2025-11-10

Don't take the bait

Don't Take The Bait - by Jasmine Sun - @jasmi.news #ai #hype

What we’re seeing is the Donald Trump school of tech marketing: Be as provocative as possible, then let others’ moral outrage propel you into prominence. It’s an iron law of social climbing—irrelevant people desperately want to be relevant and will say crazy shit to make it happen. There are copious financial rewards for whoever excels. As performance art, I can even respect it.

Or if you must, go test these people’s most outlandish claims. If someone says they work on agents, ask if they personally let AI book their flights. (I’ve never gotten a yes.)

Touching grass is the other antidote to taking the bait. Go connect with real living people and real life experiences. When you’re deep in conversation you won’t even notice the dumb subway ads. I had drinks with my friend nikhil last week at a cozy East Village sake bar, where he told me about reading all this online fear-mongering about the death of partying and literacy and democratic trust, then looking up and seeing New Yorkers booking out the Metrograph and knocking doors for Zohran and turning the NYC marathon into an ecstatic 26-mile block party. And when you see everyone outside, talking and laughing and falling in love, the world no longer looks so grim.

Notes From an Unemployed New Grad Watching the Job Market Break

Work, After Work: Notes From an Unemployed New Grad Watching the Job Market Break #ai #jobs

On the official dashboards unemployment is still low, which is what older people tend to quote back at you. From the ground the thing feels different. The postings are there, the interview loops still exist, recruiters still send polite rejections. It is the density of opportunity that has changed. There are more people stacked against fewer real openings, and the default advice of “just apply to more places” lands differently when you know you are running through the same funnel as thousands of other people who also did everything right.

I do not know how many jobs will exist in twenty years, or whether my own work will sit far enough into the tail of the distribution to matter. I will certainly try to become an out of distribution human by doing a lot of different things, and by refusing to live entirely in the centre of the curve but if your entire life plan rests on being a respectable, central case worker, doing a standard job in a standard company, I think you should at least stare straight at how much effort is going into eroding that category. If your politics rest on the idea that everyone will work full time and find dignity there, you should stare at it too. The twentieth century spent a lot of intellectual and moral effort glorifying labour because economies needed people to show up every day. The twenty-first century is starting to build machines and systems that do not need quite as many of us.

2025-11-11

Psychology of Craft

One of the imperatives in contemporary, professional work culture is to “grow.” There is often a sense of height or largeness with that imperative, as if growth must be measured in your distance up the ladder, your territory across the way. In The Soul’s Code, James Hillman implores us to think rather of growing down, of growth not of branch but root, of becoming more grounded, sturdier, less able to be pushed around by the whims of others.

The question I hear is, what does it mean to see our work as craft rather than as growth? What are we shaping, handling, or doing something with? The metaphor of growth is one of hunger, consumption, acquisition—to acquire more pips on your collar, more titles after your name, more people under your domain. But craft asks instead, what are you doing? What reality comes into being with your shaping and working? What is in your hands and in your heart?

2025-11-13

Harsh realities of getting older

8 harsh realities about getting older that no one warns you about until it’s too late | Scandinavia Standard #aging #wisdom

• Time starts moving faster… and it never slows back down
• Friends drift away, even the ones you thought were permanent
• Your body ages faster internally than externally
• You become more selective with your energy — sometimes to the point of loneliness
• You realize your parents are aging too — and much faster than you expected
• Your priorities change, often without your permission
• You become painfully aware of how few things are truly in your control
• You realize you don’t get a “second draft” of your life

This is the heaviest reality of all — and the most motivating.

There comes a point where you recognize that life is not a rehearsal. The choices you’ve made are real. The seasons you’ve lived through won’t return. The opportunities you missed don’t come back around.

But this realization isn’t meant to be depressing. It’s clarifying.

It pushes you to stop waiting for “later.” It forces you to stop living on autopilot. It encourages you to make decisions you’ve been avoiding.

Because once you accept that there’s no reset button, you start living more intentionally.

2025-11-14

Corporate Nihilism

What will bring ambition back from the dead? - Two by Two by The Ken #workplace

“Nothing about work fazes me anymore. Absolutely nothing,” said a senior executive at a consumer-tech company who’s in his early forties. His financial comfort means: “Anything can happen and I don’t bat an eyelid. And I can’t remember ever feeling this way.” 

He didn’t say that to me, though.  

That quote is from Arundhati Ramanathan’s workplace vibe-shift story from just over two weeks ago, “Indian tech companies are spawning an ‘ambitionless’ generation.”

Arundhati called the prevailing mood “corporate nihilism.”

LinkedIn Meme

Manifesting this in life.

Found via: Beast Land and Christiancore - After School by Casey Lewis