The Writing Is the Easy Part Now A writer friend of mine, who once tasted critical acclaim before slipping off the literary map, called me recently to ask whether AI had killed his career. His sales had flatlined. He gestured at the Amazon charts, thick with clean, readable, aggressively optimistic titles. "Is it the algorithm?... Continue Reading →
When AI becomes Your Therapist
In 2013, Her showed us a man falling in love with his AI operating system. We watched it as science fiction—a little unsettling, but safely distant. That was 13 years ago. Today, people are using AI for therapy. For companionship. For the kind of emotional support we used to get only from other humans.
The Great Inversion: When Articulation Becomes the Bottleneck
25 years ago, Linus Torvalds said: "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." In 2026, Zerodha's CTO flipped it: "Code is cheap. Show me the talk." The great flip happened in just 25 years.
What I Learned from Scott Adams: Systems, Stacks, and Selfishness
I started my very first newsletter quoting Scott Adam’s, Systems > Goals That’s how deeply I internalized this particular insight. With the news of his passing yesterday, I pondered over his final message: "I had an amazing life... If you got any benefits from my work, I'm asking that you pay it forward... Be useful." That’s one beautiful parting message. And one of the 3 top lessons that most resonated with me.
The Gig Workers Strike Isn’t Market Failure—It’s Market Pressure Working
The gig workers strike raises a question we're not asking: Can workers exit? If yes, let market pressure work. If no, then regulate. But before we rush to "do something," we need to understand the difference between empathy and good policy.
2025, or What Happened When the Reservoir Ran Dry
When I started this newsletter (back in 2024), I had the confidence of someone who'd never run out of ideas. By this year, the reservoir had run dry. But I kept writing anyway. Here's what I learned from writing 51 newsletters in 2025: → AI dominated my output (31%) when I planned to write about policy → Being right about content marketing's comeback didn't prevent months of struggle → The newsletter became less about expertise, more about documenting uncertainty → Writing became thinking in public The biggest lesson? Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. And that applies to career too.
The AI Revolution’s First Casualties: Why Your Entry-Level Job Disappeared
If you're a recent graduate struggling to land that first role, you're not imagining things. A new paper examining millions of American workers reveals something stark: since ChatGPT went mainstream in late 2022, employment for workers aged 22-25 in AI-exposed occupations has plummeted 13% relative to their older colleagues. The traditional career ladder assumed you started at the bottom and climbed up. AI just removed the bottom rungs entirely.
The Great Inversion: How AI Flipped Copyright Inside Out
In 2020, my manager rejected a candidate for plagiarism. In 2024, Anthropic paid $1.5 billion for using pirated books to train Claude, even though a judge ruled the actual training was "fair use."
What 2025 Taught Me About Survival and Meaning
This is the 100th edition of "Elephant in the Room", and my most personal. It's the story of survival in face of uncertainty. Edition 100 is about the year that forced me to learn the difference—and what actually kept me intact when everything felt uncertain.
The Waiting Room We Never Left
"What if a demon were to creep after you one night... and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more...' Would you throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, 'Never have I heard anything more divine'?" - Friedrich... Continue Reading →
Musings by Madhav 