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🤖 The current state of AI feels like pressure over progress
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Hello friend, I grew up in a time when food delivery was mostly limited to pizza. You picked up the phone, called in an order, and if it didn’t get to you within 30 minutes, the pizza was free. This had to be the peak of pizza delivery. But everything in life changes. Fast forward to 2026: Pizza Hut has completely lost the plot. They tried to deploy AI to speed up delivery times, but instead it caused a cascade of problems that could end up costing them $100M in lawsuits filed by their franchisees. When it comes to the threat of AI obliterating jobs and industries, I am as paranoid as the next guy, but the pressure everyone is putting on everyone else to adopt the tech is crazy-making, and the fumbles I think we are about to witness will be legendary. The lessons for me are: Don’t confuse pressure with progress. Resist FOMO; take the time to wait for real use cases to emerge (learn from other folks who blow up their business). And always look at the underlying incentives around the AI content you come across. (i.e., content creators are incentivized to create scary, anxiety-inducing content because they are in the business of getting you to pay attention). How the hell are you all dealing with all this AI pressure these days, either in your individual careers or with your business? Would love to know. Don’t be shy; hit reply. Take care, 💸 Tough Business Rules for Surviving Uncertain Economic Times (Paco de Leon) Here are some tough little business rules that have come to mind as I’ve been navigating this uncertain economic moment in my own business and with my clients. 🤑 This CNBC survey says that "Gen Z adults spend an average of $205 per date". Shout out/never have I felt more grateful that my wife is happy when I take her on an In-N-Out cheeseburger date that costs me less than $20. Reminds me of this article, that has findings that support the idea that building wealth can be done most effectively by being married and starting a business. 👛 NYT reporter flies ultra-first class to discover the main luxury of flying ultra-first class: total isolation! And no normies! Listen, I’m all for building wealth, but at a certain point, I think too much money makes you… I’m gonna say, a little weird. But this is true of anything. If I have a few whisks because I really like whisks, that’s normal, but 10,000 whisks makes me a weirdo (sorry to the person with 10k whisks reading this). Collecting dolls? I could say 100 dolls is acceptable, maybe a few hundred dolls even, but a million dolls? Sorry to tell ya, but a million dolls makes you a weirdo. Anyway, to recap: wealth = good. Severe inequality and hoarding = bad. ✈️ Spirit Airlines and the Death of Leisure for the Non-Leisure Class (New Yorker) “The point of flying Spirit was to spend as little money as possible. It is not valorizing the company to point out that it identified a need: for air travel to be stripped of its economic identity as a splurge so that as many people as possible could access it. To be clear, Spirit was a mess. The customer service sucked. The predatory add-ons were annoying. Leg space was nonexistent.” 🎥 I Work in Hollywood. Everyone Who Used to Make TV Is Now Secretly Training AI (Wired) For screenwriters like me—and job seekers all over—AI gig work is the new waiting tables. In eight months, I’ve done 20 of these soul-crushing contracts for five different platforms. It’s bad. “Between February and April 2026, I was hired and fired on seven different projects over four different platforms. The dismissals were always abrupt, shocking. One moment I would be typing rubrics into an Airtable, waiting in line on a 24-hour Zoom to talk through a task with a reviewer. The next, the UI would vanish. The Slack channel would disappear. The Google docs would lock me out. No message. No warning. No explanation. I never intended to write about this industry. I came to it not as a journalist but as a disgruntled, broke TV writer determined to make a dent in student loans and keep paying LA rent while my industry withered in front of me. But working with and for AI had proven even more cruel than I could have ever imagined. Mercor says it employs about 300 full-time staffers. Meanwhile, each week it keeps some 30,000 independent contractors caught up in a fever dream of aimless, directionless urgency, corralled across Slack channels by achingly young adults, sending messages at 3 am to “push on” and “finish strong” and “lock in” and “Go Team GO!” All in service of the grandest purpose in history: to successfully remove a scuba diver from a picture with one click of a mouse, transport him to the moon without any glaring artifacts—and bring him back again.” This Week's Featured Story: A 44-year-old project manager reflecting on divorce, financial independence, immigrant-family scarcity mindset, and learning to invest later in life. 