so than the action itself.

How We Encourage Self-Improvement at Buffer

Unlimited books

Every teammate receives a free Kindle when they join Buffer and can expense any digital or audiobooks they choose. No approvals needed. No need to tie it directly to work.

Entropy Piano Tuner

David Braid told me he uses this open-source software to tune pianos in the following way:

1. Play each note to calibrate.
2. Let the software analyze and then you can preview with MIDI.
3. Adjust each string until the feedback shows a positive result.

is it really FOSS?

[Seeing whether projects are as open-source as advertised.]

[Kris realized that micro-businesses weren't a good fit as they are often run by one or two people with less resources to risk on services. Switching to multi-location owners made her offering more appealing and an easier sell.]

[Industries or movements with many fans and haters always present a good business opportunity.]

How the head of Obsidian went from superfan to CEO

[It was fortuitous that we generally appealed to developers because we launched our plugin system to many power users who also could build new functionality for themselves and share them with the community.]

[The Obsidian team gets by with one meeting a year in part by having one or two goals at any time: this way, the focus is often clear and people can be self-motivated to push things forward.]

i find this counterfeit money logic a bit weird where the seller avoids accepting large bills for small purchases, but if they accept them for large purchase it seems equally bad

"having a platform profile is like living in a single-room apartment, whereas having your own site is a castle with unlimited rooms."

If you wanted to learn about [something, but without] surfing around, a $25 investment could solve the problem.

[Test the market with these questions: 1. Have people asked for your help? 2. Are there enough of them willing to pay for your expertise? 3. Are other businesses serving the market but without your approach?]

Capoeira Music Practice: Profa Minha Velha

Mixture of leading and harmonizing. Big sound with 7 people; sounds like there's more instruments than there actually are.

I'm joining a16z

Winning, for bloggers, means writing the reference take on a good topic. My favourite example of this is how Byrne Hobart broke out with his piece on the 30-year mortgage. It’s kind of surprising that this kind of post had such influence - it’s wonky, it’s not written for a general audience whatsoever. But it turns out that people think and talk about their mortgages a lot, and like to feel competent when they do. Reading that piece equips them with a kind of legitimacy to speak on the topic.

One lesson hiding in plain sight here is that most of the audience of any successful post does not actually read it. They are told it by someone who did read it. There’s a primary audience who carefully reads the piece and does the cognitive work of “restructuring their consciousness” (see Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy) around good writing. And then there’s a secondary audience, who are re-told the content, either verbally (including group chats, podcasts, Youtube) or in other oral formats like Twitter.

This is why, paradoxically, to reach the widest audience, you write to the narrow audience. Your objective as a writer is to give your primary audience material they’ll want to re-tell. They do the work of translating it to wider audiences in specific contexts; you do the general articulation in rich detail.

My first open source psyop - postmortem

[Information asymmetry is not only about lies, but whether someone can hear the correction or feedback.]

Capoeira Angola: Contra Mestre Gato Preto (GCFA) e Contra Mestre Reny (Oke Aro)

Seems like they escape so fluidly that they must stop to appreciate.

Mestre Gato Preto e CM Jorge

Crazy flying cartwheel at 5:50.