🎣Weekly Catch #1.2

raymond loewy, job of an artist, teflon don, astrocytes & steve lacy ??

Aug 25, 2025

So many new folks here, hi & welcome:)

This is Thought Fishers, where I, Ms. Fisher, cast net for key thoughts of each week and share the coolest things I’ve consumed, what’s going on in my life, and the raw bids of soul-expression that surface from my unspoken emotions. It’s been a while since the last catch. After a two-month hiatus, I’m back with a new structure. Every time I break consistency, I will start fresh while still keeping track of progress hence(1.2). Not sure if this habit will aid or betray me, but I’m giving it a shot.

Think of this as your one-stop shop at the crossroads of me: philosophy, music, books, lore, math, history, and more.

📣 Updates/Announcements:

SO to @Lewis Wanjohi for putting me on this path! I’ve been trying (and failing) to learn homotopy type theory , this video sort of broke some ice for me, but if you’ve got any good recs, send them my way. Trying this one next since I understand logic more fundamentally. (Wish me luck 🤞🏾)
- In set theory, we usually say Bob ∈ Human—Bob belongs to the set of humans. But this creates trouble if we push it too far: no set can contain itself (Human ∉ Human), just as in type theory we avoid Type : Type
- Yet from Bob’s perspective, “being human” is just one feature within his unique identity, not the whole of it. In that sense, Human belongs inside Bob’s category, not the other way around.
- This is why the “n of 1” perspective matters: each person is their own category. Modeling them as just an element of some universal set misses the singularity of their type.

My mentor Lorenzo Barberis Canonico from high school got married! So amazing getting to see people in love, my favorite activity!
Deet’s Substack posted the video from our walk from SF to Palo Alto! check it
Erykah Badu & The Alchemist are releasing an album this week, after going on tour with phone-less concerts… she continues to be an icon 15 years since her last album👀

`CueReading(📚):`

Situated Knowledges by Donna Haroway
The Source Of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott
Infinite & Finite Games by James P. Carse (r2)

Let’s get into this:

Maya Rule ~ Tribute 2 Raymond Loewy

“To appreciate this job, one has to feel it flowing. By touch, you sense a form—atleast I do.”

A few weeks ago, I met Tigris Li, and something she said really stuck with me. It sent me down a mini deep dive into the father of so many iconic 20th-century designs: think the tractor, Greyhound buses, the Exxon logo, Coke vending machines, cars, NASA branding, even the Shell logo. His name is Raymond Loewy, and he’s the kind of guy where you might not know his name, but you know his work. Loewy started designing at just 15.

So what is the Maya Rule?

It’s the key to getting your work mass adopted in mainstream markets. Maya means Most Advanced Yet Acceptable, and it’s a tool for a paradox that every creator faces: How can I innovate and create something drastically new while making it cool and popular? Whether you’re an artist or scientist, you need to create new things, and maintain your audiences, customers, or boards. This is how you do that.

According to Loewy, good design should:

Be timeless, like a Greek statue.
Be humble. It shouldn’t scream for attention but blend into everyday life.
Carry the beauty of simplicity.

When I was 15, I started my journey in product management. Back then, the mantra I was taught is: focus on what the users want and communicate that in form of features for the engineers. But my latest experiences in product design and humane technology have taught me that isn’t the whole truth. Loewy’s lesson is that good design is almost invisible—it provides what’s needed without flash or excess. Lavish and vulgar things exist and sell, sure, but they rarely achieve mass adoption.

Loewy’s Maya Rule is at the heart of it all.

The Job of an Artist

Lately I’ve been thinking about ‘artist’ as an element in my set. Here’s how I see it right now: creativity is a lot like the pipes in a toilet. Without expression(toilet paper) and agency(the flush), everything gets clogged—angst, depression, nihilism. So how do you flush? That’s entirely up to you.

For me, my current flush is philosofounder—and only I can define what that means. The best advice I’ve received, and what I now guard with my values and boundaries, is this: be honest in your work. But honesty requires awareness. And awareness only comes from practicing authenticity.