👤 Who: Female, 44, Project Manager (PMP, LEED AP ID+C) 📍 Location: Canada 💰 Income: $118,000 🏦 Savings & Investments: • $25K emergency fund/cash • $30K TFSA • $50K RRSP • Workplace defined benefit pension (primary retirement savings) 💳 Debt: • ~$110K mortgage 💼 Net Worth: ~$1M 🛍️ Spending Priorities: Travel, events, comedy shows, dinners, and experiences with my child and friends 💡 Biggest Financial Win: After my divorce in 2020, I got really intentional about what I wanted my money to do. I’m especially proud that my child and I are about to go on a European adventure fully funded by money I intentionally saved for this exact experience. 💎 Inheritance: I received $50K toward a vehicle and $100K during my divorce to help support the transition. I may eventually receive another ~$100K. 👪 Who I Support Financially: I’m currently POA for a sick parent and will eventually be executor of the estate. I don’t expect direct financial support responsibilities, but navigating the bureaucracy has been emotionally exhausting. 😬 How I Deal with Jealousy: I try to stay in my own lane and focus on my goals. You never really know anyone’s full financial picture. 📉 Biggest Money Regret: Not paying enough attention to finances during my marriage and assuming my partner was making decisions in our collective best interest. 🏠 Money Lessons from Childhood: I grew up in an immigrant family with a scarcity mindset and fear around the stock market. I was always taught to save, but money was never discussed in a meaningful or empowering way. I only started investing after my divorce in 2021, once I began educating myself. 🤐 Ever Hidden Money? No. My ex did — and it caused major issues that contributed to the divorce. 💰 Financial Windfalls: The $100K I received during my divorce gave me breathing room during a period of intense uncertainty. At first I froze, but eventually used most of it to buy my ex out of the house I now own. 📚 Best Financial Advice: The idea of FI (Financial Independence) completely changed my thinking. Learning about living below your means, investing the difference, and the math behind compound growth finally made money click for me. 😅 Quirky Money Habit: I track all my spending. What started as a practical exercise became something genuinely empowering — I love seeing the patterns in how I live. 🙃 Most Regrettable Purchase: Not really. I don’t like to look backwards. 🧠 Biggest Financial Realization: I wish I had learned earlier not to fear the stock market — and how powerful a TFSA could be. Now I feel like I’m playing catch-up. 💸 How I Talk About Money: I’ve found online communities and podcasts really helpful, but I don’t usually get into specifics with close friends. If people ask, though, they know I’m happy to point them toward good resources. 🗣️ Money Outlook: Max out your child’s RESP if you’re Canadian. I’m also a huge believer in the Die With Zero philosophy and the idea of “living inheritance” — intentionally helping your children at critical moments while you’re still alive to see it matter. If you'd like to share your personal story with us, submit it here! And if you'd like to share your business story with us, submit it here!
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The Nerdletter by Paco de Leon
Want money advice that you can actually understand? So much money advice ignores who we are, our background, our values, and our emotions. I’ll show you how to be in better control of your money every week, even if you’re just starting out.
Hello friend, Here are some numbers that caught my eye this week. Revenue between $10k - $50k and production costs between $30k - $80k. What emerging artists on the 2026 Coachella line up earn and spend in production costs. Compare that to headliners like Justin Beiber’s record-breaking $10M fee. After $500k - $2M in production costs, there’s still a hefty profit. $0.004. What Spotify pays per stream. In California, artists must rack up ~733,000 streams a month in order to earn minimum wage....
Hi there, I had a roommate who, at one point, was one of the most powerful assistants in Hollywood. She was 1 of 4 assistants and her life was chaotic, but when you’re in your twenties, you have the energy for it. One day I remember coming home, walking into the kitchen and seeing several deli platters full of uneaten food. There were multiple loaves of bread and packs of cigarettes. My immediate thought was, “Score.” “Where did all this come from?” I asked my roommate. She was standing in...
Hello there, I’m writing this from a hotel room in Paris, where I’ve been staying for a bit over a week. Since I arrived, the news out of the U.S. has been a steady drumbeat: a military parade during the largest protests on record, political assassinations, attacks exchanged between Iran and Israel, and talk of the U.S. going to war. The headlines shift, but the chaos doesn’t, that part stays the same. From this strange vantage point—physically, far from it all but, emotionally, still wired...