T
Steeping· 4 min
The Intimacy of Travel
On how the places we visit become part of us, even after the memories fade.
The Lab
Manav brews ideas from physics, biology, philosophy, and technology.
An engineer and curious mind. This is my lab — a place to think out loud, write things down, and share what I find.
Currentlyexploring what happens to our thinking when intelligence becomes rentable.
Essays
Distilled thoughts
Longform, polished pieces from the workbench.
T
Distilled· 3 min
The Critique, The Creator and the Editor Went to a Bar
The three voices you need to make anything — and why letting them work at the same time means nothing gets made. On sequencing creation, critique, and editing instead of letting them clash.
D
Distilled· 3 min
Daal Chawal Happiness
All happiness is small. On cooking my mom's daal chawal, the fleeting nature of every joy — from new sneakers to dream cars — and why the mind keeps fooling us into ranking them.
Lab notes
Loose, evolving thoughts
In-progress hypotheses.
Reference shelf
Books I'm reading
The stack on my workbench.
Pride and Prejudice
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
The Outsider A memoir For Misfits
The Outsider A memoir For Misfits
Vir Das
Born A Crime
Born A Crime
Trevor Noah
Quick links
Worth a read
Found around the web.
The Bitter Lesson
Rich Sutton · incompleteideas.net
Sutton on why general methods that leverage computation tend to win.
How to Do Great Work
Paul Graham · paulgraham.com
Long but worth it. The section on curiosity is the one I keep re-reading.
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics
Eugene Wigner · dartmouth.edu
1960 essay — the question hasn't been answered, only deferred.
You and Your Research
Richard Hamming · virginia.edu
A talk about why most researchers don't do important work. Brutal, honest.