Numbers don't lie

Some time ago, Google rolled out a new feature for Gchat. It will now suggest context-aware responses to your friends’ messages. Rather than suffer the grueling effort of typing “lol” yourself, you can choose from three different messages that the software presents to you, which will typically be things like “Haha,” “Yes,” and “Haha, yes.” It’s an absolutely bizarre and pointless feature that provides no value whatsoever. Naturally, we use it all the time.

See, there’s some grim humor to be mined from the uncanny canned responses that Google serves up, particularly when you start chaining them together. You end up with a facsimile of a conversation, each side exchanging pithy, content-free congratulations and messages of approval. The robotic and unreal nature is, in some way, entertaining. But it’s not a real interaction and, crucially, our usage of this feature is not any indication that we find it valuable. It’s the opposite.

Yet I’d be willing to bet a substantial sum that product managers at Google are pointing at the numbers as proof of our “engagement.” Look! They’re using it sometimes dozens of times a day. It’s right here in black and white. Mission accomplished, everybody.

One of my many, many working theories about the world we’re living in now is that nearly all of the services we interact with daily are operating under this kind of delusion. Businesses are measuring and optimizing for real behavior, but their metrics have become decoupled from anything their customers find meaningful. The numbers are all good. The experiences are all bad.

Recently I listened to a talk about how someone had worked on automating his company’s customer service experience. He went into detail about the work and about the outcomes. Handle time was down. CSAT was up. CS agents were handling fewer, higher-priority calls. Wins all around. And while I don’t have any reason to believe that this guy was saying anything false, I also know that I sometimes have to use customer service and it always fucking sucks, in large part because of how much is automated.

You can at least understand when business metrics that are hostile to the customer improve at the cost of user experience. How have we gotten to a point where companies can swear up and down that they have concrete data showing that their products are better and their customers are happier when all of their products are worse and we’re all miserable using them? We’re no longer talking about a problem with how we’re measuring, or even what we’re measuring. We’re talking about two fundamentally different realities.

The rules are simple

The rules are simple. Every 20 years, all of the realms come together to compete in a fighting tournament. If one realm defeats another one in 10 consecutive tournaments, the winning realm now rules over the losing realm. However, the tournament will continue to be held and if the subjugated realm should defeat the conquering realm the next time, then they are freed. It’s just that simple.

Each realm sends its five best fighters to the tournament. The fighters are chosen by the gods and cannot opt out. If they happen to be killed prior to the tournament, the gods will choose another fighter, and if they happen to be resurrected and chosen by a different realm to compete in zombie form, they still cannot opt out. A fighter can decide at any time that they would rather fight for a different realm and this request is immediately honored. You understand why it’s so important that every realm sends five, and only five, combatants.

The tournament is controlled by the gods. They may not interfere directly in the fighting. However, if a combatant manages to steal a god’s amulet, use it to drain the powers of another god, and then imprint godly powers on themselves to become immortal and thus unbeatable, that’s just gamesmanship. This is how the gods maintain competitive balance and fairness.

Earthrealm has lost to Outworld for the past 9 tournaments. We’ve only got one shot to save ourselves. That one shot is five one-on-one fights, which happen at random times in random locations. The first two fights happen simultaneously, as do the last three. This is important because all five fighters for each side need to be prepared for anything, in particular one guy being in more than one fight if he feels like it. The tournament ends when all of one side’s fighters are down, except if one of them decides to switch sides afterward. That’s why we need to get this right the first time.

It’s called “Mortal Kombat” for a reason: these are fights to the death. Unless you don’t want to kill your opponent. You don’t have to. But if you do, they’re dead and gone forever, banished to the Netherrealm, which is basically like the Christian conception of Hell except that if you want you can manifest a peace garden in your mind and live out your eternal damnation in tranquility and comfort.

Because one thing’s for sure: there’s no coming back from the Netherrealm. Not unless a necromancer performs a quick and effortless spell on you. But beware! You will be an obedient, zombie version of your mortal self, or else the necromancer may decide you can just be the same as you were in life. The stakes couldn’t be any higher.

If you don't start digging your own grave, you'll only lose out to someone else who will

It’s been a few months now since we announced some exciting new changes to how we operate. Most of you, I’m happy to report, have embraced these changes. You’ve left behind your worldly possessions and marched mile after mile into the countryside. You’ve undertaken your re-education with vim and vigor, two words that are hereafter prohibited for sounding too intellectual. And most, but not all, have eagerly taken up farming implements and begun digging the deep deep trenches into which your newly bullet-ridden bodies will fall for the greater glory of the people.

But, frankly, some of you are not exhibiting the revolutionary spirit we expected.

