Hi Friends,
Greetings from Brooklyn!
Welcome to the nine new subscribers who joined this week. Every week, I share a thought that’s on my mind and three links that I think are worth your time.
This week, the score my wife wrote for the documentary “Introducing, Selma Blair” was released as an album. “The Pool” is my absolute favorite.
I hope you enjoy this latest edition.
Until next week,
Florian
Sampuru
When I was a teenager, my parents took my brother and I on a trip to Japan. Walking around Tokyo was a profoundly disorienting experience. From street names to neon billboards, we were fully immersed into a language that we couldn’t even begin to understand.
Fortunately for the clueless western tourists, Japanese restaurants have a century-old tradition called “shokuhin sampuru”. They are plastic replicas of the restaurants’ dishes displayed in the front window. All we needed to do was point our finger to whatever looked most promising.
These fake food models ended up being a bridge of legibility in a country whose language was entirely inaccessible to us. The familiar shape of fish, rice and noodles gave us an idea of what we’d be in for.
Sampuru is a good metaphor for how we understand anything that’s unknown to us. The unfamiliar is best understood by bringing it on familiar territory first.
Say for example you’re learning about computers and you’re trying to understand what an API is. Do you go and search for a definition?
Here it is:
“An API is a set of functions and procedures allowing the creation of applications that access the features or data of an operating system, application, or other service.”
Did that feel enlightening?
Not all that helpful for the beginner’s mind.
Now what if I tell you that an API is like a restaurant menu. When you go to the restaurant, you order something and hopefully the waiter comes back a little while later with the Steak Tartare you’ve been craving. In this scenario, you are a computer program and the restaurant is another computer program you need something from. The API (the menu), is what makes it possible for the two to interact.
This is the power of analogies. They are the bridge between what’s relatable and what’s too complex to engage with directly.
So next time you find yourself struggling in uncharted territory, try searching for a good analogy.
Weekly Wisdom
🥼 Research Design: My friend Kasey left Google to set up a research design consultancy and is helping early stage ventures develop product-market fit. Some people are so talented and smart, you feel like it’s your civic duty to promote their work. Kasey is one of them.
⏳ TGIF: Weeks are the central unit of time regulating our lives. But unlike days, months and years they are completely artificial. This piece digs into the fascinating History and impact of the 7-day week.
💰 More Money, Fewer Problems: Stew Fortier sends newsletters sporadically and you never know when they’re going to land in your inbox. But when they do, I bookmark them to enjoy them from the comfort of my couch sipping on Chamomile tea (or Bourbon). They’re that good.
Lateral Thought
“To someone who has lived for many years, the door is obvious. The house is obvious, the garden is obvious, the sky and the sea are obvious, even the moon, suspended in the night sky and shining brightly above the rooftops, is obvious. The world expresses its being, but we are not listening, and since we are no longer immersed in it, experiencing it as a part of ourselves, it is as if it escapes us. We open the door, but it doesn’t mean anything, it’s nothing, just something we do to get from one room to another.”
Karl Ove Knausgaard
Love the clever API analogy! And the funny thing is sampuru the word is actually borrowed from the English word sample. They’ve taken the concept and made it their own to interface with others. Your analogy goes so many levels deep!
Florian! Thank you for putting us on to your wife's work. I am a huge fan of classical scores and enjoyed every bit of "Introducing Selma Blair". It was such a stunningly beautiful score filled with moments of sorrow, elation, fear, and redemption. I haven't seen the film yet (I intend to bc I'm a Selma fan), but cannot wait to match the emotions I felt listening to the music with what my eyes will see on screen. xx- Natalie