should large language models refer to themselves using first person pronouns? i just came across a tweet by uncle bob from 2 days ago arguing that this shouldn’t be allowed. while i agree in principle, i believe we are way past the rubicon now.

very quickly, amidst the ai hype of 2023 and especially 2024, it was inevitable that we will end up here - where chatbots routinely refer to themselves in first person as though they exist in the sense of the word. this is something that would have been brushed off as a gimmick by most a few years ago, but today, a lot of people have moved past (or outright skipped) the “prompting a statistical model” phase and have collectively deluded themselves into the “chatting with a friend”, or even worse the “opening up to my therapist” phase.

whether this is a good or bad thing remains to be seen. after all, at the core of it all, we are all matching...

okay so a bit of a preamble that may or may not have anything to do with the rest of the piece. some days ago, i read a tweet from dhh (which i sadly cannot find now) about how he takes out ~20 minutes to write something on his mind, publish it, and move on. it got me thinking on how much wasted cycles i spend ruminating on what (and sometimes, how) i want to write instead of just getting on with the writing. maybe this will take 20 minutes of my time, maybe it will take longer. but i’ll definitely revel in the payoff after i hit the publish button.

yesterday, while mindlessly scrolling through substack, i happened on a post whose title caught my attention - things that are none of your business. reading it reminded me of a term i wrote down in a draft doc about yet another article i was once moved to write but somehow haven’t gotten to finish or publish despite publicly berating...

around age 11, i discovered that touching myself in certain ways produced really pleasurable sensations. being the curious kid with internet access, i did what came naturally - research. i went online, read articles, found studies, and discovered this thing i was doing had a name: masturbation. even better, the data showed it was incredibly common, especially among young american males.

my findings made perfect sense to me; it felt good, it was natural, and apparently everyone was doing it. so one day at school, my friends and i were having one of those random knowledge-sharing conversations and i casually dropped it. something along the lines of: “hey, did you know a really high percentage of young men masturbate frequently? i do it daily too.”

the moment that followed was fascinating. everyone just… turned and stared at me like i’d said something completely outrageous. it was in...

After following Elon Musk almost religiously over the last 13 years, observing his gradual but stark personality shift from my initial perception of him has been fascinating. Since 2020, I started developing a theory to help contextualize my observations and now feel compelled to write about what I think is easily the most consequential case of audience capture in history. This will be a long one so, strap in.

At its core, audience capture describes the process by which social media users gradually modify their behavior to appeal to their most engaged audience members. While this phenomenon has been widely documented among influencers and content creators, its manifestation in someone of Elon’s stature and resources presents a unique view into how this dynamic can shape even the most seemingly independent actors.

Pre-2016: Elon Musk, the visionary engineer

In the years before 2016...

We were discussing product delivery in a meeting earlier today where Shola, my cofounder, touched on something interesting about speed versus quality - that classic argument about tradeoffs in project execution. His take was fundamentally different, and it got me thinking. This is it, paraphrased.

Quality is inherent. Speed is a reflection of priorities.

The core insight is this: quality isn’t actually a variable - it’s a constant. You’re either committed to building quality products or you’re not. That’s an absolute fact, not something that flexes based on other factors. Speed, however, is ultimately just a reflection of how you prioritize. This distinction becomes clear when we look at how it plays out in practice.

In an ideal scenario where you’ve got all your ducks in a row - you’re focused on the right work, you’re not getting derailed by random distractions - your speed of...

my first program was written in a notebook. i had just finished reading a thick-ass textbook on qbasic and had an idea for a game. when i was “done”, the code spanned multiple pages. i did not have a computer at home but thankfully, we had a computer lab in school. i went to the computer teacher’s office to request access to the lab to run the code. he took one look at what i had written and shook his head, saying it will not run - he gave me access anyway. needless to say, after painstakingly typing everything out, it was errors galore.

the teacher admired the interest though, and ultimately setup recurring classes for me and about 5 other students. he had noticed our participation in class and took it on himself to set us up for success. he was proficient in c/c++ so once he was done taking us through the basics, we started learning c. our classes were between 7am and 8am (just before...

zuck did what?

the growing trend of reduced moderation on mainstream social media services will end up being a net negative to society. “free speech” advocates were never silenced in the literal sense. they had their “safe spaces” and weird subreddits to themselves.

today, impressionable young people are getting exposed to fringe and dumb content by default, and education is still underfunded for a significant portion of the world’s population.

we have already seen where this leads.

we are not going to forget myanmar so soon, are we?

what i’m about to write reminds me of this piece i wrote in 2016.

it’s year end, and amidst the flurry of activities and moments of reflection, some bibliophiles took to their socials to share how much they’ve read over the course of the year. unsurprisingly, the non-readers jumped in to dispute certain claims without basis while high-fiving themselves with uninformed takes on reading.

i condensed my read of what was going on into this tweet. it was an observation about how unprovoked reactions often reveal insecurities. if anything, a more accurate articulation of it could have said, “your real problem might be with yourself…”. i followed it up by acknowledging my own limitations.

someone replied. their argument is a time management concern. it’s a pseudo-anonymous handle i have come across a few times. previous context indicates someone who is online more often than not. precious...

growing up, i only paid attention to proper casing when creating documents or writing an email. for instant messaging, i used all lowercase. then smartphones took off and autocapitalization made it something to not worry about… until i realized i probably didn’t want to give away what device i’m on when chatting with people. why should they rightfully guess i’m on my laptop when i text in lowercase when i can make things ambiguous by always texting in lowercase?

so i turned off autocapitalization.

over time, a framework emerged to tell my lowercase writing apart from appropriately cased ones. the former signified a stream-of-consciousness articulation, while the latter implied formal comms.

i plan to publish more in the new year, and one way i intend on making it less of an aspiration is to occasionally share slightly longer form versions of the kind of thoughts that inform my...