Forking Mystical Silicon: Welcome Birddog!

Moving my "work-related posts" to a new newsletter

Hello friends - this is just a quick post to announce I’ve decided to create a new newsletter called “Birddog 500” where I plan to write my more work-related posts. I will then focus Mystical Silicon more on mindfulness and making the world more full of life and beauty.

If you like my work-related posts you can subscribe here.
Here is a list of the kind of posts I will include there.

PS - if you’re curious why I’m forking the newsletter you can read below the fold / dog image :)

That’s it. Have a great weekend! 🙏🏼

Why am I forking Mystical Silicon?

The thing about this newsletter is it isn’t one topic - it’s actually two. As I say in my description this is “a weekly newsletter on mindfulness, how to make the world more alive, and a variety of other things I find interesting.” The “variety of other things” statement is quite broad. It’s so broad in fact that I get context collapse.

For those of you that don’t know what context collapse is, chatgpt says:

“Context collapse refers to the phenomenon in which the multiple contexts in which an individual interacts (e.g. work, family, friends) become compressed or collapsed into a single online identity, often through the use of social media. This can make it harder for people to express themselves authentically and may make people more likely to self-censor.”

I guess in theory newsletters shouldn’t have context collapse because they are usually about one thing. Unlike twitter or elsewhere, you should be able to have a narrowly selected audience. However, this breaks down for my newsletter because I’ve been writing about a very broad range of topics (e.g., from why lists & checklists are awesome to memory palaces for mindfulness). This has attracted a very diverse set of people :) (thank you for being here!) This also means context collapse is happening.

I have a lot of more mindfulness-centric posts I want to write but I find myself holding back because I don’t want to alienate people that found the newsletter from my work-related posts. Similarly, I want to write more detailed things about work but find myself holding back because some of them are quite tactical.

So with that in mind, it’s time to fork. Mystical Silicon will become even more mystical and Birddog will be more related to my day job at Google as a Product Manager. (Here is the link with posts that can give you a sense for what I’ll include there.)

Let’s see how this goes!

Thank you all for reading and exploring with me. 💙