#shuacantikharem

Joshua gelisah seharian. Sedari tadi dia muterin pulpen di tangan, sesekali gigitin kuku jempol tangan satunya. Semua yang lagi diomongin dosen di depan nggak ada yang nyangkut sama sekali di kepala cantiknya. Gimana mau konsen coba, kalo dia baru aja nerima chat berbau anceman begitu? Itu siapa? Kapan dia ngambil video itu? Mau diapain tuh video anjir?? Joshua nggak bisa berhenti mikirin semua kemungkinan yang jelek-jelek.

“Bang.”

Sikut ketemu sikut. Pulpen terpelanting dari gerak monotonnya, terjatuh ke lantai dengan bunyi yang membuat satu kelas nengok ke arah Joshua. “Maaf,” buru-buru Joshua bangun dan berjongkok mengambil pulpen, mematikan pertanyaan dosen yang baru aja mau buka mulut. Ketika fokus kelas kembali ke pelajaran, Seungkwan menunduk dengan ekspresi minta maaf.

“Bang, sori ya, tapi lo kenapa sih?” bisiknya pelan. “Kayak lagi banyak pikiran.” Yang mana hal itu sendiri udah aneh di mata Seungkwan. Saking nempelnya mereka berdua dari kecil, Seungkwan hafal tiap perubahan kecil dari diri Joshua. Mode overthinking Joshua bisa diitung dengan jari selama dia hidup dan biasanya gegara hal yang bener-bener serius.

Karena masih dalam kelas, Joshua cuma menggeleng sambil tersenyum sebagai jawaban. Disenyumin gitu, makin dalam lah kernyitan alis Boo Seungkwan. Bang Shua aneh banget. Pokoknya dia harus tau ada apa sama Bang Shua sampe jadi aneh begini.

Pas bubaran kelas, Seungkwan tadinya mau nyeret Joshua ke kantin buat interogasi keanehan dia sepagian ini, tapi Joshua malah bilang kalo dia ada urusan penting jadi skip maksi dulu. Nggak cuma itu, dia juga wanti-wanti Seungkwan supaya nggak ngikutin dia. “Awas ya kalo nguntit,” ancamnya. “Aku kasihin foto malu-maluin kamu ke om aku.”

“Ih anjing, kok lo gitu sih maennya?” decak Seungkwan.

“Ya abisan kalo nggak digituin, kamu pasti nguntit! Kepoan banget, kenapa sih?”

“Iya, iya, enggak! Nggak asik lo, Bang!”

Biarin Joshua nggak asik. Daripada ketahuan dia diblack mail orang asing pake video dia lagi cipokan sama Wonwoo di perpus.

....

Lagi-lagi disentuhnya bibir. Masih tertinggal jejak bibir cowok berkacamata itu di bibir Joshua. Agak kering dan sedikit pecah-pecah—Joshua pengen kasih bibir Wonwoo lip balm tiap hari rasanya deh—tapi panas dan melumat bibir Joshua bagai kudapan favoritnya. Pipi si manis bersemu kala mengingat bagaimana bernafsunya ciuman mereka. Kalo Joshua ketemu Wonwoo lagi di tempat sepi, apa...bakal maju ke base berikutnya? Pengen, tapi takut. Biarpun Joshua berkarir di modelling dan punya fans seabreg di kampus, dia belom pernah pacaran.

Ciuman pun...pertama kalinya diambil sama Wonwoo...

Terlalu lebur dalam memori, Joshua nggak sadar kalo dia udah jalan ke taman yang dimaksud. Kakinya pun udah melangkah mendekati bangku yang dimaksud. Pas sampe, si anak melongo. Ada orang yang nggak asing sedang duduk di bangku itu.

”...Jeonghan?”

“Yo, Joshuji,” cengiran, yang sukses bikin suara Joshua seketika meninggi.

“Joshua! Bukan Joshuji!” sumpah, dia benci banget dipanggil Joshuji Joshuji begitu, apalagi sama orang kayak Jeonghan. Ngejek banget, nyebelin! “Kamu ngapain di sini?”

“Ketemu sama lo,” ditunjuknya Joshua tanpa ragu.

Sedetik, Joshua bingung. Detik berikutnya, dia langsung nangkep maksudnya. “....Kamu yang ngirim chat itu?” gumamnya.

Oh God, please don't...

“Hehe, yoi,” Jeonghan mengedipkan sebelah mata. Ngeliat muka cantik Joshua pucat pasi bikin Jeonghan nggak nyesel udah iseng ke perpus buat numpang tidur kemaren sore. Siapa sangka, kan, primadona satu kampus sekaligus objek kejailan utama Yoon Jeonghan yang bisa buat hari-harinya less ngebosenin, malah sibuk tukeran liur sama cowok nerdus nggak tau siapa di salah satu sudutnya?

Pathetic.

“Nggak nyangka selera lo yang cupu-cupu gitu,” ejek Jeonghan. Ternyata, selain keliatan super cantik pas lagi ngamuk, Joshua juga super cantik pas lagi ngeliat dia horor begini. “Sayang banget cantik-cantik bibirnya abis dikokopin cowok selevel gitu doang.”

Cowok yang pantes buat Joshua tuh standar Jeonghan gitu lah minimal—ganteng, jago olahraga, semua orang kenal dia, party animal, plus keluarganya turun temurun bergerak di bidang hukum. Nggak tau berapa digit di rekening dia sendiri hasil transferan bokap nyokapnya, padahal Jeonghan juga nggak minta. Apaan tuh, modelan cowok kacamataan kemaren? Baunya aja udah orang miskin.

“Terus k-kamu mau apa?” masih syok, Joshua memaksakan mulutnya bergerak. Sebenernya dia mau ngamuk, tersinggung sama omongan Jeonghan. Bukan, bukan ejekan soal selera dia, tapi Joshua mau ngamuk gegara Jeonghan ngejelekin Wonwoo. Tangannya di sisi badan nggak ayal terkepal. “Mana video yang kamu bilang kemaren? Apa itu cuma boongan??”

Jeonghan mengangkat kedua bahu. Lalu, diambilnya ip17 buat ditontonkannya ke Joshua. Dalam kualitas 4k, bola mata Joshua melebar menyaksikan gimana dia ngalungin lengan ke sekeliling leher Wonwoo, bercumbu bak dua remaja sangean. Refleks, Joshua mengulurkan tangan berniat ngerebut hp Jeonghan. Sayangnya, refleks Jeonghan juga nggak kalah sensitif. Dengan lihai, atlet informal sepak bola dan basket itu menarik lagi hp nya agar jauh dari jangkauan Joshua.

“Eits, nggak boleh bandel, Shuji,” digoyangkannya telunjuk, seolah mendecak 'no, no, no' ke anak kecil. “Gue nggak sejahat itu kok. Lo mau gue apus videonya ato kasih ke lo, boleh-boleh aja. Asal ada syaratnya.”

Of course. An eye for an eye.

“Apa syaratnya?”

And we all go blind.

Jeonghan menyeringai lagi sambil menepuk-nepuk santai pangkuannya, “Duduk sini, cium gue.”

I was sitting on a curb having the kind of revelation that only hits when you're at the exact intersection of self-pity and dehydration.

The context is that nobody wants to date me. I've tried the apps. I've cold-approached strangers on the street like some guy handing out flyers for a restaurant nobody's going to. I've asked friends to set me up, which is the romantic equivalent of having your mom call the teacher. Nothing has worked. People tell me I’m a fashion terrorista — okay, fair, but you don't have to volunteer that information unprompted. I'm also short, which means I’m automatically ugly to most women. So there's that.

