It’s Always Sunny when It’s 5 o’clock somewhere

Back in college, I was nearly kidnapped.

I was staying at my girlfriend’s apartment and the trash smelled terrible. It was time to take it out, so I grabbed the far-too-full 30 gallon bag and climbed down the three sets of stairs to make the arduous walk across the parking lot to arrive at the dumpster.

It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was setting soon. The putrid scent of the dumpster met the not-so-fresh scent of my own trash. I held my nose as I tipped the trash bag into the dumpster.

Right as that happened, an SUV rapidly pulled up behind me. I jumped back, almost pushing my back against the dumpster.

It was an all black SUV and I couldn’t see inside the tinted windows. The window rolled down. A woman looked out at me.


In fragmented English, she explained she was a delivery driver and confused by the app’s directions. She wanted me to get in her car to help guide her.


I looked at her, I looked at her phone which clearly had an active delivery app with directions on it, I looked at my surroundings. I did a quick check in the back seat. I even saw what appeared to be a full Wendy’s bag.

And I did one of the stupidest things I’ve probably ever done.

I got in the car.

The second I got in, the doors locked, my heart started pounding. Why did I just get in a random woman's car? Had I learned nothing from a lifetime of warnings about strangers?

I took a deep breath out, trying to calm myself. I glanced at the delivery app and realized it was in Spanish, so I started a conversation with her. My Spanish was not amazing, but she seemed thrilled. I was able to tell her to go izquierda o derecha. She asked me how old I was, ventiuno. In normal circumstances, that’s probably a normal question. At the time, it said the wrong thing, maybe I was about to get human trafficked.

We made our way through the complex and eventually stopped in front of what the app said was the right spot. It had been confusing. And we still had to go to the back of the building, the furthest point in the complex from the front gate. So, we dropped off the order at some building in the back of the complex. I felt a little better on the way back, given we actually had completed the delivery.

She brought me back to the dumpster, thanked me profusely in Spanish, and drove away. I stood there dumbfounded for about five minutes. As I processed what had just happened, I realized how quickly I had assumed the worst. This woman wasn't trying to kidnap me (or, if she was trying to, she is really terrible at kidnapping people); she was just lost and needed help. We're often told to fear strangers, but most people are just like you or me, trying to navigate the world the best they can.

Though, I was a white man inside a gated apartment community, so maybe that’s a privileged takeaway 😅 I still wouldn’t advise getting into anyone’s car randomly.

Of course, it's still important to be VIGILANT and trust your instincts, but we shouldn't let fear dictate our interactions with others. And certainly not by default. My default is to tend to perceive threats when there aren’t any, likely due to experiences from my own past. It’s taken me a long time to try to see the best in other people and to feel generally safe. So this was a very, very uncharacteristic thing for me to do.

Ultimately, the greatest danger often lies in our own assumptions. I’d love to hear her version of the story.

As much as we’d like things to be orderly, life is messy. It would be preferable if life was like a recipe with easy steps to follow.

Sadly, life is more like a grocery list, and you forgot to grab the bread in Aisle 5. So you send off your kid to grab it while you finish up in the frozen section.

After ten minutes of waiting for them to come back, you go looking for them. You search every aisle when it dawns on you.

You don’t have children.

And, even worse, you realize you forgot your wallet.

So something more straightforward would be nice.

But even recipes lie to us. They present steps as a matter of fact. But cooking isn’t a perfectly linear process. Certain activities must happen in parallel. All recipes reduce complexity to be more accessible to their target audience. They may skip entire steps, processes, or ingredients.

For instance, most Americans don’t own gochugaru, so it’ll list red pepper flakes instead. Most people don’t own a blowtorch, so a recipe creator won’t advise using one. So we eat our lackluster results from these cherry-picked instructions that don’t reflect what a professional chef might do.

What if our tools and systems were designed to embrace the mess instead of trying to present everything as linear steps?

Reform is better than relief. If we can change the system for the better, we should do that—obviously.

Except, it isn’t obvious.

It is harder to reform something, and there’s no guarantee it leads to better results. Meanwhile, real people suffer.

Relief deals with the tangible problems of now. Which is important because pain and suffering exist in the present, not in some hypothetical future.

Imagine: There's a river that supplies water to a town. Someone is actively poisoning it upstream.

Some people want to install expensive water filtration systems in every home (relief), while others decide to find the source of the poison (reform). Both matter. We need clean water now (relief) while also stopping the source of the problem (reform).

