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Kyle Chayka Newsletter
The the words it uses that this site has seen least often elsewhere. Posts are matched on those words alone — nothing here is a summary of this one.
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19 September
18 September
14 September
11 September
10 September
8 September
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korrents.com
In an age of abundant information, a person's judgment, taste and perspective are their primary value as a writer.Their words
Information is ridiculously abundant. Your judgment, taste, and perspective are literally all you have to work with now.
7 September
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Their words
especially with AI now I'd say anyone can try, and non-technical people with the best ideas, creativity/taste and understanding of whatever cultural zeitgeist we're in can win
5 September
2 September
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Their words
Its worse than ever with AI, but these people existed before.
26 August
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Their words
The other thing I'd say is that most organizations don't know what they want. They don't know how to make it better. They're not bottlenecked on implementation. They're bottlenecked on ideas. They're bottlenecked on vision. They're bottlenecked on taste. And if you don't have those element in excess of your implementational capacity, it doesn't help. So you can make a lot of shitty ideas come true, then what?
17 August
16 August
14 August
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Their words
making intelligence cheap does not automatically make “agency” cheap. people are constrained by time, money, confidence, health, education, institutions, family, geography; a model does not magic any of that away. there’s a perfectly believable future where these tools mostly compound the advantage of people who already have the skill, taste, money and the spare time to use them well.
12 August
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Their words
Something intertwined with this story, which I stumbled upon when thinking about agents, is how your pace of understanding won't increase by using agents.
11 August
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
Clean CodeTheir words
Clean Code is another standard recommendation, but that one wasn't for me. There are useful design principles in there worth studying, but the book as a whole is too narrow and a bit too dogmatic for my taste. Your mileage might vary.
9 August
7 August
6 August
From one piece On the Perils of Self-Assessing... 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
Could this phrase or sentence or paragraph or section be improved, even a little? That is, can I make myself (on this very localized turf) make myself dislike it less?
On the Perils of Self-Assessing...georgesaunders.substack.com
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korrents.com
A first draft should not be graded good or bad; it is only the material that taste then gets to act on.Their words
Just don’t do it. Accept it, whatever it is, as a starting place in the long game of exerting your taste on your own prose.
On the Perils of Self-Assessing...georgesaunders.substack.com
5 August
4 August
3 August
30 July
From one piece Jeff Dean: The 1% Rule for Building in AI 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
When agents do the building, the scarce skill is taste: choosing which problem is worth the time at all.Their words
Yeah, I mean I think it's really having incredibly good taste in what you ask your agents to work on, right? That is the the crux of you know from my background uh a research problem. You know, a researcher can have all the tools and all the techniques, but often most of the battle is what problem are you gonna spend your time on?
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Their words
Um, another way you can get more experience for yourself is to just write down a bunch of things you think might be important in the next 12 months. And maybe you pick one of them to work on, but go back and evaluate in 12 months of these other things, which ones actually seemed important or which ones did other people in the world go out and and create and which ones did they did not seem to do yet.
14 July
9 July
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korrents.com
AI tends to flatten outputs toward sameness, so personal taste and perspective become the main way to stand out.Their words
AI flattens everything it touches. The way you stand out is by getting clearer about what you really want, your taste, your perspective, your opinions.
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Their words
you've got these other generalists doing design, you've got engineers doing design, product staff doing design, but I'm actually pretty long on design or designers because they tend to have taste and I think that is something that is much more difficult to imagine being automated away.
5 July
From one piece If You Want Taste, You're Gonna Have to Eat 2 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
AI has made ability nearly free, making taste the main bottleneck separating good creators from mediocre ones.Their words
As AI has allowed more and more people to create things, the biggest differentiation, the biggest skill people are lacking, is taste itself.
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korrents.com
Taste is not about consensus or criticism, but the courage to value what genuinely resonates with you.Their words
Taste isn't consensus. It's not judgment first, either. It's easy to be a critic. Curiosity has to come first, because without curiosity you never broaden your horizons.
3 July
30 June
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Rishi Dandelion GingerTheir words
Rishi Dandelion Ginger. Extraordinary and surprising. And most things taste better mixed with tonic.
29 June
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korrents.com
AI models default to generic, lowest-common-denominator output unless a user actively pushes back against them.Their words
If the user doesn't actively push back against the AI model, then they get the generic output, the lowest common acceptable denominator of aesthetics and taste.
26 June
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korrents.com
Models have no research taste yet, which is why they complement researchers rather than replace them.Their words
one thing I see for research in particular is they don't have very good research taste right now and so I think they're actually a very good complement to researchers
7 June
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Their words
crema is composed of lots of carbon dioxide, fines, oils, and bitter compounds.
6 May
3 May
2 April
26 March
From one piece Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste" 3 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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korrents.com
The online ecosystem has become so degraded that it has impaired people's ability to exercise taste.Their words
Another conclusion might be that the online ecosystem has become so polluted-so fragmented, deceptive, overstimulating, ersatz-that it has warped our ability to exercise taste at all.
Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com
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korrents.com
AI companies promote themselves around 'taste' because their products are unappealing outside tech circles.Their words
A.I. companies need to associate themselves with taste precisely because their tools are not very palatable, much less cool, to anyone outside of Silicon Valley.
Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com
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korrents.com
Tech's embrace of 'taste' is an attempt to dress anti-humanist technology in humanist branding.Their words
We might call what's going on now "taste-washing," an attempt to give anti-humanist technologies a veneer of liberal humanism.
Why tech bros are obsessed with "taste"kylechayka.substack.com
25 March
9 February
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korrents.com
Craftsmanship, taste, and human judgment remain valuable in software development despite AI-assisted coding tools.Their words
There is value in good taste, there is value in craftsmanship, and there is value in human judgment.
