Good tokens 2025-07-30

Inspiration

That became my yardstick: I’d ask, “Is this dish good enough to come downtown and wait in line for? If not, it’s not what we’re after.” A chef can go years before getting another dish like that. We’ve been lucky: Hits have come at the least expected time and place. I’ve spent weeks on one dish that ultimately very few people would care about. And then I’ve spent 15 minutes on something that ends up flooring people like the pork bun.

David Chang on strange loops and food. “Is this good enough to come downtown and wait in line for?” is going to be my measuring stick for all future projects.

Things I learned

1. In Switzerland, you are never more than 16km from a lake. About Switzerland.
2. The English Monarchy didn’t formally release their claim on the English throne, originating with Edward III, until 1801 — after Napoleon had become dictator. The Rest Is History.
3. A 2019 survey of 2,000 American adults found that 79% had made at least one drunk purchase and that they averaged $444 in drunk purchases per year. The Hustle.
4. International adoptions in the US are down 94% since the peak in 2004. Pew

Worth your time

1. Cate Hall and Patrick McKenzie on agency. Some notes for me: be willing to go places others won’t and do things others won’t do, including looking stupid and taking hard feedback. More from Cate here.
2. Ben Reinhardt on Fat Ideas and False Negatives.
3. A v0 friction log. I’m increasingly convinced that all these vibe coding tools are collapsing into a single hyper competitive category.
4. How to achieve victory in Ukraine and the future of cheap UAVs
5. The Bitter Lesson and the Garbage Can. This has me wondering what makes AI a research problem rather than an engineering problem?
6. The Electric Tech Stack
7. I’ve officially built an AI agent. And my HeyRecap build in public document.

2025-07-30