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Most AI backlash is economic anxiety coated in a veneer of social justice. Alfalfa farming consumes 19 times the water that data centers do; there’s n
“Diffusion lag” reflects a lack of product-market fit. Even AI optimists are still hitting practical roadblocks. That’s why detailed case studies are
Here are some things I’ve asked chatgpt recently: “why is Toblerone so popular at airport duty-free stores?” “give me a recipe for a chickpea tagine
ubiquitous connectivity and our media environments naturally lend themselves toward an influencer-and-fandom dynamic. If the system is built to inspir
In the new cultural economy, the culture is the product. It is composed of practices, ideas, and discourses. Products are auxiliary, supportive, but n
…and look. I think that it is perfectly reasonable for people to be normal music fans and to have a normal relationship to music. But…if you want to g
Companies like Crossfit and Soulcycle create a sense of consistent space and ritual that inculcate deep loyalty and community among their participants
As a consumer, you subscribe to one vision or another: what’s your version of hiking out doors? What type of vibe are you about? Purist? Gorpy? High i
In the new cultural economy, the culture is the product. It is composed of practices, ideas, and discourses. Products are auxiliary, supportive, but n
honestly i'm so good at consuming content LMAO. like how do I make it my job to literally just read, watch, and listen to stuff??
What am I supposed to do? Keep standards high and fail them all? That’s not an option for untenured faculty who would like to keep their jobs. I’m a t
The more upset I became, the more I felt that my sensitivity towards the paintings was the same sensitivity I held when I was the subject of the photo
To spot weird signals, you need to go down rabbit holes. Follow your intuition. And remember, pursuing rabbit holes is not always an act of procrastin
Gen AI for music has captured ~$300M in funding so far this year across several high-profile deals, the majority of which either focus on rights man
The fundamental issue is that these are subtle and esoteric arts. These ways of experiencing and interrogating reality depend (almost) wholly upon our
People with an optimistic mindset are associated with various positive health indicators, particularly cardiovascular, but also pulmonary, metabolic,
Umwelt, as I learned from Ed Yong’s book, An Immense World, is the world as it is experienced by a particular organism. How does the organism that is
What you allow your milieu to feed into your mind is what you will be processing. It is what will carve the pathways of your brain. This is perhaps we
1. It doesn’t have to be new. It just has to be fresh. The toy brick was invented (and patented) by British toymaker, Hilary Fisher Page in the 195
90% of Claude’s code is now written by AI, and this has completely transformed how they build products. The bottlenecks have shifted from engineering
hottest companies in Silicon Valley, famous for one thing: they made an extremely boring product extremely beloved. He speaks about how «technology ma
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
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The text actually moves back and forth between all of these. Few novels pay less attention to the rules of fiction than Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
surprise may be a better proxy for creativity than quality. A polished output is not necessarily creative, but a surprising one might be. Yet even sur
Every system young men touch today extracts value while promising creation. College extracts tuition while promising knowledge. Jobs extract time whil
Someone said “it’s a privilege to be exhausted doing something you love” and I told them “go to hell.” Our bodies are not built to be exhausted. We
But this isn’t just about seeking exit from the turmoil of a modern, connected existence, nor is it merely about recharging our batteries so that we c
Indigenous people did not despise wage labour primarily because of the effort that it entailed. Rather, they thought the work demanded by capitalists
Proponents of degrowth argue that economic growth is predicated on the continuous extraction of natural resources, and so infinite growth in a world i
Ugh, I can’t believe I had to live/work through the deaths of both print media AND online media and now possibly television and film too?? Can I just
The problem in media isn’t the business model. The problem is that most of the content sucks.
the answer for publishers in the age of AI is no different than it was in the age of Aggregators: build a direct connection with readers. This, by ext
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
Curation leads to expertise. Through curation, you better understand yourself, history, and unlikely connections across fields. Increasingly, we will
we’ve always been influenced in what we find beautiful or valuable or important, of course, but what’s new is the speed at which one is inundated with
You can use algorithms to surface new things. But algorithms are not nearly as good as human curators yet. Whatever pattern matching is going on insid
"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
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
On the one hand, Octavia Butler has this to say: “The only lasting truth is Change.” On the other hand, Bill Bernbach would counter as such: “A com
pretty clear that collecting cultural ephemera is a new consumer behavior that’s going to become a core part of life on the internet
Something I’ve noticed, however, is that exclusively using TikTok doesn’t mean I’m only exposed to TikTok-specific trends and culture. In fact, many o
Introducing a Rocks, Sand, and Water Framework for AttentionWe always talk about consumers’ attention as being finite, but how is it divided?I imagine
So when people opt to devote their energy to tracking the latest TikTok star or scrolling content instead of nurturing interpersonal relationships, th
Social media stopped being primarily about connecting socially a long time ago. People still use a range of technologies to connect to friends and bui
Taste for Privacy: How Context, Identity, and Lived-Experience Shape Information Sharing Preferences
The social-platform layer offers the feeling of encounter with the friction surgically removed. As one analysis of Gen Z’s parasocial turn put it, onl
Put another way, will humans will always want to do things like scroll Instagram, but perhaps won't ever want to open TurboTax/Docusign/Concur/Foursqu
A futuristic and unrealistic concept interface: the computer waits on the human instead of the human waiting on the computer.
Writing with Machines
i trained an ai chatbot on my childhood journal entries - so that i could engage in real-time dialogue with my "inner child" some reflections below:
I think the best way to understand what an “idea” really is as a node in a network of other ideas, and large language models like GPT-3 are the best m
So much value and love for the process of writing and what it does for the coherence between heart, brain, imagination, lived reality, unseen, and see
You can’t write a viral essay that says “it’s complicated and I’m not sure.” But this is the only path to truly novel insight.
Writing is a task that takes both objective and subjective intelligence. LLMs ace the objective parts the same way they ace every test; you can’t faul
Hellman & Friedman's majority stake in Global Music Rights marks a watershed moment — private equity firms now control three major PROs (alo
Gen AI for music has captured ~$300M in funding so far this year across several high-profile deals, the majority of which either focus on rights man
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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
Distractions divert you from your goals, while opportunities align with and propel you toward them. For example, Americans spend an average of 11 hour
re: many genAI apps can do 'anything and everything' i used to tell this funny story to a lot of consumer founders: when one-shot TTS first started
A lot of companies don’t make it because in the process of trying to get many things right, they don’t get anything right.Why are they in such a hurry
