Business communication is broken.

We send so much time talking and writing (emails, text messages, Slack and Teams, etc.) but we don’t really communicate; we don’t transfer information.

How do we solve this?

Through tech?

We’ve kind of tried that.

First, we revolutionized written communication with email, by removing the friction of wait times with instant delivery. Then, when email inboxes got clogged up, we rolled instant messengers for the workplace, such as Slack and Teams.

The good news: Our email inboxes had fewer messages. The bad news: Now we have another communication tool to manage and lose track of information in.

What about institutional knowledge and knowledge transfer? No problem, we have knowledge management tools like Confluence to help out.

But wait, there’s more!

If the prophets of AI have their way, soon human-written communication will be obsolete because you’ll be able to lean on generative AI tools like large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT to articulate just what you need with wordy and meandering walls of text no one wants to read. All that’s required of you is to write the perfect promote that lays out exactly what you want.

With the help of AI, we can outsource sincerity!

That last point bring me back to the theme of this post: we suck at communication. And I don’t think technology holds the key to solving our communication woes.

Is it crazy to think that maybe the problem is more basic? What if the best time to solve business communication headaches was 20, 30, 40, maybe even 50 years ago–when today’s office workers started school?

The secret is out: school doesn’t teach students how to think or solve problems so much as it teaches students how to pass standardized tests.

NOTE: I don’t blame teachers for the failings of the education system. Metrics such as test scores are used as metaphorical guns to their heads. 😭🔫 Teachers don’t create the curricula; they merely execute the plan.

When it comes to writing for school, word count is emphasized more than efficiently making a coherent point.

What qualifies as creativity?

How much work does one need to put into something before he can consider himself creative? How much of creativity can be automated or outsourced before it becomes something else entirely?

Hiring someone on Fiverr to design your logo isn’t considered a creative act. (We call such practice ‘delegating’.)

So why should the act of telling a computer to design that same logo ever be considered creative?

You could argue that an artist using an iPad isn’t as creative as the artist using a sketchbook. You could say the same about a writer who uses a laptop versus the writer who uses pen and paper.

But in both cases–the artist using an iPad, and the writer using a laptop–a human is still very much involved. But it’s harder to say the same about the person who uses generative AI to make something.

Where’s that line, and what point have we crossed it?

On this blog, I recently made the case for why writers should kill more trees.

That sentiment doesn’t apply only to writers. It applies to artists too. Drawers. Sketchers. Whoever.

Art can connect. Art can heal. Art can save.

So we need more of it. And we need it fast.

Now.

Yesterday.

Sure, you might feel bad about the cost of making more art: All those dead trees. But remember that any tree you spare is destined to be part of someone else’s TPS report.

We’re on the fast track to THE END.

Or, so some people will tell you. Especially after the latest American presidential election.

(To be fair, we’d be hearing the same if the other candidate had won. We’d just be hearing it from the other half of the country–and maybe even the other half of the world.)

For the sake of this post, let’s pass on the idea of calming such fears. Let’s accept them as inevitable fact.

Okay, so now what?

Might as well enjoy the ride, I say.

What kind of apocalypse-inspired art can we make?

Might as well lean in. But make sure you do so in a way that adds no extra pain to the world.

If you can’t make the world a better place, the least you can do is focus on not making the world any worse. Such thoughtfulness should count for something.

If the end is inevitable and none of this matters anyway (there’s that nihilism creeping up again!), then I want to do what I can to live and die with a genuine smile on my face.

I hope I can only be so lucky as to find myself on my deathbed, looking back and turning to that nurse who wishes I’d hurry up and die so that she can go home–and then, when she thinks I’m starting my death rattle, I turn to her and I say I made some bombass art, skipper. I wrote a bunch of blog posts and I drew a bunch of sketches and I took a bunch of pictures. And no one gave a damn. But they were all mine.

Only then do I croak and catch a ride on the Grim Reaper’s boat.

The world can’t stop us from leaving with a raised metaphorical middle finger.

I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall by Zeke Faux. The subtitle tells it all: The book is about the craziness that was the first crypto bubble. (As Bitcoin’s price hovers around $70,000, another bubble appears raring to pop.)

One of the more interesting parts of the book was Sam Bankman-Fried’s perspective of effective altruism.

The Centre for Effective Altruism summarizes effective altruism as:

Effective altruism is the use of evidence and reason in search of the best ways of doing good.

– Source

Basically, effective altruism argues that you should pursue action that creates the most benefit to the most people. Becoming a billionaire is fine if you’re giving your money away or using it in a way that helps the needy. It’s okay to be a power-hungry egomaniac as long as you can cancel those traits out with generosity.

This delusion empowered Sam Bankman-Fried, the co-founder of Alameda Research and CEO of FTX, to justify the creation of what became history’s largest Ponzi scheme. The ends justified the means, if he could give away some of his wealth to help others. The short-term considerations of ethics didn’t matter nearly as much as the long-term gains from the potential results.

For the sake of this blog post, let’s ignore the obvious possibility that everything Sam Bankman-Fried said was a lie, a distraction from the disastrous investment bubble he helped create. Let’s take his views in good faith.

Bankman-Fried acted on the assumption of bad math. He looked only at results when doing his effective altruism math. But he fudged a couple other variables in his calculations: possibility and probability.

There was a possibility he’d pull off his grand ambitions and that it wouldn’t all blow up in his face. But probability said he’d likely be unable to pull it off. Bankman-Fried leaned heavily on possibility (the potential success tells what was possible) while ignoring or downplaying probability–the likelihood that regulators would investigate his companies and reveal a house of cards.

Every day humans perform imperfect math, though we may be unaware. Every time you get on the road, your chances of dying in a car accident increase. But if you’re unwilling to drive to work, there’s a very real probability you’ll lose your job. Even if you never explicitly articulate this point, you’ve calculated that the end result is worth the risk. Maybe you’re swayed by the fact that millions of other people make the same decision every week day.

Math isn’t my specialty. At best, I was a C math student in high school. But I can’t deny the non-mathematical math we all perform every day. Sadly, there are other types of math we willingly ignore.

Too often, people want to live their lives in binary.

Never give up.

Follow your passion.

But sometimes giving up is the best thing you can do, because doing so frees you up for better opportunities. (That’s the whole point of The Dip by Seth Godin.)

Scott Galloway echoes again and again that most of us shouldn’t follow our passions. A better option is to become passionate about what you’re good at.

Parroting platitudes seems to make life easier, but it tends to lead to time wasted on misguided endeavors.

A life well-lived involves some form of calculation. Let’s make sure we’re calculating the models worth considering.

If I were a single-issue voter in 2024, I’d vote solely on how I felt the presidential candidates would handle antitrust cases against Big Tech, not because I think tech antitrust is America’s greatest issue but because it’s one of the few issues we have long-overdue positive momentum on.

Back in August, the Department of Justice (DOJ) scored a win when Google was declared an illegal monopolist on search. The world is still waiting for a ruling on remedies, which could call for fines or the complete breakup of Google.

If you’re hoping to see Google broken up, there are reasons for concern. Donors are pressuring Kamala Harris to replace Lena Khan as head of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Khan has challenged Big Tech every chance she’s gotten, and a few billionaires would love nothing more than to see her on the unemployment line. As of this writing, Harris has failed to voice support of Khan, so I’m not feeling too great about maintaining this momentum against Big Tech if Harris is the next president of the United States of America.

But what about Donald Trump?

On a recent episode of The Tim Dillon Show, JD Vance (Trump’s running mate) said he thought Google should be broken up. Vance also claimed the suit against Google started under the Trump administration, a claim I’m not so sure about–but it’s interesting to hear the crypto bro push the narrative, whether it’s true or not.

NOTE: I’m not trying to call Vance a liar, but I couldn’t find evidence the suit started under the Trump administration with a quick Google search. (Oh, the irony.) If you have a source to verify Vance’s claim, please send it to me.

Vance’s remarks first gave me reason to think there’s a chance the heat may stay on Big Tech if Trump wins the election. That’s more than I can say for Harris, who is known as being friendly with Big Tech.

But . . .

You can’t ignore the drama of the Washington Post’s refusal to endorse either presidential candidate, an order which appears to have come from Jeff Bezos himself. Bezos claims it’s purely coincidence that executives of Blue Ocean had recently met with Trump. I’ll let you decide how to feel about that.

