The Monday Media Diet with Harper Reed

On ℳℰℳℰS, Benjamín Labatut, and Sayaka Murata

Harper Reed (HR) is a good friend of WITI and reflects the type of curious person we try to write for every day. Have a good week. -Colin (CJN)

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Harper Reed. I am an entrepreneur type person living in the beautiful city of Chicago. I spend a lot of my time thinking about applied technology and AI. There is so much hype around AI atm. I am hesitant to say that I  think it is deserved, but something is happening that is different from the past. My friends and I have recently started a company focused on what happens to commerce when you apply AI. It is fun. I want my lil LLM buddy to buy cool shit for me. 

My mantra with life is to hang out with good people doing fun things. This is what I try and do everyday. I try to spend as much time building and hanging as possible. Life is way too short to not spend it with good people. 

You will die before you are ready. 

Describe your media diet. 

My media diet is primarily a mix of TikTok and pen pals. It is not as saccharine as that might suggest. It is frenetic, though. A bunch of cheap, cheap content mixed with hyper-deliberate literature and magic. 

2024 is weird. 

For the longest time I was a twitter list user. I would curate amazing small networks of people for a specific topic. I would find amazing things in these niche lists. I looked forward to diving through them everyday. I am still curating, and reading twitter lists, but they have stopped giving the same fruit. The population of twitter has been damaged.

Now, my media discovery is based on a handful of disparate things: 

- Penpals (longer form emails back and forth with recs)

- Group Chats (small curated groups)

- Tiktok (wild recs from people outside of my network. A lot of discovery)

This allows me to discover lots of content from smart people, without sacrificing the ℳℰℳℰS, and other nonsense that is flying around the internet. 

This keeps me fed. 

What’s the last great book you read?

The last great book I read was My Work by Olga Ravn. As a new parent and an entrepreneur, it was helpful to read a book that so well captured my feelings. It made me think a lot, introduced the poetry of Hiromi Itō, and allowed me to pause and think about my life. 

More than anything, it caused me to tell people who don’t yet care about the struggle of balance about the struggle of balance. 

What are you reading now?

I mostly read books. 

I am at the end of three books and the beginning of one. 

The first book I finished recently is “Glass Houses” by Madeline Ashby. It was delightful. It is a fun play on the startup world that I adore. Also, murder. Also, robot houses. 

I recently finished “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamín Labatut. I liked how it started factual and then devolved into not. It was fun to read and was a good summary of how life is fucked, magical, and science. I imagine it is a book that people either like or don’t like. 

The other night I finished Edward Kelsey Moore’s “The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat”.  I knew little about the book, but it was recommended to me by a friend. I haven’t come across a book that has stirred up profound emotions within me in a long time. 

I just started a book called Nuclear War: A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen. I expect it to be uplifting. Lol

What’s your reading strategy when you pick up a print copy of your favorite publication?

What do you mean print? Jk. 

Normally, I will flip through it start to finish. If something catches my eye, then I will dig in. if it doesn’t, then i will go through it again. 2 passes is all I will do in one sitting.

Once I am hooked into a thing - then I will try and read it in one sitting. I find it very hard to pick back up with magazines. I end up getting distracted and losing the train of thought that brought me to magazine in the first place. 

I don’t believe in newspapers.  

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

I don’t know about everyone - but I have really enjoyed reading the aforementioned Olga Ravn. I would love a time machine so I could read The Employees again for the first time.  

There are some great newer Japanese authors that I have quite enjoyed: Sayaka Murata (The Convenience Store Woman) and Mieko Kawakami (Breast and Eggs). They are different, but both incredible.

What is the best non-famous app you love on your phone? 

I don’t know if it is famous or not - but I really love the app called Drafts. I use it as my inbox for links, notes, etc. I then triage it and send the various things to the right places: my eyes, my notes app, friends, etc. 

It just works. 

It seems to be one dude who builds it. I love that. 

Plane or train?

I have been thinking a lot about high-density travel implements. Also, I end up spending a lot of time in Japan. 

So, TRAIN! 

What is one place everyone should visit? 

Tasmania. 

Go to Mona. Say hi to David. Look at the art. Think about horse racing. 

Do the seafood seduction tour (ridiculous). Eat amazing food. 

Tell us the story of a rabbit hole you fell deep into.

Oh boy. I feel like my life is driven by rabbit holes. Lately, however, I have been a bit free from rabbit holes. I need one of those construction signs that say “It has been 34 days since the last deep dive.”

The last three were:

- point and shoot cameras (I settled on the Ricoh GR iii. I post my snaps on my blog notes).

- giant speakers from the 60s (I have a pair of vintage la Scala and for some reason I want more?)

- platform shoes (for some reason I want to wear platform shoes this fall / winter)

It is dangerous. I can sometimes feel approaching the urge to dive DEEP. It is a nice tickle in my brain. As it gets colder out, maybe it is time to reset the sign and go deep. (HR)