I'm mid-20s. This doesn't mean anything about how life turns out. I know that intellectually. But I was in the pit — the real pit, the one where your brain starts looping I'm gonna kill myself like it's a Hatsune Miku song stuck on repeat — and somewhere in the middle of that loop my brain just went: wait. Why do you even need to get married?

Like actually why. Life is short. People try to convince you it's some great thing, and I mean yeah, feeling loved and loving someone is probably wonderful. That's why so many people do it. But there are a lot of different things that can bring you fulfillment and happiness and satisfaction, and it's not like the point of life is to sustain those feelings forever, so why is this one particular arrangement elevated above everything else? I don't get it. I've never gotten it. I'm sitting on this curb and I genuinely cannot produce a reason.

And look, even the people who do get married — even the happy ones — it's not like it's this smooth, pleasant experience. My parents are happily married. They're also in the same argument they were in ten years ago. You can't fix people. You really can't. Whatever the issue is, it's going to be the same issue at year one and year twenty and year forty, and you're just going to have to live with it. Men have their specific faults. Women have their specific faults. And because they're so different from each other, sometimes one side genuinely cannot understand or sympathize with what the other side needs. It's not malice. It's just that you're wired differently and some gaps don't close no matter how much goodwill there is. Maybe if you're gay or lesbian it's easier. Same wavelength, at least. I don't know. But the point is that marriage is not this effortless beautiful thing people make it out to be. It's a grind. It's a daily grind that you're signing up for permanently.

And the divorce rate is insane. People will stand at an altar, say “till death do us part” with their whole chest, and then three years later they're splitting a Vitamix in mediation. I think of marriage as something you don't break. Period. That's what the commitment means. Unless someone is under genuine imminent threat, you stay. Personality difference? You stay. You're annoyed? You stay. That's the deal. That's what “till death” means. And yet people treat it as the most important decision of their life and then bail when it gets hard. So either the commitment doesn't mean what they said it meant, or they didn't think about it seriously enough before they made it. Either way, I'm not seeing a great advertisement here.

So I'm doing the math. Let's say I die at 65. I have 40 years left. 40 years is not a lot of time. If I get married I spend those years on kids, family, all of that, and I guess it can be very fulfilling. I'm not denying that. But you shouldn't have a kid to give your life meaning. You shouldn't need a family to feel like your existence has a point. There are things that fundamentally have meaning apart from all of that. If you're a Christian, the essence of life is to love God, love your neighbor. Being single doesn't subtract from that. It's not even in the equation.

I spent a good 30 minutes on this curb — which is a long time to sit on concrete, for the record, my ass was completely numb by the end — and I could not produce a single reason why you need to get married. Not one. I tried. I sat there and I tried to argue the other side and I kept coming up empty.

Thought experiment time!

I ran this thought experiment on myself. Let's say I wake up tomorrow and I'm inexplicably attractive. Just overnight, something changed, and now there's a horde of people who want to date me. They're knocking on my door, telling me I'm handsome, the whole thing. Do I want them?

No. I'd hate every single one of them. Because I know what happened. Yesterday they wouldn't have looked at me if I was on fire, and today some switch flipped and now they're interested. That's not real. They don't like me. They like the version of me that crossed whatever arbitrary threshold they have for attractiveness, and that version didn't exist 24 hours ago. Everything I actually am — all of it, the good and the bad and the boring and the weird — none of that changed. The only thing that changed is my face or my height or whatever, and that was enough. That tells me everything I need to know about what they actually value.

Or let's say I got rich. A billion dollars, just appeared in my account. Suddenly everyone thinks I'm interesting and attractive and worth their time. That doesn't draw me towards them. That makes me want to walk into the ocean. You didn't want me when I was broke and invisible, and now I'm supposed to believe this is genuine? We both know what this is. Get out of my house.

I realize I'm getting increasingly worked up about hypothetical people who don't exist. I'm developing resentments towards women I have never met over scenarios that have not occurred. This is probably not a sign of great mental health. But the point underneath all of that is real, I think. What I actually want — what anyone actually wants, if they're honest about it — is someone who likes them when they're not impressive. When they're sick, broke, annoying, ugly, boring. Not just when everything's going great and you're easy to love. The love people actually crave is the kind that doesn't have conditions.

And that kind of love is almost impossible to find between two people. Parental love comes close, but even that has limits. If your kid is a three-time serial killer, even Mom is going to have a hard time. Really the only place you find truly unconditional love is God. That's it. That yearning you have — that deep, bottomless thing that makes you feel like you'll die if nobody ever really knows you and loves you anyway — that's pointed at God whether you realize it or not. Romantic love is great. I'm not trashing it. But it's not the answer to that particular ache, and it never was, and treating it like the answer is how people end up devastated when it doesn't fix them.

So where does that leave me.

I think the issue was never that nobody wants me. I think the issue is that I was staring at the wrong scoreboard. I've been depressed about something that doesn't actually matter as much as I thought it did. My priorities were misaligned. I was pouring all this energy and anguish into the fact that I'm not valuable in the dating market, and the whole time the answer was just: so what? It doesn't take away from the things that actually matter. It doesn't diminish my life. It's fine. It is genuinely fine.

And I mean that. I'm not just repeating “it's fine” to myself like a mantra, trying to brainwash myself into believing it. I actually sat with this for a while and I cannot find a hole in it. There's no reason this should be ruining my life the way it has been.

I think I can own it. I'm a chud. Possibly an extreme chud. I have zero aura. I get nervous in big open rooms and feel safe in capsule hotels where everything is tight and enclosed and nobody can see me. I am most at peace in a basement in front of a computer. Complete self-deception can fix a lot of things, but there are some objective truths that no amount of gaslight-yourself energy is going to override. I am who I am. The dating market has weighed me and found me wanting, and I have decided that the dating market's opinion is not one I need to care about.

Do I talk to anyone about this? About any of it? No. Should I? I don't know. Will I? Absolutely not. I keep everything buried all the time. Everything is embarrassing. Everything is shameful. I don't know where that comes from — this feeling that any interior thought, once spoken aloud, becomes humiliating — but it's been there as long as I can remember. Sometimes I think I would rather die than describe what's going on inside my head to another person. That's probably its own problem. A big one, actually. But I'm choosing not to engage with it right now because I can only have one crisis at a time and this curb is not comfortable enough for two.

I do all my thinking alone, which means my thoughts are becoming increasingly feral. I'm drifting further from what normal people think. I'm aware of this. Every week I spend processing things in complete isolation is another week my worldview gets a little more strange, a little less compatible with polite conversation. I'm developing opinions and frameworks that I could never say out loud because they'd sound insane, but they make perfect sense inside my head, which is either a sign that I'm onto something or a sign that I've lost the plot entirely. I honestly don't know which one it is and I'm not sure it matters.

I wanted to write all of this down before I forgot it. That's the only reason this exists. I thought about something for 30 minutes on a curb and I want to be able to come back to it later and remember what I was thinking, because usually these things just evaporate and then I'm back in the pit again with no recollection of ever having climbed out. So here it is. My ass hurts. I'm going inside. I don't know if I'm convinced or if I'm just tired, but either way I'm done sitting on concrete.

A friend sent me a Facebook marketplace listing for the minions movie fart gun, And I really wanted to rebuild a taser and so I bought the guns for $22. I went to the lady right after the gym and she said I can clearly tell you work out, and I realized that it doesn’t shock me at all that someone says that. Like very clearly I work out I was in my tank top and I am very muscular, and it kind of nice even though it feels scary and like I’m being vain, but it feels really nice too have that positive self image about myself for once. I don’t know why it feels like it’s such an evil thing to have a positive self image.