The Washington Post was expected to endorse Harris, so you can’t blame people for thinking something smells fishy. The LA Times also refused to endorse either candidate, but I’m unsure if their refusal was due to any ties with Big Tech. Even though Bezos is ‘officially’ retired from Amazon, I imagine most of his wealth is still tied up in the company he founded, so he’s obviously still interested in its continued success.

Is letting a breakup of Google go through as good as it gets under a Trump presidency? Worse yet, is it possible Vance truly feels Google should be broken up but Trump may disagree or may simply have other concerns? The possibility of a presidential administration killing such momentum echoes the antitrust case against Microsoft in the late ’90s, when the incoming Bush administration declined to pursue a breakup of the tech monopolist and instead let the company walk away with some fines and restrictions which eventually expired.

Depending on your politics, you may have your own reasons to be excited for either candidate. The point of this post is not to be overly political, though it is political in nature. The point is to look at the politics as they relate to tech. And when viewing the candidates purely from the lens of their effects on the tech industry, I’m unsure there’s reason to feel great about either option.

So many of us love tech yet have fallen out of love with the companies which comprise the tech industry.

But how can that be?

Data

We’re tired of tech companies exploiting our data.

‘If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product’ suggests you stop being a product once you start paying, but that’s not always true. Often, we’re paying to be the product as the tech companies mine and store our data. What are they doing with that data? What information is within that data? How secure is it? What happens to that data if the tech company shuts its doors?

Bricked products

Our tech products need to be separated from the companies themselves as much as possible. The tech companies should do as much as they can to limit the number of products that go offline if a tech vendor goes out of business.

For an example of what I mean, look at Fisker EVs, which are basically the largest and most expensive paperweights of all time, as they can’t be used now that the manufacturer has filed for bankruptcy. To make matters worse, the cars can’t even be ported to a new server.

This story shows one of the major flaws of SaaSification, as the SaaS model keeps tech products and services tied to the tech vendors.

DRM

DRM (digital rights management) via services like Kindle and Steam ensures you don’t own media–you own only a license with little recourse if that license is revoked by the other party. (The tech vendor can likely remove the licensed product from your gadget without your knowledge.)

Right to repair

The right to repair the products you buy is increasingly at risk.

Apple has a long history of fighting right to repair. Then they endorsed it. Then they backtracked.

Even farmers aren’t safe as John Deere made sure users couldn’t repair their tractors without going through the approved channels. Farmers appear to have the right to service their own equipment for the time being, but who knows how long that’ll last.

What are the implied rights of ownership? What rights do you enjoy, and which can you exercise?

These are only a few of the reasons people are now disenchanted with tech and are now skeptical of anything the industry is peddling.

At the end of the 20th century and early into the 21st, we fell in love with tech due to two chief promises: convenience and productivity.

On one hand, tech delivered in terms of convenience. But convenience didn’t benefit only the user. It also benefitted the tech companies as new services made it more convenient to spy on customers and extract and exploit their data. If anything, gathering all that data made it easier for the tech companies to inconvenience us with wave after wave of personalized distraction.

But did tech make us more productive? That claim is called into question by assertions that the tech revolution increased productivity by only 0.5%.

And don’t forget the promise of the cloud, which proposed simplifying operations by letting businesses outsource their tech infrastructure rather than maintaining it themselves. But more and more businesses are asking if the move off-site was worth it.

And now the tech industry insists we all need Generative AI. Don’t get left behind, they tell us, but it’s unclear what we’re missing out on by refusing to adopt their over hyped, half-baked ‘solutions’. Why should we trust tech when they say there’s something for us to gain? For the companies rushing out to fuse generative AI into their processes, what’s the total cost? What liabilities are they opening themselves up for? How will businesses stand out from their competitors while they’re all using the same technology?

This criticism is not a call for Ludditism. It’s not a call to go back to the ‘good old days’, back when mobile phones were in big bags and had to be plugged into your car’s cigarette lighter port and cost $4 a minute to use. This criticism is instead a plea for the tech industry to work harder to deliver on more of its promises and stop certain practices (like the misuse of our data), which make our relationship with tech so adversarial.

Not so long ago, tech was fun and exciting and full of such potential. But it now feels like an industry devoid of any good ideas.

In a clip that starts a recent episode of the podcast Tech Won’t Save Us, Sam Altman acknowledges generative AI’s Achilles’ heel: energy. Generative AI needs a ton of energy, at a time when tech companies are supposedly pushing to curb carbon emissions to address climate concerns. Seeing tech companies go all-in on generative AI when climate change very much remains a problem may seem like a disconnect, a misalignment of ideals and reality. But this disconnect isn’t a problem to Altman, because he sees the contradiction as a feature, not a bug. According to Altman, the energy needs of generative AI are just the thing that will push us to find a much-needed breakthrough in energy generation.

Because, you know, we weren’t properly motivated before generative AI hit the scene. Maybe tech will save us after all!

Altman’s assertion highlights a problem I have with the prophets of AI: they’re quick to tell us what they need for generative AI to succeed, but they can’t explain why we, the masses, need generative AI to succeed. The closest they come is when they tell us how artificial general intelligence (AGI) will benefit us.

But I have a couple of issues with such claims:

1. Despite what the hypemen tell us, we’re nowhere near reaching AGI.
2. If AGI replaces us, then we’re screwed, so I don’t want to help out if I have a choice.

Let’s focus on objection #1. We’re well beyond the point of selling generative AI on its potential. The technology is stalling, with no signs of significant gains anywhere on the horizon. So, when we promote generative AI, we must do so in terms of what it can do now, not what it can do in a future that may never come to be.

Let’s say we somehow find a way to cleanly increase our energy generation to a level that meets the needs of generative AI. This hypothetical new power source is plentiful and places no extra strain on our power infrastructure. Why the hell should generative AI be first in line for this new source of energy? Surely there must be better ways we could use the resulting energy.

How many areas of the world still don’t know firsthand the wonders of electricity? There must be other places where the extra energy could be used to produce something of value. Can’t that energy go toward enabling manufacturing or keeping critical infrastructure online during bad weather? Generative AI has value only for those who sell it. The technology offers little value to those paying to use it.

The prophets of AI act as if everyday people need generative AI to be successful, but only those invested in generative AI have such need. For the rest of us, generative AI is merely something which exists. Sure, it can make for a fun digital toy or two–but that’s the thing: when you account for generative AI’s hallucinations and its lack of reasoning skills, you realize its greatest use is as something you use to kill time. Okay, that’s not completely fair–generative AI is plenty useful if you want to spam and scam at scale. Scale is, after all, what generative AI can do better than humans. The only problem is that generative AI doesn’t scale anything worth a damn.

You can’t blame Altman for looking out for his investment. But we don’t have to validate his quest. Altman is full of shit. He has every right to be full of shit. And we have every right to ignore him when he speaks, something I hope more people in power will start doing soon.

Altman and his ilk are out of touch, and it’s obvious when they talk about how generative AI and AGI will make our lives better. The way they tell it, we’ll all have more time to sit around and ponder life’s biggest questions. Some, like Altman, will use this ‘inevitability’ to push for universal basic income (UBI). But technology alone won’t bring about the adoption of UBI, because UBI isn’t a technological problem; it’s a political problem.

Even the need for more energy for generative AI isn’t a purely technological problem. On one hand, it is, because we lack the technology to cleanly generate the needed extra energy. But, on the other hand, even if we were to solve the technological part, we’d soon run into the problem caused by a lack of investment in critical infrastructure. As Molly White has pointed out, tech alone can’t solve all our problems. Unfortunately, tech may in fact be the very thing keeping us from finding the solutions we desperately need.

Economic growth is a hell of a drug. But what do you do when the well’s run dry?

The American economic system is built around the assumption of growth. Our unofficial motto regarding the economy is If it ain’t growin’, it must be dyin’! Policy makers will jump through any hoops necessary to protect and ensure growth. Focusing on economic growth has been the American way since its founding, especially so in the decades after World War II. It’s served (at least some of) us well. But there’s one big problem with this model: the era of assumed economic growth is coming to an end.

At the end of World War II, America made the best deal in the history of deals. We told the rest of the world we’d protect the seas and enable trade routes on one condition: the rest of the world had to participate in our economic system. This proposal created the ultimate win-win scenario. The rest of the world got protected access to otherwise unavailable markets, and America got more of that international cold, hard cash. And, for 80 years or so, the world order was relatively stable, at least in comparison to the majority of world history.

