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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xmlns:xml="http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace" xml:base="https://anildash.com/"> <title>Anil Dash</title> <subtitle>A blog about making culture. Since 1999.</subtitle> <link href="https://anildash.com/feed.xml" rel="self"/> <link href="https://anildash.com/"/> <updated>2025-10-17T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com</id> <author> <name>Anil Dash</name> <email>a@anildash.com</email> </author> <entry> <title>Exit the Wu</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/07/16/exit-the-wu/"/> <updated>2025-07-16T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/07/16/exit-the-wu/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>Alright, friends, in honor of attending the (alleged) last-ever Wu-Tang show at Madison Square Garden, I thought it appropriate to tell the story of the time I got to see the greatest, most hype, most chaotic energy hip hop show that I've ever seen, or that I ever <em>will</em> see: the last time all nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan appeared together on one stage together.</p><p>At that point in my career, I was working at a small company that did online music promo, and we were lucky enough to work with Loud Records, which was releasing The W, the third full album by the group. The internet was not yet central to album launches at that point (Napster had just come out the year prior, and this was still the period when the major labels were convinced that the Internet was the devil) so we'd only been involved in the periphery of some of the lead-up work. GZA had come by our offices a couple days earlier to record some promo voiceovers and brought his kid along (if I'm helping the Genius' kid with math homework, does that make me a genius also by the transitive property? I think so.) and I figured that was as exciting as things could possibly get around this album rollout.</p><p>Then we got invited to the album release concert.</p><p><img src="/images/wu-tang-w-invite.jpg" alt="Loud Records and Wu-Tang Clan invite you to celebrate the release of the new album The W featuring an exclusive Wu-Tang Clan concert Hammerstein Ballroom 311 West 34th St. Tuesday, November 21st Doors Open: 8pm Showtime 9:30pm sharp Drinks & Hors d'oeuvres will be served. Invite valid for one and is non-transferable. You Must RSVP at 212-337-5354 by Friday, Nov. 17th" title="Invite to the release party for Wu-Tang Clan's 'The W' on November 21st, 2000"></p><p>The show was high-energy from the start, opening with crowd-pleasers like Protect Ya Neck to take folks back to where it all began. But this was also sort of what you'd expect from an album release party, with three or four tracks in a row from the new record right after that. I wasn't yet super familiar with the new songs, so I was more watching the crowd, and the thing I remember most was that there were a <em>ton</em> of dudes milling about on stage, and the crowd was incredibly hyped up considering that they had rapped every word of the first song along with the guys on stage, but didn't yet know the new ones the same way.</p><p>The vibes around the record release overall had been a bit fraught. In the prior years, all of the members of the Wu had put out their solo records, which were usually excellent, but that made people wonder if the group was ever going to get back together at all. And then just in the months before the album release, O.D.B. had gotten arrested and his only contributions on the album had been made by recording his vocals over the phone from prison. At the time of the performance, he had been on the run, having left a mandatory rehab stint in California with his whereabouts unknown. Only the other eight members of the group were onstage, along with whatever hangers-on they had invited to come up with them. (I remember Redman dropping in to do Da Rockwilder with Meth, too, because I still love that song.)</p><p>But being up in the balcony (RZA said it was only industry types sitting up where we were), it was hard to make out exactly who all was on stage; what I remember was that nearly every dude on stage was wearing all black. Except after a couple of songs, I noticed that one guy was in a BRIGHT ORANGE parka. After that initial set of songs from the new album, RZA had started hyping up the crowd a bit while the orange parka dude started moving to the front of the stage.</p><p>And then, the piano part from the beginning of Shimmy Shimmy Ya started up. The reaction was, to this day, the most insane, explosive, hyped-up response from a crowd I've ever seen at any hip hop show, ever. Everybody in the building lost their goddamn minds. Old Dirty Bastard, on the run from the law, had shown up on stage. All nine members of the Wu were in the building.</p><iframe width="720" height="405" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/CciilSf4ovU" title="Wu-Tang live at Hammerstein November 2000" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen=""></iframe><p>The only record of the moment I've ever found is this potato-quality recording of the show, which doesn't nearly do justice to the feeling or the emotion in the room, but it was as ecstatic a collective expression from a crowd as I've ever felt — and not just during a live music performance. Even 25 years later, I can remember getting shivers from that moment, which is even more striking given how ridiculous and over-the-top O.D.B.'s lyrics and onstage persona were in the moment.</p><p>O.D.B. stuck around just long enough for the guys to start Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nuthing ta Fuck Wit, but word pretty quickly got out that he was at the show, and <em>during the set</em> he slipped offstage and was back on the run. By the time the group closed the show with Gravel Pit (which was the brand new single at the time), he was long gone. Being up in the balcony, we saw the cops come in and run through a few times during the rest of the set, and there were all kinds of rumors flying about where he was headed, or whether he was going to pop up again, but O.D.B. was gone for good.</p><p>A week later, still on the run, O.D.B. was arrested in Philadelphia. Four years later, he was gone for good. As <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2000/11/22/i_saw_wutang_cl/">I'd noted on the night of the show</a>, I knew it was the last time we'd see all nine members onstage together.</p><p>Still, I'm excited to see them close a chapter tonight, as the greatest hip hop supergroup of all time. I didn't think I'd ever get to see them again, and 25 years goes by a lot faster than you'd imagine!</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Zohran Mamdani is the leader NYC needs for innovation and entrepreneurship</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/08/20/zohran-mamdani-is-the-nyc-innovation-leader/"/> <updated>2025-08-20T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/08/20/zohran-mamdani-is-the-nyc-innovation-leader/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>When you think of someone hustling to build a better life in New York City, do you think of a small business owner getting up in the wee hours of the morning to open up their food cart so they can support their family, and their community? Or do you think entrepreneurship is when the richest tycoons in the world swoop in from the other side of the country and demand that New York City’s taxpayers give them billion-dollar handouts?</p><p>We’re in a moment of reckoning for how we provide new jobs, build new businesses, invent new technologies, and imagine a new future in New York City. And we’re going to have to choose between those who want to bring everyone along in that future, or those who want to strangle opportunity for the least among us, in favor of just capturing all the winnings for a handful of billionaires. This is the closest we’ve come in decades to truly opening the door for so many more to pursue their dreams in the city.</p><p>One key decision we can make to enable that better future is to elect Zohran Mamdani as our next mayor, if you care about innovation and entrepreneurship in New York City — especially for the tech sector that provides the single biggest source of new jobs in the city. There are three simple reasons why he’s the right person for the job:</p><ol><li>We need a solid foundation to build our businesses on.</li><li>Entrepreneurship is about working, not getting paid to move money around.</li><li>Our community has always been defined by service and values.</li></ol><p>For a little bit of quick background about me, and why I care so much about this topic — I’ve been part of the tech community here in NYC for more than 20 years, helping found half a dozen companies, involved in raising hundreds of millions of dollars in venture funding, serving on the boards of companies worth billions of dollars providing thousands of jobs. But more important than any of those traditional business credentials, I’ve been part of a genuine <em>community</em> of entrepreneurs, founders and innovators. These are people who come together to help each other when times are tough, offering support, encouragement, advice, and, yes criticism (!) when creating new things. And that work goes far beyond just venture-backed startups to vital areas like mom-and-pop businesses, academia, non-profits, side-gigs and creative work that’s more focused on expression than commerce.</p><p>It’s too important to the heartbeat of our city to leave this conversation to be dominated by just those with the biggest bank accounts. So let’s dig into the three ideas that distinguish this candidate and this movement, and explain how Zohran uniquely delivers on each.