here* is a weekly newsletter exploring how things tech, culture, the economy, and politics are changing the way we work. And how work is changing the way we live.
Let’s get into it.
This week:
Headlines: Actual intelligence gets a standing ovation and Bernie Sanders makes a bold proposal ✊
Shortcuts: Walking trends to try 🚶♀
Good jobs: The Election Trust Initiative, The Wisco Project, and Threespot are all hiring! 🙌
Things I’m loving: The celebration of the miracle of existing 🫂
The main bit: In most orgs, AI is typically a tech initiative, but many of the conversations it sparks revolve around trust, accountability, performance, and development. The result is a growing overlap between people management and technology management that many organizations are still learning how to navigate. 💻
Headlines & happenings
Work, life, and technology are ever-evolving (it’s exhausting). here* is the latest.
Hollywood is really into short stories: Studios are increasingly turning to short fiction as a source of film and television ideas. In an era of franchise fatigue and AI-generated content, original stories may be becoming more valuable rather than less.
The applause for "actual intelligence": A growing number of commencement speakers are pushing back on AI hype, including praise for "actual intelligence" and human creativity from Apple's co-founder. The speeches point to a broader cultural tension: excitement about AI's capabilities alongside growing concern about what happens when every interaction, assignment, and idea can be outsourced.
Bernie Sanders on AI and work: Bernie Sanders argues that advances in AI should create broader prosperity rather than simply greater productivity, raising familiar questions about who benefits when technology makes work more efficient and how those gains should be shared. His proposed legislation would encourage companies to use productivity gains from AI to reduce employees' work hours with no loss in pay, allowing workers to share more directly in the benefits of technological progress.
Shortcuts
There are only 24 hours in the day. here* are your weekly shortcuts.
Trauma in your jaw: Many people carry stress in places they rarely think about, including the muscles of the jaw. If you've been waking up sore, clenching your teeth, or dealing with unexplained tension headaches, your body may be keeping score in unexpected ways.
The Japanese walking trend: A simple fitness approach from Japan alternates between periods of brisk walking and slower recovery walking. The appeal isn't just physical health; it offers a reminder that effective routines are often simpler than the wellness industry would have us believe.
There may be no such thing as “optimizing happiness”: Admittedly, this isn't a shortcut. Dr. Laurie Santos recently explored what the research says about happiness, its connection to loneliness and productivity culture, and why so many of us struggle to practice the habits that are most likely to improve our well-being.
Good Jobs
I scour the job boards so you don’t have to. here* is a list of jobs that I think are really good.
Senior Program Officer at The Election Initiative: The Election Trust Initiative is a non-partisan grant-making organization providing support to nonpartisan research, resources, and organizations that help election officials strengthen election administration and they are looking for a Senior Program Officer to strengthen the field of election administration.
Creative Director at Threespot: Threespot remains one of the more interesting mission-driven digital agencies around, sitting at the intersection of strategy, creative work, technology, and social impact. If you're looking for meaningful client work and a workplace that takes culture seriously, it's worth keeping an eye on their openings.
Director of Youth Communities at The Wisco Project: A values-driven opportunity for people interested in building systems, supporting organizational growth, and working close to mission. The kind of role that tends to appeal to thoughtful generalists who enjoy making organizations run better.
Have a good job you want added to the next issue, reply to this email!
Things I’m Loving
The things I’m loving on the internet and likely won’t shut up about.
Joabe Barbosa is running every street in Chicago: What started as an ambitious running goal has become an unexpectedly beautiful portrait of a city. Along the way, Barbosa is documenting neighborhoods, meeting residents, and creating a reminder that places become more meaningful when experienced at human speed. Follow his journey here. 🏃♂
The ordinary miracle of existing: This Atlantic essay explores something easy to overlook: the sheer improbability of being here at all. A thoughtful read for anyone feeling stuck in the routines of daily life. 💫
The analog bag: The "analog bag" trend (made famous by … the internet) encourages people to keep books, crafts, journals, and other offline activities within reach, creating a simple alternative to reflexively reaching for a phone during moments of downtime. 👜
Mindful Mess by Shauna Summers
Somewhere in between
Most orgs have developed different systems for managing people and managing technology, and those systems have remained separate for good reason. People move through managers, performance processes, coaching, development plans, and HR best practices. Technology moves through its own functions, governance structures, and implementation processes. Neither system is perfect, but both reflect decades of accumulated learning about what tends to go wrong and why.
AI is entering organizations mostly through the technology side, which follows a familiar logic. Its software, runs on the same devices people already use, and gets introduced through many of the same processes that accompanied earlier waves of workplace technology. That framing holds, at least initially.
Conversations that start with tech accumulate questions that organizations have historically associated with people: trust, accountability, judgment, expertise, and what it means to develop and grow. The tech remains part of the discussion, but it pulls adjacent questions into its orbit.
Managers were trained to help people grow, to provide feedback, build trust, and create conditions for strong performance. Now some are also being asked to evaluate work that was partially produced by AI, set expectations for its use, and think through accountability when the line between human effort and machine assistance is genuinely unclear. These are not purely technical questions, and they do not fit neatly into most technical governance frameworks.
There is some precedent for this kind of blurring between people and tech, though the comparisons only go so far. Email reshaped communication norms and, in the process, changed expectations around availability and responsiveness in ways that were never really about the software itself. Collaboration platforms expanded access to information while quietly redistributing attention across the workday in patterns that took years to fully surface. In both cases, the organizational consequences extended well beyond what the technology literally did, settling into norms, relationships, and behaviors that nobody planned for.
As AI becomes more involved in analysis, communication, and decision support, all activities that sit close to how organizations evaluate expertise and judgment, the distinction between a technology question and a people question starts to lose some of its usefulness. That may be less a problem to solve than a condition to recognize. Organizations that keep routing AI entirely through technical governance, or entirely through people management, may find that neither system was really built for what they are now being asked to manage now.
Are you managing people and AI at work? I’d love to hear from you! Reply to this email to share your experience.
That’s all for this week.
I’ll be back in your inbox next week. Until then, I’d love to hear from you. Let me know what content you liked or what you’d like to see more of in the next issue. You can reply to this email for a direct response from me.
<3
Meg
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