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One cannot understand the Iran War without understanding the Kahanists. But I rarely see analysts mention them. Maybe they did, and it was behind a pa
Trump seemed unmoved by his divine destiny: the messiah, after all, is an unpaid position. More mysterious is why Parnas — a transnational criminal un
What do they say? Nothing at all. Life goes on. In the morning, adults hurry to work; children go to school; grandmothers go stand in lines. More and
But the question remains: Why was the Palace of the Soviets to be erected precisely where the Temple of Christ the Saviour had stood? (Let us add that
I've started to see imposter syndrome not as a personal failing but as a natural response to the gap between our interior lives and our exterior prese
Perfectionism rarely creates perfection. You procrastinate because you’re terrified of falling short. You abandon projects because they don’t live up
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A good life doesn’t ask you to be good at everything. It asks you to find the small circle where you have unusual leverage, and to be peacefully avera
My father was a Sarkari Babu (government officer with basic salary) his entire life, he was at one job throughout his life. He drove a Bajaj scooter
A great story about simplicity from Akio Morita, the instigator of the Walkman project at Sony: Engineers had the technology to add the recording func
Long-tail users of user-centered design are not given the degree of control necessary to adapt the design object or tool to their unique needs, and de
The engineer who truly understands the problem often finds that the elegant solution is simpler than anyone expected. The engineer who starts with a
I often hear of founders shutting down their company after a year or so of trying, so I don't know who needs to hear this but: it takes anywhere betwe
Product-market fit works in both directions. The perspective of the builder is always toward what they can do to change their product, what features a
Start in the future and work backward
If you pay attention, you’ll see that today’s winning brands understand the customer’s story is the only one that matters. Your most important job as
Solving a problem for your user is great, but easing their cognitive dissonance can have a much greater emotional impact. There is likely something th
The Questions Before the Questions
Interface > Data > Models While media still focuses on the “next best model” rat race, increasingly believe that the “interface” and “data” layers wi
App layer is where most of the value is. Nothing has changed. Humans like a well designed focused UX that deeply solves a problem as a first class cit
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft’s AI CEO, believes this is the primary way AI companies will differentiate their products. It all comes down to personalit
I was reading an article about the state of SaaS recently, and came across this line:The data moat surrounding incumbent SaaS / systems of record is l
Your competitive advantage is not that your designs are secret, but that you have a strong relationship with your community of customers.
“At both Viaweb and YC, every minute I spent thinking about competitors was, in retrospect, a minute wasted... It's exceptionally rare for startups to
There are brilliant examples all over the place of people tweaking time subjectively. One of my favorites is the Uber map. It doesn’t change how long
I want them to take away from the book the same thing they would take from the concert. I want them to think, well, I feel better now. I feel upli
There's a feeling you get in the presence of beautiful buildings and bustling courtyards.
"Every product in the world, the quality at the end of the day is simply a reflection of how much the people who created it gave a shit about the prod
we have a world where friction gets automated out of experiences, aestheticized in curated lifestyles, and dumped onto underfunded infrastructure and
Long-tail users of user-centered design are not given the degree of control necessary to adapt the design object or tool to their unique needs, and de
So rather than view it as a choice between intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, embrace both. Cultivate intrinsic motivation to create a constant source
Everywhere we go, people are telling us what we should want and do. Bigger muscles. Less fat. Run a marathon. Deadlift 400 pounds. Lose 30 lbs in 30 d
Most productivity advice is rooted in force “Hack your willpower” “Discipline your mind” “Push through” This may work short-term. But it burns you o
teams tend to underestimate the gravity created by shipping their first product. Once you share something with customers, you naturally start to think
If you launch and no one notices, launch again. We launched 3 times.
our job is also to understand what people think they want and then translate the value of Slack into their terms.
We should be skeptical of both utopian and dystopian technology predictions. New tools will amplify both our virtues and our vices, just like every pr
We see something that works, and then we understand it “We see something that works, and then we understand it.” (Thomas Dullien) It is a deeper
33% of British criminals were dying en route to Australia in the 1700s. Britain switched from paying sea captains for every passenger who walked on
The rabbit runs faster than the fox, because the rabbit is running for his life while the fox is only running for his dinner
One thing I didn’t realize until later in life is how the incentives of an industry shape your mood, your outlook, and even your character. In early s
Collecting and archiving are ways to reclaim and own our attention—they are acts of meaning-making. These practices are rituals: habits and skills tha
Parnell shows that authors of color and queer authors are much more likely to have their work flagged as “adult content,” largely due to problems with
The whole thing about the Kardashians — the resistance they’ve kind of induced in people — is that it doesn’t feel consensual. You absorb information
