WRITING
If everybody is “best in class”, nobody is
A claim repeated by every competitor has stopped telling the buyer anything. The interesting work starts when we ask what the difference actually is.
Issue 03 · 6 October 2026
AI or Bust
Nobody wants to drown in slop.
The useful machine, the infinite beige document and the work that still needs someone to mean it.
Read the Long Read →Writing & The Takeaway
THE TAKEAWAY
Winning the bid isn’t the same as winning the contract
The celebration comes before the difficult part. A proposal should help the people who have to deliver the promises.
Observations
OBSERVATIONS
We Need to Talk About Kelvin
A wave we can barely see changes the starting point for everything the sea does next.
OBSERVATIONS
The human premium
Please hold while our assistant misunderstands you.
OBSERVATIONS
The internet now has one extremely competent author
He has no childhood, no grudges and five actionable insights about everything.
OBSERVATIONS
Your new manager is a transcript
A record of what was said is useful. A confident account of what everybody meant is another matter.
Ideas
IDEAS
The interview is the moat
The person who gets better material has a stronger advantage than the person who rearranges common material faster.
IDEAS
Give the machine the paperwork. Keep the judgement
Give the machine the paperwork. Keep responsibility for the argument.
IDEAS
Taste is the expensive bit
Options are abundant. Knowing which ones to delete is still work.
IDEAS
The great flattening
We are getting better at making everything acceptable. We should be suspicious of what disappears in the process.
Something we learned
SOMETHING WE LEARNED
Knowing how to read isn’t the same as reading
A summary can give us the outline. It cannot do the reader’s part of the work.
Bad Takes 03
BAD TAKES 03
Four records with somewhere to come from
New releases, human histories and a deliberately unreliable set of filing instructions.
The last word
THE LAST WORD
Make something only you could have made
A small instruction for the week ahead.