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!
The ET Office Hours conversation about AI and writing surfaced all sorts of cross-sections about how we're each using the tools. Ben Hunt doesn't use AI because his covenant with himself won't allow it, Adam Butler does because his covenant supports it, and both of them are right - about themselves. The covenant isn't with the tool, and it's not even with the reader. It's with yourself, and the reader can be trusted to feel the difference.
Quote from the Personal Archive - Matt on what the highest standard actually is
"When I read something from an author, I want to know that they've earned it. And what I think I figured out is this idea that I write to think. I write to figure out what I think, and that's by exploring what I feel. That covenant with myself, and honoring it - that is now the highest standard in my mind."
The full Office Hours session - Ben Hunt, Adam Butler, Brent Donnelly, and a room full of 100+ sharp people working through what AI does and doesn't cost you as a writer - is up as a lightly edited transcript on Panoptica. It's one of the better conversations I've been part of, and reading it on the page hits differently than being in the room.
Standing at the sink, dousing a sponge from the oversized refill bottle that's now the only bottle, I started reading the label. "Made with recycled plastic: 100%." Then, four-fifths of the way down: "Antibacterial: 99.9%*." You can only control your internal processes. Once you put it out in the world, no matter how good your process is, you get rounded down from perfection and asterisked.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on the limits of any process, however good
"They have their internal and external processes, too. The soap may have their number most of the time, but - most ain't all."
I may have come down too hard on mall culture in a previous essay, so let me clarify: the mall I actually love is only a container - a locally placed third space where the freaks were just the freaks, with no algorithm sorting you out when you walked in. The mall I hate, which is metaphorical but rooted in a reality, is the Hot Topic version, where something real gets corporatized to profit off its meaning. I still can't walk into one without announcing, at least to myself, "I love the smell of commerce in the morning" - and I still resist building anything exclusively for the purpose of it.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what we actually lose when gathering spaces get an agenda
"I want to believe we can have spaces where we scale certain parts but leave common areas alone for people to be people."
It started with a random question to Joseph Moore about Drive-By Truckers and turned into his "Jason Isbell Theory of Everything" - which is exactly the kind of non-justifiable side-conversation that becomes a thing you do just because it's fun to do. The floor this produces is a playlist. The ceiling is there is no ceiling. We're calling it Cultish Creative Music Club, and the first submission is live - messy pitches, surprise guitar appearance, and all.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what mess-around time is actually for
"It's where random curiosity gets a chance to turn into something. The non-justifiable side-conversation that becomes a thing you do just because it's fun to do."
In 2021, Scott Shadian helped organize the evacuation of over 1,200 vulnerable Afghans from Kabul in the final days before the US withdrawal - navigating Taliban checkpoints, charter planes, diplomatic back-channels, and a suicide bombing, largely without government support. He did it the same way he's done everything: by finding the back door when the front one is locked. His late father's phrase - "we figure it" - turns out to be less a personal mantra and more an inherited operating system, one Scott carried from a tourist shop in Coronado all the way to a charter plane that didn't exist 48 hours before it needed to.
Quote from the Personal Archive - Scott's father, on every problem having a solution
"Don't worry. We figure it. We figure it."
Busta Rhymes has been collecting and curating J Dilla beats since 1996, including after Dilla's passing, and Dillagence 2 finally dropped last week - twenty years after the original mixtape, built from 300 unreleased beats Busta had been keeping safe. I'm so sad and so happy all at once about this record, which is probably the only honest way to feel about it. Listen on good headphones or great speakers, and start with "This Woman" featuring D'Angelo - it hasn't left my head since I first heard it.
Quote from the Personal Archive - on what it sounds like when a collaboration outlasts one of the collaborators
"Dilla beats sound like nobody else, and to hear them 20 years after his passing and they still feel like they could have been made yesterday... such a loss. I'm so sad and so happy all at once."
Where Else I Showed Up This Week
The conversation that started in ET Office Hours didn't stay there. Ben Hunt joined me on the latest episode of Why Am I Reading This Now to explain why damaged Fed and Treasury credibility could matter just as four major risks converge - private credit, AI financing, oil, and the consumer. Ben's "credibility is a teacup" framing is exactly the kind of thing that sounds simple until you sit with it, and then you can't unsit with it. The Four Horsemen framework he walks through is worth your full attention.
One of my favorite people to talk markets with, Kevin Muir of The MacroTourist, joined me on Excess Returns to break down the bond market, Scott Bessent's Treasury buybacks, the AI capex earnings bubble argument, leveraged ETF risk, and why Kevin is bullish on gold again. Kev has a way of making the complicated feel legible without losing any of the nuance - one of those conversations I wanted to keep going.
Also this week on Excess Returns: the Weekly Wrap with Jack Forehand covering bond yields, the AI earnings bubble, and standout clips from Kevin Muir, Dan Rasmussen, and Ian Cassel - and Last Call, the monthly show with Kevin Muir, Aahan Menon, Ben Hunt, and Brent Kochuba on inflation breadth, Fed credibility, and why the options market still looks remarkably complacent.
If you want Kevin's full life story - and it's a good one - his Intentional Investor profile remains a personal favorite of mine.
Personal Archive Prompts (For You)
What is the covenant you've made with yourself about how you do your best work - and when did you last check if you're honoring it?
WHAT DOES "EARNING IT" LOOK LIKE IN YOUR FIELD, AND WHO AROUND YOU HAS ACTUALLY DONE IT?
Where in your life are you writing reports that go into a drawer - and what would it take to change who owns the data?
WHAT PHRASE OR INSTINCT DID SOMEONE HAND YOU EARLY IN LIFE THAT STILL SHOWS UP WHEN THE SYSTEM STOPS WORKING?
What's the third space in your life where you can just be a person without an agenda - and how often do you actually go there?
WHEN DID YOU LAST MESS AROUND WITH SOMETHING FOR NO REASON OTHER THAN IT WAS FUN - AND WHAT DID IT TURN INTO?
What collaboration in your life - past or present - still produces something neither of you could have made alone?
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
