News!

We’ve spun @lexdotpage out of @Every.

I’m now focused on Lex full-time as CEO, and raised a $2.75M seed round, led by @trueventures!

Couldn’t be more excited 🙏 techcrunch.com/2023/08/23/lex… Since Lex launched last year, a LOT has happened:

- The sentiment around AI shifted from “hot” to “ridiculously hot” to “hey maybe this is a bit over-hyped”

- Google Docs, Word, and most other writing tools built at least some sort of basic AI integration

- Some of Lex’s original features (like typing +++ to have AI generate the next paragraph) became standard “hello world” demos, and were even built into multiple open source projects

I wrote about a book that I love.

It's called Mastery, and it helped me be less anxious without sacrificing any of my ambition.

Here's what I learned from it:
every.to/divinations/bo… The big idea is that we can gain serenity without sacrificing our ambition if we focus on long-term mastery and learn to love the process of continual improvement for its own sake, trusting that the results will inevitably come.

Had an idea for @lexdotpage, debating whether to build it—writers, would love to hear if this sounds useful? 🙏🏻

PROBLEM:

It’s great to get feedback on your writing from a group of early readers, but a pain to send a draft link around. SOLUTION:

Early reader groups. Send an invite link to friends and colleagues, and they can join your group. Then, when you’re ready for feedback on a draft, click a button and everyone gets an email.

Five pieces of advice for those building in AI right now: 1. Resist broad generalizations

AI is like steel or electricity—a broadly useful underlying technology that is becoming a part of almost everything we use.

The pre-existing dynamics of whatever business you're integrating AI into are more important than any AI-specific advice.

A little thing happened in my head today that was somehow meaningful to me

I was eating toast and eggs for breakfast, in a bit of a rush to start work As I took my last bite of toast, I noticed an impulse to shovel the remaining egg in my mouth and get going.

Normally I would have done this without thinking, but today I noticed it. I thought, "hm, maybe let's hang tight for a bit and just enjoy the toast."

LMAO he deleted the tweet about going to war with apple

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1598050795882442752

I quote tweeted it here, it's gone now

https://twitter.com/nbashaw/status/1597314557604528128

Hell yes KMAG!! (F1 tweet 😀)

Introducing "Ask Lex"!

When you're writing, if you need to look something up, just ask Lex in a simple chat interface.

No more ruinous context switching and hunting through webpages. Stay in the flow and just have a quick convo with the world's smartest AI.

https://twitter.com/nbashaw/status/1581673516360876032

Here's a demo of "Ask Lex"

(If you want to skip the setup go to 1:40)

Thinking about replacing the tagline here with “Never get stuck while writing again”

Good idea? Bad idea?

Got any better ideas? Holy shit, @clayhebert nailed it

https://twitter.com/clayhebert/status/1582165769219342336

Introducing Lex!

A word processor with artificial intelligence baked in, so you can write faster.

👉 lex.page 👈

(I've been working on this awhile... so glad to finally share it!!)

https://twitter.com/nateliason/status/1580969589298458634

Here's a demo!

It's like google docs, but when you type "+++" it tells you what you could say next, it can generate headline ideas, etc

What’s that quote about how there are some years where nothing happens and some days where years happen? Lmao it’s a Lenin quote

Will "the metaverse" replace laptop and desktop PCs?

Meta thinks it will, and they are betting everything on it. I am not so sure. Believers see obvious advantages to full immersion, and consider it just a matter of time before the technology is good enough and cheap enough to get us all to make the switch.

The main obstacle, they believe, is technical.

Pro tip for new parents:

Be careful holding your infant next to your eye. Sofia scratched the shit out of mine last night! 😅 twitter.com/i/web/status/1… She got me good 💀💀💀

(The green part is scratched off)

When I first joined Substack back in 2018, it was kind of hard to explain what product category we were competing in. The founders had originally conceived of it as an all-in-one publishing platform for independent writers who wanted to offer paid subscriptions.

At this point business insider should just go ahead and rebrand itself as "business outsider" 😅

this is ridiculously low quality journalism twitter.com/i/events/15777… I mean, the social media admin couldn't even get very simple things right like "who hosted these podcasts" — the author listened to "all in" and "how i built this" and "20 minute VC" and many other podcasts not hosted by a16z

https://twitter.com/BITech/status/1577730124165677056

Why is there no YouTube for text? Lot of people saying Twitter is it

I think it's probably the closest?

I was thinking more like what Medium and now Substack are going for

Have you had COVID?

Did you get long COVID? If you had severe long COVID, were you vaxxed at the time?

We have had some pretty excellent guest contributor essays in @every in the past few weeks: @eliotpeper on writing to figure out new ideas: every.to/p/writing-is-a…

@lpolovets 👋 lost 25lb over the past year (215 -> 190) and still going

I used to think exercise was easier for me than dieting too, but until I made a few simple tweaks to my eating habits it was super hard to make progress. The good news is, if you’re active you def don’t have to starve @lpolovets Ultimately it’s about calories in - calories our, so what helped me most was tracking calories and macros for a while (I use macrotracker) to get a better understanding of what I was putting in my body. It was super fascinating to get a better understanding.

Got a scam text

Feeling chaotic

Should I?? 😅 Or better yet:

“Surely you can’t be serious”

I am skeptical that Instagram/Reels is going to make much of a dent in TikTok's growth.

BeReal, on the other hand...

If I were a shareholder I would BeWorried every.to/divinations/be… Some other great writing on BeReal lately:

@CaseyNewton is always on point platformer.news/p/why-bereal-i…