Let's connect some dots from this week's notes...

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The essay that anchors this whole week is over on Panoptica - and I won't summarize it here because that would defeat the point entirely.

What I will say is this: somewhere between a middle school guitar class, a kid named Tommy who thought Slash was the greatest guitarist of all time, and the creeping dread of watching AI generate passable content in seconds, I worked out something I've been turning over for a while. The question isn't whether AI can write your s***. It's whether you still want to earn it.

Read "Nobody Wants to Earn Their S***" on Panoptica

AI is baiting every creative alive right now into being a victim, a persecutor, or a rescuer - and I'm arguing you don't have to be any of them. The Creator Triangle is my attempt to name the thing that keeps me out of that drama: every creative life needs a question worth answering, a why worth protecting, and a game worth playing. Remove any one point and the triangle collapses.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on co-existing with AI and an ever-changing world

"AI and how we're talking about it as a society right now, it's the game, the question, and the why all at once - which is either terrifying or clarifying, depending on the day."

Simon found the script for The King's Speech at 3am in a stack of unproduced plays, fought for it through years of rejection and a remortgaged house, produced it to four Academy Awards and Best Picture - and three days later he was alone in a New York hotel room, rocking, unable to process any of it. The crash after a creative peak isn't a sign something went wrong. It's almost a structural feature of the process, and Simon names it from the inside better than anyone I've talked to.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Simon and Joseph on what it costs to be wired for the next thing

"Because you feel like you need to be in that moment all of the time, and it's like an unnatural drug high. You know, it's artificial. It's wonderful, but there's a downside to it."

Joseph got 90 rejection letters before How to Get Rich in American History hit the national bestseller list - and his explanation for why he kept going is the most useful thing I've heard on persistence in a while: the 15 failures before the breakthrough were load-bearing, and you only know that by looking backward. Then he handed in the manuscript, felt like a failure anyway, and spent his days in the basement playing video games from college until the energy found somewhere else to go.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Joseph on the only hack worth learning

"Failure is just feedback. Just - if you can learn that one hack in life and you learn nothing else, I don't care what you're... Especially as a creative, though, especially as a creative, failure is just feedback."

Cool Hand Luke was always just there - on TV at 3am when I'd get home from a gig, from whatever point it happened to be at, which is a weird way to discover a movie but probably the right way to discover this one - and somewhere across a hundred viewings it imprinted something I couldn't have named at 18 but cried about at 40: life is a series of prisons, and you don't physically escape them so much as you mentally survive playing in and around them. Turns out 3am has a way of finding you the things worth fighting for.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on what a great story actually does

"A great story can keep you out of prison, sure, but more than anything it can help you make sense of the prisons we are always navigating across our lifetimes."

Jack is 20 pounds of dachshund-chihuahua mix - a real German-guac, if you will - who has decided, without any apparent self-doubt, that every moving object in a three-block radius is his personal responsibility to confront. That includes the stroller couple, the runner, the yard sale, and the k-turning pickup truck. The other day I spent our entire evening walk waving apologetically at strangers with a poop bag in my hand while he handled his business. Sometimes the most earned thing in a week is just getting everyone home safely.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on the natural order of things

"Who wants a good boy?"

"American Music" by the Violent Femmes is a failed pickup line for a whole country - Gordon Gano asking if you like American music, fumbling the romance, getting gently corrected by a gang vocal that says broaden your standards, and somehow arriving at something that feels more honest about what America actually is than anything written on purpose. I've been singing it to nobody since 1993 and I don't plan to stop.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on what we're all really doing when we sing along

"All we want to do is singalong with people who understand THIS experience of being human. Even if we sing over each other sometimes, or even if it doesn't make perfect sense, we sing it out - because we're in love with it."

Ritavan joined me for a special Story Time edition of The Intentional Investor - and if you want to understand why a data scientist and engineer thinks about moats, systems, and how games change, start with his grandfather riding on horseback at sunset to treat patients across hundreds of kilometers of rural India. The family history that shaped Ritavan is one of the most unforgettable conversations I've hosted, and his new book The System Gambit is the place to take it further.

Where Else I Showed Up This Week

Meb Faber came on Excess Returns to talk about his new book Investing in America: The Rise of a 250 Year Bull Market - and the timing felt almost too perfect for a week built around earning it. America as the ultimate venture capital success story, 250 years of booms and busts, and why you can be genuinely optimistic about the long arc while still being cautious about today's valuations. One of my favorite conversations we've done.

Then Jack and I did our weekly recap show, where I accidentally gave him a new and terrible nickname that I owe him a lot for. Please be nice in the comments.

Also this week on Excess Returns: Last Call with Andy Constan, Ben Hunt, Brent Kochuba, and Eric Pachman breaking down June's biggest market stories, Warren Pies on the AI bull market and macro risks, and Katie Stockton back for her quarterly technical update.

What are you still doing because someone else set the rules for the game you're playing - and what would change if you stopped?

WHAT'S THE THING YOU'VE FAILED AT ENOUGH TIMES THAT THE NEXT ATTEMPT MIGHT FINALLY BE THE ONE THAT BREAKS YOUR WAY?

When did 3am - or some other unlikely hour - find you something worth fighting for, and did you recognize it at the time?

IF THE CRASH AFTER THE SUMMIT IS STRUCTURAL, WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO PLAN FOR IT INSTEAD OF BE SURPRISED BY IT?

Where in your life are you still holding Tommy's opinion - confident, unexamined, inherited from somewhere you can't quite remember?

WHAT DOES "EARNING IT" ACTUALLY MEAN TO YOU RIGHT NOW, IN THE WORK YOU'RE DOING TODAY?

Who in your life sings along even when it doesn't make perfect sense - and when did you last let them know?

As always, I did my part, now it's your turn to write some reflections in your own Personal Archive.

(then, be sure to let me know where you're keeping it, I'm in search of the others too)

ps. Claude helped me organize and synthesize these thoughts from the week's posts. If you are curious how I use AI, read this post: Did AI Do That: Personal Rules