Paragraph

Paragraph

JA Westenberg | Paragraph

Search...Ctrl+K

Joan Westenberg

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 15

Gluttony became “eating seed oils.” Sloth became “suboptimal sleep hygiene.” Penance became “cold plunges.” Grace became “social media engagement.” The religious architecture survived. Only the theology changed. https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-optimized-self-and-the-life-that-got-away/

The optimized self and the life that got away

Westenberg.

The optimized self and the life that got away

This newsletter is free to read, and it’ll stay that way. But if you want more - extra posts each month, access to the community, and a direct line to ask me things - paid subscriptions are $2.50/month. A lot of people have told me it’s

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 15

Building, making, crafting - these are Benedictine acts. They're labor undertaken for its own sake and for the immediate good of a knowable community, and they produce a satisfaction that no amount of MRR can replicate. https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-noble-path/

The Noble Path

Westenberg.

The Noble Path

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an indie hacker in possession of a widget must be in want of a business model... Every tool is a startup now. Every script is a SaaS product. Every neat little hack you cobbled together on a Sunday afternoon to solve your own

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 13

You could pitch Elon musk that surgeons should be required to wear roller blades in the OR for speed and he’d immediately commit $10m to the cause

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 13

The same gambler's logic that makes a 23-year-old pour his savings into a memecoin because the asymmetry is too beautiful to resist is now directing cruise missiles at a country of 88 million people. The math is the same. The math is nihilism. https://www.joanwestenberg.com/everythings-casino/

Everything's Casino

Westenberg.

Everything's Casino

On the evening of February 28, 2026, American B-2 bombers lifted off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri. By the time they reached Iranian airspace, Tomahawk missiles were already in flight from submarines in the Persian Gulf. Operation Epic Fury hit over a thousand targets in its opening hours.

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 12

We’re cooked bro. This 15 year old has openclaw agents answering his emails bro. Here’s the exact stack bro. Screenshot of Notion bro. We’re a permanent underclass bro. You have 12 months bro. You have 6 months bro. You have 11 days bro. All the Claude credits are subsidised bro. The Mac Minis are sold out bro. Buy a GPU bro. Rent a GPU bro. Learn to code bro. Don’t learn to code the agents code bro. AGI bro. ASI bro. Iran bro. Tilly Norwood bro. Looksmaxxing bro. Mogging bro. Rawdogging bro. Manifesting bro. Andrew Tate bro. Sam Altman bro. Sam Altman’s skin bro. What is Sam Altman eating bro. Soylent bro. We’re cooked bro. Ozempic bro. Vibe coding bro. Vibe trading bro. Vibe parenting bro. It was always burning since the world’s been turning bro. Harry Truman bro. Doris Day bro. We didn’t start the fire bro. It was always burning bro. Red China bro. Johnnie Ray bro. We’re cooked bro.

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 12

I built Kerouac for myself - it's a writing tool that lets you plug in your Ghost blog, your Medium account, any RSS feed and get a Github style activity graph for your publishing... You can generate a sharable image, and even send folks to a public page. Give it a try, shout if you run into problems. kerouacapp.com

KEROUAC // Writer Activity Tracker

Kerouac

KEROUAC // Writer Activity Tracker

Track your publishing activity across every platform. One terminal to rule them all.

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 12

In AI, capital is becoming the binding constraint, and not all capital is equal. The companies with cloud provider relationships, favorable compute contracts, proprietary data: those companies have advantages that no amount of sweat equity can overcome. https://www.selfonomics.com/p/why-sweat-equity-doesnt-work-for

Why sweat equity doesn't work for AI startups

Why sweat equity doesn't work for AI startups

AI startups and the equity bet you can't win

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 12

Life must be exhausting for people who need random celebrities they’ve never met to be saints who match their personal and specific moral codes and purity tests

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 9

Launched this. We're building out a home for skills, MCPs and CLIs. distributism.ai

Distributism

Distributism

Distributism

The open registry for Model Context Protocol. Browse 120+ servers across 12 categories. Install MCP integrations into your AI assistant with a single command.

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 8

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an indie hacker in possession of a widget must be in want of a business model... https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-noble-path/

The Noble Path

Westenberg.

The Noble Path

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an indie hacker in possession of a widget must be in want of a business model... Every tool is a startup now. Every script is a SaaS product. Every neat little hack you cobbled together on a Sunday afternoon to solve your own

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 7

the world was a better place when pmarca wrote productivity guides instead of political manifestos

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 6

Being good at building software that humans use is vastly different from being good at building software that does what humans used to do.

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 4

lol at no point do these posts ever say what the company actually does. TL:DR - it's an openclaw company that sells openclaw agents / skills. This is not a real or sustainable business.

Embedded content

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 4

The GTM Engineering Playbook (How to build the machine that builds the pipeline) https://www.selfonomics.com/p/the-gtm-engineering-playbook-part

The GTM Engineering Playbook

The GTM Engineering Playbook

How to build the machine that builds the pipeline

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 3

The future is undetermined, the stakes are enormous, and the work is ours to do. That's the most optimistic thing I can imagine. The future is still up for grabs. So grab it. https://www.joanwestenberg.com/a-soft-landing-manual-for-the-second-gilded-age/

A soft-landing manual for the second gilded age

Westenberg.

A soft-landing manual for the second gilded age

By the summer of 1945, West Berlin had been reduced to rubble. Allied bombing, the Soviet ground assault and Hitler's insistence on Götterdämmerung had destroyed roughly a third of the city's buildings and left most of the rest damaged. There was no functioning government, no reliable electricity, no clean water

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 3

The Shelves

Embedded content

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 2

In a rough update to a rough year so far it looks like our bar will be closing its doors soon. I’m devastated obviously, but that’s life I guess. The grind continueth. 🖤🍸

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 2

But it might work for us

Embedded content

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 2

Guys I don't think Bill is moving to Grok

Embedded content

joanwestenberg.eth

Mar 2

Every tech CEO right now: "We need to move fast and break things" The thing they're breaking: their own terms of service The thing they're moving fast toward: a government contract