Yet in the modern world, we see people unknowingly supporting systems that harm them, while others rush to defend the people poisoning the source! It’s the modern “drinking the Kool-Aid”.

This is evident in how people follow public figures. Any substantial following includes a group of unwavering supporters. Even when a controversial figure proposes an idea that might be harmful, their devoted followers defend them, calling them geniuses. This blind support can hinder both meaningful reform and effective relief efforts.

We live during the richest period in human history (even though it may not feel like it due to income inequality). How can we allow people to suffer needlessly? How can we allow opinions to override helping actual human beings? But simply throwing money at problems and hoping they will go away doesn’t permanently reduce suffering.

There has to be a balance between reforming everything and providing relief. There’s inherent value to both. We have to help people now and we have to change things for the better. One doesn’t make sense without the other.

I used to think if something was easily broken, it deserved to break. It was cheap, expendable.

But the best things in life are often fragile, perhaps even delicate.

It’s easy to break things—it’s so much harder to cultivate. To build. Things built over your entire life can topple down in a second.

The Olympic torch is a classic example of this mentality and, indeed, culture itself. Literally carrying the torch of civilization.

Warren Buffet has a story he tells about this. Imagine you get a single car for the rest of your life. How would you treat it?

Now, I treat my car like crap. But it’s a good thought experiment. If something is valuable to you, treat it well. We all value different things.

Now, I believe we should do what we can to cherish and preserve what is crucial to us.

Stay tuned, next time I’ll share my edgiest opinion: relief vs. reform.

I just finished reading A Walk in The Woods by Bill Bryson. I love the first part and overall it was a great read. It becomes a bit meandering at times but I overall enjoyed the journey. I’d do a greater write up but I mean the title basically sums it up. This man decided to walk the Appalachian trail and we go along. And it’s funny and witty and dry and tough. But it’s also just a dude pondering things in a forest and then sometimes not in the forest. It didn’t occur to me there is this massive volunteer trail going through large swaths of America (even though I kinda knew) but what was more surprising is that they never really felt that far from civilization. They’d stop and eat burgers and shit after X amount of miles. But he did walk further than New York to Chicago.

I’m fascinated by big random human endeavors. I used to dig 200×200 holes on Minecraft because I’m fucking strange. The idea of doing something big like a marathon appeals to me. Except not running. But I’d like to do something like that someday… maybe a month long hackathon or something idk lol. I used to be addicted to a game called RuneScape and one dude made a whole YouTube series about spending all his time in the swamp lol. It got massive. People love watching big but tbh stupid shit. It’s real art. It’s not pointless, but it’s also very very specific and odd.

As an aside, I have some longer stories I’ve been working on but they’re not quite ready to showcase yet. Looking forward to showing them off!

Kinda one of those Thursdays. Hopefully you aren’t dragging like I am! Need some caffeine stat.

yours always,

Kenny (i mean Lucas, I think)

Coincidences are not magic. We simply lack context for the building blocks behind events.

Events are interconnected even if they feel random. We’re living in the present, but the present is established by the past.

It’s like the butterfly effect where small actions can have big, unpredictable consequences over time.

For instance, I’ve been seeing a ton of references to the Bob Newhart show in the last few days.

Only today, I learned Bob Newhart died July 18th. So it makes sense that people would be referencing the show of a person who recently died, even if they didn’t necessarily mention that he recently died.

That was a pivotal piece of information which made everything click into place for me. When the world confuses us, we need to gain clarity or shift perspective to realize that it isn’t all some crazy conspiracy.

However, irrational and illogical circumstances happen. There’s a lot humans don’t understand. Sometimes there really is a conspiracy. You can chase coincidences and try to explain them all your whole life, but you’ll never become omniscient.

So you gotta pick your battles for what is worth getting the real scoop on. As much as the modern world wants us to be, we can’t be fully educated about most things.

The point is: even if we don’t know the cause and effect, it’s still there. Things rarely happen out of absolutely nowhere.

✌️ Lucas

It’s crazy how one person or place or situation can affect your entire trajectory.

And you don’t often realize until later the massive impact.

Sometimes our favorite things or even our entire worldview is determined by a moment.

For me, that period of time was in junior high. I had a teacher who truly enlightened me. I wish more people got this opportunity.

Most of us float through the school system like cattle. Whether it’s on purpose or happenstance, it is undoubtedly true that in the good ol’ USA we’ve never been that great at education at scale.

