@signulll The act of owning something and then caring for it, maintaining it, repairing and improving it is valuable in itself. It’s not easy, but it’s hard to replicate in a renter mindset
House, especially, is true here
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Nikhil Kumar
4.9K posts
Nikhil Kumar
@nkumar23
building @5x5_Collective // explore all ideas
New York, New York Katılım Mayıs 2010
2.5K Takip Edilen4.6K Takipçiler
overtime you realize every thing you own is a small tax on your attention.
maintenance, storage, insurance, repairs.. all kind of take up precious bandwidth even if you delegate it or whatever.
in the past ownership used to mean freedom because the world was scarce. if you wanted access, you had to basically possess.
but the modern world has been kinda redesigned around rent where you can rent anything.. incl. people, places, objects, taste, labor, entertainment.. all available on demand with a tap of a button.
why would you own a car when there is uber? why would you have a vacation home when you can stay at anything you desire? why would you allocate capital anywhere other than markets where it actually compounds?
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According to my research, NYC subway performances are finally approaching pre-COVID levels
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Nikhil Kumar retweetledi
during the @stripe sessions keynote this morning, @collision and @emilygsands reference ronald coase's nature of the firm (1937) which is a very interesting lens with which to view AI + its effect on corporate structure
in the original essay, coase essentially explains why companies exist—to reduce the friction and transaction costs of contracting individual work on the free market (it’s cheaper to do things internally than coordinate in the market). however, firms come with their own diminishing returns to size (bloat, coordination costs)
emily and john explain how AI changes that math
inside companies, AI lowers coordination costs so companies can do more with fewer people
but AI also lowers the cost of using markets––agents can discover vendors, integrate software, buy data, etc. etc. more work can happen outside the firm
one way i might extend this argument/read between the lines: AI makes two corporate forms viable
a hyper-optimized firm: you get the scaling benefits of shared context, systems of record, proprietary data, and AI helps you reduce bloat—fewer people just routing information, translating context, and keeping the machine moving. AI working inside the company
a nanocorp: a solopreneur or tiny team can launch globally, stay lean, and automate aggressively, with agents, APIs, contractors, payments, and cloud tools standing in for the old org chart. AI working as the company
the awkward middle is the company with proprietary context but neither the coordination nor the AI leverage to do anything with it—all hierarchy/bloat, no upside
Emily Sands@emilygsands
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Gm! Excited to share that the @ColumbiaDSL has a new site: see comments
Hard to believe it’s been 13 years since we started the lab. What began as a single new media course has grown into a mix of programs, events, and prototypes exploring where storytelling is headed.
That really came into focus Sunday when Frank Rose and I hosted the 11th edition of the Breakthroughs in Storytelling Awards. Congratulations to all the 2026 winners!
We’ve got a lot in motion right now. This fall, a new DSL prototype opens as a 10,000 sq ft installation at MAD Arts. We’re also building a Certificate in Digital Storytelling for both students and outside practitioners.
Our courses bring together undergraduate and graduate students from across the University, including classes we co-teach with Engineering and the Narrative Medicine program. And since 2015, we’ve been hosting monthly meetups at Lincoln Center.
The new site brings a lot of this together, including an archive of 132 projects experimenting with storytelling and emerging technology. It’s still evolving, just like the lab.
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@AbolTaabol Fair point, but the world has been inflected by the internet whether or not folks are connected
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@nkumar23 Directionally true, but ~2.6 billion people still aren't online and live a life without it even today. 😋
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Wild thought:
If you’re a millennial, there will be a point in our lifetimes where we’re the last people on earth who experienced life before the internet 🤯
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In the coming years we’re going to see a lot of claims about “autonomous labs” accompanied by videos of cool-looking robots.
I’m extremely bullish about this space and I’m rooting for all these companies to succeed. But right now it’s hard to know who is succeeding because the word “autonomous” has no fixed meaning.
It’s lowkenuinely a problem that robots look so cool. It's easy to see a video of robots in motion and be convinced that the future has arrived. If you haven’t worked on an automated lab floor, frontier tech looks about as cool as useless arm-flailing.
