flâneur

Mohammed Ibrahim

3 followers · 4 following · 912 views

on the atlas — 44

highlights — 7

  • AI answer engines are phenomenal in what they do. I can fire off a prompt and relatively quickly get a blurb with the exact information I need. It really can't be overstated how great they are. But I've lost something profound in the process—the joy of the unexpected detour. I'm not really browsing the web anymore. At best, I'm just browsing AI interpretations of a limited slice of the web. A slice that I didn't even pick or have control over. My surface area for discovery is now whatever these tools decide to show me.
    Browse No More | Paul Stamatiou
  • To avoid pretending to learn, you should focus on choosing material that will actually help you learn, setting clear specific goals for what you’re hoping to learn, build systems that test whether you’re actually learning, and try to become more psychologically resilient to feeling stupid and bad in a new subject.
    Strategies for Learning - by Andy Masley
  • Perversely, the more educated you are, and the more of the map you know, the worse this effect can be, because you have more to unsee (eg. in fiction⁠). One must always maintain a certain contempt for words⁠ & spooks⁠. The fool can walk right in because he was too ignorant to know that’s impossible. This is why atheoretical optimization processes like animals (eg. cats engaged in⁠ fuzz testing⁠) or SMT solvers⁠ or evolutionary AI⁠ are so dumb to begin with, but in the long run can be so good at surprising us and finding ‘unreasonable’ inputs or ⁠reward hacks⁠ (analogous to the bias-variance tr…
    On Seeing Through and Unseeing: The Hacker Mindset · Gwern.net
  • “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be” – Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility 1935
    Design Literacy
  • These founders recognize that company design goes beyond playbooks, case studies, or podcasts. Consider how modern startups approach product development: A technically proficient team might build perfect features, but design-literate founders create experiences that make users feel something when using the product. Notion succeeded not through technical superiority but by understanding how modularity & collaboration could transform how teams work. Stripe won by treating documentation and developer experience as a first-class product—showing how design can elevate infrastructure often regarded …
    Design Literacy
  • His gift was communicating this vision with infectious enthusiasm while maintaining craft in every detail. He spent hours equally on factory floors and at sales shows—examining the technical through to the tactile. This isn’t just perfectionism that AI could replicate; it was a distinctly human integration of engineering pragmatism, market understanding, and relationship building. He didn’t just perfect hull designs—he understood how materials, shapes, and experiences made people feel and how technical details could translate into human aspiration. This fusion of obsession and insight made him…
    Design Literacy
  • How do you become a 100-year company? Taste is a double-edged sword. Because it is ephemeral, you’re untouchable if you have it. Competitors won’t be able to copy it—what is there to copy? You can expand products as rapidly as MSCHF has without any negative consequences. But taste can also disappear quickly. If the artists collective loses touch with what makes them special, their advantage will erode overnight. To me, the key to keeping taste is to be true to yourself. While I recognize that that sentiment would be more appropriate on a wine mom’s wall hanging, it is surprisingly hard. When n…
    The Art of Scaling Taste