Something for the weekend: mafia, business lunches, JW Marriott and more
Aggregate #006 is here for the weekend
Good morning
I’m testing times we deliver this weekly aggregate roundup. Let me know what you think of the Saturday delivery.
Context and experience are becoming the most valuable skills in AI.
But something else we all need to learn is perseverance.
If you tell Claude to connect to an Ads MCP and ask it for recommendations, it’s going to tell you to increase brand search because of the mega ROAS. There are those who see that as a sign of AI’s failure and stop.
If you prompt Nano Banana with a basic prompt, you get something OK but still looks like AI. But if you spend eight hours refining, you’ll produce something lifelike.
It takes work to keep trying.
People who play video games know this. They know the feeling of relentless repeating the same thing over and over, getting more and more frustrated only to finally have a breakthrough.
Software engineers know this. Problem-solvers know this. Big problems require so much work that is essentially failing over and over. And we need to persevere through it.
And AI is that challenge writ large.
As it currently stands, AI is pretty bad at replacing like for like work. Yes you can get 80% of a result in 1/10th of the time. But that last 20% is where all the value in the world is created.
But what AI is exceptional at is, with the same level of input time, your output scales 10x more.
It’s not ‘turning an 8 hour task into 1 hour’ it’s ‘if I used those same 8 hours, I can do the job of 100 hours.’
But getting there requires perseverance.
I hope you have a great weekend.
Josh
Key stat
Signals
Key signals for builders, growers, and operators.
Meta had a large outage on Monday [Meta Ads] – The X rumourmill is putting it down to Meta rolling out its new attribution system. One of the reported problems was huge overspends in cost controlled campaigns. We’re not seeing it too much in our (mostly UK-centric accounts), but keep an eye out.
How to diagnose any growth problem [growth] – I shared my framework this week for how I diagnose growth problems and prioritise them with a revision on the old ICE framework.
Playwright CLI version is way more token efficient [AI] – many of us are already using playwright instead of the default claude code browsing function, but I recommend an upgrade to the playwright CLI version. This is considerably more token efficient in most use cases.
Meta is adding a 2% tax on UK ad spend [Meta Ads] – for every UK advertiser, you’re about to see Meta CAC go up by 2%. They’re adding taxes across Europe related to taxes being bestowed on them. Update your financial plans soon.
The Stack
A shortlist of stuff I recommend you read and watch this weekend.
📝 The Science of why AI still can’t write like you. Every
📝 It’s strictly business: the enduring allure of mafiosi in culture. Economist (£)
📝 Don’t make a meal out of your business lunch. Monocle
📝 Is Britain ready for US-style religious politics? FT (£)
📝 An Interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang About Accelerated Computing. Stratechery
📝 The salaries of 60 New Yorkers. New York Magazine (£)
🎧 Outliers: JW Marriott: Building an empire without a master plan. Farnham Street
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