You should be thinking every day about how you can help the revolution succeed, and if shoveling spadeful after spadeful of dirt from your imminent final resting place is how to do it, then that’s all that should matter. It should not take a barefoot 14-year-old pointing an AK-47 at you to make you start digging.

Some of you have protested. You’ve asked why you should have to dig your own grave, and whether that won’t hasten your untimely demise. It’s a fair point. In fact, that’s why many of you have already been gunned down even though the mass graves aren’t even close to finished.

I ask you to look around at those who have pushed through the doubts and the confusion, and dug the hell out of their own graves. Those are the go-getters! They’re the ones who are ensuring the complete success of our revolution. You should be ashamed to watch them digging with gusto while you drag ass, whisper to the people next to you, and continually eye the distance to the tree line. Just so you know, you’d never make it.

In your previous life, perhaps you were a teacher, a doctor, or a lawyer. Perhaps a life’s worth of study and work has left you wondering why you are standing here now, spade in hand, being politely asked to dig the hole you will die in. This is the wrong question to ask. The right question is why you shouldn’t be digging your own grave right now. Look to your left. Now look to your right. By day’s end, all three of you will be covered in soil and beginning the putrefaction process. That’s how we get results.

Mainly, your complaints are not helpful. Digging slowly and pretending that you lack the physical fitness to perform such an arduous task aren’t helpful. The only thing that helps now is you digging the grave. We all have a part to play. Some are diggers and some are executioners. Still others are planners, and must stand here calculating how many shovels and how many bullets we need in order to dig and then fill the graves. You think that’s easy? Have you spared one single thought for my feelings? Of course you haven’t.

Think of it this way: one way or another, there’s going to be a mass grave here and yours is but one of the dozens of bodies that will fill it. That’s just a fact. Knowing that, you can choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution. Time to start being part of the solution. The final solution, as it were.

Cigarette?

Our company's incredible success has left us with no choice but to let you go

Team,

We’re writing to let you know that we’ve made the hard decision to eliminate about 1,100 positions globally. Honesty and transparency have always been a core company value, so we’ll explain why.

As you know, our revenue is growing by 20% year over year. However, we had projected that we would grow by 21% this year. The reality is that changes have to be made.

We’ve seen incredible growth in our employees’ embrace of AI. Employees across the company from engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done. You might think that the smart thing to do with all this extra productivity would be to hire even more people. That’s why you’re reading this email and we’re writing it.

To be clear: this is not a cost-cutting measure. We could easily afford to provide you with stable employment and a steady paycheck for years to come, at least until your kids are finished with college. That would be the easy choice. Leadership isn’t about making easy choices.

At 2 o’clock today, we will begin notifying those of you who are impacted. Here’s what to expect: a mysterious carriage will arrive at your doorstep and a masked figure will emerge carrying a wooden box engraved with eldritch runes. Wordlessly, the figure will present the box. You will reach inside and grab a ball. If it is white, that means you are not impacted. Black, you are impacted. Should you find yourself holding a swirling orb of many colors — well, our lawyers have advised us to say no more.

Do not speak to or touch the masked figure.

To those who are impacted by these job eliminations that are really nobody’s fault — just one of those things, like a tidal wave or the death of a far-distant star — our company’s success today is thanks to you. Indeed it is a direct result of the fantastic work you’ve done over the years that you no longer have a job. We owe you a debt we would never be able to repay, certainly not with money.

To those who remain, although this is a hard day it is also the first day of an exciting new phase for our company. We believe our best days still lie ahead, and that’s why each and every one of you needs to start working weekends.

Best,

John T. Executive

Perfect! This message is professional, direct, and authoritative, striking a tone of seriousness and sympathy for those affected, while also inspiring remaining staff with visions of a brighter future for all. Do you want me to send this company-wide email?

Summer movie preview

Mortal Kombat II (May 8)

Note: Cole Young died on the way back to his home planet.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (May 22)

Lucasfilm keeps pressing the button even though the pellets stopped coming out over a decade ago.

Backrooms (May 29)

Fall into an alternate reality in which YouTube videos are considered movies.

Disclosure Day (June 12)

Behold Steven Spielberg’s most fantastic vision of all: a government that is competent enough to keep a secret for more than five minutes.

Toy Story 5 (June 19)

Pixar keeps pressing the button even though the pellets stopped coming out over a decade ago.

Jackass: Best and Last (June 26)

Behold the ravages of time, in which the boys of Jackass have somehow become paragons of adult friendship and positive masculinity.

Supergirl (June 26)

Originally titled “Ms. Superman.”

Minions & Monsters (July 1)

This will make over a billion dollars.

