Two theories of the AI investor spook-out

Concerns are growing that AI-generated applications could disrupt existing software companies, leading to significant drops in market value for tech stocks, particularly following major announcements from firms like Anthropic and Amazon.

Relative to your interests, Friday

Enterprise AI reality checks everywhere: no more free lunches, Copilot productivity gaps, agent sprawl, usage control, and OSS maintainers drowning in AI slop. Also: Kubernetes + Greenplum, MCP auth that finally works, EA’s quiet resurgence, AI prompts-as-infra, propaganda via images, and yes, a Chicken McNugget futures market.

Two leading thinkers of the 18th century, the French philosopher Montesquieu and the Scottish political economist Adam Smith, argued that world trade promoted peace and harmony because it advanced mutual interest and interdependency.

Yes, but:

Beckert emphasizes how capitalism has depended at every stage of its development on the military power of the modern state and frequently on practices of extreme violence, such as the outright terror required to build the Atlantic system of slavery.

🔗 Book Review: ‘Capitalism,’ by Sven Beckert, NY Times

one of the values of Pair Programming is that you have to regularly explain things to your pair. This is an important part of learning - for the person doing the explaining. After all one of the best ways to learn something is to try to teach it.

🔗 Fragments: February 4

The broader lesson extends beyond music. When outcomes worsen, we are tempted to regulate expression rather than confront underlying issues. School bans, censorship campaigns and moral lectures target what is easiest to see. But culture, more often than not, is a lagging indicator—not a driver—of economic life.

If hip hop had never existed, the trajectory of the communities most exposed to it would have remained the same. Silencing the music wouldn’t have created jobs, stabilized families or reduced violence. If we want gentler lyrics, we should solve the problems they describe.

Every generation thinks the music The Kids listen to is corrupting society. Of course, it never is. And usually it’s doing the opposite.

Relative to your interests, Tuesday

OpenAI’s Codex taking aim at Claude Code, plus growing global pushback against U.S. tech - with Europe flirting with the kill switch. And a spicy take on AWS’s future: when developers don’t choose the cloud, AI tools do.