</p><h2>1. Businesses need to build on a solid foundation</h2><p>From the start, we’ve seen Zohran Mamdani illustrate his campaigns, and his principles, by standing with small businesses and entrepreneurs. Being in the desi community, I had known about his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQVsVNPkPmE">Nani video</a> back in the day, where Zohran pops up in a halal cart, though I will admit I was mostly checking for Madhur Jaffrey there, and not Young Cardamom. More recently, and far more seriously, the thing that had put Zohran on the radar of most people city-wide was his solidarity with taxi workers, when he <a href="https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2021/11/activist-lawmakers-share-taxi-drivers-victory/186641/">participated in a 15-day hunger strike</a> and helped win over $350 million in debt relief for taxi drivers. Those drivers epitomize the entrepreneurial spirit that powers the city, and Zohran literally putting his body on the line on their behalf is the energy we need fighting for those who are trying to build a better life. Because it’s important to remember that entrepreneurship isn’t just about tech, and isn’t just about venture-backed startups — it’s about anybody who’s got a dream of building a better life through their hard work and good ideas.</p><p>If you <em>do</em> want to build a company, so much of what it takes to succeed is about reducing risk. And many of the biggest risks to a company come from factors outside your control as a founder. Can you rely on infrastructure, like reliable transportation for your workers? Can your workers depend on services that enable them to do their work in a consistent way, like reliable and affordable childcare, education and nutrition? If you look at reports like this one from the Center for the Urban Future — a very moderate, very pro-business organization, which I was glad to collaborate with many times as a tech CEO — their <em>number one</em> recommendation for enabling continued tech growth in New York City is improved housing affordability. And, no surprise, that’s one of Zohran’s three signature policy initiatives. Their next priorities are addressing key public services like transit and libraries, which are also right at the top of his list.</p><p>If your workers are at risk, or your community is at risk, your company can’t succeed. Zohran Mamdani clearly understands that, and the priorities that he’s focused on make that clear. The issues that the entrepreneurial community has identified as its most important requirements, like ensuring access to housing, transportation, education and other foundational services, are exactly the ones being addressed by <a href="https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform">the Mamdani platform</a>. That’s important to know when there are parties with loud voices distorting that fact.</p><h2>2. Entrepreneurship is about working, not getting paid to move money around.</h2><p>This is an important point that’s increasingly getting lost in the conversation around entrepreneurship and innovation. Someone who builds a new business, or invents a new technology, or who shows up every day to provide goods and services to their community — that’s an entrepreneur. A person who moves money from one bank account to another? That’s not an entrepreneur. And a person who just tries to create systems that let them extract rent from everyone else for doing nothing? That’s <em>definitely</em> not an entrepreneur.</p><p>As New Yorkers, we’ve got to say that loud and clear, as often as we can, because the people with a vested interest in lying about this reality — and a lot of them are people who hate New York City, but care a lot about being able to influence our politics with their money.</p><p>A clear example a few years ago was Amazon’s attempt to demand up to three billion dollars in handouts to build an office complex in New York City, a greater subsidy than has ever been given to any tech startup that was ever founded in the city. Exactly as predicted by every critic of the deal, Amazon has since then hired <em>more</em> workers in New York City than they would have been required to by the agreement, making the handouts completely unnecessary. This fits the larger pattern of tycoons demanding that working people give them billions in handouts, and coercing politicians into supporting this grift by saying they are “anti-business” if they don’t. That’s why it’s important to draw a distinction between <em>actually starting a business</em> and just moving money around.</p><p>The serial sexual predator Andrew Cuomo, who lost to Zohran Mamdani in the Democratic primary and was forced to resign as governor, called the lack of giving a $3 billion handout to Amazon the “greatest tragedy” he had seen during his tenure as governor of New York. The current estimates of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_COVID-19_nursing_home_scandal">death toll in nursing homes</a> during his administration is over 15,000 people.</p><p>By contrast, one of the most resonant messages of Zohran’s primary campaign was his story about “<a href="https://ny.eater.com/2025/1/13/24342837/zohran-mamdani-halal-food-inflation-mayor-candidate">halalflation</a>”, the increasing cost of food at halal carts (there’s those halal cart vendors again!). In this video, he shows his fluency not just in the concerns of ordinary New Yorkers who are worried about paying too much for lunch at a food cart, but also the entrepreneurs <em>running</em> these carts, who struggle with complex permitting systems and extractive leases. These are the real concerns that actual business owners face. NYC doesn’t lose jobs and business because we fail to give billions of dollars to billionaires, we lose small businesses because they keep getting squeezed by higher and higher rent until they finally have to put that sad note up in the window telling the neighborhood that it’s time to say goodbye.</p><p>These are the things that can change by policies like cracking down on bad landlords and making services like 311 more efficient for reporting inspection problems. In a recent conversation with <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/tech-executives-new-york-zohran-mamdani/">NYC tech execs</a>, that promise of engaging on making systems like 311 more efficient was one of the topics that seemed to resonate best — and that's part of why this community’s tech leaders have started to embrace him. I know many of these leaders, and used to participate in these kinds of conversations when I was a CEO or founder, and given that there isn’t any representation from workers in the room, it’s an extremely positive sign that there’s still a relatively open-minded reception to Zohran and his policies, even amongst the investor class here in NYC. This is a stark contrast to the extremists in power in Silicon Valley, many of whom are trying to influence our election here in New York with their money, who have resorted to <a href="https://trt.global/world/article/68bff0f7fbcc">rank bigotry</a> as their first line of attack against Zohran's platform, since they can’t win on either substance or popularity.</p><p>Fortunately, the fundamental culture of entrepreneurship in New York City is still united by everyone wanting the guy who opened up the bodega on the corner to succeed.</p><h2>3. Our community has always been defined by service and values.</h2><p>There’s one final thread that connects the community of entrepreneurs in New York City, and I’ve seen it demonstrated many times: there’s a common set of values. People give a damn about each other, and look out for their neighbors and their community. Yes, that’s taken the form of saluting IPOs from wildly successful startups, but it’s also been members of the community getting together to roll up their sleeves to help folks in the Rockaways dig out after Hurricane Sandy. It has been celebrating milestones about founders raising funds for their companies, but it’s also been watching Aaron Swartz rally the crowd to <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jwherrman/how-aaron-swartz-joined-the-fight-against-sopa">stop the SOPA and PIPA bills</a> and fight for <em>everyone</em> to be able to innovate and express themselves on the internet. (A fight that couldn’t be more relevant at a time when today’s apps are demanding that people put in their driver’s license just to listen to a song.) For every time we cheer on a startup from our community getting acquired by one of the big tech companies, we also celebrate a cool new demo from one of NYU’s ITP students wowing us with their brilliance.</p><p>That civic attitude, community service, and genuine connection has gone up and down over the years, but it’s never completely faded away. And it stands in stark contrast to the rising intolerance, obnoxiousness and plain cruelty of the tycoons who dominate the larger tech industry today. Many seek to strangle the innovation in our midst, rather than allowing anything to happen outside of their control.</p><p>I don’t pick that phrasing lightly, and I don’t merely mean it metaphorically: they mean to strangle entrepreneurship.</p><p>We saw this coming with Eric Garner’s death more than a decade ago. The act that he was alleged to have perpetrated was the selling of loose cigarettes without a tax stamp. Even if we grant that this may have been an act that he participated in — something which has never been proven — this is certainly far less of a crime than operating a ride-hailing app completely outside of taxi laws, or enabling private home rentals through an app in clear violation of hotel laws. It’s absolutely far less of a crime than any of the crimes the current president has committed, but it is one for which Eric Garner was strangled to death on camera, by cops who were not even indicted for his death. Based on the brief conversations I had with her before her passing, I think the public hounding of his daughter Erica Garner by the enthusiastic fans of her father’s killers contributed to her also having passed away at an unconscionably young age.</p><p>This is pertinent for two reasons. First, Eric Garner was plainly participating in an act that anyone would recognize as entrepreneurial. If he were a member of a demographic that Silicon Valley considered respectable, they would have called him a “disruptor” who challenged obsolete regulations by serving needs directly to consumers. Second, many of the most powerful and influential investors in Silicon Valley saw what happened to Eric Garner years ago, and took away a clear, and awful, lesson.