Contentment feels right for me. Not necessarily happy or sad. Not good or bad. I’m good with what is. I still know how to make myself happy if I want to, but I don’t have to do that all the time. I enjoy it, though. Like, the other day, I went out to a restaurant. It was such a pleasant experience that after ordering an appetizer and an entrée, I ordered another entrée. The server was laughing. I don’t think she was expecting an order of medium bison steak when she came back to my table with a dessert menu. I still had dessert after the bison, rhubarb panna cotta to be precise. My appetite surprises me sometimes. Good food makes me happy. I know how to have a good time.

I stopped consuming stimulants a few years ago. Coffee, alcohol, cannabis, and some other things. I quit because I wanted happiness to come from within. They say these substances aren’t addictive. I think they are. They were for me, and I didn’t want to admit that. There were individuals in my life whom I could only connect deeply with by sharing substances. When the effect wore off, the connection was lost. I wanted something more. Deeper, more meaningful, and something worth sustaining. People’s energy levels vary, but I am a high-energy beast. I realized I am a stimulant myself. When someone like me consumes external stimulants, it’s a complete overkill. Many people need stimulants to feel confident. I feel more relaxed and more like myself without stimulants.

I stopped wearing makeup daily because I didn’t want to anymore. I like my face the way it is. I stopped wearing a traditional bra. I always hated wearing a bra. It was so uncomfortable. Then one day, I realized I didn’t have to wear it, so I stopped. I quit social media because I didn’t want to wake up to a load of information I didn’t ask for. To this day, a few friends have asked me to come back to Instagram, which I find somewhat gratifying. But I feel really, really peaceful without it. And honestly, I don’t care about what’s trending. I used to think I should care, but I don’t. I’m very happy to be missing out.

I recently spent hours reducing my over 2000 contacts down to less than 200. Why keep them if I don’t even remember who they are? I still delete call and text history every day. I find it unnatural to keep a record of conversations. I believe in actively eliminating irrelevant digital content regularly. It’s the same as intentionally letting go of our outdated beliefs. It has to be done on purpose. However, when I meet friends or new people, I am very present. If they share stories and resources, I take them to heart because they came from the people I choose to keep and cultivate. I appreciate them sharing with me in person. This is how I learn in life.

There’s some Yorkshire racing every day of the week this week, so lets see if I can’t find a winner or two.

3.12 Redcar Perfidia looks to have a good chance here but would want bigger odds than 10/3 to get involved. So I’m going to take a chance on Fahey’s FAR AHEAD who despite form figures of 9066000 could have a say here. I’m happy to put a line through the 6000 figures as they were all on the AW this winter and he was beaten so far out of sight he sight I’m suggesting he hated the surface. I’m also willing to scratch his 906 finishes as although they were on the turf, they were also in much better races. So today, he’s contesting a class 6 handicap for the first time off a career low mark (21lbs lower than his best bit of form – 3L 6th at Thirsk) and from box 1 – which if he can get a lead like LTO, could be a big advantage. When I started writing this 15 minutes ago he was 16/1 but has since shortened to 10/1 so that’s what I’ll go with here. I wouldn’t take any shorter, personally. Obviously a big chance he’s just crap, but I’ll take it! FAR AHEAD // 0.5pt E/W @ 10/1 4 places (Paddy Power)

Freundinnen & Freunde der Weisheit! Resilienz ist eine wichtige Ressource – gerade in Zeiten wie diesen. Dr. Hones drei Strategien können uns helfen, Resilienz aufzubauen.

Die neuseeländische Resilienzforscherin Dr. Lucy Hone weiss, wovon sie spricht. Nach dem Verlust ihrer zwölfjährigen Tochter entwickelte sie auf Basis persönlicher Erfahrung und wissenschaftlicher Forschung drei Prinzipien, die besonders in belastenden Lebensphasen Orientierung bieten – etwa bei Trennung, Trauer oder anderen Umbrüchen.

Erstens: Resiliente Menschen erkennen an, dass Leiden zum Leben gehört. Sie fragen nicht „Warum ich?“, sondern „Warum nicht ich?“. Diese Haltung schützt davor, sich als hilfloses Opfer zu erleben, und schafft Raum für Selbstwirksamkeit – auch in der Krise. Zweitens: Sie richten ihren Blick gezielt auf das, was bleibt. Dankbarkeit ist hier kein Zweckoptimismus, sondern eine bewusste Entscheidung, das Gute im Schlechten nicht zu übersehen. Dr. Hone empfiehlt, abends drei positive Dinge des Tages zu notieren – eine kleine Übung mit messbar positiven Effekten auf das emotionale Wohlbefinden. Drittens: Resiliente Menschen stellen sich die Frage „Hilft mir das oder schadet es mir?“ – etwa beim Umgang mit Erinnerungen, Selbstgesprächen oder Verhaltensmustern. Diese simple Reflexion verschiebt den Fokus weg vom Schmerz hin zur Selbststeuerung. Wer so denkt, gewinnt Handlungsspielraum zurück – und findet Schritt für Schritt zurück in die eigene Kraft.

Diese drei Prinzipien – Leid annehmen, Positives wahrnehmen, bewusst steuern – bilden ein tragfähiges Gerüst für mehr innere Stärke. Resilienz entsteht nicht über Nacht, aber sie lässt sich Schritt für Schritt kultivieren. Gerade in Zeiten von Umbruch oder Verlust kann sie zu einem Kompass werden, der hilft, neue Orientierung und Hoffnung zu finden.

Denkanstoss zum Wochenbeginn

„Wissen nennen wir jenen kleinen Teil der Unwissenheit, den wir geordnet und klassifiziert haben.“ – Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914)

ProductivityPorn-Tipp der Woche: Weniger Nachrichten konsumieren

Ständiges Nachrichtenlesen lenkt ab und kann deine Stimmung negativ beeinflussen. Begrenze deinen Nachrichtenkonsum auf feste Zeiten oder Tage, um deinen Fokus auf deine eigenen Aufgaben zu behalten.

Aus dem Archiv: Wie der Fokus auf Zahlen uns vom Wesentlichen ablenkt

In unserer digitalisierten Welt werden wir zunehmend von Metriken begleitet. Egal ob es die Anzahl gelesener Seiten, die Schritte auf dem Fitness-Tracker oder die Schlafstatistik sind – Zahlen und Daten sind allgegenwärtig. Metriken können uns helfen, Fortschritte zu sehen und Orientierung zu schaffen. Doch sie bergen auch Risiken, die häufig übersehen werden. Sobald eine Kennzahl selbst zum Ziel wird, entfaltet sie oft nicht mehr die ursprünglich beabsichtigte Wirkung.

weiterlesen …

Vielen Dank, dass Du Dir die Zeit genommen hast, diesen Newsletter zu lesen. Ich hoffe, die Inhalte konnten Dich inspirieren und Dir wertvolle Impulse für Dein (digitales) Leben geben. Bleib neugierig und hinterfrage, was Dir begegnet!

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EpicMind – Weisheiten für das digitale Leben „EpicMind“ (kurz für „Epicurean Mindset“) ist mein Blog und Newsletter, der sich den Themen Lernen, Produktivität, Selbstmanagement und Technologie widmet – alles gewürzt mit einer Prise Philosophie.

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Disclaimer Teile dieses Texts wurden mit Deepl Write (Korrektorat und Lektorat) überarbeitet. Für die Recherche in den erwähnten Werken/Quellen und in meinen Notizen wurde NotebookLM von Google verwendet. Das Artikel-Bild wurde mit ChatGPT erstellt und anschliessend nachbearbeitet.

Topic #Newsletter

Manzanas, cerezas, naranjas, melocotones. Cada fruta, su precio. Y si no, mejor no muerdas.

Lógico e ilógico, aquí y desaparece, el colibrí.

