12 March 2026 Have you watched The Office? Your answer doesn’t affect what I’m hoping you’d takeaway from this piece, but it’s this show that got me thinking about the intricate connection between language and “social utopia”. Quite early in the show, it’s indicated that Pam, the receptionist, would end her relationship with Roy, the w...

Show Me A Genius I've held this hypothesis for a few years now, and somehow never managed to sit down and write it out properly. Here it is. I believe geniuses -- the word as is used to describe people with impressive "talent" and not the flashes of ingenuity, flow, and creativity that all of us (hopefully will) experience in life -- a...

So I told people Typerite was launching in a week, a few weeks ago. What happened was, I'd built the app, ready to submit it to Apple for review, and presumed the hard part was behind me. Then, I looked more carefully at how the encryption was working. I was/am stupidly adamant about Typerite having end-to-end encryption (E2EE) — all w...

I've been thinking about how PMs use experiments. And, I don't mean the textbook version: define a hypothesis, set your significance threshold, run the test, read the results, act accordingly. I mean how the decision really gets made when the results come back and you're sitting there with a number that either confirms or contradicts w...

There's a version of you that shows up when you know you're being evaluated, and a version that shows up when you're actually doing the work. They're not the same person. Research on choking under pressure (Beilock, 2005) explains why. Pressure doesn't just make people nervous. It actively consumes working memory, the same cognitive re...

I recently watched Dhruv Rathee's video on civic sense and empathy. He makes a strong case for how systems, infrastructure, and empathy all play into why some countries feel more "civilised" than others. I agree with most of it. But I keep coming back to something that gets glossed over in almost every conversation about civic sense in...

Countries where the basics — clean streets, public transport that shows up, government services that don't need three visits and a bribe — just work tend to also be countries where strangers are kinder to each other. People queue without pushing. Strangers help without being asked. Nobody's trying to game a system that isn't gaming the...

Typerite doesn't give you prompts. It doesn't analyze your writing. It doesn't suggest what to write next. It's a blank page with a word counter. Set word goal each day. That's it. Why would anyone use this? Because writing is the closest thing we have to thinking on paper. When you write without assistance, you do the work: find the t...

“AI won’t take your jobs, but humans using AI will.” “AI is not about replacing humans; it’s about letting humans focus on higher-order work that matters.” These are all euphemisms for AI will take your job. It’s just wrapped differently so nobody panics. It’s comfy to not address the elephant in the room right away after all. Here’s t...

In those moments of life, When you don't have someone To talk to; Or, maybe you just can't; Or, maybe you just shouldn't; All that might be needed Could be the plunge: What couldn't be let out, Getting washed down the soul, By rhythmic vibrations.

Everyday, diligently: Mother lights a lamp, And breaks a coconut; Daughter laughs at, And roasts her for doing so. They believe in different powers, yet, Have one thing in common.