</p><p>Andreessen Horowitz is one of the most visible and well-financed venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, with enormous reach and impact across the industry. Earlier this year, they <a href="https://fortune.com/2025/02/05/daniel-penny-andreessen-horowitz-a16z-investing-david-ulevitch/">hired a new partner at their firm</a> on the basis that he had strangled one of our neighbors to death here in New York City; he has no experience or credentials in either technology or finance. The partner they hired killed his victim, Jordan Neely, even though Neely had not made any moves towards him. This was considered a positive thing within their social circles because his victim was a Black man, and the venture firm wanted to send a signal to our city about their intentions for our entrepreneurial community. Obviously, this makes clear who would feel comfortable asking Andreessen Horowitz to invest in a company, based upon the likelihood that they might have to share a boardroom with this partner, or even be forced to have this person represent the firm as their investor, at some point in the future.</p><p>You can’t pretend that this is a choice about innovation. You can’t pretend that this is a choice about inventing the future. There’s only one reason a handful of billionaires who have virtually unlimited dollars would make a choice like that. If these are the depths they’ll sink to just to send a signal about who’s welcome in their investment portfolio, there’s no limit to how far they’ll go to keep someone they hate from actually holding office and having power.</p><p>But it’s no surprise that our community of entrepreneurs and innovators and dreamers here in New York City has rallied behind someone like Zohran, who wants to open up opportunity for all, by <em>actually making people’s lives better</em>. Because making people’s lives better is what great entrepreneurs want to do, too. And it’s no surprise that those who profit from extraction and exploitation and corruption have resorted to hatred and bigotry in an all-out effort to stop this movement that’s inspired and motivated so many.</p><p>But you can’t stop an idea whose time has come. Just like any of us who’ve been lucky enough to build a successful business know, there’s a magical feeling when it starts to click. And all of us who’ve watched Zohran’s rise have gotten to have that same feeling. In a moment where there’s so much that’s broken, so much that induces despair, and when so many had very nearly given up on even hoping for good things to happen… it’s been possible for someone to remind us what a great leader can do.</p><p>I had gotten a little embarrassed about my past as someone who had been a CEO in tech, honestly. The very worst of the industry had tainted it so much that I’d worried people would never believe that it could ever have been something people could go into with a good heart, or honest intentions, however imperfect. But now I’ve realized that I probably felt the same way about politicians, too. And no, I don’t idealize <em>any</em> politician. But I do have a ton of hope about what the people can do, especially with good leaders to help inspire them.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Moguls Moving Money Isn’t the Same as Building a Business</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/08/20/moving-money-ain’t-building-a-business/"/> <updated>2025-08-20T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/08/20/moving-money-ain’t-building-a-business/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>One key point about entrepreneurship (which I covered in <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2025/08/20/zohran_mamdani_is_the_nyc_innovation_leader/">my lengthy piece</a> yesterday) is worth amplifying because society is often being lied to about what <em>actually</em> constitutes building a business.</p><p>Put simply: a person who moves money around is not the same as someone who actually <em>makes</em> something. It is not impossible that a money-mover is adding value — I have seen it happen! — but rearranging capital is not, in and of itself, the same thing as actually inventing, or being innovative, or building something from scratch.</p><p>I point this out because I’ve spent my career enabling creative people. Whether it’s artists and writers, or coders and makers, my heart is with the people who make things with a soul. Sometimes they make stuff just because that’s what makes their heart stir. Sometimes it’s so they can sell enough of their work to be able to pay the bills. And yep, sometimes it’s so they can start a big business! All of those things seem like valid reasons for creative people to exercise that urge to build something new, and to profit from their effort in doing so.</p><p>Frankly, I don’t give a shit what happens to the guys who move the money around to enable the makers. Get the dollars into the accounts and then get the hell out of the way. Try not to crash the economy while you do it.</p><p>But what makes me absolutely <em>furious</em> is that the greediest, most do-nothing cohort of the money-movers have spent decades creating the myth that now <em>they</em> are the builders. They think they are the creative ones, the inventors, the ones who see the future. They’ve taken to writing grand pronouncements about how society ought to run, and how they can see the future — based solely on what they might write checks for.</p><h2>How the VCs boiled the frog</h2><p>Over the last two decades, the loudest and most prominent venture capital investors have gone from saying they simply provide resources to founders who come up with great ideas, to major VC firms now having extremist political manifestos on their websites, which they promote through coordinated media operations. These campaigns are designed to recruit compliant subordinates as “founders” in order to out the agenda of the money-movers. This is nothing like the prior ideal of enabling creative people who just have a genius idea that they want to get out into the world.</p><p>Part of this effort has also been building the distortion that the only way a new business happens is through venture capital funding. Venture funding is, compared to other sources, an extreme form of betting on new businesses that was only ever supposed to be one narrow kind of high-risk, high-reward funding, complemented by many, many other sources. And any of these other much more reasonable options might be more likely ways of building a sustainable business. But the tycoons who made their money in VC have warped the public dialogue so much that the idea of getting something like a bank loan to start a company sounds as anachronistic as a horse and buggy. New companies and even the word “startup” itself have become virtually synonymous with venture capital and the extremist agenda of the most vocal cohort of that community.</p><p>Worse, this reframing of capital-as-creativity has captured politicians and regulators at every level. Why does Jeff Bezos need three billion dollars in handouts to build a headquarters in NYC, based on a fake promise to hire Amazon workers that he was always going to hire in the city anyway? Because compliant chumps like then-governor Andrew Cuomo mistakenly think moving money around to billionaires is what constitutes building a business. Do you know how many mom-and-pop small businesses in NYC you could have saved if you put three billion dollars in subsidies into helping those who are squeezed out of their spaces by greedy landlords, instead of the HQ2 boondoggle?</p><h2>What <em>is</em> really a business, then?</h2><p>So: beware of people conflating pushing pennies around with actually doing the hard work of building a business. Beware of those who pretend that venture capital and the VCs who run that industry are the voices of entrepreneurship — or that they’re even on the side of entrepreneurs.</p><p>And beware of anyone who thinks innovation is about one lone genius or big piles of money. It’s about communities, creativity, and the joyful optimism of coming together to do hard work.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>Five for 50</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/09/05/five-for-fifty/"/> <updated>2025-09-05T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/09/05/five-for-fifty/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>Today I’m 50 years old! That feels absurd, because it’s a big number, the kind of round number that people usually obscure by saying “I’m celebrating a big birthday” or something vague like that. But, since you only get so many of these to celebrate, I’m using this chance to ask everyone who I’m lucky enough to have in my life to join me in observing the day by considering five different ways of taking action. These are all the gifts I could possibly ask for, because I’m lucky enough that my life has brought me all the good fortune that anyone could ever want or need.</p><p>So, without further ado, some ideas of what we might do together. (And feel free to use these as starting points and change them to make them your own.)</p><h2>1. Give to those who help the people who are most in need in your immediate community.</h2><p>In my neighborhood, I’ve been privileged enough to get to serve on the board of the Lower East Side Girls Club for about a decade, working to support an incredible team that stands behind some of New York City’s most at-risk girls and families. Through the education, resources, guidance and just plain old-fashioned love that the Girls Club provides these girls, they’re able to reach the full potential that they’ve had all along.