Turned 45 today. It's been a little quiet on my blog, so in honor of the day, I made a little list of 45 things I have enjoyed in my life, and feel more people should try or know about. seanvoisen.com/writing/fort...

Me to every LLM: Say “it's not just a ___, it’s a ___” one more time. I dare you. I double dare you.

Been increasingly curious how writers and academics manage reading and sources across long projects. Heard everything from "pristine Zotero libraries" to "a folder of PDFs I'll organize someday." If juggling sources is part of your work and you're up for it, I'd love a 15-20 min chat.

📝 Snow, rest, and the strange drug of ungrounded, non-sentient language. Plus a few links and things. Just sent my latest newsletter (published monthly) to my subscriber list. seanvoisen.com/moonpointing...

📝 My contribution to the discourse on the software industry's favorite topic du jour. seanvoisen.com/writing/prog...

Most talk about agentic coding is about technics and productivity, not enough about how it changes the *feel* of the work—the phenomenology of coding. But productivity is a 2nd-order effect of flow state, not just pure capability. Amazing post about exactly this. neonvagabond.xyz/articles/the...

Moon gazing, reading strategies, book recommendations, DIY e-ink typewriters. Moonpointing is my new monthly newsletter with personal updates, things I'm reading, links and other fun things I don't often put on my blog. Check it out if you like that kind of thing! seanvoisen.com/moonpointing...

Every single day in the U.S. is infuriating. What to do: Know your neighbors; invite them to dinner. Contact your senators. Bear witness. Get a whistle. Attend a protest. Vote every congressperson who funded this out of office. Give your distracted coworkers some patience and grace. Abolish ICE.

I mostly gave up on self-hosting things last year because all the maintenance became another chore I didn't want to make time for. Yesterday, though, I discovered PikaPods. "Self-hosting" without the fuss. Perfect. www.pikapods.com

📝 We Computers is a novel narrated by an AI poet. It's the strangest and most thought-provoking book I've ever read about machine authorship. Part book review, part philosophical journey, this was an incredibly fun but challenging essay to write. seanvoisen.com/writing/cosm...

Working on a new essay and I'm trying out Oliver Burkeman's editing method: Print out the first draft, delete everything, and re-type it all back in. Works surprisingly well!

Whenever I sit down to write, I always discover I don't know what I thought I knew. Writing is both a process of thinking and of learning, that's the pain of it. Italo Calvino, from his essay "Why Do You Write?" in which he called writing a "violence against myself."

Trying a new experiment: tracking my book reads for 2026 as a thread right here 📚🤓 If you're looking for new things to read this year, feel free to follow along! Here we go ...

📝 My personal year in review. Got it done, just under the wire. seanvoisen.com/writing/2025...

Suzuki Roshi with some words of wisdom that I always feel are very apt this time of year. If you're planning a new habit, taking on a new practice, going for some resolution in the new year, do so with your "whole body and mind." "Burn yourself completely."

My reading stack for the holidays: Continuing through Yuk Hui’s “A Question Concerning Technology in China,” revisiting Borges, and hoping to crack the cover on Frederic Gros’ “A Philosophy of Walking.”

One of the habits I hope to cultivate next year is to write every single day. Trying to resist the mindset that each word must always lead somewhere, that each thing must be "publishable." Really appreciated the perspective on writing as practice in this essay. www.late-review.com/p/the-own-wo...

In 2025 I both read more books and wrote more blog posts by changing one habit: I stopped using devices with glowing screens or an internet connection after dinner.

📝 Intelligent agents. Stochastic parrots. Blurry JPEGs of the web. We reach for metaphors as cognitive shorthand for the complexity of AI. A few thoughts on the many metaphors we use for LLMs, with a suggestion that maybe the best one comes from Borges. seanvoisen.com/thinking/202...

My team at Adobe is hiring a web components engineer to help us build out the future of our design system. Great opportunity for someone earlier in their career to jump in and help us continue to improve Spectrum Web Components. In-office hybrid in LA, Denver or NYC. adobe.design/jobs/job-pos...

I already gave my book recommendations for 2025, but if I could add 1 more it would be this: "We Computers" is an Uzbek novel about a French programmer-poet who writes an AI system for generating Persian poetry. Beautiful Eastern literary perspective on tech mostly dominated by Western discourse.

One of my end-of-year blogging traditions is to share a few of my favorite books from the past year. Here’s a few I feel are worth your time. seanvoisen.com/writing/2025...

📝 With the clock came the atomization of time through the invention of the minute. With LLMs comes the atomization of computation through the concept of the "token." Some quick thinking out loud on the parallels and differences. seanvoisen.com/thinking/202...

