Maybe the act of realizing self, results in the mental eradication of your sense of others. Maybe my act of worshiping God is the joy of release in killing my sense of self I’ve been trying to form.
I’m not going to explain this.
Let’s actually start this one with some random thoughts:
I don’t necessarily think Facebook cares about freedom of speech, as much as they care about never taking a definitive view on what is right or wrong. Which is safer as a utility. They are simply a vessel, with no meaning, but that which you ascribe to it. That said, if they actually wanted to be a vessel — they would be better at allowing users to write their own rules for how the platform behaves for them. I think this is the future that would be really interesting for Facebook.
While in Lisbon, I received the black man - to - black man nod. And I felt at home. Black is universal in such a unique way. That I feel may not be matched by anything else.
Lately I’ve been meditating on how I can grow the ability to make space in conversation -> and how that might lead into other arenas. My point being that, I generally have pretty hard opinions on thing. Which makes a lot of conversation confrontational. Not in an aggressive way… but in a defined way. However, there’s always something beautiful that happens when you can just let someone keep going deeper in thought in front of you. And I want to foster that.
From the outside, observing on Twitter, the SF political arena is so fascinating to watch the secondary effect of the reaction from the crowd. There is so much denial in what the problem is rooted in. So much lack of empathy for those in need. A good amount of pseudo-conservative thought because the admittedly stupid leftist policy. And a dash of indirect asks for a stronger police state, and maybe some racially inclined motivations. FUN ALL AROUND FROM NYC.
Luca (my co-founder) gave me some really great tough love recently at work. And that level of transparency and critique at work is something I am super grateful for. In short, he pointed out that I wasn’t running toward the need/problem I said I was going to solve. And I was distracting myself with things I wanted to do more of, but we didn’t necessarily need. It was a good slap. I guess I wanted to share this because, it’s good to publicly show how we are all learning through work and we can be public about it!
I’m going to own a home in the future, because I’m going to be stupid rich from Eternal. Like rich to the point people question on Twitter whether I’m even supposed to have that kind of money, as a moral argument.
However, the mass economic reality… or at least the current narrative because I don’t feel like independently breaking down the math, is that millennials and gen-z probably won’t own homes. And instead will be renting for a larger chunk of their life.
This timing is also tied to our growing improvements in VR, and more mmo driven digital spaces. What would happen if the creators of a future space, that is not cool VR mom centric Facebook Horizons, created “the street” from Snowcrash.
As a quick side note, I’ve never truly understood owning my own reggiejames[dot]com, as I have so many identity markers online already. However, I think that the new personal url could become digital real estate on the street. Not bounded by traditional constraints.
We increasingly take more and more time to simply linger online. The future of how we view the nature of personal space is rapidly morphing. I wake up in my apartment, I go to work, I have a drink at Ethel’s Club, I go back to my apartment and put on my headset. I’m in my home, my real home, that is designed by a neural net that’s been fed a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright imagery. I have friends over. They live in Berlin and LA, and we catch up about the week before bed.
Lately I’ve been watching more and more Rick Rubin, as he holds conversations with some of my favorite people in music. Something that I love about Rick’s energy is that, even if I feel he might disagree. He poses it far more as curiosity for the other person to go deeper, than he does confront the idea itself. He creates a sense of space around conversation that is so intimate… I could watch these and feel there and comforted and wanting to talk myself.
The other thing that’s been on my mind, particularly around his recent talks with Pharrell and Tyler the Creator — were both of their focus around chords and chord progressions.
How chords create emotional movement, anchoring, and space. It’s funny because chords weren’t how I thought of either of these artists in how they would approach their own music. But it makes me then think about how we could think through early stage product as a chord, and a product timeline as a chord progression.
In the most basic way, a chord is composed of a root + a third + a fifth. So, if we have a C major chord it would include = C natural + E natural + G natural. The C also indicating the key that the chord is residing in. I grew up playing classical piano, jazz band, choir, musical theatre… etc.
So to not make this drag on:
thinking about the core nugget as the root. the overarching house this product is living and grounded in
the third as what resonates with that root, and makes it unique. gives it direction and carves what differentiates it from other chords. Taking Grailed as an example, the third is their curation. without curation, it’s just a verticalized eBay.
finally the 5th… this is what I’m having a little difficulty with as I think through this out-loud (in writing). but there’s definitely something here with how we close the loop. creating the top layer to the experience
What I’m currently consuming
I saw The Lighthouse yesterday, and it was a square black and white fever dream that psychotically kept going. I loved it, my girlfriend did not feel similarly. But it had this very unique delivery that left so much up for interpretation yet was clearly directed with a strong handed world view and style.
For some reason… I haven’t been reading a lot. Which is frustrating I can’t seem to stick to a book. But I have been watching a lot of interviews. Which makes me want someone to build a video interviewing app… similar to a podcast creation tool or even Jumprope style. I have a lot of ideas here, maybe I’ll pitch it formally next time.
The new Rex Orange County album is so so so good. I’m not even going to say anything about it. I’m just going to put it below. But it came out of nowhere for me, h/t to my co-founder Luca for passing it to me.
I’m not going to go back and edit any of this…. so…. excuse anything that doesn’t make complete sense or typos…
Thanks so much for giving me your attention. I hope it was worth it, if not… unsubscribing will not hurt my feelings, and will give you back time you literally cannot have back.
Much love.