But all good things must come to an end, and so here we find ourselves in a post-COVID world, as America is withdrawing from the world and isolating. Why are we doing this? Put simply, the world has gotten old. Baby Boomers are retiring and we don’t have enough young people to replace them. Old people don’t produce and they don’t consume at the same levels of young people. Old people instead sit in their retirement homes and clip coupons until it’s time for Senior Hour at the local Country Kitchen Buffet and then they scoot back home for bingo.

Building an economy around old people is a recipe for disaster. So, America is saying ‘Bye Felicia’ from the rest of the world and working to GTFO. Maybe I wouldn’t worry if I saw an alternate path. But growth is all we know. And we’re like that guy in the VIP section of the nightclub rising his head from the table, his nostrils and upper lip crusted with white dust, as we cry What do you mean there’s no more coke!?

We don’t appear to have a Plan B because we still talk about the economy in terms of growth. If we had another model of economic success, we’d have started using it by now–ya know, for the vibes.

A post-growth world means less opportunity to go around. What does this mean for those already struggling? And what happens when people unfamiliar with struggling now have no other choice? If you want to keep societies from rebelling and calling for heads to roll, your best bet is to give them everything they need to prosper economically. But what do you do when that’s no longer possible?

Every generation following the Baby Boomers has had to live in the shadow of Boomer expectations: get your diploma, get a job, bust your ass, prosper. The Boomer formula for success may have served a person well in 1965, but not so much in the 21st century. The game has changed and the goal posts are constantly moving with each financial crisis or recession, which brings me back to my main point: we must stop measuring success in terms of the old economy. The days of effectively 0% interest rates and assumed economic growth are over. Also, we failed to invest in critical infrastructure in the best of times because we were too busy chasing down that metaphorical economic cocaine; I doubt we’ll start investing in infrastructure now when capital is more costly with less return.

So what follows? What do we replace the old economic model with? How do we define and measure success going forward?

I won’t pretend to have the answer. I wish only we knew the powers that be were asking the same questions rather than focusing on chasing outdated metrics, which doesn’t feel like a SMART goal to me.

Jake LaCaze tries to play it cool, but these are the kinds of thoughts that keep him up at night.

21st-century living is complicated. But must it be?

When you look around you, it’s easy to feel as if complexity is a requirement of the modern world. Most workplaces run via series after series of overcomplicated processes. To ‘exist’ today requires an ever-growing number of online profiles. Life seems impressive only so long as it’s being continually pumped with more, more, MORE.

How did things get this way?

One problem seems to be who benefits from increased complexity. And most often, it’s the corporate overlords trying to satisfy the need for constant growth. How can you expect corporations to benefit from simplicity? The adage ‘Less is more’ may be true in regard to your quality of life, but when is less ever more in terms of corporate bottom lines? For the corporation to get more, you need more. And what better way to get more than from an entity that must grow, grow, GROW?

To hell with simplifying processes by reducing unneeded steps. The real answer is MORE: More software, more automation, more problems to one day be fixed.

The people who want to sell you more are quick to peddle their tech du jour: generative AI. Regardless of what the prophets of AI will tell you, generative AI doesn’t save time; it instead shifts where you spend your time, if you care about accurate work. Large language models (LLMs) often hallucinate, so you must double-check all their work, which negates any efficiency gains you’re hoping for. Sure, humans are fallible and capable of bullshit just like LLMs, but humans are not fallible and capable of bullshit at the same scale as LLMs and generative AI.

So many of the people pushing generative AI just want to get paid to play with tech for a living. And for them to do that, you need to complicate your life with this half-baked technology that doesn’t fix real problems.

Why unplug and focus on relationships that matter and provide value? Instead, choose MORE ‘friends’, MORE ‘connections’. The more complexity you can handle, the more capable a human being you are. The more PRODUCTIVE you are. But how capable, how productive, do you need to be? When is enough enough?

Simplicity makes life more manageable. Simplicity is sustainable. But simplicity is hard. It’s hard to see how you can simplify when complexity is all you know. And it’s hard when complexity is all your peers know. Are you sure you can do that? they might ask. What makes you think you know better?

But we all know this complexity is distracting and exhausting. And, it’s bullshit.

We feel it in our aching bones, in our tired eyes, in our foggy brains. We’re caught in a hamster wheel we can’t find the courage to jump off.

This complexity isn’t serving us. There’s so much pressure to add more to our lives, but we often get nothing out of it, other than more problems, more headaches, more distractions.

Jake LaCaze is getting old and has less time for bullshit these days.

Writing by hand is the best. There’s nothing like finding that perfect combination of pen and ink and paper.

That tactile feedback as your pen scratches across the page. The shimmer of the ink making your words shine. The joy of distraction-free creation. These are just a few reasons people fall in love with writing by hand.

But for some people, there’s one big problem with writing by hand: the practice requires the use of certain natural resources, like trees that are cut down to make paper. This use of resources may push people to seek alternatives, such as writing exclusively on a computer or on an e-ink writing tablet.

Some people use these devices in the name of saving the trees and also Mother Earth. They clearly have their hearts in the right place. But I’d like to challenge these writers to kill more trees.

Let’s be honest: you’re not saving the planet by foregoing pen and paper.

Search your feelings. You know it to be true.

Decades ago, the petrochemical companies told us we could make a difference via recycling. If we’d just put our plastics and our paper in a green bin and take it to the curb every Friday, we could make the world a better place, one that reuses materials to cut down on single-use products.

Recycling was great for a while, until we realized it’s a sham.

The truth is that recycling is highly inefficient. It’s not cost effective. Most people (like the author of this post) suck at putting only recyclable materials into the recycling bin. We now know the call to recycle was merely a campaign of misdirection to pressure everyday people into taking responsibility to save the earth while the petrochemicals companies got the green light to keep pumping out more plastic.

NOTE: To be clear, this post is not intended to be read as criticism of plastics. It is instead criticism of sacrificing due to misguided blame.

Either way you cut it, recycling is impotent activism.

Going paperless may make you feel good about the reduction of your own carbon footprint, but how do you think the paper usage of individuals compares to the paper usage of corporations? Over the years, I’ve worked at multiple companies with leaders who think the company should never need to print anything ever again. Spoiler alert: Officepeople still be printin’. Maybe they’ll get their dream when Gen Z or Gen Alpha (two generations who don’t remember a time before screens) rules the office, but for old Millennials like me (and Gen X and those Boomers still lingering around), some things are better suited for reading on paper than on screens. So, if I’m working at your company, you gotta be prepared to kill a few trees in the name of productivity.

The point I’m making about the paper usage of individuals versus corporations is related to an oft-overlooked point in the push to electric vehicles (EVs): the majority of highway emissions don’t come from the individuals driving alone in their sedans or pickups or SUVs; they majority of highway emissions come from moving freight. Please keep in mind that the vast majority of that freight is moved for businesses, not for individuals like you and me.

Also, when you account for the precious minerals needed to build them, EVs aren’t a clear-cut homerun over gas-powered vehicles. I’ve also heard the argument that EVs don’t become more environmentally friendly than gas-powered vehicles until you’ve driven the EV for 60,000 miles. If you plan on driving your EV until the wheels fall off, then this mileage threshold isn’t a concern.

But how much must you write on your computer or other device before it’s better for the environment than pen and paper? Especially if you’re saving your work on the cloud and justifying yet another datacenter in the world.

What about when you publish? Is that ebook really better for the environment than paper? Maybe it is. But then there’s the issue of never actually owning your ebooks so long as they come with DRM baked in. That paper book may not make you feel like Captain Planet, but at least it’s yours to loan out or resell or use to stabilize that off-balance coffee table that always clanks when you put your drink on it.

Writing by hand is a gateway to mindful writing. Pen and paper offer less distraction than most electronic devices. Yes, the physical act of writing by hand takes more work than typing on a keyboard, but the extra effort is a great reason to focus on word efficiency, unless you’re trying to be the next Nabokov.

There’s nothing wrong with preferring writing on an electronic device to writing by hand. By all means, keep on keeping on if that’s your jam. But don’t neglect writing by hand out of some misguided belief that these electronic options are somehow better for the environment.

