Philip I. Thomas

Here's my monthly newsletter about what I'm up to, which I send in place of social media. What I did in last month• On Contraption Company, I published An app of one's own about building a personal app for life automation, and How I built a chatbot with my dog about vibe coding. • Spent Memorial Day weekend in LA. Driving through the remains of the Palisades Fire was sad and eerie. • Recovering from a bike crash and subsequent wrist surgery. I'm navigating the world with one functional hand for the next six weeks. • Saw Craig Mod speak in San Francisco as part of his Things Become Other Things book tour.  A topic that stuck with me from the talk: taste-skill gaps. • Been busy working on Chroma, and we published a blog about our usage-based billing systems. Things to share• Articles: Europe Built Trains, America Built Highways and Regret. In Washington, as in other American cities, homes for sports teams are the only kinds of homes that still get built - "Municipal leaders fixate on big-ticket projects because it takes so much money and time to obtain the necessary permission to do anything that only the big things are worth attempting." Slop is everywhere. A Visit to the ‘Best Bike Shop in the World’,  The Claude 4 system card had some fascinating insights, including a self-preservation instinct for the LLM. • Books: The Optimist shared an interesting perspective on the current AI trend, including how Y Combinator missing out on OpenAI. • Shows: My recovery has been aided by The Pitt, Borgen, and the latest season of Clarkson's Farm - which are all fascinating for different reasons. • Videos: Fascinating design of the Virco 9000, America's school chair. • Tools: I have been using SuperWhisper to assist with my current one-handed life - It has been great. I saw many Reviver e-ink license plates in LA, though I still don't understand their purpose Plans for the next month•  I'm working on open sourcing Postcard.