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Mitchell Hashimoto
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Beware people obsessed with outcomes instead of building outcome machines. Its worse than ever with AI, but these people existed before. Short term results above all else, etc. Don't fall into the trap. Invest in building strong fundamentals, invisible supports, and outcomes flow like water. An outcome machine.
beware invisible trap
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20 September
Bulgarian-born writer and founder of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), a reader-funded blog on books, science, art and philosophy running since 2006.
19 September
Former option trader and risk analyst, now a distinguished professor at NYU. Author of the Incerto essay series, including The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness.
A real intelligence test: if one can figure out that someone was hacked and avoids falling into a trap. Related
16 September
Writes Hyperdimensional, a newsletter on AI policy and governance. A White House AI policy adviser in 2025; joined OpenAI on 6 July 2026 to lead its Strategic Futures team.
nobody should patronize those who newly have opinions about third party evaluators. non-experts forming opinions fast is part of the american tradition. the constitution itself was, in a very important sense, vibe coded by 20 somethings with concepts of a plan. but newbies being fleeced is also part of the american tradition. “caveat emptor” is a provision of a contract signed by an adult, not some god-given right to be treated as something other than a little child. you will be treated as a child no matter what. you are the buyer. it is your job to beware. America Related
14 September
Economist; writes In My Tribe, and wrote The Three Languages of Politics.
British open-standards and open-source technologist, formerly of the UK Government Digital Service and the W3C Advisory Committee. Blogs at shkspr.mobi, where he posts a book review most weeks.
12 September
Technologist and entrepreneur; former CTO of Threadless and chief technology officer of the 2012 Obama re-election campaign.
8 September
Free software developer and longtime Debian developer; author of git-annex, etckeeper, ikiwiki and debhelper. Lives and works off-grid.
Through no fault of my own I am in the giant tourist trap Vegas strip of the Appalachians. At least the view of the Smokies is nice. Related
Writer on habits and decision-making; author of Atomic Habits and the 3-2-1 newsletter, and publisher of long-running book recommendation lists.
Beware the student of one teacher. A good idea spirals into dogma when it gets applied to everything and stretched beyond the areas where it is useful. Remain open and embrace a lot of teachers. Related
Writer of the personal-finance blog Of Dollars And Data and author of Just Keep Buying and The Wealth Ladder. Chief Operating Officer at Ritholtz Wealth Management.
5 September
Gear reviewer who publishes long-form hi-fi audio and camera equipment reviews, plus video reviews, at stevehuffphoto.com.
3 September
Forecaster, founder of FiveThirtyEight, author of The Signal and the Noise and On the Edge. Writes Silver Bulletin, where the predictions come with numbers and the numbers are later checked against what happened.
Writer and researcher, founder of New Science; writes essays on science funding, sleep research, productivity and ambition at guzey.com.
The "ex-OpenAI" safety grifters are on a whole another level. So many people who did nothing of substance for years now launder their former affiliation to sound like technical experts to spread propaganda and disinfo. Beware. OpenAI Related
2 September
Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and author of The Power of Habit, Smarter Faster Better and Supercommunicators. Writes for The New Yorker.
If you want to make anyone feel incredibly comfortable talking to you, stop trying to think of deep, complex topics. Instead, top communicators use the 'Invisible Question' method to keep the conversation alive. Here's what it is: 🧵 Related
Co-founder of Superlogical, started in 2026 to build server-side terminal infrastructure; creator of Ghostty. Co-founded HashiCorp and created Vagrant and Terraform before that.
Their words
Invest in building strong fundamentals, invisible supports, and outcomes flow like water.
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@mitchellh on X x.com
1 September
CEO of SafeGraph, host of the World of DaaS podcast, and author of the Summation newsletter; previously founded LiveRamp.
new summation pod with @nireyal, author of Hooked, Indistractable, and the new Beyond Belief. we get into why to-do lists are a trap, why 90% of your phone checks are an emotion and not a notification, and the surgeries people do fully awake with no anesthetic. youtube.com
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28 August
Developer and podcaster; created Instapaper and Overcast, co-founded Tumblr, and co-hosts the Accidental Tech Podcast.
I couldn't figure out this bug, so I asked Fable, and it was SO much more incredible than I expected. - My bug report was wrong in a way I didn't notice - There technically was no bug, but a flawed design caused unintended outcomes - It verified that the design almost certainly caused me to fall into that trap, and proposed a simple, effective fix Wow. Related
26 August
Programmer; makes Handmade Hero and teaches Performance-Aware Programming, and argues loudly about how software got slow.