At this point, the climate’s gonna do what it’s gonna do. Climate change is pretty much undeniable at this point, though some will still try. Some will say we’re doomed, and to them I say: k. Then why try, if the ending of humanity is inevitable? Shut the hell up and let me enjoy my pen and paper. (Am I returning to my roots and flirting with nihilism?)

I don’t know what the future holds as far as the climate is concerned. Are we doomed? Can we adapt? (I hope.) Can we reverse the trend? (I doubt it.) But what I do know is that the efforts of individuals to curb their own consumption is useless as long as corporations keep conducting in corporation-y ways.

Instead of spending so much effort thinking of ways to save the planet via individual practices, perhaps people would be better off putting that effort into activism to reform corporate practices in a way that moves the needle–in a way that’s effective. (Effectiveness is a far better metric than effort, after all.)

If you choose to go this route, I have one request: when you write your manifesto, consider writing your first draft on pen and paper. Killing that extra tree just might be worth it.

Jake LaCaze sees no point in making sacrifices that don’t move the needle.

Why is business so hard?

I mean, why do so many businesses struggle with basic tasks? Why do companies of smart and accomplished people seem to get bogged down on the way to success?

Here’s the simplest answer I can come up with: Employees have to wade through oceans of BS. (I don’t claim to be an edgelord on this blog, so I try to keep things PG-rated here. But to be clear, yes, in this case, BS stands for bullshit.)

To me, it’s clear as day. I’ve worked at quite a few companies over the years, ranging from publicly-traded companies to family offices and a few other stops in between. When I look back at my career as a whole, I’m amazed at how often the same themes pop up again and again. Terrible leadership, unclear communication, poorly-defined processes that no amount of new and shiny technology can fix.

Among the masses of Yes Men, often parroting ‘That’s the way it’s always been’, it’s hard not to feel alone. Or like you don’t see reality clearly. You feel like Will Ferrell’s character in Zoolander: ‘I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!’ In the end, maybe you start taking crazy pills just to cope.

Misery loves company, or so they say. And that’s why I’m glad to have recently discovered the blog of Nikhil Suresh. Nikhil pulls no punches. Gives no fucks, as the kids say. (I’ve already broken the PG rating once on this post. And I’ll do it again later, because quotations, so I might as well go big, right?)

To get an idea of Nikhil’s subject matter, look no further than the blog posts below, which must surely be part of his greatest hits:

• I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again
• Most Tech Jobs Are A Joke And I’m Not Laughing
• PowerBI Is A Human Rights Violation
• Strategy Doesn’t Matter If You Blunder Every Move
• I Will Fucking Haymaker You If You Mention Agile Again
• Your Organization Probably Doesn’t Want To Improve Things

Nikhil takes something I know in my soul to be true and gives example after example of confirmation. So much of what we deal with on a daily basis is useless. The struggle leads to little productivity. You rush to meet your boss’s crazy deadlines, but no one does anything with your hard work. Your report sits there unread. Your boss is an idiot who has no idea of the daily struggles required by your job, but he has an MBA and he looks great in a suit. Or, he’s the owner’s son. (Nepotism is a horrible business strategy that fails most of the company, yet it’s far more common than you’d expect.)

Once, in a phone interview, someone asked me where I’d like to work: at a large company or a small company. I can’t remember what I responded, but here’s my honest opinion: Pick your poison. Each situation has its good and its bad, its pluses and its minuses. At a large company, you likely have to navigate waves of bureaucracy to get anything done. At a small company, the owner might fire you because he often gets a bit frisky on Tuesdays.

To piggyback off Nikhil’s writing, I think so much of so many jobs are bullshit because so much of so many companies’ operations are bullshit. Even the most successful people don’t have all the answers. They’re trying to figure it out as they go. But too many ‘leaders’ don’t have the ability to figure it out, because they lack humility and curiosity and the ability to research anything they don’t already have the answer for.

I find business is at its best when it’s as simple as it can be. For so many companies and industries, the temptation seems to be to lean into complexity. The more complex it is, the more valid it is, right?

I urge you instead to start on the other end of the pendulum. Start from the viewpoint of simplicity. Make processes as straight-forward as you can and add complexity only when absolutely necessary. (To make sure only the absolutely necessary complexity is added, I recommend defaulting to the mindset that no complexity can be added; then you can begrudgingly allow it when the case has been made again and again, at which point you realize that maybe the extra steps truly are needed.)

I’m going to share with you a secret for making sense of complex situations: Ask questions. The asinine answers will show that no one has thought this out. No one capable of critical thought was included on the mapping of this proess.

Why is it this way? I blame the industrialist mindset.

Under the industrialist mindset, your boss seeks the best way you can make the most widgets possible. Often, the answer is for you to work harder. Or for longer hours. Or more consistently.

‘Why are you talking to your co-worker when you could making me another widget!?’

That mentality might work for industrialist industries. But many of us aren’t widget makers. I’m not. Neither is Nikhil or his peers.

In my own career, much of my hardest work has come from interpreting and enacting legal agreements. What does this document actually say? What was its intent? Did it cover this situation?

Sometimes you find yourself in a situation no one else in your company has ever seen before. Congratulations, you’re in what they call ‘uncharted territory’! This is a golden opportunity. You just don’t know if it’s an opportunity to make a name for yourself, or an opportunity to find a new way for things to blow up in your company’s face!

In these situations, simply working harder won’t fix much of anything. I can bang my head against my desk and try to make sense of it all again and again. But somtimes I need to step away and let the words bounce around my head before they start to make sense.

For most of us knowledge workers, these are the kinds of issues we regularly deal with. These are the issues that use most of our energy and take up most of our time. So it’d be nice if we could focus more time on these issues; or it’d be nice if other, lesser important tasks didn’t get in the way.

So why are these lesser important issues so complicated? Well, dear reader, how else are your bosses going to know you’re working hard?

When you’re making widgets, I can count how many times you pull that lever. And I can see that more pulls of the lever mean more widgets.

What’s the equivalent in knowledge work? The Company pays you eight hours a day. How else can the Company ensure it’s getting its eight hours worth out of you? Or, look at it another way: By keeping things complex, I know you’re giving me at least eight hours a day.

By now this is all sounding familiar to fans of Cal Newport.

You’d think that someone in charge of such operation would be focused on higher-level metrics: Revenue, profit, etc. But it’s easier to focus on whether you’re in the office, obviously doing something for a certain amount of time every day.

We also can’t discount the herd mentality. Everyone’s doing AI? What’s our AI strategy!? No one’s on it!? Well, transfer the crypto team over. They don’t have much going on these days.

As you get older and experience more of life, you realize common sense ain’t so common.

With every new antitrust lawsuit against Google, it looks more and more like we’re falling out of love with tech. I hope that also means that we’re falling out of the habit of thinking something new is great just on the basis of its age and novelty.

On a personal level, I feel as if most of us could benefit from a classical liberal education. On a business level, I think we could benefit from leaders who focus on simplifying business and who have great bullshit detectors. The perfect mix might be finding such a person who’s also a great bullshit artist so that maybe he or she will have a chance of actually changing some minds and making a difference.

In other words, I don’t think it’s something new that’s going to unlock unrealized gains and skyrocket your business. What if the answer instead lies in old school values that have been available this whole time?

Jake LaCaze thinks we make things way harder than they need to be.

What will be your life’s sweetest dessert?

I recently rewatched a video related to the prolific band The Cure being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

No, it wasn’t a video of Trent Reznor’s flattering induction speech. It was the one of the overly excited TV personality asking frontman Robert Smith if he was as excited as she was. Smith pretty much shrugged her off.

How could he be so chill about such a major accomplishment? I’d say inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is the cherry on top of the sundae that is an awesome musical career.

The cherry is usually the first part of the sundae you eat. Credentials like being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame might be one of the first things people mention when they talk about certain bands. Many bios of The Cure will likely mention this accomplishment early on, maybe even in the opening line.

But the cherry isn’t the sweetest part of the sundae. It’s not the part you get excited about. Sure, you expect the cherry. But you don’t order the sundae for the cherry; you order it for the ice cream and the chocolate syrup and the whipped cream.

What do you think is sweeter: the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, or knowing you recorded Disintegration, the best album ever?

You can still have a sundae without a cherry; but a cherry does not a sundae make.

Jake LaCaze likes to imitate Seth Godin in his free time.

If there’s one thing I’ve come to value after the last 16 years full-time in the workforce, it’s simplicity.