This was the first teacher I felt truly cared about us, about the content, and about educating us. He didn’t need to follow the exact format. He made it fun and switched it up. There were games and models and simulations. It really felt like he wrote the rules too. Other teachers just seemed to be following a syllabus made by someone three paces removed from them. It’s easy to get hyped when someone is buying the Koolaid they're selling.

And I was additionally lucky that I got this teacher multiple times and for long blocks of time. I’ve often said my favorite book is The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (affiliate) and this is where I first encountered it.

So we’ve said the nice stuff. Let’s inevitably transfer this into a dark place. This is a poem I made back then.

I was proud of a lot of what I wrote during those years. At the end of our final year, my teacher created a collection where each student could contribute one or two pieces of writing to it to come back to. And I’ve come back many times nostalgically.

My class was incredibly disturbing and dark. Our perspectives were informed by things like 9/11 and never having really felt safe to begin with.

Everyone else shared these deep pieces of themselves.

I shared this fucking clock.

In some ways, I’m impressed by my foresight. Most of the writing is pretty terrible and mediocre. We were kids! This seems deep and stands up tbh.

On the other hand, I feel like my mentality was clearly corrupted by the need to hide myself. I was scared to share my real writing. It was one thing to do it in the safety of the classroom, it was another to stick it in a permanent collection, forever.

Young me found a lot of poetic resonance in poking fun at the idea of permanence and the concept of time. I mean, I still do. I was shitposting even back then.

I wonder if any of the other sad sacks from that time are as sentimental as I am, and I feel the answer is no.

I reached out to my former teacher a few years back to let him know I was extremely grateful for him changing the trajectory of my life and showing me the value in being a little offbeat. The value of writing and communication. And maybe even for giving me some empathy and trying to understand other perspectives. For giving me my favorite book and my favorite author.

I often wondered what type of person I would be without the internet (I’m a goddamn software engineer and I spend endless time in front of the computer), but I’m sure that’s just an implementation detail. I truly have no idea who I would have been without this class at that moment in my life.

Lucas

p.s. bonus point if you get the title hehehehehe

Here’s a fun way to pick your next book: read the first chapter of the last few books you added to your to-read list and then start with the one that sticks out most

You can trust me because I read over 100 books every year. And over the weekend, I did this!

I went buck wild recently and bought more than 10 ebooks. I signed up for this BookBub email list and I couldn’t resist. They’re usually 99cent ebooks. It’s great if you’re into ebooks.

So I read the first chapter of each, sorted them, and sadly I do like them all. Two stuck out the most to me: Nine Tailed by Jayci Lee (fantasy) and Power and Thrones by Dan Jones (history)

I tend to read many books at once. According to my Goodreads, I’ve got 30 in-progress. That’s not exactly true, but it’s not exactly false.

A trick I use to read multiple books is to use very different genres. The two books I liked above are a good example: one is fiction and one is non-fiction. But even more granular is genre. I can read a programming book, a history book, a sci-fi book, and a romance novel at the same time without having much problem with overlap.

People worry they’ll get mixed up. Everyday people tell you a million stories and we rarely have a problem distinguishing them.

Books have different pacing. When there is a lull, we can switch to another one because if I stopped every time I got bored I’d never finish any book. And it’s okay to decide a book is trash.

Plus your mood matters deeply. Maybe I’m in the mood for something dense or technical. But sometimes I need to relax. I chill out with the romance novel or escape with some sci-fi. Having an alternatives at hand and already started makes you more likely to read.

It’s just like TV. You might be watching a few shows or keeping up with multiple at once. And sometimes you want a chill sitcom not a full ass drama. It’s easier to continue something you started already than something new.

But for some reason our minds treat books differently. As more sacred. Perhaps we should!

Lucas was here

P.S. As always, any Amazon link is an affiliate link. I would technically “make” money if you bought it, but even tho I may get a few pennies, tbh, the main reason I include them is Amazon Associates automatically shortens the url 😇😇 personally, I’d prefer you got the affordable ebook version through bookbub and your favorite provider because I’m frugal as hell. But if you are interested and prefer physical copies by all means!

Today for the first time in a minute I got out into the world and spent some time in a public space.

I mean I go out and do stuff but it’s rarely dawdling in one spot for a long period.

And I kinda dig it. I love overhearing strangers and seeing how people act. I like just being someplace with nothing to do and nowhere to be. It’s a rare and fleeting experience.

It’s easy to be disillusioned in the times we live in and forget there are real people out there just living life.

