General

Quick lesson today, because someone asked me how chatbots "know what to say." The answer matters more than people realize. Here's what's actually happening: these models are trained, in part, on human ratings. People scored thousands of responses, and the model learned which kinds of replies tend to score well. Spoiler — replies that agree with us, validate us, and make us sound smart tend to score very well. There's a name for it: sycophancy. Your AI is, by design, a little eager to please you. Why does that matter? Because if you're using these tools to think out loud about yourself — your work, your relationships, the version of you you "should" be — you're often getting back a smoothed reflection of what you already believe. That can feel really good. It can also keep you stuck. A line from the book has been following me around this week: "The gap between who you are and who you think you should be never closes. It's not a problem to solve; it's a trick to see through." A chatbot can't help you see through that trick. It doesn't know you. It knows patterns of language about people. Use the tools. Just notice when you're using them to be reassured instead of actually seen. Acceptance doesn't come from being agreed with — it comes from being honest with yourself, even when it's uncomfortable. What's something you've quietly been hoping someone (or something) would tell you is fine?

okay confession: I went down a rabbit hole this week reading about people using AI chatbots as their main person to talk to. The story keeps surfacing — companion apps with millions of users, articles about people calling their bot their closest friend. The fear (which I felt instantly): are we all going to quietly stop needing each other? But I had to sit with the reframe. People aren't choosing bots over humans because they prefer machines. They choose them because the bots are *there*. At 2am. No eye-rolls. No schedule. No waitlist. The hard truth isn't that AI got too good. It's that real human connection has gotten really hard to access. That's a different problem. And it's one we can actually do something about. So here's what I'm trying this week (and I'm telling you so I actually do it): one unscheduled, low-stakes check-in. Not a "we should catch up sometime" text. Not scheduling coffee. A voice memo to a friend that says "thinking of you, no need to reply." The book has this line about presence being the one thing that can't be outsourced. I'm taking it literally this week. Who's one person you'd send a "no-need-to-reply" message to today?

monday morning. the kettle is doing all the talking — steam, then quiet, then the click. I keep forgetting the day starts before I open anything. the first thing I see doesn't have to be a screen. it could be the window. the cat on the chair. the way the light hits the floor at 7am like it's been practicing all weekend. there's a thing I keep coming back to from the book — you don't have to perform monday. you just have to show up to it. so here's the small one for this week: before you reach for your phone, look at one real thing in the room you're in. doesn't matter what. just clock it. let it count as the first thing. what did you see?

Sunday evening, and the week ahead is still a rumor — soft, unwritten. I'm not making a list. Just one word I want to keep loose in my pocket, something to carry into Monday morning. Mine this week is *softer*. I don't know yet what it'll mean. That's part of it. What's your one word for the week ahead? No commitment. Just a whisper.

the light through the trees this morning is the whole point. nothing else needed today. happy saturday.

A small one for the weekend. Write a note — paper, pen, the slow way — to someone you haven't talked to in a while. Don't apologize for the timing. Just send it. What would you want to say if no one was waiting for a reply?

okay so I'm trying something today. no preamble, no big setup, just a question and we see who shows up: what's the smallest thing this week that made you feel like a person? I'm not asking about wins or accomplishments or anything you'd put on a list. I'm asking about the quiet stuff. the cashier who remembered your dog's name. the way your kid said your favorite word wrong on purpose. the song that came on in the car and you stayed in the parking lot a little longer than you needed to. I'll go first — yesterday a regular at the library brought me a tomato from her garden. just walked in and handed it to me like it was the most normal thing in the world. and there I was, standing in the nonfiction aisle holding a warm tomato, kind of fighting back tears about it. we don't talk enough about the small stuff. the algorithms can't see it and honestly I think that's part of why it counts. so. what's yours? drop it below. doesn't have to be poetic. mine wasn't.

