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07.19.2025: The Weekend Edition
There are certain sweet-smelling, sugarcoated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate. One of these is that there is such a thing in the world as independence: independence of thought, independence of opinion, independence of action. — Mark Twain
There are two books on the fall of Condé Nast: “Empire of the Elite” by Michael M. Grynbaum, a media reporter at The New York Times. It is good, juicy with details, but it feels like a chipotle dish. However, read Graydon Carter’s “When the Going Was Good” to get a full-on San Francisco-styled burrito experience. Carter is a much better storyteller, and his details have a level of first-person authenticity. Some of these good times were enjoyed by me at Forbes, but I am glad I escaped to the freedom accorded by Silicon Valley. Both these books are a good reminder of the innovator’s dilemma: if you don’t change, others change the game and the chessboard.
Recap of my week on the social web:
For those who have not experienced the joy of thick marine layer and its noise suppression qualities along with slow, flat light, don’t quite understand the joy of nature’s chill-out mode. Time to play the new Ian Hagwood album. Happy weekend, everyone!
For an industry that is supposed to be about the future, technology industry analysis and media is highly reactive to the news and events that have been playing out in the near past. I suppose side effects of “attention economics.”
Something never changes—sycophancy is both a historical, current and future problem because we have a hierarchal mindset. This is me in response to a tweet by Ethan Mollick.
Ideas worth a retweet:
After we invented the dynamo, it took us 40 years to electrify factories. In the process, we had to redesign the entire factory layout — electrifying existing factories didn’t cut it.
Software engineering will likewise need to undergo drastic changes to truly benefit from AI. Using AI to speed up existing tasks might seem helpful, but redesigning how we write code/maintain repositories will probably be far more impactful.
But as we discuss in AI as Normal Technology, this process is time consuming, and we will need broader adoption to figure out what will genuinely help.
If I worked at OpenAI I would strongly consider turning off memory in ChatGPT. It’s not that useful and more importantly it makes it easy for the model (and the user) to lose attachment with reality.
Nathan Baschez, creator of Lex, my favorite writing tool.
Worth Watching:
My good friend Hiten Shah occasionally does video analysis of companies. He posted a video about Cluely, which is a polarizing brand and there are lessons for others.