We’re almost through week one of Digital Commute an it’s been a whirlwind.
Big thanks to everyone reading along and sharing the letter on Twitter and beyond.
Onwards:
Knowledge
Stripe + Carbon: Stripe, the de facto payments platform for ecommerce, announced yesterday that US businesses can now elect to automatically contribute a fraction of their revenue to carbon removal from the atmosphere. That’s a big deal. With roughly $500B in annual transaction volume (and growing fast), an average commitment of 0.5% from Stripe merchants could create a $2.5B fund for carbon removal — a staggering amount. That’s greater than the total AUM of Google Ventures. Stripe could quickly become one of the leading arbiters of climate “progress” (for a relevant exploration of this loaded word, check out Stripe CEO Patrick Collison’s essay on progress).
Wisdom
Cultivating Insight: Mathematician Dan Rockmore has spent a lifetime reflecting on the origin of good ideas: what causes insight? His framework is simple: insight comes periods of intense focus in a work environment followed by periods of unconscious processing somewhere new (bonus points for physical motion). For example: reading a chapter of a dense book then going for a run. Focus is never easy, nor is relaxing the mind enough to process something new, but this combination may lead you to more frequent insights. Said more eloquently, optimize for:
"A feeling of being free, of forgetting for a moment that we are bound by gravity and logic and convention, of letting the magic happen." — Dan Rockmore
Inspiration
Purists + Tourists: Virgil Abloh, Off-White CEO and artistic director for Louis Vuitton menswear, describes the idea of Purists + Tourists as his main device for understanding how insider and outsider cultures interact. Purists find value in meaning based on an existing premise, while tourists seek out value in what’s new and different. This dichotomy is always in play when dealing with what’s new — art, products, anything.
The Purist sees through the lens of a critic — erudite and aloof, observing a subject in the context of other subjects, while the Tourist sees through the lens of a child — curious and engaged, experiencing a subject without judgement. And yet the Purist creates while the Tourist consumes. We should all strike a balance as Purists and Tourists; specialists and generalists who can both analyze and enjoy new things.
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Daily Vibe
Notes
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