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Every time I have given up on America, it has been a mistake. And yet, America has never, ever given up on me.
I turned 40 today. For my 35th I did principles, but for my 40th, I wanted to offer perhaps more useful reflections.
I first started compiling "How To Thought Lead" in my notes 5 years ago, at first as an ironic parody and then slowly becoming sincere, and never published it, 1) because I don't know if I ever really nailed it / have a complete picture, 2) I was somewhat worried if I published it then others might diminish the techniques through overuse.
You are of course aware that attention spans are shrinking. YouTube -> Shorts, Instagram Reels, Tiktoks, etc have taken over the world.
Through my 4 (!) podcasts I obviously have built up a lot of opinions on podcasting over the years. Here's some of them. The two outlier podcasts of our time are Dwarkesh and TBPN, and I will explain my mental model of them to the end - the following advice is what I strongly believe for the "average" podcast that wants to do well but not necessarily being full time top tier influencer level. Also, this is primarily for professional/technical interview guest-led podcasts, but I also do have opinions on non-guest-led podcasts as well.
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As a person that has lived in Kansas almost all my life, I have never seen such good political news for this state as we got this week. It is a stunning rebuke of fascism from across the country. One of the many pieces of wisdom from mechanic Tom Magliozzi is this question: “Would you … Continue reading Letter from a Kansan: “Would You Rather Be Right or Happy?” →
Google told K-12 schools they could turn off AI, but only if they gave up search too. That isn’t integration. It’s holding education for ransom.
Once a year at my church, I usually give one sermon. I was asked to tie the theme to a young adult retreat we had taken to the Sunshine Coast. My first experience giving a sermon was many years ago at my old home church in El Monte, California. It was a Vietnamese-American church, but…
Practical tools for design engineers to explore possible futures through speculative design
As with my last post on AI, let me open with a statement: Just because most people hold AI a certain way, doesn’t mean that we always must, either now or in the future. As I noted in that piece, and my shades of gray post, I am well aware — and agree with — … Continue reading Must we always use LLMs this way? →