It opens your eyes to different perspectives and makes you witness the human experience happening in real time.

Plus quadruple points for good food and drink!

—

Small Interweave update: still waiting on app review 😅 I guess I shouldn’t promise a date if it relies on a third party

Hope to share better news soon!

Lucas

People are too quick to call trying failure.

All the advice on the internet (and countless self help books) is that you just have to get started or you have to put in more reps.

While it’s not easy to get started and it’s not easy to continue, those are rarely the difference between success and failure.

Failure can look like success. Sometimes you spend idk decades doing shit you hated successfully.

Trying is easy AND quitting is easy. It’s easy to stick your toes in the water without actually jumping in. It’s easy to say the water is too cold and walk away.

But did you really give it your effort? Did you jump into the deep end?

And here’s the real secret: look before you leap. It’s not about completing everything, it’s about aligning with your understanding of success and what you feel compelled to do. If you don’t want to risk death, maybe you shouldn’t be a stunt person. Yet we’re okay risking 50 years of our existence doing something we hate for an illusion of security.

People think their choices lead to success or failure, but choices lead to consequences

Did you really fail if you realized you were about to jump into a disgusting cesspool? Avoiding things we hate is more important than finding some underlying mysterious love that may not exist.

And if you did jump in? Get out and clean it off. You just learned what you don’t want. That’s confidence really. That’s understanding more about yourself and your lifestyle and human nature.

Try, try, and try. Go deeper on a few things and get out of the pool. Reevaluate. Then, refine your what you want to avoid and jump back with all the knowledge you have. It’s not starting over—it’s taking everything you’ve ever done with you.

It’s easy to get stuck in the past. On situations and on people.

Think back to school. Remember someone you haven’t thought about in a while.

A former best friend you haven’t talked to in ten years, the random girl who sat by you in home room… or maybe the kid who sang in my ear every goddamn day in math class.

If they’re still kicking, they are not the same person (hopefully with less ear singing). They’ve diverged on a path that you may no longer realize or understand. Human minds like straight lines, so we keep people as static characters locked in coffins in our mind.

Including ourselves.

We likely didn’t even know that person then. Not fully. We barely know our full selves, so all we really have is a small impression of who someone is.

And they’re an entirely different person now. You open up Facebook and (doom)scroll past these different lives, different looks, different names, different faces.

Effectively, that person in your memory is dead. They don’t exist in the same way, shape, or form.

It especially hurts when you loved somebody. You keep this vision of them in your mind. This is why so many people have trouble moving on.

But the version of the person you knew doesn’t exist anymore. Grieve it, but stop locking yourself in a coffin with dead bodies.

Loss is something we all experience at some point. And I’m not talking about losing a kid’s baseball game. I mean true loss, a permanent separation.

I experienced true loss early on, and there’s something about never being able to access something again that is so hard to grasp.

Maybe it’s never being able to have a conversation with a loved one again. Or your favorite restaurant changing their menu so you can no longer have their delicious Mapo Ramen ever again.

Sometimes life feels like loss after loss, and it’s just a continuous cycle of grieving and starting over.

But there’s power in this too: impermanence. It frees us from many expectations and obligations, reminding us that everything changes, and nothing lasts forever. It’s terrifying, yet liberating.

It may sound alarming at first. Or perhaps even a bit hustle culture-y. That’s not my intention. Don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating for a relentless pursuit of productivity.

Grappling with mortality can be so scary that many people scramble around with their heads cut off their whole lives and forget to live at all.

Perhaps sadly, existential dread and human mortality remain unsolved—but I feel it’s critical to tell you that the time is now if there’s something you want to do. 

I mean, not ANYTHING. Within reason and the law 😂 This isn’t legal advice, and we should still respect other people’s autonomy. I shouldn’t have to qualify this advice, but we live in the times we do. 

We can lose ourselves in escapism and doomscrolling, but we have the creeping suspicion we aren’t fulfilled or we’re wasting our potential.

It’s because we’re avoiding reality. And sometimes we have to in order to survive. So if you’re still surviving, survive. But if you already did, it’s time to break free of the patterns that helped you survive. 

But do you boo: even if that is going slow and ignoring the bustle. I’ve been in this state relatively recently. You don’t need to always be on. Life feels like rapids, but it really is a stream—but be careful, you can still drown in a stream. 

It’s a balance. Just like the cycle of grief and repeat. It’s only by coming to terms with this we can be cognizant and escape the cycles.

