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

My latest Epsilon Theory: Unplugged Essay for Panoptica is out - More Eccentrics. Less Influencers.

It started with Mark Zuckerberg's manifesto and ended at a Circle Jerks show in Glenside, PA. What happened in between is the question I've been turning over for years: who do you actually look up to, and why does the answer feel shorter every time you check?

The essay was already out when I realized I hadn't named the thing underneath it - the Creator Flywheel, which had been running in my head the whole time I was writing. Eccentrics have a muse. Influencers have a cousin to the muse. Both are flywheels, both end in habits - it's just that eccentrics have a shot at being happy people.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on what separates the two flywheels

"They're both flywheels. They both end in habits. It's just that the eccentrics have a shot at being happy people."

Neighborhood kids from the football terraces who saw the Sex Pistols and somehow got more punk and more pop at the same time - and then landed at #1 on Top of the Pops right after Grease. The algo then was doing its job too, just with different curators. Watch the audience reaction in that 1978 performance and tell me scenes aren't the whole point.

Quote from the Personal Archive - on algorithms across time

"Music history is a weird version of how the algorithms over time have changed. How the curators have shifted. How much stuff falls into the cracks and spills over like this."

The internal monologue when it gets loud enough to write down: what's not a terrible time, while we're at it? That's the sanitized version. The fix is boring and correct - more walks, less calendar - and the world doesn't end when you actually do it.

Quote from the Personal Archive - a note to self and anyone else who needed it

"I don't need to live life like it's Excitebike and the turbo button is perpetually mashed to the verge of overheat."

Sober and salads all week, then Friday arrives and the banana ice cream with extra hot fudge does not want to be frozen anymore - in a new car, no less. Agnostic Front on the playlist, soft serve cascading everywhere, Val saying just drive, and somehow the whole thing is funnier than anything that happened all week. This is what eccentric life actually looks like up close.

Quote from the Personal Archive - the only viable strategy

"You have to inhale it! Attack it from the top, not the side."

Lara Crigger has been editing writers for over 20 years and the sharpest thing she said is also the most counterintuitive - bad advice and wrong advice aren't the same thing, and wrong advice is the dangerous kind. The whole conversation on Just Press Record is about what it takes to find a first reader worth trusting, and why you can't revise your way out of inauthenticity.

Quote from the Personal Archive - Lara on the only fix for the real problem

"You cannot fix inauthenticity. You have to tear it out, break it down, and replace it with something that is authentic."

Ben Hunt lasered in on the line from the essay - I don't just write to figure out what I think, I write to figure out what I think by exploring how I feel - and the conversation that followed left me with five more things worth writing down. Habits make better inputs. Drafting is where the pattern matching happens. Practice makes performance, not perfect. Pick role models who practice and perform at the level you want to reach. And somebody is always watching, whether you know it or not.

Quote from the Personal Archive - the whole assignment in one line

"Pick role models who practice and perform at the level you want to be at. Study them."

Ian Cassel is the founder of MicroCapClub and author of the new Stock Picker - and if the week was about eccentrics finding a process worth trusting, Ian is the investing version of that argument. He turned $20,000 into $120,000, watched it fall to $8,000, and built his entire framework out of what that felt like. That's not a formula. That's a sensibility. Pick up the book here and watch the full conversation below.

Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, joined us on Excess Returns this week - and it's already one of our most-watched episodes in a while. We covered rotation, attitudinal vs. behavioral sentiment, AI capex, Treasury yields, and why this market cycle keeps breaking the old playbook. Watch it below.

Also this week: Jack and I broke down the week's key ideas on the Weekly Market Wrap, and I had a brief cameo on MacroDirt with Tony Greer and Jared Dillian - we talked 2012 music, independent artists, and AI's impact on creativity at the end of their markets rundown.

Who is your bone-deep first reader - the person who both believes you have something worth saying and gets what you're actually trying to say?

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE LAST PIECE OF FEEDBACK YOU GOT THAT FELT WRONG AND THE LAST PIECE THAT FELT BAD - AND HOW LONG DID IT TAKE YOU TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE?

Where in your life are you patching over inauthenticity instead of tearing it out?

WHAT'S YOUR MUSE - AND WHEN DID YOU LAST MAKE A HABIT OUT OF FINDING IT?

Name one eccentric in your life whose scene you'd show up to without hesitation - and when did you last actually show up?

IF YOUR CREATIVE HABITS WERE PRACTICE FOR A PERFORMANCE, WHAT WOULD THE PERFORMANCE LOOK LIKE - AND ARE YOU PUTTING IN THE REPS?

Who's watching you model a role right now that you don't know about - and is what they're seeing worth the watching?

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