subj
We are standing at the edge of the GPT Boundary.
Think about the KT Boundary. A razor-thin layer of iridium in the rock. Before it, dinosaurs. After it, mammals. One world ended. Another began.
GPT is that kind of line. Before it, words were human artifacts. Messy, brilliant, flawed, full of lived experience. After it, an endless flood of machine text.
Useful, sure. But also suspect. The origin of language collapses. Trust is broken. Smart people will learn to treat everything written after the line as contaminated unless proven otherwise.
What survives is what was written before the line. Voices carved in clay, pressed on paper, carried through centuries. My anchor is The Epic of Gilgamesh, the first story we ever told. When Gilgamesh fails to win immortality, he is given this command:
“Fill your belly with good things
day and night, dance and be merry
feast and rejoice
let your clothes be fresh
wash your head and bathe in water
look on the little one who holds your hand
let your wife delight in your embrace
these are the gifts of life to mankind”
Four thousand years ago humans already knew the truth. Immortality is not in code or algorithms. It is in the child’s hand you hold, the meal you share, the joy you make while you are here.
Cross the GPT Boundary if you must. But remember where trust really lives.
GPT is that kind of line. Before it, words were human artifacts. Messy, brilliant, flawed, full of lived experience. After it, an endless flood of machine text.
Useful, sure. But also suspect. The origin of language collapses. Trust is broken. Smart people will learn to treat everything written after the line as contaminated unless proven otherwise.
What survives is what was written before the line. Voices carved in clay, pressed on paper, carried through centuries. My anchor is The Epic of Gilgamesh, the first story we ever told. When Gilgamesh fails to win immortality, he is given this command:
“Fill your belly with good things
day and night, dance and be merry
feast and rejoice
let your clothes be fresh
wash your head and bathe in water
look on the little one who holds your hand
let your wife delight in your embrace
these are the gifts of life to mankind”
Four thousand years ago humans already knew the truth. Immortality is not in code or algorithms. It is in the child’s hand you hold, the meal you share, the joy you make while you are here.
Cross the GPT Boundary if you must. But remember where trust really lives.
subj
Interesting lens on China's Pop Mart
China has a curious relationship with gambling. All forms of gambling are strictly prohibited under Chinese criminal law. The only legal gambling activities are the state-run China Welfare Lottery and the China Sports Lottery, which are framed as non-profit “public welfare fundraising”, circumventing the ban.
Yet walk down most any rural village in China on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll see card games, mahjong tables and piles of cash laid out on porch tables and park benches. Try to take a picture though, and you’ll be kindly but firmly asked to delete it. The Communist Party frames gambling as a feudal-capitalist vice linked to the rampant inequality and corruption of China’s Republican era (1912–1949). From the start, the PRC has always portrayed itself as a project meant to cleanse such vices from the national soul. In official discourse, gambling is grouped with other social ills that erode harmony: Prostitution, drugs, and “superstition” (anything from unsanctioned religious activity to pseudoscience).
Pop Mart started out as a lifestyle store selling trendy stationery, toys, and knick-knacks inspired by Japanese and Korean pop culture, the kind of cutesy-cheap plastic items that are popular with teenagers. Such stores are dime-a-dozen in China and competition is brutal, so founder and owner Wang Ning pivoted to a new direction. Like most things popular with Chinese teens these days, the idea came from Japan.
Pop Mart’s “blind box” model can be traced to Japan’s “Gashapon” machines. Invented in the 1970’s, these vending machines released small capsule toys — adorable, detailed, and completely random. Unlike similar vending machines in the West, Japanese toymakers focus on, artistry, craftsmanship and collectability. By the 1990’s, Gashapon had become a national pastime.
Full post by Matias Otera Johansson:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cuteness-casino-how-pop-mart-monetizes-artificial-otero-johansson-sztef/
Yet walk down most any rural village in China on a Saturday afternoon and you’ll see card games, mahjong tables and piles of cash laid out on porch tables and park benches. Try to take a picture though, and you’ll be kindly but firmly asked to delete it. The Communist Party frames gambling as a feudal-capitalist vice linked to the rampant inequality and corruption of China’s Republican era (1912–1949). From the start, the PRC has always portrayed itself as a project meant to cleanse such vices from the national soul. In official discourse, gambling is grouped with other social ills that erode harmony: Prostitution, drugs, and “superstition” (anything from unsanctioned religious activity to pseudoscience).
Pop Mart started out as a lifestyle store selling trendy stationery, toys, and knick-knacks inspired by Japanese and Korean pop culture, the kind of cutesy-cheap plastic items that are popular with teenagers. Such stores are dime-a-dozen in China and competition is brutal, so founder and owner Wang Ning pivoted to a new direction. Like most things popular with Chinese teens these days, the idea came from Japan.
Pop Mart’s “blind box” model can be traced to Japan’s “Gashapon” machines. Invented in the 1970’s, these vending machines released small capsule toys — adorable, detailed, and completely random. Unlike similar vending machines in the West, Japanese toymakers focus on, artistry, craftsmanship and collectability. By the 1990’s, Gashapon had become a national pastime.
Full post by Matias Otera Johansson:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cuteness-casino-how-pop-mart-monetizes-artificial-otero-johansson-sztef/
subj
It’s about to happen again — this time by choice, not plague.
The last time humanity shrank was in the 14th century, during the Black Death. It’s about to happen again — this time by choice, not plague.
Demographics is the silent shock ahead.
