jonathan robinson

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

Why analysts are as excited for McDonald’s Monopoly as customers are trib.al/Ujt2zok

Don’t just read books, re-read books. What's your favorite book to re-read?

Over the last two years, I started using an amazing new digital anti-depressant. Five years ago, I woke up and didn't want to get out of bed. Work had become...hard. The fire had gone out of me. I was flat out exhausted. Why? Because every time I'd have a great idea, I found that I needed to execute it via other people. And people are hard. I invariably needed a developer, a copywriter, a lawyer, an accountant—some middleman to move things along. People who want to do things their own way. Have their own incentives. Work at a slower pace. Or flat out don't want to do what I want them to. I would get excited about an idea, make as much progress as I could myself, then the project would get stymied and stuck in the mud of bureaucracy and coordination problems. Sure, I could be run through the wall, but it required increasing amounts of energy which I just didn't have as I approached my mid thirties. I'd have a business idea in the shower and where I previously would have been fired up. Instead, I just I felt depressed. I'd think: "That will just be exhausting and not turn out the way I'd hoped. Why bother?" It was a bleak period. But that all changed when ChatGPT came out. Now, many things that previously would have required people, can simply go to ChatGPT or Claude. It's my strategist. My designer. My accountant. My lawyer. As Steve Jobs pitched the original Mac: "A bicycle for the mind." Except that AI is an automated electric bicycle that travels miles in a matter of seconds. Since all these incredible tools came out, I've felt completely reinvigorated at work. I jump out of bed, sometimes at 4:30AM because I'm so excited to get to work. Something I haven't felt since my early twenties. While it represents massive disruption and change to many jobs, I could not be more excited for AI to give anybody the tools and knowledge to achieve whatever they want to achieve. No matter how advanced and crazy. Who would have guessed that AI would be such an effective anti-depressant?

Core to the Slow PhD thesis is that CEOs should be the best investors in their own companies and that this is a learnable/teachable skill. Again, lots of white boarding from @wquist in this one 😂 Dropping to the @indievc mailing list Friday…