The job of an artist is to hold up a mirror. My mistake was sitting too long in authenticity without any expression. To finish the flush, the water has to return to the sewage—that’s how one toilet connects to another. In other words: my art has to move beyond me. I need to share it with the world. For that, I need the right medium. So I’m experimenting with many.

The last step is simple: tell the truth. That’s what I want to do with everything I create. And that’s why I may claim the identity of “artist”—so long as I follow the job requirements. What our world is in dire need of right now are good artists. So how do I plan to become good in my container?

“Study the greats, and become greater. Become a scientist, dissect… God plants those seeds through people and I’m one of them.” — from my favorite and one of the best musicians of all time

Friction breeds Appreciation ~ Teflon Don

I think I first stumbled onto Maybach Music III from one of Erykah Badu’s Instagram stories, and it made me curious enough to listen to the full album. I’d done something similar recently with Wyclef Jean’s The Carnival—and ended up falling in love with it. Such a beautiful record, musically weaving Caribbean sounds with American trials and tribulations. And then with Rick Ross. Teflon Don is a masterpiece. I would’ve never even known the song Live Fast, Die Young (linked at the end) existed without slowing down long enough to listen through. Rick Ross is an insanely talented hip-hop artist, and the album showed me that in a way his hit singles never could’ve.

This week I also watched Steve Lacy’s Rolling Stone interview.

And I’ll say it again for the people in the back: Steve Lacy is one of the greatest producers of my generation. He just suffers from what I’ll call Bieberism—being reduced to viral TikTok/Instagram songs instead of recognized for his full artistry.

We Beliebers are one big family no one can break us down Beliebers doesn't abandon their own family — *Belieber meme*

In that interview, he said something that stuck:

“We take this, then ingest something else quickly… I’ll listen to things I made years ago and think this is really good, why do we get over things so quickly? why can’t you just listen to the old music? ”

I related so hard. Because honestly, I personally don’t need new music and don’t really desire it. If every artist alive today decided to stop releasing songs, I’d be content. There’s hundreds of years of music already here, and I still don’t have enough time to fully appreciate even one song. Each listen is a new experience. Speaking strictly as a hip-hop connoisseur, I know I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s already been created. Hip-hop is a playground where any kind of instrument, voice, and contradiction can chaotically collide…It will never get old to me, but of course I love hearing more

What Teflon Don reminded me is this: I need friction to be inspired. Today, you can just search for the exact song you want. But back then, you had to buy the CD. And when you’ve paid for it, you sit with it. You listen to every layer, every transition, every accident of sound. That friction forces deeper attention and appreciation for the art.

Friction breeds focus. Friction breeds inspiration. Without it, everything slips past too easily before real absorption stimulates inspiration.

🕵🏾‍♀️ Hunting For Astrocytes

I went to the Trans Time lab with Ayana Farooq, and had an amazing time. We spent time looking for astrocytes(star-shaped glial cells in the brain)to see how they grow. While we didn’t quite get close enough to spot them clearly this time, I still learned a lot about glial cells in general (which, embarrassingly, I used to think were just another type of neuron 😅).

Like me before meeting Ayana, you might not know what astrocytes are—or, like me, you might not even know how to spell them correctly lol…

now you know what astrocytes are, and why I will never enter a spelling bee I can’t cheat

But they actually could be very important to my work because they sit right at the intersection of neuroscience and ontology. Astrocytes may hold clues for how to physically investigate qualia.

My next hunts will be focused on questions like:

What connections exist between sleep, astrocytes, and mental states?
How does neuroendocrinology tie into this? (curtsey of Dr. Steven Garan who is a true genius)
Could humans distinct larger astrocytes help explain what distinguishes humans mental states(& consciousness) from other animals?

I often argue that human persons can’t yet be fully investigated by physics—so I can’t accept that humans are strictly physical beings. But astrocytes may be a key to bridging that gap. They could be part of how we measure the frequency of unique mental states.