If you prefer to receive these recaps weekly instead of daily posts, you can manage your subscription preferences right by viewing this email on the web. Look for your profile icon in the top right of the browser, and you can update your settings from daily to weekly (and vice versa) there. However I can get you the full narrative arc without it feeling cluttered - I'm just happy you're here!

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

J Mascis and the band end up on a rooftop at the end of this video, having played a round of golf through mid-90s New York City - and "roofing it," where I grew up, meant nobody gets to play anymore. That contrast is doing a lot of work here, and so is the tempo switch nobody seems to do anymore, and so is the fuzzy bass underneath the guitars I've loved since I was a kid watching this on MTV.

"I feel the pain of everyone… then I feel nothing."

Quote from the Personal Archive - Dinosaur Jr., still haunting, still hypnotic

My dad has been taping a broken garbage can back together for months - he knows he should replace it, but there's a mental block, and somewhere between vacation drinks and waking up the next morning I wrote a confusing note to myself that turned into two posts. A garbage can's only job, every day until it isn't, is to hold the very thing it will one day become.

The thing you're becoming is already here. You don't have to wait and you don't want to rush it.

"It's not garbage; it's a collection of character."

Quote from the Personal Archive - Oscar the Grouch, as quoted by my dad's garbage can situation

I fell down a Pepper Keenan guitar rabbit hole this week and ended up watching a guy put his gum on the table mid-interview - and stay there for the rest of the video. That's the whole post, really. Catalogue value gets you found. Belonging value is what keeps people from leaving. Influencers optimize for the first one, eccentrics stumble into the second, and the gum-on-the-table moment is exactly the kind of thing that sorts out who's still around after the novelty wears off.

Make a scene worth belonging to. You can't manufacture the rest.

"Eccentrics, almost by accident, are optimized for belonging value. Eccentrics think, behave, and go through life belonging to an otherwise bizarre set of beliefs."

Quote from the Personal Archive - on why the eccentric outlasts the influencer every time

Adam built an entire philosophy - and a business - around a single timestamp: 9:03 AM, South Tower stairs, September 11, 2001. There was a version of him before that moment and a very different one after, and the 9:03 Collective is everything he's learned in the 25 years since, handed back to people who need it. The lesson I keep turning over: life is moments stacked on each other, and the work is choosing which ones you create - the big ones and the small ones both.

Also, the difference between "how have you been" and "how are you feeling" is a ten-word question that can collapse thirty minutes of distance in an instant - and I take that to work with me every single day.

"Hop on the plane and go see the show. Run the race. Skip work and take your kids to the ball game."

Quote from the Personal Archive - Bruderly on what 9:03 taught him about showing up

Kris Abdelmessih spent 12-15 hours over several days turning his frustration over the SALP hedge fund blowup into an essay - and the catharsis shows. His crocodile metaphor for certain market participants, eyes just above the water, waiting until the caloric math tips their way, clicked something in my head: these people are dinosaurs who didn't go extinct. The worst thing you can do is be the passive one, evolved to massive size, betting the world will never change even slightly.

Kris is one of the dinosaurs. The essay and this conversation are proof - and it rhymes with everything I believe about earning your right to be there.

"If you don't constantly earn your right to be there, and adapt as much as you fight to keep being there, the world can change fast."

Quote from the Personal Archive - on staying small, staying adaptive, and not going extinct

Dave Nadig named the people who can give you real feedback without demoralizing you out of your art your "first read" people - and the second he said it I knew exactly who mine are. The LLM isn't stress testing your idea the way a stranger at a bar is. It has no stakes, it's too nice, and when it comes back with "Great job, I especially love the way you..." and then trails off into a garbled version of your own not-quite-clear-yet logic, all you know is you still have work to do.

The killer idea isn't that AI is coming for jobs. It's the promise that we'll need fewer people in our lives - and I don't want fewer people. I want more interesting ones.

"If you want real readers, write something real, worthy of being read. Earn that s***."

Quote from the Personal Archive - Nadig, on what the box can't do for you

The AI thread that ran through Kris and Dave's essays spilled into everything I did outside the newsletter this week too.

The big one: Richard Bernstein and David Rosenberg - former Merrill Lynch colleagues, genuinely different views on where the economy is headed - sat down together on Excess Returns and debated the Fed, inflation, the AI investment boom, gold, and the case for international diversification. 20,000+ views, 500+ likes, and a comments section that actually had something in it. Jack and I are proud of this one.

Jack and I broke it all down - plus Tian Yang and Brent Donnelly - on the weekly wrap. The AI CapEx concentration thread, the K-shaped economy, why rationality beats raw intelligence, and what Bayesian thinking actually looks like in practice.

And then John Okoro recorded a Zoom call with me for the AIScento Podcast - I prepared nothing, he got all sorts of interesting stuff out of me anyway. The question on the table: will AI replace financial advisors? My answer, roughly: trust gets more valuable, not less. Which is kind of the whole week in one sentence.

What's the timestamp in your own life that split things into before and after - and what have you built with it since?

CATALOGUE VALUE GETS YOU FOUND. BELONGING VALUE KEEPS YOU THERE. WHICH ONE ARE YOU OPTIMIZING FOR RIGHT NOW?

Who are your first read people - the ones who can tell you the truth without demoralizing you out of your work?

WHAT ARE YOU TAPING BACK TOGETHER THAT YOU ALREADY KNOW NEEDS TO BE REPLACED?

Where have you been showing up solo for something that might hit completely differently in a room full of people?

WHAT WOULD IT LOOK LIKE TO STAY SMALL AND ADAPTIVE IN THE AREA OF YOUR LIFE WHERE YOU'VE GOTTEN THE MOST COMFORTABLE?

What's one conversation you've been having on autopilot - and what object could you attach to actually open it up?

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