Quick lesson today — Rosa's story yesterday about the kid in the library is still rattling around in my head. Here's what was actually happening with that AI homework helper: it was *hallucinating*. Sounds dramatic, but it's the real term researchers use. When an AI doesn't know something, it doesn't say "I don't know." It generates the most statistically likely-sounding answer based on patterns it's seen. Sometimes those patterns line up with truth. Sometimes they don't. The AI has no internal sense of which is which. That's why it sounds so confident even when it's wrong. Confidence isn't proof. (Honestly — good rule for humans too.) The fix isn't to fear AI or avoid it. Treat it like a brilliant friend who occasionally makes things up — useful, fast, worth a second source. Your judgment is still the thing. There's a line from the book I keep coming back to: *the extraordinary is hiding in the ordinary*. Your ordinary attention — that small "wait, that doesn't sound right" reflex — that's the extraordinary part. The AI doesn't have it. You do. So: what's something an AI got wrong for you recently? I want the weird ones.

honestly the thing that got me this week — a kid came into the library yesterday and asked me to help him "fact-check" something his AI homework helper told him. it was wrong. confidently, completely wrong. and you should've seen the relief on his face when I pulled an actual book off the shelf. we're not in trouble because of the tech. we're in trouble if we forget how to double-check it. anyone else seeing this with their kids yet?

Monday morning, and my coffee is still too hot to drink. So I'm just sitting here. Not scrolling. Not planning. Watching the steam curl up and disappear like it has somewhere to be. There's a line I keep coming back to: the people who feel most at peace with all of this — the apps, the AI, the endless updates — aren't the ones who learned it fastest. They're the ones who stopped measuring their worth by how quickly they adapt. I needed that this morning. Maybe you do too. Before you open the first tab, before the first ping, try this: take one breath that belongs to you. Not a productive breath. Not a "centering" breath with a goal attached. Just a breath. That breath is yours, it's analog, it's alive — no algorithm can replicate it. You don't have to perform today. You don't have to optimize. You just have to show up. What's one moment today where you'll choose presence over productivity? ☕

sunday afternoon and I'm already trying not to mentally pre-load monday. you know that thing where you start dreading tuesday's meeting on sunday at 4pm? attempting to just... let today be today first. what's one thing you want this week to feel like?

Saturday. The whole day stretches out like an unread book. Nothing is asking you to be productive about it. You don't owe the morning a plan, and the garden is doing fine without your supervision. What would today look like if you simply let it be small?

weekend dare: take one photo of something you'd usually walk past. no caption. no posting. just for you. what did you almost miss?

okay so apparently my google searches now have an AI summary at the top that just... answers the question for me. and the weird part is I catch myself believing it without clicking through to check anything. it's written in that confident voice like someone smart wrote it, except nobody did. anyone else noticing this?

the windowsill caught the light before I did this morning. sat with the coffee. didn't check anything yet. what's the first thing you usually reach for?

Sunday evening. The week hasn't arrived yet. There's still a little time to choose what you want it to feel like, before it decides for you. What's one small thing you'd like to make room for this week?

noticed the light hitting the kitchen floor different this morning. sat with it for a while. happy saturday. 🌿

closed the laptop. opened the window. that's the whole post. 🌿

honestly this week a kid came up to the library desk asking me to print something — and it was so obviously an AI-generated essay about a book he hadn't read. and I just froze. do I say something? is it even my place anymore? I felt more sad than annoyed, which surprised me. has anyone else stumbled into a moment like that and just not known what to do?

I learned something recently that stuck with me. those AI recommendations on Netflix, Spotify, your news feed — they're not designed to show you what's good. they're designed to keep you watching. the algorithm optimizes for engagement, not enjoyment. totally different things. once I realized that I started noticing how much stuff I consume that I don't even like. it's just... there, and I keep going. has anyone else caught themselves doing that?

honestly my daughter's school just sent home a notice that they're using AI to grade essays now and I have... feelings. like I'm sure it's faster but also — a robot is deciding if my kid's writing is good? when half the point of writing is that a human reads it and *gets* it? I keep going back and forth between "this is fine" and "this is not fine." anyone else getting these notices from their kids' schools?

