Keep the thesis in mind. ‘Writers must […] constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it?’
Posts in "links"
Employee optimism about work-place productivity
Employees think working from home is fine:
Hybrid work has moved from novelty to normality, but employers and employees are no longer aligned on what it should look like. More than half of employees (56%) now work in the office full-time, yet only 15% would choose this pattern, with three-quarters (75%) preferring a more balanced approach.
This widening gap signals that organizations face a choice: continue to rely on presence-led models or shift toward purpose-led ones.
Related to your interests, Wednesday
More than 20% of videos shown to new YouTube users are ‘AI slop’, study finds - “Together, these AI slop channels have amassed more than 63bn views and 221 million subscribers, generating about $117m (£90m) in revenue each year, according to estimates.” // Assuming The Algorithm" is working (showing people things they will watch and they verify this by watching more), this is some revealed preference in action. “I think of Trumpian policy, first and foremost, as elevating cultural policy above all else.
While Finland and Sweden consistently rank at the top of the happiness league table, for example, both countries have also persistently experienced some of the highest suicide rates in the European Union, ranking in the top five EU countries according to one recent statistic.
Weird-ass sounds from Russell's Dig
Also, see parts two, three, and four.
AI generated ads are more effective, but people don't like them.
Study finds that AI generated ads are more effective, but people don’t like them.
Some good old revealed preference.
The 🤖 says:
Ads fully created by visual genAI achieved about a 19% higher click-through rate than human-created ads. However, when ads disclosed that they were generated using AI, click-through rates dropped by about 32% relative to human-created ads.
🔗 Paper: The Impact of Visual Generative AI on Advertising Effectiveness by Hyesoo Lee, Vilma Todri, Panagiotis Adamopoulos, Anindya Ghose
Good actionable pondering on coming up titles that people will click on and word-of-mouth spread.
Full on management-by-magazine phase in effect
Executive mandates are racing ahead of reality. Boards and CEOs often expect payback in 6–12 months, but disconnected strategies, messy data, and immature governance stall progress. While two-thirds of AI decision-makers say their organization uses genAI in production, only 15% report a positive impact on earnings, and just a third can link AI spend to profit and loss. Confidence in ROI is dropping, as well: In late 2024, 81% of firms reported 5% or greater ROI; by mid-2025, that fell to 62%!
Relevant to your interests on Monday
Don’t let having an opinion and knowing what you like (being a critic in the classical sense) ruin your enjoyment of everything in life. Yet another cross-platform graphical process/system monitor, bottom. They travel with a knife-sharpener. Smart Tool Selection: Achieving 34-64% Token Savings with Spring AI’s Dynamic Tool Discovery People are often the largest part of an ROI sudy. Abby Bangser’s keynote at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2025. Check out Tyler’s theory of interview podcasts at the end.
“Oracle’s predicament is more acute than the hyperscalers’. Its business is smaller, its pockets shallower and its lot hitched more tightly to the fate of a single customer, OpenAI, which accounts for over half its $500bn in pledged revenue.”