Toottee
Toottee helps thoughtful, non-technical people understand AI and use it well, helping to build intuitive sense of how it works, not just keeping up.
I started Toottee because I kept watching smart people I deal with every day, at work, in my personal life — do one of two things with AI: go all in on it, or write it off as another fad (probably a little self-defense). Both camps have the same problem: they don’t actually understand the thing. And most of the content out there doesn’t help, it scares them off. AI’s been turned into this doomy, scary monster, and half of people posing as experts are hiding behind big words because, honestly, they have no f*cking idea what they’re talking about. Hell, maybe I don’t either.
But here’s what I’ve figured out: AI and how you use it is actually pretty simple, the tools are changing so fast that the real skill is boiling it down and keeping up. This is the internet all over again. Except where it took a decade for everyone to get on board with the internet, this is going to take a lot less. I keep hearing the same two reactions, from med students to 60-year-old pencil-pushers being told to “use AI”: “Sure…but how am I actually supposed to use it?” and “Okay, but look, it’s not even giving me the right answer.”
That gap is the whole point. The tools are racing ahead of us, ahead of our ability to tell what’s good, what’s wrong, and what to do with any of it. AI spits out polished, confident answers faster than we can check them, which flips the job: the hard part isn’t finding information anymore, it’s verifying it and deciding what to do with it. So that’s what Toottee is, a newsletter about thinking clearly in the age of AI: how these tools actually work, where they fail, and how to use them to learn more, build more, and think more, without outsourcing the thinking itself.
Who it’s for
Curious professionals in any industry, students, and lifelong learners who use AI or want to learn how. It’s for individuals who refuse to hand over their thinking. If you want practical fluency and instincts that last, you’re in the right place. Toottee isn’t a daily news firehose, a pile of shallow prompt hacks, or technical material written for engineers.
What you’ll get
Toottee publishes in two forms under one roof:
Toottee, the weekly essay. The flagship. A long-form post that goes deep on one idea: the theory behind how AI behaves and the practice of working with it well. These build the worldview: mental models, frameworks, and verification habits worth chewing on. (Start with the Verifying AI series.)
Toottee Papers, the quick breakdown. The fast lane. Each Paper decodes a single research paper, tool, or concept in plain, non-academic language using a simple structure: short, skimmable, shareable.
Papers are the on-ramp; the essays are the destination.
Who I am
I’m Pasha, a software engineer and PhD student. Over the years I’ve moved through a range of circles, from a finance startup to a corporate job to academia, and I keep running into ideas I think more people should be talking about. Writing helps me think, and I hope it helps you too.
The commitment
A new essay every week, plus Papers as the research and tools warrant. If an issue doesn’t leave you thinking more clearly or working more effectively, it isn’t ready. Hold me to it.
Join the conversation
The best part of writing here is the feedback. Drop a comment, push back on something, or share how you’re actually using these tools. That’s what makes this worthwhile.
Subscribe to get every essay and Paper in your inbox.
