Sara Du

59 followers · 1 following · 2681 views

on the atlas — 46

highlights — 355

This does not mean you turn away from the tools of the future. AI becomes a tool for developing this way of seeing—helping us iterate faster, recognize subtle patterns, and explore more possibilities than ever before.
Design Literacy - by Willem Van Lancker - WVL
Our descendants will split their gaze: some tending to islands of pure human creation, others resultsmaxxing in endless machine-made worlds. But they’ll return, always, to our century’s archive—that last great collection of purely human noise. Not because it was better, but because our very limitations made it meaningful. In a world of endless possibility, our constraints will seem romantic; our imperfections, divine.
The Last Human Century - by Willem Van Lancker - WVL
The difference between those who succeed and those who stagnate isn’t access to options — it’s the willingness to exercise agency over them. To say: “This matters enough that I’m willing to let other things go.” While the world obsesses over accumulating options, the impactful are busy eliminating them, channeling their finite energy toward the few things that compound over time.
Option Rot - by Willem Van Lancker - WVL
The best things in life — love, skill, interest — compound over time. But they only compound if you let them. If you commit.
Option Rot - by Willem Van Lancker - WVL
This generational divide extends to organizations too, with Sam noting that established companies often struggle to adapt to AI's rapid evolution: "People get incredibly stuck in their ways. Organizations get incredibly stuck in their ways. If things are changing a lot every quarter or two and you have an Information Security Council that meets once a year to decide what applications you're going to allow... It's so painful to watch what happens here."
Insights from AI Ascent 2025 - Inference by Sequoia Capital
Throughout the event, speakers reflected on how AI is changing the nature of work itself. Konstantine introduced the concept of the "stochastic mindset" for dealing with the inherent variability of AI outputs. "The stochastic mindset is a departure from determinism," Konstantine explained. "A lot of us fell in love with computer science because it was so deterministic, right? … Now we're entering an era of computing that's going to be stochastic."
Insights from AI Ascent 2025 - Inference by Sequoia Capital
Jensen made a crucial distinction between previous technology waves and the current AI revolution: "This is the first time in technology we're not creating a tool. We're displacing labor budget. We're augmenting labor. And so the question is, how big is the labor pool? And it's measured in trillions, not hundreds of billions."
Insights from AI Ascent 2025 - Inference by Sequoia Capital
Painting weddings for a few years now, I have spent a fair bit of time observing strangers move through a room. Seeing someone new, I always have a feeling of noticing their internal architecture. I did not realize that some people do not feel this way, at least not as intensely.
21 observations from people watching - by shani
“Play to win, but enjoy the fun.”
David Ogilvy
“Big ideas come from the unconscious. This is true in art, in science, and in advertising. But your unconscious has to be well informed, or your idea will be irrelevant. Stuff your conscious mind with information, then unhook your rational thought process.”
David Ogilvy
The only way to live is to aim for the company of immortals. Build a bulletproof team, and consider yourself a part of it. Ogilvy said, “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.” Surround yourself with the smartest people you can think of. Seek the mentorship of those you admire.” In Ogilvy’s words, “Aim for the company of immortals.”
David Ogilvy
Ogilvy said, “Many people - and I think I am one of them - are more productive when they've had a little to drink. I find if I drink two or three brandies, I'm far better able to write.”
David Ogilvy
vulnerability as a binding agent between a reader and a brand
David Ogilvy
Ogilvy believed “that the brand exceeds the product in importance.” Like people, brands, have personalities, and these personalities drive sales.
David Ogilvy
Read relentlessly. Ogilvy believed that “there was an almost perfect correlation between the number of books a copywriter read and the quality of that writer’s work.
David Ogilvy
Ogilvy was risk-averse, likely because of his background in research. Unlike other advertisers, he felt that a great ad was backed by relentless consumer research, not on thoughts or opinions. In his memoir, he writes, “I do not regard advertising as an entertainment or an art form but as a medium of information. When I write an advertisement, I don’t want you to tell me that you find it creative. I want you to find it so interesting that you buy the product.”
