Upstream #216
de-coupling 👩❤️💋👨 , available 🧠, process 🚏, jarvis 🤖, cycles 🚲.
Well hey there. How is it all? Still good I hope. I went for a very nice walk, had a nice Solstice swim, made some Camote Costras and a nice gnocchi ragu. We also have seagulls nesting on our roof. Gah. Anyway. Summer loving, having a blast. Onwards.
“I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.”
Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
culture // de-coupling 👩❤️💋👨
Pop princess Sabrina Carpenter just released her new album, Man’s Best Friend. The cover showed her in a black dress, on all fours, with a man grabbing her hair. Some felt it pandered to the male gaze and promoted misogyny. Others were less convinced, seeing it more as sex positive feminism, or satire for talkability. It was divisive. So, she released a tamer one which she says was “approved by god”. Like it or not, it reflects the complexity of sex today. So complex in fact, that young people are having less of it. Despite an abundance of sexual content and possibilities, a sex recession continues. Dating apps stink and young people are drinking less in bars (down by 1/3 in 20 yrs in Ireland) so they’re not falling into each other like previous generations did. A recent Rabobank report suggests they’re “far less likely to factor alcohol into their conception of identity, socialisation, and perception of acceptable behaviour”. In the US they don’t even start a bar tabs anymore. Some believe the problem is mobile phones and social media (proven correct in China and Africa). But all in all, it’s contributing to a rise in people never coupling. This is having a knock on effect on global fertility rates. Which are nosediving. Women are choosing dogs over children. So Trump and other leaders are desperately trying to encourage baby making (houses, affordable childcare, and workplaces that don’t treat women like sh*t would be a start). Noah Smith wrote about all that in the dawn of the post human age. Massive issues loom as we age, without replacement (workforce, pensions etc etc), and yet, with growing tension around sex, rising screen time and phone addiction and rising hyper-individualism, it feels like an unstoppable car crash. Good time to remember that the world is held together by the love and the passion of very few people. Be those people.
brands // available 🧠
Humans are irrational creatures. The evidence is inescapable. Our capacity to make crap decisions is astonishing. We literally don’t know what’s good for us. John Dawes (EBI) wrote about how we don’t always buy the best product. He suggests product superiority is a myth. We mostly don't know which is which. And we're mostly too lazy (and it’s far too complicated a job) to find out. We’re cognitive misers, and information imperfectionists. It’s back to bounded rationality (decisions are constrained) and satis-ficing (we normally just choose good enough). And it’s the same regardless of what you’re selling. Buyers consider a few options, then choose. Often based on irrational things, like “this one's better known” or “I like this one more". Loads of sub-par products dominate categories (see McDonald’s, Apple Air Pods or Teams). But if you’re in people’s heads all the time, and you’re more available, and you feel like a good option, you win. Just avoid being, as Will Humphrey wrote, a Ned Reyerson brand. Tread the line between availability, and intrusion. Or at least try.
creativity // process 🚏
We live in a time when creativity and creative thinking are increasingly being systemised, automated, engineered and outsourced. Consequently, we can obsess about results, and lose sight of the process and the meaning we make while actually doing creative acts. Steve Bryant wrote about the act of creation and what you learn about yourself in the process. The benefits of doing a thing, can be just doing the thing. And how the map is not the territory, but an abstraction. Real experiences still matter. This too from Aidan McCullen on Building the Mandala was lovely. On taking chances, risk and creative acts. And on the idea of sand mandalas (intricate sand designs laboured over by monks, that eventually get blown away). How the act of creation, is the act of meaning making and self discovery. As Aidan writes “what matters is not how the mandala looks to the world — but who we became while building it”. It’s why creative work is always perfect. And why making tiles for your house sounds like a tough but beautiful family journey. Keep creating. Keeping making meaning.
technology // jarvis 🤖
Apparently, the next shift for financial services isn't just about managing money - it's about predicting and protecting our financial futures. Which makes sense. Especially given the changes that are coming. Zoe Scaman wrote about some of those changes and her trip to the Valley to glimpse at the future. Lot’s of interesting stuff but three things particularly stood out for me. 1. LLM’s are becoming super apps, that do everything. This is intentional. One ring to rule them all etc. 2. LLM’s will become identity layers, where your Chat profile knows everything about you, across every site you go to. Anticipating, and meeting every need. An AI OS for life. 3. And the sunsetting of the phone era, as Apple, Nvidia, and OpenAI all lean into an ambient, multimodal future. WTF is that? Well, it’s spatial computing (like Vision Pro), with voice and gesture (talk, glance, movement) and proactive agents (no typing, predict and anticipate needs). Bye bye phone. Hello J.A.R.V.I.S.
Five random (ish) things:
Nice. Origami ballet 🩰.
OMG. Yuppies are back 🪩.
The quiet collapse of research 🧐.
Ideas to engineer earth 🌏.
watching // cycles 🚲
Here’s some loveliness from Danish electronic jazz duo Svaneborg Kardyb. Enjoy the weekend folks.