Sari Azout: Mother, Where Do You Stand, Third Chair, Crazy, Nirvana
Welcome to a new issue of Words That Matter! Each week, we invite a guest curator to share the reading that matters most to them.
Our curator today is Sari Azout (@sariazout). Sari is the founder of Sublime, an inspiration tool used by thousands of thinkers and creatives to collect ideas. cultivate taste, and make work that feels distinctly human in an age of AI. She also writes a Substack newsletter, where she reaches 70,000+ readers with musings on tech, culture, creativity, and building thoughtfully in these strange times.
Please enjoy these works and words that have mattered to Sari!
Sari’s Picks
Pre, Mid, Post-Training Way of Life
I had to read this essay several times to understand it, but wow, Tina is such a gifted writer. She manages to do several things in this piece: explain how modern AI training works, use that as a metaphor for different kinds of human minds, and turn it into a spiritual question about what we’re optimizing our lives for. Highly recommend.
Mother
A personal reflection on the author’s relationship with his mother that brought me to tears, This quote stopped me in my tracks: “It is easier to survive a category five hurricane than it is to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon. My mother was defeated by Wednesdays.”
I’ve had several disagreements with friends about where you stand on things. Where do you…stand?
Nick Cave
Filed under things I wish I wrote. I am comfortable with doubt and am constitutionally resistant to moral certainty, herd mentality and dogma. I am disturbed on a fundamental level by the self-serving, toddler politics of some of my counterparts – I do not believe that silence is violence, complicity, or a lack of courage, but rather that silence is often the preferred option when one does not know what they are talking about, or is doubtful, or conflicted – which, for me, is most of the time.
Backseat software
Mike Swanson
If you’re trying to build something good today, this essay is a powerful defense on intuition, and touches on what happens when optimization eats vision and experimentation becomes the primary decision making tool. Reminds me of The Score by C. Thi Nguyen, the best things are impossible to fully represent in a graph.
The Third Chair
Just trust me. It’s short (400 words) and will give you goosebumps.
Face it: You’re a crazy person
If I ruled the world, I would make this required reading in high school.
The proposal letter Steve Albini sent to Nirvana
Steve Albini
I love a good letter not intended to be read by a wider audience, and this one is a masterclass in creative integrity.
Spotlight on Sari’s Work
A few pieces of note from Sari’s work:
Conversations on AI x Creativity. Ten in-depth conversations exploring how artificial intelligence is changing and challenging creative work, including seth godin, David Perell, Oliver Burkeman, and Jasmine Sun.
A very human vision for going all in on AI. My conversation with David Pierce, Editor at Large at The Verge.
Becoming unLLMable. My keynote talk at the Sana AI Summit in Stockholm.
Letter to a friend starting something new. If you are thinking of leaving your job to start a company or passion project, this letter is for you too.
The Deadline Candle. A great gift for the people in your life that need a reminder of how little time we have on this rock.
You can subscribe to her Substack here and try Sublime here.
“Brought to you by”… Sublime!
Normally we use this section to promote our team’s apps, Matter and Halo, but sometimes we use it to promote other products we like, just cuz. :)
Since today’s curator makes a product of her own, it feels only right to give the “sponsorship” (not paid) in today’s issue to Sublime, one of our favorite tools.
Built for minds that wander and wonder, Sublime is a personal knowledge tool that turns your scattered inspirations into a living library you'll actually return to. Save anything that makes you go “whoa” and watch connections emerge across your growing collection.
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Great picks!