Ways of Looking #22 (June '26)
In this issue: my grandfather, Copapers, death, happy warriors, Atkinson Hyperlegible, and bringing water through airport security.
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
My grandfather’s papers: some family computing history — I loosely knew my grandfather was a mathematician, but recently discovered that he was around in the early days of commercial computing and made some cool contributions to the field.
Copapers: multiplayer docs for humans & agents — I got sick of there being no good product that combines Google Docs-like collaborative editing with allowing AI agents edit/suggest as well, so I built one: Copapers. Fun to build and has already been quite useful.
365 days of commits — proudly just hit a year of committing code every single day. Turns out doing a thing daily makes you better at the thing.
On Seasonality — a reflection on how good it feels to have seasonal routines.
AI Captain’s Log — regular thoughts, this month on Google maybe finally getting some things right.
What I’m enjoying
Articles:
Character of the Happy Warrior by William Wordsworth. An absolute 1806 banger from the great WW. (And, yes, a poem, not an article.)
IT’S DEATH by Jesse Duffield. Wonderful & weird & brief. His other short stories are too.
There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ by Carlo Rovelli. I always find Rovelli’s thinking interesting (and am especially partial to his relational theory of quantum mechanics). I’m not sure exactly where I rigorously come out on this particular piece’s thesis, but it does line up with my intuition that the “consciousness debate” often gets bogged down in semantics thanks to dualistic assumptions in the frame of the discussion. Worth considering, at least.
Complexity in Ilya’s Model by Anand Majmudar. Allegedly, Ilya Sutskever gave John Carmack 27 or so papers he should read to understand the state of AI. Two of them discuss the mathematical idea of complexity. This post explores why it may be so relevant.
Product: using Atkinson Hyperlegible (Google Fonts) as my default font across prose-writing apps (Obsidian, Google Docs, Copapers). Does it make me feel old to use a font designed for vision-impaired people, created by the Braille Institute and named after its founder, and carrying the tagline “Making Reading Easier for Everyone?” Yes. But has it indeed made reading and writing easier and lower-strain? Also yes.
Bonuses, while you’re customizing your workspace: JetBrains Mono (Google Fonts) is the best code font (the version with ligatures, not the “NL” one). And gruvbox-material-light-hard is the best editor color scheme.
Experiment: did you know that if you have a baby with you, you can bring a large, full glass bottle of water through airport security with the explanation that it is for making formula?
Book: The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom by James Burnham. An analysis of Machiavelli and several modern (as of its 1943 publication date) thinkers who followed in his footsteps. Burnham discusses the practice of political theory and political science — in the strict sense of the word “science” — and looks critically at the United States through the lens of these thinkers’ views on the elite, power, democracy, and self-interest.
I read this book maybe a decade ago and thought it was good; upon re-reading I think it is excellent. Probably mostly due to broader perspective on my part, although perhaps also contributed to by the ever-evolving times in which we live.
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: a stealthy AI company, investing at Amity, Lightwork, Eco, tinkering with interface0 and other products, supporting FreeWorld, and advising great companies and founders.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
— Andy