I had no idea what “mad magazine autostereogram, cutecore” meant, but it was enough for Midjourney to create this:
Older generations have always been left out of the codewords and trends of the makers of pop culture, but the gatekeepers and lack of shelf space kept pop, popular. There are only 40 songs in the Top 40, only a few hit network TV shows.
Three things have changed:
The long tail means that there’s room for more. Always. As many as 25% of all Spotify songs have only been listened to a few times. The average video on YouTube is seen once a day.
AI generation of art, music, video and writing means that the pace of creation is going to grow exponentially.
Memetic identities, genres and codewords are easier for AI to begin with than complex images. And so, new genres multiply, get exaggerated, evolve and morph into new genres. It’s genetic material, run amok.
The end result is that pop is not popular anymore. It may never be again. The center was a moment in time, but the edges are now everywhere.
When we encounter a thoughtful critic, we need to quickly understand who is speaking to us.
If the work we made was intended for someone just like this, and they don’t like it, we need to do a better job next time. The criticism will help us understand how to improve.
But if the work we made wasn’t for someone with the hopes, needs and expectations of the person we’re hearing from, we can forgive ourselves (and them) by acknowledging who it’s for and why.
This is not the same as not working very hard. In fact, they’re very different.
We’ve been indoctrinated to avoid trying hard (too risky and emotionally fraught) and to resign ourselves to working hard (held up as a virtue).
People who work in productivity-focused jobs where they follow the manual work very hard. If you buy a Subway franchise, you’re buying years of hard work–the more hours you put in, the better your profits. If you work on an assembly line–making chocolate or writing code–the boss pushes you to work harder and harder.
On the other hand, there are projects where the outcomes are less certain and where the manual isn’t as complete. In these sorts of projects, we need to use our judgment and insight. We do things that might not work. There are few prizes for longer work, but plenty of upside for better work.
We’re surrounded by businesses staffed by hard-working people who have been trained to not try very hard. So they stick with the policy and avoid innovation, customer delight and connection.
Ironically, when it’s our turn to be the customer, we often seek out precisely the opposite. Humans are drawn to folks who care enough to try a bit harder.
Left alone, a cup of coffee will gradually cool until it reaches room temperature.
Stable systems regress to the mean. Things level out on their way to average, which maintains the stability of the system.
The same pressures are put on any individual in our culture.
Sooner or later, unless you push back, you’ll end up at room temperature.
(As I write this, the built-in grammar tool has made suggestions to every single sentence, pushing to make it sound less like me and more like normal.)
Here’s a useful writing breakthrough that has made a difference for me…
Set up an account at ElevenLabs. Create a custom voice by uploading some recordings of yourself speaking. It’s not perfect, but it’s eerily close.
Now, when writing an essay, a book or even a report for work, upload the text and have the site convert it to your voice. Download it to your phone and listen to the audiobook you just made as you walk around town or go for a drive.
You’ll probably notice things that didn’t come through when you were trying to edit your own work on the screen.
It’s also a useful hack for anyone writing a screenplay or dialogue. And perhaps it will be helpful for you in converting and then listening to documents that others have written.
Reading is a miracle, but our brains listen differently–especially to our own voice.
You’ll need to fix errors in the code. Adjust errors in measurement. Deal with changing conditions. Perhaps there are systems effects no one could have predicted.
If we begin a project with the high school mindset of getting a good grade (and avoiding the red check), then not only won’t we be eager to find bugs, we’re less likely to invest in projects that might not lead to flawless results.
On the other hand, if we accept that bugs are a useful part of the process, we’re much more likely to end up with a useful result.
“I’m done,” is not nearly as useful as, “this milestone has been reached, let’s go find some bugs.”
The work isn’t to pretend there are no bugs. The work is to eagerly seek out the most important ones.
Those are harsh words. They imply agency, responsibility and failure.
The response might be, “I did everything I was supposed to do.” Or perhaps, “What should I have done? I followed all the instructions.”
Agency and freedom go together. We have more choices than we want to admit. When Ahab decided to become a whaling captain, everything that happened after that was related to his initial choice.
What do we make? The answer is simple: choices.
Owning our choices is a celebration of our future agency. You don’t get yesterday over again, but you do get to make new choices tomorrow.
Even though yeast is far more reliable than it used to be, many bakers still proof it before investing the time and materials to bake a loaf of bread. The extra few minutes waiting for it to bloom is cheap insurance to avoid a failed loaf a day later.
If you need to be sure there are no pits in your chopped dates, it makes sense to avoid mechanically de-pitted fruit. Every single date has exactly one pit, and if you find it yourself, you’ll know you found it.
We can’t do every task ourselves, and we can’t test every raw material, particularly if it’s a destructive test like whether or not this glass is tempered.
The math is simple, but easy to avoid: What are the chances that the component in question might fail, multiplied by the cost to the project if it does. Compare this to the cost of the test and you’ll know what to do.
In my experience, we focus on the easy tests, without thinking hard about the real costs. Three shortcuts to avoid: Tradition, proximity to failure and the vividness of the rare cataclysm.
Traditional tests might distract us from the checks we ought to be doing.
Proximity to failure puts our focus on things at the end of the process as opposed to thinking hard about the underlying components and system failure.
And vivid failures are failures that get our attention, but loud and urgent aren’t the same as important and useful.
January 7, 2026
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