The Lindy effect.
For things that don't decay biologically (books, ideas, technologies), every additional year of life implies a longer expected future. Time is the harshest reviewer.
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Sloth sends you one durable ideaevery morning . Mental models, philosophy, the science you wish you'd been taught. Read it in two minutes. Carry it for years.
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sloth · today
Tuesday, June 3
Today's five.
Idea 01 of 5
Systems
The Lindy effect
For things that don't decay biologically -- books, ideas, technologies -- every additional year of life implies a longer expected future. Time is the harshest reviewer; survival is signal.
2 min read1,284 saved
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Chesterton's fence.
Philosophy · 2 min
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01 / The trouble
Your feed is loud.By Thursday,you can't remember asingle thing it told youon Monday.
2.6hrs
Average time the average phone spends scrolling feeds each day.
93%
Of what you read this week, gone from memory within a month.
0regrets
Number of people on their deathbed who wished they'd refreshed one more time.
02 / We built the oppositeA thinking habit,
A thinking habit,
not a reading one.
No infinite scroll. No streaks shaming you. No algorithm fighting for your minute. One small thing arrives, and the rest of the day is yours again.
Sloth 7:01 am
Today: The Lindy effect
Time is the harshest reviewer.
One idea. That's it.
A single hand-edited idea each morning. Miss a day, nothing happens. The opposite of a streak. A habit that doesn't punish you for being human.
SystemsThe Lindy effect
PhilosophyChesterton's fence
EconomicsGoodhart's law
CognitionMap & territory
Ideas that outlast the news.
Mental models, philosophical handles, frameworks that were useful in 1820 and will still be in 2120. Built for the long shelf, not the timeline.
Your vault 23 saved
The Lindy effect“Time as a filter”
Negative capability“Sit with it”
Ergodicity“Ruin is local”
A library that you actually use.
Underline what hit. Write what it meant to you. Ask it a question. Watch your private canon grow quietly, page by page, year by year.
A look insideQuiet to look at.
Quiet to look at.
Calm to use.
Every screen, every state, built for one job: get out of the way of the idea.
Chesterton's fence.
Before you tear down a fence in the middle of nowhere, find out why it was built. The fact that you can't immediately see the reason isn't evidence there isn't one.
It's evidence about you.
Most “obvious improvements” fail because they remove constraints that were load-bearing. The fence was put there by someone who could see something you can't yet.
ReadingOne idea, no chrome.
Trail · Philosophy
Stoicism, properly.
✓ The dichotomy of control
✓ Negative visualization
3 Premeditatio malorum
4 The view from above
TrailsResume any morning.
↳ Carry question
Where have you been wrong about something new and right about something old?
I keep buying new books and re-reading the same five. Maybe that is the taste.
NotesYour private canon.
Reading: The Lindy effect
So is this just “old things last”?
Close. It's “old things are more likely to last.” Survival is the signal, not the rule.
Where does it fail?
Fashion, frontiers, anywhere the rules keep changing. Lindy works on inputs to taste.
ConversationSame calm voice.
What should arrive tomorrow?
PhilosophyCognitionEconomicsSystemsScienceHistoryLanguageArtPsychologyDesign
TuneChoose what arrives.
187
ideas across 8 topics
624 min read52 philosophy38 cognition
StatsA quiet record.
03 / InsideSix small things,
Six small things,
one quiet shape.
Sloth is built around a single rhythm: read, sit with it, write, return. Everything else is in service of that loop.
01The daily
A quiet arrival at 7am.
One notification. The idea is already loaded, no doomscroll to get there. Two minutes of plain, beautifully written prose. Then your phone goes dark.
02Trails
Follow an idea all the way down.
Curated paths of five to ten chapters. Stoicism, Bayesian thinking, the history of money. Start anywhere. Resume any morning. Finish quietly smarter.
03Conversation
Ask the idea a question.
Sit with what you've read, then ask. Sloth answers in the same calm voice the piece was written in. Never as a search bar, never as a chatbot.
04Notes
Write what it means to you.
Each idea ends with a carry-question. Answer in one sentence or a paragraph. A year from now, your library reads like a private journal of how you actually think.
