Bookmarks
Worth a read: links I've bookmarked, curated by hand — no AI slop.
19 bookmarks
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- 1,000 True Fans
Kevin Kelly
Argues that independent creators don't need blockbuster fame or millions of dollars to thrive—by cultivating a direct relationship with roughly 1,000 super-fans who buy everything they produce, artists can earn a sustainable living in the internet era.
#creator-economy#creativity#business
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- Fast
Patrick Collison
Chronicles remarkable historical and technological achievements completed in astonishingly short timeframes—from the Empire State Building and Apollo 8 to Git and mRNA vaccines—while questioning why modern societal and infrastructural execution has drastically slowed down.
#high-agency#history#mental-models#progress
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- How Complex Systems Fail
Richard I. Cook
Outlines 18 foundational principles on the nature of failure in complex systems, arguing that systems are intrinsically hazardous, perpetually run in degraded states, and fail not from isolated 'root causes' but from unpredictable combinations of multiple latent flaws.
#systems-thinking#mental-models#software-engineering
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- Life After Lifestyle
Toby Shorin
Traces the shift from the 2010s 'lifestyle' era—where cultural production operated as a service economy to brand physical goods—to a new paradigm where culture, belief systems, and communities become the products themselves, transforming brands into pseudo-religions and ideological frameworks.
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- Meditations On Moloch
Scott Alexander
Uses Allen Ginsberg's poem as a metaphor to explore multipolar traps and collective action failures—explaining how uncoordinated competition forces agents to sacrifice core human values in ruthless races to the bottom across evolution, capitalism, and technological progress.
#game-theory#coordination#mental-models
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- Status as a Service (StaaS)
Eugene Wei
Examines social networks through the lens of social capital and status dynamics, arguing that humans are inherently status-seeking creatures. Wei analyzes how platforms achieve product-market fit through distinct 'proof of work' hurdles, why network effects can violently reverse, and how apps must balance utility and status to survive.
#social-networks#mental-models#status
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- A Brief History of Lab Notebooks
Ulkar Aghayeva (Asimov Press)
Traces the evolution of scientific record-keeping from Renaissance commonplace books and Newton's Waste Book to modern electronic lab notebooks (ELNs), exploring how notetaking shifted from a flexible cognitive playground for raw discovery into standardized, institutional compliance tools.
#learning#science#history#note-taking
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- Arsuz Otel: Doğu Akdeniz Kıyısında Bir Odak Noktası
Burcu Kütükçüoğlu
Examines the architectural and cultural legacy of Arsuz Otel in Hatay, tracing its roots in mid-century Mediterranean modernism, its role as a regional social anchor, and its resilience as a hub for community healing following the February 6 earthquakes.
#culture#history#design#architecture
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- How to be an Idea Person
Venkatesh Rao
Frames being an 'Idea Person' as a chronic cognitive condition of runaway conceptual generation and weak execution, outlining a pragmatic survival guide for teaming up with virtuoso doers, developing narrative 'unskills', and adopting a Sisyphean mindset to manage the brutal oversupply economics of ideas.
#creativity#mental-models#career#identity
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- How to Enter Side Doors
Maja Wilbrink (Velvet Noise)
Offers a practical guide to bypassing saturated, automated job boards by entering 'side doors'—using public artifacts, radical specificity in cold outreach, and proactive problem-solving to connect directly with decision-makers.
#career#job-search#high-agency
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- In Defence of Yearning
Maja Wilbrink (Velvet Noise)
Defends deep longing and emotional vulnerability against modern internet cynicism, arguing that yearning is not an embarrassing distraction but the foundational creative spark behind art, human connection, and personal aliveness.
#relationships#creativity#culture#emotions
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- Looking for Alice
Henrik Karlsson
Reflects on finding a singular romantic partner by discarding rigid dating categories, practicing radical conversational authenticity to filter for deep resonance, and resisting social pressure to choose easily explainable relationships over genuine connection.
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- Many ways to win
Steph Ango
Catalogs 80 distinct strategies across biology and business, illustrating that winning in competitive landscapes comes not from doing everything well, but from excelling at a narrow, unique combination of survival and growth tactics.
#strategy#business#competition#mental-models
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- See your Career as a Product
Erik Torenberg
Applies product frameworks and growth loops to career strategy, arguing that building rare, specialized skills is the foundational 'core product' that naturally compounds respect, capital, and high-value networks.
#career#mental-models#personal-growth
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- Some Parts of You Only Emerge for Certain People
Maja Wilbrink (Velvet Noise)
Explores how deep relationships act as transformative engines of becoming, using the metaphor of neural annealing to show how another person's loving attention softens our inner architecture and draws out latent versions of who we can be.
#relationships#love#identity#friendships
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- Take Asymmetric Bets
Erik Torenberg
Argues that early-career professionals should take asymmetric bets—paths with massive upside and minimal real downside—instead of chasing conventional 'safe' options that cap long-term growth out of a fear of looking foolish.
#career#startups#risk-taking#mental-models
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- The Making of Cursor's Icons
Marek Minor
A deep dive into the year-long craft of designing Cursor's custom 600+ icon system, detailing typography-inspired optical corrections, Figma consistency architecture, legacy codepoint migration, and automated build pipelines that turn icons into invisible yet distinct infrastructure.
#developer-tools#design#design-systems#craftsmanship
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- Understanding is the new bottleneck
Geoffrey Litt
Argues that as AI agents generate more code, human comprehension becomes the real bottleneck; to remain active creative partners rather than passive bystanders, we must use AI to build interactive explainers and micro-worlds that help us truly understand systems.
#ai#software-engineering#developer-tools#learning
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- Why Growth in AI Products Feels Like a PMF Treadmill
Yeşim Özsöz
Explores how rapidly evolving model capabilities have turned product-market fit into a continuous 'treadmill' rather than a fixed milestone, drawing on growth frameworks from Elena Verna and hands-on lessons from building Madlen's AI edtech product.
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