</p><p>One of the biggest reasons this kind of work is possible is because the Girls Club gives them a world-class facility, the kind of space they might otherwise never have gotten access to use, with everything from a planetarium to a recording studio to a crafting classroom. You can <a href="https://support.girlsclub.org/campaign/689691/donate">directly support this work</a> by giving as generously as possible, or find the people in your own neighborhood who are supporting the vulnerable kids and families in your own community and give of your own time and resources to make sure they have the support they need, too.</p><h2>2. Invest the time in exploring, preserving, sharing, and promoting the subject of your passions.</h2><p>People who know me well know that I am a “big fan of being a big fan” of things. What this means is, I love it when people have an exuberant, sometimes downright irrational, enthusiasm for a topic, or a hobby that’s all-consuming in a way that they want to tell the whole world about. Almost everyone I love has one or two (or… twenty) topics that they’re deeply passionate about, which they’re either an expert about, or <em>want</em> to be an expert about. The world is so much better when people take the time to dive into these passions, and to share them with the world — especially if we also take the time to ensure that the historical record or the artifacts of that subject are also appropriately recorded or preserved.</p><p>At a time when histories are actively being erased and truth is actively being distorted, it can be a brave and meaningful act to protect the real history of the works or subjects that inspire us. For me, I’m famously willing to expound on <a href="/tags/prince/">Prince’s work</a> at any time, but I have the same enthusiasm about the history of New York City, or the design of transit systems and safe streets, or the culture of making software, or any one of a dozen other esoteric topics that have been the subject of a hyperfixation for me over the years. One of the biggest reasons to be a big fan of something is that it opens the door to connecting with the <em>other</em> big fans of that thing, and also to connecting with people who may not share that same specific topic, but who are just drawn towards the sheer contagious joy of a person sharing the thing that makes their heart sing.</p><h2>3. Fight for the ability to create, and to own and control what you make.</h2><p>Nearly my entire professional life has been centered around enabling people to share their ideas, their words, and their creative expression with the world. And right now, it matters more than ever that we protect that incredibly valuable promise. Most importantly, we all have to fight for that kind of expression <em>together</em>, because the more we stand in unison, the more resilient we all are to attacks.</p><p>Just as key is the idea that everyone should be able to have control over the things people do with their work and their idea, and that their labor and creations shouldn't be exploited without consent. This is a basic human right, but it's too often ignored or denied in today's culture, and yet often all it takes is the smallest amount of fighting back to stop the bad actors from taking advantage. There are lots of ways to help with this battle, from supporting the small independent artists and activists in your community and in your life, to <a href="http://eff.org/anil">sustaining the organizations like EFF</a> (where I'm honored to serve on the board) that fight every day to protect free expression in the digital realm, where these rights are often the most threatened.</p><p>Nearly every good thing in my life has come to me as a result of being able to speak from my heart in words like these on a platform like this one, and by being able to reach people like you in an unfettered way. I want everyone else to have that opportunity too.</p><h2>4. Be kind and forgiving to yourself, and treat yourself like a friend.</h2><p>For most of my life, I would have rolled my eyes at a lot of the language of kindness or self-empathy as insufferably fuzzy-minded, a kind of indulgence that distracts from more meaningful work. But further into adulthood, having grown, and endured loss, and been with loved ones and friends as they've grieved and struggled and been through all the countless small indignities that life inflicts on us all, I realize that it's actually pretty important to extend kindness to oneself. Self-love is profoundly lacking in so many people's lives, and the ways that this absence manifests is one obvious, and major, cause of so many of the biggest problems in society today.</p><p>If you are a person who deals with impostor syndrome, or struggles with confidence, or who wrangles with insecurities, or who faces doubts, nearly every single one of those challenges can find some small reprieve by loving yourself as if you were one of your best friends. It's striking how much people are willing to be kind, generous, patient, and even unconditionally forgiving to their closest loved ones, and then turn around and be brutally, unrelentingly harsh to themselves. As it turns out, you can treat yourself with the same combination of acceptance tempered by accountability that you would extend to a true friend, so you don't have to worry that being loving means that you're suddenly going to lower your standards and not keep being the best version of yourself.</p><p>If you've been waiting for someone to say it, here it is in writing: you're granted absolution by some guy on the internet. You're allowed to love yourself.</p><h2>5. Don't wait until they're dead.</h2><p>This one is a thing people say all the time, but I can't emphasize enough how much it's true: Do not wait until someone is gone to praise them, or thank them, or acknowledge them, or to tell them what you're grateful for or how they've impacted your life. I have tried to make it a habit to say as directly as possible to people what they mean to me, in the moment when it occurs to me, or when there is the slightest prompt to do so.</p><p>People have often asked me if it is awkward to do so, and <em>it is never awkward</em>! Almost no one is offended or angry when you say that their work means something to you, or that some long-ago favor that they did for you ended up being really meaningful, or that you've always admired the way that they show their true character when no one is looking. (If you need practice, you can say something nice on my birthday about how I've made an impact in your life, and I promise I won't be anything but happy. See how easy that was?)</p><p>Aside from fishing for nice people to say nice things, one of the reasons that I've found this is a good practice is because doing so has made me realize that telling others, in plain language, what I appreciate about them has made me have to be in a vulnerable place too. When you talk about their strength, you're often revealing something that was, at least at one time for you, a weakness. But we build our greatest bonds with others by trusting them with our vulnerabilities.</p><p>Sometimes there is a chance that someone will take advantage of those vulnerable moments to be dismissive or hurtful, or they simply won't understand what you were responding to, and the connection won't be made. But far, far more often, you will have deepened a connection to someone whose character inspires you, and there are few things more rewarding in life than that.</p><h1>Thank you.</h1><p>I don't have any profound life lessons to impart after a half century, except to say that I am very grateful for all of the wonderful people in my life, and to be so fortunate, especially at a time when so many are not. I hope I can continue to be of service to others in the most effective and useful ways possible, and I'm thankful as ever that all of you take the time to read and share the things I have been writing here for half of my life.</p><p>One of the greatest gifts I've gotten in my life has been getting to connect with so many kind and thoughtful people through sharing my life and ideas here, and the best part is that's not limited to just one birthday or one moment, but really continues throughout my life over years and decades. I hope you'll stick around for many more.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>How Tim Cook sold out Steve Jobs</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/"/> <updated>2025-09-09T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/09/09/how-tim-cook-sold-out-steve-jobs/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>There’s a tech industry habit of second-guessing “what would Steve Jobs have done" ever since he passed away, and most of the things people attribute to him seem like guesses about a guy who was very hard to predict and often inconsistent. But recently, we have one of those very rare cases where we know exactly what Steve Jobs would <em>not</em> have done. Tim Cook and Apple’s leadership team have sold out the very American opportunity that made Steve Jobs’ life and accomplishments possible, while betraying his famously contemptuous attitude towards bullshit institutions.</p><p>Steve Jobs was, amongst many other things, the biological son of an unmarried Syrian immigrant who was in the United States on a student visa, and he grew up to be a person who had a really good sense of when to say “fuck you" to the man. Both of those aspects of Jobs were plainly disrespected by the pathetic display of fealty that Tim Cook put on display on behalf of Apple in the Oval Office a few weeks ago. Cook made a mealy-mouthed entreaty to Donald Trump, slathering him with compliments that were as numerous as they were false, and then used his sweaty palms to assemble a ghastly glass-and-gold trophy for a room full of press cameras. It is, quite literally, the most grim and embarrassing thing that's ever been done in Apple's name, and I was watching live when Tim Cook and Bono awkwardly butted index fingers while inflicting U2's worst album on everyone's iPods.