Hi Friends!
I've been taking some time to think about what I'm really curious about and what I'd like to write about. Your answers to the survey were really helpful.
Newsletter ๐ฉ
While the "content thesis" of this space is still a work-in-progress, I know that what I enjoy reading and writing about lays at the intersection of tech, habits, complex systems, and health. I promise you that if you stick with me we'll find out what all that means while having some fun in the process!
Related to this, I recently wrote about my experience writing a weekly email for over a year and set some goals for 2021:
Grow this list to 500 subscribers in 3 months.
Write more about what I'm curious about and share with you. My current goal is to write a new article every two weeks. If my day job permits, I'll shift to a weekly essay at some point ๐ค.
Habits and Identity ๐
In other news, I'm still shipping daily "atomic essays" as part of the January challenge of "Ship 30 for 30". Here are some of my favorite ones, all related to habit-building and the importance of crafting a new identity:
Tiny Rockets: in which I describe why we named the project like that
Keystone Habits: not all habits are created equal. Focus on the right ones.
The Goal Of Habits are Practices: Start with habits but aim to turn them into practices.
Think About Your Identity First: focus on your new identity, then on results and processes.
How To Craft Your Identity: start by jotting down your ideal day and build up from there.
Cool Tools ๐
This section is inspired by Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools project where you'll find all sorts of useful and esoteric gadgets.
This week I discovered to very cool mac apps:
Rectangle: it's an open-source app that helps you move windows around with keyboard shortcuts. While I've been a fan of BetterTouchTool for a long time, Rectangle has great defaults, it's highly customizable and the best part, it's free.
Nativefier: this command-line tool lets you convert any website to a "native app" so you can add it to your dock or desktop and launch straight into it rather than using your browser. Under the hood, it's just an Electron wrapper that uses Chromium (essentially it runs like in your browser) but I find it useful for apps like Roam that I want to keep open all the time and separate from the hundreds of tabs I may have open in my browser.
Twitter Thread ๐งต
Twitter's CEO Jack Dorsey wrote a thread explaining the reasons to "permaban" (ban forever) Donald Trump's account from Twitter. I get it that it's a complex matter and that some tech companies are so big that they're more powerful than entire countries. This thread reads more like an apology. But what I find more interesting is that while Dorsey plays the censor on Twitter he's passionate about Bitcoin, a technology that focuses on decentralization, transparency, and "not controlled or influenced by any single individual entity". A bit contradictory if you ask me.
If you're on Twitter and not following Balajis Srinivasam, stop now and give him a follow. He's one of my favorite people on Twitter. An accomplished tech founder and entrepreneur his thoughts on future the future of tech and crypto are always worth reading. In this Tweet, he highlights a few areas that are just taking off and have the potential to transform the world in the next decade.
I found this "Top 10 Things That Health Authorities Got Wrong" thread by P.D. Mangan very informational. Of all, the most worrying to me is that seed oils are still deemed healthy when we should be avoiding them at all costs.
PS: Iโm experimenting with different dates and times to send this email as I adjust my schedule. But worry not, youโll have a Nerd Corner every week no matter what!
Until next week!
Alberto