-Hoy nuestro invitado es nada más y nada menos que GarbancerasA4 (aplausos flojos). Aunque su música fue la banda sonora de una época, lo que todavía no sabemos es su nombre real, así como lo conoce su familia.

-Mi nombre no te sonará. Lo siento por tí. Lo que sí sabes, aunque la noche te confunda, es que pasaste muchas horas escuchando mis canciones en las plataformas de música y hasta pagaste la versión premium para oírme sin anuncios.

-Es verdad (aplausos a rabiar).

-Otra cosa que sabes es que, aunque te suenen algunas canciones, como La Vida Cruda y Ahí nos vemos, con el tiempo se te irán borrando, y no es tu memoria, como la del público, que supongo estará bien, es simplemente que andas como atontado de un sitio a otro, de una lista a otra, y lo que hiciste sonar hace unos días quedó atrás, y lo que pasó, pasó, y no hay tiempo para recordar.

-Dices muchas verdades. A ver si vas a ser filósofo ahora que no cantas (aplausos y gritos delirantes).

-Cuando te caigan los años encima, si es que vives para entonces y los médicos te dan un respiro, te vas a acordar de lo que canté en los Grammy:

Profundiza, hermano, que la calle es la calle y la piedra la piedra, porque no hay banano, no hay banano.

-Vieras que no me acuerdo de esa (abucheos y destrozos en el plató).

-Sí, sí que te acuerdas, bicho.

The race season was supposed to begin next weekend. With something new, exciting, fun. But it’s all been shelved. A nasty crash put me out of commission. And a few days or weeks off the bike is still the luckiest outcome one could get away with, given the sustained damage. There are plenty of spots on and inside my body that now hurt pretty badly, but ego plays a special role in that ensemble. Let’s put some salt on that wound and see what comes out. For readers’ entertainment, and the writer’s reflection.

Why would I do that? Mainly because of a recent conversation I had with myself on multiple Saturday afternoons, after I was done with my ride, had showered, and was densely stuffed with pasta. The premise was simple: if there’s no bike racing going on, you, my friend, have nothing to write about. You’re boring! (I’m often violently hard on myself). Sure, I wrote about this and that in the offseason. And I have a dozen drafts in the works, which will probably never see the light of anyone else’s screen. But I was thinking, what if I approach some of my training rides as nano-adventures, plan something fun into them, and then squeeze a story out of it, whether it’s testing new tires, or taking a KOM, or pulling my friend through all the headwinds to pay back for all those times when I sat on his wheel (so that I can attack and snatch the aforementioned KOMs, haha). None of that deserved a piece yet. But while in a hospital bed, when my brain was the only organ of the body that still had full freedom of movement, I thought, if this is not the story to tell, then what is?

Top of the ridge

If only the choices we make in life all looked like a cartoon scene where the right turn takes you into a dark, haunted, ominous forest passage, while the pathway on the left leads you into a bright, green, sunlit valley. And I’m not saying one would be obviously preferable to the other, but at the very least, the general idea of what you’re signing up for would have been a lot more predictable. But instead, you’re picking between the two seemingly identical mellow trails at the edge of the grove. One has a few bushes of blueberries scattered alongside, and the other is wrapped in cranberries. There’s a certain appeal in both, but you must make a pick today, you can’t have both, the trails will never merge back, and somewhere far ahead, one ends up at the top of the windy ridge, while another spits you into a deep, stinky swamp. And yet, a taste for sweetness or sourness is all you can go on.

My blueberries vs cranberries moment was four years ago, after we moved to Colorado. I was right between sizes on my first-ever proper mountain bike. In hindsight, Ministry of Truth’s “ignorance is strength” could’ve been a better strategy, but I chose overthinking. Um, duh. Long story short, I sized down. It wasn’t unequivocally wrong. Certainly wasn’t right either. The point is, it set me on a route that instigated going faster, higher, stronger. Pulling me further and further away from the meditative calmness of the swamp.

Years passed. The stem went from 50 to 75 mm. Its angle — from 6° to -25°. Headset spacers — lost in action. Handlebars — cut to 720 mm. Wicked Will and Racing Ralph chunky rubber combo — replaced by a quick-rolling, loose-gripping pair of Fast Traks.

I do believe I’ve achieved perfection. Balanced, aggressive, compliant. For my body proportions and this frame geometry, this is The Pinnacle. The thing rips when I point it uphill.

But what goes up must come down. And it’s a fascinating dichotomy: the day I’ve found the holy grail was also the beginning of the decline. Literally. Sunday, November 12, 2023 was my first ride testing the final touches. I was flying (to the extent of what my abilities would allow). Until a little mishap on Arroyo Grande took me into the bushes. Soft landing with a smile, and I didn’t think much of it, but the note to self: it’s different now, get used to it, and you’ll be fine. The first bell didn’t take long to toll. And it wasn’t the last one.

Tuesday (2 days to The Bada Boom)

Fast-forward to April, 2026. Casual afternoon ride with friends. The exact same spot that I will now fear for the rest of my days. Bike wiggles under me, but I keep it together.

Wednesday (1 day to The Bada Boom)

I texted my teammate, with whom I was supposed to be racing a 6-hour relay:

Thought I’d rather give you a heads up in advance, even if I change my mind later. I might wanna take two bikes with me to NM. I haven’t decided anything yet. I’m hoping to make up my mind by Monday.

I am really, really not a fan of the Lux. It’s fast on no tech, I’ll give him that, but other than that… I was riding it yesterday on some techy trails, and I just couldn’t help but think how sketchy it feels.

Coincidence? It’s not.

Dropping now

The story is not about the physics and trajectory of my fall, or how cute and caring the nurses were (they deserve nothing short of a Shakespearean poem). It’s about numerous small actions and inactions that preceded the spill, and why it should’ve never happened, but it still did. To better illustrate the point, I’ll use a quote from the Russian literary classic:

The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without any one of which the event could not have taken place.

— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, trans. Louise and Aylmer Maude

So, you take all those little setup choices made along the way that contributed to a non-forgiving front-heavy weight distribution, add the steepness of the terrain, a dry winter, poor hinging and braking technique, and maybe throw a bit of recklessness into the mix, and Icarus is well cooked. The front wheel disappeared from beneath me so fast, as if it had been incinerated by a scorching sun, and the flight, once controlled, became a free fall with a harsh landing.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t blame the equipment. After all, I’m the one in charge of it. I don’t blame Mother Nature for the conditions that have been served to us. She’s doing her absolute best against everything that people on planet Earth throw at her. I don’t blame my skills either. Because why would I? Each and every contributing factor here is insufficient on its own. They are ingredients, multiplying variables, but not the reasons.

Negligence

This is it.

A minor tumble in 2023 sure was just a jingle bell, a write-off on the grounds of “shit happens”. There were a few more that could perhaps be enough to build a beautiful blood-stained carillon for a Sunday morning dirt church. But the confession text I’ve written with my own hands and sent out on Wednesday night — this is it, the Tsar Bell.

Things I could’ve/should’ve done:

1. Adjust tire pressure.
2. Pick a different line.
3. Focus on the body position.
4. All of the above.
5. Or whatever.

In fact, the correct answer is number five. I could’ve done all of it, or I could’ve done at least something. It could’ve prevented the incident, or it could’ve made no difference. The problem is that I felt something’s off, I acknowledged it, and yet I didn’t lift a finger. It was stupid, and I’m intolerant of that.

I want to go back to that trailhead, where the blueberries and cranberries grow. I might pick a different path. Or I might retrace the ones I’ve already been to. Hopefully, with more curiosity and explorative thinking applied at every step. I might end up in ICU again, but I want to know that I’ve done everything in my power to prevent that.