Moana (July 10)

The live-action remake of Disney’s smash animated hit contains up to 0.8% non-CG footage.

The Odyssey (July 17)

The alt-right boycotts the film upon learning that Lupita Nyong’o, a Black woman, plays Helen of Troy, an unforgivable inaccuracy in a movie that stars Irish Bostonian Matt Damon as the Greek warrior Odysseus.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 31)

Marvel keeps pressing the button even though the pellets stopped coming out over a decade ago.

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma (August 7)

Indie auteur Jane Schoenbrun’s third feature film will be no doubt moving, thought-provoking, and darkly funny, and no one you know will see it or have heard about it.

Coyote vs Acme (August 28)

David Zaslov attempts to use a bundle of dynamite to prevent the movie from ever seeing the light of day, but it explodes in his hands, leaving him a charred, smoking husk. He’s able to blink a few times before crumbling to ash.

Explaining the AI race vis a vis poorly understood concepts of game theory and world history

I’ve been watching recordings of a game theory class offered at Yale. In the first session, the professor swore up and down that you didn’t need to be good at math to take the class, and by the third session he was doing calculus on the blackboard. So it’s safe to say that I’m not fully understanding it. I think I get the gist, though.

The lectures are making me look at things that are happening around the world in a new way. For example, one of the earliest lessons was that you need to put yourself in the other party’s shoes to understand their possible incentives and payoffs. It occurred to me that our fearless leaders failed to do this when planning, or not planning, to attack Iran. Everything that has happened since the first bomb dropped has been a total surprise to them. Who would have ever thought Iran would blockade the Strait of Hormuz?

The main takeaways through five classes has been to explain two types of games. One, in which there’s always a single best strategy to play no matter what, and two, when there may be multiple strategies that are best to play for all parties, but only if all parties play the same. The latter one is called a Nash equilibrium, discovered by Russell Crowe in 2001. One of the examples given in the class is an investing game in which the only really good outcomes are in which everyone invests and therefore everyone wins money, or no one invests and therefore no one loses money. Either one is ok, but if 50% of people invest and 50% of people don’t, then someone gets boned.

The interesting thing about the Nash equilibrium seems to be that it’s still the right strategy even if the ultimate outcome is not so good. Here I started thinking about World War I. (Well, I’m always thinking about World War I.) Part of the reason the fighting broke out so quickly and with such ferocity could be explained by a Nash equilibrium. Containing the discussion to Germany and France, each country had two choices: mobilize for war, or stand down. If both countries stood down, there would be peace. If one country stood down while the other mobilized, it would be catastrophic for them. And if both countries mobilized, although war would be inevitable, at least neither would be caught off guard. It’s therefore completely rational that both companies would mobilize, even though a general war was not a desirable outcome.

And now we come to what this post was supposed to be about: AI. I don’t need to tell you that the spending levels are truly looney tunes and they seem, on their face, to be irrational. How could it make sense to commit more spending to building data centers than currently exists in revenue? How could it make sense to subsidize token use to such a massive degree? How could it be a smarter business decision to lay off employees, who are at least providing a realized return, in favor of speculative investments on data centers, GPUs, and services to be provided later?

It only makes sense if these companies believe that there can be just one winner. At the end of the day, they’re convinced there will be one AI compute company, one hyperscaler, one GPU manufacturer. This might even be true. And if it is, then it actually makes perfect sense to spend literally any amount to ensure that your company is the one that’s left standing. If anyone else is outspending you, then your company will go out of business, and it doesn’t matter if your own outspending may put you out of business anyway. It’s the only play. That’s a Nash equilibrium.

Is it time for Slow UX?

I’ve just attended this year’s Growing in Content conference, which was excellent. I learned a lot. Most of it was stuff I can take with me back to work, some of it was thought-provoking, and a lot of it made me feel less crazy. But one fairly small thing grabbed a hold of me and won’t let go.

Natalie Shaw gave a talk about her work designing for a dating app called Feeld. This app aims to be more inclusive and sex-positive than other dating apps, which tend to reinforce norms of heterosexuality and monogamy (this is my characterization, not Shaw’s). In particular, Shaw talked about building a feature called “Reflections: A Self-Discovery Tool,” a questionnaire aimed at helping customers understand their own desires and fears when it comes to dating and intimacy. (Reflections is free and pretty interesting — I took it and learned that, yep, I’ve been married for 17 years.)

In her talk, Shaw said that the questionnaire was built in an intentionally unhurried way, giving users time to reflect and sit with the thoughts it was prompting. She talked about trusting people. And she coined a term to describe the approach: “Slow UX.”

