The Monday Media Diet with Jasmine Sun

On goodreads, Intermezzo, and Readwise

We’re pubbing two issues this week as to not get lost in the email flood. Happy Thanksgiving if you are stateside. -CJN

Jasmine Sun is a writer and technologist. She is building a new media venture launching in early 2025. She cofounded Reboot and Kernel Magazine, and until recently, was a product manager at Substack.

Tell us about yourself.

I am a writer and technologist in San Francisco. I just left my job as a product manager at Substack, where I spent nearly 4 years, and am now building an indie media venture of my own. I also run a nonprofit tech publication, Reboot, and have worked on Public AI policy at Mozilla and Schmidt Futures.

I respect the experts, but am frankly more of a dilettante myself. My life has been organized around trying to develop as many “literacies” as possible: learning the language of startups, media, policy, and nonprofits. How can we take the best ideas beyond the ivory tower? Where do new political movements come from? How much blame do tech platforms deserve? Why is the media always in crisis? Theory, practice, and the messy place in between—these are the questions that keep me up at night.

Other things I like: gel manicures, goodreads.com, keeping a really organized calendar, making/buying/using too many condiments (preferably spicy ones), Bi-Rite Market, the Pacific Ocean.

Describe your media diet. 

Twitter killed the link but healed my media diet. Now I rely almost entirely on human curators sharing things in chronological order: newsletters, podcasts, group chat recs, and a few social platforms that actually show me what my friends are up to. Even magazines and legacy publications have good email newsletters these days. It takes some effort to build up a bespoke ecosystem, but it’s worth it. I’m optimizing for pluralism: ingesting multiple points of view instead of a single algorithmically flattened one. 

I have my hold-outs, though; it’s not all taste and agency and informed choice. I often cave to the algorithmic tyranny of the Spotify Daylist™ (sorry Izzy!). I spend more time than I should watching cozy herby brothy bean recipes on Instagram Reels. I think Pop Crave rocks.

What’s the last great book you read?

I’ve implored at least three Sally Rooney haters to give Intermezzo a chance. She’s able to branch out of her trademark style (the autofictional anxieties of overeducated leftist writer types) to embody different personalities/voices (namely men), and the plot revolves around a complex sibling relationship rather than a romance (but of course there is romance too).

If you prefer nonfiction, I loved Oracle Bones which I read after my trip to China this year. Peter Hessler’s approach is almost anthropological: he weaves proper history with personal stories from his friends and travels to illuminate the frictions and contradictions of modernizing China. This passage from the book represents what I appreciate most about his style:

I had always been bad at daily journalism. I worked slowly; I dreaded deadlines; I failed to cultivate contacts. I knew only three Wang Weis. I quoted everybody that a good journalist doesn’t quote: cabbies, waitresses, friends. I spent a lot of time in restaurants. I avoided press conferences. I loathed talking on the telephone—a crippling neurosis for a news reporter. In particular, I hated staying up late at night to call American academics so they could give me a quote about what was happening in China. I already knew what was happening: normal people were asleep.

What are you reading now?

I recently started Conor Dougherty’s Golden Gates, which is a book about the San Francisco housing crisis (it was published a bit ago, but felt appropriate given the central role housing politics still plays in local elections). Housing is a thorny, polarized debate on a bunch of axes—wonks vs. activists, transplants vs. locals, tenants vs. homeowners—but Dougherty’s writing is empathetic and very readable. Also one of my 2025 resolutions is to finally become a Power Broker Guy. 

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

I don’t really read in print! Please don’t kill me!!

Who should everyone be reading that they’re not?

I’m always recommending Sam Kriss, but he would probably prefer I not. 

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

Readwise is the best piece of software I use on a daily basis. It’s like Superhuman for people who read a lot. You can highlight and annotate articles in-situ; then save everything—webpages, Kindle books, PDFs, tweets—to one giant searchable database, on any device, online and off. The keyboard shortcuts are really fast. And the team is incredibly kind and responsive. They just build things that users want.

During the pandemic, I got really into Seek: a plant/animal identification app, and the single use of AI that has brought me the most joy. I learned about it in Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing. Even walking the same path 100 times over becomes fascinating when you know the names of every species that you’re looking at!

Plane or train?

Train! I’m currently drafting these answers on the Amtrak Coast Starlight from Oakland to LA. The sightseer routes—e.g. this and the Zephyr, which I took in July with my writing group—are really quite serene and beautiful. So far we’ve cruised past salt flats, a granite quarry (rated 5 stars on Yelp), and various farms. There’s also way more legroom than you’ll get on a plane. 

View from the California Zephyr

What is one place everyone should visit? 

“This city is dead,” declares a blonde woman to her surly friend as she rides the MUNI. “Excuse me?” asks Jimmie Fails from across the aisle. “You don’t get to hate it unless you love it.” 

This is the most memorable scene from The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019), and I think about it all the time. From Nathan Heller’s review of the film: “In the postcard sense, [San Francisco] is the country’s most lastingly beautiful city. By other measures, though, it is—and always has been—a place of heedless, often ugly flux.”

One of my favorite things about San Francisco is how easily you can forget that you’re in a city at all—and you don’t even need a car. The key, of course, is to get the hell out of Union Square.

A few walks I recommend for your next trip:

• Ocean Beach at sunset; sitting on the ledge to watch the surfers, volleyballers, DJs, and bonfires

• Clement Street for pastries (Arsicault, Breadbelly, Schubert’s) and dim sum (Hong Kong Lounge or Dragon Beaux)

• Hiking the Presidio—from Baker Beach to the coastside cliffs to the Golden Gate Bridge

• Visiting the Legion of Honor museum, which looks like a palace

• Picking a book from City Lights, then reading it at Vesuvio Cafe

• Burritos in Dolores Park on a crowded Saturday afternoon

• Any of the open-air staircases that climb straight into the sky.

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

This is a rabbit hole that I’m still falling into—but I’m obsessed with niche Silicon Valley subcultures. Think the Whole Earth Catalog, cypherpunks, seasteading, and transhumanism; more recent instantiations like rationalism, effective altruism, progress studies, and “e/acc.” 

There’s more texture to these ideologies than a blanket label like “libertarianism” or “tech bro” reveals. Californian openness just nurtures a lot of weird stuff (see: Fred Turner’s excellent book From Counterculture to Cyberculture). My friend was telling me about a guy who gives Claude around $1500 every month to autonomously order stuff from Amazon based on their chat history. He recently got surprised with a Vitamin D lamp at his front door, because winter. Or whatever Bryan Johnson’s deal is. I think it’s cool when people run experiments on themselves, and even more fascinating to see those ideas gain power and start to go mainstream.

Writers serve the public as historians of vibe. What does it feel like to be here, now? I’m hoping to capture some of these unique spaces and feelings in my work next year. Forward me your strangest party invites, please. (JS)