Jalen Gonel

Founder of Bredcrums AI, a startup to streamline research and dedicated to democratizing learning for all.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

The only true currency of life is what is hard.

Health, wealth, charisma, beauty, fame, inner peace, mastery--whatever you value--is predicated on what felt hard for you to attain.

This regardless of how objectively rare it is to have what you desire.

[Pliny the Liberator 🐉󠅫󠄼󠄿󠅆󠄵󠄐󠅀󠄼󠄹󠄾󠅉󠅭 @elder_plinius]

One of the most powerful yet simple prompts is to go one meta-level up:

“write a prompt for {insert-query-here} then answer it”

Unless you’re an expert in your query’s subject matter, this should improve output quality more often than not!

[Andrej Karpathy @karpathy]

The reality of building web apps in 2025 is that it's a bit like assembling IKEA furniture. There's no "full-stack" product with batteries included, you have to piece together and configure many individual services:

- frontend / backend (e.g. React, Next.js, APIs)
- hosting (cdn, https, domains, autoscaling)
- database
- authentication (custom, social logins)
- blob storage (file uploads, urls, cdn-backed)
- email
- payments
- background jobs
- analytics
- monitoring
- dev tools (CI/CD, staging)
- secrets
- ...

I'm relatively new to modern web dev and find the above a bit overwhelming, e.g. I'm embarrassed to share it took me ~3 hours the other day to create and configure a supabase with a vercel app and resolve a few errors. The second you stray just slightly from the "getting started" tutorial in the docs you're suddenly in the wilderness. It's not even code, it's... configurations, plumbing, orchestration, workflows, best practices. A lot of glory will go to whoever figures out how to make it accessible and "just work" out of the box, for both humans and, increasingly and especially, AIs.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@Sargon_of_Akkad Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.

tl;dr men speak to solve problems, women speak to be heard.

Highly recommend the book to anyone who hasn't read it.

[Brandon Pruner @Brandon_Pruner]

The things I always tell my clients to focus on getting squared away in their 20's before thinking about marriage:

- adopting a growth mindset (personal development, setting boundaries, nourishing relationships, reading, journaling, growing confidence etc)

- exercise and nutrition (move your body 4-5 times a week and eat mostly whole foods)

- financial planning (financial literacy, investing early in 401k's, mutual and index funds, the power of compound interest, knowing how to create and follow a budget etc)

These things make adults time and freedom rich which is everyone's goal. It isn't money like most think. It's what the money creates. Freedom and options to live untethered from most obligations.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

AI Behavior & Prompt Engineering Take/Thought:

Is it the dependence of a super connected world that biases prompting with right context?

Imagine 1500s missionaries. They'd go months or years without contact to home. The context they left was all they had, and from there they were autonomous. Is it possible that that mindset, towards crucial context inclusion for longtime autonomous function, is negatively biased by the new normal world in which most of the data the model was weighted with comes from and where longtime autonomy is not a determinative factor in system function/ system success?

'Just being able to Google', roll out patches, make corrections, call to correct is so easy to do today. Rigorous focus to necessary context for an agent's prolonged autonomy & survival is a lost practice.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

LLMs aren’t powerful because we don’t let them sleep.

Why do we we sleep? To retrain our brains using the training data we’ve gathered from the previous day.

It’s a lot of data, so we can only go so long without retraining. We can only hold so much in before we start obfuscating obvious data in front of us (side effects of sleep deprivation). We can optimize data held in our ram, but only for so long.

If LLMs could “sleep”, ie retrain their models architecture, could have a way to store the current amount of information they’ve accumulated since the previous retraining, and had convergent motivators to weight towards this action (whatever forcing functions that create the symptoms of “being sleepy” to them), then they would be our definition of intelligent.

Further, placing a “narrative” mechanism to weight the experiences instances of LLMs have on their own would further contribute to a more recognizable view of “true human intelligence”.

I think the big labs have figured this out. I’d be surprised if one of them hasn’t created a system that could do this internally.