Their words
Then there's another possibility which is that it actually already has worked but just the productivity boost isn't as big as would be obvious if people got 10% more productive. That would still be pretty impressive because it's hard to get a 10% across the board uplift.
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youtube.com
23 August
Cardiologist and founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute; writes Ground Truths on biomedical research, and wrote Super Agers and Deep Medicine.
Psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. Writes Psychiatry at the Margins on the philosophical and scientific arguments inside psychiatry and the psy-sciences.
Good thread. I explored the visibility/invisibility aspect of things in a recent post with a thought experiment about “invisible” obesity: psychiatrymargins.com
Quoting @StevenShorrock Many “invisible” conditions are simply impossible for clinicians to imagine. I believe 1 of 3 things are necessary: 1) deep specialisation+high empathic ability 2) general training + personally diagnosed 3) general training+cohab. family member experience+high empathic ability Related
22 August
Brazilian software engineer, creator and maintainer of GoReleaser; works on Copilot CLI at GitHub. Writes about tooling and his setup at carlosbecker.com.
21 August
Founder and CEO of Social Capital, a venture firm; co-host of the All-In podcast and an early Facebook executive. Writes an annual letter and a weekly newsletter on markets and technology.
19 August
Psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University. Writes Psychiatry at the Margins on the philosophical and scientific arguments inside psychiatry and the psy-sciences.
With a new round of brouhaha over ADHD in the UK, seems like a good time to repost this discussion: What if obesity were invisible in the same way as ADHD is? ADHD is a construct that seems to encompass motivational and task initiation difficulties, executive function difficulties, and impulse control difficulties. And stimulants are attractive to people for a lot of reasons. psychiatrymargins.com
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8 August
Engineering leader and writer; wrote An Elegant Puzzle, Staff Engineer and The Engineering Executive's Primer, and blogs at Irrational Exuberance.
Middle management roles are also a trap. Six years ago, I wrote Tech Lead Management roles are a trap. My argument then was that TLM roles present themselves as easier than moving into a full management role, but the tension between doing the software engineer…
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28 July
Founder and CEO of Boom Supersonic, the Denver company building the Overture supersonic airliner and its Symphony engine.
Their words
People talk about isn't it a bad idea to build in a regulated industry? Turns out you can change the regulations. And the way you do it is just by building the thing and communicating why it's okay.
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youtube.com
22 July
Writer of the newsletter bookbear express, on psychology, relationships, non-attachment and taste; based in San Francisco.
13 July
Writes Very Serious, a newsletter on politics, the economy and culture, and hosts the podcast of the same name.
9 June
General partner at Benchmark Capital for over two decades; was the lead analyst on Amazon's IPO before moving into venture capital. Writes Above the Crowd on tech and marketplace economics.
Their words
you got to be really conscious of the consequence and not get too deterministic about a single metric or a single variable and know what's important and what's on top.
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youtube.com
30 May
Indian value investor who taught Behavioural Finance and Business Valuation as an adjunct professor at MDI Gurgaon. He writes the Fundoo Professor blog about investing, moats and mental models.
A cheap stock without a catalyst is a value trap plus a prayer for a bull market. (That is chasing beta) https://t.co/0XrAuqYqhz The most common catalysts are earnings growth when combined with very low P/E multiples plus a high dividend yield. Doesn’t happen very often but a setup like this must result in stock price appreciation otherwise the yields start exceeding bond yields which by themselves are catalysts for re-rating. There are many other catalysts based on developments inside the company (corporate actions) or developments in markets (eg increase in free float, inclusion in an index… Related
8 April
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
Their words, before
Where I get fired up, and this ties back to the AI discussion, is when that's turned into this meme, that programmers no longer have to be competent. I mean the AI is gonna figure it out. The generators is gonna figure it out. I don't need to know SQL, active record is gonna abstract it away from me. No, no, no dude, hold up. The path here is competence.
Show the whole quote
Their words now
really good programmers are currently more valuable than ever because they're the ones who are able to get the most out of the AI acceleration.
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7 April
Scientist and writer on quantum computing, memory systems and metascience; co-wrote the standard quantum computation textbook and wrote Reinventing Discovery.
Their words
So you kind of got these two separate things that just for historically contingent reasons had both sort of matured around sort of let's say 1980 or so.
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youtube.com
3 April
Non-fiction writer, podcaster and occasional TV host. Author of thirteen books including The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From and Extra Life, host of the PBS series How We Got To Now, and author of the Adjacent Possible newsletter on innovation.
