Welcome to the weekend.
This week’s first two stories capture a profound disruption at the highest levels of mathematics. As A.I. tackles problems that have occupied brilliant people for years, the response is a mix of wonder, confusion, grief and pessimism. What happens when a machine can do the work you’ve built your life around? The uncertainty reaches beyond a paycheck to identity, community and purpose.
The third story features an interview with Bono and the Edge who offer an idea that feels useful here: defiant joy. It means facing what’s frightening without letting anxiety take over everything worth living for. We can take the disruption seriously and still make room for music, friendship, curiosity and the pleasure of doing something together. We don’t have to resolve every question about the future before finding joy in the present.
Prime Numbers
5,500,000 - About 5.5 million Americans participate in cross-country skiing, up from 4.6 million a decade ago, supporting a global ski-gear market worth roughly $1.5 billion annually.
51,000 - The first global inventory counted more than 51,000 rock glaciers, whose insulating debris helps them retain ice, with those studied in Grand Teton National Park losing an average of two inches annually compared with 2.8 feet for clean-ice glaciers.
104 - Russia’s Northern Sea Route recorded 104 confirmed transit voyages through September, already exceeding 103 in all of 2025, while cargo volumes rose 15% to 3.7 million metric tons.
When A.I. Takes Your Purpose
A.I. threatens more than a mathematician’s paycheck. It threatens the chance to discover something no one else has understood and the sense of purpose that comes with it. Steven Strogatz describes a field caught between exhilaration and grief as machines begin solving problems that humans have struggled with for decades. What unsettles him is that some solutions are imaginative and elegant, the very qualities mathematicians thought made their work human. The optimistic case is that A.I. becomes a powerful instrument, leaving people to choose which questions deserve attention. But Strogatz wonders how long that distinction will hold if machines become better at asking questions too. At a Cornell town hall, a student wanted to know why she should keep doing mathematics if A.I. could do it better. Strogatz finds himself turning to Ecclesiastes, looking for meaning beyond accomplishment and recognition. We can still learn, love, create and enjoy the people around us. The difficult adjustment is accepting that those experiences might matter even when they no longer make us exceptional. New York Times / The Daily (26 minutes)
More Than an Answer
Getting an answer is only part of what mathematics produces. The struggle also trains mathematicians, builds understanding and gives researchers a way to contribute something of their own. Terence Tao worries that the race to publish A.I. results is disrupting that process, especially for young people whose careers depend on solving difficult problems. He had embraced A.I. as an assistant for calculations, code and brainstorming. Now, after OpenAI’s release of hundreds of findings, he says the company has treated mathematics as a test of its models rather than a community to empower. OpenAI says it is working with mathematicians to deepen human understanding and will keep responding to feedback. Tao’s students face immediate questions: how will employers judge an A.I.-assisted proof, and who explains a machine’s difficult manuscript when there is no human author to ask? Tao calls this reckoning “soul-searching at gunpoint.” The field must reinvent itself while the technology is already upending careers. He wants students judged on their ability to explain and defend their work, and sees a future of people using A.I. to explore problems together and discover new patterns. Mathematics still has infinite territory. The task is to build a human role in exploring it. New York Times (19 minutes)
Defiant Joy
Joy can be an act of resistance when despair is what the times seem to demand. Bono recalls Dan Savage’s account of the AIDS crisis: burying friends in the morning, protesting in the afternoon and dancing at night, because “the dance was what we were fighting for.” That is the spirit U2 wants to bring to its new music. Defiant joy means looking directly at suffering and still choosing to gather, sing and celebrate the life you’re trying to protect. The Edge distinguishes that choice from denial: pretending everything is fine leaves the darkness unchallenged. A concert can interrupt the isolation of our separate screens and remind people that they belong to something larger and can act together. Anger has a place in that response too. What the band wants to resist is the surrender to melancholy that leaves people feeling powerless. Dancing doesn’t replace the protest. It keeps alive the reason for it. New York Times / The Interview (36 minutes)