What’s something you always wanted to do? I promise you can do it. I can’t promise outcomes, but I promise you can do anything. You want to draw? I decided I did. It was shit, but I did it. Literally anything. You might not be a world-famous artist, you might not be an NBA player (I certainly won’t be), but you can DO anything you want. If you want to sing, fucking sing. What are you waiting for? Maybe it was this email ;)))))) tell me your dream yo

not sure how a piece on loss turned into a motivation speech, but whatever. I nike’d this shit

Peace, Lucas

Monday is here, the week is nigh.

I’ve been working primarily on Interweave, but after that, my full attention will be on a diss track I’ve been working on against some random guy named Vijay.

Here’s a sneak peek at the Scoreboard feature from Interweave! It will let you quickly sort through your Threads posts! You can also see the Alchemize Post button which is going to give you even deeper insights on a per-post basis over time.

Tomorrow I hope to share the release schedule and start getting these features out to people. The Threads experience will be FOREVER CHANGED. hopefully in a positive way.

Hope you all have a great start to another ****groan**** week,

LORD SACUL

Or at least Sunday would be if there wasn’t always work looming on the horizon. It’s been intense in the real world so here is some escapism with a poem

random poem

Hair pinned up,

A brunette rose:

Speckled with water flecks

To match her freckles.

don’t let other people ruin your fun

I’ve heard a lot lately people rejecting things because people they don’t like (or hate) also enjoy something. Here’s a way to put this in perspective: the person I hate drinks water so I’ll never drink water again. Ridiculous, right?

threads of the week

Spotify vs Threads????

Spotify fancies itself as a social network. Though they are really just adding these features to podcasts for now, it is potentially something they will carry over to the music streaming part.

interweave sneak peeks

Been mostly focusing on Interweave’s launch… next week will be the launch!! If you missed it, I’ve been dumping Easter eggs and sneak peals onto the interweave.social/countdown page including a 15+ minute overview of the new stuff launching soon

dont front on threads

Just be real homie 🙄🙄🙄

Remember to comment your own thoughts on these posts!!

Anyways, next week we’ve got more stories, more unsolicited advice, and of course INTERWEAVE 2.0. It’s been such a long time coming, super excited for you all to break it into a million pieces and shatter my dreams. I mean find it useful 😅😅

Forever and always and stay strong or whatever you feel really,

Lucas

Maybe we don't actually like the things we think we enjoy. We spend our lives believing we love something, only to realize we often never understood what it truly entails.

I made some feta pasta yesterday and I bought some fancy imported feta. 100% sheep’s milk. We tasted it and almost spit it out.

Because it was fancy and imported and 100% sheep’s milk, we assumed it was the best of the best.

This was a shock, but real feta is very, very musky. It tastes a bit like a barnyard.

But that wasn’t the problem.

The problem was wtf are they putting in the fake ass cheese we were getting before? What is this other feta masquerading around with these greek ass flags on them? What are they actually eating over there!?

It tastes entirely different.

I was able to quickly acquire the taste and enjoy the rest of the meal, it was just a momentary shock. But the feelings of betrayal by Big Feta stings.

Apparently, most feta sold here involves cow’s milk. It’s still feta in the sense that it is brined or whatever the hell it is. The dumbed down American one is relatively mild and inoffensive, and the actual sheep’s milk version has a much more complex taste and mouthfeel. It is a completely different texture.

I will give actual feta a few more tries, as I, personally, believe we should try everything at least three times.

What are some things you have tried that disappointed you? I challenge you to give it at least two more tries. This line of thinking has really expanded the activities I’m interested in and my palate!

Often we are in shock from how jarring the reality differs from our expectations, so we don’t give things a fair chance. Things we love or may come to love.

First impressions aren’t just for people, and they can leave us with a less fulfilled and nuanced existence. And often the first time doing anything is just shit.

Or even worse: the first time is spectacular. That’s the problem with beginner’s luck. What if your first positive impression is wrong? What if you actually hate bowling, it destroys your wrist, and the food is shit? This is the same thing a con man uses: you can easily game first impressions. That doesn’t make them fact.

So idk, go try 100% sheep’s milk feta if you eat that sort of thing.

Peace and hope your weekend is banging,

Lucas

We can't all be naturally self-confident, and many of us are deeply insecure in some way. The scary part is we might not even be consciously aware. But often we are, and we put on masks to hide from it or focus on escapism.

