you only get:
1 summer with them as a baby
3 as a toddler
5 as a child
3 as a preteen
6 as a teen
so let them run barefoot,
turn on the sprinkler,
cut up the watermelon,
chase fireflies under fading golden skies
because the summers of sticky hands, sun tired kids, and slow evenings filled with the sounds of childhood
do not last forever 🤍
Sam’s monologue from The Two Towers
Frodo : I can't do this, Sam.
Sam : I know. It's all wrong. By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to, Sam?
Sam : That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.
Last quarter I rolled out Microsoft Copilot to 4,000 employees.
$30 per seat per month.
$1.4 million annually.
I called it "digital transformation."
The board loved that phrase.
They approved it in eleven minutes.
No one asked what it would actually do.
Including me.
I told everyone it would "10x productivity."
That's not a real number.
But it sounds like one.
HR asked how we'd measure the 10x.
I said we'd "leverage analytics dashboards."
They stopped asking.
Three months later I checked the usage reports.
47 people had opened it.
12 had used it more than once.
One of them was me.
I used it to summarize an email I could have read in 30 seconds.
It took 45 seconds.
Plus the time it took to fix the hallucinations.
But I called it a "pilot success."
Success means the pilot didn't visibly fail.
The CFO asked about ROI.
I showed him a graph.
The graph went up and to the right.
It measured "AI enablement."
I made that metric up.
He nodded approvingly.
We're "AI-enabled" now.
I don't know what that means.
But it's in our investor deck.
A senior developer asked why we didn't use Claude or ChatGPT.
I said we needed "enterprise-grade security."
He asked what that meant.
I said "compliance."
He asked which compliance.
I said "all of them."
He looked skeptical.
I scheduled him for a "career development conversation."
He stopped asking questions.
Microsoft sent a case study team.
They wanted to feature us as a success story.
I told them we "saved 40,000 hours."
I calculated that number by multiplying employees by a number I made up.
They didn't verify it.
They never do.
Now we're on Microsoft's website.
"Global enterprise achieves 40,000 hours of productivity gains with Copilot."
The CEO shared it on LinkedIn.
He got 3,000 likes.
He's never used Copilot.
None of the executives have.
We have an exemption.
"Strategic focus requires minimal digital distraction."
I wrote that policy.
The licenses renew next month.
I'm requesting an expansion.
5,000 more seats.
We haven't used the first 4,000.
But this time we'll "drive adoption."
Adoption means mandatory training.
Training means a 45-minute webinar no one watches.
But completion will be tracked.
Completion is a metric.
Metrics go in dashboards.
Dashboards go in board presentations.
Board presentations get me promoted.
I'll be SVP by Q3.
I still don't know what Copilot does.
But I know what it's for.
It's for showing we're "investing in AI."
Investment means spending.
Spending means commitment.
Commitment means we're serious about the future.
The future is whatever I say it is.
As long as the graph goes up and to the right.
"Oracle’s stock jumped by 25% after being promised $60 billion a year from OpenAI, an amount of money OpenAI doesn’t earn yet, to provide cloud computing facilities that Oracle hasn’t built yet, and which will require 4.5 GW of power (the equivalent of 2.25 Hoover Dams or four nuclear plants), as well as increased borrowing by Oracle whose debt to equity ratio is already 500% compared to 50% for Amazon, 30% for Microsoft and even less at Meta and Google. In other words, the tech capital cycle may be about to change." - JPM's Michael Cembalest
While July CPI inflation was 2.7%, inflation is much higher in many basic necessities:
1. Utility Gas Inflation: +13.8%
2. Car Repair Inflation: +6.5%
3. Hospital Services Inflation: +5.8%
4. Electricity Inflation: +5.5%
5. Car Insurance Inflation: +5.3%
6. Meat and Eggs Inflation: +5.2%
7. Homeowner Inflation: +4.1%
8. Food Away From Home Inflation: +3.9%
9. Rent Inflation: +3.5%
Core CPI inflation is now up for 3 straight months for the first time since September 2022.
Americans are still dealing with persistent inflation.
Truly incredible:
The S&P 500 in Bitcoin terms is now DOWN -15% year-to-date.
Since 2012, the S&P 500 in Bitcoin terms is down -99.98%.
We are all witnessing history.
First poster for Phil Lord & Chris Miller’s ‘PROJECT HAIL MARY’, starring Ryan Gosling
The film follows a teacher who wakes up & soon remembers he was sent 12 light-years away from Earth to save humanity after the Sun began to erode.
Trailer releases on Monday.
The Veo-generated vlog series of Greg The Stormtrooper is the best Star Wars content in ages:
▫️pissed about going to Endor (“orders just came in from Vader’s bitch ass”)
▫️crash lands on Hoth (builds snowman while shot at)
▫️drinks “something questionable” at a Tatoonie bar
Understanding Bitcoin mining was one of the first things that made me really grasp what an insane and brilliant system Bitcoin truly was...
If you still think it's just some gamified ponzi scheme, I urge you to take a few minutes and watch this 👇
Bitcoin’s current token distribution. What do you notice?
57% Individuals
17.6% Lost
6.6% Not mined yet
5.2% Satoshi Wallet
3.9% ETFs
3.6% Companies
3.4% Miners
2.7% Governments