I added a glass effect to the menu on mobile, and took the opportunity to make the overall design sleeker. #checkyoshelf … before you wreck yo shelf
Ali Almossawi
@almossawi.bsky.social
📖 You've probably spotted me writing at a cafe in San Francisco. Author of Bad Arguments, Bad Choices (Penguin), Loaded Language, Pointless Work.
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from." —Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) Read issue no. 60 of The Critical Thinker: almossawi.substack.com/p/counterfac...
Counterfactual Thinking
Plus, Aristotle’s Peripatetic School
almossawi.substack.com
This week’s issue is about how understanding is built, not sent, and brings together three ideas from different disciplines: the Kuleshov effect from filmmaking, implicatures from language, and why-questions from Feynman. Read issue no. 59: almossawi.substack.com/p/understand...
Understanding is Built, Not Sent
Plus a map of the cafes I write from
almossawi.substack.com
The San Francisco cafes where 5 books, 59 essays, and 2 manuscripts largely came together. I hadn't realized until I mapped it out that coupling a project with a place has helped with discipline over the years. www.linkedin.com/posts/almoss...
The San Francisco cafes where 5 books, 59 essays, and 2 manuscripts largely came together. I hadn't realized until I mapped it out that coupling a project with a place has helped with discipline o...
The San Francisco cafes where 5 books, 59 essays, and 2 manuscripts largely came together. I hadn't realized until I mapped it out that coupling a project with a place has helped with discipline over ...
linkedin.com
The World Cup and Cognitive Biases Plus, A Field Guide to Thinking Clearly enclosed for paid subscribers Issue no. 58: almossawi.substack.com/p/world-cup-...
It Was Obvious England Would Lose to Argentina
Plus A Field Guide to Thinking Clearly for paid subscribers
almossawi.substack.com
This week's issue is about Paul Grice’s concept of the Cooperative Principle and his four maxims of communication: be informative, truthful, relevant, and clear. almossawi.substack.com/p/grice-maxi...
Grice’s Maxims
The case for direct communication
almossawi.substack.com
I have a tendency to assume all historic figures lived at the same time and hung out at the same cafe. The sequence of who sat in whose classroom can be pretty interesting. Did you know Socrates taught Plato? And Plato in turn taught Aristotle? And Aristotle in turn taught Alexander the Great?
This week’s issue is about daydreaming, boredom, and how letting the mind wander can lead to creative breakthroughs. ✨ Read issue no. 56: ✨ almossawi.substack.com/p/daydreamin...
The Distractions We're Remembered By
Daydreaming, boredom, and creative breakthroughs
almossawi.substack.com
The world around us as an edited reel. (Or as Wittgenstein put it, “We make to ourselves pictures of facts.”)
Our minds as a non-linear video editor interpreting the world.
Issue no. 54: The Handmade Things We Value Reflections from a shop in Kyoto almossawi.substack.com/p/the-handma...
The Handmade Things We Value
Reflections from a Kyoto shop
almossawi.substack.com
Issue no. 53 of The Critical Thinker is out. Known knowns and unknown knowns. almossawi.substack.com/p/on-not-kno...
On Not Knowing What We Know
Plus, the Big Five US publishers over time
almossawi.substack.com
10 years ago, I started a side project to visualize the big five US trade book publishers. This weekend’s little project was to add the ability to go back in time and to search for imprints. almossawi.com/big-five-pub... #publishing
How does a cohesive group react when a dissenting voice speaks up? In this week’s issue: what groupthink is, why we’re susceptible to it, and four things to do when we’re stuck inside one. ✨ Read issue no. 50: ✨ almossawi.substack.com/p/groupthink...
Groupthink
Conformity at the expense of independent thinking
almossawi.substack.com
Moral exclusion. ✨ Read issue no. 49: ✨ almossawi.substack.com/p/moral-excl...
Moral Exclusion
Plus, what's the Mandela Effect?
almossawi.substack.com
As I’m mid-research for an upcoming book project, I’m realizing that no two books are written by the same person.
The spectrum is interesting when crafting villains. Subhuman, inhuman, lesser human, superhuman.
Next week's issue will be on the science behind wishful thinking.
How would you draw confirmation bias as a graph? How about the Dunning-Kruger effect or the sunk cost fallacy? In this week’s issue: what if we had shapes of thinking, a la Kurt Vonnegut’s shapes of stories? ✨ Issue no. 46 of The Critical Thinker ✨ almossawi.substack.com/p/shapes-of-...
What if Kurt Vonnegut Had Done “Shapes of Thinking” Instead
Plus, what's a halfalogue?
almossawi.substack.com
I got into data visualization in 2011. I always wondered how great it would be if I could one day be on a website and somehow ask my browser to explain the data graphic I was looking at. #chatgptatlas
The top-8 cognitive biases that can derail the unwary investor—summarizing Barry @ritholtz.bsky.social’s conversation with @almossawi.bsky.social : buff.ly/oqQpK5q
This week’s issue (issue no. 44) looks into how ownership clouds our judgment through the endowment effect, the IKEA effect, and the not-invented here (NIH) bias. almossawi.substack.com/p/the-endowm...
The Endowment Effect: Owning Something Makes It More Valuable?
Plus, revisiting a picture book for grownups thanks to a nudge by Veo 3
almossawi.substack.com
This week’s issue (issue no. 44) looks into how ownership clouds our judgment through the endowment effect, the IKEA effect, and the not-invented here (NIH) bias. almossawi.substack.com/p/the-endowm...
The Endowment Effect: Owning Something Makes It More Valuable?
Plus, revisiting a picture book for grownups thanks to a nudge by Veo 3
almossawi.substack.com