Welcome!

There’s 60 of us now. We’re a bus load! Depending on manufacturer and model a bus ranges from 36-60 seats. A typical bus seats around 56. Glad to be aboard with you all on the road forward :)

Thanks for being an early subscriber to my digital postcard. I prefer the description postcard (rather than newsletter) cuz it feels more casual, personal and specific to a moment in time. Each week I share updates, anecdotes and links to things I enjoyed recently.

TIP: First-time recipient? A reply will help prevent these emails being marked spam. Don't feel obligated to say something kind or clever. In fact, I encourage the opposite. Make your reply as conveniently incoherent as possible. A quick: "sDGHsdasd" is splendid :)

Mind ≠ Computer

I’m obsessed with metaphors and analogies. I love when someone points out a common metaphor that doesn’t actually make sense. Annie Murphy Paul does this beautifully in her book, The Extended Mind:

Alan Watts: Limits of Language

Have you spent time with the thoughts of Alan Watts?

He was one of the most charismatic speakers we've had on our planet. Watts played a huge role popularizing eastern philosophy in the west through his brilliant & wide-ranging talks. I'd heard many snippets of his talks sampled into songs and videos, but until recently I'd never spent time at the source.

On January 1st, The Alan Watts Collection (100+ hrs of audio) was added to Waking Up, the mindfulness app I use. Here’s a snippet from a talk Watts gave called Limits of Language:

He points out the quirks and paradoxes of duality in our common language:

The last quote I'll share comes from later on in the talk. It doesn't have anything to do with language, but it changed the way I look at tables:

Age of Curation

Josh Terry reminds me of Naval Ravikant. He’s created a niche on TikTok by reading his blogposts on camera. Amidst all the visual dazzle, seeing a guy read words directly from his computer screen is oddly compelling. But only because of how sharp his ideas are.

This clip is the best pitch I've heard for the essential role of influencers.

Album Art Dissonance

One of my biggest pet peeves is albums that don't sound like their artwork. Sufjan Stevens and Angelo De Augustine's album A Beginner's Mind is a classic example of this phenomenon:

The album cover gives me an impression of sunny, chaotic crayola adventures into mythology.

But the atmosphere I hear is night scenery. The tone is calm, comforting, and mystical. It sounds like falling in and out of sleep on a train. Dreams blur as the tracks wind their way through mountains ranges and deep forests.

Ok. With the artwork dissonance resolved... Great album! The whole thing is worth listening, but here's one of my favs:

Olympus Sufjan Stevens

That's all till next week!

The verbal creativity quiz I sent last week was a hit! Record number of replies + you all had great words. It was a resounding vote of confidence to send more interactive things like that in the future :)

Thanks for reading,

Tommy

Were you forwarded this edition and want to receive next week's postcard? Subscribe with the button below:

PS. Replies Encouraged :)

• If you have 27 seconds to jot an impression of this postcard, please do!
• I know each of your lives bustle with activity. If it helps, think of the reply as a text (rather than an email).
• A quick jotted: “Alan Watts is sooo good, have you listened to his talk on xyz? ” or "Is the bus about to run over those 60 ppl!??!" is valuable signal of where to re-invest :)