“That cannot be done.” Is rarely true, but it’s a phrase I’ve heard more and more from technical people without offering any rationale or further explanation. This tendency to use absolute language when making blocking statements reminded me of a useful “McDonald’s rule” that I was introduced to many years ago when deciding where to eat with friends. It goes something like this:

If I say to a friend, “I’m hungry, let’s go to McDonald’s” (or wherever), they’re not allowed to block me without making a counter-suggestion. They can’t just say “No,” they have to say something like “How about Arby’s” instead. This simple rule changes the dynamic of the suggester/blocker to one of the proposer/counter-proposer. If someone is simply refusing to be involved, they McBlocked me.

In practice, though, it’s hard to always have a suggestion you’re willing to run with, so a relaxed version of the rule is that the other person has to AT LEAST specify why not. Instead of “no” it must be “no, because”. For example, it could be “I had a burger for lunch” or “I’m banned for life after jumping on a table and demanding Szechuan dipping sauce.” This helps show that you’re not just blocking things, you understand the goal and want to move the conversation forward. It gives the other person something to work with.

I was literally thinking about this “rule” the other day and had no idea what to call it.

Ironically, I’m not sure how much I like “McBlock” as the word, but I can’t think of any alternatives. 😂

The thing is, each cycle, it happens again. New artists, new art, new weapons, new masters, new ways to crush joy into little boxes that can serve the status quo.

This time around, let us use the joy of creation to bury them. This time around, let's break the cycle the only possible way: by working for everyone, by bringing everyone along. By avoiding the fist, ignoring the invisible hand, and instead linking arms with each other to rise above.

With joy.

When someone asks if you “need” something, there’s an implicit weight to that word. Need suggests dependency, maybe even weakness. It’s the difference between someone offering you food and asking if you’re hungry. One feels generous; the other feels like you have to admit to a deficit.

So I changed the question: “What’s the most important thing I can help you with this week?”

Noting this for the future.

This doesn’t just apply to the workplace, either. I’m in an era where my friends are having their second (or third+) child, and adding more burden on them by making them decide how I can help them with their burdens feels counterproductive.

Another case: my wife’s been busy with graduation at her school. Instead of asking her how I can help her deal with organizing the caps, gowns, diplomas, and tassels for 600+ students, I should have asked her what’s the most important thing I can help with.¹

Someone took the retro Weather Channel interface and turned it into a functioning website. Absolutely brilliant.

• Bag of opened asphault patch
• Homebrewing equipment
• Gus’s mattress
• Old busted wicker patio chairs
• Old beat up patio table
• Two boxes full of paint cans and other chemicals
• Car battery for the Fusion
• Tub of … tar, I think it is?

Stuff I'm still not sure how I'm gonna get rid of it

• Play-Doh ice cream truck
• American Girl ice cream truck
• Four growlers from Utepils (probably need to make a trip up there?)
• Snowblower (currently listed on Craigslist)
• Carol’s old Christmas tree

Stuff to load in the big trip this week

Sharing & Caring Hands

• The foldable strollers, carrying backpack, and car seats that no longer fit your kids

Express Bike

• Gus’s old bike
• My old bike (that could be a good idea for the first post for that series you wanna do where you throw away stuff that is super meaningful but you wanna properly honor each item with a eulogy)
• Gus’s balance bike thing that he’s never used

In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care.

In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.

As the culture of the Who Cares Era grinds towards the lowest common denominator, support those that are making real things. Listen to something with your full attention. Watch something with your phone in the other room. Read an actual paper magazine or a book.

Be yourself.

Be imperfect.

Be human.

Care.

The real threat to creativity isn’t a language model. It’s a workplace that rewards speed over depth, scale over care, automation over meaning. If we’re going to talk about what robs people of agency, let’s start there. Let’s talk about the economic structures that pressure people into using tools badly, or in ways that betray their values. Let’s talk about the lack of time, support, mentorship, and trust. Not the fact that someone ran a prompt through a chatbot to get unstuck. Where is the empathy? Where is your support for people who are being tossed into the pit of AI and instructed to find a way to make it work?