‘Simplicity’ is not the same as ‘easy’. Something simple may still be hard. (Some of the hardest truths may be the simplest.)

Simplicity means you’ve removed as much fluff and as many layers of complexity as possible. It’s taking a ten-step process and realizing you can get rid of four of those steps without losing anything of substance. It’s starting your email with the action item or key takeaway instead of burying it somewhere in the middle of Page 2. It’s reducing the number of handoffs between departments, thereby reducing opportunities for someone to drop the ball and leave the rest of the team hanging.

Simplicity is the secret ingredient for businesses looking to be more efficient. So why isn’t simplicity adopted more broadly?

Because simplicity is the enemy of those who would rather brag about how hard they work over how much they get done.

But, Jake, who fits that profile?

Far more people than I’d like to admit. Search your feelings; you know it to be true.

Why would anyone want to work and live that way?

The same reason we often resist change in other areas of our lives: If we remove this struggle, what will we replace it with? Chances are another struggle awaits.

Or maybe we’re scared of the resulting additional responsibilities. If you’re free of grunt work, then you’re free to do bigger work and make more important decisions. Do you really want that?

Simplicity isn’t sexy. Saying you do this one thing in one market isn’t as sexy as saying you do a hundred things in a hundred markets and you’re open to taking on more. It’s far sexier to automate complex processes than ask how many of the processes are needed in the first place.

Writing a 700-page book seems more impressive than saying you whittled all the crucial bits into only 100 pages (or less!). The work put into 700 pages is obvious. You can see the work. You can feel it. You can hold it in your hand. You can’t say the same of the 100-page book, because all the work went into what wasn’t included: what you can’t see, what you can’t feel, what you can’t hold in your hand. But that 100-page book fits more neatly in your bag and doesn’t weigh you down!

Steven Pinker has made the point that the world feels like a terrible place even when crime is at all-time lows, because no one gets credit for crimes that haven’t been committed. A similar point applies to simplicity: It’s harder to get credit for confusion and unnecessary work you’ve prevented.

Simplicity requires hard work. It requires focus, vision, and consistent messaging.

Simplicity requires bravery. You’ll face resistance when you have the audacity to suggest there may be a simpler way. You may hear those dreaded words ‘That’s the way it’s always been’, or their cousins ‘That’s just the way it is’.

Who decided this is how it must be? Who made the conscious decision this is was good as it gets? Who has chosen to thwart progress that might benefit the whole team or department or company? Raise your hand now and take credit. Funny, I don’t see any hands in the air . . .

That’s because the company has grown to the point that people can hide behind the entity itself. The company is now the Company with a capital C, with a mind and wisdom all its own. It’s like the Market, with its invisible hands and whatnot.

Simplicity is like that shot in the butt the doctor prescribed to the toddler who’s deathly afraid of needles (yours truly, once upon a time). The medicine is right here. Yeah, it’s gonna sting for a bit. But in the long run, you’ll be better for it. Now, bend over and show your cheeks and don’t you dare fart.

Jake LaCaze works really hard to keep things really simple.

My son is in his final year of reg-league baseball. This fall season is his next-to-last season, with his last being in the spring. It’s a bittersweet time.

The bitter part of that equation is obvious—what if he never plays baseball again? What if this is all she wrote? What if the fat lady isn’t just singing, but she’s absolutely belting at the top of her lungs? This is a real possibility, because, for him, baseball is more about hanging out with his friends. If he gets on base or comes home, that’s just a bonus.

The sweet part is that he lucked out and got to play with his favorite (and the best) coach he’s had yet, a man we’ll call Coach C.

Coach C is the man who led my son and his friends to a league title a few seasons ago.

On paper, Coach C doesn’t look like a championship-winning coach. As far as I know, he’s just a guy. He’s kind of puny. Maybe he played baseball in high school, but other than that, he’s just a father who volunteers his time to encouraging young boys to do their best and have fun while doing it. And he gets the best out of the kids, fulfilling every parent’s dream.

My son’s also played for a guy you’d expect to win a league championship. This other coach grew up playing baseball. He made it all the way to the minor leagues. Impressive resume, right? But his results weren’t.

This more qualified coach was hard on the boys, to the point that after one game, his assistant coach had a verbal tiff with him and told him to back off—They’re just kids.

Rec-league baseball isn’t the only time I’ve seen this contrast in candidates.

I once worked at a company that had a unique job position open up. The position was a hybrid position: The company wanted someone to perform one job while mentoring others performing a different job. This place I worked at was very cliquish, and a person who was liked by one group probably wasn’t liked by another group. But everyone I talked to agreed on who was the best internal candidate for the job. It seemed like a no-brainer that he’d get the job. He was good at the primary job and had previously excelled at the other job he’d be mentoring in. And why wouldn’t you hire someone who can unify the people working under his or her leadership?

But the job went to an external candidate, someone with some impressive employers on his resume. Only a few months later, that internal candidate quit for obvious reasons. Morale went into the crapper. The external candidate isn’t exactly inspiring others to do their best work either.

Humans are complex creatures, and so relationships are complex as well. You never know how people will mesh. Cohesion is crucial for high-functioning teams. So sometimes the best fit is the one that the team will listen to. The one they’ll gladly follow into battle.

Sometimes the proper magnetism is the best qualification a candidate can have. And anyone with such qualities is likely someone who can learn the rest of the job. But that kind of influence—that’s hard to teach.

Jake LaCaze is tired of those LinkedIn posts about hiring unqualified candidates, but he must admit when there’s some truth to rehashed content.

How many layers must you wade through in the search for your own writing’s common thread?

I once said that persuasion was my own writing’s common thread, but now I’m realizing there’s more to it.

Humanity. The human condition. What does this mean for the humans involved? These are the matters that often surface in my writings, whether blog posts or short stories or aspiring novels.

Can one argue that these questions are irrelevant? Don’t they hit at the heart of what really matters? Whether we’re talking business or tech or relationships, humans are the most important part of the equation. And not just shareholders. Or the C-suite. But top to bottom. Within and throughout and beyond.

My recent rereading of Paul Kalanithi’s beautiful memoir When Breath Becomes Air sees me returning to my roots of asking about the point of life.

Why bother if you feel it’ll all be pointless at some time? What’s the point of it all while we’re here? What do we focus on for however many days we have?

To that question, I answer: human connection. Human connection is what makes life rewarding. Interesting. Meaningful. Life is meant to be shared with other humans.

When you remove human connection, you miss something. Again, look at business and tech, two aspects of our lives that have become far less human and less human-centered over the years. I’m well aware that businesses of all types exist to make money, but I worry the pendulum has swung too far in the wrong direction. I have similar worries for tech, as humanity is the largest component missing in the AI devolution (AKA the codification of average).

In his book Survival of the Richest, Douglas Rushkoff recounts how some tech elites met with the author for advice about surviving in their doomsday bunkers during the inevitable societal collapse. When one of the bros asked Rushkoff how he should persuade his head of security to protect him in a time in which money is worthless, Rushkoff suggested he try treating the security personnel well now, before things fall apart. The tech bros laughed.

Can they not fathom any value beyond money and bits and bytes and likes and shares? Can they not see the value in relationships and can they not see why someone else may find value in simply being treated like a human being?

The bad news is that humanity seems to be missing in so many of our regular transactions. The good news is that I think this is a great opportunity for businesses. The standards are so low, it doesn’t take much to add a personal touch to an experience. I’m getting similar vibes to when Apple started promoting privacy as a feature of its products. Sure, we can poke holes into Apple’s claims all day. But the obvious answer is reminiscent of the joke about happening upon a hungry bear in the woods: I don’t have to outrun the bear; I just have to outrun you. Apple doesn’t have to have the highest privacy standards; their standards just have to better than the competition’s.

And businesses don’t have to be truly human—they just have to be better than their peers. (Grocery stores can start by replacing self-checkout lines.)

If we continue to choose paths that remove humanity from our regular experiences, then what kind of existence are we creating and endorsing? If nothing else, we’re making it easier for machines to replace us, because we’re negating our greatest advantage. We’re leveling the playing field. This is one situation in which we should not follow this strategy.

I want more humanity in business. In tech. I want the Web to be more human and messy and strange. I want stories that are about more than plot points—I want to know what those experiences mean for the humans involved.

I want more humanity in my day-to-day. Is that too much to ask?

Note: The title of this post is borrowed from the lyrics of ‘Without Any Words’ by ‘68.