This caught a lot of the attendees up short. In our own work, all we hear anymore is speed. Build faster. Ship faster. Iterate faster. Fail faster. And our customer’s experiences are reflecting that. Get them where they want to go faster. Get them through the funnel faster. Have they not moved their mouse in 30 seconds? Better ask them if they’re still there!

As UX professionals, one of our guiding principles is not to waste people’s time. But it’s worth asking at this point if all the work done to reduce friction has not left our customers feeling like they’re hurtling down a bobsled course. Are they being hustled along when they could really use a break? Are we helping them or are we exhausting them? I know I feel drained by every website and app demanding constant interaction.

What would a slow UX look like? It could take a lot of forms. Greater emphasis on “one thing per page,” which is an established principle but one that a lot of businesses find inconvenient. Less reliance on familiar metrics that measure customer behavior but not outcomes. A willingness to trade short-term gains for long-term value. Confidence in the service we’re providing.

Yeah, it’s a pipe dream, perhaps. It doesn’t track with more everything forever. But for smaller companies, maybe it would be a differentiator. As an example, I’m a founding subscriber to Defector, and my favorite thing about it is that I can read a blog and then leave. They don’t constantly ping me to come back and read more blogs. Defector won’t become a billion-dollar company any time soon, but they’re serving me in exactly the way I want to be served. That’s something we could all use a little more of.

Big tech predictions #1: Tesla vs Waymo

A recurring series checking in on predictions about advances in big tech.

Yahoo! Finance, 2/1/26:

The company plans to add seven new operating areas this year and has aggressive plans to double its number of robotaxis every month.

“By April, Tesla will catch up with and quickly surpass Waymo’s 2,000 vehicle fleet,” Blair’s Dorsheimer predicted, highlighting Tesla’s massive growth plans for the year.

Reuters, 4/23/26:

The rollout of Tesla’s fledgling robotaxi business is going more slowly than expected, several Wall Street analysts ​said, following an uncharacteristically downbeat update from CEO Elon Musk.

…

Musk told investors he hoped to have robotaxis and driverless vehicles in “a dozen or so states” by the end of the year, and said the company is taking a “cautious approach” to avoid injuries or fatalities. He offered no new details about a robotaxi expansion to Dallas and Houston that Tesla announced on social media last weekend.

Verdict: WRONG

10x court

Elsewhere on the internet I was having a conversation about AI and someone claimed that it has made him 10x more productive at work. That was the precise claim: “10x more productive.” Largely because I was on my phone at the time, and a little bit because I didn’t want to get into a big fight, I didn’t say very much beyond that. But this is my blog, which he will never see and which does not have a comments section, so I can respond here in the way that I want to.

Essentially I have three related and cascading responses to someone who claims that using AI has made them 10x more productive at work. The first is that I simply do not believe it. I don’t believe it!

I don’t believe they were measuring their productivity before and I don’t believe they’re measuring it now. I don’t think they truly understand what is productive or valuable about the work they’re doing — either that which they’re still doing themselves or that which they’ve offloaded to AI. I don’t even think they understand when they say “10x” that they are making a quantitative, not qualitative, claim. Otherwise “10x” wouldn’t be the exact same multiplier every AI booster uses. Mostly, though, I think people who say this are either delusional or lying.

Second, I think someone making this claim may be mistaking increased output for increased productivity. Are they creating 10 times as many artifacts? 10x the reports, the decks, the spreadsheets? They may literally be producing “more,” but by no means does that mean they’re creating more value. That’s more things to check and double-check, more stuff landing on the next guy’s desk, and way more opportunity for error. For some reason, everyone who claims to find AI useful considers themselves to be careful users of it who aren’t introducing a bunch of noise into the system, but I’ve seen some of the shit they’re making. They’re wrong.

Finally, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that someone making this claim is right. You’re getting all the good and none of the bad parts of using AI, and you’ve made yourself 10x more productive at work. That means you’re creating 10x the economic value you were before. Has your salary also increased 10x? Are you now working only 1/10 as many hours?

No?

Then what the fuck are you doing?

The rats are fleeing the sinking ship

Tim Cook is leaving Apple. He’s not the only CEO getting out while the getting is good.

“Data from consultancy Russell Reynolds found that in the first quarter of 2026, there were 77 incoming CEOs named across the 13 indexes tracked by the firm, which includes the S&P 500, FTSE 100, and Germany’s DAX 40, among others. This marked the highest first quarter total since at least 2018. In 2025, CEO departures hit a record high.” (Yahoo! Finance)

Financial observers have certainly enjoyed the bull market of the last several years, while those of us who make more of an effort to gauge reality have become more and more alarmed by what seems like a market unmoored from anything tangible. Massive data center buildouts, ever-increasing GPU sales, and a flood of AI software are all treated as evidence of genuine demand and barely tapped economic potential. But looking at all those things separately is like counting the beans without tasting the soup.