私と上司が一緒に銭湯に入ったときのことだ。上司はやけにフランクに話しかけてくる。背後には大きな富士山の絵がある。本来なら、話している上司に焦点を当てるべきなのだが、あまりにも富士山の迫力が強く、視界全体の焦点がそちらに引っ張られてしまう。結果として、自分の中では「富士山の中に上司がいる」というような見え方になってしまう。

富士山は「和」の象徴であり、もしそこに何か文字を添えるなら、それにふさわしいフォントがあるはずだ。上司が話すたびに、その言葉が富士山の脇に文字として現れ、しかもその“それっぽいフォント”で再現される。会社の話でも、家の話でも、コンビニの新作のお菓子の話でも、すべてが富士山に添えられる立派な文字として感覚的に追加されてしまうのだ。

やはり、銭湯に富士山を置くというのは、意味を持たせすぎているというか、少し重すぎるのではないだろうか。加えて、銭湯特有のエコー。声がよく響く。そのせいで、まるで富士山の頂上から話しかけられているようにも感じる。文脈の暴力、と言ってもいい状況なのに、不思議と嫌な気持ちはしない。

ただ一つ困るのは、上司が完全に富士山の一部、つまり様式美の中に取り込まれてしまい、浮世絵の登場人物のように認識されてしまうことだ。そういうものだと脳が処理してしまうため、肝心の「何を言っているのか」が分からなくなる。結局、ニュアンスだけで返事をするしかなく、これは自分の性格もあってなかなか厄介だ。

そこまで考えて、ふと「なぜ自分はこの状況で裸なのか」と気づく。もちろん湯に浸かっているのだから当然なのだが、ここまで思考を巡らせていると、一瞬その前提がずれる。しかし、それも特に不便ではないので、そのまま受け入れてしまう。

結局のところ、不便でなければそれでいい、という話になるのだが、最初に感じたあの強いもやもやが解消されるわけではない。そこがとにかく厄介なのだ。

There is a particular kind of dread that does not show up in any labour market report. It is not the fear of being fired. It is the slow, creeping realisation that the thing you spent a decade learning to do well is now being done, competently enough, by a system that learned it in seconds. You still have your job. You still get paid. But something has shifted beneath you, something that the economists measuring unemployment rates and GDP growth have no instrument to detect.

In the March/April 2026 issue of the Harvard Business Review, researchers Erik Hermann of the European University Viadrina, Stefano Puntoni of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Carey K. Morewedge of Boston University's Questrom School of Business published a study that gave this dread a framework. Their paper, “Why Gen AI Feels So Threatening to Workers,” argued that the primary psychological threat of generative AI is not job displacement. It is something more intimate and harder to measure: the erosion of competence, autonomy, and relatedness, the three psychological needs that, according to decades of motivation research, make work feel meaningful in the first place. When those needs are satisfied, the authors found, employees embrace AI as a helpful tool. When they are frustrated, employees resist, disengage, and in some cases actively sabotage their organisation's AI initiatives.

The numbers are striking. A 2025 survey by Kyndryl, spanning 25 industries and eight countries, found that 45 per cent of CEOs report employees who are resistant or openly hostile to workplace generative AI. A separate cross-industry survey of 1,600 American knowledge workers found that 31 per cent admit to actively working against their company's AI strategy. Among Generation Z workers, that figure rises to 41 per cent. Meanwhile, according to a BCG survey published in 2025, 85 per cent of leaders and 78 per cent of managers regularly use generative AI, compared with only 51 per cent of frontline workers, a gap that reveals how differently the technology is experienced depending on where you sit in an organisation. This is not Luddism. This is something more psychologically complex: a workforce that senses, even if it cannot always articulate, that the introduction of AI is not merely changing what they do but hollowing out why it mattered.

The Competence Trap

To understand why AI feels so destabilising, even to workers whose jobs are ostensibly secure, you need to understand what competence actually means in the context of professional identity.

Self-determination theory, the psychological framework underpinning the Harvard Business Review study, holds that human beings have three basic psychological needs: competence (the feeling of being effective and capable), autonomy (the feeling of being in control of one's actions), and relatedness (the feeling of having meaningful interpersonal connections). These are not luxuries. They are the bedrock of intrinsic motivation, the internal drive that makes people voluntarily invest effort, pursue mastery, and find satisfaction in their work. When these needs are met, people thrive. When they are frustrated, the consequences ripple outward into disengagement, anxiety, and what psychologists call “controlled motivation,” where people continue to work but only because they feel they have to rather than because they want to.

Generative AI strikes at all three needs simultaneously, but the blow to competence is perhaps the most disorienting. For most knowledge workers, professional identity is inseparable from professional skill. A lawyer's sense of self is bound up in their ability to parse a complex contract. A writer's identity is entangled with their capacity to find the right word. A financial analyst's confidence rests on their ability to spot patterns in messy data. These are not just tasks. They are the cognitive and creative activities through which people develop, demonstrate, and maintain their sense of being good at something.

When a generative AI system can draft that contract, write that paragraph, or analyse that dataset in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost, something happens to the person who used to do it. They may still be employed. They may even be more productive. But the specific activities that gave them a feeling of mastery, the activities that made them feel like skilled professionals rather than warm bodies occupying desks, are being absorbed by a machine. The Harvard Business Review authors found that this dynamic is particularly acute for younger workers, whose entry-level tasks (document review, data compilation, first drafts) are precisely the tasks most susceptible to automation. These are the assignments that, while unglamorous, constitute the learning curve itself. Remove them, and you remove the mechanism through which junior professionals develop expertise.

The autonomy dimension cuts equally deep. Hermann, Puntoni, and Morewedge described how mandatory AI use creates what they call “algorithmic cages,” standardised procedures that limit task customisation and strip workers of agency over their own cognitive process. Workers find themselves held responsible for AI-generated output they did not truly author, cast in a supporting role to a technology rather than functioning as drivers of their own work. The Ivanti Tech at Work report found that 32 per cent of generative AI users keep their usage hidden from employers, with reasons ranging from wanting a “secret advantage” (36 per cent) to fear of being fired (30 per cent) to concerns about impostor syndrome (27 per cent). When a third of workers feel they must hide their relationship with the primary tool of their profession, something has gone badly wrong with how that tool is being introduced.

A Stanford study published in 2025 found that hiring for entry-level, AI-impacted positions such as junior accounting roles fell by 16 per cent over roughly two years. In the United Kingdom, technology graduate roles fell by 46 per cent in 2024. The share of technology job postings requiring at least five years of experience jumped from 37 per cent to 42 per cent between mid-2022 and mid-2025, while the share open to candidates with two to four years of experience dropped from 46 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period. The bottom rung of the career ladder is not merely being restructured. It is being removed.

When the Tool Becomes the Crutch

The competence problem extends beyond entry-level workers. There is growing evidence that even experienced professionals are losing skills as they increasingly delegate cognitive work to AI systems.

In August 2025, The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology published a multicentre observational study examining what happened to endoscopists at four Polish clinics that had introduced AI-assisted colonoscopy as part of the ACCEPT trial. The AI system helped doctors detect adenomas, a precancerous growth, with impressive accuracy. But when the AI assistance was later removed, the doctors' own detection rates had measurably declined. Average adenoma detection at non-AI-assisted colonoscopies fell from 28.4 per cent before AI exposure to 22.4 per cent after AI exposure, a 6 percentage point absolute reduction. The researchers attributed the decline to a natural human tendency to over-rely on the recommendations of decision support systems. The doctors had not become incompetent. They had simply stopped practising the skill, and, as with any unpractised skill, it had atrophied. This was, as the study's authors noted, the first research to suggest AI exposure might have a negative impact on patient-relevant endpoints in medicine.

