Latest
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AI News #151: Week Ending August 21, 2026 with 35 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s cover theme was inspired by a recent stay at the InterContinental Hotel in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile. My window looked out on the backs of the heads of three sculptures of warriors, most likely created by Leon Hermant’s studio a few blocks away. They’re made of Indiana limestone…
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AI News #150: Week Ending August 14, 2026 with 51 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s cover theme and humanities readings were inspired by a major life achievement this week, when I completed the single item on my bucket list: climbing to the top of Grand Traverse Peak outside of Vail, Colorado. When I was 19, I was a ski bum in Vail, and at…
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AI News #149: Week Ending August 07, 2026 with 37 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s cover theme and humanities readings were inspired by Wendell Berry, who was born on August 5th. I’m behind on my newsletter by nine weeks, so I know that he also died on August 31st. Given his importance as a poet, I decided to go with his birthday landing in…
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AI News #148: Week Ending July 31, 2026 with 53 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s covers are inspired by Kavinsky, who died on July 28th, 2026, three days before his 51st birthday. He was born July 31st, 1975. Both his birth and his death fall inside this week’s window. He is most famous for the song “Nightcall,” which was used in the opening credits…
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AI News #147: Week Ending July 24, 2026 with 34 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s covers are inspired by George Clinton, whose birthday is July 22nd. He represents a most human style of creativity with the psychedelic art of Parliament and Funkadelic album covers. The main cover is inspired by “What Is Soul,” a 1970 Funkadelic song where Clinton says soul is a ham…
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AI News #146: Week Ending July 17, 2026 with 46 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers The covers this week are inspired by Plas Johnson, who played the breathy tenor sax in Henry Mancini’s The Pink Panther Theme. It’s a uniquely human song with a sly lag behind the beat. Legend has it it was recorded in two takes, and the entire session band applauded, even the…
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AI News #145: Week Ending July 10, 2026 with 48 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers An actual real life White Barn hand soap called Crisp Morning Air inspired this week’s cover. The names and smells of these soaps are hilarious and existential. I used the red font from Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simulation, which I believe is Garamond, for the title text. These soaps are out of…
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AI News #143: Week Ending June 26, 2026 with 24 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers Today’s cover is a departure from my normal AI images. I went old school and took a June photo of the beach, put it into Photoshop, and added text. I used to do “film photography”, and I worked with wedding photographers. In the ’90s, I have vivid memories of being screamed…
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AI News #142: Week Ending June 19, 2026 with 28 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s cover is a nod to Anthropic’s frontier model Fable, and it is based on the classic illustration for Aesop’s Fables, drawn by Milo Winter, a spectacular illustrator in the early 20th century. In the original artwork, a child sits in a tree surrounded by animals. I changed the kid…
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AI News #124: Week Ending February 13, 2026 with 35 Executive Summaries
About This Week’s Covers This week’s cover image celebrates my winter offline hobby of floating in the freezing cold bay for ten minutes at sunset every Sunday from Thanksgiving through the start of Daylight Saving Time. The cover is an image I took during my February 1st bay bath. I spent ten minutes in 28.8°…
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Vail YOLO Adventure Part II: Reuniting with the Gore Range and Sending Off My Daughter 30 Years Later
In January 1994, my sophomore college roommate, Caleb, and I bought one way tickets to Vail Colorado, on a mission to be ski bums. We each had a suitcase, skis, and $300 in cash. No cell phones. No internet. No job. No house. No plan. Table of Contents You can read the first part here:…
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My YOLO Vail Story – 19 Years Old With a One Way Ticket and No Plan
Table of Contents In January 1994, my sophomore college roommate, Caleb, and I bought one way tickets to Vail Colorado, on a mission to be ski bums. We each had a suitcase, skis, and $300 in cash. No cell phones. No internet. No job. No house. No plan. There wasn’t much to research in advance,…