From here, the buildouts look impulsive and dick-measuring — and it matters that almost none of them are on schedule. The GPU sales are increasing, but where are they going? Who’s using them? How can something increase forever? As for all AI all the time, we do indeed seem to occupy separate realities. Not everyone hates AI as much as I do. But the numbers seem to back me up that most people don’t want it anywhere near as much as big tech wants us to want it.

Bubbles and crashes always look obvious in retrospect. There are a million reasons to explain them away while they’re happening (or a trillion reasons, in this case). And the reason it’s so hard to call them in real-time has less to do with the signs and symptoms than with timing. You may be right that a bubble is going to pop, but it matters a lot if it pops today, tomorrow, or next year. So when I look not at the numbers but at the world we’re living in, it could not be more obvious that something is deeply wrong. Then again, I’ve been thinking that for a while. The number still go up.

Seeing CEOs heading for the exits ought to be yet another in a line of red flags. Many of them are in the reality-making business. Most of the time they aren’t responding to market demand, rather they’re trying to create it. This can work for a while. Eventually the bill comes due — cf. “the Metaverse” — and it’s on to the next thing.

The question is, can they pivot out of this one? I don’t think so. And I think they finally know it. They’re on the hook for too much. All it’s going to take is one big contract to go unpaid and the chain reaction is going to be nuclear. So they’re securing the bag and hitting the bricks. I’d do the same thing.

On double standards

New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel will miss day 3 of the NFL draft to get counseling after he was caught in flagrante delicto with a reporter for The Athletic, Dianna Russini. (Both of these people are married, just not to each other.) Russini, for her part, resigned from her post at The Athletic, where she had been one of the highest-placed and well-sourced NFL reporters in the industry.

“Funny” is not the word for the whole situation, but certainly there was mordant humor in Vrabel’s initial annoyed denials. Despite photos that clearly showed him and Russini frolicking in bathing suits with a level of ease and interpersonal comfort that eluded me until about year 3 of my marriage, Vrabel insisted that everything was above board and innocent. He even invoked the Nathan Fielder defense that they had multiple friends just off-camera, laughing too. The only things more naked than the photos were the lies.

This is all well-trod ground for takes, but I want to hone in on a point about double standards that I don’t see made often enough. First, as far as professional ethics are concerned, I don’t think this is a case of double standards, but of separate standards. Russini’s breach of journalist ethics was, in fact, more grave than Vrabel’s breach of coaching ethics. I’m not even sure if there is anything in the rulebook saying a coach can’t have a relationship with a reporter. But a journalist absolutely cannot have one with a source or a subject of their coverage.

The real double standard is the public treatment of these two people, or the perceptions of their personal transgressions. Vrabel gets compassion, empathy, and time off from the draft to address his personal issues. Russini gets death threats. Neither one really gets the grace that this is now a family issue, but clearly this treatment is not equal.

This obviously true observation leads some people to suggest that Vrabel shouldn’t get off so easily, that he should be fired or otherwise punished in some way, or at least that he should be made to wear the Scarlet Letter that Russini will carry with her for the rest of her life. I think this is backwards.

What I’ve noticed over the years is that whenever a double standard pertaining to gender is criticized, the proposed remedy always seems to be for the woman to be treated more like the man, or worse, for the woman to behave more like the man. You see this a lot when women beat themselves up for being too polite at work. Stop apologizing! Lean in! But there’s an inherent acceptance of the misogynistic premise here that being considerate at work is weak or wrong, or that becoming the target du jour for incel rage is appropriate punishment for anything.

I have a better idea. Let’s extend more grace and compassion to women who fuck up publicly, and insist on more accountability for men who do the same. Let’s be glad that we have coworkers who care about others’ feelings, and maybe try apologizing and/or shutting the fuck up ourselves. Let’s hold people to a high standard and also understand that many will fall short. And most of all, let’s not have sexy fun time with our side pieces anywhere within range of a telephoto lens.

From the makers of "Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six" comes "Pete Hegseth's Warfighters"

PARIS - APRIL 22, 2026 - Today Ubisoft announced the launch of a brand-new tactical action series, “Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters,” for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and Windows. Created by the teams behind past Ubisoft hits such as “Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell,” “Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six,” and “Tom Clancy’s The Division” — and definitely not by the team that made “Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.” — “Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters” marks the beginning of the company’s next great action franchise.

