KP
@kpx
931 Following
1576 Followers
An Ideal Social App (That Gets Me)
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Some days I feel like a monk. Other days I’m arguing with strangers about tokens I don’t even own. Most days, it’s some weird mix of both.
See, I love engaging with new people and new ideas. Still, at the end of the day or on days when I want to be peaceful, I want to read a book in a comforting chair in my shorts. Having a deep conversation with myself, generally on the book I am reading, or rambling on thoughts generated out of it. I know the whole setting around me is calm. No rush. Just jolting gently through ideas. The world might be chaos, but in that moment everything feels fine. Or better is when I don’t even feel there is a world outside that moment.
But then I also love trying out what new kids are building because it's refreshing, not always motivated by money but pure chaotic passion. One thing I do miss about being under 25 is that unfiltered passion, where you feel like time is running out for everything- career, love, money, travel, legacy. The future is built on the obsession of young. But the world is noisy, and I’m still learning how to filter signal from shitposts.
Now at 35+, which is a very desirable age for 60+ people, I want to use socials in both my moods.
Let’s say right now I want to watch/read something like how Gödel cracked the limits of formal systems, or dive into the epistemology of computational limits. But because I watched one video from the 2003 Cricket World Cup final out of nostalgia, my entire feed thinks I’ve switched careers to cricket historian.
There’s no real way to tell a platform what my mood is. One interesting math problem can divert me from making an analytical report on the state of meme coins. So we end up having a different apps for different states of mind.
Want updates on Iran-Israel conflict? Open X.
Want to hear what friends are yapping about? Open Telegram.
Want to know which distant relatives are dead? Open Facebook.
Farcaster? General perception shaping up to be where crypto nerds post, experiment, and build in public.
Each app, I have a different personality-
On my yoga app, I’m a procrastinator.
On Kindle, I’m too ambitious.
On Instagram, I’m a traveller (though haven’t opened it in three years)
On Telegram, I have a multiple personality disorder, who is either spamming or don't show up for 2 weeks.
On GitHub, I’m a ghost.
On LinkedIn, I’m a motivational speaker who once liked a @naval's post and now the algo thinks I run a hedge fund..
But my ideal app? It's where I’m 'all' of those things.
Yes, I want a decentralised world where users have control but I also want to buy that overpriced NFT made by a known grifter because its cute.
Yes, I love Homer or Hofstadter but I also want to have fun when someone launched $PrePhil for @phil's upcoming coin
And it goes the other way too.
I can tell with one dune chart that your project is shit and going nowhere, but your dog is adorable, and I want to see more of it. 🐶
Yeah you abandoned your last 'this-is-going-to-onboard-billions' projects but I still am interested in what you are building next.
So an ideal app would be one which understands that a person can be multifaucted. I don’t know how, but at least let me switch the whole feed according to my mood.
Farcaster can shape out like this with mini apps and new clients. But it’s a long journey to build an ideal social app.
Until then, I will keep switching apps with personalities... 0 reply
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Book review status update, short term plans, and reflections:
We're almost exactly halfway through 2025.
I've been writing a book review per day since January 1st. That's 183 reviews without missing a day, as far as I know.
I've reviewed everything that I read in 2024 and almost everything I've read in 2025.
The reviews I got the most engagement on were mostly recent-ish (last 75 years) and pop-leaning. Childhood favorites punched above their weight class.
I'm planning on taking a break for at least 3 months, maybe even 6. I'm almost out of books to review, and I think this review business works better as an every-day-or-never thing.
Plus, I want to spend more time fishing, working on side projects, and playing outside with my kids while they're on summer vacation.
This is the second most fun I've had on social media (the most fun was running a popular NFT account through the rise of NFTs, if you're wondering). Thank you all for the likes, the comments, the quotes, and the rest of the engagement. My favorite reactions were the respectful disagreements. You all are great at that. Thank you especially for pushing back gracefully.
If you've made it this far, I'm inferring that I've earned some credibility with you, and I'd like to expend it all right now. Please carefully consider the following.
You must read good books.
Your entire experience is downstream of the information you consume. The way you think about problems, the way you see the world, the way you feel about other men and women, the things you value, and your sense of how to live a good life are all a product of the playlist of thoughts you put on in your head.
We consume culture with mothers' milk, as the Romans believed. But we retain some degree of mental plasticity through our whole lives. That means that you, as an adult, are choosing your own propaganda. The thoughts you permit to pass through your mind, the things you look at, the things you watch, and the things you read are not just database entries. They're updating your firmware in real time.
If you choose to consume short shelf life information, you're depriving yourself of abilities to process and understand the world's most important patterns. If you choose to consume partisan information, you are willfully warping your perspective. A poor nutritional diet causes lifestyle diseases of the body. A poor information diet causes lifestyle diseases of the mind.
It's impossible to know what the ideal piece of information for you to consume at any given moment is. Reading about Bictoin on HackerNews in 2011 was extremely high yield for some people. But chances are, if you were reading the latest tech news in 2011, you were mourning the death of Steve Jobs or getting hyped about Arab Spring unfolding on Twitter or something. The chances of a piece of content 100 hours old proving itself of substantial long term value to you rounds down to 0.
On the other hand, the chances of something 100 years old, or better yet 1000 years old, proving itself of substantial long term value to you round up to 1. It's not a perfect system, but give older books the benefit of the doubt nonetheless. The Lindy effect is real, and young content should require extraordinary proof of value before you allocate your time to it.
Don't worry about falling behind on the news. You can't escape it. I've got 15 years of practice, and I fail at least a little every day. You won't be left behind.
And to state the implicit part of all this explicitly: prioritize books above all else. You should not consume information with the primary goal of adding database entries to your memory. We have the internet for that now. You are training the LLM in your head. You are refining your ability to process novel situations by building up a stable of mental models that have proven themselves valuable across millennia.
I encounter no greater catastrophe on a daily basis than a high horsepower mind malnourished by a suboptimal information diet, or worse, turned against itself by an information diet antithetical to its own true interests.
You are smart people. You don't just sit around on the couch eating chips and candy. Despite your base urges, you eat right.
I implore you to take your mental wellbeing as seriously. You shouldn't just watch short form videos and read political listicles. Read good books, because reading is thinking and every thought that passes through your head leaves behind some trace of itself, great or small, in your deepest nature.
You must read good books. 19 replies
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