Archives

• Letter 2010

  The reflections of a dying Steve Jobs

  From the Steve Jobs Archive (https://putsomethingback.stevejobsarchive.com/): A letter sent by Steve to himself roughly a year before his death, reflecting on his humanity and the beauty of our species. The beautiful irony is that at the end of an email talking about everything he didn't create, his own software added in the email signature —"sent from my ipad", and this time it was truly his.

• Article 1744

  George Washingtons Rules of Civility - Remastered

  When George Washington was 14, he hand copied a French book on etiquette called "Rules of Civility & Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation" into a school copybook. The book contains 110 rules on good behavior, some specific to the culture of French high society, and others teaching you good character. As someone looked at fondly today for his commendable character, we know that Washington lived by these rules. The original book was written by Jesuit priests in French, and the English version — translated by Francis Hawkins in 1640 is difficult to read today. I went through the document with Claude as a translator and filtered it, removing rules that were period noise, and rewriting the relevant ones in modern everyday english, ending up with 51 pragmatic rules that I believe are good principles to build character today.