What I'm up to - February 2023

✨ What I've been up to

Hello from Cozumel, Mexico! It's 80° F here - a welcome break from the Chicago Winter.

Since last Summer, I've been taking a "solo week" trip every quarter as a creative recharge. This trip to Cozumel is one of these solo weeks, and I've been spending a lot of time in cafes exploring new Contraption Company projects. It's a ritual I plan to continue - I've already scheduled solo weeks over the next year to Copenhagen, Mexico City, And Tokyo.

Postcard continues to do well. I built new features and did a short interview with GoSolo.

Robin Sloan mentioned Postcard in his newsletter. I enjoyed Robin's book Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore while living in the San Francisco neighborhood where the story is set.

🤔 Things to share

• Articles: Nash Equilibria and Schelling Points. Underutilized fixed assets and how marketplaces inevitably shift from retail to professional sellers. The Digital Workplace Is Designed to Bring You Down. The uncovering of a real Tom Cruise-style dogfight between US and Soviet fighters during the Korean War. All of Bits about Money (like Money Stuff for financial systems).
• Books: Intrigued recently by the Nordics, I read every book by Kay Xander Mellish - even a guide to American culture for Danes (!).
• Trends: Starlink is popping up on Airbnb listings.
• Listening: Creativity by John Cleese. A 2019 interview between Lex Friedman and Donald Knuth (personal takeaway: seek simplicity in tools I build, but embrace complexity in tools I use).
• Fun fact: Many Russian submarines have a sauna.
• Apps : Obsidian replaced Notion as my personal organization tool. Quitter closes my calendar, messages, and email after 5 minutes of inactivity.
• Cool infrastructure : Chicago Deep Tunnel project.
• Coffee I'm drinking: Metric Costa Rica La Bandera Geisha.

📫 What I'm up to this month

• Writing a post about the AI hype cycle
• Launching some new Postcard features
• Researching online communities
• Prototyping a new project

📍 Where I'll be (Let me know if we overlap!)

• Feb 18-24: 🗽 NYC

Current office