Opinion The Moral Peril of Meritocracy - The New York Times ✦
The self-centered voice of the ego has to be quieted before a person is capable of freely giving and receiving love.
Links
What Are You Waiting For ✦
Writing produces clarity of thought, because half-processed thoughts cannot create coherent writing. Writing out your fears turns possible "what ifs" into realistic outcomes.
Your 30s Are a Time to Go for It ✦
You can choose to focus on your career. At that level, candidly, it will require support from your significant other, understanding from your family, and may affect your health. You may also need to make so much money that you can afford to support aspects of your domestic life via child care, personal trainers, elderly care, and other support. Do this on purpose, because you are in a zero-sum competition with people who are willfully sacrificing and find great joy in having a singular focus.
Sam Altman is the founder of OpenAI and was president... ✦
The best predictor of success for a startup is if people:
Areopagus Volume XXXVIII ✦
*Polyptoton*
Helen Garner on Happiness- ‘It’s Taken Me 80 Years to Figure Out It’s Not a Tranquil, Sunlit Realm’ ✦
So I’m not going to spend what’s left of my life hanging round waiting for it. I’m going to settle for small, random stabs of *extreme interestingness –* moments of intense awareness of the things I’m about to lose, and of gladness that they exist.
Great features, not products, leveraging found productivity, and the era where we can no longer believe our eyes. — Great features, not products, leveraging found productivity, and the era where we can no longer believe our eyes. ✦
The viability of AI-first products as stand-alone companies will rely on data moats, privacy preferences for consumers and enterprises, developer ecosystems, and GTM advantages.
The Opportunity for Creative Pros in the Era of Creative Confidence ✦
as we age, our comfort with creative expression declines. We’re discouraged by the learning curve of creative skills and tools, by our tendency to compare ourselves to others, and by the harsh opinions of critics. As Picasso famously quipped, “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.”
#002- Beyond the Struggle ✦
Becoming or creating something new isn’t always a cake walk filled with rainbows, unicorns and lollipops—the path is often littered with darkness, solitude, and inner demons. But waiting for us beyond that shadowy road are new lessons, skills, creations, identities, and capacities, such as empathy and compassion.
#003- Sitting in Liminal Space ✦
The English poet Willam Blake described these thresholds as “doors between the known and unknown.” My daughter's birth is like a towering gate looming over me, quickly approaching and ready to swallow me. As I pass through, a part of me will die and another will emerge on the other side. With both feet firmly planted on the ground facing this certainty, my body is flooded with emotions—anxiety, fear, sadness, grief, excitement—because I treasure the road I’ve traveled, appreciate who I’ve become, and wonder how things will unfold.