Share this page!

Andy Matuschak Profile picture
Twitter logo
24 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
I’ve really enjoyed 2020’s flowering of Substack writers, but I also enjoyed this criticism of the medium’s impact on thought: nintil.com/substack-milqu…

One reframing: is there an adjacent model which can support book-depth thought? Or even three-month-essay-depth thought?
I’ve heard the argument that maybe one can support book-writing by writing a weekly newsletter *while* writing a book. Ideally the newsletter might be exhaust from research or book-drafting sessions. I think @antonhowes is trying this! I’d love to see success stories here.
Note that this approach is the opposite of a common practice: write a blog for a few years; get popular; staple posts together into a book. I like some of those books, but they usually seemed just as good as blog posts: they don’t seem to be accessing new depths as books.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if Substack’s model can’t produce book-depth thought. After all, if the model could “only” support the creation of lots more SlateStarCodexes, that would be really incredible!
Anon friend suggests that much Substack criticism can be read as: "Yeah, [your fave neighborhood restaurant] is great, but I fail to see what they’re doing for world hunger, farming challenges related to depleted soil, etc, to say nothing of how useless it is to dead people"
I like this framing too!

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
　

Keep Current with Andy Matuschak

Andy Matuschak Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @andy_matuschak

Andy Matuschak Profile picture
31 Oct
When teaching, it feels natural to center on powerful ideas or techniques. But it’s usually better to center on *questions*—ideas and techniques can follow. Ideally, they’re deep, meaningful questions with no “right” answer, an active object for experts in the discipline.
e.g. If you're studying history, details are important, but usually in service of broad, enduring questions like "when and how do individuals make a difference?"

Wiggins & McTighe call these "essential questions" in Understanding by Design, a great text on instructional design.
I love this idea but often forget it when I'm writing or giving a talk. Institutionalized education sets a bad cultural norm: a teacher's supposed to know the answers and tell them to you… not ask impossible questions! Obviously, I don't *believe* this, but it sneakily seeps in.
Read 7 tweets
Andy Matuschak Profile picture
29 Oct
!! Celebration day for food nerds: new Keller cookbook!

The first French Laundry cookbook (from ’99) was a revelation to me. Cooking through it taught me more than any other resource has. I was shocked how makeable it was in a home kitchen—very few unusual supplies needed.
The follow-up, Under Pressure, included dishes from Per Se. The style was barely recognizable! The dishes now included many modernist techniques and daring flairs. Fascinating to read, but much less suitable for home cooking: the components didn’t generalize very well.
I’m so happy that this book looks like it’s landed somewhere in between. Under Pressure was explicitly centered around technique (sous vide), but this one’s not; and a decade’s passed, so the enthusiasm for whiz-bang modernism has faded a bit.
Read 9 tweets
Andy Matuschak Profile picture
18 Oct
An unintuitive secret of reading books on computers: reading PDFs with original typesetting is much better than reading ebooks, which treat text like a 4chan shitposter and have impoverished reading software.

But… where to get the PDFs?! A survey & suggestions for future work:
Google Play:
👍 ~smooth workflow; clean pages
👎 PDFs lack text layer, so they're not searchable or selectable; only recent books available in PDF

archive.org:
👍 has many older books Play lacks; includes OCR'd text layer
👎 OCR errors; photo noise; clunkier workflow
Z-Library:
👍 occasionally has clean PDFs for books which others lack
👎 PDFs are often EPUB->PDF conversions (the worst!); more illegal
Read 6 tweets
Andy Matuschak Profile picture
18 Oct
I've noticed that consciousness recedes when I'm deep in a coding phase, many back-to-back days in flow. My mind narrows to tunnel-vision, fixated on the software and its issues. My sense of self shrinks; non-code ideas cease to arise; I get less curious; writing yields little.
It's an odd feeling: flow is experientially satisfying, but the creeping self-abnegation is worrying. I also notice it takes quite a while to "reset" from this phase, to start hearing myself think again, to feel like less of an automaton.
I don't experience this feeling when I spend many days back-to-back in flow doing other work: developing an idea, writing, designing. I wonder if it's bc those activities are more creative, involve more reflective thought. Or maybe it's that I'm worse at them—so flow's less deep!
Read 7 tweets
Andy Matuschak Profile picture
17 Oct
I enjoyed @eriktorenberg's observation that earned authentic respect is an underrated catalyst for the way one's skills, capital, brand, and network can reinforce each other. eriktorenberg.substack.com/p/see-your-car…
I've often misunderstood this b/c respect is not very illegible, and the scale is unlabeled.

e.g. It feels like success when others reliably accept your coffee invites. But that's actually not very high on the scale: better if people proactively think of you in relevant moments.
Part of why this is confusing is that respect *feels* more legible than it is. Proxies like $, media appearances, followers, citations, etc *seem* like they correspond to respect, but very often they don't! Easy to accidentally internalize false lessons about what earns respect.
Read 4 tweets
Andy Matuschak Profile picture
25 Sep
Woke up to a great paradoxical notion from @nsbarr: sometimes the main benefit of non-linear authoring (whiteboard, hypertext, Muse) is actually linear thought! These envs offer a “release valve” for tangential stuff so you can focus on your “main” idea. notes.andymatuschak.org/z3iT7pPmhbY8Wt…
@nsbarr One thing I really like about this is that it subverts the usual narrative around e.g. densely-linked note systems: maybe the value of non-linear writing isn’t (just) in the future value of the embedded links to you/readers—but rather in helping you focus in the moment.
@nsbarr In this framing, the tangential stuff and non-linear associations are ephemeral chaff, not durable future working material!

Too strong as stated, I think (see notes.andymatuschak.org/z2HUE4ABbQjUNj… for args in favor of future value of links), but a useful angle, I think.
Read 4 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Like this author's thread?

Get email notifications when new thread is out from this Author!

Check out other threads from this Author!

Read all threads by @andy_matuschak