Wisereads Vol. 55 — The Art of Finishing by Tomas Stropus, Founder Mode by PG, and more

Last week, we shared How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, a short guide from 1910 on making the most of your time. This week, we're sharing The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, a classic collection of short stories in Middle English.

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Lithuanian data engineer and serial hobby starter Tomas Stropus highlights the challenges, rewards, and techniques of completing personal projects. "There’s a certain comfort in the realm of infinite possibility. When a project is ongoing, it can be anything. It’s Schrödinger’s project — simultaneously perfect and flawed until you actually finish it and put it out into the world. The moment you declare a project “done,” you open it up to criticism, both external and internal."

In the debate over AI's role in creative pursuits, sci-fi writer Ted Chiang argues that image generators, as tools of efficiency, will never truly create art. "In essence, they are saying that art can be all inspiration and no perspiration—but these things cannot be easily separated. I’m not saying that art has to involve tedium. What I’m saying is that art requires making choices at every scale; the countless small-scale choices made during implementation are just as important to the final product as the few large-scale choices made during the conception."

Inspired by Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, Paul Graham challenges the conventional approach to management by highlighting the success of founders who embrace a leadership style uniquely their own. "Founders feel like they're being gaslit from both sides — by the people telling them they have to run their companies like managers, and by the people working for them when they do. Usually when everyone around you disagrees with you, your default assumption should be that you're mistaken. But this is one of the rare exceptions."

Dr. Derek Muller of Veritasium unpacks the quirks and mysteries of airplane travel, including why cabin doors remain unlocked, why planes fly at such high altitudes, and the explanation behind airplane mode. "The concern was that 200 phones traveling at 800 kilometers per hour in a plane could rapidly connect to many towers at once, overloading the infrastructure. At least that's what the FCC thought could happen. So, they banned cell phone use in flight in 1991. But there's a problem with this theory—a plane is a big metal enclosure, essentially a Faraday cage. So, it should block almost all electromagnetic signals."

Nvidia's recent success led Sean Kelly to analyze CEO Jensen Huang's leadership style, marked by a flat organizational structure and adaptable planning cycles. "Jensen doesn't use status updates because he believes they are too refined when they get to him. Instead, anyone in the company can email him their 'Top five things' regarding whatever is at the top of their mind, and he will read it."

After analyzing value spread throughout his career, AQR Capital cofounder concludes that markets are becoming less informationally efficient. "You’d be forgiven if, like me, your initial whiggish assumption is that markets would get more efficient over time. After all, over the last 20-40 years the ubiquity and speed of available information has continuously grown, and at the same time trading costs have come rapidly down. But like me initially, you’d be mistaking speed for accuracy."

Often mentioned alongside Shakespeare by scholars, Geoffrey Chaucer remains a less familiar name to the wider public despite his influence on English literature. The Canterbury Tales showcases his mastery of rhyme and character through twenty-four tales in Middle English, capturing the lives and quirks of pilgrims journeying to Canterbury Cathedral.

"Povert’ a spectacle is, as thinketh me, 

Through which he may his very friendës see. 

And, therefore, Sir, since that I you not grieve, 

Of my povert’ no morë me repreve."

This edition of The Canterbury Tales is available through Standard Ebooks. You can explore their collection of high quality, carefully formatted, and free public domain ebooks here.

During her travels between Seoul, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, Elle sends out weekly "postcards" with reading recommendations, playlists, and seasonal musings. From ten books you should read this early autumn: "I adore books with characters that feel real, like this could be the story of my neighbor or the woman I see at the bus stop every day on the way to work. Dept. of Speculation is tangible and personal, and sometimes it feels almost untoward to be reading the story of someone in their most vulnerable moments because it is so easy to forget that the characters are fictional."