So here are some quick heuristics you can use to get a sense for how “autonomous” the lab you see in a video really is.
- Compact form factors. Physical space is at a premium in the lab. Mature automation systems use it efficiently. If a robot has lots of open space around it, that’s a sign that it requires a lot of human support.
- Cold storage. Almost all biological protocols need some kind of refrigeration. Automating sample retrieval from freezers is particularly annoying, because frost interferes with mechanical gripping, barcode reading, etc. If you don’t see a freezer near the robot, it means humans are doing the sample management off-camera.
- Sample transfer. Real lab protocols require the operations of many different devices (PCR machines, incubators, liquid handlers, centrifuges etc) - too many to fit in a single workstation. An autonomous lab needs a way to shuttle samples around. If you don’t see plates moving around the room, humans are doing that.
- Inventory and waste. Biotech eats a lot of reagents and makes a lot of plastic waste. Managing inventory is labor intensive but unglamorous - the last thing most buzzy startups want to care about. A true autonomous lab demo will include robots doing boring and unsexy things.
With these tips, you too can become a cynical jerk who looks at a startup’s tech demo and says “that’s not REALLY an autonomous lab!”
But don’t do that. Instead, root for success and watch as more automation teams check off more items from this list over time. I’m expecting fully autonomous labs, even by my high standards, before 2030.
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Nikhil Kumar retweetledi
Why We Ship: @useDecal
After building products for billions at Google and launching Solana Pay in a cafe in SF, @joshfried decided to go build the merchant product the ecosystem was missing.
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@big_duca @coursera @solana My openclaw has been curating bangers
I’m gonna clean this up into a neater experience for *not me* but give it a look:
nkalfredbot.github.io/weekly-picks/
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i've had the most fun in my career working with jon. we started at @coursera, ran it back years later @solana, and now it's time to chart our own course.
we're entering a world where skilled generalists will be more relevant than ever; where vision matters in profound ways. we were built for this. time to have some fun.
follow along for the ride here 🏀 5x5.studio // @5x5_Collective
jon wong@jnwng
after four long years, last week was my final one @SolanaFndn. along the way, i've been witness to the growth of one of the strongest ecosystems in all of technology (let alone crypto) and i'm deeply appreciative of having played a small part in where @solana is today there are too many stories to recount and too many people to thank so i won't begin to try, but i'm forever a fan of the entire Solana ecosystem and always hope to count myself as part of the family as for what's next: i seek to fulfill a decade-long vision quest to build the last company i ever work for with my friend @nkumar23. across both of our many interdisciplinary experiences throughout our careers, we've seen the value of being glue, of mixing-and-matching skillsets, and of building powerhouse teams to tackle hairy problems. this all-around mindset is embodied by the rare achievement of getting a 5x5 in basketball: at least five points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks in a single game. only 15 players have done it, ever. we will take this approach to heart with the next step of our journey. this creative technology lab slash product studio slash members collective will have both highly experimental and entirely practical outputs, which we'll explore with software, writing, events, & art. we'd love for you to follow along as we figure it out: 5x5.studio // @5x5_collective
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after four long years, last week was my final one @SolanaFndn. along the way, i've been witness to the growth of one of the strongest ecosystems in all of technology (let alone crypto) and i'm deeply appreciative of having played a small part in where @solana is today
there are too many stories to recount and too many people to thank so i won't begin to try, but i'm forever a fan of the entire Solana ecosystem and always hope to count myself as part of the family
as for what's next: i seek to fulfill a decade-long vision quest to build the last company i ever work for with my friend @nkumar23. across both of our many interdisciplinary experiences throughout our careers, we've seen the value of being glue, of mixing-and-matching skillsets, and of building powerhouse teams to tackle hairy problems. this all-around mindset is embodied by the rare achievement of getting a 5x5 in basketball: at least five points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks in a single game. only 15 players have done it, ever.
we will take this approach to heart with the next step of our journey. this creative technology lab slash product studio slash members collective will have both highly experimental and entirely practical outputs, which we'll explore with software, writing, events, & art. we'd love for you to follow along as we figure it out: 5x5.studio // @5x5_collective
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