Developed in consultation with the US Department of War, including Secretary of War Pete Hegseth himself, “Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters” presents an immersive new way of putting players in the boots of today’s most elite fighting forces. Missions include true-to-life adventures like:

  • Shaving

  • Posing in front of the mirror with a firearm

  • Making weird speeches

  • Shaking and sweating in a cot while coughing up blood

“Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters” features a robust single-player campaign with a deep character creation tool that affects game difficulty. For an easier mode that lets players more quickly advance through the story, simply play as a white man. Customize your character with darker skin, less symmetrical facial features, and a hard-to-pronounce name to ramp up the challenge. Players who want the ultimate challenge can unlock “estrogen mode” after their first playthrough.

The game’s multiplayer modes will offer both instant action and a long-term, evolving story that will reward dedicated players. Set in a fictional country, “The Strait of Morhuz” campaign will allow warring factions to battle over a critical waterway while receiving strategic instructions from a mysterious and erratic leader. (“Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters” is a work of fiction. Any similarity to any real-life persons, locations, or events is purely coincidental.)

“The unveiling of ‘Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters’ is the logical next step for Ubisoft,” said Yves Guillemot, co-founder and CEO, Ubisoft. “We’ve already sucked the marrow out of team-based shooters and stealth action, and Secretary Hegseth’s reforms at the Department of Defense — sorry, Department of War, there’s no need to point that thing at me — have provided a rich vein of military excitement for us to bury under dozens of layers of UI.”

“I’m excited to work with Ubisoft on this important project,” said Pete Hegseth, United States Secretary of War. “No fighting force in the world can compare with the United States when it comes to pwning n00bs. Make no mistake, the days of politically correct online gaming are over. We will be teabagging our fallen adversaries early and often. We will be saying the N-word in chat and we will be including a hard R.”

“You might even see me on the virtual battlefield,” Hegseth added, sharing that his gamertag is “DeusVult1488.”

“Pete Hegseth’s Warfighters” will be released on April 25.

© 2026 Ubisoft Entertainment

The Democratic party risks losing me if they keep proposing policies that some people might like

I’m a life-long Democrat. Sure, I voted for Reagan twice and Perot once, and have tactically voted a few times for the GOP when the alternative was a far-left wacko like John Kerry or Kamala Harris. But I’ve always considered myself a rooting member of Team D — part of “the base,” even. And I’ve got to warn the Democrats: if they don’t do something soon, I’ll have no choice but to leave the party.

Let’s talk about free speech. This used to be a core principle of the left wing. Now it’s all censorship and “political correctness.” We used to cherish the open exchange of ideas in this country, even unpopular ones. I ask you, what is the chilling effect on my freedom of speech when I can’t even wear my “proud Zionist” shirt around without someone calling me a “fucking idiot?” The GOP would never stand for that.

Or consider transgender athletes in youth sports, absolutely the most pressing issue facing our nation right now. I’m not bigoted against anybody. But I don’t think a boy should be beating up a girl in middle school and winning trophies for it, and I don’t care if that’s actually happened or not. It’s about principles. Republicans may be a little less civil on this issue than I’d like, but at least they’re doing something. What have Democrats done?

I like to say that I’m socially liberal and economically conservative. I’m all for women having driver’s licenses and even, in certain cases, their own bank accounts. Believe it or not, I’m even in favor of legal abortion, and despite what the far-left media would have you believe, it is still legal to travel from Texas to Massachusetts to get one.

But I think the Democrats have gone too far with their tax proposals. Tax the rich? Hell yes! It’s when ordinary, middle-class guys like me see their tax burdens increase that I start to wonder how out-of-touch the party elites have gotten. You should see the property tax bill I’m shouldering between Cambridge and Martha’s Vineyard. It’s outrageous. I’m a working stiff like anybody else. Really rich guys — I’m talking billionaires — should obviously pay more. I know because I see them up close all the time as a member of their boards of directors.

It would, of course, be childish to imagine that any party or even any candidate would match my policy preferences 100%. That’s democracy. So, for example, even though Joe Biden disappointed me on some issues, such as forgiving student loans and strengthening labor protections, he also far exceeded my expectations on others, such as obliterating Gaza. And frankly, I would have been much happier voting for him in 2024 than the alternative (some broad).

Still, a man must have principles and there comes a time when he must be prepared to sacrifice for them. So although the Democratic party has, until this point in time, served my well-heeled, centrist interests, unless they can rein in their more extreme members — like that guy in New York who wants people to be able to afford to live there — they’re going to lose me. But I won’t have left the party. The party will have left me.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author, who was named in the Epstein Files but did not remove his underwear.