We have spent decades obsessing over financial crises. The risks ahead are of a different order. Climate, geopolitics, and demographics are physical risks: slow-moving, without precedent, and possibly existential. They propagate through supply chains and societies. There is no weekend bailout for a shuttered factory, no swift reset for a dried-up river basin.
For demographics, global fertility rates are collapsing far faster than expected. Turkey, India, China, Colombia—countries once assumed to be demographic engines—are now below replacement. Instead of 10 billion by century’s end, humanity may peak below 9 billion in the 2050s. And then shrink, something unseen since the Black Death.
This is not a temporary shock but a structural inversion of the growth story on which our economies, politics, and social contracts rest. An aging world means strained social systems, labor shortages, and geopolitical recalibration. The “population bomb” that never arrived has given way to a silent implosion.
Financial crises can be charted on a Bloomberg screen. Physical risks—demographic decline among them—require new tools, new models, and a sober recognition: the next shocks will not just rattle markets, they will reshape the world.
Source and illustration from The Economist.
Demographics is the silent shock ahead.
We have spent decades obsessing over financial crises. The risks ahead are of a different order. Climate, geopolitics, and demographics are physical risks: slow-moving, without precedent, and possibly existential. They propagate through supply chains and societies. There is no weekend bailout for a shuttered factory, no swift reset for a dried-up river basin.
For demographics, global fertility rates are collapsing far faster than expected. Turkey, India, China, Colombia—countries once assumed to be demographic engines—are now below replacement. Instead of 10 billion by century’s end, humanity may peak below 9 billion in the 2050s. And then shrink, something unseen since the Black Death.
This is not a temporary shock but a structural inversion of the growth story on which our economies, politics, and social contracts rest. An aging world means strained social systems, labor shortages, and geopolitical recalibration. The “population bomb” that never arrived has given way to a silent implosion.
Financial crises can be charted on a Bloomberg screen. Physical risks—demographic decline among them—require new tools, new models, and a sober recognition: the next shocks will not just rattle markets, they will reshape the world.
Source and illustration from The Economist.
subj
Seems pop culture-ish and anglo centric but kind of interesting (I can't judge or counter though)
why is everything falling apart?"
"
The answer may sound dramatic, but it’s true:
It's not falling apart. It's being torn down.
I get it, though… It feels chaotic.
Financial markets are collapsing , supply chains keep breaking, basically no one trusts anybody anymore.
But this isn't some random crisis. We're in what historians call a "4th Turning" – and we're only about halfway to three quarters of the way through the storm.
Here's how this works:
Every 80-90 years, society resets. The old guard gets swept out and new systems get built.
➡️ 1940s: Depression + World War II
➡️ 1860s: Civil War
➡️ 1780s: Revolutionary War
We entered the "Crisis" phase around 2008. Which means we won't exit until roughly 2030.
Which means, we have another 6-7 years of this intensity ahead of us.
But here's what keeps me up at night:
Most people are preparing for the wrong thing.
They're trying to preserve a system that's already dead: Buying gold, building walls, stockpiling astronaut food and bottled water.
But that’s not preparation, it’s living in denial with what’s really going on.
The clients I work with aren’t trying to save the old world…
They're building the new one.
(BTW, this is why we called our company 5th World, we want to be part of building this new world)
And asking the right questions:
"How do we design systems that get stronger during chaos?"
"What infrastructure will the next economy actually need?"
"Where are the opportunities hiding in this breakdown?"
They understand something crucial:
Every 4th Turning creates massive wealth transfer: From those clinging to the old systems to those building the new ones.
It’s not a matter of whether or not a massive change is coming, we are already in it.
The question is: Are you positioning yourself as part of the solution being built, or still trying to preserve what's being swept away?
Because the people who figure this out first? They don't just survive the transition.
They own it.
P.S. For a deeper dive into this, take a look at the graphic below and read The Fourth Turning by Strauss–Howe. Their book is shockingly accurate!
"
The answer may sound dramatic, but it’s true:
It's not falling apart. It's being torn down.
I get it, though… It feels chaotic.
Financial markets are collapsing , supply chains keep breaking, basically no one trusts anybody anymore.
But this isn't some random crisis. We're in what historians call a "4th Turning" – and we're only about halfway to three quarters of the way through the storm.
Here's how this works:
Every 80-90 years, society resets. The old guard gets swept out and new systems get built.
➡️ 1940s: Depression + World War II
➡️ 1860s: Civil War
➡️ 1780s: Revolutionary War
We entered the "Crisis" phase around 2008. Which means we won't exit until roughly 2030.
Which means, we have another 6-7 years of this intensity ahead of us.
But here's what keeps me up at night:
Most people are preparing for the wrong thing.
They're trying to preserve a system that's already dead: Buying gold, building walls, stockpiling astronaut food and bottled water.
But that’s not preparation, it’s living in denial with what’s really going on.
The clients I work with aren’t trying to save the old world…
They're building the new one.
(BTW, this is why we called our company 5th World, we want to be part of building this new world)
And asking the right questions:
"How do we design systems that get stronger during chaos?"
"What infrastructure will the next economy actually need?"
"Where are the opportunities hiding in this breakdown?"
They understand something crucial:
Every 4th Turning creates massive wealth transfer: From those clinging to the old systems to those building the new ones.
It’s not a matter of whether or not a massive change is coming, we are already in it.
The question is: Are you positioning yourself as part of the solution being built, or still trying to preserve what's being swept away?
Because the people who figure this out first? They don't just survive the transition.
They own it.
P.S. For a deeper dive into this, take a look at the graphic below and read The Fourth Turning by Strauss–Howe. Their book is shockingly accurate!
express, not stress