This is not an isolated finding. Advait Sarkar, an AI and design researcher at Microsoft Research who delivered a TED talk at TEDAI Vienna in November 2025, coined a phrase that captures the dynamic with uncomfortable precision: when we outsource our reasoning to artificial intelligence, he argued, we reduce ourselves to “middle managers for our own thoughts.” Sarkar pointed to research showing that knowledge workers using AI assistants produce a smaller range of ideas than groups working without AI. People who rely on AI to write for them remember less of what they wrote. People who read AI-generated summaries remember less than if they had read the original document. The cognitive effects are measurable: fewer ideas, less critical examination of those ideas, weaker memory retention, and diminished capacity to perform the task independently.

A separate analysis published in the Harvard Gazette in November 2025, featuring perspectives from researchers at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Kennedy School, reinforced the concern. Tina Grotzer, a principal research scientist in education at Harvard, noted that overreliance on AI can reduce engagement with challenging mental skills, while users may avoid developing critical capacities like analysis and reflection. The researchers emphasised that the outcome depends entirely on how users engage with AI: as a thinking tool or as a cognitive shortcut. The evidence so far suggests most workplaces are optimising for the shortcut.

The philosopher Avigail Ferdman of the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, published a paper in the journal AI and Society in 2025 that frames this dynamic as a structural problem rather than an individual failing. Ferdman introduced the concept of “capacity-hostile environments” to describe conditions in which AI mediation actively impedes the cultivation of human capacities. The argument is philosophically precise: humans develop and exercise their epistemic, moral, social, and creative capacities through a long, gradual process of habituation. We get better at things by doing them repeatedly, by failing, by adjusting, by trying again. When AI absorbs those activities, the environment in which capacity development occurs is fundamentally altered. Deskilling, in Ferdman's framing, is harmful not merely because it reduces economic productivity but because it “diminishes us as human beings, undermining the epistemic, social, moral and creative capacities required for practical reason, self-worth, as well as mutual respect between persons.”

Critically, Ferdman argues that expecting individuals to simply resist deskilling through personal discipline is naive. To a large extent, she writes, we develop and exercise our capacities in response to our social and material environment. If that environment is structured to reward cognitive offloading and penalise the slower, messier process of independent thought, then deskilling is not a failure of individual willpower. It is the predictable result of structural conditions. This is not a problem that a training programme can fix.

The Illusion of Competence

Perhaps the most insidious dimension of AI-mediated deskilling is that its victims often do not recognise it is happening.

A 2025 study published in the International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation by researchers at Mount Kenya University examined what they called the “illusion of competence,” a misleading perception of mastery created by AI-generated outputs that mask underlying cognitive deficits. The researchers found that as AI tools take over cognitive tasks, users develop an inflated sense of their own ability. They confuse their skill at operating the tool with genuine expertise in the underlying domain. A junior lawyer who uses an AI system to draft a motion may feel confident in the output without having developed the legal reasoning to evaluate whether the motion is actually sound. A financial analyst who relies on AI to build models may not notice when the model rests on flawed assumptions, because they never developed the intuition that comes from building hundreds of models by hand. The study identified specific risks including academic underperformance, reduced originality, erosion of self-efficacy, and the devaluation of human expertise across professional contexts.

The 2025 Microsoft New Future of Work report reinforced this finding, observing that knowledge workers reported generative AI made tasks seem cognitively easier while researchers found the workers were ceding problem-solving expertise to the system. The report noted that junior workers aged 22 to 25 in high-AI-exposure jobs have seen employment drop by approximately 13 per cent, and warned that organisations risk “eroding collaboration and mutual support if AI is used to replace social engagement.” The Microsoft report also found that 52 per cent of surveyed employees report moderate to high workplace loneliness, a finding that speaks directly to the relatedness dimension of the psychological threat identified by the Harvard Business Review authors.

This illusion of competence creates a dangerous feedback loop. Workers feel more capable because their AI-assisted output is better. Organisations see improved productivity metrics. Everyone appears to be benefiting. But beneath the surface, the actual human skill base is eroding. And the erosion only becomes visible when something goes wrong: when the AI system fails, when it hallucinates, when the situation requires precisely the kind of independent judgement that the worker no longer possesses because they stopped practising it years ago. The Wharton/GBK Collective annual survey captured this paradox neatly: 89 per cent of senior decision-makers say generative AI enhances employee skills, while 71 per cent simultaneously believe it will cause skill atrophy and job replacement. Both things, it turns out, can be true at the same time.

The Identity Crisis Nobody Measured

The psychological damage of competence erosion extends well beyond the workplace. For most adults in industrialised societies, professional identity is a core component of personal identity. What you do for a living is, for better or worse, a significant part of who you are. When the substance of that work is hollowed out, the identity built around it becomes unstable.

Maha Hosain Aziz, a professor at New York University's MA International Relations programme and a risk and foresight adviser to the World Economic Forum, published an essay on the Forum's platform in August 2025 describing what she calls the “AI precariat,” borrowing the term coined by economist Guy Standing in 2011 to describe a class defined by insecurity, exclusion, and anxiety. Aziz's argument is that the AI version of this precariat will face not just economic hardship but an occupational identity crisis: “the loss of purpose, structure and social belonging that comes when work disappears.” She points to historical precedents from post-coal Britain to post-industrial American towns, where the disappearance of livelihoods led to deteriorating mental health, rising addiction, and fertile ground for political extremism. The AI wave, Aziz warns, could replicate those dynamics on a global scale and at a far faster pace. Her proposed solutions include “precariat labs,” cross-sector hubs where governments, companies, and civil society test interventions for at-risk workers, integrating mental health care, retraining, and community-building to preserve both livelihoods and identity.

The data on worker engagement suggests this identity crisis is already underway. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace reports, global employee engagement fell from 23 per cent to 21 per cent in 2025, the sharpest decline since the early days of the pandemic. Fewer than one in three employees feel strongly connected to their company's mission. Less than half of employees (47 per cent) strongly agree they know what is expected of them at work, which Gallup identifies as a foundational element of engagement. In 2026, 52 per cent of workers reported that burnout was dragging down their engagement, up from 34 per cent the previous year, with 83 per cent of workers experiencing some degree of burnout. These are broad trends with multiple causes, but the timing is difficult to separate from the rapid deployment of generative AI across knowledge work. When the tasks that gave work meaning are automated, and the remaining tasks feel like supervisory busywork, disengagement is not a mystery. It is a predictable consequence.

The ManpowerGroup's Global Talent Barometer 2026 captured this dynamic with unusual clarity: regular AI usage among workers jumped 13 per cent in 2025, while confidence in the technology's use plummeted 18 per cent. The confidence gap was most pronounced among older workers, with a 35 per cent decrease in confidence among baby boomers and a 25 per cent drop among Generation X workers. Nearly nine in ten workers (89 per cent) are confident they have the skills to succeed in their current roles, but 43 per cent fear automation may replace their job within the next two years. Workers are using AI more and trusting it less. They are becoming more productive by measures that appear on dashboards while feeling less capable and less purposeful by measures that do not. This is the gap that no employment statistic can capture.

The Organisational Blind Spot

Most organisations have responded to AI's disruption of work with a familiar playbook: skills training, upskilling programmes, change management initiatives. These are not inherently misguided, but they systematically miss the psychological dimension of the problem.

The Harvard Business Review study found that only 36 per cent of employees felt properly trained for generative AI tools. An Amazon Web Services survey found that 52 per cent of IT decision-makers did not understand their employees' training requirements. But training, even when well-executed, addresses only one dimension of the threat. It addresses competence in the narrow sense of knowing how to use the tool. It does not address the deeper issue: the feeling of being deskilled, the loss of autonomy over one's own cognitive process, the erosion of the interpersonal connections that emerge when people collaborate on intellectually demanding work. Only 44 per cent of business leaders involve workers in AI implementation decisions, according to the Harvard Business Review authors, a figure that reveals how little most organisations understand about what is actually at stake.

