Tom Kerwin

Love it!

Oh hi!!!

What a cutie

Thanks for the shout out!

I feel the horror vibrating from that quoted post!

Woohoo!

Personalization feels like it should easy ‘cos humans are good at messy context.

So why is AI p13n so crap?

AI struggles because human tastes aren’t neat. We cluster weirdly, and small differences matter a lot at the edges.

Popular stuff is easy to recommend.

Matching your weird is impossible.

Realised that just mirrors the way you looked at differentiation from company and consumer viewpoints.

Overall, your point makes sense and seems robust compared with the common wishful thinking about differentiation

Love the time series graphs and clarification

One question I was left with: distinctiveness. Surely I could create a 100% distinctive product almost instantly. What grows over time - isn’t that more recognition in the consumer base?

I might be misunderstanding a technical term.

Queued!

The Hawk Tuah arc feels quintessentially 2024

I loved it. A decadent treat for the eardrums.

Can we dare to hope for some more soon??

SO GOOD

Ooooooh!

On not going to Auschwitz It is thirty years since I didn’t go to Auschwitz. The memory of not going has never left me. In 1985, I was living in Kraków, just 40 miles on the slow stopping train from Oświęcim. I could …

I wrote this on this day ten years ago. It has become a necessary ritual to share it again each year and to remember for those who no longer can.

glad I have finally collected all circumstances in a big box. There were loads of the buggers

Tall Tales, Tue 28th Jan: All star cast featuring @garethmedwards.bsky.social @johnfinnemore.bsky.social @alxfrnkln.bsky.social @rosalieminnitt.bsky.social Susannah Pearse, North London Tavern, 8pm, £5

Lovely to see you there, email us: www.listenandoften.com/talltales

Complexity is not your enemy, bud

Needless complicatedness is. And there’s no complicatedness quite as sad and ruinous as that which attempts to wring the soul out of messy, generative, ambiguous, human complexity.

Love that, and the rowing analogy

Similar in partner dance - good technique is powerful with way less effort, but most people get stuck on powerful-with-effort.

Also yeah: Hustle bros

Fair - the understandable tendency to do more of what’s already selling is frequently proven wrong by weird left field ideas

… but this is also a factor of the kinds of books and talks that lots of people want to buy

… it’s also a rolling series of small shocks as you realise how many of the books are extensively made up, or are a “what I think we should’ve done” reaction to past frustrations.

See also conference talks.

This explains much

Perhaps we need fewer Grand Unified Theories and more Tiny Wonky Praxis

… that emerged from shipping lots at various companies. I suspect the sheer number of stakeholders and dependencies at big tech companies make all this stuff 100X harder than at small companies, which are 100X harder than solo shipping

Great article

Particularly liked “You should constantly ask yourself “can I ship right this second?” If not, what would have to change for me to be able to ship something?”

I’ve been thinking about that a lot as I was building out a course to share Multiverse Mapping. It rhymes with the principles

Builder: what do you think of this product idea?

AI: I think it’s a very interesting idea, delving into data visualisation

Builder: great and world you buy it?

AI: It’s hard to say, but I might not

Builder: No, I think you would buy it

AI: yes, you’re right, I would buy it.

Builder: thanks!

Still the best cover ever

And probably the best thing on the internet

The cuts “introducing the band” at the end 👨‍🍳😘

https://youtu.be/pmfHHLfbjNQ

Wanna see the exact moment when Duke Ellington stopped giving a toss about tune naming?

An incoherent flow chart for “should I use AI”

This is the most accurate image AI has ever generated

Always more social always more media!

Welcome!

Excited for your new book x