The Links
Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs - “The results revealed a troubling paradox. Workers who were more susceptible to corporate BS rated their supervisors as more charismatic and ‘visionary,’ but also displayed lower scores on a portion of the study that tested analytic thinking, cognitive reflection and fluid intelligence. Those more receptive to corporate BS also scored significantly worse on a test of effective workplace decision-making.” But, the others are more cynical and, I would guess, more grumpy: “The study found that being more receptive to corporate bullshit was also positively linked to job satisfaction and feeling inspired by company mission statements. Moreover, those who were more likely to fall for corporate BS were also more likely to spread it.” // Related: (PDF) The Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale: Development, validation, and associations with workplace outcomes.
The Brand Age - Brand is a strong lock-in, both for the buyer and as a constraint on the seller. Example: Claude seems more moral and clean, OpenAI is icky like Facebook. Both are the same in cost and utility. Once a company finds its competitive advantage via brand (loyalty to both brand and function - Nike shoes, Apple), the switching costs for both functionally and psychologically for buyers is tough. But, the seller is trapped in that constraint as well: they have to keep delivering what the customer wants. That’s some classic innovator’s dilemma.
HR may have to cajole employees to use AI - My read of this kind of thing is that enterprises are struggling to find uses for AI in day-to-day work. Programming is the exception. // “The enterprise whisperer says that its July 2025 survey of nearly 3,000 employees showed that 46 percent of managers are experimenting with AI to improve their work, compared to just 26 percent of employees.” // Once you find a good use for a new technology, and a good form-factor, it will spread virally in your organization. You have to focus on finding those uses, on setting up the policy, the platform, and the “system” to allow for that exploration and discovery. Instead of focusing on training and org - stuff so much - the human, “culture” stuff - focus on putting in place an environment where diffusion can happen.
Related: Deloitte’s State of AI 2026: Why Enterprise Execution Is Falling Behind Adoption - “most companies have focused on training rather than restructuring how work gets done. This means that employees are being educated about how to use tools without actually reworking how work gets done using these tools.”
Why Europe Doesn’t Have a Tesla - Fired CEOs are infamous for getting huge golden parachute packages, millions when they get fired. What if every employee also had a golden parachute? Good enough for the goose, good enough for the gander. Econ-Growth hogs be hatin’, tho.
The Software Development Lifecycle Is Dead - What if the robot does everything? // From the same author: How I Use Claude Code.
🤖: Rethinking Sovereign AI as Strategy - India’s AI summit pushed hard on domestically developed models and national compute capacity, but the article argues full AI sovereignty is economically impractical for most countries. Better to selectively own, control, or partner based on strategic necessity rather than chasing complete independence.
The Song of LinkedIn - Good satire that shows you how to write a LinkedIn post.
ZIP Code First - This is how most address forms in the Netherlands work. It’s pretty magical.
Wastebook
“The Calvinist-adjacent aversion to conspicuous branding.” Claude on Hunkemöller versus Victoria’s Secret.
“There is unlimited potential value in a markdown file that argues cases in court” JasonJ.
“The rare agent post that reads like a system, not a seance.” Comment.
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I am getting some real applied learning on applying agentic to enterprise-y things that are not programming. It is amazing with the right rig.