Does anyone else feel they’ve developed a finely tuned radar for that clipped, wooden ChatGPT voice in online writing? It’s practically a sixth sense, which begs the question: If my brain is just doing pattern recognition with its available data set, and LLMs are just doing pattern recognition with their available data set, then what is “thinking” anyway? This may be too much philosophizing for 7 AM.
In other news, someone tagged me in an essay and called me “inimitable,” and it’s important to come clean that I had to do one of these:
🚬 The “education-mortality gradient,” or the life expectancy gap between people with and without college educations, increased by nearly 250% between 1992 and 2019. But a new paper finds that smoking, rather than education or income, is the strongest predictor of mortality rates—and notably, the discrepancy only appears to be worsening because of a lag in health outcomes:
In the United States, smoking rates started falling for college graduates earlier than they did for the non-college population. As a result, college graduates who are now aged 55–64—the age group with a disproportionate share of overall midlife mortality—are far less likely to have ever smoked than comparably aged persons without a degree. This discrepancy in “never-smoking” rates means that college graduates now aged 55–64 have, over the past 30 years, experienced less health depreciation from cigarette consumption. (National Bureau of Economic Research)
☀️ One thing about me: I’m just as interested in structural critiques as I am in your morning routine. Nearly every Verified Successful Person in this listicle noted that their morning routine involves proactively identifying the single-most important element of their day and organizing around it. There were 21 people featured, and the words “clear” and “clarity” appeared 11 times. (Fast Company)
🎩 A trillionaire could spend $1 million every day for 2,700 years. Elon Musk is rapidly approaching this milestone, his ascent fueled by little more than South Texas ketamine and the noxious fumes produced by his relentless hype factory. Today’s billionaires differ from previous Gilded Age rich guys, Ben Steverman writes, because they essentially own our “digital lives,” where we spend so much of our time:
We usually notice when the super-wealthy rearrange the economy. Harder to spot, because it can take decades to accomplish, is the way their priorities can suffuse society, changing the ways we think and live. (Bloomberg)
🔄 The pay bump premium has hit a new low for “job switchers,” who are currently faring only 1.9% better than “stayers.” For context, at its recent peak in April 2022, it was 8.4%. This seems broadly reflective of a weak labor market where leverage is low. (ADP Research)
🔥 The success of Survivor, now approaching its 50th season, can be attributed to the way it “bolster[s] the shared fantasy of meritocracy in a country with diminishing prospects for social mobility.” I’ll never forget my mom’s scandalized gasp when Johnny Fairplay (Season 7) faked his grandmother’s death for sympathy and later revealed in his confessional that she was “watching Jerry Springer right now.” Fun essay—the second thinkpiece analyzing Survivor as a metaphor for capitalism to cross my desk in the last week. (The Baffler)
⏳ This 2025 paper I stumbled across—which cites a 2016 paper that found more than 80% of Americans reported “never hav[ing] enough time”—has me wondering: If you’re employed, do you work (for pay) more or less than 40 hours per week? The aforelinked ADP Research report found that working hours have been trending downward since the pandemic, with an average weekly working time of about 33 hours.
🫖 Sofia Franklyn, ex-Call Her Daddy cohost who lost custody of the podcast in the divorce, is publishing a memoir in November. The girlies are rightfully titillated. I took advantage of my sparse publishing industry connections to catch a glimpse of the evidently shopped-around proposal, which was mostly just an annotated chapter guide. It appears that only one (lurid) section of the book will go into detail about Sofia’s perspective on the heretofore-Alex Cooper-dominated story. In retrospect, it’s wild that Sofia was painted as the greedy villain for choosing to reject Dave Portnoy’s opening offer of a $500,000 salary (citing her belief that the IP was worth more) when her cohost went on to ink a $60 million deal. Just goes to show how punitive our knee-jerk reactions tend to be toward women who negotiate. You know I’m a sucker for an intellectual property thriller. (The Hollywood Reporter)
📈 As of February 13, the average tax refund amount for individuals is $2,476, about 14.2% higher than the previous year. It’s still early, so this trend could shift as more returns are filed. Sorry for two polls in one issue, but I’m curious. (CNBC)
🏠 Homeowners who purchased before 2022 are the closest thing we have to an economically protected class, and since we’re talking about taxes, it’s a good time to remind you that interest paid on home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) can be tax-deductible. It depends on how you use the funds, but assuming you’re doing substantial renovations, the tax deduction lowers your effective interest rate. With plenty of people house-rich after a historic price run-up, it probably won’t surprise you that HELOC balances have been steadily climbing since Q4 2022. Even if you’re able to pay cash, it’s worthwhile to run the numbers and see if you come out ahead with the benefit of amortization and an interest deduction. (Wall Street Journal)
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🚘 When I moved from Kentucky to Texas, I didn’t understand why I needed two license plates—one for the front and another for the back—but it turns out I have lobbyists to thank. Last week I learned in a Just Futures webinar that the push for front license plates came from 3M, a company which uses prison labor to achieve its status as one of the largest plate suppliers. Every day, I am given a new reason to be cynical. (The Drive)
🤖 Anthropic—the company that created Claude—doesn’t want the US government to use its tech for “domestic surveillance” or “autonomous weapons,” prompting Trump to call it “a radical left, woke company.” (When I say “woke,” you say “robot”?) In response, Kegseth [very much sic] posted that he intended to declare Anthropic a “Supply-Chain Risk to National Security,” in effect barring any contractor that does business with the US military from working with Anthropic. Apparently OpenAI was like, “It sounds like you want to surveil citizens. And honestly? You’re asking all the right questions.” While Sam Altman claimed that OpenAI hewed to the same red lines as Anthropic, he quickly signed a deal with the Feds, and further reporting suggests the domestic surveillance ability may be retained via a loophole similar to that which allows the NSA to tap phone calls.
