NYTimes: “A.I.s have spent the last few years watching and imitating us, scraping the planet for data to digest and disgorge, but humans are mimics as well. A recent study from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development analyzed more than 360,000 YouTube videos consisting of extemporaneous talks by flesh-and-blood academics and found that A.I. language is increasingly coming out of human mouths. The more we’re exposed to A.I., the more we unconsciously pick up its tics, and it spreads from there. Some of the British parliamentarians who started their speeches with the phrase “I rise to speak” probably hadn’t used A.I. at all. They had just noticed that everyone around them was saying it and decided that maybe they ought to do the same. Perhaps that day will come for us, too. Soon, without really knowing why, you will find yourself talking about the smell of fury and the texture of embarrassment. You, too, will be saying “tapestry.” You, too, will be saying “delve.””
FT: “Videos are the new start-up pitch decks…A new ritual has taken hold in Silicon Valley. A founder creates a company and instead of just emailing prospective investors with a pitch deck or a Notion link, they create a trailer. Under a minute long and stitched together with AI editing tools, these videos are uploaded to social media in a bid to grab the attention of customers who might like the product and venture capitalists who might back the idea. The format of these videos is already becoming familiar to VCs. Many begin with three or four quick cuts designed to give the impression that something urgent, possibly world-changing, is about to happen. Text flashes on screen. Interfaces glide past. Sunsets, attractive people and slow-motion shots of typing hands fill the space. The product is often software but the vision is an aspirationally sci-fi future…A well-made video therefore tells investors that a founder has taste, confidence and a point of view. It can reveal that they are fluent in the culture they are building for.”
Camus: “Roger Federer broke the internet with one statistic that will change how you see every setback in your life. 1,526 singles matches. Won almost 80% of them. 20 Grand Slams. 103 titles. Now answer honestly: What percentage of total points do you think he won across his entire career? 70%? 65%? 60%? Try … 54%. He lost literally almost EVERY SECOND POINT he ever played for 24 years. And still became one of the greatest of all time. Watch him explain it himself: “In tennis, perfection is impossible… When you lose every second point on average, you teach yourself to say: ‘Okay, I double-faulted — it’s only one point.’ ‘Okay I got passed at the net — it’s only one point.’ Even a screaming overhead smash that ends up on SportsCenter Top 10… still just one point. So when you’re playing your point, it has to be the most important thing in the world. The moment it’s over — it’s behind you.”
SemiAnalysis: “The two best models in the world, Anthropic’s Claude 4.5 Opus and Google’s Gemini 3 have the majority of their training and inference infrastructure on Google’s TPUs and Amazon’s Trainium. Now Google is selling TPUs physically to multiple firms. Is this the end of Nvidia’s dominance? The dawn of the AI era is here, and it is crucial to understand that the cost structure of AI-driven software deviates considerably from traditional software. Chip microarchitecture and system architecture play a vital role in the development and scalability of these innovative new forms of software. The hardware infrastructure on which AI software runs has a notably larger impact on Capex and Opex, and subsequently the gross margins, in contrast to earlier generations of software, where developer costs were relatively larger. Consequently, it is even more crucial to devote considerable attention to optimizing your AI infrastructure to be able to deploy AI software. Firms that have an advantage in infrastructure will also have an advantage in the ability to deploy and scale applications with AI.”
FT: “We invented clocks to measure our days — but they ended up measuring us.”
