Weekend Briefing No. 592
The Story of SONY -- AGI's Timeline -- Phone-Free School Revolution
Welcome to the weekend.
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Prime Numbers
17,400,000,000 — Africa's electric vehicle market is projected to grow from $17.41 billion in 2025 to $28.30 billion by 2030, with smartphone giant Transsion (which controls half of Africa's smartphone market) positioning itself as a major player in this expansion.
25 — Wrench attacks on cryptocurrency owners have reached 25 documented cases in 2025, matching the pace to potentially exceed the record 36 attacks set in 2021, with French crypto owners facing the highest risk.
18.14 — Pizza restaurant meal prices increased 12% from 2023 to 2024, outpacing other restaurant categories, with the average large pizza at top chains now costing $18.14, up 30% from 2019.
The Story of SONY
Born in the unlikeliest of places — the terrible, wasteland-like aftermath of post WWII Japan — Sony rose to capture the imaginations (and wallets) of consumers and engineers around the world. The company produced hit after hit after hit: portable transistor radios, CDs, the Walkman, the PlayStation, DVDs, life insurance ... and yet ultimately fell behind its greatest American admirer: Steve Jobs and Apple. This is the incredible story of Sony’s human and technological optimism in the face of overwhelming odds — a story that, given recent world events, remains as relevant today as ever. Acquired Briefing (12 minutes)
AGI's Timeline
Most experts debate whether artificial general intelligence arrives in two years or 20, but the real bottleneck isn't raw intelligence — it's the ability to learn on the job like humans do. Current AI models are essentially brilliant amnesiacs who forget everything by the end of each conversation, unable to build up contextual understanding or improve through practice the way human employees naturally do. This fundamental limitation pushes key milestones to 2028 for reliable computer use agents and 2032 for human-level continual learning, making AGI timelines "lognormal" — either this decade as compute scaling peaks or much longer as progress shifts to slower algorithmic improvements. Once continuous learning is solved, however, we may witness a rapid intelligence explosion as AI systems accumulate knowledge across all their deployed copies simultaneously. Dwarkesh Podcast (6 minutes)
Phone-Free School Revolution
A teacher discovered his students averaged 11 hours of daily screen time, with one hitting 17 hours on a Sunday, leading him to ask: "What else is there to do?" After failed attempts with classroom bans and "foolproof" locked pouches that students stabbed open with pens, his Harlem high school implemented a bell-to-bell phone lockaway policy with immediate consequences for violations. The transformation was remarkable — students actually talked to each other, teachers covered material faster, cyberbullying plummeted and classroom management shifted from battling Silicon Valley's behavioral psychologists to simply overcoming boredom. While phone withdrawal revealed the depth of addiction (students stampeded like hyenas when phones were returned), teachers finally won back their classrooms from what amounts to "electronic brain cocaine." After Babel (7 minutes)
Silicon Valley Embraces Nuclear
Silicon Valley has discovered that training AI models requires more electricity than entire cities consume, sparking an unprecedented rush toward nuclear power partnerships. Meta just signed a 20-year deal to power its AI ambitions with nuclear energy, joining Microsoft, Amazon and Google in betting that atomic power can solve their massive energy demands while meeting climate goals. The agreement will rescue Illinois' Clinton nuclear plant from closure while expanding its output by 30 megawatts, but the broader challenge remains daunting — the U.S. has built only two new reactors in nearly 50 years. Despite 25 states passing pro-nuclear legislation and over 200 supportive bills introduced this year, quadrupling nuclear production as the White House envisions may prove as complex as the AI systems these plants will power. ABC (6 minutes)
AI Web Browsers
Web publishers are hemorrhaging traffic and laying off journalists as AI chatbots replace traditional search, yet suddenly everyone is building new web browsers — a puzzling contradiction that reveals the internet's next evolutionary leap. Opera, Browser Company, Perplexity and reportedly OpenAI are all developing browsers designed not for humans to browse but for AI agents to act on your behalf while you're away. These aren't traditional browsers loading webpages but AI-powered interfaces that can understand requests, complete tasks, generate content and essentially do your digital work for you. The irony is stark: As the web becomes less valuable for human consumption, it's becoming the perfect playground for AI to navigate autonomously, potentially breaking every assumption about how online publishing and commerce actually works. Platformer (11 minutes)
Does Similarity Matter in Romantic Relationships?
Many couples obsess over whether they're "compatible" based on personality traits, but new research reveals that emotional synchrony matters far more than being similar people. While partners do tend to choose others with matching relationship-specific qualities like responsiveness and conflict-resolution styles, broad personality similarity shows no consistent link to relationship satisfaction once you account for individual traits. The real magic happens in micro-moments of emotional connection — laughing at the same joke, sharing excitement about good news, or moving through daily highs and lows together. Rather than worrying about whether you're both introverted or conscientious, focus on whether you can create shared emotional experiences and support each other's growth over time. Psyche (8 minutes)
Watts' Six Life Principles
Most people spend their entire lives defending a version of themselves that doesn't actually exist, but philosopher Alan Watts offered a different path through six transformative principles. His teachings reveal how to find meaning in ordinary moments, stay present instead of mentally time-traveling and transcend the ego that creates false separation from the world. Watts showed that by overcoming the illusion of control, letting go of attachments and replacing fear with curiosity, we can approach life as a joyful dance rather than a burdensome task. These six interconnected ideas — embracing the ordinary, living presently, transcending ego, releasing control, practicing non-attachment and cultivating playful curiosity — form a complete philosophy for discovering profound satisfaction in everyday existence. Postantly (8 minutes)
Should We Work Together?
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Weekend Wisdom
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth. - Alan Watts