22 December 2025
14 December 2025
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Lovedsponsoredrcmnd.app
Sézane x New Balance 471 sneakersTheir words
Full disclosure, I got these for free, but have become unexpectedly obsessed. I wear them constantly and really like how they instantly change the mood of an outfit. Can't really say why they stand out since they're pretty basic but people ask me about them all the time.
9 December 2025
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Their words
When you allow tech bros too much power over decision-making along with their running dog lackey in kind of management consultancy, you're optimizing for something which may be very very distant from what your real world customers really care about.
5 December 2025
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korrents.com
Living according to a genuine purpose brings sacrifice, stress and pain rather than constant enjoyment.Their words
Because when you believe in something, when you become obsessed with something, you sacrifice yourself to it. And that sacrifice actually feels like pain and stress and doubt. Not fun.
28 November 2025
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korrents.com
Dripper diameter, with other brew variables held fixed, does not change extraction or taste — only batch size.Their words
changing the dripper diameter, keeping all other important variables fixed, has no impact on the brew mechanics and the resulting cup, in an "idealized" scenario
26 November 2025
16 October 2025
From one piece Figma’s CEO: Why AI makes design, craft, and quality the new moat for startups | Dylan Field 4 beliefs, in the piece's order there
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Their words
I think the best, you know, designers on the product side can turn it on and off. They can go, I have my own taste. I know what I like. And then, okay, you're going for this. And that might be different than what I like, but I can match it brand as well.
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korrents.com
A lot of people can match a framework for taste; almost nobody can create one, and creating one is the rare skill.Their words
I think that for those who can create and then articulate a framework around what is taste for us that is really a important skill and uh then I think people can a lot of people can basically match a framework not many people can create the framework.
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Their words
It's just this loop of okay, I'm having an experience of any sense. Maybe I'm looking at art, maybe I'm hearing music, maybe I'm literally eating food and tasting something, you know, but like do I like it? Do I not like it? Why?
+ 1 more
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Their words
And there is something about judgment in there too. you know, uh, implied in taste is that some things are good and some things are bad. So, I think you have to be willing to lean into that yourself in terms of uh, being high judgment.
7 October 2025
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korrents.com
As AI lowers the barrier to building software, personal taste becomes a more valuable differentiator.Their words
But along with the question of what you're willing to maintain, as the barriers to creation drop the value of taste will only increase.
5 October 2025
1 October 2025
19 August 2025
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Their words
My model is that research requires a mix of skills. The day-to-day coding and execution is crucial. But there's also a set of harder-to-learn conceptual skills, collectively called research taste. These skills take a long time to gain because they have poor feedback loops, but they take very little time to use.
13 August 2025
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Their words
I’ve rarely seen a more capitalist society than China, from the pure economic side. I’ve rarely seen companies that are as competitive as Chinese companies. People as ambitious and obsessed with making money as Chinese people. Kind of ruthless actually. And look, consumers shop, firms invest. If you invest well financially, you’ll get great returns. What is not capitalistic about the Chinese economy? At the same time, the social fabric is highly socialist.
25 July 2025
23 July 2025
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Their words
So picking the right question is the hardest part of science and making the right hypothesis. And that's what today's systems definitely they can't do. So I often say it's harder to come up with a conjecture, a really good conjecture than it is to solve it.
24 June 2025
3 June 2025
19 April 2025
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korrents.com
Different people's areas of strongest judgment or taste rarely overlap much with each other.Their words
it's quite rare for different people's "zone of best taste" to overlap very much.
17 April 2025
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Lovedrcmnd.app
ReadwiseTheir words
All my friends know that I'm obsessed with Readwise, which combines a web highlighter, a powerful read-it-later app, and every feature under the sun to organize and remember everything that I read.
25 March 2025
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Their words
Good taste: taste is the ability to distinguish excellence from mediocrity. The hand can never consistently produce better than the eye can discern.
The Death of Product Development as We Know itlg.substack.com
22 March 2025
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Their words
I don't use Neovim because I love Neovim, I use Neovim because I love the instrument I play. And so it's like if Cursor can meet those needs, I could see myself moving over. I don't have some sort of obsessed attachment with it.
21 March 2025
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed WorldTheir words
A more how-to pragmatic version of carving your own path. Includes some personal story of reinvention but more on experimentation that challenges our default scripts of success and ambition.
16 March 2025
14 March 2025
7 January 2025
16 December 2024
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Mixed onrcmnd.app
First, Break all the RulesTheir words
Gallup interviewed thousands of high-performing teams and managers and found a dozen of things each of these teams had in common. While the insights are good, the content itself was quite dry for my taste.
1 December 2024
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Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
FulgentiusTheir words
Point being that it was probably inevitable I would love this short and absurd novel about a sexagenarian Roman general who is obsessed with staging the sole play he ever wrote—back as a precocious young artist—over and over again.
5 February 2024
3 February 2024
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Likedrcmnd.app
ArabsTheir words
3000 years of factual Arab history, and personal insights from this Oxford Brit who lived in Yemen for 37 years, translates classical Arabic, and clearly cares a lot. Huge and thorough but really wonderful for those with the interest. I loved his writing style and poetic asides. Read my notes here for a taste. What a great book.
28 September 2023
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Lovedaffiliate linkrcmnd.app
CuckooTheir words
It turns out that a breakthrough rice cooker is a bargain, even if it seems expensive at first. The Cuckoo is an extraordinary device. It comes in many shapes and colors, most of them will not be to your taste, but persist until you find one.
19 August 2022
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Lovedrcmnd.app
Steam DeckTheir words
The Steam Deck was my first taste of PC gaming in a handheld form factor and I love the snot out of my deck.
12 March 2020
Nothing matches.
What is a korrent?
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