Blake C.

“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” — Bertrand Russel

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

so many books, so little time.

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

As of today, I am officially an Alzheimer's Advocate for the @alzsatx. I look forward to engaging with my member of Congress, @repcasar, and advocating for the ALZ community. If you'd like to get involved, please reach out or visit https://t.co/JxLrF68Yvq. #ENDALZ

[Andrew Wilkinson @awilkinson]

Today, we’re announcing a huge change at Tiny.

Entrepreneurship is just delegation taken to the extreme.

At first, you do it all. Badly and all at once.

It sucks. Because you suck.

Then you read a book and have a lightbulb moment:

You realize that you can hire someone to do the things you’re bad at.

It feels like someone has given you the cheat codes.

You hate Excel, but it turns out, that someone else's idea of a perfect evening is six hours of pivot tables in Excel.

It’s a miracle.

You can't believe you can pay someone to do this.

But you can. And it works.

So you keep going. Focusing on the stuff you’re good at, hiring people to do the rest.

You become Teflon for Tasks.

Delegating. Always delegating.

First, the things you hate. But eventually, even the things you love.

You thought you wanted to be a star athlete, an individual contributor, but you come to realize that isn’t you.

You’re a machine builder. An engineer.

You want to build a team. A machine made up of people and plays and strategies.

So you do.

At first you’re the captain. Still scoring goals. Clinking pints with your teammates after the game.

But over time, this changes too. You play less and less.

If you want to win, you realize, you have to get off the field. The others are stronger than you.

It turns out that the thing you’re truly great at isn’t kicking the ball, but building the team.

Coming up with the plays. Tinkering. Training. Trading players.

Strategizing.

It feels odd, but right. You've disconnected your own effort from the results.

Harnessed a group of amazing people to achieve staggering things.

You’ve built a winning team.

No longer the star player, or the captain, but the bar raiser. The cheerleader.

The coach.

You say it out loud. It feels good.

One day, you realize that you don't kick the ball anymore.

You work on the plays. Build players up. Break them down. Trade the ones who aren't working.

Your system—the players and strategies you’ve chosen—produce wins.

There's a method to the madness. A system appears. The machine is humming.

You feel like you're in the zone. Doing the thing you're best at.

But then, one day, you make a trade and a new player joins the team.

He comes from an even larger and more successful team. And he changes things.

Everyone takes notice of him. Starts looking to him in the locker room.

You quickly promote him to team captain, and before long he’s proposing his own plays and strategies.

"Hey, that's pretty good..." you think, scratching your head.

You feel odd.

"Why didn't I think of that?" you wonder.

On the tenth time it happens, you have a strange realization.

Maybe he should be the coach.

You built the team that got us to today, but he knows the next phase.

After all, the job has changed.

The team is big now. It’s a franchise.

There’s fans to contend with. The press. Owners. League politics. And everyone wants a piece of you.

You’re no longer doing the thing you’re great at and you have that old feeling.

The one you got in the beginning.

And you realize that this guy. Your star player. The captain. The potential coach.

He's better than you at all that.

So you do what you’ve always done.

You delegate. Step aside. Empower. Move up to the owner’s box.

Focus on the next level up, as the machine keeps growing:

https://t.co/xPckdEUVyt

[Sam Parr @thesamparr]

@awilkinson This is long so either congrats to you or i'm sorry.

jk, congrats man!

[Roshan Patel @roshanpateI]

I accidentally said “time” instead of “bandwidth” and my product manager took me into the break room and waterboarded me with lacroix

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

For anyone else who was curious:

"DALL·E" is a portmanteau of the name "Salvador Dalí", the famous surrealist artist, and the Pixar character "WALL·E", a robot. The name playfully references the tool's artistic capabilities and its artificial intelligence nature”

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

Gave #DALL·E this wallpaper and said “now make it robots” and got this INSANE creepy thing back I love it.

The wallpaper is the one with the babies and whatever, the other is…whatever horrific creation #DALL·E came up with 😂

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

Unreal. @RobinhoodApp @Reddit @MongoDB etc just automating the first round/filter I guess

[Jerry Lee @JerryJHLee]

4. Despite that, we got 29 interviews at these big, medium & small companies, which shows that this '6 second rule' isn't isolated to a specific size of company.

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

Photo credit
https://t.co/pnoNYZtUYq
https://t.co/p40Fb1WStO

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

Either I'm watching too much #TOKYOVICE, or Japanese streets just have the most pleasing aesthetic. Maybe both lol. The signage too just draws you in somehow, it's wild. Must go in person one day.

[Damian Kimmelman @duediler]

8/BOA recently did a study that when you factor in the cost of backup and transmission Nuclear is far cheaper than solar. https://t.co/6V0hQ6TMX9 and solar is effectively twice the price.

[Blake C. @CharvozB]

#Typeface designers, fear not: ChatGPT says it does not have the capabilities for the full set of characters. So I guess I'm on my own for my aardvark-inspired typeface 😭🐜

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

There's such a gulf between Japanese print media and American print media when it comes to menswear. My friend Seiji McCarthy recently sent me this charming little book about shoes from Japan. Unfortunately, I can't read Japanese, but even the photos are instructive. 🧵

[Paul Graham @paulg]

@RobertKennedyJr @r2r It depends how they do it. If they're following the law, we say "That's a country with rule of law."

[Sam Altman @sama]

what i wish someone had told me:

https://t.co/1nEaYimzXG

[Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias]

Very broad nature of the decline makes me suspect "the phones"

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

The RMS Queen Elizabeth pulling into New York with service men returning home after the end of World War 2, 1945.

She was able to carry 15,000 people at a time, including 900 crew members. The trip from The British isles to the east coast of the United States usually took 5 to 7 days. During her service in World War 2, the RMS Queen Elizabeth transported more than 750,000 troops, and sailed a total of 500,000 miles (800,000 km).

[Emmett Shear @eshear]

This is the 3rd time I’ve had a @lyft accept my ride and claim they’ve “arrived” while driving away. When I call to ask they say “you have to cancel”. If I cancel, Lyft will blame me…if I don’t they run out the timer and claim I no showed. Lyft has no way to report this afaict.

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

Andy Weir's short story, The Egg, is one of the most mind-blowing things you will ever read.

Do yourself a favor and find 10 minutes to enjoy it.

(bookmark this for later)

[Sahil Bloom @SahilBloom]

The deeper purpose behind the piece:

"I wanted the reader to change their mindset (if only for a short time) and start imagining themselves really being the people they meet."

Mission accomplished, if you ask me.