Scott Baker

Meaning, purpose, narrative | Daily leadership insights (120k subs) on Substack | Possible insights from 8B page views.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

It's always what you don't have.

Very happy that we have 120,000+ daily readers of the @AdmiredLeaders Field Notes email via @Substack.

186 countries is amazing.

But nobody in Greenland?

Help me find a great leader in Greenland to bring on board!

Also Turkmenistan.

[𝐎. 𝐀𝐥𝐚𝐧 𝐍𝐨𝐛𝐥𝐞 @TheAlanNoble]

My Outlook on life has improved.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@shadihamid My 12yo got it in less than 10 seconds.

And she is always telling me she’s not that good at math!

[Matthew Keys @MatthewKeysLive]

Everything OK at AP? Is Gen Z running the headline desk today?

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@DefiantLs This was five years ago.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@Verityy1x This was five years ago.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@dieworkwear This goes into the top five of Derek's all-time great posts.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@DavidLimbaugh I was a news anchor at WNEM-TV in Saginaw when Rush was just beginning his Rush to Excellence Tour.

This would have been in the 1988-89 range.

I remember interviewing Rush live on the 6pm news.

And ... I had to message him on Compuserve to organize the details!

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@annielcrawford My teleprompter coaching fees are very reasonable!

[Tim Urban @waitbutwhy]

[read about what’s happening with AI]

ME: Wow we’re actually legit fucked this is so bad.

[go outside]

ME: Wait those people are all acting like nothing unusual is happening. Maybe I was just in a paranoid bubble? Yeah it must be that. Phew.

[read more about what’s happening with AI]

ME: Wait no we ARE fucked. Shit. It’s all those people outside who are in a delusional bubble.

[go outside]

ME: Wait...

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

I'm looking out my bedroom window.

I see a large buck chasing a doe.

Currently a common thing.

But then -- I see a large coyote (like 30+ pounds) zip right by the window in pursuit.

Would a coyote really go after a large healthy buck?

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

A foreshadowing of AIs just making stuff up?

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@GrimGriz A true horror movie.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

I'm looking out my bedroom window.

I see a large buck chasing a doe.

Currently a common thing.

But then -- I see a large coyote (like 30+ pounds) zip right by the window in pursuit.

Would a coyote really go after a large healthy buck?

[Quote Investigator® @QuoteResearch]

A play is fiction—and fiction is fact distorted into truth

Which prominent playwright crafted this remark?

https://t.co/fp0IdzM0a1

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@QuoteResearch And certainly truth that goes beyond mere facts (John Hendrix).

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@PaulVanderKlay I get the implications.

But, c’mon Paul.

Enough with the blue Costco shirts.

This could be your new look.

Listen to the algo.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

If I had asked you to name the best-selling novelist of all time -- would you have said, Agatha Christie?

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@grok @chrisbriem @DChronicleTales Wait - @grok just auto decided to create another scenario than the one I posted?

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

Here @groks riff on the original:

In 2024 I started as a night editor at a content shop on the third floor of a building off Herbert Macaulay Way in Yaba. The client wanted long-form posts that sounded like American property stories—tree rings, old wells, township roads, county extension agents. The brief said the tone should feel like a man who had lived with the land and was only now telling someone what he found.

We kept the prompts in a shared Google Sheet called “North American Domestic.” Column A was the anomaly: distorted tree rings, cable grown into a trunk, a road the previous roadmaster never skipped. Column B was the local detail set: Potter County, hemlock, sinkhole, 1967–74 window, county extension. Column C was the prior-owner action that explained it. The sheet had thirty-two rows when I arrived. Most of them had already been used.

My job was to run the prompt through the model, then strip the parts that didn’t hold. The model liked to make the previous owner heroic in a way that felt performed. I would cut the sentences where he “knew exactly what he was doing” and leave the ones where he just kept the taxes paid and told the neighbors he was too stubborn to sell. Those versions tested better. We measured it in the first hour: replies that said “quiet integrity” or “this is what we’ve lost” versus replies that called it AI.

The shop ran three accounts under the same brief. One stayed on Pennsylvania counties because those posts still cleared five hundred likes without paid boost. The other two rotated through Appalachian and upper Midwest variants so the pattern stayed less obvious. Reply accounts were kept in a separate group chat. They were instructed to post within the first twelve minutes, keep it short, and never use the same phrasing twice in a week. Most of them were in Lagos or Port Harcourt. A few were in Accra. None of them had been to the counties we wrote about.

We billed the client per post that cleared two hundred likes in twenty-four hours. Anything under that we rewrote and resubmitted at half rate. The model drafts were free. The cost was the editors who knew which details to keep and which ones made the post sound like it had been assembled. I left after nine months. The sheet still had open rows. Someone else is filling them.

[Scott Baker @bakerlink]

@chrisbriem Okay -- I couldn't resist. I asked @grok to create a thread about what kind of content shop does this but to do it in the style of @DChronicleTales.

Took about a minute.

Will post below.