Art credit @Madison Harney
Spark of the Week
Having an interesting few weeks where I am trying to distill some thinking into a set of 2026 goals and intentions while somehow managing to expand all the things I'm thinking about and processing instead. I guess that is the nature of the type of busy that happens in December where you are both doing more AND falling further behind -- and this from a woman who no longer has any additional school obligations.
These are also weeks of me searching even more broadly for context from my rabbit hole into The Whole Earth Catalog to my reading of the 1929 book, I suspect I'm looking for hope and meaning in addition to my broader intentions of finding the best path forward. As we wrap up 2025, the year that told unprecedented to hold my beer, we see that it worked out pretty much as we feared and yet we are still here. Holding on and moving forward trying to find our way in this awkward messy middle space where we have no choice but to just keep swimming.
To everyone who is doing their best to find joy, show kindness, admire out loud and do good in the world, I see you, I appreciate you and I want to tell you that it makes a difference. Thank you - it's you I like and you are why I believe in us.
Reading and Pondering
AI eats the world - “just” software vs. AI (slides here)
Home Insurance rising 16% over the next two years
Adolescence lasts until your 30s (brain development stages are 0-9, 9-32, 32-66, 66-83, 83+ )
AI self awareness index (yes it’s a thing and yes, they think [know] they are smarter than you)
Hong Kong fires - having just spent a few days in HKG this feels especially awful. The one thing you learn when you visit is how big of a problem housing is there, so this isn’t only grief for the suffering of many lives lost, but also for the obvious additional hardships for everyone who lost housing.
Whole Earth Catalog rabbit hole.
Fossil fuel use expanding for AI – Meg POV: this is predictable AND terrible.
Power infra buildout not mathing - On the current plans something has to give - we are NOT going to have enough power to meet our AI demand. This is going to have some side consequences - my guess is that this will produce rationing of sorts and given our current policy trajectory I would expect that we as consumers of electricity will be the ones who feel this the most. Of course, there will also be innovation breakthroughs based on constraints and that will smooth things out in the long run but in the short term it’s clear things are going to be less than ideal. Might be a good time to re-evaluate the ROI of a solar investment for your home.
AI adoption and high performing teams - DORA report here - h/t Rob Zuber (This bit in the exec summary is the big point IMHO and this is not just for tech adoption “The greatest returns on AI investment come not from the tools themselves, but from a strategic focus on the underlying organizational system: the quality of the internal platform, the clarity of workflows, and the alignment of teams. Without this foundation, AI creates localized pockets of productivity that are often lost to downstream chaos."
A good summary of the AI circular economy - Meg Note: When it gets this hard to explain/hold in your head, the issue is bigger than a cockroach - I am going to adopt the “extreme financialization” language. The tl:dr on the risk side is this quote “When a bunch of highly leveraged loans go bad at the same time, the fallout can spread throughout the financial system and trigger a major recession.” - you already know this but somehow you (and I and everyone else) are hoping to be wrong. WE ARE NOT WRONG. Every economic crisis/crash starts with a single plot point - being over leveraged. I remind myself that it all seems like a localized/contained issue and then Iceland goes bankrupt.
UBI and crime (Scott Santens breaks down the Finland experiment and refutes Elon and Noahpinion blog )
Hype your friends - solid take - Meg POV: #AdmireOutLoud.
Work and Jobs
MIT Job report (Iceburg Index)- AI can do 11% of work, 70% jobs will have task shifts (read this as a floodmap vs. a prediction tool)
Startup shifts and the SF scene (Meg POV: This is clearly an oversimplification framing with an assumption that the only good option is a 1-person startup, but it does hold some interesting insights into how the tech scene in SF is evolving/changing).
CHRO turnover is high
Women CEOs 2x more likely to be activist targets
Enshittification and P(catastrophe)
This one is a two-fer. Robots that can crush your skull and the new whistleblower risk. Meg POV: I would like to remind our future robot overlords I wish them nothing but success
Social media - where the US political divide is monetized and amplified by non-US rage farms.
College participation shifts (tl;dr older adults and men’s participation declining - especially white men) h/t Gad Levanon
DEI crackdown on college enrollment is hurting [white] men
US Congress are outstanding stock pickers...
AI company says “don’t look at the people behind the curtain”.
Fun and Funny
This one hits just a bit too close (agile methodology.)
AI images when you recursively re-run the prompt (reminded me of this which is still one of my favorites)
Looping Back to You
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** Typos and poor grammar either because I'm too lazy to edit properly, or to make you feel confident this was written by a flawed human and not AI generated.
