Ways of Looking #8 (April '25)
In this issue: a brief guide to ending suffering, sketching practice, building a DocSend replacement, Egypt's history, and quantum mechanics puzzles.
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
Ways of Looking: a brief guide to ending suffering — on the difference between pain and suffering, and a path towards eliminating all of the latter. (And now you know where this newsletter’s name comes from!)
Speedrunning a home-cooked DocSend replacement — I (well, AI) built a personal replacement for DocSend in 2.5 hours.
Assorted excerpts on the malleability of "reality" — eye-opening posts and quotes I’ve collected over the years about how much agency you have over “reality.”
The illuminated blog — medieval monks created custom illustrations in their hand-scribed books; more modern bloggers should write custom code for their posts.
What I’m enjoying
Book: Egypt: A Short History by Robert Tignor. I walked away from this book with a much deeper understanding of one of the oldest continuing civilizations on the planet. Highly readable and well-paced. I only wish there were an updated version for 2011 through present…
Article(s): A quantum mechanics puzzle (and parts deux and drei), by Ron Garret. If you’re into such things, it’s a great read. I also recommend the comments section on part three, which has some thought-provoking argumentation about the whole concept. I’m working on a more layman-targeted post about the wonders of quantum mechanics, so keep an eye on this space…
Product: Dodecahedron Timer Ball (well, they call it a dodecagon. But it’s actually a dodecahedron). I love the pomodoro technique and will write about it another time. This is my favorite way to track pomodoros — no screen (you don’t know how long is left), physical object (feels more substantial than a digital timer), pleasant buzzing interaction.
Experiment: 100 sketches. Every night, I’m doing a 5-10 minute sketch on paper of the room I’m in. I do not consider myself artistic, and probably haven’t drawn like this since elementary school art classes. But I’m ~20 sketches in right now and it is shocking how quickly I’ve improved with just a few short reps. Can’t wait to see what #100 looks like.
Here’s a good X thread on the concept of practice reps, and a related single post.
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