David Ogilvy
"Let’s face it—artists are always working, though they may not seem as if they are. They are like plants growing in winter. You can’t see the fruit, but it is taking root below the earth." - André Gregory
Christopher Gavigan | LinkedIn
The goal of supervised deep learning is to solve almost any problem of the form “map X to Y”. X can include images, speech, or text, and Y can include categories or even sentences. Mapping images to categories, speech to text, text to categories, go boards to good moves, and the like, is extremely useful, and cannot be done as well with other methods. An attractive feature of deep learning is that it is largely domain independent: many of the insights learned in one domain apply in other domains. Under the hood, the model builds up layers of abstraction. These abstractions get the job done, bu…
My path to OpenAI
I realized that sometimes an effort needs only someone bold enough to pronounce a goal, and then the right people will join them.
My path to OpenAI
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Aryan Naik
Synthetic data is already useful for domains where verification is straightforward such as math and coding or in a small set of domains where collecting high-quality human-annotated data might be challenging or costly, such as tool use, long-context data or preference data. Based on this success, and the intuitions we’ve discussed, we find it plausible that high-quality synthetic data generation is possible in a wide range of fields, beyond what has been demonstrated until now, but this is still uncertain. In this case, data availability might not pose a constraint on scaling, as more could be…
Can AI Scaling Continue Through 2030? | Epoch AI
A misconception most people have is that edge is pure intellect or a well defined ‘skill’. Edge is far more amorphous than that. It can be willingness. Or doggedness. Edge can be density of networks, consistent levels of energy or faith or patience. Edge can be perceptiveness: sensitivity to environment. Edge can even be a higher-than-average pain tolerance.
play the game where you have edge - by Nix 🕊
Sometimes it's not the people who change, it's the mask that falls off. Haruki Murakami
nothing to prove - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
Money currently struggles to buy talent Money can buy you many things: capital goods, for example, can usually be bought quite straightforwardly, and cannot be bought without a lot of money (or other liquid assets, or non-liquid assets that others are willing to write contracts against, or special government powers). But it is surprisingly hard to convert raw money into labour, in a way that is competitive with top labour. Consider Blue Origin versus SpaceX. Blue Origin was started two years earlier (2000 v 2002), had much better funding for most of its history, and even today employs almost a…
By default, capital will matter more than ever after AGI — LessWrong
Blaise Pascal was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer.
blaise pascal - Google Search
On Wednesday J and I walked through an old neighborhood and talked about how having something to prove is pretty big driver of intensity and focus. What did J call it? An attempt to fill the void. What is the void? Paraphrasing Blaise Pascal: there’s a vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. An infinite abyss. He theorized the concept of the god-shaped hole. The belief that every human yearns for something transcendent.
nothing to prove - by Nix 🕊 - starting from nix
Ever so often I lie awake at night and think about how everyone in my life is a delicate product of chance, serendipity and agency. Of all the places I could’ve been, I was here. Of all the people I could have met, I met you. I’m inherently romantic at heart and don’t hide it too well. But there’s always a tension between the romantic part of me that wants you to stay — and the deep, pragmatic side of me that knows there’s never a guarantee that anything will last. Not chemistry. Not magnetism. Not the future, nor the past. Everything emerges according to context and serendipity. Our relations…
dear friend or perfect stranger - by Nix 🕊
However, in liquid modernity, we are no longer constrained by industry, bureaucracy and the panopticon, and Orwell’s dystopia no longer seems possible. Liquid Modern society, however, is no less modern than it was 100 years ago, because it is still obsessed with modernising, with creative destruction… with phasing out, cutting out, merging, downsizing, dismantling, becoming more productive or competitive, and, just as with heavy modernity, fulfillment is always somewhere in the future. But two things make the Liquid Modern Era different to the Heavy Modern Era: – Firstly, the end of the idea o…
Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity – A Summary of Chapter One – ReviseSociology
Distinguishing between these two strategies of emancipation makes possible the distinction between subjective freedom (to do with how one perceives the ‘limits’ to one’s freedom), and objective freedom (pertaining to one’s capacity to actually act). This highlights the fact that people may not be objectively free but feel free because they either fail to realise they are not free, or, more worryingly for Bauman, because they dislike the idea of freedom given the hardships that come along with that freedom, which brings him onto the ‘mixed blessings of freedom’.
Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity – A Summary of Chapter One – ReviseSociology
Redfin’s data shows that buyer demand for second homes increased nearly 178 percent from April 2020 to April 2021. (April 2020 was the demand bottom, but as you can see from the graph below, second home demand has well-exceeded pre-recession demand.) It’s possible that a good number of these investor purchases come from second-home buyers.
BlackRock buying houses isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market - Vox
One even claimed that investors are “a main cause” for the hot market, which is not what the John Burns research details. In fact, the report explicitly states that the US is “not in an investor-induced home price bubble today.” The report found that the share of total home sales that come from investor purchases has actually declined over the past year. And even at its peak in 2013 (when regular sales had bottomed out due to the recession), it only reached 29 percent of total sales. Last year, the firm estimates that investors make up about 20 percent of housing sales.
BlackRock buying houses isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market - Vox
But pre-Covid-19 research shows that institutional investors were still very small players. Mari reported that by 2016, private equity firms had acquired more than 200,000 homes — a fraction of the total number in America. A 2018 research paper notes that these investors “account for less than 1 percent of all single-family housing units across the U.S.”
BlackRock buying houses isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market - Vox
Institutional investors “grew up in 2010-2013 buying distressed properties that no one else would buy and in fact put a floor on the market, so they provided a very, very valuable service and they basically cleaned up the distressed market, a lot of which required repairs,” Laurie Goodman, vice president for housing finance policy at the Urban Institute, explained.
BlackRock buying houses isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market - Vox
Housing prices have been skyrocketing due to historically low supply, low mortgage rates, and the largest generation in American history entering the market looking for starter homes.
BlackRock buying houses isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market - Vox
Yield-chasing investors have turned to the real estate market because it has become a very profitable place to put your money. And the main reason it has become so profitable is the preexisting housing shortage created by local governments and certain homeowners seeking to block new homes from being built, leading to a nearly 4 million home shortage nationwide.
BlackRock buying houses isn’t to blame for the chaotic housing market - Vox
Fannie and Freddie’s losses were mounting and so over Labour Day weekend, the government was called into action to resolve them. The only problem was they were too big to nationalise. Having pushed Fannie out to private shareholders in order to get its debt off the budget in 1968, the government couldn’t afford bringing its enlarged balance sheet back on in 2008. So instead, the government embarked on what it calls a conservatorship. And in trying to optimise across so many interests, it ended up tying itself in knots. Conservatorship was supposed to be temporary. The press release accompanyin…
Financing the American Home - by Marc Rubinstein
The solution was to restructure Fannie Mae. It was sold to private investors with a mandate to promote liquidity and stability in the secondary market for mortgages and to provide mortgage credit throughout the nation. By taking it private, the government was also able to remove its debt – a number that would grow materially over the following decades – from its balance sheet. In 1970, Freddie Mac was set up to create a market competitor for Fannie Mae.
Financing the American Home - by Marc Rubinstein
The Housing Act of 1949 promised a “decent home and suitable living environment for every American family”. Between 1940 and 1960, home ownership increased from 44% to 62%, and outstanding mortgage debt grew from $36 billion to over $207 billion.
Financing the American Home - by Marc Rubinstein
Sociologist Sarah Quinn argues that America uses indirect policy tools such as credit more than other governments a) to circumvent the diffused complexity of its political system and b) because American people are more likely to be suspicious of concentrated state power. So rather than operate a nationalised bank like in China, say, the US operates an indirect scheme of credit facilitation, but the end-result is similar. She writes, “the point is not to be laissez-faire so much as to profess a commitment to laissez-faire.”
Financing the American Home - by Marc Rubinstein
This reluctance of private capital to backstop the mortgage market would recur again. It stems partly from the risk involved (30 years is a long time) and partly because having established a foothold in the market, the government’s presence makes it difficult for private capital to compete. The same issues give the the government such a dominant share of the market today.
