2026-03-02 18:03:00
Popular is easy to measure. Good, not so much.
Setting out to make something popular requires only a focus on the crowd and on the moment. Most pop music is popular simply because that’s what it was built to do.
Good work can be good without being popular. And so the two goals aren’t easily aligned.
It helps to begin by becoming comfortable with what good feels like to you. Because conflating it with popular is a trap.
2026-03-02 05:09:36
After playing 498 days in a row, my score today in Bongo was the second-highest in the world:
There’s a difference between casual online games that have a right answer, and those that are open-ended.
In crossword puzzles and most of the games from the Times (like Wordle and Connections) you’re trying to guess what the puzzle constructor had in mind. This can lead to frustration, because the idiosyncratic nature of inventing clues and answers means that you might not be in sync with the person at the other end. They’re inherently closed systems.
Bongo, on the other hand, is generative and combinatorial. There are bazillions of possible right answers, and your goal is to find a right answer that’s worth more points than anyone else’s. It doesn’t matter that I invented the game, I have no advantage over everyone else, because we all begin with the same tiles.
For me, open-ended games are time well spent. Have fun.
2026-03-01 18:03:00
It’s not slop because it was created by an AI. It’s slop because it’s slop.
I just read the first two pages of a sci-fi novel on my Kindle. The author proudly proclaims that the 400-page book was created without any AI whatsoever. Alas, the book is slop. The writing is overwrought and the dialogue is banal. If a page isn’t worth writing, it’s unlikely a chapter is.
Slop happens when a marketer who should know better stops trying. It’s when we prioritize volume over impact. If we measure the cost of what we create instead of its value, it’s likely we’ll end up with slop.
AI makes this easier, no doubt. But it pays to focus on avoiding slop, not in worrying how the slop is made.
The question is now, “Who approved this?” not “who made this?”
2026-02-28 18:03:00
Pundits are saying that Netflix “lost” the bidding for Warner.
Actually, they won. They didn’t just win because they got a nearly $3 billion breakup fee.
They won because in just about every contentious public auction, the winner is the one who is willing to overpay the most.
The best way to win a bidding war is to not bid.
2026-02-27 18:03:00
Orson Welles may have said, “Nobody gets justice. People only get good luck or bad luck.”
I think it’s more productive to imagine that “Justice is how society deals with luck.”
Good and bad.
