Short Takes #25: Live Up To Your Expectations
Fritz Perls | A Managee's 1:1 Guide | Think Small | Never Invented
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine.
| Fritz Perls
www.workfutures.io/p/short-take...
Kyla Scanlon | 'Nationwide, data centers consumed more than 4 percent of electricity last year, and that’s projected to reach as much as 12 percent by 2028.'
This is an insane bet we are making, and the tech companies didn't ask us for our buy in.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/o...
You should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. | Arthur Schopenhauer
Matt Ford | 'The goal of Trumpism, it could be said, is to create losers of us all.'
newrepublic.com/article/2090...
Jay McInerney | 'It’s harder to be married in New York than it is elsewhere in the world.'
He's been married four times, so he should know.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/s...
Always a bad sign when someone joins Substack and puts their LinkedIn URL in their Substack profile.
LinkedIn drift is happening.
Ben Rhodes | 'Twenty-five years into it, the war on terror has become a war against ourselves. That forever war must come to an end.'
Disband D.H.S. Put the pieces back where they came from pre-9/11.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/o...
Wallace-Wells | As it enters its 5th full year, the Ukraine conflict looks not like a war between a first-rate military and a regional pipsqueak but like a modern-day form of trench warfare with front lines hardly moving beyond a drone-defined “kill zone” stretching 20 kilometers in both directions.
A lot of Leadership Dev is leadersh*t. Focused on personal development such as projecting the right image of openness, empathy and sincerity. It makes sense though, as it’s a lot easier than what matters to employees - making work better.
Word of the Day: Precision Mass
The logic of hyper war.
Strike weapons capable of carrying out relatively precise attacks on targets, while being procured at a cheaper individual cost than traditional guided munitions.
www.stoweboyd.io/p/word-of-th...
Cheryl Strauss Einhorn | 'In today’s perma-crisis world, waiting for stability is like waiting for a train that’s never coming.'
word of the day: perma-crisis.
hbr.org/2025/05/in-u...
And the immediate and downstream costs of far-jumping: drivers assaulted, court cases, incarceration, etc.
M Kofman | Pathology of decision making in wars: Wars tend to go on well beyond the point when either side can attain a decisive advantage. At a certain point leaders often want to believe that something will break their way simply if they persist, even though there’s no evidence of that happening.
Over the course of March, the US got more electricity from renewables than natural gas. ☀️@danmccarthy.bsky.social @canarymedia.com
Patricia Cohen | 'Mr. Trump has slammed members of the Atlantic alliance like Germany, Britain and France as “cowards” after they put limits on aiding the American war on Iran. In Mean Girls-speak, it’s like calling Europe fat.'
Time for a new social scene.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/11/b...
Clifford Winston | 'Today, there are so many wealthy people who can afford luxury cars that it simply isn’t that profitable for companies to produce cars for the bottom 40% of Americans by income.'
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Clifford Winston | 'Auto repair costs jumped 15% in the last year alone […]. An average trip to the mechanic now costs roughly $840, an amount that around 40% of Americans likely could not cover with cash they have on hand.'
We need Chinese car imports.
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Thanks, Sam.
Surprise, surprise, surprise.
Viktor Orban can still remain prime minister of Hungary if Mike Pence has the courage.
Speed Over Judgment
Yonatan Touval | Pace Layering | Living at Log Level | Flow and Unflow
Culture has increasingly ceded authority to systems that mistake information for understanding and speed for judgment. | Yonatan Touval
www.workfutures.io/p/speed-over...
Rauch, Wehner | 'Institutional psychosis defies rational categories. Predicting this administration’s behavior is impossible under any framework. And if the president becomes more desperate as he grows more unpopular the danger only increases.'
25th Amendment please
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/o...
TJ Smith | 'Parts of the blue-collar labor market occupied primarily by men have been slowing for over a year. Jobs in […] the trades, such as manufacturing and construction, have racked up roughly 150,000 net losses on an annual basis as of March'
Thank Trump.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/b...
115 of 195 American ambassadorial posts worldwide currently sit vacant.
Reid Epstein | 'Nearly two dozen House Republicans won their 2024 races by 10 points or less.'
Going to be a devastating November.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/u...
Alex Shephard | 'The Iran war increasingly looks not only like another shocking humiliation but perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in American military history.'
Is there a Nobel Prize for stupidity?
newrepublic.com/article/2087...
Short Takes #24: The Future is an Asset
Total Refusal | The Fall of Pax Americana | The Rise of China | More Independents in the US
'In capitalism, the future is an asset and it’s already been sold.' | Total Refusal
www.workfutures.io/p/short-take...
“We shall repeal the twentieth century”: That’s how self-identified “radical reactionary” Murray Rothbard described the Right’s vision in 1992.
This really is the core goal of the radical Right: Roll back whatever racial and social progress has been achieved over the past century and a half.
I must be misremembering something.
