Hey there,

Congrats to all the Knicks fans. Impossible to be mad at a guy who took a $50M pay cut to build a team to win, and then they do it. I really think Brunson may be more loved than Jeter in NYC going forward. What a life that guy is about to live.

Let's dive in.

Top of Mind

1. The power of peer to peer support (and pressure)

Three weeks ago my daughter was 10+ swim lessons in and still nto really getting it. She was comfortable in the water, but made essentially zero swimming motions. Her two friends who were taking the class were starting to clearly become more capable in terms of swimming.

And then we went to a public pool that week. There were a bunch of her friends there and they were all showing off how they could kick their feet, move the arms, and swim from parent to parent. These are 4 year olds, so not exaclty Michael Phelps style swimming, but they were clearly able to jump in the water and swim to a parent.

And my daughter just kinda stared. She wasn't ready yet in her mind. She was a bit scared. Even though my wife and I totally believed she could do it, we were going to let her make the choice on when she was ready.

Then her friend gave her some words of encouragement. Then they invited her to swim with her.

On her accord, she got out of the pool and then quickly jumped in. Then she started swimming. Like legit swimming.

This past week she passed the "level" of swim class before her other two friends. Today, she was full blown swimming in the lake fearlessly.

In three weeks her entire attitude, performance, and interest in swimming changed because her friends gave her some words of encouragement and a bit of peer pressure.

I always believe that adults and children are way more similar than we give credit to. My daughter's experience is no different than many of the challenges we all face today. The things that are uncomfortable, unknown, or disruptive all are hard to do on your own. But with some peer support and good encouragement, things can change practically overnight.

2. Fable was just a myth

Claude Fable 5 lived for three days.

It launched Tuesday as the most capable model Anthropic had ever shipped to the public. State of the art on nearly every benchmark. The harder the task, the bigger its lead. I had it just long enough to fall for it. Closest thing to magic I've touched in this whole AI run. I literally didn't sleep on Tuesday because I was too into using it.

Friday night the government switched it off. An export order said no foreign national could use it, anywhere, and Anthropic couldn't filter fast enough, so they pulled it for everyone. Refunds went out. A model named after myths became one.

Some argue Anthropic had it coming by comparing it to a nuclear weapon a few months ago. As I've written about before, they use fear a bit as a marketing tactic. And it appears the combination of that and making this adminstration mad has cost them.

But there's a bigger lesson for companies like ours. AI is infrastructure now. You don't keep all your money in one bank. One AI model is the same bet, and it's an irresponsible one for a business to make.

It also lends itself to ask, is open source the right way to go so no one can shut it off?

Lots of impact of this going forward. I'll miss Fable. We had a hell of a run.

3. I had a "just hit send" moment

This is not my usual thing I write about, but the purpose of this email is to write about what is top of mind. Unfortunately, I had a lot on my mind this weekend about a close friend of mine who passed away on Saturday.

He was a relatively well known NFL player who I had known for a long time. He was a great friend who supported me in ways that truly changed my life. He was also a complicated guy who battled addiction and made a lot of bad decisions in his life.

With that context, many people were saying horrible things about him, specifically on X after it was announced he died.

It made me so mad. And sad. He was so much more than a football player to so many people.

The only way I could figure out how to deal with those emotions was to write about it. I wanted the world to know he was more than that. But the reality was it was 9:15pm CST on a Saturday in the middle of the final NBA championship game. I also haven't really been active on Twitter in months. I didn't think anyone would see it or care, but I knew it would make me get what I wanted to say out of my head.

So I just wrote down what I felt and hit send. It was full of typos, tense issues, run on sentences, and was pretty awful in terms of writing quality. I didn't care. I just wanted to get it out there.

To my surprise, I woke up today and hundreds of people were responding to the tweet and thousands more sharing it. People were coming out of everywhere sharing sweet stories about him. Then today it was reported he was passing out pizzas to the homeless the day he died.

I still feel so upset, but a tiny part of me is relieved. That the world got to learn more about who he was. That he was more than the headlines.

Question of the Week

What's something you have struggled learning or adopting (personal or professional) that you could use some support or encouragement to do?

Thanks for reading and make it a great one.

Adam