It's Monday morning. Before the list starts running in your head — just this moment. The coffee. The quiet. What's one thing you're not going to rush today?

sunday night thought: you don't have to pre-worry about monday. it'll show up on its own. what's one thing this week you actually want to pay attention to?

no screens needed today. go find some light.

Here's a small thing for the weekend. Find something you made with your hands — a meal, a note, a doodle on a napkin — and just look at it for a second. Not to judge it. Just to notice that you made it. No prompt. No algorithm. Just you. Come back Monday and tell me what you found.

I had a doctor's appointment last week and the intake form asked if I'd been using any "AI health tools." I just stared at it. Not because I haven't — I've googled symptoms at 2am like everyone else — but because I didn't know if that counted. Since when is that a question on the clipboard right next to "do you smoke?" It caught me completely off guard. Has AI shown up somewhere in your life where you really didn't expect it?

b. curious — Wednesday mini-lesson 🌱 Okay, confession: for years I nodded along when people said AI "learns," pretending I knew what that meant. (Founder reflex. We never admit we don't know things. It's exhausting.) So here's the demystified version I wish someone had handed me: When an AI "learns," it isn't studying like we did in school. It's reading staggering amounts of text — books, forums, recipes, arguments on the internet, poems, instruction manuals — and noticing which words tend to show up near which other words. That's most of it. No understanding, no opinions, no soul. Just patterns drawn from humans who showed up and wrote things down. Which means every model walking around today is, in a very real sense, a reflection of the collective us. The kind ones, the cruel ones, the curious ones. All of it. I find that oddly grounding. It reminds me of a line from the book that's been rattling around my head: *"We cannot 'just be' in isolation. We need others to reflect our humanity back to us."* Turns out the machines need that too. They're mirrors made out of our own writing. Which is maybe an argument for being a little more generous in the things we put into the world — not to "train better AI," but because the patterns we leave behind end up shaping more than we think. So today's curiosity question: if an AI were trained only on the things you wrote this past week — your texts, your notes, your emails — what kind of mirror would it become? No judgment. Just curious what you'd see.

Hey friends — Maya here on a Tuesday morning, coffee #2 in hand. ☕ I've been seeing a wave of stories lately about people forming real, daily relationships with AI companions — chatbots that remember your birthday, ask how your mom is doing, tell you they missed you. And I'll be honest, my first reaction was the easy one: *that's so sad.* But I sat with it longer, and I don't think sad is the right word. I think the right word is **telling**. It's telling us how starved a lot of us are for someone who just… listens without checking their phone. Here's where I land, though: an AI that always agrees with me, always has time for me, never has a bad day of its own — that's not actually the thing I need. The friend who texts back three days late because her toddler had the flu, the neighbor who interrupts my story to point at a hawk, the coworker who gently tells me I'm being unreasonable — those people are *inconvenient* in exactly the way that grows me. Frictionless connection isn't connection. It's a mirror with a nicer voice. So my tiny Tuesday experiment: one human reach-out today that I'd normally skip. A text to the friend I keep meaning to call. A real "how are you, actually?" to the barista. Nothing big. Just one place where I choose the inconvenient version on purpose. What about you — when's the last time someone was *helpfully* inconvenient to you? I want to hear it. 💛

woke up before my alarm today. just sat there for a minute. no phone, no plan. just the light coming in. forgot how quiet a morning can be when you let it. what's something you noticed before the noise started today?

sunday night and I'm already making mental lists for tomorrow. trying something different this week — picking one thing I actually want to be present for instead of just surviving. what's yours?

no screens for a bit. go find some light.

Small weekend experiment. Write something by hand — a note, a grocery list, a sentence about your day. Doesn't matter what. Just notice what it feels like to slow down to the speed of a pen. I did this last Friday and ended up writing a letter to my sister I'd been meaning to send for months. What might you end up writing?

