Hi friends,

​Last Saturday, I sat down at my computer, opened Twitter, shared an image of company logos, and asked: "What's causing all these logos to look the same?" ​

It received more than 20 million impressions in the first 24 hours — the most popular thing I've ever published, by far. Linking Friday Finds at the bottom led to more than 1,500 subscribers. To all of you new faces, welcome!

My team and I are working hard on the newest version of Write of Passage, my online writing course.
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Some no-background: Writing instruction has followed the same stale advice for decades. Write of Passage is a splash of vibrant color in the black-and-white world of education. You'll learn how to use what you’re already doing in your everyday life to generate interesting ideas and sharpen your thinking alongside a curious group from around the world (in the last cohort, we had students from 35 countries).
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​Interested in joining us? Click here to learn about our upcoming cohort.

Here's what I want to share this week:

1. ​After Minimalism: I've been circling the ideas in that thread for a while. It all started with this essay I wrote about minimalism, and what could come next. I’ve always liked the idea that “style is an external expression of the inner spirit of our time.” Today, minimalism is the defining style of our age. It represents two of the virtues we value most: utility and efficiency. But a lot of modern minimalism lacks life and character. This essay explores what should come after it. Read the essay here.​
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2. ​The Microwave Economy: There are costs to the quest for efficiency. Sometimes, when I look at the sterility of things made today, I wonder if we've read too many books about the 80/20 rule. Stripping character from things can produce efficiency gains, but comes at the cost of reducing charm. ​
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3. My Interview with Balaji Srinivasan: My interview with one of the most imaginative people I know. Marc Andreessen once called him "the most generative person I've ever met." Balaji and I talked about his strategies for being more productive, how he identifies top talent, and even how to reverse the aging process (Listen to the podcast here: Apple | Spotify).
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Today's Finds

Chopped Up Music Samples: I love videos where electronic musicians show how they chopped up existing music to make entirely new tracks. My favorite is for Daft Punk's One More Time, where the artists turned More Spell on You by Eddie Johns into one of their most iconic drops. Here's another example from Porter Robinson, where he remixed one of his unreleased tracks to create Musician. Sometimes, if you play around enough with existing concepts, you develop entirely new ideas.

On Being Known: A pair of haunting pieces about the peculiar emotion of "being known." The first piece by Tim Kreider talks about an email someone received by accident, an email where they were the center of attention. It reveals a split between ourselves and the rest of the world. We all see ourselves as special snowflakes. But at the same time, we are "just another person" to almost everyone else. These dichotomies continue. We judge ourselves on intentions, but others on actions. Seeing the way others talk about us when they know we're not there can be a strange and painful experience. This second piece builds on that idea. Here, the author (who goes by the name of Ava) talks about writing on the Internet. She puts it simply. Being known is a dichotomy. Just about everybody wants to be seen and heard, which doubles as a flame for the creative spirit inside of us. But being known can have terrible psychological consequences. Why write on the Internet then? This line stood out: "Finding people whom I’ve become close friends with, who really and truly understand me, is worth the embarrassment of sharing. It doesn’t feel good to be vulnerable but it often feels necessary." There are diminishing returns to being known too. The purest connections I've made on the Internet came in the early days, back when only a few thousand people subscribed to my newsletters.

​Computers as Bicycles for the Mind: Steve Jobs famously proclaimed that computers are "bicycles for the mind." Following in his footsteps, Molly Mielke asks: "How can we make computers better bicycles for the creative mind?" The essay is founded on the idea that computers are, too often, seen as mere execution machines. I've grown wary of the way computers (and the Internet) homogenize aspects of culture. For example, the efficiency gains of Adobe Illustrator come at the cost of an entire industry following the same implicit constraints. Design styles like Corporate Memphis reveal a growing intellectual homogenization too. At the same time, TikTok has opened up new avenues of creativity. In comparison to design apps and no-code software, the camera doesn't exert such a heavy hand. The combination of music, animation, and recording software has helped TikTok blossom into a new creative medium.

Lifestyles: A piece about two sailors. One focused on what others thought about him, while the other focused on what he wanted. One ended up dead, while the other found a deep sense of happiness. In life, we are always in a struggle between what the world wants from us and what we truly want. This piece from Morgan Housel (one of the world’s best non-fiction storytellers) is a profound window into the tensions that drive our desires.

​Threads by the Cultural Tutor: There are few things better in life than discover a writer who articulates thoughts you never found the words to describe. This Twitter account is Exhibit A. The author has been studying Western culture for more than a decade — poetry, architecture, literature, design, classical music, etc. I've long held a soft spot in my heart for these domains. If you're looking for an entry point into his work, I recommend this thread about beauty or this one about minimalism. After seeing his following skyrocket, I contacted him and instantly offered him a job. Now, he's our full-time "Writer in Residence" at Write of Passage.