vaughn tan avatar
vaughn tan
@vt
not-knowing ✹ 🍕-fan ✹ productive discomfort + idk ✹ Marseille / Singapore / Auvergne ✹ The Uncertainty Mindset (2020) ✹ now: vaughntan.org/now-ish
vaughn tan avatar
💕
any burger establishments that asks for patty's doneness is not a true burger place, only a well-done patty is apt for a burger don't @ me if you don't know what you want in a burger
1
1
vaughn tan avatar
where is the flood of guangzhou tipzzzz channeling /guangzhou in case that helps
Guangzhou for a few days from tomorrow — would love any tips (esp food). mandarin speaker, so locals-only stuff much appreciated. excited for noodles of all sorts
1
vaughn tan avatar
just made a mug of an earnestly and responsibly grown and processed coffee that is so overroasted it is hard to finish drinking. 😑
1
3
vaughn tan avatar
Guangzhou for a few days from tomorrow — would love any tips (esp food). mandarin speaker, so locals-only stuff much appreciated. excited for noodles of all sorts
1
3
5
vaughn tan avatar
Machine prose looks finished → brain shifts from "is this my argument?" to "break this sentence?" Struggling with incomplete thoughts is where thinking happens. New newsletter on writing with LLMs.
Writing with machines (wk 3/2026)
uncertaintymindset.substack.com
Writing with machines (wk 3/2026)
1
vaughn tan avatar
king city pinks cooked with carrot, garlic, and celery; recooked with sweet potato leaves cooked with pounded chilies and garlic.
Cast image embed
3
vaughn tan avatar
Innovation requires uncomfortable work. People resist discomfort viscerally and instinctively. Solution: commit to calibrated projects that exceed current capabilities and trigger some productive desperation to force the learning and experimentation that incentives can't.
Desperation by design - Vaughn Tan
vaughntan.org
Desperation by design - Vaughn Tan
vaughn tan avatar
Cast image embed
vaughn tan avatar
roni horn, water double v3 2 solid cast glass cylinders, black and clear, each approx 1.3m tall and 1.3m dia how long did they have to anneal this enormous solid piece of glass 🤯
Cast image embedCast image embed
1
vaughn tan avatar
Cast image embed
vaughn tan avatar
The most important knowledge in any organisation can't be written down. It's tacit knowledge that must be learned through direct experience. Three mechanisms that actually work for creating orgs that can transmit tacit knowledge well:
Learning what matters - Vaughn Tan
vaughntan.org
Learning what matters - Vaughn Tan
1
4
vaughn tan avatar
1999 vieux telegraphe and 2018 koehler ruprecht kallstadter saumagen auslese trocken
Cast image embed
1
vaughn tan avatar
Businesses need cheap small-scale automation ... which is already feasible to build. But corporate mindsets and procurement systems built around big, expensive-to-build software can't figure out how to buy these Boring Tiny Tools. Imagination failure, not technical barrier.
A Boring Tiny Tooling paradigm - Vaughn Tan
vaughntan.org
A Boring Tiny Tooling paradigm - Vaughn Tan
1
vaughn tan avatar
just off a long call with an editor at a press. among many things, we talked about how publishing gravitates toward high-certainty book projects and projects which are illusory in their high certainty of success. (the large investment of time required for publishing is what makes publishers grasp for certainty that the...
#43: A new market of ideas
uncertaintymindset.substack.com
#43: A new market of ideas
2
4