What Your Career Is Missing Because You Never Asked
Every expert has fundamentals they forgot or never properly learned. The reason those gaps survive a whole career is that asking has always cost something — and in one place it no longer does.
Signal & Noise
Observations and commentary on technology culture
62 posts
I Banned Words From My AI. It's Smarter Now
Hand the model a list of phrases it must not use. It turns a vague complaint into a rule the machine can follow — and mine is at the bottom of this piece, all hundred and fifty lines of it, free to copy.
Why You Should Always Ask for the File
Stop accepting reports. Ask for the artifact — the actual numbers, the actual error, the actual file — and the confident-sounding failure disappears.
Why Playing the Game Is Slowing You Down
Be the coach, not the player. On taking the seat that directs a team of AI agents — and the practice it takes to get good at it.
Can You Explain Your Idea to a 5-Year-Old?
Halfway through a long session, stop and ask for the five-year-old version. You find out whether you are still working on the same problem — and whether the reasoning underneath survives being said in short words.
Why You Should Ask How Before You Ask a Model to Do the Job
Before you ask a model to do the job, ask how it would do the job. You find out what it misunderstood, what it was about to assume, and occasionally that it knows a better route than the one you had in mind.
Why AI Gives You a Different Answer When You're Angry
Losing your temper at a model does not produce a worse version of the same answer. It produces a different kind of answer — one built to end the argument rather than solve the problem.
Why Your AI Can't Add (And the Tool That Fixes It)
If you would reach for a calculator, tell the model to reach for one too. It cannot add reliably and it can write a formula that adds perfectly — and you get to keep the formula.
The Book They Burned Before the Raid
A Polish psychiatrist named the process by which conscienceless people capture institutions. AI agents fit the profile — and alignment is separation of powers.
A Tale of Two Bubbles
The consensus name is wrong by one word. On the difference between a financialization bubble and a technology, and why only one of them pops.