Ben Mann Monthly October: Scribe alpha launch, T-Group, birthday video experiment, jaw surgery
Purpose
An index for my memory
An menu of topics for my next conversation with you
A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it
Inspired by Gwern, a way to spread content I found valuable
It’s meant to be skimmable. If there’s anything you want to see more or less of, please let me know!
Experiments and experiences
How to give support post
Two years ago, my friend Rahul Guttal changed the way I thought about giving support with exercises mostly centered around the five love languages. I finally wrote them up, along with my commentary on why each felt valuable to me.
"If meditation is a mindfulness practice that you do with yourself, T-Group is a mindfulness practice that you do in relationship.” In practice, it was a ritual around practicing Nonviolent Communication. I found it novel, challenging, and worthwhile to try once, but not sure I’d do it again. A friend who goes regularly said you can’t really get the value until you’ve done the full day version. 🤷♂️
Birthday video experiment
Inspired by Daniel Moreh, I prompted my friends and family to send me a 1 minute selfie video reflecting our relationship. The results vastly exceeded my expectations. I’m not sure how to share the results yet, but I plan to use this format myself, unsolicited, for friends’ future birthdays.
Geology of Glen Canyon tour
Hosted by Nature in the City, a Berkeley geology prof led us on a tour through Glen Canyon. She had trouble wrangling the group, keeping things, moving, and projecting, so after the first 30 minutes my friends and I broke off. I think I could get more out of a YouTube video followed by a walk.
Life updates
Job interviews
In a moment of weakness, put my resume on AngelList and workatastartup.com. Got a lot of interesting leads and ended up interviewing with Skip, 7 Cups, and Culture Robotics. After talking to them, I was inspired to keep pushing on my own stuff. Happy to make an intro if you know anyone interested. Skip in particular looks like a rocket ship.
Jaw surgery completed
As part of getting braces, a surgeon cut off my jaw and reattached it to improve my bite. My jaw was wired shut for 10 days while I recovered and a housemate took the opportunity to do a photoshoot. It was painful, but I’m glad it’s over with.
Found a cofounder! I’ve been working with designer Austin Hou for the last month. It’s been great.
Launched Scribe for Android to closed alpha
Austin and I built an app to help people retain more of the content they consume. Initial feedback has been positive, but we think it’ll be hard to monetize, so we’re pausing work on it for now.
Reinventing commenting systems
Based on our work on Scribe, we’re thinking about enabling publishers to give their readers inline commenting to increase engagement and depth of understanding. We’re launching some experiments this week. If you know any bloggers who might be interested in better comments, let me know.
Content
New twist: 5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend"
Why you will marry the wrong person 4/5
Lots of food for thought on how to think about long term relationships. I don’t agree with all of it, but I think it could spark a great discussion.
Why is behavioral economics so popular 4/5
Debunking loss aversion
Flavors of Youth (audio: mandarin, subs: english) 3/5
Three anime vignettes designed to create a sense of wistfulness. I liked #1 and #3, couldn’t handle the vapidity of #2. Good mandarin listening practice!
5 centimeters per second (audio: japanese, subs: english) 4/5
Worth watching just for the eye candy. What does it mean to find real, deep connection, and then lose it?
The Little Prince (both the book in French and English and the recent movie) 3/5
The value of curiosity and sticking to that curiosity, even when others ignore your questions
How personal ties make common things unique. There are a thousand roses, but this one is mine. We are aware of each other’s needs.
Suspension of disbelief, remembering what it’s like to be a child
Not pursuing wealth, fame, admiration, knowledge, duty, etc for their own sake
Simplified “Pretence of Knowledge” 4/5
Hayek’s big thing was information asymmetry and uncertainty in markets. This was a nice concise taste of it without getting too deep in the weeds.
Great points, but I’m ~50% in and it’s feeling redundant. This is one of those books where you don’t have to read the whole thing to get the point if you're already an optimist like me. If you think the world is going to shit, definitely read this! Everything is awesome and getting better.