So sure, critique the tools. Call out the harm. But don’t confuse rejection with virtue. And don’t assume that the rest of us are blind just because we’re using the tools you’ve decided are beneath you.

(via Jeffrey)

Today, quite suddenly, billions of people have access to AI systems that provide augmentations, and inflict amputations, far more substantial than anything McLuhan could have imagined. This is the main thing I worry about currently as far as AI is concerned. I follow conversations among professional educators who all report the same phenomenon, which is that their students use ChatGPT for everything, and in consequence learn nothing. We may end up with at least one generation of people who are like the Eloi in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, in that they are mental weaklings utterly dependent on technologies that they don’t understand and that they could never rebuild from scratch were they to break down.

Before I give a counterpoint, I do want to note the irony that even now people do not understand how this stuff works. It’s math, all the way down. It shouldn’t work, frankly… but it does!

I think that is so beautiful. We don’t really understand much about our universe, like dark matter, gravity, all number of naturally-occurring phenomena.

But just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean we can’t harness it to do amazing things.

As far as the students using ChatGPT… I mean, yeah, it’s painfully obvious to most teachers I chat with when their kids use the tech to get by.

I would posit, though, that this is the history of education in general. We teach students truths about the world, and they go out and show us how those truths are not entirely accurate anymore.

Sure, some kids will certainly use ChatGPT to compose an entire essay, which circumvents the entire point of writing an essay in the first place: practicing critical thinking skills. That’s bad, and an obvious poor use of the tool.

But think of the kids who are using AI to punch up their thoughts, challenge their assumptions with unconsidered angles, and communicate their ideas with improved clarity. They’re using the tool as intended.

That makes me so excited about the future. That’s what I hope teachers lean into with artificial intelligence.

(via Simon)

Because this is how we are conditioned to see value: we are only valuable if we do x,y and z – this is also how we value other people and our selves. It perpetuates an insidious suffering because very few people are truly loved or seen. We are not loved for who we are but the roles we play and the actions we make. Obedience is seen as a great virtue. Wanting to live in a way that we want is seen as selfish. When other people get to live in an unconventional way they want we ostracise them for it. If I didn’t get to do this, you can’t do it too. If I suffered, you should suffer too. Sometimes weird shit happens even if we do societally-valued things. For example, if we start caring about our health by eating better or exercising more, suddenly we start getting comments about how we are too health-conscious and should loosen up more.

If we spend a few moments thinking about this, it is shocking how little space we have to be our selves. Who exactly are our selves anyway? We may not know because we did not have the time, space or permission to unfold. We spend so much time and energy chasing the goals we think we want, without contemplating why we wanted them in the first place.

Another one I got a sore neck from reading because I found myself nodding vehemently the entire time.

Psychologist Paul Bloom's research on pleasure suggests that we derive our deepest satisfactions not from hedonic experiences but from making meaning; not from having but from being; not from displaying but from experiencing; not from accumulating but from connecting.

In response, new status hierarchies have emerged that privilege experiences that money alone cannot buy: deep relationships, creative fulfillment, community belonging, physical vitality, spiritual practice, and environmental stewardship. In some ways, these new status markers are even more rarified than the old ones, if only because they're harder to fake. Anyone with money can buy a Rolex, but you can't purchase the glow of someone who has fulfilled duty, found purpose. You can't buy your way into belonging to a community that values contribution over consumption.

This isn’t to say that material prosperity has been rejected entirely. But it is a more sophisticated, epistemic relationship with wealth – treating financial capital as just one form of abundance alongside social, intellectual, physical, and spiritual capital.

One of the best parts of going through unemployment was being forced to figure out who I wanted to be.

One way to approach this exercise is to identify what you do not want to be. The easiest entries on that list involved chasing status through my job title and material possessions.