Financing the American Home - by Marc Rubinstein
In response to the crisis, the federal government intervened, setting up a number of institutions to help. One of them – the HOLC (Home Owners’ Loan Corporation) – raised funds to purchase defaulted mortgages which it would then reinstate. To make them more affordable, it changed the terms, converting variable, short-term interest-only mortgages into fixed-rate, long-term (20 year) fully amortising mortgages that look closer to the American product of today. The advantage of the structure is that it would not need to be refinanced—borrowers could completely pay it off over 20 years. In total, …
Financing the American Home - by Marc Rubinstein
Second, hedge fund managers retain a “restart” option: they can close up shop if they’re underwater and re-establish themselves down the street with the performance clock reset to zero. This is something the market overall can’t do. You don’t know whether the market will be up or down tomorrow, but you do know that it will be open. So as long as you are not carried out by excess leverage, the opportunity to recoup losses is always there. Not so the hedge fund that shuts up shop, extinguishing the value of any “fee credits” that have built up while it was underwater. Each of these features mean…
Zuckerman’s Curse and the Economics of Fund Management
It would be nice to say that Jones saw his fee structure as a solution to an agency problem, but the truth is that he saw it as a solution to a tax problem. At the time, marginal tax rates on personal income were 91%; capital gains rates were just 25%. Charging only incentive fees allowed him to keep more of his earnings. Of course, he didn’t tell clients this—he told them his profit share was modelled after Phoenician sea merchants who kept a fifth of the profits from successful voyages. Marketing investment management services has always been about telling a good story!
Zuckerman’s Curse and the Economics of Fund Management
It wasn’t always this way. The practice of charging fees as a proportion of assets became pervasive only after an East Coast/West Coast schism on the issue. Historically, fees were levied as a commission on transactions. The problem with this approach is that it incentivised churn. As an alternative, Arthur Clifford, an independent investment advisor based in Pasadena, California, began offering fixed fees for his services in 1915. On the other side of America, in Boston, Theodore Scudder of Scudder, Stevens and Clark (since subsumed into Deutsche Bank) chose instead to charge 1% of assets in …
Zuckerman’s Curse and the Economics of Fund Management
It’s a lot for one brain to contemplate, but multitasking across mediums and disciplines is Ahn’s resting state. “I’ve put myself in this situation because I know how my brain functions, and I know how to stimulate myself…I don’t think in a linear form, I like to bounce,” she says, comparing her way of thinking to an old-school mobile game. “I want to connect the dots — I know it will all make sense.”
Yoon Ahn On Business, Fashion, And How To Do Everything At Once | Jing Daily
After all, the designer still remembers feeling like an outsider. Looking back at her time in fashion, Ahn describes her identity as that of an “admiring fan” turned “tourist” and now “citizen,” well-versed but still learning the ups and downs of a magnetic yet cutthroat industry. This came down to swallowing a hard truth. “We create beauty, but it’s still business in the end. It’s important for designers like me to find joy in this endless cycle of things to churn out, and have an understanding of where the world is growing and going as a social place.”
Yoon Ahn On Business, Fashion, And How To Do Everything At Once | Jing Daily
A Korean-American graphic turned jewelry designer, in 2008 she founded Ambush with her husband, the rapper Verbal, to sell designs accenting 90s hip hop and streetwear with Japanese futurism.
Yoon Ahn On Business, Fashion, And How To Do Everything At Once | Jing Daily
Currently based in Bushwick, Park is drawn to themes like celebrity, politics, and gender — enmeshing figures within chaotic gestural shapes that evoke the movement and complexity of the subjects.
11 Artists We Have Our Eyes on at This Year’s Art Basel
Ilana Savdie’s vibrant, highly saturated, large-scale canvases are like a dose of caffeine for the mind. Primarily abstract, yet imbued with hints of figuration — a curved torso there
11 Artists We Have Our Eyes on at This Year’s Art Basel
You’re putting on something that had 100 years of life before. It’s a very delicate experience. ... It’s not really uncommon for people to cry in our store.”
How Emily Adams Bode Aujla created a menswear 'brand that has no gender’ - The Washington Post