Writeups
A life, written along the way.
2026
22 writeupsHow to Die Digitally
I imagine removing the public version of myself. Would I feel relief, miss the archive, or still want someone to notice? An unfinished reflection on being known.
What Would Count as Proof?
A missing step in a proof becomes a doubt about being a mathematician. What happens when understanding the step still does not feel like enough?
A Degree, Two Kids, and a Dacia
A mathematics degree was once the whole word: success. Around me, it came with a future attached—teaching, marriage, two children, a Dacia. I wanted the degree. The rest was still a question.
The Price of Belonging
The neighborhood that helped raise me also expected a say in who I became. On gratitude, saying no, and wanting to stay close without staying the same.
The Life I Thought I Was Leaving
After a car hit me, I recorded the passwords I could remember. I thought I might lose my memory. I also felt relief. I am still trying to understand the life inside that contradiction.
Support Has a Timestamp
Congratulations are not back pay. On remembering who made room for the work before there was anything to applaud.
I Never Felt Qualified, So I Learned to Speak Anyway
I feared my JAX and Flax talk at Google’s MP7 was too basic. Some experts found it too advanced. On the audience I imagined and the one I needed to reach.
I Had to Teach It Before I Could Understand It
I rebuilt mathematics in English. Then I tried to explain deep learning in Darija, and the missing steps stopped being mine alone to overlook.
The Language I Could Speak but Couldn't Think In
Tachelhit and Darija were where the world first reached me. School asked me to know it in Arabic, then French. I learned the words. Understanding took longer.
The Ancestors We Were Taught to Forget
From childhood weddings near Agadir to amarg, ahwach and the manuscripts of the Souss: what it means to inherit more than a melody, and to make something new with the memory.
Changing Wells
A quiet office, a break from the noise, and the embarrassment of finding how local my confidence was. On changing environments and learning to be new again.
Wasted Potential
I chose the WASTED POTENTIAL sticker and threw my research poster away. On unanswered drafts, seniority, credit, and wanting to keep doing the work.
What Keeps Me Motivated?
Curiosity, spite, and the people who keep me going. On the reasons I work, the pleasure of understanding, and the difficulty of knowing when to stop.
I Already Failed at Football
The news should have felt like winning. It didn’t. Football still does. On the room that taught me what a victory was, and learning to celebrate a life it could not imagine.
Generation Zero: Standing on Nobody's Shoulders
First in my family to finish elementary school. On the shoulders I did not inherit, the classmates missing from the ending, and the sentence my grandmother left me.
Getting Zucked: The Nonprofit and the LLC
We planned a nonprofit. Then came a sole-owner LLC and a request to assign the project's IP. I read the document twice and did not sign.
San Francisco: The Dreams, the Delulu, and the Messiah Syndrome
I came for the ambition. I recognize the grandiosity too, including when it starts forming in my own mouth.
The Cap Table Said Peer. The Whiteboard Said Teacher.
I spent months teaching and checking the work while calling it a partnership of equals. On the conversation I avoided and the early emails I still cannot reread.
The Universe Is the Better Teacher
What can correct a model besides our approval? A question about training signals, human knowledge, and learning from a world that can prove us wrong.
Am I Building the Ship, or the Flood?
After the conviction that made me begin comes a harder question about what the work enables, and whether good intentions are enough to keep going.
What Am I, If Not the Things I Make?
What happens to my sense of myself when making gets easier to delegate? A question about craft, usefulness, and wanting credit.
On building spaceships and surviving floods
The conviction that makes you begin before anyone agrees the work is necessary, and the responsibility of trying to build something that will hold.