SWL Week in Review - P90 selloff

From:

sam lessin <s@wlessin.com>

To:

Hidden Recipient <hidden@emailshot.io>

Date:

2/24/2026, 7:50 PM(4 hours ago)

Jess made me stop podcasting and go to urgent care in the middle of the episode…. Because I thought I might have ‘dan corned’ myself after an epic run in the side country (I was fine)… but it means I missed most of the conversation — so I am as curious as you are as to what everyone said — but the parts I caught towards the end were the debate around...

(a) How many professional Bay Area ‘developers’ are left In 5 years? (I say it gets cut in half if not formally decimated in the traditional sense…. We will all be ‘developers’ just like we are all ‘typists’ — but the job won’t exist as it does now, duh. (b) Anthropic vs. The Pentagon — the question IMHO is who leaked the story and with what angle. Grok? This isn’t the type of thing that just shows up — someone makes it show up for a reason? (c) The Commodification of Intelligence —people / technologists keep talking about the commodification of intelligence meaning that P50 humans don’t have ‘jobs’ anymore… but the same is true of P50 computers… there will be no margin for the machines just like there is no margin for the people…. So I really don’t get how anyone expects to make money in this business if baseline knowledge tasks can be done by anyone… and any machine.

HOT TAKES

If Everyone is a Developer No One is a Developer, If Intelligence is Abundant Than Intelligence is Worthless. — the short version of the big theme. It isn’t just the ‘humans’ of average intelligence who lose their ability to generate margin, it is the machines as well.

Hockey - Shoresy is back (best show ever), Heated Rivalry… and now USA hockey… what a moment for a sport no one cared about 3 months ago — this might be the pattern for the future… purpose and community through obscure sport & singular goaltending.

AI is deflationary AND wealth destroying? — the selloff I have been chicken-littling about for the last 12 to 18 months might be hear… yes it is all narrative ahead of reality — but it is kinda crazy that Anthropic can destroy with a tweet far more equity value then they are even worth. Is their business model just shorting everything and then putting out press releases?

Everyone loves open, til it gets real — the death of web we have been yelling about for a while… but it is interesting in this spirit of ‘commodity machine intelligence’ to watch even the AI companies flip off APIs / access to their services and come to the realization that they too are giving away intelligence / tokens to acquire users in the hope that they get stuck on their interfaces and in their ecosystem.

If Intelligence is the New Energy, Should We Expect Regulated Local Monopolies? — Think what energy would look like in a world of global superconductor infra… it can be generated anywhere and delivered anywhere? That would be a disaster for PG&E… unless they have a locally regulated monopoly. It is kinda like the cable problem on steroids in the age of the internet ...

If Intelligence becomes abundant, does it become a bad business for computers (not just people?) — again, to the point above. I just don’t get how this all ends with any sort of high margin business in an era where the narrative of ‘first to AGI wins all business’ is clearly shattered / turned out to be a researcher-marketing game.

Billboards — you probably know how much I love billboards… I really do. I didn’t read most of this article but the part about SF advertising resonates (look out for the 101 billboards coffee table book we are working on!)

Reversion to the mean or tendency towards disequilibrium — from a dear Canadian friend… He believes in the reversion to the mean … and that is either totally reasonable and correct or completely out of touch… coming from the bay-area tendency- towards- disequalibrum team.

P50 selloff of everything… You never want to be average… you might not even want to be P90 these days… but what we are saying now is just the P50 selloff. There is no value in being average or being an average or even good company. Humans are terrible at estimation, so they want narratives of near complete security or near complete possible upside.

The Meaning Vacuum — remember when I said I would have time to work on this? I haven’t had time to write my grand thesis of human meaning and AI transition BUT I am still thinking about it and the AI meaning vacuum is THE thing.

A Students work for the B Students…. But The B Students Are Regulated by the D Students - I can’t believe that Gavin actually scored less than 1000 on the SAT… but if he did, just to the point. We all know that the A students work for the B students…. But don’t forget that the B students are regulated by the D students.

Campaign Finance Reform is a Misdirection … — this snippet from the NYT makes a lot of sense to me… and really puts a fine point on the fact that the issue with money in politics isn’t campaign finance… it is influence / the money AFTER the election. I do think that money is speech … and money should be free to speak — why? Because if you don’t let it speak it just buys newspapers, or social networks… and followers- and then speaks for free. Even that tho? Nothing compared to unions.

Best,
Sam

P.S. At least I still own a lot of copper!… and if I can’t beat Dave in a ski race (haven’t in 20 years)… at least I can beat everyone else :)

P.P.S best meme on the internet that explains basically everything.

Sponsor Notes

https://www.nimbleway.com/ — just officially announced its round. Slow company… great to see and great example of a company that was GOOD before AI, but with AI becomes great & accelerates at ton.

http://meritfirst.us/ — massively upgraded and massively important for hiring for talent (which will still happen at least for some!) —

http://eternity.photos/ — store your photos in a deep vault for a thousand years…. For when the machines take over.

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