2 April
Professor of finance at NYU's Stern School of Business, known for his work on valuation. He publishes his data, spreadsheets and classes free at Damodaran Online and writes the Musings on Markets blog.
Beware the ides of March? That was true in 2026 as the month started with war, with questions about how long and to what end, and ended with war, and the same questions. Oil prices were up, stock prices were down, but the market was remarkably well-behaved. bit.ly
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27 February
Writer and developer. He runs the Latent Space newsletter and podcast about AI engineering, and writes essays on software and careers at swyx.io.
17 February
American social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business; author of The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation.
Their words
I cannot support any law that includes a “parental consent” exception—it defeats the central purpose of the law by dropping parents and children straight back into the same collective-action trap
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afterbabel.com
16 February
Programmer and teacher; writes on software, learning and the web, and makes the Coding Blocks video course.
7 January
Executive coach for product leaders. Previously a partner at GV (Google Ventures) and a product manager at Google. Writes at Bring the Donuts, including a standing essential-reading list for product managers.
Their words
Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer.
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bringthedonuts.com
10 December 2025
American social psychologist at NYU Stern School of Business; author of The Happiness Hypothesis, The Righteous Mind and The Anxious Generation.
Their words
Parents want this. They know social media can harm their children, yet many feel trapped because everyone else’s kids are already online.
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afterbabel.com
18 November 2025
Novelist and critic, author of The Body Scout and Metallic Realms; writes the newsletter Counter Craft on fiction craft and the publishing industry.
12 November 2025
Chairman and chief executive of Microsoft since 2014; joined the company in 1992 and ran its cloud business before that.
12 July 2025
Creator of Ruby on Rails, CTO of 37signals, and creator of Omarchy.
Their words, before
it's a luxury good like you're not paying the penalty for that the people who embrace it and think that they can just ask AI for everything or they can just look everything up but they don't have to understand the copy pasta that they slam into their project they're the ones who going to suffer
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Their words now
Where I get fired up, and this ties back to the AI discussion, is when that's turned into this meme, that programmers no longer have to be competent. I mean the AI is gonna figure it out. The generators is gonna figure it out. I don't need to know SQL, active record is gonna abstract it away from me. No, no, no dude, hold up. The path here is competence.
Show the whole quote
2 February 2025
General partner at Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2018 and CTO of Coinbase from 2018 to 2019; co-founder of Counsyl and Earn.com. Wrote The Network State (2022), free in full at thenetworkstate.com, and founded the Network School.
Their words
Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
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balajis.com
Their words
Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
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balajis.com
Their words
Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
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balajis.com
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Their words
Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
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balajis.com
Their words
Imagined Communities, Invisible Countries, The Origins of Political Order, How to Hide an Empire, The House of Government
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balajis.com
21 January 2025
Development economist; writes Global Developments, on growth, history and the numbers behind them.
On changing their mind
Having fallen into the East Asia - Africa Trap before, I can tell you precisely why so many people make this mistake.
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21 July 2024
Software engineer and writer; former CTO of Wave, now at Anthropic. Blogs at benkuhn.net on attention, engineering management and doing hard things well.
26 March 2024
Marketing author and daily blogger; founder of the altMBA and the Akimbo workshops, and author of books including Purple Cow and This Is Marketing.
Google
Their words
Your product might be great, but how do you get it on the shelves of Walmart? Or how do you get it on the shelves of Google? Because if you're not on the shelves of Walmart, you're not on the shelves of Google, you might be invisible. And it's friction that kept you there, not some sort of merit contest.
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youtube.com
26 December 2023
Machine learning engineer working on recommender systems, personalization and information retrieval. Previously worked on LLMs and LLM infrastructure at Mozilla.ai and on ML and recsys at Duo, Tumblr, Automattic and Comcast; wrote the 'What are embeddings?' text and ran the Normconf conference.
Their words
A wonderful idea for a book and brilliant execution as she lives from Medieval France to modern day.
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vickiboykis.com
18 December 2023
Software engineer who writes the blog Made of Bugs about performance, debugging and understanding computer systems. Previously worked at Anthropic on interpretability, at Stripe on Sorbet, and at Ksplice.
Nothing matches. Show everything
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one
sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at
korrents.com .
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said.
The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in
korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who
else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public
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About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they
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this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the
serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to
quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter,
especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked
article and a belief on korrents.com
are left in their original language.
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