November/December Links

Nick Roberts -

Happy 2025!

I don't know about you, but I ended 2024 feeling pretty drained. Don't get me wrong: It was a terrific, action-packed year. I checked off of a bunch of big items. I got to see a lot of new places. I reconnected with old friends. This is all detailed in my year-end report linked below.

The problem is that I commit to too many things– at work, with new hobbies, with lots of travel. And every commitment comes with overhead. And all that overhead stacks up until I feel frenetic, harried, and unfocused. I realized at the end of this past year I'd just been existing for months in this state and it was significantly tolling on my happiness.

So, I'm making some changes. My resolution for 2025 is to do less and open up more space for my mind.

From the past couple months

My stuff:

  • A look back at 2024 - End of year report card on my goal progress, what I read and watched, and where I went. Also includes goals for 2025.
  • Down on the border - A trip down to the fence demarcating the US and Mexico.

Choosing an Ordinary Life: Finding Joy in Simplicity. I really enjoyed this one. It dovetails with my recent focus on Slow Productivity and generally doing less. [Video]

"It's Still Easier To Imagine The End Of The World Than The End Of Capitalism." [Link]

The Shipwreck Detective. [Link]

A YouTube channel all about canned fish. I think I've linked this guy's stuff before. It is excellent. There's something about his vibe that makes me want to crack a can of sardines real bad. [Link]

How to read 100 pages every day. [Link]

Brian Cox on black holes. [Video]

I’ve been inspired to dive deeper into JavaScript and system design—mostly for my job where I build products for developers, but also to tackle more side projects. I want to better understand whether ChatGPT and other AI models are actually suggesting good code. I'm working my way through this course which is entirely open source. Pretty good so far! [Link]

Building an app in 60 minutes with ChatGPT O1 and Cursor. [Video]

The seductive promise of building software as fast as you can think. My personal experience with tools like Replit is that they're intriguing but I prefer to have more control over the build process. I also found the Replit Agent to be slow and apt to make mistakes or to wind itself into frustrating loops. I think I'm going to stick with O1 and Cursor. [Video]

AI pilots for the Air Force. [Link]

More Lord of the Rings, ruined by AI. [Video]

On destroying great companies. [Link]

The death of point solutions. [Link]

"mymind is the extension for your mind." A digital notebook with marketing that makes it feel like it was created by a cult. Things that you save are tag-able and searchable, rather than folderizable. Cool concept, but I'm still on Notion. [Link]

Craft: Another Notion-esque digital notebook. I like to keep tabs on these kinds of apps to see what they can do, but I ain't switchin' yet. [Link]

Skateboarding down a mountain [Video]

ChatGPT can now read some of your Mac's desktop apps. I've tried this out and it's not terrific, but points in the right direction. It can read individual files in VSCode, but it can't really weave together a complete picture of your code project yet. [Link]

"What’s Your Shape? A Product Manager’s Guide to Growing Yourself and Your Team." [Link]

'Brain Rot' named word of the year by Oxford University Press. [Link]

AI apps worth trying out. [Link]