Aviral's Notes
Long-form essays on technology, media, and culture
How the Silicon Valley culture that cancelled Travis Kalanick came to worship him
How the Warner Bros. bidding war morphed into something the film industry wasn't prepared for
How AI breaks every pattern in cinema's century-long history of technological innovation
On Jesse Eisenberg's "A Real Pain" and the performances that keep us from real connection
Mercor, Scale AI, and the people teaching AI models what good looks like
How Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are restructuring Hollywood compensation with their most ambitious endeavor yet
The rise, dominance, and inevitable collapse of one-man offenses
On the beauty of friction, icebergs, and traveling without a script
Why the war on friction is a war on what makes you different
How a campus VC talk pulled me into a deep dive on recruiting AI, and why every startup eventually runs into LinkedIn
Reflecting on how business roles in creative industries stay close to the magic but never shape it
On the end of Netflix’s creative carte blanche and the rise of algorithmic control