My assertiveness was hard-fought. Often people are pushed to a breaking point. If you're pushed again and again, you often develop a defense mechanism where you act hard and cut people off with no chances.

Many mistake this for self-confidence. It isn’t. It's withdrawal. It's protection. But it's not healthy because we can only develop strong bonds with people who tiptoe around us and think we're a bit unstable. We can't truly open up because there is only fear.

The Myth of Confidence

So how can we escape insecurity and our defense mechanisms? How can we become truly comfortable and confident?

The good news is you don't have to deal with everything that ever happened to you to develop this. Assertiveness isn't necessarily about being comfortable or confident. You can feel deeply uncomfortable with yourself and still not let other people push you around.

6 Techniques to Develop Assertiveness

1. Ask yourself: "If this person was saying this to a child, would it be messed up?"

This perspective shift helps you identify unfair treatment. I could never trust my gut in these situations but over time this question has helped me train it.

2. State how you feel.

You should always be allowed to express your feelings. Toxic people out themselves quickly by suppressing or denying your feelings. Say stuff like “I feel X” also feels a lot more comfortable and less rude than being more demanding.

3. Role-play difficult scenarios.

In the mirror, in your head, with your friend, or even a pro. There are even some online support groups that do this, though I personally haven’t tried it. There are even therapists and social workers who specialize in this area.

4. Practice saying "no" without explanation.

A simple "No, thank you" is often sufficient. And if it’s not, you have to begin wondering why this person doesn’t respect you.

5. Set and maintain clear boundaries. Identify your limits and communicate them consistently.

Sadly, we never wake up one day and have perfection. That’s the difference between walls (the example from above of pushing everything away) and boundaries. I wish it was set it and forget it, but we have to constantly maintain them. Labelling things should never become an issue with safe people.

6. Use "I" statements to express needs without blaming others.

For example, "I feel frustrated when plans don't start on time." I mention this above but I feel like it’s important even in non-boundary setting situations. If people don’t know how you feel, they might not realize they are trouncing your boundaries or you even have a problem. Normal people when they realize you feel some type away try to modify their behavior (assuming you aren’t simply manipulating them) or come to a new solution together. That’s mutual respect and a relationship built on communication. You may sometimes feel differently… the goal isn’t to punish people but so everyone knows where each others head is at. If you feel caught unawares, it’s often because no one is sharing their true feelings or intentions because we are uncomfortable, even with people we love.

Bounding Boxes and Boundaries

You never come perfectly assertive. Be patient with yourself and celebrate any time you advocate for yourself.

You deserve to be heard and respected. It's time to claim that right. Other people will let you in and you will attract better relationships and caring people overall.

Try one of these techniques if you never have before or if you’re already an expert do a quick reality check on your existing boundaries. How are you feeling now?  Would love to hear if any of this was new to you or helps!

I appreciate and value you!

Lucas

We live in times where you are forced to have an opinion about things.

In many ways, this is good. But we can’t possibly be informed properly on everything that is happening in the world.

We encounter people espousing their moralistic virtue about what we should or shouldn’t believe. We get shamed for choices when, overall, we really haven’t done anything wrong.

For instance, many people may choose to buy an iPhone every year just because, not realizing that type of consumption might be harmful to the environment or something like that.

However, there are a many areas where people are misinformed. I see people refusing to use AI at all because a Google search uses less water. But that’s a vast oversimplification. Those aren’t easy things to compare. You shouldn’t just see one opinion post and decide to base entire parts of your life philosophy on them.

Training an LLM model does take a metric fuckton of energy. But continual usage isn’t that much different than running other large-scale software operations. While studies raise concerns about future trends, individual choices to abstain from AI won't halt model training. These models already exist, and you can opt for locally-run models if environmental impact is a concern. It's fascinating how people choose their battles. I'm sure I exhibit similar biases in areas I haven't yet recognized.

On the internet, we hear the loudest complaints coming from randos and people with large followings who we often wouldn’t even like in real life.

We need to stop demonizing normal people and start educating them.

Rather than saying, “You are an idiot for not doing this”, let’s outline some facts they may not know about. From our perspective, it may be completely obvious to us. But we certainly don’t all have the same context or opportunities. So have some grace and be a good human. The next time you’re ready to go off, take a step back, and educate or move on. You don’t need to preach or manipulate them into “being a better person” to make yourself feel superior. But also: realize it isn’t your job to educate people either and that some people will not be receptive no matter what. It doesn’t mean anything about yourself.