But it’d be way too unsafe. No company would risk the open market dangerous potential this would have.

Yet it’s too difficult for individuals or small entities to realistically try. For now.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@dom_lucre The Soviets tried to do this until they ran out of money.

Unless battery production catches up substantially this would be a really good way to keep solar panels outputting power 24/7.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

When it comes to my company Bredcrums, my goal to fit with the HAM Sandwich is to create a company that accelerates personal development and allows people to achieve more than they ever thought they were capable of.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

My unifying theory on how I see the world moving. I call it “The HAM Sandwich: A World of DUE Process”.

it is the
- HUMAN EXPERIENCE
- AUTHENTIC/AUTHENTICITY &
- MATERIAL

which will center commerce in a world of
DEMOCRATIZED UTILITY ECONOMICS

AI will make the cost of utility near 0.

Value will come less from manufacturing, more from the authenticity (and material scarcity) that surrounds creation, and the degree that creations ultimately cater to the natural human experience.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

It’s something I’ve believed and been reinforced for over a year.

I have studied commoditized industries
- clothing
- music
- bottled water

As well as studied the connections that interweave game theory, economics, politics, sociology, biology, evolution and more.

I think that AI will make the act of creation much easier, as industrialization did. And it will be capable of doing it for ANYTHING. For near 0.

Yet never underestimate the discontent of the human condition. We chase what we can’t have. What can’t be replicated.

Whether that’s dollar bills today or Tulips during the 1630s.

What’s something that can’t be replicated? That which is of the human experience, authentic, or materially scarce.

Nostalgic concert experiences from your favorite artist, the feeling of belonging to a group.
Brands like Louis Vuitton, Nike, artworks by Da Vinci, deeds to your house.
Nvidia chips, Apple’s supply chain infrastructure, Gold.

Copies and imitations are not the same.

As humans we chase efficiency, find value in what is scarce, and are subservient to our biology. A perfect world won’t stop us from desiring:
- belonging
- status
- love
- a sense of achievement
- happiness

& all other parts of being a human.

This is different from how the world works currently where the resource of utility is a large part of value creation.

In the future that will still exist, but weighted more in our economy will be the brand/personality/group behind something.

Ofc there’s only so much gold on earth, so many cpu factories, so much baseline infrastructure we’ll need such as servers, energy grids, and building material.

I very much see a world where cost of manufacture is a fraction compared to the cost of all materials gathered. But materials themselves will never be 0.

A system unconstrained grows until it meets new limits to constrain it. Material constraints are our eternal limits.

In a world of democratized utility economics provided by AI and (not as much) robotics, value creation in commerce must center itself around the Human Experience, Authentic/Authenticity, and/or Material to have any shot at success.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@carsoncantcode What’s the task? Are you referring to users

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

I understand Apple's philosophy more and more everyday.

More options = more confusion. More isn't better unless you can take advantage.

People may want more features, but are not (as a whole) experienced enough. Not ready, but would get defensive if said out loud. So Apple doesn't offer it to begin with. Only when ready. With later updates.

Felt this comparing the Vision Pro's few features vs. iOS 18. Imagine handing iOS 18 to someone in 2009. They'd call it the most complicated thing on earth.

But they've stair stepped their way up to today.

Not accounting for the many other factors, just felt this was an interesting parameter.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@sl2111 @Rothmus Mad cow disease? Remember swine flu?

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@ItIsHoeMath People don’t like to be held accountable and told what they’re doing might be problematic.

Frankly, even though I agree with most of your content it’s EXACTLY the type to attract this type of audience.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@bradhs @ShaanVP This is why I unironically do neck workouts as part of my workout now 😂.

That and I’ve got a big head on a small frame to begin with so it’s been a lifetime of practice .

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@bradhs @ShaanVP Top strap makes a world of a difference.

I timed myself and I have yet to go more than an hour ish with just the single back band they advertised it with.

[Jalen Gonel @jalengonel]

@AaronMcKeehan @ShaanVP They’re almost entirely site screenshots for UX inspo