Ten Thoughts for a Tuesday Morning
Notes from a Window Seat Somewhere Over America
AI is real but not in the way we think it is. It will replace the customer service agent, the cashier, and the cab driver. It won’t replace the architect, the builder, or the carpenter. It will change how they generate blueprints, estimate costs, and prototype their work.
Women and girls are outpacing men and boys academically, socially and professionally. They are more focused, more disciplined, and don’t let ego get in the way of getting the job done. And somehow they still have time to pick up the kids from school.
Boys and men are in a crisis. They are skipping college, eating gummies, and playing xbox in mom’s basement instead of building the skills that lead to independent lives. A zero six hundred formation at Fort Benning or Parris Island followed by a five mile run in boots builds confidence, discipline, accountability and calluses that last a lifetime.
Winston Churchill was right about democracy being the worst form of government except for all the others. James Madison was right that tyranny and faction are dangerous bedfellows. Let’s hope that Madison’s genius holds and that balance returns to democracy when we’re finally exhausted by the partisan kabuki theater currently masquerading as politics.
60 is the new 40. Our retirements will look nothing like our grandfathers’. It will be a third act and not a walk off the floor holding the ball waiting for time to expire.
There’s no hope for the New York Jets.
Competence is on hiatus across institutions big and small, public and private. It returns only when problems like education, entitlements, and healthcare get so big and so undeniably urgent that posturing and avoidance are no longer possible.
It’s the balance sheet that will kill your business and crush the economy. No business can innovate its way out of a math problem and no country can grow its way out of a debt crisis. Interest payments for yesterday’s expenses do nothing to unlock potential. They don’t fuel growth. They are not an investment for tomorrow. They are an unpaid and unfunded mortgage that will recklessly fall to our children’s grandchildren.
Artemis’ journey to the moon and back proved we can still do hard things. It captivated the world. And provided us with a glimpse of the unseen dark side of the moon.
Mozart, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, and Miles Davis experimented, evolved, and improvised. I hear something new every time I listen.
Those are my thoughts for this Tuesday morning from my window seat somewhere above America at 35,000 feet. What are you thinking about?