The author reflects on their first-year law school experience while purchasing a Rhodia tablet, drawing parallels to fraternity involvement and previous law office work.
The author reflects on the vanity behind writing and content creation, admitting that while they write to understand things deeply, they're equally motivated by validation from readers. After building a metrics dashboard tracking their Hacker News submissions and engagement, they discovered that of 127 submissions, only 26 reached the front page with minimal cumulative visibility, revealing that the pursuit of online recognition is largely driven by vanity rather than substantive impact.
A writing coach tool powered by Anthropic that provides feedback on user writing without generating sentences for them. The service processes submissions in real-time, doesn't store writing data, and doesn't use submissions for model training.
Chronicle is a local-first, open-source authoring software designed for writers to manage the complete book creation process, from drafting to publication. It offers specialized tools for plotting timelines, building character and location databases, annotating manuscripts, designing covers, and exporting publication-ready formats including PDFs, ePubs, and Shunn manuscripts—all without cloud dependencies or paid subscriptions.
The article questions whether Paul Graham's and Scott Adams's advice to 'write simply' is actually responsible for their success, or if it's survivorship bias masking the importance of pre-existing brand and wealth. The author argues that successful writers often employ academic, sophisticated prose rather than simple writing, suggesting that complexity conveys credibility and attracts educated audiences.
The author shares principles for editing blog posts based on nearly 450 reviews at PostHog over four years. Key practices include ensuring posts have clear purpose before writing, leading with the strongest content rather than saving it for conclusions, grounding claims with concrete examples, and maintaining coherence throughout. Blog editing is presented as a distinct skill requiring different approaches than academic or other writing forms.
The author argues that AI writing tools force users to commit to their initial ideas, unlike manual writing where ideas evolve organically through the process of composition. With AI-generated text arriving as large blocks, revising and pivoting becomes difficult and time-consuming compared to the natural iterative refinement that happens word-by-word in traditional writing.
CEO Hour is a 40-minute structured thinking practice where individuals use timed stages to clarify a work question or decision through focused writing and reflection. Participants work independently on their own paper while optionally joining others for shared momentum, with no thinking stored or shared anywhere.
Benn Stancil, a prolific writer in the data space and Mode co-founder, discusses his writing journey starting accidentally in 2013 with company blog posts, taking a break during startup growth, and returning around 2021 with a Substack publication. He emphasizes that effective writing requires pushing beyond comfort—if you always enjoy it, you're not challenging yourself hard enough.
The author argues that AI writing is acceptable for functional content like documentation, release notes, and support FAQs, where the goal is clear information transfer rather than personal expression. AI should be avoided for emotionally meaningful writing like eulogies or cover letters, and the backlash against AI writing mirrors historical moral panics around tools like calculators and photography.
A literary story set in Silicon Valley exploring the relationship between a writer named Sam and an AI assistant called Ink as they struggle with authenticity, revision, and human connection amid technological surroundings. The narrative examines tensions between perfection and imperfection, with Sam's daughter EL serving as a reminder of what matters beyond polished outputs.
The debate over AI writing mirrors ancient Greek concerns about writing itself. Plato's dialogue presents writing as a pharmakon—a tool that can both aid and harm memory depending on use—a paradox that Derrida later explored and that now applies to generative AI. Media institutions today face a dilemma similar to Odysseus navigating between Scylla and Charybdis: balancing the efficiency gains of AI tools against the risk of losing human judgment and editorial integrity.
The author shares lessons learned from 630+ days of daily online writing, emphasizing that starting is the hardest part but consistency doesn't require daily posting. Key advice includes choosing one platform initially, participating in others' content, writing from your phone, scheduling posts, and not rushing to publish ideas before they're fully formed.
A writing guide emphasizing vulnerability over success stories, citing James Altucher's rule that authors should only publish content that scares them. The author illustrates this with personal examples of sharing struggles like burnout and health issues, which ultimately resonated deeply with readers and created meaningful connections.
An essay exploring how to approach writing through the lens of Moby-Dick, using the novel's pervasive imagery of blankness and whiteness—blank pages, unmarked charts, the white whale's faceless form—as a metaphor for the indefinite sublime that writers must confront when creating literature.
Jot is a privacy-focused AI writing assistant Chrome extension that rewrites emails, messages, and social posts directly in your browser without copying text elsewhere. It offers customizable writing styles, local text redaction before sending to AI providers, and support for multiple websites including Gmail, Slack, and LinkedIn.
The author reflects on why they increasingly avoid posting online, arguing that internet dialogue lacks genuine listening and often devolves into name-calling and mockery rather than fostering progress. They conclude that sometimes it's better to simply read and move on rather than contribute to the noise of social media.
A writer reflects on being asked to optimize content for AI-generated responses (GEO) rather than traditional search engines, drawing parallels to a Stanislaw Lem story about humans unknowingly disguising themselves as robots. The author ultimately abandoned the task, finding it impossible to write authentic prose while conforming to algorithmic requirements.
Writer Afra Wang explores how AI-generated content feels like betrayal to readers who evolved to crave authentic human connection and inner lives. Drawing on Joan Didion's introspective writing and psychological research on human self-domestication, Wang argues that artificial text triggers visceral repulsion because it masks the absence of a real person behind the words.
A software engineering team at Conveo created a Slack emoji (:asdr:) to flag poorly edited AI-generated documents, establishing a contract requiring team members to read documents thoroughly, remove AI artifacts, and spend more time editing than others spend reading. The practice aims to balance AI's efficiency in content generation with human accountability for quality.