Adding to the reading queue. I work with a few designers. Do I actually want to know how they think? We shall see ... 😉

📝 New post: What started as a 60-day life habit experiment learning and writing about philosophy became something else—neither hobby nor work, but "serious leisure." Also ... polished up my site design, including better typography for long-form reading. seanvoisen.com/blog/not-a-h...

Took the day off. If you need me, I'll be over here at the local coffee shop, polishing up my personal site's design & typography, and (hopefully) finish some neglected drafts of new essays.

Excited to dig into my copy of "Context Window" by @scottboms.bsky.social. Awesome little book with thoughts on computing and quotes from Wendell Berry, Lewis Mumford, the Unix philosophy—just my kind of thing. Came with a bunch of cool stickers and riso prints too.

📝 New in my ongoing "philosophy for designers" series, some design interventions for "lingering" and contemplation, inspired by Byung-Chul Han's "The Scent of Time." seanvoisen.com/blog/design-...

📝 The third post in my ongoing series on "Philosophy for Designers" is now up. A little bit of a side quest here, looking at what the post impressionist painter Cézanne might have to teach us about philosophy and design. seanvoisen.com/blog/cezanne...

📝 Happy Sunday! New post in my Philosophy for Designers series is now up. Continuing down the phenomenology rabbit hole, looking at how the "structural form of parts and wholes" might be useful in UX design. seanvoisen.com/blog/parts-w...

📝 Just posted the first in my series on "Philosophy for Designers," which is my attempt to read, learn and share about philosophy and design in the open. A quick primer on the school of philosophy called phenomenology, written for anyone who designs digital things. seanvoisen.com/blog/phenome...

📝 Just published my monthly personal update, with a few recommended reads. seanvoisen.com/blog/recentl...

A former colleague and I have started engaging in a practice he calls "pair reading" and it's been really great. He describes it as "pair programming for intellectual exploration." Basically, it's a book club of two people. Pick a book, read it together, and talk about it as you go. That's it.

📝 Sharing my current project for after hours self-studies, a little something I'm calling "Philosophy for Designers." seanvoisen.com/blog/introdu...

📝 A quick note inspired by Frank Chimero's recent blog post reflecting on his sabbatical. seanvoisen.com/stream/2025-...

Pro tip for anyone working in a large organization: Be kind to executive assistants. Use the words please and thank you.

📝 Kicking off my second life habit experiment: "self-directed study." seanvoisen.com/blog/habit-e...

📝 Well ... it's been 30 days and life habit experiment №1 "analog evenings" has concluded. I wrote a brief follow-up and reflection on how it went. seanvoisen.com/blog/habit-e...

New (used) book haul. Continuing my autodidactic philosophy of technology studies.

📝 What do we lose when we try to measure and track everything we do? What do we gain by letting some things go unrecorded? seanvoisen.com/blog/the-imp...

🗒️ Ruminating on AI as a programmer clairvoyant seanvoisen.com/stream/2025-...

📝 Trying to get back into the habit of writing (semi) monthly personal updates. Here's a longish one, including books I've been reading (mostly philosophy), and links to a few other things I've enjoyed recently. seanvoisen.com/blog/recentl...

📝 Note: Multitasking as antiprogress. seanvoisen.com/stream/2025-...

Thanks to Byung-Chul Han, now lost in conjecture about what it would mean to live in a slow, leisurely society dominated by scent-based media instead of visual imagery.

I've been reading much more since starting my "analog evenings" habit. Added several new books to my bookshelf page. Donald Robertson's "How to Think Like Socrates" was a recent favorite. Great blend of philosophy, practical psychology, and ancient Greek history. seanvoisen.com/bookshelf/

📝 How might Socrates use ChatGPT? Some brief thoughts inspired by the recent MIT Media Lab paper on AI and cognitive debt. seanvoisen.com/blog/socrati...

📝 I'm trying a thing. Here's personal habit experiment №1: "Analog evenings." seanvoisen.com/blog/habit-e...

📝 Dear AI, help me do less seanvoisen.com/stream/2026-...

📝 "It takes a village" Just went through one of the most challenging weeks I've ever endured in my adult life. Still processing everything, but I jotted down a brief reflection on the necessity of friendships during hard times. seanvoisen.com/stream/2025-...

Using #JuliaLang to replicate the algorithm used in Rough.js for "hand-drawn" sketched lines that have a natural bowing effect. Trying out different curve fitting approaches: Blue is Catmull-Rom, Red is cubic B-spline. Think I prefer the B-spline. shihn.ca/posts/2020/r...