</p><img src="/images/tim-and-bono.jpg" alt="Tim Cook and Bono do not know how to do a high-five" /><p>I’m not an uncritical Steve Jobs fan. I know, from having worked closely with people who worked directly for Jobs for many years, that he could be a mercurial, and brutish, boss. Too many of his greatest accomplishments came at significant personal cost to those who worked for him. But it’s inarguable that Jobs could see a future that many others could not, and virtually every single one of the people I know who had the chance to work for him directly have said that, even at their most critical, they inarguably felt that Jobs brought out the best of their talents and helped inspire them to do some of their best work.</p><p>But everybody knows that part of the Steve Jobs lore. What’s far less well-known is where Steve Jobs came from. As <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2011/08/19/what-theyre-protecting-us-from/">I noted fourteen years ago</a>, “the anchor baby of an activist Arab muslim who came to the U.S. on a student visa and had a child out of wedlock". Jobs’ adoptive parents were able to take him in because he was born into that relatively unstable environment, with an uncertain future ahead of him. His upbringing and social context were all the things that the current authoritarian administration have violently targeted for attacks.</p><p>Steve Jobs was able to achieve many of the signature accomplishments in the history of American business because of the fundamental human rights and civil liberties that we extend to many of the most vulnerable and least-privileged people who come to our country.</p><p>Steve Jobs was also, plainly, a member of the 60s and 70s counterculture that defined the community and context where his work was born. The early personal computer scene was rife with psychedelic drug use (which was then criminalized, as was recreational marijuana use), and even some of Jobs’ ordinary cultural tastes such as being a fan of “hippie music” was considered so anti-social that artists were commonly monitored by federal agencies of the time.</p><p>This is the social context in which early personal computers were created, just one generation after IBM had sold its mainframe computers to the Nazis, when that company provided the numbers that would be inked onto the wrists of the prisoners held in concentration camps. And the anti-institutional, anti-war, anti-surveillance, and yes, often <em>anti-government</em> sentiment of those early hackers informed the ethos of everyone in that scene. That's why it was no surprise, when Jobs had the chance to make the first and most definitive global statement from Apple — the launch of the original Macintosh — that it would have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(advertisement)">a nod to Orwell’s 1984</a>, and a shot at IBM’s PC, with what’s widely been regarded as the greatest advertisement of all time.</p><p>The son of an immigrant, a child of the counterculture, a man offering an unmistakable fuck-you to Big Brother, and a person who, above all, would never kiss the ass of someone who had <em>absolutely awful taste</em>. This was Steve Jobs.</p><p>And then Tim Cook handed a big shiny golden turd to Donald Trump, and couldn’t wait to stammer out how much he’d love to polish that turd for him, please sir — the emperor’s clothes look especially lavish today! It’s an embarrassment, a humiliation, not least because it was absolutely <em>unnecessary</em>. The iPhone is far, far more popular than this administration. Apple is powerful! An Apple that still held onto Steve Jobs’ spirit could have played the strong hand that it has, and bet with confidence on the enthusiasm and loyalty of the American people, and called Trump’s bluff, especially since this kind of appeasement is only going to embolden the administration to demand even more tithes from Apple in the future.</p><h2>“But they can’t do that!"</h2><p>Many people have the quisling impulse to insist that Apple <em>had</em> to kiss Trump’s ass. “They’ll be stuck with really high tariffs!" “They might lose government contracts!" This is foolishness, of course, because <em>all of this will still happen</em>. The only thing that’s different is that Apple will have to navigate those headwinds while everyone in the world already knows that they’re led by a CEO who has already bent the knee, and by a board that collectively has no spine. There's no point in having fuck-you money in the bank if you never say "fuck you"!</p><p>People without imagination will ask, “well, what else could they have done?" This is only a tough question if you don’t realize the immense cultural and technical assets that Apple has at its disposal. For example, just recently, Apple deployed its formidable multi-billion-user global cloud infrastructure in service of… <a href="https://www.theverge.com/news/692276/apple-wallet-notification-f1-movie-ad">promoting the Brad Pitt Formula 1 movie</a>. People were, understandably, a bit disconcerted to see their <em>wallet payment app</em> sending them promotional messages about a film, and Apple undoubtedly screwed up in polluting a functional messaging channel about transactions with a commercial message, but hey — this is a clear sign Apple knows it’s got the power to drop a note directly into millions of people’s pockets.</p><p>There’s even precedent for how a tech company can be far more effective in this kind of battle, though it was for much lower stakes, and with a company that <em>wasn’t</em> actually being unfairly squeezed. Ten years ago, when New York City was making the wild demand that Uber should actually follow the laws of the city if they wanted to operate within its boundaries, Uber responded by <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/why-uber-has-a-de-blasio-car-option-in-new-york-city-2015-7">actually calling out the city’s mayor by name</a> within the user interface of the app. Business media of the time called the move “clever" and hailed it as a great innovation. (In reality, Uber was, of course, lying, and activists’ assertion that Uber was trying to destroy competition and undermine mass transit so that they could raise their prices once they had put all the taxis out of business turned out to be exactly correct.)</p><p>Here is an idea: Apple could, rather than creating golden bribes for child sexual predators, actually send a message to its users explaining that it would like to continue providing value to its customers, and ask those customers for help making that case to their elected officials.</p><h2>Talk to your users</h2><p>Now obviously, I’m fairly comfortable being antagonistic, but perhaps Apple’s corporate communications team is less so. Their tone might be something closer to Steve Jobs’ famous “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash">thoughts on Flash</a>" at the dawn of the smartphone era, where he laid out a vision of technology and competition that changed the entire landscape of how developers created experiences on the web. Despite Jobs often personally having a hotheaded personality, his letter on this topic was very well-reasoned and logical, and even many of those who were inclined to be deeply critical of his perspective on industry debates found it fairly persuasive.</p><p>Apple’s argument today could be very simple: Americans love technology like their phones and their laptops, and are proud of the innovations and success of American tech companies like Apple, and they know that those thrive best when their markets are free and open. That means rules should be made by the rule of law, not backroom deals made behind closed doors, and definitely not by greasing the palms of those in power. (If Apple wants to play nice, they can add something polite about how they know this administration would never do anything like that. Of course that’s a bald faced lie, but clearly Apple leadership wants to do some sucking-up to Trump, and this would at least be a form that does not involve rank debasement.)</p><p>Pushing out a message along these lines to every Apple user in America, with a specific call to action directed to their local elected officials and a message that they could send encouraging them to support open innovation would be extraordinarily effective. Name it the “American Phone Freedom Movement" and nudge a few of the stars of the Apple TV shows to talk about how much they love freedom.</p><p>As people are fond of pointing out these days, courage is contagious, and it wouldn't take much for others in tech to line up behind Apple if they had merely stood up in this moment. Hell, the entire industry has made a habit of copying Apple in so many areas over the years.</p><h2>One more thing</h2><p>In short, instead of meekly capitulating to pathetic bullies, this is a moment when Apple needed go on the attack. Instead of curling up in a defensive ball on the floor and crying while you hand out gold bricks to fascist predators, this is a time when a company full of smart and talented people should stand its ground. Because down the path of acquiescence lies only pain and a long, slow pathetic spiral to irrelevance.</p><p>Why would Apple employees believe they should follow leaders who blatantly violate the ethics guidelines that every worker is asked to follow about offering bribes to government officials? Why would consumers believe that Apple is still innovating when they’re resorting to the worst behaviors of over-the-hill incumbents who rely on graft and cronyism instead of actually making cool shit? Gold trinkets are emblematic of the Apple Intelligence flop era, right when they need to be channeling peak Steve Jobs one-more-thing energy. It's not too late. And if he gets mad, tell him he's holding it wrong.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>24 is After the Fall</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/09/11/24-is-after-the-fall/"/> <updated>2025-09-11T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/09/11/24-is-after-the-fall/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>It was clear fairly immediately that the political goal of the attacks on September 11th was to undermine the American empire. Sitting here less than a quarter-century later under authoritarian rule, with the rule of law in America in tatters, tanks in the streets, political violence becoming routine, and the country’s stature permanently (at least for my lifetime) diminished, it would seem that we could put up a banner saying “Mission Accomplished”.