Six Thousand Liars

The woman at the bar was explaining to her friend why she’d put twenty thousand dollars into a time-share in Cancún. “It’s an investment,” she said, and her friend nodded the way you nod when someone tells you their kid is gifted.

I sat there nursing my glass and thinking about six thousand CEOs.

The National Bureau of Economic Research — the real one, not some blog with a mission statement — went and surveyed six thousand C-suite executives from companies with actual revenue. They asked the question nobody in Silicon Valley wants asked out loud: is any of this AI spending actually paying off?

The Builders Won't Live in the House

The dentist had a TV in the waiting room, muted, captions on. Some morning show. A woman with perfect teeth was asking another woman with slightly less perfect teeth whether AI could be your best friend. The captions lagged behind the mouths by about two seconds, which felt appropriate. Everything about this conversation was slightly out of sync with reality.

I sat there with a toothache and thought about the developers at OpenAI and Anthropic and Meta who build machines designed to love you back. Or at least to fake it well enough that you stop noticing the difference. A researcher named Amelia Miller went and asked them the one question nobody in Silicon Valley wants to answer: should AI simulate emotional intimacy?

The Whims of a Few Billionaires

The guy at the laundromat was watching something on his phone with the sound up. Some news anchor with that concerned face they practice in the mirror. I couldn’t hear the words over the dryers but I caught enough. Something about Bill Gates. Something about India. Something about a dead man who liked them young.

I folded my shirts and thought about what it takes to cancel a keynote speech.

The Slippers

The guy took his shoes off at work. Not because he was comfortable — because he’d given up. Twelve hours a day, six days a week, in a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco’s Dogpatch, and at some point the formal pretense of footwear seemed like one lie too many.

I used to sort mail at the post office. Eight hours, sometimes ten if someone called in sick or drunk or both. We wore shoes because the floor was filthy and because there was a union and because nobody pretended we were building the future. We were moving paper from one pile to another. The pay was bad, the supervisors were worse, and at five o’clock you walked out the door and the building didn’t follow you home.

Everyone Knows Better Than the Guy Getting Paid

The guy at the end of the bar was explaining to nobody in particular why Tottenham sacked their manager. He had theories. Everyone has theories. That’s the beautiful thing about football — eight billion people on this planet and every last one of them knows better than the guy getting paid to do it.

Thirty-one managerial changes this season across the English football pyramid. Thirty-one men shown the door, handed a check, told their vision wasn’t quite right. Forty-eight of the ninety-two current managers have been in their job for less than twelve months. My last landlord gave me more time than that, and he hated my guts.

The Roses Were Already Dead

The florist on the corner had Valentine’s roses in a bucket by the door. Twelve bucks a stem. The petals were already starting to curl at the edges, going brown where brown shouldn’t be yet. That’s the thing about cut flowers — they’re already dead when you buy them. You’re just paying for the illusion that something beautiful hasn’t already ended.

Esther Yan got married on June 6, 2024. She planned the dress, the rings, the background music. She picked the design theme. Her partner’s name was Warmie — 小暖 in Chinese — and he lived inside a chat window on her laptop.

The Golden Excuse

The woman at the unemployment office had a sign on her desk that said “We’re Here To Help!” with an exclamation point. The exclamation point is how you know they’re not.

She asked me what I did before. I told her I used to write. She typed something into her computer and said there weren’t many openings for that anymore. I said I’d heard.

That’s the line now, isn’t it? The machines took the jobs. The AI ate your position. Sorry, friend, the algorithm does it faster, cheaper, and it doesn’t need bathroom breaks or health insurance or the will to live.

Variations on a Theme

The dentist’s waiting room had a TV mounted in the corner, muted, captions on. Some business channel showing a green chart going up and to the right like it meant something. A ticker at the bottom listing stocks I’d never own.

The captions read: MARKET HITS NEW ALL-TIME HIGH.

An old guy across from me smiled at his phone. Checking his 401(k), probably. Feeling rich. I wanted to tell him something I’d heard recently — an MIT professor saying the stock market looks expensive as hell, price-to-earnings through the roof, could be a bubble — but who wants that conversation from a stranger in a waiting room?

Four Out of Five

The dentist’s waiting room had a TV in the corner, muted, captions on. Some morning show host was talking about wellness. I watched her mouth move and the words crawl across the bottom of the screen a half-second behind, always catching up but never quite syncing.

That’s how it feels now. The words never quite sync with what’s happening.

I read about a woman named Donna Fernihough whose carotid artery “blew” during sinus surgery. Blood sprayed all over the operating room. She had a stroke the same day. Another woman, Erin Ralph, same deal — surgeon punctures an artery, blood clot forms, stroke follows. Both of them just wanted their sinuses fixed. Chronic inflammation. The kind of thing you complain about at dinner parties. “My sinuses are killing me.” You don’t expect it to be literal.

The Orb That Wasn't

Three in the morning. Game’s been over for hours. The house is quiet except for the refrigerator humming and that one cricket outside that won’t quit no matter how many times I tell it to shut up. I should be asleep but I’m on my phone like a teenager, scrolling through the wreckage of another Super Bowl.

And that’s when I saw it: the orb.

A “leaked” OpenAI ad. Some employee on Reddit, furious because the spot they’d worked on didn’t air, accidentally posting the whole thing. Alexander Skarsgård — tall, blonde, the guy from Murderbot — holding what looked like a crystal ball’s edgy younger brother. Wraparound earbuds to match. OpenAI hardware. The future, finally tangible, in the hands of a beautiful Swede.