Hermann, Puntoni, and Morewedge proposed a framework they call AWARE: acknowledge employee concerns, watch for adaptive and maladaptive coping behaviours, align support systems with psychological needs, redesign workflows around human-AI synergies, and empower workers through transparency and inclusion. The framework is sensible. But it is also demanding, requiring a level of psychological literacy and organisational intentionality that most companies have not demonstrated.

The contrast between organisations that get this right and those that do not is instructive. Duolingo's CEO Luis von Ahn publicly shared a memo in April 2025 detailing an “AI-first” approach that included reducing reliance on contractors and a policy of hiring only when automation could not handle the work. The company had already cut around 10 per cent of its contractor workforce at the end of 2023, with further cuts in October 2024, replacing first translators and then writers with AI systems. The backlash to the memo was immediate and fierce, with users flooding the company's social media pages with criticism. Von Ahn later admitted the memo “did not give enough context” and clarified that no full-time employees would be laid off. The damage, however, was done. The message received by workers and the public was clear: human skill is a cost centre to be minimised.

Compare this with PwC, which created a dedicated AI “playground” for employees, ran “prompting parties” to build collective AI literacy, and designated peer “activators” to support adoption. Or BNY, which achieved 60 per cent employee adoption by emphasising universal access and encouraging 5,000 employees to build their own custom AI agents. Or Moderna, which merged its technology and human resources departments to design collaborative AI workflows from the ground up. These approaches treat workers as co-creators of the AI-augmented workplace rather than passive recipients of a technology imposed upon them.

The difference is not merely strategic. It is psychological. When workers participate in shaping how AI is integrated into their roles, their sense of autonomy is preserved. When they develop new skills alongside AI rather than watching AI absorb their existing skills, their sense of competence is maintained. When AI adoption is a collective endeavour rather than a top-down mandate, relatedness survives.

What Policymakers Cannot See

The policy conversation about AI and work remains overwhelmingly focused on employment numbers. Will AI create more jobs than it destroys? How fast will displacement occur? What retraining programmes should governments fund? These are important questions. But they are the wrong questions if the primary harm is not unemployment but the psychological hollowing out of work that continues to exist.

There is no government metric for “the feeling of being good at something.” There is no Bureau of Labour Statistics category for “work that still feels meaningful.” The entire apparatus of labour market policy is designed to measure and respond to job loss, not to the subtler and potentially more corrosive phenomenon of job degradation, where employment persists but its psychological substance is drained.

Aziz proposed the creation of an “AI Anxiety Index” to track how occupational displacement affects mental well-being across societies. The American Enterprise Institute published a 2025 report on deskilling the knowledge economy that argued the workers best positioned to thrive would be those combining legacy technical skills with AI literacy and broader capabilities such as critical thinking, communication, and adaptability. The AEI report noted that as AI platforms absorb routine tasks, entry-level and mid-level knowledge workers in finance, business services, government, and health care face growing vulnerability. These are useful contributions, but they remain at the margins of policy discourse. The dominant conversation is still about headcounts.

This is a structural failure of imagination. If AI's primary harm to workers is not economic but psychological, then the response cannot be purely economic. Policies that address only unemployment and retraining will miss the damage being done to workers who remain employed but whose professional identities are being systematically undermined. What is needed is a framework that recognises work as a source of meaning and not merely income, and that treats the erosion of that meaning as a harm worthy of policy attention.

Reclaiming Craft in an Age of Automation

The question, then, is whether it is possible to preserve the psychological substance of work in an era when the cognitive and creative tasks that gave work its substance are increasingly performed by machines.

The answer is not obvious, and anyone who tells you it is should be treated with suspicion. But there are starting points.

First, at the individual level, there is Sarkar's argument that AI should function as a “tool for thought” that challenges rather than obeys. The distinction matters. An AI system that generates a first draft and presents it as a finished product encourages cognitive offloading. An AI system that generates competing hypotheses, flags weaknesses in the user's reasoning, or refuses to provide an answer until the user has articulated their own position first encourages deeper engagement. The technology exists to build either kind of system. The question is which kind organisations choose to deploy.

Second, at the organisational level, the AWARE framework and similar approaches point toward a principle that should be obvious but apparently is not: the goal of AI integration should be to augment human capability, not merely to reduce headcount or increase throughput. This means deliberately preserving the tasks that build and maintain expertise, even when AI could perform them more efficiently. A law firm that automates all document review for junior associates may save money in the short term, but it will find itself, within a decade, with a generation of senior lawyers who never developed the foundational skills on which legal judgement depends. The short-term efficiency gain produces a long-term competence deficit.

Third, at the policy level, governments need to develop new metrics and new categories of harm. The Gallup engagement data, the ManpowerGroup confidence data, and the Harvard Business Review psychological needs framework all point toward measurable indicators of work quality that exist outside traditional employment statistics. Integrating these indicators into policy-making would at least begin to make visible the damage that current metrics cannot see. Aziz's proposed precariat labs offer a model for what this might look like in practice: cross-sector interventions that treat AI-driven disruption not merely as an employment problem but as a crisis of identity, mental health, and social cohesion.

Fourth, at the philosophical level, there is a conversation that the technology industry has been remarkably reluctant to have: about what work is for. The dominant framing treats work as a production function, an input-output equation in which the goal is to maximise output per unit of input. Within this framing, any technology that increases productivity is unambiguously good. But if work is also a site of human development, a context in which people cultivate skill, exercise judgement, and build identity, then a technology that increases output while eroding the human experience of producing it is not unambiguously good at all. It is, at best, a trade-off that deserves honest acknowledgement.

Ferdman's concept of “capacity-conducive environments” offers a useful compass here. The question to ask of any AI deployment is not simply “Does this increase productivity?” but “Does this create conditions in which human capacities can develop, or conditions in which they atrophy?” The answers will not always be comfortable. They will sometimes point toward deliberately choosing less efficient arrangements because those arrangements better serve the humans within them. But that discomfort is the price of taking seriously the idea that work is more than a transaction.

The Unasked Question

The conversation about AI and work has, for the better part of a decade, been dominated by a single question: will the robots take our jobs? It is the wrong question, or at least an incomplete one. The more urgent question, the one that the Harvard Business Review research and a growing body of psychological, philosophical, and medical evidence points toward, is this: what happens when the robots take the part of our jobs that made us who we are?

The employment statistics will not tell you. The productivity dashboards will not tell you. The quarterly earnings calls, with their triumphant announcements of AI-driven efficiency gains, will certainly not tell you. You will have to look elsewhere: at the endoscopist whose diagnostic eye has dulled, at the junior lawyer who never learned to think like a lawyer, at the writer who can no longer find the sentence without asking a machine for it first, at the 31 per cent of knowledge workers who are quietly sabotaging their company's AI strategy not because they are afraid of unemployment but because they sense, at some level beneath articulation, that something essential is being taken from them.

That something is competence. It is craft. It is the hard-won, slowly-built, deeply personal experience of being good at something. And no algorithm, however sophisticated, has figured out how to give it back.

