Ways of Looking #4 (December '24)
In this issue: AI agents in practice, a way of donating that could effectively match you 5.5x, Clean Travel Club, and the lie behind "ikigai."
Welcome to Ways of Looking. Roughly every month, I send my friends a few things I’m enjoying — content, products, and experiments — and summaries of anything I’ve written recently.
Check out my more regular writing and reply to this email anytime. Thanks for reading.
What I wrote last month
Building out directory site content with AI agents — I recently launched Clean Travel Club, and in order to pull together the initial content and data, I created some agents with CrewAI, OpenAI, and Perplexity. It was much more fun and useful than old-school scraping.
Bricklaying, architecture, software engineering, and AI — the hype around AI-assisted coding tools is very unevenly distributed, and this post attempts to explain why (in part because software engineering is broadly misunderstood).
More tech and crypto people should use DAFs — donating appreciated property and using DAFs are underrated mechanisms for philanthropy and tax optimization. This post walks through the numbers.
What I’m enjoying
Site: Clean Travel Club! I just launched it this month as a fun hobby project. Think “Yelp, but healthy.” Filter restaurants and coffee shops by attributes like whether they are organic, seed-oil-free, etc. — and soon we’ll add hotels, workouts, wellness activities, and more. Feedback welcomed!
Product: FlyKitt is a magical product. I’ve used it for years and it still surprises me every time. Totally eliminates jet lag — I just did a trip from the west coast to Europe and back, and felt great.
Book: Clockers, by Richard Price. Page-turning novel about drug dealers and cops in a 1980s New Jersey town. Deeply immersive prose.
Article: Meme Seeding, by Marc Winn. Have you heard of the Japanese concept of “ikigai,” which sits at the intersection of the diagram below? Well, it turns out… this guy in Guernsey made that diagram up in 2014. Here’s another post with more background.
Experiment: I just hit the five-year mark of my “750 Words” experiment, which I think means it’s going well. Every day for the last five years, I have sat down at my computer and written at least 750 words about something. Whatever comes to mind. Sometimes it’s as prosaic as an email I’ve been pushing off, and sometimes it’s aimless wandering. But I consistently find it is among the most helpful things I do every day, and I plan to do it for a very long time.
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.
— Andy