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My friend Mike’s gift of love
When my dad died, I had to decide how I felt about death. To have my friend Mike call me the next day, and ask me to walk with him for the next three years as he approached death was a big challenge, because I was at a very dark point. Mike didn’t want me…
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Eulogy for Michael Bernstein, my buddy
Eulogy for Michael Bernstein, my buddy Wednesday July 2, 2025Central SynagogueNew York, NY GREETINGS Daph, Allie, Theo, Jana, Seth, Marsha..… Family and friends. Mike asked me to share a bit about who he was when he was younger. I met Mike our first semester in college. It was 1992. We were 18 years old. FRESHMAN…
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AI News #89: Week Ending June 13, 2025 with 33 Executive Summaries, Top 45 Links, and 7 Helpful Visuals
About This Week’s Covers This week’s newsletter category covers honor the passing of musical great Brian Wilson. Beyond music, Brian had an exceptionally tough life and I admire him as an incredibly gentle soul. Since Brian was such a big part of The Beach Boys, I asked GPT-o3 to create a rubric I could use…
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AI News #86: Week Ending May 23, 2025 with 18 Executive Summaries, Top 93 Links, and 12 Helpful Visuals
About This Week’s Covers This week’s covers celebrate my great friend Mike Bernstein, who introduced me to the Beastie Boys’ album “Paul’s Boutique” many years ago. I asked GPT-o3 to create a rubric I could use for batch producing derivative newsletter covers in the spirit of the Paul’s Boutique album cover. The main cover is…
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AI News #85: Week Ending May 16, 2025 with 25 Executive Summaries, Top 56 Links, and 10 Helpful Visuals
About This Week’s Covers This week’s covers are in honor of my great friend John Bayalis, who is an incredible painter, photographer, and New Order fanatic. A few years ago, John decided to paint all 64 official Joy Division and New Order releases on 3×3 inch canvases. I’m thankful to be the caretaker of more…
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AI News #82: Week Ending April 25, 2025 with 35 Executive Summaries, Top 67 Links, and 2 Helpful Visuals
About This Week’s Covers This week’s cover is a tribute to the 35th anniversary of Public Enemy’s classic album, “Fear of a Black Planet.” To make it relevant to artificial intelligence, I changed the theme to fear of the paper clip maximizer. The paper clip maximizer is a popular ethical warning where an innocent request…
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Always be kind. To everyone.
A reminder that you never know who you’re meeting. Fourteen years ago today, I presented at a conference with Sam Altman and John Battelle. Of everyone there, Sam was the nicest to me. He genuinely asked me questions and was kind. Everyone else was too cool for school. As the saying goes, ‘People only remember…
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Billie Eilish – Bag Guy
It’s the weekend. Normalize sharing fun things with your professional network. When I was at American Eagle Outfitters, I took a Strengths-Based Leadership test. I got the highest score in the company in creativity. In this case, creativity implies free association, not artistry or talent. Sounds cool, but this trait has been a colossal pain…
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Handmade memes had a posse
Back in the 90s, I used to make and trade stickers with Shepard Fairey before he founded OBEY Clothing. This is an old one my friend Tom found last week. I made it in honor of Swarthmore College president Al Bloom. These stickers ended up all over the world. Before people shared memes on the…
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Apple is pulling a Braveheart and can change the way we use phones whenever they choose
Update: Dec 15, 2024Making onscreen content available to Siri and Apple Intelligence | Apple Developer Documentationhttps://developer.apple.com/documentation/appintents/making-onscreen-content-available-to-siri-and-apple-intelligence I believe Apple is purposefully slowing their AI releases because the impacts would be too disruptive. Apple is sitting on a Large Action Model that could “use your phone for you”. It could use apps, navigate interfaces, and take…
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The AI Future: Exploring the Adjacent Possible with Emerging AI Solutions
I’m excited to have written an article in the latest issue of Delaware Lawyer magazine. It addition to forcing me to put ideas to paper, it was a fun opportunity to shout out Jeremiah Owyang, Alan D. Thompson, and Ethan Mollick in print. I wrote the piece in November with a Thanksgiving deadline. The issue came…
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Return to the Shawnee golf course 37 years after a lifetime ban
I was kicked off the Shawnee Country Club golf course 37 years ago. I was 15 years old. I didn’t play much golf and had only walked the course before. My friends told me that we should rent carts because you did not have to be 16. I thought this was an awesome idea, so…