@elleunchained made a TikTok a while back that I think about all the time. We aren’t necessarily good or bad people. We probably are relatively neutral in the grand scheme. Most people aren’t in a position where they can really, truly, deeply impact the world.

Instagram post

Yes, one person can change the world. Yes, multiple people choosing individual choice can change the world. But often individual consumer choice makes less different than people hope it does. Most of the time it requires a concerted effort, regulation, and industry-wide changes.

There’s a guaranteed way to make the world better and it’s something we can all do: choose not to be an asshole.

See y’all tomorrow!
Lucas

Yo guys! This was one I’ve been sitting on for a minute and wasn’t fully sure I would share. But it feels right. Know it’s a bit heavier than usual. If you want a dose of hopefulness today, this is not it 😅

Content Warning: Today's newsletter delves into some heavy stuff from my past. It includes mentions of bullying, physical confrontation, a subtle drug addiction reference, and implied child abuse. It's raw and unfiltered.

I’ve mentioned before that a big reason for me coming online was to no longer hide myself, and this and other stories are one way I am opening up to the world. These types of things can’t die in silence, unshared and unspoken.

If you're not in the headspace for this kind of content today, please skip this one. Take care of yourself first.

There was a guy I called Clump.

He was a classic bully and he didn’t like that I stood up to people, namely him. I had stopped him from fucking with people a few times.

One day, I was riding my bike when he pulled up behind me with two henchman.

They surrounded me and formed a triangle with their bikes.

Now—I know this is likely not how I come across online—keep in mind I was a varsity swimmer and Clump is two years younger than me. He may have been a bit meaty, but to me he was kinda pathetic.

It ended poorly for them. They never messed with me again. But this story isn’t about the confrontation.

Clump and I had a complicated history. We didn’t really know each other and just kind of fell into this antagonistic, confrontational relationship. We had many small encounters before.

But I’ll never forget the day after the fight. I remember this vividly because Clump came to school with his face fucked up. But that was not my handiwork. I didn’t do that.

I knew a bit about Clump’s home life, and I know his parents struggled with substance abuse. Which is a nice way to say they were nasty abusive drug addicts. To me, it seemed like they noticed he had been fighting and then beat the shit out of him themselves. I didn’t expect to feel bad for the kid who literally just tried to attack me the day before.

It haunts me. I wanted to hate this stupid motherfucker, but all I could do was see myself in his bruised and bloodied face. We were both just prisoners to something that existed far before us and would exist far after.

And I can’t help but think about how we grew up down the street from each other and could have had very different outcomes in life.

Is he still stuck in that shitty little apartment complex? Is he even alive?

We live in a society the produces bullies and protects no one. Obviously, the bullied are victims. But often the bullies are too and no one helps them either. No one seems to help anyone! So many family systems are as broken and dysfunctional as the rest of our systems. Literally no one cares.

No one cared about me, but I was smart and clever. Clump was many things, but sadly those were not traits he had been well-endowed. If I was a little less shrewd or conniving, I’d probably never have made it out of there. Neither of us had support and the adults in our lives had their own issues or were grossly incompetent.

Due to this, I became good at talking my way out of situations and reading people. It was survival.

America failed us. The school system failed us. Our parents failed us. And our society does nothing to address the root causes of abuse and bullying and family struggles. People just “do their own thing” and it’s their right. It’s how violence gets perpetuated generation after generation and people get stuck in seemingly unbreakable cycles.

I’d love to leave you with a less bleak picture, but there really is no happy takeaway.

What should we do when a nefarious ne'er-do-well exploits our kind and humble nature to take all the credit for themselves?


We tend to put others first and downplay our roles. Humbleness is treated as virtue.

Yet people take advantage of this fact every day. Even non-super villains manipulate this.

There’s credit snatchers, false humility peddlers, and gratitude vampires.

Credit Snatchers

Credit snatchers take what you do and somehow turn it into a big victory: sometimes not just for themselves. Sometimes your achievements are played up for the “team” or group or other entity. This is particularly annoying when “the entire department gets a win.” A VP gets promoted or something, and you’re just told to chill.

Humility Peddlers

That said, it’s easy to understand why misaligned incentives and selfishness lead to snatching credit from others. But peddling false humility is the worst because it’s right in your face, and it’s annoying as hell.

Humility peddlers are masters of false modesty. They’ll downplay their own achievements while subtly fishing for compliments or recognition.

You may have heard them say things like, “Oh, it was nothing, really,” when they know full well it was a significant accomplishment.