References

1. Hermann, E., Puntoni, S., and Morewedge, C.K. “Why Gen AI Feels So Threatening to Workers.” Harvard Business Review, March/April 2026.
2. Kyndryl. CEO Survey on AI Adoption and Employee Resistance, 2025. Spanning 25 industries and eight countries.
3. Writer/Workplace Intelligence. Enterprise AI Adoption Survey: Knowledge Worker Resistance to AI Initiatives, 2025. Survey of 1,600 U.S. knowledge workers.
4. BCG. “AI at Work 2025: Momentum Builds, but Gaps Remain.” Boston Consulting Group, 2025.
5. Budzyn, K., Romanczyk, M., Kitala, D., Kolodziej, P., Bugajski, M., et al. “Endoscopist deskilling risk after exposure to artificial intelligence in colonoscopy: a multicentre, observational study.” The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology, vol. 10, no. 10, October 2025, pp. 896-903.
6. Sarkar, A. “How to stop AI from killing your critical thinking.” TED Talk, TEDAI Vienna, November 2025.
7. Ferdman, A. “AI deskilling is a structural problem.” AI and Society, Springer Nature, 2025.
8. Matueny, R.M. and Nyamai, J.J. “Illusion of Competence and Skill Degradation in Artificial Intelligence Dependency among Users.” International Journal of Research and Scientific Innovation, vol. 12, no. 5, 2025.
9. Microsoft Research. New Future of Work Report 2025, published December 2025.
10. Grotzer, T. et al. “Is AI dulling our minds?” Harvard Gazette, November 2025.
11. Aziz, M.H. “The overlooked global risk of the AI precariat.” World Economic Forum, August 2025.
12. Standing, G. The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.
13. Gallup. State of the Global Workplace Report, 2025.
14. ManpowerGroup. Global Talent Barometer, 2026.
15. Amazon Web Services. Gen AI Adoption Index: Survey of IT Decision-Makers, 2025.
16. Stanford University. Study on entry-level hiring declines in AI-impacted positions, 2025.
17. American Enterprise Institute. “De-Skilling the Knowledge Economy.” AEI Report, 2025.
18. Ivanti. Tech at Work Report: Survey on hidden AI usage among workers, 2025.
19. Wharton/GBK Collective. Annual Survey on AI and Employee Skills, 2025.
20. Duolingo. CEO Luis von Ahn's “AI-first” memo and subsequent clarification, April-August 2025. Reported by Fortune, CNBC, and HR Grapevine.
21. Hermann, E., Puntoni, S., and Morewedge, C.K. “GenAI and the psychology of work.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2025.

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Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

In Summary: * Waiting patiently for radio pregame coverage for tonight's San Antonio Spurs vs Portland Trail Blazers to come over the air. While waiting I'll work on the night prayers so I won't have to wait for later when my attention might be distracted. Okay, Spurs Countdown Show is starting. I do have time to work on the prayers before the game starts. Go Spurs Go

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 232.81 lbs. * bp= 155/94 (59)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 07:20 – 1 banana, 4 crispy oatmeal cookies * 08:35 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 12:10 – salmon with spinach, mushrooms, and sauce, and white bread * 13:10 – dish of ice cream * 16:15 – 1 fresh apple * 17:45 – carmelized banana dessert

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 07:00 – bank accounts activity monitored. * 07:20- read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap. * 12:45 – watching NASCAR Raceday, * 13:00 – watching the first few laps of today's NASCAR Cup Series Race * 14:30 – have tuned in 105.3 The Fan, DFW Sports Radio, ahead of this afternoon's MLB Game with the Texas Rangers vs Seattle Mariners. And I'll stay with this station for the radio call of the game. * 17:40 – And... the Mariners win 5 to 2. * 17:50 – tuning now to 1200 WOAI, radio home of the Spurs, to catch all the pregame coverage offered ahead of tonight's game against the Portland Trail Blazers. And I'll stay with this station for the call of the game later tonight.

Chess: * 16:47 – moved in all pending CC games

14 April 2026

Rosy day

My safety went surfing and found a dream beer, a beer that juices the mouth and suns the gut, that kicks history into a wide blue sky and combs the skin. I brought news of this to my love room where I could hold it in private. God I warped it and praised it and gave it long names and then plucked its dead minutes and ground them into a clean face, which I wrapped in wax paper and left on the stoop jutting out from the house where my best friend used to live

Larry Ivkovich 99 pages IFWG Publishing (2024) 

Read this if you like: steampunk-style alternate histories, unique aliens

tl;dr summary: Humans fight back against interdimensional reptilian invaders in souped-up version of the 1860s.

See the book on Bookshop

This novella has one of the best first lines I've seen in a minute: “The horizon exploded in a world of fire.”

The rest of the first chapter keeps the reader fully planted in the middle of the action, watching as Mirrie flees her farm ahead of a wall of fire and the reptilian aliens who emerge in its aftermath. Her son and husband were in the field that is now aflame, and she realizes they're likely dead as she escapes just ahead of the destruction. 

The rest of the novella keeps up this pace, and the action sequences are on-point, with a nice balance of phyiscal details that keep the reader anchored and flashes of insight into the characters that keeps their voice centered in the story. In the big-picture sense, the plot movement all felt natural and logical, with some nicely woven moments of convergence that made full use of the multiple narrative threads and made the conclusion feel very satisfying. 

Where I found myself a bit torn on this novella was with regards to the world. And don't get me wrong—I very much enjoy the world. The main aliens, the eelees, are unique and complex, reptilian creatures that ride spider-like mounts and come to Earth through an interdimensional rift. They also aren't just bent on conquest. Over the course of the book, the reader learns they don't all want to wage war on humans, but that there are multiple factions with differing views. The thing is, the reader only finds out about this fairly late in the book, and the idea isn't explored in much depth, with only one brief scene that happens at an eelee camp. 

I think this issue plays into a broader one that I had after reading Hope's Song: It feels a bit rushed. This world is a layered one. Not only are the eelee a novel element the reader wants to know about, but the Earth of Hope's Song is a steampunk slant on reality. This means the technology is different, first of all, but it also impacts other aspects of the world. It has different governments, countries, and culture than real-world Earth—a secondary world, for all intents and purposes, and one the reader only sees in glimpses. I definitely could have spent much longer exploring this world, because it had a lot of really cool stuff going on that I felt like I was only able to glimpse in passing.

I felt similarly on a character level. I found myself wanting to know more about all of the viewpoint characters and their relationship with their world and the other people in it. I especially wanted to know more about Sky Wolf and Torre, both in terms of their relationship to each other and exactly what position they hold in regards to society. Some of the secondary characters also ended up feeling a bit flat because there simply wasn't space to develop them more. The titular Hope, for instance, I felt was a bit under-developed and under-utilized, and Stamatis was another character that I thought could have been fleshed out more. 

Of course, there definitely isn't space to go into any of these things I mentioned in a 99-page novella. Already this book is cramming a lot of characters, POVs, and plot points into a very compact space. I think maybe the heart of my critique on this is that I wanted the novel version of it, where all of these details did have space to breathe. I still enjoyed the story, without that, but there felt like there were some missing opportunities, and some of the plot movement did end up feeling a bit too convenient or coincidental because the reader only learned about certain world details right at the moment they became relevant. 

All of that being said, when it comes to pure storytelling, Hope's Song is a very entertaining read. It has a satisfying arc, characters you want to root for, and a nuanced antagonist that pushes it beyond a simple “good guys vs. bad guys” narrative. I'd definitely recommend it for anyone who enjoys steampunk or alternate history sci-fi, especially if you're looking for a book that you can happily devour in a day or two. 

 

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Hello! I have been, with a mounting sense of frustration, come just a few hundred points short of S rating on Umamusume: Pretty Derby.

Again.

My friend he asked me: how’s the writing going? The context I am writing what I believe to be a modern classic, and sometimes he helps me with the grammar, because he’s even better than I am with grammar.

The thing is that I have been busy playing Umamusume: Pretty Derby, trying to get a full roster of S+ horse girls.

But now I’m questioning whether that truly is a productive use of my time, or should I in reality finish my book instead?

This is the question on my mind this Sunday: how to spend the precious seconds of a finite life span…