Agalia Tan

As qualitative validation all but erodes, the only form of validation left is quantitative. Miles run. Books read. Movies watched. Songs streamed. Beers bought. Fantasy wins. We have turned competition into connection because it’s the only way we’ve learned that we can get attention — and when you see a continuous decline in relationships outside o... See more

What is risky work? And what if we tend to fundamentally mistake what is or is not risky? What if the formulaic, expected, small c-conservative work is, in fact, the riskiest? What if fitting in with what’s expected and copying what everyone else is doing, far from de-risking, actually adds risk?

There is so much I loved in those archives. There is so much I would delight in rediscovering. But I can’t find what matters in the morass. I’ve given up on trying.

Agency fees and margin are under relentless pressure. That’s hardly hardly surprising. When procurement departments have their people systematically re-qualify to keep pace with business, market, and technological change and we don’t systematically train any of our people in anything it’s just not a fair fight. And as ever more pressure is put on o... See more

One of the misconceptions about AI is that it reduces the need for expertise. The opposite is true.

LLMs operate in a vast space of linguistic possibility: every word you input shapes what comes next. Ask it to write about walking through a city and you’ll get a generic response. But ask it to explore urban wandering in the style of Walter Benjamin... See more

"The ‘safe path’ is not actually safe. In fact it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to your dreams. Safety murders your ambition. Murders your sense of adventure. Safety is a serial killer. But it operates in a slow, boring fashion. Like a pillow suffocating an old-man on a hospital bed."

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