05Tune
Choose what arrives.
Philosophy, cognition, economics, systems, history, language, science, art. Toggle what you want more of. Sloth adjusts gently, never aggressively.
06Reflect
A year, in ideas.
No streaks. No leaderboards. Just a quiet record of what you've thought about. A heatmap of attention, growing across the months you stayed.
7:01●●●●○
Slothnow
Today: Chesterton's fence
Chesterton's fence.
Before you tear down a fence in the middle of nowhere, find out why it was built. The fact that you can't immediately see the reason isn't evidence there isn't one. It's evidence about you.
“The rule exists because someone died.” -- paraphrased
Trail · Philosophy
Stoicism, properly.
3 of 838%
✓
The dichotomy of control
3 min
✓
Negative visualization
3 min
✓
Premeditatio malorum
4 min
4
The view from above
3 min
5
Virtue as the only good
5 min
Reading: The Lindy effect
So is this just “old things last”?
Close. It's “old things are more likely to last.” Survival is the signal, not the rule. A 50-year-old book has earned an expectation of another 50; a brand new one has earned nothing yet.
Where does it fail?
↳ Carry question
Where in your own taste have you been wrong about something new and right about something old?
Tune your feed
What should arrive tomorrow?
PhilosophyCognitionEconomicsSystemsScienceHistoryLanguageArt & aestheticsMathematicsPsychologyDesignTechnology
A year, in ideas
187 ideas across 8 topics.
624minutes read
52philosophy
38cognition
31systems
04 / This weekA taste
A taste
of the catalogue.
Real ideas, recently sent. Hover one. Read it on the home screen tomorrow.
Chesterton's fence.
Before you tear down a fence in the middle of nowhere, find out why it was built. Most obvious improvements fail because they remove load-bearing constraints.
902 saved
Goodhart's law.
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure. Every metric, sufficiently rewarded, will eventually be gamed.
1,567 saved
Negative capability.
Keats's term for the ability to sit inside uncertainty without irritably reaching for resolution. Hold the question longer than feels natural. That's where the better answer lives.
2,103 saved
Map & territory.
Every model leaves things out. That's why it's a model. Trouble starts when you forget. Most disagreements are arguments about the diagram while the world ignores it.
1,822 saved
Ergodicity.
Average outcomes across many people don't tell you what happens to one person over time. Most life choices are non-ergodic. Ruin is local, recovery is the exception.
887 saved
05 / A Tuesday morningSame hour.
Same hour.
Different shape.
Before Sloth
A morning spent scrolling past it.
- 06:58Alarm. Phone. Notifications already 47 deep.
- 07:04Open the bird app. Open the photo app. Open the bird app again.
- 07:18Three half-takes on a war you can't pronounce.
- 07:32Half-watch a YouTube about productivity.
- 07:45Stand up vaguely anxious. Forget all of it by lunch.
With Sloth
A morning that holds.
- 07:00One notification. “Today: Chesterton's fence.”
- 07:02Two minutes of plain, beautiful writing. Nothing else.
- 07:05Underline the line that hit. Write one sentence about why.
- 07:08Close the app. The phone goes dark.
- 14:00Catch yourself using the idea in a meeting. Quietly.
06 / Everything elseSmall details
Small details
you'll feel, not see.
No streaks.
Miss a day, nothing happens. The opposite of a guilt trip. The habit holds because you want it, not because you're afraid to lose it.
Two-minute reads.
Every idea is engineered to fit in the time between coffee and your first meeting. Long enough to land. Short enough to finish.
Hand-edited prose.
Not AI sludge. Not Wikipedia. A real editor on every piece. The kind of writing you'd quote back to yourself in a year.
Spaced return.
Ideas you save quietly come back. Three days, two weeks, one month later. The same line, reread, hits differently each time.
Quiet by design.
No infinite scroll. No badge count. No bottom navigation that begs to be tapped. The app ends when the idea ends.
Built to compound.
A year of Sloth is ~300 ideas. The kind of base most people don't have by 40. You'll have it by next March.
07 / PricingStart free.
Start free.
Go deeper when ready.
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