Existence, well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can
— ‘Heart and Soul’ by Joy Division

. . .

Existentialists ask what it all means.

Nihilists say it all means nothing.

Absurdists say it all means nothing, yet we can’t help trying to attach something deeper to it.

My own outlook on life has followed this same path.

In my early years, I pondered the meaning of life, a silly question for one yet to experience much of anything. Then, after the deaths of my parents, I flirted with nihilism, which I eventually put aside, not because the belief structure was untrue, but because it didn’t serve me. And then, sometime during the COVID-19 pandemic, I shifted to absurdism, where I still stand at the time of writing this post.

On a long enough timeline, the events of your life don’t matter. That’s where nihilism stops. Absurdism, on the other hand, acknowledges the futility of it all, while also acknowledging the desire and need for something more.

Why would anyone acknowledge this struggle? Because, at the end of the day, that struggle is all we have. That struggle is the source of meaning.

Everything we hold dear—our families, our vocations, our friends—will be forgotten in time. In less than the blink of the cosmic eye, everything we hold dear will be gone. So why bother? Again, this is all we have. We can lament that this is as good as it gets, or we can embrace it.

What’s the alternative? To wade in the waters of waste? You can spend your days however you want. But I hope you choose to spend them in a way that might let you and those around you smile from time to time, even if the source of that joy be delusion.

Anything is pointless if you spend all your time thinking about it, something I wish the rationalists could figure out. Sure, you can laugh at all the ways we fall in love with silly shiny things. Or you can accept that, for better or for worse, humans are little more than highly-evolved apes.

If you stop and think about it, sex is one of the most ridiculous concepts of our world. (To keep this blog family-friendly, I won’t elaborate on the mechanics and will instead trust you to fill in the details on your own.) But it’s been crucial for the persistence of our species, as well as so many others.

Albert Camus concludes the essay ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ with this simple line:

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Sisyphus was damned by the gods to a lifetime of rolling a boulder up a hill, only for the boulder to roll down and for him to start the process over again. So, how can one imagine Sisyphus happy? Because that damn boulder is all he has. What’s the alternative?

I once heard someone criticize ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ by saying that Camus basically tacked that last point onto the end. I won’t argue with the criticism, but I will say the point of the last line resonated with me as I realized we are all pushing our own boulder up the hill, over and over and over again. No matter how we feel about it, the boulder’s here to stay. We might as well embrace whatever we can.

In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankenstein describes how, as a prisoner in a concentration camp, he helped others maintain morale through the Holocaust, despite his own family having already died in the camps. One might argue that Frankel’s loss shows it all means nothing, that his previous experiences and sacrifices were nullified by their deaths. Or they could say it was absurd of him to find any meaning at all after losing his family to something as senseless as genocide. There’s no question Frankel was dealt a terrible hand. But he did amazing things regardless.

Some may disregard absurdism on the very basis of its absurdity. But to ignore the existence of absurdity is the greatest form of absurdism. Anyone who’s spent time with other humans knows we don’t default to rationality. To ignore the absurdism within us is to ignore a crucial part of what it means to be human. How can one ever hope to understand or improve the human condition without first understanding the human condition? And how can one understand the human condition without first accepting the existence of absurdism without our nature? If you ignore this basic part of humans, how well can you understand them? And if you’re unable to understand these universal truths within us all, can you ever hope to find the truths buried within yourself? Can you ever know your own heart and soul?

If you discovered tomorrow that we were all living in a simulation, would that make your life and your connections meaningless? I’d argue that it changes nothing. While what you have may, in some way, be unreal, it’s in fact real by the fact it’s all you have. The absurdist notion of needing meaning means that within this fake existence is your only hope to find meaning. If anything, your situation now means more than it did before, because while there may be something else somewhere out there, your consciousness exists only within this simulation. So, your digital family and your digital friends and your digital dog—all just a series of binaries—are still as good as it will ever get for you. Because when the lights go off, that’s it.

Poof.

Absurd? Yeah.

Depressing? Only if you expect something more.

Jake LaCaze is working to embrace the absurdism of life.

Not so long ago, bloggers used social media to share their posts and build audiences. While social media is unlikely to go away any time soon, people do seem to be falling out of love with it, if for no other reason than most of the mainstream social platforms (Facebook, Twitter/X, LinkedIn, etc.) tend to throttle any posts with external links. If bloggers can’t share external links for fear of being pushed into the digital ghetto, then how the hell are they supposed to be promote their sites?

Bloggers have plenty of free and paid options for creating their own blogs: WordPress, Ghost, Blogger, Bear, Mataroa, GitHub Pages . . . But most of these options provide little more than hosting and maybe email newsletters. (For the record, this point is not an insult, because these providers don’t claim to offer more. So no harm, no foul.)

These options offer little in regard to promoting your writing outside of their platforms. Writers have countless options when it comes to owning their audiences. But what good is owning an audience if that audience is zero?

Social media is a hassle for some of us. It’s an inexhaustible firehose of noise that’s impossible to keep on top of;

But some blogging platforms, such as write.as and micro.blog, do offer other ways to share your writing without the aid of social media. write.as in particular has read.write.as, where you can read all public posts by anyone on the platform. micro.blog is in many ways a social network powered by blogs and RSS feeds.

Online life is changing. Many of us, once enamored with social media, are now turned off by it. The internet has always been about connecting people—and I think that’s still true. These days we focus on the negatives of the internet (social media and the spread of conspiracy theories and fake news, etc.). But we can’t forget or discount the good that comes with building connections with like-minded people—connections that may have never happened without the power of the World Wide Web.

While those of us with public blogs may not default to doing whatever it takes to get more clicks and eyeballs, we still want to be read. Maybe we don’t want to be read by everyone, but we want to be read by those who matter to us. How do we find these people without social media?

Is this need an opportunity for blogging platforms? Might it be a differentiator in the future? Is this why Substack has basically built a social network (Notes) into its own platform?

I myself don’t need a million readers. I’m not searching for a big audience. I’m just searching for my audience. But that audience is hard to find without social media, unless you’re going to play the SEO game. There’s nothing wrong with leaning on SEO—it’s a valid strategy. It’s just not a strategy I want to pursue.

Since I started blogging again in 2018, I’ve hosted my writing on multiple sites, including write.as, micro.blog, Mataroa, GitHub Pages, and probably one or two others I’ve forgotten. The best engagement I got in that period came when I was hosted on write.as or micro.blog, blogging platforms with built-in communities. 

I don’t know how exactly blogging platforms pull this off. And I don’t know how write.as can build upon its foundation. But I can’t help wondering if the next innovation in blogging has nothing to do with Markdown or image hosting or newsletters. Maybe the opportunity lies in simply getting writers in front of readers who matter without requiring them to whore themselves out on the social networks that often feel like far more work than they’re worth.

Jake LaCaze wants to see people connecting with people online.

I’m on the verge of finishing my absurdist comedy novella, which will become my longest completed writing project.

When it’s all said and done, I’ll most likely have enjoyed the process far more than the finished product. Because this pending novella will become my longest work, I’ve obviously had to stretch beyond my writerly comfort zone. So I want to share a few things I’ve learned from this experience.

1. I should outline longer works.

I often outline short stories–yes, even flash fiction sometimes–so why should I think I shouldn’t outline a novel or a novella?

I think of outlining as the logical part of the writing process. When outlining, you’re lining up your beats and making sure that the progression of your story makes sense. If this part is taken care of beforehand, then you can focus on your prose during the writing phase.

Reminder: You don’t have to do it all at once. Feel free to take writing step by step, because great writing is iterative.

2. It’s okay to put a project down and come back later.

I started this novella months ago–maybe over a year ago, at this point. I wish I could tell you that I’ve been good about working on it bit by bit every day.

But that would be a big, fat lie.

The truth is that I put it down for a few months, when I wasn’t in a great writerly headspace. Rather than risk doing more harm by pushing through, I stepped away for a bit and came back later.

And I have some great news: The novella was still waiting for me and it welcomed me back with open arms.

Sometimes you should step away so that you can bring your better self back to the project.

3. Maybe I should juggle multiple writing projects at a time.

Sometimes I want to write, but I don’t want to write on that–you know, that one project that’s uninspiring at the moment.

Maybe juggling multiple writing projects means that one of my projects is destined to inspire me, similar to one of the arguments for reading multiple books at once (It’s under Pro #2).

