Ways of Looking #10 (June '25)
In this issue: a new LLM interface, prostate health, seasonality, and how the Yom Kippur War caused our homes to get moldier.
Welcome to Ways of Looking. Roughly every month, I send my friends links and summaries for anything I’ve written recently, plus a few things I’m enjoying.
Check out my more regular writing and reply to this email anytime. Thanks for reading.
What I wrote last month
interface0: the LLM interface I've been waiting for — I built an upgraded version of the ChatGPT/Claude frontends, with all sorts of power-user features (all providers in one place, memory across them, configurable system prompts and contexts, etc.). It’s called interface0. And it’s advanced quite a bit since I published that post three weeks ago!
How the Yom Kippur War led to America's moldy homes — Sounds wacky, but is true. You can draw a line from the 1973 invasion of Israel to elevated mold issues in modern-day America…
I'm not sure how I feel about this — when fed sufficient context, Gemini did a shockingly good job writing a blog post “like Andy.” It even came up with the idea!
AI Captain’s Log — A few more updates to my weekly-ish notes on my usage of AI. Models, tools, and capabilities continue to move fast…
What I’m enjoying
Articles: three for you this month —
An end to all this prostate trouble? A breakdown of one very interesting proposal on how widespread prostate issues might be trivially solved. It’s interesting to read such a mechanical piece on biology / medicine.
Possibly a serious possibility by Adam Kucharski. On what such phrases as “probably” or “improbable” or “highly likely” mean in practice.
The Frame-Dependent Mind: On Reality's Stubborn Refusal To Be One Thing by Emmett Shear and Sonnet 3.7. “The question isn’t whether your frame is The Truth, but whether it serves the purposes for which you’ve adopted it.” Adjacent to my recent piece about Ways of Looking (the namesake of this newsletter!).
Product: Intake Nasal Strips. If you use Breathe Right strips or anything similar to dilate your nostrils, I highly recommend trying the Intake ones. I like them so much more, and they’re less damaging to my skin.
Experiment: Seasonality. I’ve always had a bias towards routines: eating the same thing every day, going through the same morning and evening flows, doing the same workouts. But I often find that after a long stretch of that, it starts fraying at the edges and I feel the need to make changes. Recently, I’ve been leaning into this “seasonality” and proactively shifting my routines as the seasons change.
My sense is that our bodies have some sort of intuition for seasonal behavior change, and we might as well lean into that. Most ancient medical and wellness traditions have some concept of this — Ayurveda, TCM, Japanese “shun,” and more.
Book: The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. I’m revisiting this one while diving deeper in quantum physics (see this post from last month), and it’s so much richer with a better understanding of that field. Gotta read it slowly, sentence-by-sentence, though…
About me: I’m a three-time founder (Eco, CoinList, Sidewire) based in Austin, TX. I’m currently spending time on: Eco, exploring the home health & environmental toxins space, supporting FreeWorld, hacking on a few products, and investing in and advising great companies and founders.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
— Andy