✈️ 🗽
I’ve confirmed my move to New York! After ~1.5 years in SF, I’ll be trying out that little concrete jungle.
Reading
The Browser Company is building Arc, an experimental, ground-up take on the web-browser. I just started playing with it.
They try to explain their rationale and approach to the new browser here:
Before drugs, my friend assumed his eyes would always work like… well, eyes! Everyone’s eyes are different of course, some people can see better than others, some people are blind or visually impaired in some way, but he had assumed that eyes generally acted within the bounds of some laws set by the universe. Eyes were a thing that absorbed the world to the best of their ability and reported back to the brain as honestly as they could.
Then he did acid and entered another dimension for a bit.
When he came back, his understanding of reality had been toppled. He was like, “Wait, how did my body even do that? What is reality?! What are eyes?!”
He hadn’t realized he had been living under assumptions about the axioms of the universe, but these false pillars became visible in their acid-induced shattering. If all it took was some chemical cajoling for his eyes and senses to transport him to another planet, what were the actual rules? Are there rules, or are there only defaults? What other invisible false pillars was he living his life by?
And this is why he liked recreational drugs — because he could explore and challenge and unlock a new relationship with reality.
Though my friend didn’t quite put it that way. The way he phrased it to me was, “When I do acid, it’s like messing with the operating system for humans.”
The best analogy we’ve got is actually not about a browser at all — it’s about recreational drugs. An engineer I knew in San Francisco, the “goes to Burning Man” type, was trying to explain to me why he liked drugs.
Before drugs, my friend assumed his eyes would always work like… well, eyes! Everyone’s eyes are different of course, some people can see better than others, some people are blind or visually impaired in some way, but he had assumed that eyes generally acted within the bounds of some laws set by the universe. Eyes were a thing that absorbed the world to the best of their ability and reported back to the brain as honestly as they could.
Then he did acid and entered another dimension for a bit.
When he came back, his understanding of reality had been toppled. He was like, “Wait, how did my body even do that? What is reality?! What are eyes?!”
He hadn’t realized he had been living under assumptions about the axioms of the universe, but these false pillars became visible in their acid-induced shattering. If all it took was some chemical cajoling for his eyes and senses to transport him to another planet, what were the actual rules? Are there rules, or are there only defaults? What other invisible false pillars was he living his life by?
And this is why he liked recreational drugs — because he could explore and challenge and unlock a new relationship with reality.
Though my friend didn’t quite put it that way. The way he phrased it to me was, “When I do acid, it’s like messing with the operating system for humans.”
Are they rewriting the internet?
Vibes
Canada
We recently went on a family trip to Banff. This place is stunning. If you are a poor photographer like myself this is the place for you. Impossible not to get pictures like this.
Some takeaways:
- people in Canada are some other type of kind. Every single person had such genuine love and care for each other, including us ignorant (Indian) American tourists
- We used an app called Autio as we road-tripped - very cooll! It narrates stories and guidance on the surrounding areas based on location. The narrator also sounds eerily similar to Ray Dalio
- Lots of Indians
- Found that many of the service workers (park rangers, hotel personnel) were nomads spending a few years there before finding a new place to jump to.
Writing
Getting back into the habit of writing has been the best thing I’ve done for myself in the last year. I’m excited to have a home for thoughts, whether one or one million people read them.