I need a hobby

The problem I have with hobbies is that I inevitably reach a point of wondering why I’m doing them. It would be nice to do something for its own sake. The whole point of a hobby is that it’s something you choose to do, that you don’t monetize it, that it’s a discipline you can return to throughout your life with continual improvement. That sure sounds good on paper.

Plus, hobbies fall into a few broad categories. You’ve got your sports and exercise hobbies, many of which I’ve done with some success throughout the years. I took up snowboarding as an adult, suffered a devastating injury, returned some years later and suffered a less devastating but far more definitive injury vis à vis me going “fuck this.” More recently I spent more than 4 years regularly lifting weights, and while I got a lot stronger I was still a flabby weakling. At some point I just didn’t want to go anymore. At least some of that was due to the mental effort it took to ignore the extreme MAGA vibes of my gym.

A lot of people have food-based hobbies. They like cooking and baking. I hate cooking and baking. I don’t find them fun or satisfying. And I really hate cleaning up afterward. I tried homebrewing beer a few times, which was a bit more rewarding in the end but something always went catastrophically wrong plus I’m an alcoholic. Maybe homebrewing craft soda?

Music? I have indeed picked up and abandoned the guitar over the years. The last time I got into it, I bought some primo effects pedals and a pricey guitar, and reader, it sounded fucking glorious. I practiced scales and noticed myself getting better, and then, after months of effort, felt still no closer to actually sounding any good. But the real reason I stopped playing was because I started playing Balatro. That was like two years ago.

I guess I do play a fair amount of video games, but I don’t consider that a hobby as such. Maybe I’m shortchanging myself but putting in the time to platinum Resident Evil: Requiem has not, in fact, helped me self-actualize. I also watch movies, although not as much as I’d like, and read books, although really not as much as I’d like. I guess these are hobbies, but they’re not the kind of thing I’m talking about. I’m talking about something that has an end result.

Writing could be considered a hobby, if approached consistently and with rigor. I suppose I’m working on that (the first part), at least. Again, though, where am I going with this? Am I gonna write a poem, a short story, a novel? How many of those have I abandoned over the years? Is success contingent on actually publishing something or on knowing I saw a piece through to completion and did the best I could? I can definitely answer that last one.

In the meantime if there’s some kind of authority I can appeal to — a hobby lobby, if you will — to redefine lying on the couch and staring into space as a productive use of personal time, that might be my best bet.

The pain of knowing

This excerpt about the last days of USAID, courtesy of DOGE, is, of course, infuriating. Elon Musk has a body count, as do many of his lackeys whose names will probably not be passed down through the ages (excepting perhaps “Big Balls”). What sticks out most to me is not the particulars of this situation as much as the general dynamic, which is playing out in institutions everywhere: government, corporate, and educational. We’ve come to a place where knowing what the fuck you’re talking about is considered an impediment to gettin’ shit done.

Everyone who’s ever had a new boss kick down the door, particularly if they’re backed by new ownership, has seen this in action. You’re all dumbasses. The grown-ups are in charge now.

Somehow the new regime’s ideas are never very different from the old regime’s, although they frequently have a new name. The core idea is that you, the person with expertise and judgment, are blocking true progress. A new way of thinking — which may, perhaps, be not thinking at all — is needed. It’s time for action.

Umberto Eco wrote in his essay on Ur-Fascism: “Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” In the parlance of our times: doing something is per se better than doing nothing, and thinking about it first is gay. Get moving!

The worst part about this is when you do know what the fuck you’re talking about and it counts for nothing. The confident guys who are full of bluster would sound the same no matter what they were talking about. To pick a random example, say there were a very rich and successful guy who talked a big game about electric cars and rockets, and you assumed he must indeed be an expert in these topics because of both his confidence and his material success, and then one day you heard him talking about his Elden Ring loadout with the same braggadocio and you realized that he had less than no idea what he was doing. That hurts.

I don’t have a way to wrap this up but we’ll call it a success because I did it.

Reality outpaces one's ability to satirize

I told myself I should start writing more, and I told myself that it didn’t matter what I wrote. Just crank something out every day. It’s not always easy to come up with something to write about, but that, too, was part of the commitment. However slender a reed of thought I have, I should lean on it.

Usually I have decent luck with noticing something dumb and then exaggerating it. Melania’s press conference last week was a perfect example. It was such an odd event, suggesting such a blinkered thought process, that it was easy for me to spin out a couple sillier examples of the same type of thing. The post took maybe 10 minutes, but I had fun writing it.

