CBeebies at the Proms at the Royal Festival Hall

I fell down a rabbit hole, if you can call it that, of consuming great essays and non-fiction writing this week. I felt like I hadn't read anything for a while that was really well written and I wanted to correct that. My main source was www.readsomethingwonderful.com which is a great resource, though it skews techy and probably prioritises the ideas over the writing. One thing I went back to was George Orwell's Politics and the English Language, which I read during A-Levels and at University but haven't been back to since. It's still fresh, incredibly relevant, and his argument linking clear thinking and clear writing could be applied to the 'writing with AI' debate today.

I went to my second classical concert and while it was aimed at the kids (it was Cbeebies at the Proms), it was amazing. This time around there was a full orchestra, which really is something to experience. And because it was aimed at kids the music was far more accessible, with some great introductions from the conductor.

I've started working on a little AI wrapper app idea: a tool to help people think through second and third order consequences of decisions or actions.

Related: I'm still trying to get DeepSeek to summarise my notes on conversations and idle musings throughout the week. But it's terrible at it. And I'm basing this on the fact that the same prompts to ChatGPT APIs work better. But I'm trying to do it locally and, well, for free. The real upshot though is that I've started writing proper summaries of articles I read so that they can be pulled in here. This is much better for actually engaging with the ideas and remembering where things came from.

Inputs

Against Optimization

This is a very well written piece about the perils of praying at the altar of optimisation. It shows how over-optimisation leads to fragility and how many non-human social systems (e.g. ants) keep inefficiency, or slack, in the system to remain resilient. I naturally gravitate to this as a generalist. It means I have skills that I don’t use all the time, but that I can draw on if I need to adapt. It makes me think that spies and other action heroes who save the world in films are always generalists. It also touches on some things I’ve been feeling lately, that pressure to optimise every aspect of life leading to the loss of enjoyment. It’s not perfectionism but it’s optimisationism. My natural tendency is to try to improve at everything I do, so I struggle to separate a healthy desire to improve from an unhealthy focus on optimisation.

Have We Forgotten How to Team

Daisley takes a refreshing long view on some of the changing dynamics amongst teams at work, suggesting that our increasingly isolated upbringings impact our ability to team cohesively at work. His prompt for the article is that he keeps hearing from leaders that their teams don’t feel as bonded as they used to, and that running team socials isn’t improving things. I would add that GenZ drink less on top of the isolation cited, and that companies still haven’t figured out how to build culture without a sense of place.

Jimmy Soni, on Interviewing Elon Musk, Writing Biographies, Lessons From Peter Thiel, and the Art of Research

I've not heard of Jimmy Soni before but I liked this interview with him. Possibly because he, like me, started in consulting (he was at McKinsey) and when he was a kid he, like me, loved the Redwall books by Brian Jaques. There was lots of good stuff in here about his research process. Like he would walk the distance between the offices of X and (the other pre-PayPal company) to figure out what it was like to be in Palo Alto and be competitors so close together. I also liked the advice he took from Walter Isaacson to be 'chatty in the end notes'. I feel like in consulting this is the equivalent of putting all your personality into the appendix. The main slides can be the polished, corporate story. But you can express your point of view and your taste and perspective in the appendix.

Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule

Paul Graham’s classic essay on the different modes of working of makers and managers. I wonder if he’s updated this since the pandemic? The world since has moved even more to the manager’s schedule and makers try and slot their collaboration into one hour chunks in the day. Some good, clear writing in here. He writes like a programmer, beautiful logic.

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

This was written in 1946 and it could have been written today. Orwell sets out to rid English of meaningless phrases arguing that imprecise language shows imprecise thinking. His metaphors throughout are wonderful and everything he prescribes: new, singular, and aiding the reader’s understanding. I liked his description of people who let their thoughts be hijacked by common phrases as unthinking machines. This could be an argument for not outsourcing your writing to AI. Above all I think this essay shows that you can write clearly and efficiently and still be vivid and idiosyncratic. I’ve read this before, but not for a long time, and I found critiquing my own work against Orwell’s rubric shows lots of ways I can improve my writing.

Secrets of Japanese Urbanism

Exploring what creates Tokyo’s unique city design (I’ve never been and I would like to!). Liberal zoning laws plus Bottom up governance means residents negotiate with each other about what businesses are acceptable in the neighbourhoods. Winding back roads between bigger road arteries keep car traffic out of residential areas. A huge number of small businesses (160,000 restaurants vs 25,000 in manhattan) promote walkable neighbourhoods and public transport to get customers in. These businesses are supported by encouragement through government policy e.g. cheap alcohol licenses. Commercial density creates vibrancy.

This Is Water by David Foster Wallace

This is a beautiful deconstruction of the “banal platitudes” that are passed on as wisdom about life. The cliches that are trite, but which do harness great truths about living well as an adult. David Foster Wallace delivers a really focused speech, never really deviating from his core premise but illustrating it with examples, mixing academic and philosophical musings about the subject of being free to choose what to think with very colloquial anecdotes.