Ways of Looking #20 (April '26)
In this issue: space toilets, orange-tinted refrigerators, homunculi, and the frequency domain.
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
How to pick the best air purifier, objectively — the internet is cluttered with people’s opinions on the best air purifiers. So we at Lightwork put together a quantitative approach to selecting the most effective units (and it’s free, no signup required, no affiliate links or bias).
Theory of Constraints: the (Claude) Skill — I love the theory of constraints, and now I can have Jonah from The Goal in Claude Code helping me solve my (perceived) problems. (And you can, too!)
AI Captain’s Log — regular reflections, this month touching on skills & subagents.
What I’m enjoying
Experiment: putting blue-blocking photography gels over our refrigerator & freezer’s interior lights. I got a few of these sheets, cut them up, and taped them over the lights in my fridge. Yes, everything is now orange-tinted. But when we open the fridge in the evening, we no longer get blasted with intense blue light. We use very little lighting in the evening (just a couple amber incandescents), and so opening the fridge was always a shock. No more! Highly recommended, although it takes a week to get used to the orange hue.
Book: Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Now in competition with The Baroque Cycle for my favorite Stephenson book (with Snow Crash, Diamond Age, and Cryptonomicon all trailing close behind). Epic alternate-world plot. As you get into it, know that you are meant to not understand everything right away, and that it will unfold beautifully. I also suspect I don’t understand everything Stephenson does in this novel, and may need to re-read it — especially the end — to really grok the depth. I look forward to that.
Product: Craighill money clip. Despite many tries, I had never found an aesthetic, durable, tight money clip until stumbling on this one. It’s great for cash & cards.
Articles:
Byrnes on Trance by Scott Alexander and the original source material, Intuitive Self-Models by Steven Byrnes (especially post #8, Rooting Out Free Will Intuitions). Provocative exposition of a heterodox view on perception and self-models. This line from Alexander summarizes the thrust well: “Byrnes argues that ‘homunculus’ vs. ‘trance’ are two alternative bistable models for analyzing internal mental experience” — and if you read Alexander’s piece, you’ll understand what that means and Byrnes’ proposed implications of the same.
Argentina On Two Steaks A Day by Maciej Cegłowski. Never been to Argentina but this makes me want to. Great travel writing.
Let’s talk space toilets! also by Maciej Cegłowski. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know — and more — about how toilets work in space and the engineering problems they have faced.
Is the frequency domain a real place? by lcamtuf. Really interesting, if you’re into this sort of math-y stuff.
For a compilation of all past recommendations, see the Recommendations page on my site.
About me: I’m a multi-time founder (Eco, Lightwork Home Health, CoinList, Sidewire). I’m currently spending time on: Eco, Lightwork, building interface0, investing at Amity, supporting FreeWorld, hacking on a few other products, and advising great companies and founders.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
— Andy