Jim Morrison

Product Builder

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

My Bluesky account: https://t.co/UmpCo5s4Ly

[John Maeda @johnmaeda]

ORIGINALITY AS THE GOAL: Follow your curiosity, make something meaningful for others, and let *their* responses shape what you make next.

- Start with your own questions.
- Make for others, not just yourself.
- Treat feedback as fuel for discovery.
- Don’t let AI’s instant answers end your curiosity.

https://t.co/hnrUylerAw

HT @hardmaru

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@zoink So connecting the dots here. @elonmusk buys Cursor. Within weeks, @ryolu_ (former Head of Design) leaves, citing a depressing obsession upon efficiency, productivity and speed.

[Ryo Lu @ryolu_]

convergence to the mean

when everyone looks at everyone else to decide what to make, we eventually stop making anything of our own.

we copy what works. borrow the language, the aesthetic, the features. we call it learning from the market, following best practices, staying competitive. together, everything starts to feel familiar. polished, interchangeable. nothing wrong. nothing alive.

the mean isn’t necessarily bad. it’s where everything lands when we remove the reasons for it to be different.

numbers are easier to compare than feelings, so we make things that produce numbers. we study what gets attention, then shape ourselves around it. eventually the feedback stops informing the work and starts authoring it. we’re no longer asking what we want to say. we’re asking what will be rewarded for saying.

ai makes this loop frictionless. it can draw from more references than we could see in a lifetime. but access to every perspective isn’t the same as having one. it hasn’t lived a particular life that makes one detail unbearable and another beautiful. when we ask it to choose for us without bringing any intention of our own, we get something plausible, easy to approve.

then we ship it, measure it, copy it, and feed it back into the next round. a tidal wave of mid.

this changes not just the work, but the people making it.

we describe ourselves in categories platforms can distribute and markets understand. designer. founder. creator. pick a niche. build a brand. be consistent. the parts that don’t fit become inconvenient, even when those contradictions might produce our most interesting work. we become easier to classify and harder to tell apart.

i think we need to approach making things more like artists.

an artist develops a perspective through the work. making, noticing, choosing, failing, returning. learning what matters even when nobody else cares. craft gives that perspective a form precise enough for someone else to experience.

the life outside the work matters too. the places you’ve lived, the people you’ve loved, the things you’re embarrassed to care about. these aren’t distractions from having something to say. they’re how you come to have something to say.

we understand this with music, paintings, photographs, movies. we expect a person to be present in the choices. we want to experience something we wouldn’t have encountered without them.

software can do this too.

a piece of software expresses beliefs about how life should feel. what deserves your attention. what you should be free to change. whether a task should feel like paperwork or play. even a small interaction can carry someone’s care, humor, or curiosity.

but we rarely talk about software as a medium. we talk about it as an industry. markets to capture, workflows to optimize, competitors to catch up with. we add a feature because someone else has it, without asking whether it belongs. products accumulate the same parts and lose what made them worth choosing.

underneath the branding, it’s all the same thing.

artists learn from others too. the question is whether you’re absorbing those influences into a point of view, or using them to avoid developing one.

what are you trying to let someone feel, understand, or do? why this particular shape? what have you noticed that the existing tools don’t seem to notice?

those questions don’t have answers you can borrow from a competitor’s roadmap.

if we can make almost anything, deciding what deserves to exist becomes more important, not less. speed gives us more chances to exercise judgment. it doesn’t remove the responsibility.

i don’t want a world where every person becomes a more efficient distributor of the same ideas. i want people to use these tools to go further into what they actually care about. to make things specific enough that we can feel someone behind them.

what is the point of everyone being able to make something, if we all end up making the same thing?

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@MSchwaibold If only every one of my layouts only needed 2 images 🫠

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@ryolu_ Enjoying this moment where the guy who got me hyped on going all in on AI is quietly distancing himself from doing exactly that.
I’ve a few months delay, but I’m very much relating

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@DannPetty Are you using a ui kit library?