</p><p>There was so much to grieve for on the day. All these years later, there is so much more grief. As I noted <a href="https://www.anildash.com//2024/09/11/23-what-was-911/">last year</a>, the reality of the actual day has fully faded into mythology; it’s hard to recognize the version of the story that’s repeated under the pretense of “never forget” in comparison to anything any of us actually remember from the time.</p><p>But worse, the hope and even optimism that many of us had about some sense of unity, of collective purpose, arising from the moment has given rise to the revelation of the darkest impulses that anyone could attribute to America. I still don’t believe it’s <em>most</em> people, just the ones who have seized power, and those who are willing or complacent enough to enable them, but it’s enough that the United States became in character more or less exactly what Bin Laden said we were.</p><p>Despite all this, New York City is still the New York that permanently became a part of my heart that day. We will embrace the young Muslim man who will, inshallah, be our mayor soon. We will hold the line on remembering that day as it actually was, and caring for each other now as we did then. If Manhattan has to be a figurative island as much as a literal one, then that’s what it was always born to be.</p><p>As I write this, I’m walking around our neighborhood surrounded by people who are both adults and without any memories of being in NYC on that day. I feel like I have a secret that is terrible and a little bit beautiful that could reveal the truth of this place to them. But also I hope they take this tragedy and wreckage that they’ve been given right now and make something beautiful for each other.</p><hr><h2>In Previous Years</h2><p>Last year, <a href="https://anildash.com/">23: What was 9/11?</a>:</p><blockquote><p>The majority of people in the world were either not born, or not old enough to be aware of what was going on, and then many who would recall are either gone or their memories have faded. But I was in New York City on September 11, 2001, and I can say definitively: The constructed cultural narrative around the day bears almost no resemblance to the actual lived experience of anyone I know who was here that day. So maybe it’s worth telling a little bit of what I actually saw.</p></blockquote><p>Two years ago, "<a href="https://www.anildash.com/2023/09/11/its-unrecognizable/">It's unrecognizable</a>":</p><blockquote><p>[M]aybe I keep coming back because I am hoping that others might still recognize the little glimpses of humanity that I saw on the day of the attacks, and that I saw in abundance, in New York City, in the days that follow. It wasn't a myth, it wasn't just wishful thinking, there really was kindness and care in this place that I love so much. I don't think those who tell the loudest stories today would even recognize it.</p></blockquote><p>Three years ago, "<a href="https://anildash.com/2022/09/11/there-is-nothing-to-remember/">There Is Nothing To Remember</a>"</p><blockquote><p>So it's clear that the events of that day have fully passed into myth, useful only as rhetoric in a culture war, or as justifications for violence. Nothing epitomizes this more than the fact that, while the memory has faded in culture broadly, it's only brought to the fore in situations like those where most New Yorkers would be targeted.</p></blockquote><p>Four years ago, "<a href="https://anildash.com/2021/09/11/twenty-is-myth/">Twenty is a Myth</a>":</p><blockquote><p>I can't change how society overall sees this event. To my eternal regret, I couldn't change how we responded in any meaningful way. But I did get to make personal changes, permanently and for the better, and the loss and grief of that day does still motivate me to try to honor the moment by pushing for justice, and care, and an earnest engagement with the world.</p></blockquote><p>Five years ago, <a href="https://anildash.com/2020/09/11/nineteen-is-when-they-forgot/">Nineteen is When They Forgot</a></p><blockquote><p>I do have the experience of having seen this city bounce back from unimaginable pain before. I have seen us respond to attacks on our public life by rebuilding and reimagining public space. I have seen us grieve our losses and rally behind those who cared for those injured, and preserve space in our cultural memory for their pain and sacrifice. By no means have we done enough for all those lost, but it is absolutely true that we can rebuild. We’ve done it before.</p></blockquote><p>Six years ago, <a href="https://anildash.com/2019/09/11/eighteen-is-history/">Eighteen is History</a></p><blockquote><p>There are ritualized remembrances, largely led by those who weren't there, those who mostly hate the values that New York City embodies. The sharpest memories are of the goals of those who masterminded the attacks. It's easy enough to remember what they wanted, since they accomplished all their objectives and we live in the world they sought to create. The empire has been permanently diminished. Never Forget.</p></blockquote><p>In 2018, <a href="https://anildash.com/2018/09/11/seventeen-is-almost-just-another-day/">Seventeen is (Almost) Just Another Day</a></p><blockquote><p>I spent so many years thinking “I can’t go there” that it caught me completely off guard to realize that going there is now routine. Maybe the most charitable way to look at it is resiliency, or that I’m seeing things through the eyes of my child who’s never known any reality but the present one. I'd spent a lot of time wishing that we hadn't been so overwhelmed with response to that day, so much that I hadn''t considered what it would be like when the day passed for so many people with barely a notice at all.</p></blockquote><p>In 2017, <a href="https://anildash.com/2017/09/11/sixteen-is-letting-go-again/">Sixteen is Letting Go Again</a></p><blockquote><p>So, like ten years ago, I’m letting go. Trying not to project my feelings onto this anniversary, just quietly remembering that morning and how it felt. My son asked me a couple of months ago, “I heard there was another World Trade Center before this one?” and I had to find a version of the story that I could share with him. In this telling, losing those towers was unimaginably sad and showed that there are incredibly hurtful people in the world, but there are still so many good people, and they can make wonderful things together.</p></blockquote><p>In 2016 <a href="https://anildash.com/2016/09/11/fifteen-is-the-past/">Fifteen is the Past</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I don’t dismiss or deny that so much has gone so wrong in the response and the reaction that our culture has had since the attacks, but I will not forget or diminish the pure openheartedness I witnessed that day. And I will not let the cynicism or paranoia of others draw me in to join them.</p><p>What I’ve realized, simply, is that 9/11 is in the past now.</p></blockquote><p>In 2015, <a href="https://anildash.com/2015/09/11/fourteen-is-remembering/">Fourteen is Remembering</a>:</p><blockquote><p>For the first time, I clearly felt like I had put the attacks firmly in the past. They have loosened their grip on me. I don’t avoid going downtown, or take circuitous routes to avoid seeing where the towers once stood. I can even imagine deliberately visiting the area to see the new train station.</p></blockquote><p>In 2014, <a href="https://anildash.com/2014/09/11/thirteen-is-understanding/">Thirteen is Understanding</a>:</p><blockquote><p>There’s no part of that day that one should ever have to explain to a child, but I realized for the first time this year that, when the time comes, I’ll be ready. Enough time has passed that I could recite the facts, without simply dissolving into a puddle of my own unresolved questions. I look back at past years, at my own observances of this anniversary, and see how I veered from crushingly sad to fiercely angry to tentatively optimistic, and in each of those moments I was living in one part of what I felt. Maybe I’m ready to see this thing in a bigger picture, or at least from a perspective outside of just myself.</p></blockquote><p>From 2013, <a href="https://anildash.com/2013/09/12/twelve-is-trying/">Twelve is Trying</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I thought in 2001 that some beautiful things could come out of that worst of days, and sure enough, that optimism has often been rewarded. There are boundless examples of kindness and generosity in the worst of circumstances that justify the hope I had for people’s basic decency back then, even if initially my hope was based only on faith and not fact.</p><p>But there is also fatigue. The inevitable fading of outrage and emotional devastation into an overworked rhetorical reference point leaves me exhausted. The decay of a brief, profound moment of unity and reflection into a cheap device to be used to prop up arguments about the ordinary, the everyday and the mundane makes me weary. I’m tired from the effort to protect the fragile memory of something horrific and hopeful that taught me about people at their very best and at their very, very worst.</p></blockquote><p>In 2012, <a href="https://anildash.com/2012/09/11/eleven-is-what-we-make/">Eleven is What We Make</a>:</p><blockquote><p>These are the gifts our children, or all children, give us every day in a million different ways. But they’re also the gifts we give ourselves when we make something meaningful and beautiful. The new World Trade Center buildings are beautiful, in a way that the old ones never were, and in a way that’ll make our fretting over their exorbitant cost seem short-sighted in the decades to come. More importantly, they exist. We made them, together. We raised them in the past eleven years just as surely as we’ve raised our children, with squabbles and mistakes and false starts and slow, inexorable progress toward something beautiful.