Back to zero

Restart | Continue reading


@chad.is | 4 months ago

Who Needs Foundations?

I’m thinking about cryptocurrency, but also everything else. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 3 years ago

Dick jokes

What to do when you realize things aren’t the way they ought to be. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 3 years ago

Endless forms most beautiful

A meditation on my place in the universe | Continue reading


@chad.is | 3 years ago

The work of the listener

Reflections on the art of paying attention. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 4 years ago

Self as Process

Evan Thompson’s response to “neuro-nihilism”. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Getting Started with Complexity Science

A handful of online courses, books and other resources to start learning about the field of complexity science. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Technologies of the Self: A Short Introduction

One of Michel Foucault’s late interests provides a rich framework for understanding self-transformation and meaning-making. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Managing Oneself

An outline of Peter Drucker’s “Managing Oneself”, a short but essential book for navigating your professional life. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Reductionism can explain neither carrots nor consciousness

Trying to understand a whole as simply a sum of its parts hasn’t worked out well in nutrition or many other fields of science. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Copenhagen versus the universe

The trouble with the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum physics. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Hereditary

The true horror of Ari Aster’s Hereditary. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

Confronting the burden of consciousness

In response to Zapffe’s famous essay, ‘The Last Messiah’, I offer two perspectives which confront the darkest parts of consciousness while still affirming the possibility of a life well-lived. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 5 years ago

What happened to ebook innovation?

Due to pervasive DRM and closed ecosystems dominated by Amazon and Apple, the possibilities of ebooks are nowhere near fully realized. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 6 years ago

Designing self-sustaining systems

Technology and design both share a concern for creating solutions to problems. What causes them to diverge is a matter of ethics. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 8 years ago

Nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect

A meditation on the concept of wabi-sabi and it’s connection to questions of mortality and meaning. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 11 years ago

Creative work cannot be managed

Traditional management strategies are useless for problems that require creative thinking. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 11 years ago

Beautiful code does not make a beautiful product

If the purity of a codebase would suffer from a change that enhances the experience of users, then the code should suffer. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 11 years ago

What to know before joining a startup

Your stock options are unlikely to make you rich, so make sure you enjoy the work enough to make it through the tough times. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 11 years ago

The advantages of design in the 21st century

A summary of the paper ‘A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design’ by Bruno Latour. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 11 years ago

Guns as technology, guns as culture

Debates about gun rights must acknowledge that guns are not only technology, they are culture and symbol. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 11 years ago

Design & Hacking

In order to meaningfully shape the future, design must challenge and overturn entrenched systems, not simply create new packages for yesterday’s ideas. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 12 years ago

Don’t Make Me Wait

Web-based apps that match the speed and responsiveness of native apps are better for users, but they require more investment from product and engineering teams. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 12 years ago

Going from Zero to One

Zero to one is the process of creating new things while 1 to n is ‘copying things that work.’ | Continue reading


@chad.is | 12 years ago

The Design of Design

An overview of several main ideas from Fred Brooks’ book The Design of Design. | Continue reading


@chad.is | 12 years ago