School’s out for summer

10 things worth sharing this week

Hey y’all,

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week:

1. School’s out for summer here in Austin, Texas! Here is my message to graduates from a few years ago. I think it holds up.
   
   

2. “Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. Someday I’ll put that on a three-by-five card and tape it to the wall beside my desk.” Words pinned to the wall.
   
   

3. Some wisdom on AI from 2016: “What I hope I've done today is shown you the dangers of being too smart. Hopefully you'll leave this talk a little dumber than you started it, and be more immune to the seductions of AI that seem to bedevil smarter people.” Superintelligence: the idea that eats smart people.
   
   

4. I tried writing about the open-world genius of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom and failed. A book I pulled off my shelf, somewhat inspired by Link’s prosthetic in Zelda, is Sara Hendren’s What Can a Body Do? Really excellent. (More about Sara on her excellent website and Substack.)
   
   

5. Five historic art works spurred by disability. (For years, I have been collecting stories of artists whose differences and disabilities have led to their signature work. If you have a good one, send it to me!)
   
   

6. I was going through John Warner’s list of books about thinking and thinking, “Man, I like a lot of these books!” and then saw my book at the bottom! Very chuffed. Two of my favorite books about thinking: Alan Jacobs’ How To Think and Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.
   
   

7. From one of my favorite visual thinkers: I love Dave Gray’s 100 Visual Frameworks. Here’s Dave on how to explore stuckness with them. (And here’s another David, David Epstein, on the science of getting unstuck.)
   
   

8. “It’s very difficult to make things simple and understandable.” How Bill Withers wrote his masterpiece, “Lean on Me.” (Something I hadn’t thought too much about before is how the song ends with Withers’ saying “call me, if you need a friend” over and over. On a recent phone call with my friend Wendy, I found out Bloomsbury is publishing her wonderful book about losing loved ones, How To Say Goodbye.)
   
   

9. Podcasts: Dipping into the Studs Terkel Radio Archive yields such riches. I’m listening to Neil Postman’s three appearances, spread out over a decade. (I’m a huge Neil Postman fan — if you haven’t read Amusing Ourselves to Death, that’s the one to start with.)
   
   

10. RIP Tina Turner. RIP Andy Rourke, bassist for The Smiths. RIP filmmaker Kenneth Anger. RIP writer Martin Amis. RIP jazz bassist and composer Bill Lee.
    

Thanks for reading! If you need an easy gift for a dad or a recent graduate, buy them one (or two or three) of my books:

You could also give them a subscription to this newsletter!

xoxo,

Austin