ZD 25.38: Falling Into Place
Is this going to be a fall season to remember?
In the Issue: Is the TikTok deal a template? Is TV’s golden age over? Is the US falling behind in the AI race? What every parent should know about AI. Normal people age out of addiction.
Production Note: I am in the final throes of delivering a massive project. The good news is it will be over soon and I have some things to share, the bad news is that this week’s edition is a little lighter than I had hoped. I don’t hold out much hope for a full edition on 9/30 but we will be back in full force come October.
The Distilled Spirit
The Big Picture
)The TikTok technology transfer saga is a political problem with a political end. But it is a template for other, similar problems.
As the TikTok saga (hopefully) draws to an end, it is apparent that all that effort was a giant waste of time. This was a purely political problem all along, so it could only be solved by a political solution. Technology doesn't matter. National security doesn’t matter. The law doesn’t matter.
⚡ Modern War is Electronic Warfare (
)Things we have learned in Ukraine: Decentralized command is the norm, Drones dominate; phones and power are critical targets and tools. War has changed.
What we’re seeing in Ukraine is the future of war. It resembles the first world war in a lot of ways, with trenches and stubs of trees sticking up out of muddy fields while corpses rot. But it’s also where drones, cell phones, and electricity can decide life or death.
📺 Is TV’s Golden Age Officially Over? ()
The TV industry is going through a wild ride — massive mergers, distribution disruptions and sea changes in people and technology. Is the golden age over?
If you asked someone, "Who is winning the streaming wars?" and gave them ten guesses, they would never name the frontrunner because it's not a Hollywood studio.
Social Cancellation Movement
⚖ Balancing Accountability vs Destruction (
)How do you find a balance between holding people accountable for speech and mob rule? Policing the Overton window is difficult without social norms to enforce.
The alternative—the current system where everyone claims to support free speech while applying wildly different and often contradictory rules—serves no one's interests except those who profit from perpetual outrage and division.
🚫 Cancelation is a Partisan Tool (
)Everyone is for canceling the other guys.
Vanishingly few people have consistent, objective standards of any kind about who deserves to be cancelled. It’s entirely ad-hoc and based around the tribal instincts of the moment.
🎞 Smart People Get Misled ()
Social media, easily shared context-less video clips and among the features of the modern information environment designed to mislead you.
The sheer volume of information today makes it difficult for many to separate truth from fiction. Social media, podcasts, traditional outlets, and now AI all compete for attention, each with their own biases and incentives.
AI High and Low
Big AI Picture
🏎 Falling Behind in the AI Race? ()
The US holds a clear advantage in compute capacity today. But the AI race is much more than computer capacity or even the race to AGI. China is rapidly catching up on all fronts.
Under this framing, the U.S. is certainly still ahead on algorithmic innovation, and compute especially. But because we lag behind China on these key non-cognitive capabilities, we risk losing out on scientific and economic gains, putting us at a long-term disadvantage in the accumulation game.
📈 AI Will Not Make You Rich (Colossus Magazine)
Shipping Containerization was an amazing invention that changed the world, but few of the inventors got rich. AI might be similar.
The increase in competition led to a rate war, which led to squeezed profits, which in turn led to consolidation and cartels. Meanwhile, the cost of building ever-larger container ships and the port facilities to deal with them meant the business became hugely capital intensive.
🎈 AI Boom or Bubble? ()
Is AI a boom or is AI a bubble? Investors would love to know.
Bubbles are impossible to diagnose in real time. Only in retrospect do we know whether exuberance was justified or delusional. Rather than making a definitive call — which borders on unhelpful speculation — it’s better to benchmark today’s boom against history to spot where bubble-like dynamics may be creeping in.
🎁 Is OpenAI The Amazon of AI? ()
Most early internet innovators failed, and the survivors like Amazon went through some very lean times.
🚗 Waymo is Usually Not at Fault ()
Self driving vehicles seem pretty safe, at least according to Waymo. YMMV.
Applied AI
👨👨👧👧 What Every Parent Should Know About AI ()
Four key lessons on how you can help your kid be ready for the world to be.
The gap isn't between kids who use AI and kids who don't. It's between those motivated to leverage AI to learn and create—to get ahead—versus those who turn to it simply to get by, scrolling without direction, letting their skills atrophy.
🌶 15 Hot Takes To Cut the Hype ()
Distilled advice from an AI product leader. A goldmine of advice for anyone building products today.
Reading and understanding code matters more than ever. Despite what I want to believe, I simply cannot vibe code anything as good as a real engineer. AI can help with writing code, but understanding how software actually works remains essential.
📚 How to Build an AI Research Assistant ()
Step-by-step instructions on building a research system using a combination of Airtable, Perplexity and Make. Very achievable for cents a month.
🤖 Building a Multi-Agent Research System ()
How to construct a multi-agent system inspired by Anthropic.
🛠 14 AI Tools To Try ()
Fourteen neat looking niche AI tools worth looking at should you need them.
Interesting Things
👴 Aging out of Addiction is Normal ()
The stereotype of a life-long drug addict is off. Studies tend to be based on populations of hard core addicts. Many simply age out of drug use.
While I would be horrified if any of my kids tried hard drugs, I’d also be horrified if my kids tried climbing mountains, racing cars, worshipping Satan, visiting Haiti, or even getting visible tattoos.
💊 The Horror of Modern Rehab ()
Interview with the author of Rehab: An American Scandal demonstrating how broken that industry is.
😢 Those Are Not the ‘Shroom Candies You Wanted (Scientific American)
Twelve out of twelve purportedly psilocybin-infused edibles in Portland contained no psilocybin. Seven contained other, undisclosed psychoactive ingredients. Don’t trust what you can’t see.
💾 Hosting a Website on Disposable Vape (BoganTheGeek)
Your disposable vape has enough computing power to host a simple web server.
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