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@cameronmoll Although I see you’ve already responded :-)

[Cameron Moll @cameronmoll]

I have zero interest in the debate about which P/E/D role will replace the other with the rise of AI.

It's incumbent on each function to demo their value going forward, be adaptable with increased role
ambiguity, & trust the dust will settle in favor of a better way of building.

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@cameronmoll I dunno if that’s comparably the ‘best’ times.
Early 00s it was for those that chose to learn the craft within a narrow toolset. Optimistic and exciting.
Now it’s for anyone who can type and the toolset changes week to week.
Anxiety ridden and a little doomsy.

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@jxmnop @ryolu_ @pangram Dang. There’s a strong sad irony here.

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@shl ✋

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@doc_feld @bryan_johnson Read the post again

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

I needed to move a sofa.

I mentioned this to an American. He said, "You know anybody with a truck?"

I did not know anybody with a truck.

He looked at me with real concern. Not pity. Concern. The way you look at a man who has told you he does not have a name.

"You gotta know somebody with a truck."

I asked how one acquires such a person.

He said, "You just do."

This is the third time I have received that answer in this country. It is the answer to everything here. You just do. There is no process. There is only the eventual fact of having.

He said, "Ask Kevin."

I do not know a Kevin. He said Kevin like I should. He said it the way you say a shared uncle.

I met Kevin four days later. Kevin owns a truck. Kevin does not own a truck for himself. Nobody owns a truck for themselves. Kevin owns a truck for a fifteen mile radius.

Inside I said: THIS MAN HAS TAKEN A VOW. HE DID NOT ANNOUNCE IT. HE SIMPLY PURCHASED A BED AND ACCEPTED THE CONSEQUENCES.

Kevin arrived on Saturday. He brought the truck. He also brought a second man.

I had not asked for a second man.

The second man's name is Tony. Tony came because Kevin came. Tony did not know me. Tony did not ask what we were moving. Tony brought gloves.

They moved the sofa in eleven minutes.

I offered them money. Both of them laughed at the same time, which felt rehearsed and was not.

I asked what I owed them.

Kevin said, "Buy the pizza."

That is the price. That is the entire economy. The truck costs one pizza and the pizza is not negotiable and the pizza is also not expensive and everyone knows what size.

Inside I said: THE FEE IS FIXED ACROSS THE ENTIRE NATION AND WAS SET BY NO ONE.

We ate on the floor because the sofa was against the wall and none of us wanted to be the first to sit on it.

Tony told me his daughter plays soccer. I asked if she is good. He said, "She's aggressive."

I still think about that.

Three weeks later, Kevin texted me.

"You free Sunday? Helping Tony move a fridge."

He did not ask if I wanted to. He informed me of a fridge.

Inside I said: I HAVE BEEN CALLED UP. I DID NOT ENLIST. THE PAPERS WERE FILED ON MY BEHALF.

I went. I moved the fridge. I have no truck. I contributed only arms.

Afterward, a man I had never met asked me if I knew anybody with a truck.

I said, "Yeah, I got a guy."

I have a guy.

I am somebody's guy now, too. Tony has told two people about me.

He describes me as "the guy who's strong for his size."

I have never been prouder of a sentence in my life.

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@Scobleizer Credibility hitting an all time low

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@AlexAperios They didn’t exactly make it shine on their site did they 🫣

[Karri Saarinen @karrisaarinen]

https://t.co/srw9NQMkH2

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@chrysb @garrytan What’s the @karpathy take on this?

[Marci Shore @marci_shore]

I've taught European history for 30 years. Americans have always asked me how the Holocaust was possible, how Germans could have enabled a madman reveling in mass murder to carry out his plans. Now we can see in real time how this is enabled; now we have front-row seats.

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

One month after starting the war in Iran, this is the statement of the President of the United States on Easter Sunday.

These are the ravings of a dangerous and mentally unbalanced individual. Congress has got to act NOW. End this war.

[Jim Morrison @drooog]

@karpathy This sounds quite cumbersome for the less technical. Is there a more simple approach? Or someone willing to build a single app to do this ?