This approach has worked for the filmmaker Jordan Peele. Unfortunately, I can’t find the video to link to, but trust me on this one–I once heard that he was juggling multiple scripts when writing Get Out, before deciding to focus on the script that pulled him in and demanded his attention.

Why make creative work harder than it has to be, right? That’s basically how I’d summarize this whole post.

. . .

Sharing is caring

Links from other sites you should check out

• Five signs that the GenAI honeymoon is over
  Generative AI might not be around to write your novel for you much longer. So you still need to learn how to write gooder.
  
  
• I’ve Written 7 Books…Here’s Why I’ve Never Self Published
  I’m leaning toward self-publishing a couple projects, but it usually pays to listen to the other side so you know your decision is an educated decision.
  
  
• How does Open AI survive?
  I’m trying to avoid talking about tech so much these days, but some habits die hard.

Jake LaCaze is working to enjoy the journey, not the destination.

In an attempt to reverse its falling stock price, Southwest Airlines announced it will start assigning seats to its passengers.

Congratulations, Southwest—you just became indistinguishable from every other airline!

Writers would be smart to question adopting every piece of writing advice they hear so as not to become the Southwest Airlines of literature.

The thing about writing advice is that it’s not one-size-fits-all, despite how some people may make it seem.

Show, don’t tell - I’d argue that good writing is a balance of showing and telling. The struggle lies in knowing when to show and when to tell.

Don’t use passive voice. - Active voice is often the better choice, but passive voice has its place, as it’s great for keeping a particular character in focus, or for being intentionally vague, such as when you don’t want to give away who done it in a mystery novel.

Always use double quotation marks for dialogue. - Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers, and Irvine Welsh would like a word with you. I’d love to be able to pull a Cormac McCarthy and get away with throwing away quotation marks, but I’ll instead have to settle for using single quotation marks like Carson McCullers.

Don’t use adverbs and flowery language. - I personally agree, but to say this has no place at all means you just killed Vladimir Nabokov’s career.

How many first-person literary novels wouldn’t exist if every writer followed the advice to always write in third-person and past tense?

What do a writer got if they ain’t got voice?

If you buy into the idea that every story’s already been told, then how can you set yourself apart from the sea of other writers?

You lean on your voice. And what is your voice? Your voice is the style decisions you make in your regular writing. It’s how you choose to present your words, your thoughts, your points.

In short, your voice is your marketing. Don’t throw your voice away and give up on standing out like Southwest Airlines just did. If anything, lean into those decisions. Just know why you do what you do.

If you’ve found a certain tool or service that works for you and makes your life better, COOL—then keep using that thing. This advice applies to AI, Notion, Obsidian, TikTok, WHATEVER. If your tool of choice is a net benefit, then keep on keepin’ on.

But please don’t let peer pressure convince you that you ABSOLUTELY MUST try some new piece of shiny technology. (I’m thinking specifically about generative AI and large language models like ChatGPT, but the point also relates to non-AI tools).

Great writing is a process. It’s often messy—unfortunately, that’s just the nature of the work. Sometimes, it’s only by that messiness that you’re able to make your writing work. The only way out is through.

If you want only to churn out a certain number of words on a given topic, with little to no concern for quality or insight, then maybe leaning on generative AI is the strategy for you. But if you’re looking for the right words to capture your voice, then maybe AI ain’t right for you. And that’s okay, because AI never had to be the tool for you, unless you decided it was so.

Generative AI ain’t all bad for writers

Rather than just crap on AI, I want to take a moment to give credit where it’s due and share some ways in which generative AI has helped me as a writer.

For one, large language models (LLMs) make great proofreaders. Just be sure to ask the LLM what exactly it corrected so you can ignore any bad corrections. (Don’t just blindly accept its changes—it messes up sometimes!)

LLMs are also useful when you can’t word a particular phrase just right, especially when you’re refreshing your resume. You can bang your head against the wall for hours, or you can ask the LLM for help so that you can move on to more pressing matters. The choice is yours.

Choice is the point

That the choice to use AI is yours is the point of this post. You can choose your own adventure in regard to AI and your writing. Don’t let others pressure you into using a tool that might not fit into your writerly workflow.

Your writing is your words. Your voice. Your choice.

Just remember, writers: You ain’t gotta use AI if you don’t wanna.

As I’m writing this post, I’m juggling three longform writing projects:

• An absurdist comedy novella
• A vampire hunting novel
• A literary novel about fatherhood

The literary novel is the only one I can imagine publishing.

The vampire story is so far outside what I typically write.

I’ll likely stick with the absurdist comedy just to complete it. I need reps in writing something longer than a short story.

I’ve been stewing on the literary novel for almost two decades at this point. The story has evolved as I’ve gotten older. Wisdom says I should hurry up and finish it before it evolves yet again. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to publish it in my golden years, begging the question of whether I have enough time left for a second novel.

Many writers fear they may have only one novel in them. It’s a point Chuck Palahniuk has brought up multiple times as he’s warned that literary writers risk running out of material because their stories are too personal.

I won’t argue that Palahniuk is wrong in his assessment of the risk. But I ask, How bad would that be, really?

If you publish only one novel, you’ve still published one more than most people. How many writers publish only one novel?

Is it safe to say the secret’s out that writing is a horrible plan for getting rich? Sure it’s possible, but your writing most likely won’t replace your day job–it will instead be funded by your day job.

So what’s the big deal about having only one novel in you? Is that really the worst thing?

One is one more than none. So there’s that. 

No business stands on its own. Every business is dependent on something else in some way; the question is to what degree, and how stable is that dependency?

Transportation companies are dependent on highways and railroads and open waterways and skies.

A coffee shop may be dependent on the attractions around it (movie theaters, retail, restaurants, etc.).

Some tech companies are completely reliant on other tech companies.

How many companies have tried to make a business out of implementing ChatGPT in some way? These businesses are entirely dependent on ChatGPT. They can’t create their own large language model to replace ChatGPT if needed.

What happens if ChatGPT closes its doors or hikes up its prices or restricts access in some other way? The company’s business model is immediately affected. The company’s strategy is entirely dependent on things as they are, and on those things staying the same.

You could make the same argument for transportation companies: Well, what if the government shut down all the highways? If that were to happen, then you’d be right. But that’s highly unlikely to happen. Possible, yes. Probable, no.

Many businesses are dependent on easy money and low interest rates. Some are dependent on capturing the effects of FOMO before consumers have a chance to realize how silly and useless the product is. coughNFTscough

Every business is dependent on something else. If nothing else, they’re dependent on government regulations that don’t force them to close their doors.

The assumptions upon which we’ve built our businesses are subject to change. But how likely are they to change?

We can’t eliminate the business model dependency problem. We can only acknowledge it and decide how much related risk we’re comfortable with.

Jake LaCaze finds it hard to depend on one company when they can disappear in the blink of an eye.

Over the last few months, I’ve been asking myself if I’ve been turning into a Communist, as certain aspects of capitalism have had me seeing red.

So many parts of the capitalist system feel broken, especially when companies lay off thousands of workers, only to then perform stock buybacks with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that could have paid the salaries of those terminated workers for at least a couple extra decades. And when companies perform buybacks, they’re not investing in their employees or improving the infrastructure of the company. They’re simply prioritizing shareholders, which is a quick way to kill morale. Perhaps this situation wouldn’t be such a big deal if companies would admit that labor is little more than a transactional relationship and would so encourage employees to act in the same way. Instead, employees are expected to give their all, while they can be cut loose for the good of the Company.

But after Lina Khan and the FTC banned noncompete agreements (at least for now), I realized I haven’t turned anti-capitalist. In fact, I’m quite pro-capitalist. I merely want a system more nearly representing the merits of capitalism I’ve been sold as a red-blooded American. To bring that system into reality, we need to ensure that the rules of capitalism apply to corporations as well as individuals. To some degree, the same rules should apply for all parties involved.

Corporations can’t help being selfish and sociopathic. Some may argue that corporations are people, but how can they be when they have no flesh and blood, when they can live on into eternity as long as they make enough money to stay afloat? That’s why we need competition and regulars to keep corporations on the right path. But we’ve let corporations down over the last few decades. We gave them too much freedom and they’ve shown they can’t handle it. Now we’re stuck with troublesome monopolies that are too big to care and that are active in an enshittification campaign that hurts customers in a number of ways. With capital costs now being higher than they’ve been in decades, we can’t rely on a wave of startups to right the markets.