The problem is that much of what’s happening is so dumb that I can’t even process it. Actual news items are like Langford’s basilisk, blue-screening my brain on contact. You tell me how someone is supposed to draw these things out past the point of believability:

“President Donald Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on social media on Sunday, saying the first American pope should ‘stop catering to the Radical Left.’ ‘…Pope Leo is WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy,’ the president wrote on social media.”

“…the president posted an image to Truth Social depicting himself as a Christ-like figure healing a sick person with American flags and eagles in the background.”

That’s just politics! What about tech?

Meta is building an artificial intelligence version of Mark Zuckerberg that can engage with employees in his stead, as part of a broader push to remake the Big Tech company around AI. … The $1.6tn group has been working on developing photorealistic, AI-powered 3D characters that users can interact with in real time, according to four people familiar with the matter.

Sports?

On Wednesday, The Athletic reported that fans who had purchased Category 1 tickets were receiving their seating assignments, only to discover that they'd been placed in a Category 2 section. It turns out that many of those sections in the lower bowl had been set aside for people who purchased even more expensive hospitality packages, and that Category 1 ticket buyers never really stood a chance at getting assigned a seat in those sections.

In the sixth inning of a game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers, Brewers first baseman Jake Bauers reached first on a play that saw Rays second baseman Ben Williamson miss a throw. …[umpire C.B.] Bucknor’s ruling: Bauers was out, because he failed to touch first base while running. That led to a quick challenge and a quick overturn, as replay showed Bauer’s entire foot hit the bag. It gets even worse when watching Bucknor himself on the replay, as he very clearly is looking at the errant ball and not the base.

Entertainment?

The "will Robby die?" question has lead to even more questions and fan theories. The other day I was mindlessly scrolling Instagram, as one does, when I came across a video from a content creator I've never heard of claiming that they had actually solved a big "The Pitt" season 2 mystery. "The show has been faking us out!" this person said. "Robby isn't going to die in the season finale! Santos is!"

Forget about AI putting guys like me out of work. Reality is doing a much more efficient job of it.

My "not associated with Jeffrey Epstein" press conference is raising a lot of questions already answered by my press conference

Recently there has been a lot of speculation, or perhaps speculation about future speculation, that I had more than the most passing acquaintance with Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and the rest of that rogues gallery. I’m here today to tell you that none of it’s true. I deny categorically that I ever traveled to Epstein’s island, that I had any knowledge of or involvement in his sex trafficking organization, and that we ever engaged in a brief but torrid love affair. There may be pictures of me with this group, but have you heard about what they’re doing with AI these days?

While we’re at it — just to head off any rumors — I’d like to clear the air about a few other things. On September 11, 2001, it’s true that I rescheduled a cross-country flight from Logan to LAX at the last minute, but any phone records showing an incoming phone call from the CIA to my cell have been fabricated.

Yes, I was in Pripyat on the night of April 26, 1986. And yes, I was touring the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. I have nothing to hide. Because it was the firm conclusion of the official Soviet Union report that I did not order the scram and I did not press the AZ-5 button. These are all documented facts. Your refusal to let this go is, frankly, embarrassing for you.

No one has even accused me of being in the Texas Book Depository at the time JFK was shot. It’s not an issue. As I’ve said over and over, I was on the Grassy Knoll. I am clearly visible in frame 2588 of the Zapruder film not holding a rifle.

I hope this clears everything up and that we can never speak of these things again.

The world may be in flames but at least I platinumed Resident Evil: Requiem

This week the President of the United States threatened to nuke Iran, literally to end their civilization, but at least I finally unlocked all 49 achievements in Resident Evil: Requiem.

Anthropic claimed their latest LLM is too dangerously powerful to be released, and I have beaten the game on Insanity difficulty.

My employer informed us that we will no longer have Friday afternoons off in the summer. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day that means four more hours of work each week, or more time than it took me to unlock the “Speed Demon” achievement.

At least I still have a job. Many in my field can’t say the same. Maybe it’s luck, or maybe it’s because I’m a “Master Craftsman,” having crafted every possible item with Leon.

The anti-vaxx zealot running DHS is directly responsible for a resurgence of measles in this country. Similarly, I collected 5000 microsamples of infected blood with the blood collector. Only 19.8% of players can say the same.

Reality makes less and less sense every day. It’s sort of like the Final Puzzle in Resident Evil: Requiem, a complex, multi-step riddle that requires multiple playthroughs to complete. But what really doesn’t make sense is that completing the Final Puzzle is not tied to an achievement. What’s up with that?

The ground is shifting under our feet. The people running the show are evil, or crazy, or liars, or some combination of all three. The systems are on autopilot and heading straight over the cliff. But as I’m wandering the wasteland from now until my untimely death of radiation poisoning, they’ll never be able to take that platinum trophy away from me.