If you’re curious about public reception, consider that Anthropic got so much support following the announcement that the Claude app crashed from unprecedented demand, per Anthropic. Out of curiosity, I read the company’s statement, and it was less “principled stance” than “humble pushback.” The vibe was very much, “We’re actually super fine with the brave American warfighters using our tech to kill enemy combatants at their leisure, and we’d really like to keep working together if they’ll come around on these two tiny-whiny-wittle things.” At this point, the bar for honorable behavior is subterranean. (TechCrunch)
📈 The Trump administration is reportedly considering an expansion of 2022 legislation that was set to provide up to a $1,000 match for low- and middle-income Americans’ retirement savings. The matching is scheduled to begin in 2027, and the changes would attempt to go further by universalizing access to 401(k)-style accounts. The move is being framed as part of a broader “affordability” agenda:
The proposal, described in broad brush strokes in the State of the Union address, was one of several measures mentioned that were aimed at assuaging the financial concerns of everyday Americans with midterm elections approaching. (Bloomberg)
, Senior Economist at the Economic Innovation Group and former The Money with Katie Show guest, reached out to alert me to this development, saying, “A good portion of the content and policy design aligns directly with the retirement work I’ve been doing at EIG. The wage subsidy hasn’t been picked up yet, but the expansion of retirement account access appears to have a genuine chance.”
Universalizing access to retirement savings accounts is unequivocally a no-brainer and it’s dumb we don’t do it already, though positioning the move as an affordability measure is curious. Investing for retirement requires that you have money to save in the first place, and at low- and middle-income tax brackets, the tax break isn’t usually meaningful enough to offset the immediate liquidity hit—especially if you’re barely getting by already.
🤡 Here’s a headline for you: [Prediction market] Kalshi reveals insider trading case against editor for MrBeast. Feels like a scenario that a particularly feverish REM cycle would’ve concocted after reading the newsletter from two weeks ago. Insider trading on MrBeast videos…we used to be a proper country. (NPR)
🗽 Watching Love Story about JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette (against my better judgment) and struck by how nostalgic I feel for a place I’ve never been: mid-nineties New York City. One reviewer described it as the “last era of mystery” (pre-cell phones, as we’re reminded when a fictionalized Bessette asks Kennedy why he didn’t “call the restaurant” when he was running late), which might be the same reason why Sex and the City reruns feel inexplicably comforting. The show runners managed not only to idealize JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette, but also the cleanliness of the streets. (Curbed)
📀 Nostalgia is, after all, a powerful driver of behavior—a curious cultural phenomenon on which mall brands like Abercrombie & Fitch appear to be capitalizing. Recent looks you can create with their “archival” pieces include, per GQ, “Blue-Collar Cosplay.” The recent aestheticization of blue-collar and working-class identity, particularly in light of the white-collar job market struggle, should be studied. These outfits feel like what you’d get if you held a Boy Meets World casting call in Bushwick. (GQ)
💕 The Manosphere has infiltrated Love is Blind. I could’ve told you that. Was planning on skipping the Ohio season (too close to home, literally) but it sounds like the distinct flavor of train wreck I need right now. (WIRED)
🕹️ Sam Kriss’s talent is upsetting to me, personally and professionally. His new piece “Child’s Play,” which is the AI nerd equivalent of Daniel Kolitz’s “The Goon Squad” from earlier this year, stitches together a series of intimate, absurdist character studies of terminally online Bay Area tech Zoomers. Kriss and Kolitz definitely don’t need to look up what “inimitable” means. (Harper’s Magazine)
🫥 “Telling someone you love A24 in 2026 is the cultural equivalent of telling them you shop at the farmer’s market. It’s true, it’s fine, and it tells me exactly how much money you make.” LOL. This article made some interesting observations about the evaporation of the “middle” tier offering across film, food, retail, and media, but when the writer began talking about mid-market fast casual chains going under, the private equity elephant in the Applebee’s dining room seemed underexplored. That we can identify the cultural outcome without implicating the financialized mechanism driving the shift (i.e., the “billionaires suffusing society with their priorities” and “changing the way we think and live,” per the earlier Bloomberg quote) leaves the most fascinating part unsaid. Speaking of having an ear for the ChatGPT accent, this article felt like a strange hybrid of novel insights in a unique voice and ChatGPT phrasing. Here’s an example of what I mean:
Each time, the thing that died was the thing that served the most people with the least pretension, and each time, the thing that replaced it was a genuine improvement that served fewer people while flattering the taste of a specific class. [Novel argument; doesn’t set off any alarm bells. Seems written by a person. Made me go, “Hmm…”.]
The pattern is so consistent it stops looking like a market correction and starts looking like a heist. [I’m 98% sure this is ChatGPT. Same goes for the repeated use of “it’s doing X and calling it Y,” or “X disguised as Y,” or “That’s not X, it’s Y.”]
I’ve realized my aversion to AI is about this type of monotony. You end up with essays that sound like they were written by a middle-management marketing specialist at a B2B SaaS company. If you don’t believe that LLMs speak using an immediately recognizable rhythm, I’ll close today by humbly presenting to you “ChatGPT After You Abandon Your Wife and Child”:
See you next Wednesday. In the meantime, don’t miss our recent episode of . (This Sunday, we’ll be releasing a 2.5-hour special on Epstein.)