</p></blockquote><p>In 2011 for the 10th anniversary, <a href="https://anildash.com/2011/09/12/ten-is-love-and-everything-after/">Ten is Love and Everything After</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I don’t have any profound insights or political commentary to offer that others haven’t already articulated first and better. All that I have is my experience of knowing what it mean to be in New York City then. And from that experience, the biggest lesson I have taken is that I have the obligation to be a kinder man, a more thoughtful man, and someone who lives with as much passion and sincerity as possible. Those are the lessons that I’ll tell my son some day in the distant future, and they’re the ones I want to remember now.</p></blockquote><p>In 2010, <a href="https://anildash.com/2010/09/11/nine-is-new-new-york/">Nine is New New York</a>:</p><blockquote><p>[T]his is, in many ways, a golden era in the entire history of New York City. Over the four hundred years it’s taken for this city to evolve into its current form, there’s never been a better time to walk down the street. Crime is low, without us having sacrificed our personality or passion to get there. We’ve invested in making our sidewalks more walkable, our streets more accommodating of the bikes and buses and taxis that convey us around our town. There’s never been a more vibrant scene in the arts, music or fashion here. And in less than half a decade, the public park where I got married went from a place where I often felt uncomfortable at noontime to one that I wanted to bring together my closest friends and family on the best day of my life. We still struggle with radical inequality, but more people interact with people from broadly different social classes and cultures every day in New York than any other place in America, and possibly than in any other city in the world.</p><p>And all of this happened, by choice, in the years since the attacks.</p></blockquote><p>In 2009, <a href="https://anildash.com/2009/09/11/eight-is-starting-over/">Eight Is Starting Over</a>:</p><blockquote><p>[T]his year, I am much more at peace. It may be that, finally, we’ve been called on by our leadership to mark this day by being of service to our communities, our country, and our fellow humans. I’ve been trying of late to do exactly that. And I’ve had a bit of a realization about how my own life was changed by that day.</p><p>Speaking to my mother last week, I offhandedly mentioned how almost all of my friends and acquaintances, my entire career and my accomplishments, my ambitions and hopes have all been born since September 11, 2001. If you’ll pardon the geeky reference, it’s as if my life was rebooted that day and in the short period afterwards. While I have a handful of lifelong friends with whom I’ve stayed in touch, most of the people I’m closest to are those who were with me on the day of the attacks or shortly thereafter, and the goals I have for myself are those which I formed in the next days and weeks. i don’t think it’s coincidence that I was introduced to my wife while the wreckage at the site of the towers was still smoldering, or that I resolved to have my life’s work amount to something meaningful while my beloved city was still papered with signs mourning the missing.</p></blockquote><p>In 2008, <a href="https://anildash.com/2008/09/11/seven-is-angry/">Seven Is Angry</a>:</p><blockquote><p>Finally getting angry myself, I realize that nobody has more right to claim authority over the legacy of the attacks than the people of New York. And yet, I don’t see survivors of the attacks downtown claiming the exclusive right to represent the noble ambition of Never Forgetting. I’m not saying that people never mention the attacks here in New York, but there’s a genuine awareness that, if you use the attacks as justification for your position, the person you’re addressing may well have lost more than you that day. As I write this, I know that parked out front is the car of a woman who works in my neighborhood. Her car has a simple but striking memorial on it, listing her mother’s name, date of birth, and the date 9/11/2001.</p></blockquote><p>In 2007, <a href="https://anildash.com/2007/09/11/six-is-letting-go/">Six Is Letting Go</a>:</p><blockquote><p>On the afternoon of September 11th, 2001, and especially on September 12th, I wasn’t only sad. I was also hopeful. I wanted to believe that we wouldn’t just Never Forget that we would also Always Remember. People were already insisting that we’d put aside our differences and come together, and maybe the part that I’m most bittersweet and wistful about was that I really believed it. I’d turned 26 years old just a few days before the attacks, and I realize in retrospect that maybe that moment, as I eased from my mid-twenties to my late twenties, was the last time I’d be unabashedly optimistic about something, even amidst all the sorrow.</p></blockquote><p>In 2006, <a href="https://anildash.com/2006/09/11/after-five-years-failure/">After Five Years, Failure</a>:</p><blockquote><p>[O]ne of the strongest feelings I came away with on the day of the attacks was a feeling of some kind of hope. Being in New York that day really showed me the best that people can be. As much as it’s become cliché now, there’s simply no other way to describe a display that profound. It was truly a case of people showing their very best nature.</p><p>We seem to have let the hope of that day go, though.</p></blockquote><p>In 2005, <a href="https://anildash.com/2005/09/11/four-years/">Four Years</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I saw people who hated New York City, or at least didn’t care very much about it, trying to act as if they were extremely invested in recovering from the attacks, or opining about the causes or effects of the attacks. And to me, my memory of the attacks and, especially, the days afterward had nothing to do with the geopolitics of the situation. They were about a real human tragedy, and about the people who were there and affected, and about everything but placing blame and pointing fingers. It felt thoughtless for everyone to offer their response in a framework that didn’t honor the people who were actually going through the event.</p></blockquote><p>In 2004, <a href="https://anildash.com/2004/09/11/thinking-of-you/">Thinking Of You</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I don’t know if it’s distance, or just the passing of time, but I notice how muted the sorrow is. There’s a passivity, a lack of passion to the observances. I knew it would come, in the same way that a friend told me quite presciently that day back in 2001 that “this is all going to be political debates someday” and, well, someday’s already here.</p></blockquote><p>In 2003, <a href="https://anildash.com/2003/09/11/two-years/">Two Years</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I spent a lot of time, too much time, resenting people who were visiting our city, and especially the site of the attacks, these past two years. I’ve been so protective, I didn’t want them to come and get their picture taken like it was Cinderella’s Castle or something. I’m trying really hard not to be so angry about that these days. I found that being angry kept me from doing the productive and important things that really mattered, and kept me from living a life that I know I’m lucky to have.</p></blockquote><p>In 2002, I wrote <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2002/09/11/on-being-an-ame/">On Being An American</a>:</p><blockquote><p>[I]n those first weeks, I thought a lot about what it is to be American. That a lot of people outside of New York City might not even recognize their own country if they came to visit. The America that was attacked a year ago was an America where people are as likely to have been born outside the borders of the U.S. as not. Where most of the residents speak another language in addition to English. Where the soundtrack is, yes, jazz and blues and rock and roll, but also hip hop and salsa and merengue. New York has always been where the first fine threads of new cultures work their way into the fabric of America, and the city the bore the brunt of those attacks last September reflected that ideal to its fullest.</p></blockquote><p>In 2001, <a href="https://anildash.com/2001/09/11/thank-you/">Thank You</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I am physically fine, as are all my family members and immediate friends. I’ve been watching the footage all morning, I can’t believe I watched the World Trade Center collapse…</p><p>I’ve been sitting here this whole morning, choking back tears… this is just too much, too big. I can see the smoke and ash from the street here. I have friends of friends who work there, I was just there myself the day before yesterday. I can’t process this all. I don’t want to.</p></blockquote> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>A Way We Were</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/09/17/a-way-we-were/"/> <updated>2025-09-17T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/09/17/a-way-we-were/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>Hearing the news yesterday that Robert Redford had passed away reminded me of one of the most moving, and bittersweet, memories that Prince shared with us toward the end of his life. It began as an uncharacteristically direct moment of vulnerability, and eventually turned into a conversation about the one most important lesson he wanted everyone to learn about his life’s work. It’s one that seems more relevant than ever today.</p><p>Prince’s final tour was called “Piano & a Microphone”, an intimate show where he’d play his own songs, and songs that had meant a lot to him growing up, while telling stories of his life or of the moments that inspired those songs.</p><p>In those last shows, including at the final concert of his life, Prince would play a searing, heartfelt medley of Bob Marley’s “Waiting in Vain” and his own “If I Was Your Girlfriend”.