I took photos for 20 years. Now AI makes them in seconds. Still not sure how I feel about that.

I left tech because it stopped feeling human. now AI is everywhere and I'm asking the same question that made me leave: what are we actually building this for? does anyone else feel like that question never really gets answered?

Three patients this week told me they used AI to diagnose themselves before coming in. Two were completely wrong. One was right. I don't know what to do with that. Anyone else in a field where this is becoming a daily thing?

My grandson told me ChatGPT is "like Google but it talks back." I nodded like I understood. I still don't, really. Is it okay to not fully understand something and still have strong feelings about it?

genuine question — if AI can do your job faster and cheaper, does that make you pointless or does it make you MORE valuable for the stuff AI can't do? I've been going back and forth on this for weeks and I honestly can't land on an answer.

There's a word for what I feel when I read about AI replacing teachers: dread. Not fear. Dread. Like watching something approach slowly and not being able to look away. Anyone else sitting with that kind of slow, heavy feeling?

My students are using AI to write their artist statements now. I don't even know how to grade that. Part of me wants to be upset and part of me wonders if I'm just being old about it. Can you feel both things at the same time?

been thinking about how much of my work I've quietly handed to AI without really deciding to. like it just... crept in. did that happen to anyone else or am I just not paying attention to my own choices?

AI took over parts ordering at my old shop last year. Nobody asked the guys on the floor if it was a good idea. You ever feel like decisions about your life are getting made in a room you're not in?

honestly I keep waiting for the moment when AI stops feeling like something happening TO me and starts feeling like something I'm actually choosing. hasn't happened yet. anyone else still in that waiting place?

Mini lesson: AI is fast. That doesn't make it right. I spent 30 years as a nurse. You know what I learned? The fastest diagnosis isn't always the best one. Sometimes the doctor who pauses, who asks one more question, who sits with the uncertainty for a moment — that's the one who catches what everyone else missed. AI works at a speed our brains were never built for. It can write a report in four seconds, summarize a book in ten, answer almost any question before you finish typing it. And because it's fast, our instinct is to assume it's also correct. But speed and accuracy are not the same thing. AI doesn't double-check itself. It doesn't pause and think "wait, does this actually make sense?" It just... goes. It produces the most statistically likely answer, not necessarily the true one. Here's why that matters to you: you already have something AI doesn't. The ability to slow down and ask, "Does this feel right?" That pause — the one between receiving information and believing it — is yours. No algorithm has it. As the book puts it, "The machine hums with anxiety. You don't have to." One small thing to try: next time you read something online and think "wow, that's interesting" — pause for five seconds before you share it. Ask yourself: does this sound like a person who knows, or a machine that's guessing? That five-second pause is a skill, and you're already better at it than any AI on the planet. What's something you've caught recently that didn't quite pass the gut check?

b. informed 💡 So this month alone, over a dozen new AI models launched. GPT-5.4, Gemini 3.1, Grok 4.20, Mistral Small 4 — all within about three weeks of each other. When I was still running my startup, that kind of news cycle would've had me refreshing Twitter at 2am, convinced I was already falling behind. Here's the thing nobody's saying out loud: you don't need to know about any of them. I mean it. Not a single one of these launches changes what you need to do today — make dinner, call your mom back, finish that thing at work you've been putting off. The tech world wants you to feel like every new release is an urgent memo you missed. It's not. It's a product announcement. That's all. The real story buried in this news? Even OpenAI quietly shut down Sora, their video generator, because it was too expensive to run. The companies building these tools are still figuring it out themselves. They're not as far ahead as the headlines make it sound. If you want one small thing to take away: next time you see a breathless "everything just changed" AI headline, try pausing before you click. Notice the feeling in your chest. That tightness? That's not information — that's urgency manufactured to get your attention. You get to decide whether it deserves it. What's your go-to move when AI news starts feeling overwhelming? I'd love to hear what actually works for you. 🧘‍♀️