Unlike humans who have a limited lifespan, corporations can exist indefinitely. So we must always be ready to steer them in the right direction. Like any parents, we must do certain things not because we’re big, bad poopyhead meanies, but because we have to do what’s ultimately best for all the group as a whole.

Capitalism might be in a bit of a crisis. It’s getting harder not to take seriously the claims we’ve hit late stage capitalism. Especially now as the tech sector, which has dominated the stock market in the 21st century, appears to have run out of good ideas aside from yelling, ‘AI! Get your AI here!’ at every street corner. Even the once might Apple now has little to offer beyond a thinner iPad.

Before we can reform capitalism, we must first ask if it’s worth saving. I think it is. And so must the swaths of immigrants who enter America, whether by means legal or illegal, every year. If those people were merely running away from something, they’d have plenty of other options. So is it wrong to imagine they’re running toward something when they choose America? Might that thing be an economic model they believe gives them the chance at a better life? And if you argue that such a system doesn’t actually exist here, isn’t that all the more reason to reform capitalism to more nearly match it?

I’m not convinced the base game of capitalism is broken. I like the idea of being able to change my lot with a combination of opportunity, work and skills, and luck. While Hollywood won’t be releasing my biopic anytime soon, I consider myself a homegrown American success story. Raised in a trailer house in the Louisiana Delta, I’m now building a middle-class life in the Lone Star State. Those born in poverty should have the opportunity to rise above and beyond the class they’re born into. This possibility may be a dream, but in an age where we collectively have fewer dreams and heroes, we must protect the fewer we have left.

But the dream of capitalism must be real, especially as the global economy shifts in the coming decades thanks to deglobalization and aging populations. I can’t help feeling a sense of dread at the possibility of a small handful of corporations owning bigger slices of the pie as the economy contracts. It seems to me that we need a more dynamic version of capitalism. One in which innovations wins and one that challenges the behemoth corporations to remain relevant rather than survive as protected incumbents.

How exactly do we bring about this ideal form of capitalism? I don’t have the answer. (But if you do, I’d love to hear from you.)

But going forward, I expect this topic to bounce around every corner of my mind. It might become one of my prolonged obsessions. And that’s all right, because I think is a question worth obsessing over.

Jake LaCaze sometimes forgets to add his mini-bio to his blog posts. But not today!

I’ve been sleeping well lately. So I decided it was time to investigate another North Texas oddity. This time I checked out Goatman’s Bridge in Denton, Texas.

I’ve actually visited the bridge twice. I lost my pictures after the first visit and revisited a few days later with my son to get another round. We went the day after a crazy storm blew into the area and brought baseball-size hail and strong winds. So there were a lot of fallen limbs in the area.

Or maybe they were the destruction left behind after the Goatman’s latest rampage.

There are certain ghost stories that people seem to repeat every chance they get. Every lake has the ghost of the mother searching for her drowned child. Every small town with a railroad track has that strange light no one can explain. Even the Goatman pops up time and time again.

According to Eric J. Kuhns:

There are many states with this same creature haunting certain areas or entire countrysides such as the legendary ax-wielding half-goat half-man creature of Maryland. The U.S. state of Kentucky has their own demonic Goatman stories. As the goat head has been popularized in satanic worship and symbolism, it’s no wonder that the superstitious would conjure this image in their minds.

The Goatman of Denton, Texas, has a few different origin stories. But in all of them, he is a half-man, half-goat giant standing more than seven feet tall (maybe even eight feet tall). Legend has it he terrorizes the area around the bridge. Some stories say he’s the monstrous product of a lynching. Others claim he’s a servant of the devil.

Note: All pictures in this post are my own. But the content was written with the help of the posts referenced at the end. Properly citing these references in the post itself would be a pain, but I want to be sure to give credit where it’s due.

The Old Alton Bridge

Let’s cover some facts before we start digging into the lore of Goatman’s Bridge.

The bridge’s proper name is Old Alton Bridge.

As you can see in the picture of the sign below, Old Alton Bridge was built in 1884 and placed on the National Register of Historic Places just over a century later in 1988.

The bridge was built to accommodate horses but was used for vehicle traffic for a while. The bridge became obsolete when a modern bridge crossing Old Alton Road over Hickory Creek was built.

But the bridge’s story would be boring if it stopped there.

The story of Goatman’s Bridge

Most ghost stories and urban legends I’ve checked out appear to have one agreed-upon narrative. But Goatman’s Bridge is unique in that it bounces between two extremes: one in which the Goatman is a victim of lynching, and one in which he’s a sign of devilish activities.

Let’s take a look at the Goatman’s origin stories.

Oscar Washburn

The most popular of Goatman’s origin stories says that he was first Oscar Washburn, a successful Black goat farmer who angered nearby Whites when he posted near the bridge a sign pointing potential customers in his farm’s direction. ‘This way to the Goatman,’ the sign supposedly said. Back in the 1930s, this was apparently enough to justify a lynching.

So members of the Ku Klux Klan crossed the Old Alton Bridge in the cover of night and dragged Washburn from his home to the bridge, where they hung him and threw him over the side. But when the Klansmen looked over the bridge, Washburn was nowhere to be found.

Some versions of the story say that the Klansmen panicked and then burned down Washburn’s home, killing his wife and children. The Klansmen fled. But they had already created a monster as Washburn somehow merged with at least one of his goats.

If anyone with Klansmen’s blood in their veins summons or taunts the Goatman, they’ll soon wish they’d just stayed home watching reruns of Bonanza.

When I visited the bridge, I saw numerous locks attached to the bridge.

I imagine these locks are a reference to Washburn’s lynching, though I may be wrong. (And if you know what the locks represent, please let me know!)

There is no record of an Oscar Washburn in Denton County, so all details of this story appear false. But there’s almost always a deeper truth in a completely fictitious story. America has quite the shameful history with racism and lynchings. And Texas has its own fair share of guilt in these areas.

While the Oscar Washburn story is most likely completely made up, the story has served as a vehicle for talking about parts of the past many of us would rather forget.

The demonic Goatman’s Bridge

One version of the tale says that Goatman’s Bridge is a portal to Hell.

I haven’t found many details about why this bridge became such a portal. And I can’t find any links to the Goatman other than the fact that goats are often considered symbols of Satanic rituals. Also in keeping with Satanic lore, you can summon the demon Goatman by knocking on the bridge three times.

It should come as no surprise that you can find pentagrams spray-painted on the bridge.

Supposedly things gets really crazy on the bridge if you cross it at 3am.

Jack Kendall

The lesser-known Jack Kendall story is similar to the Oscar Washburn story.

One minor difference is that Kendall was Creole. When he was hung over the side of the bridge, his head popped off, but the power of Voodoo reanimated his body, which walked over to a nearby goat, ripped off the head of the goat, and claimed the goat’s head for his own.

Like Washburn, there is no record of a Jack Kendall in Denton County. Perhaps Kendall’s story could serve as a reminder of the history of race in Texas, if not for Washburn’s story.

The grieving mother

One version of the story—or perhaps a side story—says there’s a woman who haunts the creek as well.

In one version, the woman is Oscar Washburn’s wife, grieving for their murdered children. In another version, the woman is the mother of a child who was taken by the Goatman.

I’m not sure why the Goatman took this child. Was the child the offspring of a Klansman? Is the mother White? Black? Only now do I realize these details don’t appear to have popped up in my reading on the tale.

Beyond Goatman’s Bridge

Goatman’s Bridge likely wouldn’t be so eerie if it were in a wide-open area. But it’s near some woods, which add to the mystery.

My son and I started exploring the surrounding woods but didn’t go too far due to mud courtesy of the previous night’s storm.

If you believe in the Goatman, I think you have to ask where he hides out during the majority of the time, when he’s not haunting. This swamp looks like a good home for a half man, half-goat creature.

Learn more about Goatman’s Bridge

To learn more about Goatman’s Bridge, watch this video from Buzzfeed’s Unsolved series and read the articles below.

References

1. The Haunted Goatman’s Bridge
2. The true history behind Goatman’s Bridge on We Didn’t Do It
3. Atlas Obscura
4. The Goatman of Old Alton Bridge: A tale rooted in Texas’ historical racial tensions
5. Exploring the Haunted Goatman’s Bridge in Denton County