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And why I’m rebelling against it anyway

John: Every year, it seems like the MacStories Selects awards roll around faster than the last, and this year was no exception. For most people, the year begins on January 1st, but for us, WWDC marks the beginning of our year, and the MacStories Selects Awards feel like its conclusion. Plenty happens the rest of

Hi. My name is Cabel. And I’ve probably got the neatest job in the whole world. I wear many hats. But here on my personal blog, I get to write about the things I really care about, just for y…

The results of our poll asking how often you use Finder tags are in, and while tags aren’t broadly popular, being reminded of what they can do for you might encourage you to use them in appropriate situations.

Watch movies like the makers intended by switching off weird smart tv settings.

Writing about the big beautiful mess that is making things for the world wide web.

Welcome to my yearly post about stuff I’ve loved in the last year. I love doing this because it reminds me how amazing the Mac/iOS app ecosystem is these days. I can’t list every app I use in this

Reid Hoffman is one of Silicon Valley’s grown-ups. After helping to found PayPal, he moved on to launch LinkedIn in 2002—an endeavor that turned him into a billionaire. He was an early investor in Facebook and now serves as a partner at the venture capital firm Greylock. In this edited interview with Tim Sullivan, of HBR Press, Hoffman explores his idea of “blitzscaling”—the discipline of getting very big very fast. In today’s networked landscape, the path to high-growth, high-impact entrepreneurship can be chaotic and grueling. It involves rapidly building out a company to serve a large and usually global market, with the goal of becoming the first mover at scale. And there’s no playbook to guide you, Hoffman notes. “You throw yourself off a cliff and assemble your airplane on the way down.” Hoffman emphasizes that blitzscaling is not just about growing revenues and the customer base but also about scaling the organization. People naturally focus on the first two, and “if you don’t get those right, then nothing else matters.” But very few businesses can succeed on those fronts without also building an organization that has the capability and the capacity to execute at a high level in the face of extremely rapid growth. The challenges, risks, and headaches of blitzscaling go beyond the operational; they can take a toll on organizational happiness. “But the thing that keeps these companies together—whether it’s PayPal, Google, eBay, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter,” Hoffman says, “is the sense of excitement about what’s happening and the vision of a great future.”

Technology evolves from raw to complex to simple. From the fist to the hand axe to the hammer. From carts to the Model T to Tesla. From switchboard-operated phones to digital phones to smartphones. From SMS to Facebook to Messenger. From the crude to the cooked to Sushi.

A dozen things that drive my writing, research, thinking & actions

The legendary composer on the creative process, importance of deadlines, problem with software in arts and what is art actually for?

AI has its use cases, but it can’t solve a perennial mystery—yet

Though we talk about “the individual vs the collective,” as if that dichotomy is an eternal truth about the world, there exist groups that encourage divergence and healthy individuation.

A plagiarism

Let me introduce you to WordStar 4.0, a popular word processor from the early 80s. WordStar 4.0 As old as it seems, George R.R. Martin used it to write “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Why …

11/25/2023 10:58:48 PM

When he opened the seminar that prompted these essays, Fred Turner said that Silicon Valley built more than semiconductors or search engines or smart phones or sharing platforms. Indeed, he suggest…

Freya India explains how algorithms act as conveyor belts, transporting girls to dark and extreme places

The latest book from the author of At The Existentialist Café surveys seven hundred years of humanist thought.

The billionaire investor sees the apocalypse coming. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on your tolerance for excitement.

One answer, and 5 tricks to help

You can’t give general advice. If I do, millions of creators are going to see this and then they’re going to do it and I’m going to fuck them over.

Let's do more of those

“You can only write regularly if you’re willing to write badly… Accept bad writing as a way of priming the pump, a warm-up exercise that allows you to write well.”

“Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but most of all, endurance.”

Hemingway, Didion, Baldwin, Fitzgerald, Sontag, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Morrison, Orwell, Le Guin, Woolf, and other titans of literature.

How do we solve hard problems? A deep dive into one of the most influential theories of how people figure out difficult things.

Here are the people who have most greatly influenced my thoughts on learning.

Can you learn more efficiently by making things harder for yourself? These three strategies let you learn faster (even if it feels slower).