What's in the cards?
10 things that made me go 'whoa'
At Sublime, we call anything you save to your library a ‘card.’
So when I saw
I’m not sure if Austin’s edict includes letting the person know you’re stealing from them, but in the spirit of creative borrowing and with great thanks to Austin for the idea, welcome to the first edition of “What’s in the cards?” where I pick a few things on Sublime that made me go whoa.
This line from Franny Choi took my breath away.
A good rant, on how nothing makes sense, by
. It reminds me of On Bullshit’s opening line: One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share.I was thinking about sex the other day because I was having a really depressing day, and a dead body had been found by the pier, and as I was taking my son to school and waiting at a traffic light, a homeless man in a mad fury began circling my car, shouting and spitting, and it felt like forever before the light turned green and I thought I needed to get my mind settled so I went to a bookstore and all the books were about how to succeed in business, and about how to work even more, and there was a whole section about how to use the ancient philosophy of Stoicism to get ahead in your corporate career, and outside the bookstore people were sleeping on the sidewalk and there was a store where shoes were 30% off and still cost two-hundred dollars and I stopped to write at a coffeeshop where people were arguing about politics and war and fascism and genocide and a woman at the table beside me was talking loudly at the people on her laptop screen, who were talking loudly at her about the client and the presentation and the need for a more aggressive social media marketing plan, and as I drove home the billboards and buses were covered with advertisements for movies, and the people in the advertisements were giants, and they were perfect, and they were revered and admired like Gods and most of them were actually truly awful people who shouldn’t be admired at all and so by the time I got home, I crawled into bed and I closed my eyes and a moment later, I heard a little girl outside my window, and she was crying and shouting and her mother asked her what was wrong and she shouted, at the top of her little lungs, “EVERYTHING TODAY MAKES NO SENSE!” and I thought that must have felt really good, I would love to scream like that right now, I would love nothing more than to scream “EVERYTHING TODAY MAKES NO SENSE!” and how that would make me feel better than sex, better than the best sex better than all the sex in the world, and that’s why I was thinking about sex the other day.
When building a company feels impossible, my favorite thing to do is to read about the early days of other companies. I’m curating all my finds here. Here’s one of my favorites
Normal behavior is forgotten. Only weird behavior survives.
Nobody tells stories of when you did the expected — they only tell stories when you did the unexpected.
Normal behavior costs nothing in the short term — but it disappears into the abyss.
Unconventional behavior costs a social price in the short term — but the actions live on as story assets in the future.
If you pay for the bill at everyone in the table - the short-term reaction is shock and confusion. But in the long term, it’s everyone’s favorite memory of you.
If you travel across the world for a friend’s birthday, the friend’s initial reaction is: “You don’t have to do that” — but it’s the story they tell at your funeral.I’m half way through David Brooks's latest book, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Here’s a bunch of highlights. I loved the concept of inverse charisma:
E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.”
Ugh, I keep being reminded of this lesson in the process of building Sublime: To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them. Simplicity takes time.
The Daylight Computer - a Kindle on steroids you can use outside — launched after six years in development. I felt very seen listening to the founder talk about the journey.
“One of the tragedies of doing humane tech is you lose the humanity in the process of surviving the world, of trying to build something”
Fun fact: One of Sublime’s developers also works on the Daylight Computer and shared how beautiful Sublime looks on the Daylight:
Kurt Vonnegut, talking about when he tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope. We’re more than the point, we’re the process.
“Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.”
Everyone’s disrupting, and it’s exhausting. An interview with
in .I have a deep sensitivity toward products that exist for no reason, like, Do we really need another x, y or z? I’m pretty exhausted by the proliferation of things created by people who aren’t even in food — it’s this weird money-grab where they’re, like, ‘There’s a hole in the market,’ and no, there’s no hole in the market. We have everything we need.
I’ve been blasting this song with my kids on weekend mornings — instant mood boost for everyone, wholeheartedly recommend.
In other news…
Our wall of <3
So often we put everything into our art and work, release it into the world, and then…crickets. Not because people don’t enjoy it, but it’s rare for someone to go out of their way to let you know they care.
All the more reason to celebrate the love we’ve been getting from all of you.
“Here to fart about on earth.”Brilliant. So happy to be farting out on my online earth c/o Sublime 🌎💚
Super enjoyable. Thank you.