Coleman McCormick — Unified Feed

We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship.

My latest post on the importance of remembering what makes the American flavor of independence unique: Something unique about the American Founders' flavor of revolution was that it was the first (only?)

In the latest issue of Building Blocks, I dove into Shape Up and its idea of setting the appetite for a project.

Julian Lehr wrote an interesting post recently on the problems with conversational interfaces, with the fitting title "The case against conversational interfaces".

Will Manidis: The demonic recognizes in our shortcuts the perfect opportunity: tempt humans away from the difficult labor of making, growing, and building with our own hands and minds.

When we think about brain-computer interfaces, why do we always jump to the chip-in-the-head?

I just watched this excellent interview with Michael Dean on the How I Write podcast.

Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.

I recently wrote about the tendency of creators to keep messy versus clean workspaces.

Saw this from John Carmack today on X: Feedback beats planning.

Here's a useful way of thinking about the domains of our three branches of government, from Yuval Levin's American Covenant: It is only a slight exaggeration to say that the Congress is expected to frame for the future, the president is expected to act in…

Watch video Great interview with the author of one of my favorite books from the last several years, Joe Henrich.

Good stuff here on building with Cursor.

Watch video MF DOOM / Ghostface Killah - Angelz, 2004.

Some technologies are unpredicted, but evolve.

Watch video Firefly Aerospace became the first private company to land a spacecraft on the moon when Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon on March 2nd.

Roman ruins at Schönbrunn.

Volos harbor at night.

"Topographic beauties straight from old geography books", @egeberkina.

The Fall of the Damned.

This is a phenomenal extended (3 hour!)

When capturing hundreds of problems during product discovery, we generate at least as many potential solutions.

In this AI era, I've been thinking a lot about what it means for humans in the loop of formerly human tasks.

As I watch my kids learn, it sits with me how much we learn by copying.

Charles Mann on the unseen, unappreciated wonders of modern infrastructure: The great European cathedrals were built over generations by thousands of people and sustained entire communities.

Jason Carman's S3 project has been relaunched (no pun intended) as The Story Company, continuing his incredible work on documenting the hard tech scene.

A great little paean to curiosity from Henrik Karlsson: There is something frustratingly Tao about curiosity. (1) It is by following your curiosity that you can bring something new and beautiful into the world as a gift to others.

In the latest Res Extensa, I explored how craftsmen build expertise through deep understanding of their medium.

Bell Labs Holmdel.

Muse – Prompts for journaling Sometimes in a journaling session it’s hard to get yourself writing.

So far this year I've gone headlong into what's possible with AI development, specifically using Cursor.

Oblique Strategies was originally a set of cards created by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt back in 1975.

A common problem I encounter with computers is the everyday minor friction in workflow: the repetitive but only occasional task, or the tedious multi-step process.

New York and Erie Railroad diagram, 1855.

This latest issue of Res Extensa riffs on an idea from wiki-inventor Ward Cunningham: “Given what we’re trying to do now, what is the simplest thing that could possibly work?”

I found and watched this this morning.

An archive of concepts drawn from works of science fiction.

Watch video The Headhunters perform “Sly”, 1974.

Two phenomenal records to start a recording career.

Western Electric Plant.

Nantucket Sleigh Ride.

A Chapel in the High Mountains.

The Flood.

“They died to make the desert bloom” Hoover Dam bas relief.

Bell Labs Holmdel Complex.

Winged Figures of the Republic.

Gordon Brander explores Meadows's list of intervention points in systems, from her excellent book Thinking in Systems: All systems are fictions that we project onto our environment for our own instrumental purposes.

"Truth is beauty, and beauty, truth" —John Keats I've been on a kick lately trying to understand what informs the concept of "taste."

Where You Work Shapes How You Work Our levels of productivity, creativity, and inspiration have an intimate, hard-to-articulate connection to our environments.

Fantasy Landscape with Buildings by a Lagoon.