Three hours of commercials about AI, crypto, and sports betting last night in the middle of a boring game. I miss the time when Super Bowl ads were actually clever marketing and not just how many celebrities can they stick in an ad. Is anyone going to remember the Dunkin Donuts ad in two months? Meanwhile, how many people alive in the ’80s or ’90s remember Spuds Mackenzie or the Budweiser Frogs?

Today: Listened to a podcast on the bus discussing the writing and reading process and two things have lingered. One, so much of the process was outsourced to AI in terms of editing and amazingly fact checking. While there was discussion of reviewing the material, it’s really disheartening to see how many writers and media personalities are migrating towards AI usage. Secondly there was a comment about how no one pays to read things they dislike. Even though the movement back towards independent blogs and sites is heartening, the economics of subscriptions means people really are building castles with moats rather than islands all over the internet. Sometimes they put the moat down, but if you want into the castle all the time you have to pay. So at the end of the day, we’re not really solving the bubble problem.

Reading: I don’t know if I’ll really finish Martyr!, there’s parts that still grab me but a lot of it feels like a slog.

Listening: I saw Ghost on Saturday in Tulsa. It’s always funny to me to see how this is a band that has such an outlandish public persona (demonic pope!, nameless ghouls band!) and then plays the melodic heavy-ish rock and make dumb jokes during the show. The show was so threatening there were kids and friendship bracelets!

Last Watched: I can’t lie, the Super Bowl was boring but as someone who detests the Patriots, watching them get embarrassed for the entire game by a good Seattle defense was entertaining.