The Business of Seinfeld
Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David reportedly each kept a 15% stake in Seinfeld because NBC guaranteed the project before a studio was attached. What looked like an unimportant one-off special gave the creators unusual negotiating power. The show went on to generate roughly $5 billion for its ownership group through syndication, streaming and home video. The durable advantage is another accident: Warner Bros. owns the IP, while Sony controls distribution. Warner cannot simply keep the show for its own streaming service. Sony takes the rights to market, forcing buyers to pay real cash rather than move an asset between corporate siblings. The show’s creative structure helps, too. Characters don’t change and plots don’t require watching episodes in order, making reruns endlessly reusable. The asset keeps earning because its creators retained meaningful ownership and its distribution arrangement preserves competition among buyers. Check out the deep dive in my other newsletter. Acquired Briefing (14 minutes)
New Is Not Necessarily Better
People who can recover easily from a bad idea may underestimate what the same mistake costs someone else. That’s the connection Rob Henderson draws between intelligence and luxury beliefs: capable people can afford to experiment with new ways of living, then dismiss the established rules that others depend on. A study of social learning offers a possible clue. Participants learned a padlock code or a route through a maze, then encountered an alternative. Those with higher intelligence scores were better at adopting genuine improvements, but they were also more willing to switch when the new solution was no better or even worse. The researchers suggest that trying something unfamiliar may be less costly for people who can learn quickly and recover when it fails. Henderson extends that reasoning to social norms. The person promoting a new idea may have the ability to navigate its pitfalls, while someone following their example may not. The study doesn’t establish that broader claim, but it sharpens the question: before dismissing a familiar rule, ask who can afford to live without it. Rob Henderson (5 minutes)
Your Ten-Minute Life
Where you live shapes how you live by making some things easy and others a project. If friends, groceries, coffee and a park are ten minutes away, connection and activity fit naturally into your day. If everything requires a drive and a plan, you may do less of it. That’s the tradeoff hidden in the search for more square footage: a bigger house can give you more room indoors while shrinking the life you lead outside it. A small apartment in a lively neighborhood can make the surrounding streets an extension of your home. You see familiar faces, stop for coffee and meet a friend without arranging your day around it. These priorities won’t suit everyone, and schools, safety and climate still matter. But when comparing places to live, look beyond what fits inside the house. Consider what an ordinary Tuesday would look like once you step outside. Kottke (3 minutes)
Dawn on Mars
Dawn on Mars lights up a landscape of wind-carved cliffs that scientists have waited years to see this clearly. Curiosity captured six photographs with its Mastcam instrument, which were stitched together into a panorama. The image preserves the early-morning light rather than adjusting the colors through white balancing. On the horizon are ridges called yardangs, stretching across about ten miles of Mount Sharp. As Curiosity climbs closer, the views could help scientists understand how these formations developed. For now, there’s the pleasure of seeing morning arrive on another world. USA Today (3 minutes)
Most Read Last Week
Pinker: The Case for A.I. Optimism - Steven Pinker questions the assumptions behind predictions of A.I. extinction and makes the case for practical safeguards.
Finding the Words - An Oscar-winning short follows a man whose online romance faces the prospect of an in-person meeting.
So, You Think You Can Be an Electrician - The promise of a lucrative career in the trades leaves out the competition, physical toll and uncertain rewards.
Should We Work Together?
Hi! I’m Kyle. This newsletter is my passion project. When I’m not writing, I run a law firm that helps startups move fast without breaking things. Most founders want a trusted legal partner, but they hate surprise legal bills. At Westaway, we take care of your startup’s legal needs for a flat, monthly fee so you can control your costs and focus on scaling your business. If you’re interested, let’s jump on a call to see if you’re a good fit for the firm. Click here to schedule a one-on-one call with me.
Weekend Wisdom
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality. - Bertrand Russell