I’ve closely tracked the impact of technology on media for more than 30 years now. The impact of AI is of a completely different character. It is orders of magnitude faster. It moves so quickly that you cannot talk about it as if it were one trend — it is 100 trends wrapped up in…
Short answer: no. If you have a series of blog posts, podcasts, SubStacks, columns, or videos, turning them into a book seems like an obvious idea. After all, you have all this content teed up and ready. Why not just pour it into a book format and publish it? Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, and Mark…
Newsletter 105. Trump’s ultimate goal is the destruction of reality, or at least how we measure it. Plus, will AI doom consultancies; Johns Hopkins licenses books for a pittance, three people to follow, and three books to read. The war on reality We’ve heard past presidents declare war on concepts: the war on cancer, the…
Tesla’s board is giving Elon Musk $29 billion (a record compensation for a CEO) to “keep him focused” on Tesla. I have questions:
This is my father’s slide rule. For those unfamiliar with this vintage computing instrument, a slide rule was how scientists, engineers, and technicians did mathematical calculations for much of the twentieth century. You’d carefully align the sliding middle portion with outer frame and read the result off the scales, using the cursor (which was a…
Red Sox Nation is disappointed once again. Major League Baseball’s 2025 trade deadline has passed, and the promising Sox came away with nothing more than a marginal starting pitcher and a redundant relief pitcher. But what we did get was perhaps one of the best examples of pretzel logic ever uttered in sports — which,…
If you have an idea, you can spend hours trying to find the right name for it. GoDaddy and NameCheap have efficient tools for searching domains. And Trademarkia will tell you who’s attempted to trademark the name, and for which services. That’s a lot easier than the real work of figuring out who would pay…
Newsletter 104: Any writing tool that clarifies communication is a boon, AI included. Plus Amazon licenses the Times, Trump declares IP meaningless, three people to follow and three books to read. The future of human writing A furious debate is going on now about AI-generated text. Professional writers and other humans who write feel threatened…
Relax. Take it easy. Be creative. Do your own research. I’ve noticed phrases like these creeping into writing that I edit. I call them I4’s: inane, irritating ironic instructions. They turn how-to advice from specific to infuriating. Stop writing this way, please. What is an I4? An I4 is useless, vague advice included in a…