2025

On why good writing feels like honesty even when it's fiction

My take

The best essays and stories both do the same thing — they say something the writer couldn't say any other way. When a piece of writing makes you feel seen, it's because someone was honest enough to say the thing that was true for them. The universality is a side effect.

The case against 'strong opinions, loosely held'

My take

The phrase sounds reasonable but in practice, most people hold strong opinions strongly and call it loose holding. Real intellectual flexibility is rarer and quieter than the slogan implies. It looks less like updating in public and more like just... not needing to win.

Paul Graham is right about ambition but wrong about everything that makes it liveable

My take

He writes about ambition like it's pure signal — just follow it and everything else figures itself out. But ambition without some relationship to the people around you is just appetite. The founders I've met who seem genuinely well are ambitious and also capable of sitting still. Graham's essays don't teach you that part.