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this website will eventually destroy itself
go ahead & smash that “connect” button so we can network in the post-apocalypse
linkedin.com/in/round
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Maxim Leyzerovich
227K posts
Maxim Leyzerovich
@round
design at @floraai faculty at @svamfadesign
brooklyn Katılım Temmuz 2008
18.3K Takip Edilen31.2K Takipçiler
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
i beg of you to develop a sense of narrative
Los Angeles, CA 🇺🇸 English
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Literally the entirety of tech and any related industry rn
Maxim Leyzerovich@round
A lack of professional mentorship is an existential threat to today’s design practice.
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Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Last week was my final week at Perplexity. After nearly four years of full‑speed, labor‑of‑love work, I felt ready to pass the baton. I’m excited to share that @scspeier will lead the design team going forward. There are many things I’m proud of, but most of all I’m proud of the design culture at Perplexity. It fosters boldness, creativity, trust, and, most importantly, real impact. Everyone on the team lives our brand’s values, embodying curiosity and a love of learning. I have no doubt this culture will not only endure but continue to grow as the company evolves under Sebastian’s stewardship. ····
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Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
“nobody cares about your design process”
That’s what @round at @floraai said.
And I disagree with that.
Sharing your design process is one of the most important things you can do as a designer.
Because people don’t just buy designs.
→ They buy thinking.
→They buy clarity.
They buy confidence that you actually know why you made certain decisions.
A clean visual alone is easy to scroll past now.
Especially in a world where anyone can generate graphics with AI.
What separates designers today is not just execution.
It’s the ability to explain the reasoning behind the work.
→ Why the typography was large.
→ Why the colors were chosen.
→ Why the design communicates emotion instead of just looking pretty.
That’s what builds trust.
That’s what makes founders take you seriously.
And that’s what makes people remember your work.
I’ve seen this firsthand myself.
When I shared the thought process behind this Neptune redesign, people connected with the work differently because they could understand the intention behind every decision.
Not just the final output.
The process gave the design meaning.
Post: x.com/i/status/20548…
Most designers hide their thinking and only show polished visuals.
That’s a mistake.
Because when you explain your process well, you stop looking like “someone who makes graphics” and start looking like someone who solves communication problems.
And that changes how people value your work.
Maxim Leyzerovich@round
nobody cares about your design process
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Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
if you don’t find the right words, the wrong ones will find you
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Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
1/ Alexander Karp wrote his PhD under Habermas on how philosophical jargon becomes a weapon: elevated language that creates insiders, scapegoats outsiders, and rebrands domination as “authenticity.” Habermas rejected it. He had already read the manual.
2/ Karp and Kaczynski share the exact same diagnosis: tech society breeds alienation, therapeutic softness, fake elites, and crowning achievements that are also cages. Kaczynski’s answer: burn it down. Karp’s answer: arm it - and invoice the Pentagon monthly. This isn’t a rebuttal of the Unabomber. It’s the Unabomber with a government SLA and a $100 billion valuation.
3/ Silicon Valley “owes America a moral debt”? The internet was built by DARPA, public universities, and collective labor - then enclosed and sold back as rent. Palantir was seeded by the CIA, sustained by Pentagon contracts, and incorporated in Delaware to dodge taxes. The debt runs the other way. What Karp calls “patriotism” is feudal tribute dressed in Critical Theory drag.
4/ “Hard power in this century will be built on software.” Horkheimer and Adorno - Karp’s own tradition - called this instrumental reason: morality stripped out, rationality reduced to pure efficiency. They wrote it as a warning. Karp read it as a roadmap. He didn’t abandon Critical Theory. He completed it in the worst possible direction.
5/ “The question is not whether AI weapons will be built - it’s who builds them.” Oldest trick in the book: declare inevitability, kill debate, demand applause for your version. Kaczynski used the same logic to justify bombs. Arendt called this the precondition for totalitarianism. Karp calls it strategy.
6/ “America has delivered an extraordinarily long peace.” True - if you only count great-power corpses. The rest of the planet got Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Chile, Iraq, Libya, Yemen. Conflicts where the exact surveillance Palantir now sells decided who lived. Karp’s peace isn’t peace. It’s empire with better accounting.
7/ “No country advanced progressive values more than America.” The same country that did the Marshall Plan did Guantánamo. Landed on the moon and redlined its cities. Wrote the Universal Declaration and ran COINTELPRO - now serviced by Palantir. These aren’t contradictions. They’re the actual content. Karp turns monuments into blank checks.
8/ Decadence. Softness. Weak elites. The urgent need for hardness and sovereign decision. This isn’t Frankfurt School. This is Carl Schmitt wearing Habermasian drag: permanent exception, executive will over deliberation, violence as restoration of order. His committee noticed. Karp took notes and switched sides.
9/ Karp now decries the “psychologization of politics.” Meanwhile Palantir’s entire product is the psychologization of populations at industrial scale: risk scores, behavioral predictions, pre-crime social graphs sold to governments. He demands “grace for public figures.” Their complexity deserves forbearance. The rest of us get location data, zero due process, and an algorithm that never forgives. Mercy for the masters. Metadata for the masses.
10/ This is the real product. Not a betrayal of Critical Theory - its simulation. Karp kept the form (ideology critique, language as violence, demand for authenticity) while flipping every conclusion. Emancipation becomes domination. Critique becomes product. Reflection becomes targeting solution. The culture industry doesn’t suppress radical thought. It packages it and sells it back as proof the machine is self-aware.
11/ The company is named after Tolkien’s seeing-stones. They showed truth - but Sauron controlled the network, and those who looked too long saw only what he chose. "The Technological Republic" already exists. It’s the company that published the manifesto. And what it shows us is a world with no alternative to looking - and no one left to ask if the stone corrupts.
Palantir@PalantirTech
Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software. 5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed. 6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost. 7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way. 8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive. 9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret. 10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed. 11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice. 12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin. 13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet. 14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war. 15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia. 16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn. 17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives. 18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within. 19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all. 20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim. 21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful. 22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what? Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska techrepublicbook.com
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Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Parametricism is not what humanity needs from architecture in the 21st century, writes Catherine Slessor as part of our series on the style.
dezeen.com/2026/05/19/par…
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Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
design’s bright future
Maxim Leyzerovich@round
A lack of professional mentorship is an existential threat to today’s design practice.
English
Maxim Leyzerovich retweetledi
tl;dr we're not cooked (not yet at least)
Ben Blumenrose@benblumenrose
Our 2026 Design in AI Report is now live! This report is the culmination of thousands of people hours and many late nights to create what we believe is the most comprehensive, well-researched report capturing and synthesizing the state of Design + AI today. While we used AI in many areas, a report like this still required deep thinking, grit, and humans coming together to do what they do best. The final report spans nearly 20k words covering the survey results of over 900 people paired with dozens of qualitative interviews. Over the coming months we will also release 7 beautiful case studies showing how top design teams are working on the ground featuring designers at @AnthropicAI, @framer, @linear, @NotionHQ, @Shopify, @SierraPlatform, and @stripe. This work is a true labor of love to help guide a design community we hold so dear. Link in the comments and please let us know what you think. Your feedback helps us shape how we will evolve this work over the coming years...
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