…there are many Buddhist stories in it, most of which come down to doing the same thing forever with no response and then suddenly all is well. That is blogging.

Some of it is using an RSS reader to change the cadence and depth of my consumption—pulling away from the quick-hit likes of social media in favor of a space where I can run my thoughts to their logical conclusion (and then sit on them long enough to consider whether or not they’re true). ​ Some of it is just letting myself wander, link to link, through people’s personal websites and passion projects, seeing what comes up. ​ A theme of the past year has been trying to disengage from my attachment to what I think other people want or need from me, and to rekindle my working relationship with myself.

This particular shapeness of twitter mostly pushed me off of it some time ago and whenever I return it always feels like I’m the wrong shape. I don’t really know what to do there anymore; I can’t capture my voice, my dumb jokes, my weirdness in a way that’s satisfying to me. But, right here on this very website I somehow can. Reminds me of how Ryan used to note how odd it is that dating apps. box us all into the same shape, seemingly for the same “legibility” a timeline can afford.

I think Anna hints at something here that I’ve struggled to describe, the way that blogs were somewhat hidden and when you discovered them it was like finding a treasure map; something intentionally obscured from view.

A good founder is capable of anticipating which turns lead to treasure and which lead to certain death. A bad founder is just running to the entrance of the maze without any sense for the history of the industry, the players in the maze, the casualties of the past, and the technologies that are likely to move walls and change assumptions. Some of these theories come from academia, but increasingly they come from investors and entrepreneurs on blogs.

That last line is worth repeating: “Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.”

Think about blogging for a second: the fact that a list of posts is ordered chronologically by publication date, by default, is a bug in our incrementally-correct worldview. Blogging tools don't create any incentive to go back and edit previous ideas or posts. Or, at the very least, the default ordering has a de facto side effect of fewer people being aware of revisions or reversals to previously-published ideas.

I’m an engineer at Stripe. I run Buttondown and Spoonbill. I love Python, cocktails, poetry, and you.

And yet it somehow got me out of a rut, because here I am. Blogging. And remembering I do have a voice, and thoughts to share.

Only rarely do online-first takes on economics, management theory, cultural theory, and analytic philosophy, among others, make the leap into academia, that other internet of texts. There are perhaps numerous reasons why this is the case. A significant one, though, is the lack of coherent citation and attribution practices on the web.

A tool for networked writing.

Writing for another publication you get a little circular avatar at the beginning of the post and a brief bio at the end of the post, and that’s about it.

Just share what’s of importance to you. And don’t look at pageviews. Don’t seek claps. Don’t chase reposts. Don’t covet trackbacks. Seek the unique pleasure of having shared something you feel is worth sharing. And the conversations that sort of writing (that sort of blogging) encourages. And yes, it can take time. Good things generally do.

A blog can still stand as a separate place to develop an individual voice. But what if a blog could also exist as a Twitter account of sorts?

how they escape their old loops, how they become more themselves, and where they end up. ​ This is the kind of artistic X-ray that makes you want to seek out the subject, put the flesh back on the bones. Which is what I did, and: I loved it. ​ A blogger can simply love a thing, and write about it. ​ an encyclopedia of appreciations.

I think my limit for open-loop writing is about 14k words. For the book on temporality I’m working on now, I’ll probably serialize it online in some form before trying to put it together as a book. ​​ All in all, it was a wonderful outpouring of deep reserves of creativity and knowledge, the likes of which I haven’t seen online in a long time. ​ Twitter is where all the history-making, universe-denting social media action really is. It is as close to a pure ideas-commons/digital public as we’ll ever get. ​ Email today is now less a communications medium than a communications compile target.

a blogging product without a publish button and create a space for collecting the dots. ​ It’s more common to think of “connecting the dots” but the truth is that you can’t connect the dots you can’t see.

As one astute tweet put it, “1999: there are thousands of websites, all hyperlinked together. 2019: there are four websites, each filled with screenshots of the other three.” ​ I just let the ideas fly. People did relate, usually, although—importantly, I think—sometimes they didn’t. That was okay, and expected. I was just saying things. ​ Long live the blog. Long live straightforwardly sharing what’s in our hearts.

Tell other people about cool blogs and feeds you’ve found. ​ Or: skip helping us, and, instead, help people who need help more than we do. Those people should not be hard to find.

my philosophy on blogging has shifted from “every essay must be a perfect, shimmering artifact” to “blog posts should be short, authentic, and flawed transportation devices”. they mark off from ten to noon and three to five as “engineering time”, and spend the intervening three hours doing anything but programming. I am growing more and more tempted to steal this for myself. those “correct” Sundays, where you flit from obligation to obligation and never grow tired enough to require pause.

One of the key would be to keep it simple. It’s just one component in an ecosystem of tools. Do search, and do it well, and that’s it.

[December 21, 2011]

You may be wondering just that – where did all of the blog posts go? Why did Cummings stop talking about writing, work, kids, and everything else? Believe it or not, they are still being writ…

“Twitter can still be great for spreading ideas, but it’s not a particularly good home for them.”