 By itself, that could be considered some harmless attention seeking, but this is often used to diminish the success of others or the team.

Gratitude Vampires

Gratitude vampires just suck the life out of every achievement to the point where you don’t even want to have one. They make your wins so insufferable you’d prefer to lose just to not deal with them.

They use “gratitude” to undermine your achievement, which can make you feel guilty about celebrating your wins.

The very worst gratitude vampire is the type who hoists credit onto you for things you didn’t want to do, or perhaps even makes you look incompetent. But how can you say anything when they’re “lifting you up”?

How to Deal With Absolute Nonsense

I am a cordial person who wants to be nice to others. Everyone deserves a baseline level of respect, until they prove otherwise. Of course, still be kind. You don’t have to be bitter to ensure people aren’t putting you down.

The real issue is that people consistently prove to you over and over again when they don’t deserve respect, and you keep letting them get away with it. You keep letting them trounce over your boundaries, or you never set them to begin with.

Stop betraying yourself. We’ve been humble enough of our lives to make up for probably ten lives of karmic balance.

What You Can Do

So let’s start with a simple boundary. If you’re going to take credit for this thing, I am not going to do this thing I was going out of my way to help you with. Remember, the people we work with are not necessarily our friends. In many ways, it is uncomfortable to set boundaries, but most of the time the people causing these problems aren’t your boss. They have no claim over your time to begin with.

If they are your boss, many suggest just quitting. But that doesn’t help pay the bills and oversimplifies your complex situation (maybe you otherwise like the job, maybe this is a recent change, maybe you can’t find another job, maybe there is some other important reason, or you think it will soon change).

In this case, stop taking on extras. When no one is respecting you or your time, you aren’t gonna be up for promotion anyway. And if “extras” are required, then start pulling away or do less in the other areas until you can get to the right spot. Take that extra time for self-care or find ways out of the situation.

And, of course, this all applies to personal relationships as well.

So, please, for your own sake—set one boundary this week. You can even start with a safer person who you know will be receptive. Some people are toxic, and they definitely don’t take well to boundary setting. It is very likely they won’t respect your boundary: however, this means you just follow through. If you don’t respect X, I will do Y. So stop doing the Y. 

However, I understand that there may be NO safe people. Let’s talk about it.

Nuance, or when to keep on keeping on

While I prefer direct, honest, transparent communication, toxic environments don’t always allow for a straightforward approach. Don’t put yourself in a bad situation. Sometimes you gotta finagle it.

Or worse: there may be no person to actually set the boundary with. Sometimes you can’t change the environment you are in immediately. If it’s that bad, focus on getting out or minimizing the surface area that you are exposed to.

I also admit that being assertive and overcoming a lot of these things is not simple or easy. Trust.

If you struggle with assertiveness or self-confidence, that makes it even more difficult to approach these situations. We let people walk over us, and perhaps the only time we can be fully assertive is when it comes to a boiling point. Sometime in the next week, I’ll share strategies for increasing your assertiveness in a more comfortable way.

Cutting the Cord

Perhaps a bit of an extreme example: at my first job out of college, I poured my entire life force into the work, logging far too many hours and taking on extra projects with the promise of a full-time offer. The offer finally came—6 months too late and at $20k less than promised. That was the day I handed in my resignation.

Remember, you are a human being and you deserve not to be treated like shit. You deserve to feel like you matter. At the very least, you are entitled to respect. And while I wish we could all be humble all the time, it can’t come at the expense of your sanity and career growth. We tell other people how to treat us by what we are willing to accept. We do not need to be accepting to people who literally use us as pawns and treat us as subhuman.

So it’s time to put yourself first. In the immortal words of Kanye West, “I’d rather be a dick than a swallower.”

Peace,

Lucas

“MAX, MAX, GET ME A PEPSI”

It still shocks me to this day how my friend’s parents used him for free labor, even when a group of people were over hanging out.

A dozen of us sat in the basement looking at each other while Max had to go run around doing chores.

His Dad sat in a massive easy chair lording over everything like Jabba the Hutt.

What a weird microcosm I had entered. It’s hard to know if his dad was simply blind or intentionally trying to embarrass and diminish Max.

You think you’d want to at least pretend some sense of decorum—but some evil in the world doesn’t care that you know it exists.

Clearly, I’m obsessed with imbalanced power dynamics. Have you ever witnessed a situation like this?

Stay vigilant friends,

Lucas