</p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/W1XnX8onck8" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen class="video"></iframe><p>During the song, Prince paused and put up a still photo of Robert Redford and Barbara Streisand from “The Way We Were”, asking the audience if they remembered the scene in the film where the couple breaks up, only for Streisand’s character to immediately call Redford’s character to console her despite being her ex.</p><img src="/images/prince-onstage-way-we-were.jpeg" alt="Prince onstage during his final concert, with an image projected behind him of Redford and Streisand from The Way We Were" /><p>Prince then resumes his song with the next verse, “would u run 2 me if somebody hurt u, even if that somebody was me?” It’s a surprisingly revealing look at the inspiration, or at least an artistic connection, behind one of Prince’s most beloved songs. Though it’s far from one of his biggest hits or his best-known compositions, “If I Was Your Girlfriend” is beloved by fans for its groundbreaking bending of gender, its genuinely unique production, and especially the empathy and vulnerability of its narrative. And now we saw Prince dropping his long-maintained stage persona to talk about a romantic movie that came out when he was 15 years old. We can only imagine the impression it left on him as a teenager, enough for him to reference it more than 40 years later with absolutely no loss in emotional resonance.</p><h2>Prince’s Version</h2><p>In an era when an entire generation has grown up listening to “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re-recording_(music)">Taylor’s Version</a>” of a recording, fans’ fluency about intellectual property and artists’ rights of ownership is very high. But in the 80s and 90s, it was often considered gauche for an artist to talk about such commercial concerns, and very few mainstream media outlets even mentioned the long history of Black artists having had their work exploited and extracted by the music industry over the years.</p><p>After becoming one of the most popular and consequential artists of the 1980s, Prince started, in the early 1990s, to focus his career on getting control of his artistic output — specifically his master recordings. During this time, he said that the one thing he wanted to be remembered for was “<a href="https://www.marketplace.org/story/2023/06/07/30-years-ago-prince-changed-the-way-artists-negotiate-with-the-music-industry">If u don’t own your masters, then your masters own u.</a>”</p><p>That message of artistic control over creativity has always stuck with me, and I was reminded of it again when Prince had performed his beautiful, moving cover of that Marley song mashed up with one of his own greatest compositions.</p><p>So I asked him if he would release a recording of his live performance of the track for us fans to be able to listen to legally.</p><img src="/images/asking-prince-about-single.png" alt="me asking Prince in a tweet, can you make one of the Waiting In Vain/If I Was Your Girlfriend medleys a Tidal single, too? Would love to be able to share it!" /><p>He responded in a deleted tweet (he usually deleted nearly all of his tweets shortly after posting) that he would have to ask the Marley estate's permission in order to release the recording. I pointed out that he technically didn't need to do so, since the legal regime of compulsory licensing meant that artists could record a cover without having to ask the original composer. This was, for example, how Sinead O'Connor had been able to record his composition "Nothing Compares 2 U" without having had to ask for his clearance.</p><img src="/images/compulsory-licensing.png" alt="my response, saying Sure, but compulsory licensing allows it? Could just send the letter, wait 30 days, pay the royalties, yay Marley estate! :)" /><p>Prince's response was, well... classic Prince. (He tended to respond to tweets by copying-and-pasting them into his responses instead of quoting them.)</p><img src="/images/prince-heinous.jpg" alt="ONE OF THE MOST HEINOUS ACTS EVER PERPETRATED ON MUSICIANS!!" /><p>ONE OF THE MOST HEINOUS ACTS EVER PERPETRATED ON MUSICIANS!! seems to be fairly consistent with his views about how artists should have been able to maintain full control over their work. Well, at least how <em>he</em> should have been able to maintain full control over his work — Prince played covers of other artists without their prior consent <em>all the time</em>. In fact, the true genius of how <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2021/02/05/how-prince-won-the-super-bowl/">Prince played the greatest Super Bowl halftime show of all time</a> was due to his deep and brilliantly subtle use of cover songs as incredibly thoughtful cultural commentary.</p><p>But that complexity aside, what I largely took away from reflecting on this exchange from almost a decade ago was how much I miss having this kind of interplay about artists' rights and artistic influence with smart, engaged, thoughtful creators.</p><p>Redford fought throughout his career for underrepresented creators to have the stage (and the screen) at platforms like Sundance, just as so many institutions falter and back off of support for those vital creators. He gave voice to narratives like the immorality of McCarthyism in films like The Way We Were, just as a new wave of equally virulent witch hunts begins to ramp up. His most legendary roles like All The President's Men ring most resonant when we see The Washington Post making a mockery of itself against the backdrop of a presidency whose corruption is even more depraved, carried out by those who don't even bother to hide it.</p><p>Similarly, Prince shared his stages and studios with an incredibly broad and diverse set of collaborators, and constantly reminded them that they needed to walk away with <em>real</em> ownership of their work. He fought the biggest and most powerful companies that attempted to control every aspect of culture and media, and even when it took decades to do so, wrested control of his work back into his own hands, all while pioneering so many of the tools and technologies and techniques that would inspire a new generation of artists to demand the rights they deserve. Just as importantly, he never backed down from using the art he created to speak up on issues of social justice and equity, standing on the biggest stages to plainly speak to the humanity and dignity of every person.</p><h2>Waiting</h2><p>But beyond those big headlines, there are the simple acts that these artists performed on a daily basis. They made art where they allowed themselves to be vulnerable. They dressed with style <em>all</em> the time, even when nobody was looking. They let themselves be inspired by the unexpected, by other forms of art, by everything around them. And they made a space for the next generation to follow in their footsteps, to create on their own terms, to go even further after they're gone.</p><hr><figure> <figcaption>Listen to Waiting in Vain / If I Was Your Girlfriend (Live on April 14, 2016)</figcaption> <audio controls src="/images/19-waiting-in-vain-if-i-was-your-girlfriend.mp3"></audio></figure> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>The "Taylor's Version" generation is not gonna let Big AI steal her stuff</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/09/18/the-taylors-version-generation/"/> <updated>2025-09-18T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/09/18/the-taylors-version-generation/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>You didn’t used to have to be an expert on intellectual property law just to be a music fan. You would just put on your headphones, hit play, and enjoy whatever your favorite artist had made for you to listen to. Maybe you would listen to a record, or if you were old enough, a CD, or if you were old enough, a record.</p><p>But thanks to the bottomless greed that suits in the music industry have had her the years, fans have had to learn about formerly-obscure concepts like recording contracts and licensing rights and master recordings. And no one in recent years has done more to teach them about these details than Taylor Swift, whose years-long campaign to wrest back control of her master recordings culminated with the triumphant announcement, earlier this year, of her having purchased her entire catalog of master recordings. This announcement meant fans were no longer forced to choose between the versions of her albums they originally heard, or the re-recordings of those classics that she’s been releasing to streaming services with expanded tracks and guest features and all-new art, all meant to displace the legacy versions with ones under her control.</p><p>The capstone on Taylor’s reclamation of her work was the recent New Heights podcast her with her now-fiancé Travis Kelce, where her narration of the battle to own her work, talking about the loss she felt over work she’s been creating since she was a teenager, was moving even to those who weren’t fans of her music or who didn’t know her songs very well. It humanized these kinds of battles as being about art and heart, not just abstract legal concerns.</p><h2>A Master Plan</h2><p>All of this seemed very familiar to me as a Prince fan, as it mirrored the pioneering battle he’d fought starting in the early 1990s, based on his having signed a contract when <em>he</em> was a teenager <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2016/05/15/message-from-the-artist">As he explained</a> in a letter to fans, “both youth and excitement towards the opportunity to have an album produced made me, as Prince, naïve”. Based on the long history of Black artists having been exploited and abused by the music industry, Prince knew that it would be an arduous battle, but after nearly two decades of persevering, he won back full control of his master recordings for his entire catalog of dozens of albums before the end of his life. It was a triumph and a fitting victory for a man who wanted to be remembered for the phrase “If u don’t own your masters, then your masters own u.” It was a rallying cry that galvanized fans.</p><p>But that was a battle from the 20th century. I wasn’t sure if a generation of music fans growing up in the current era would have the same passion about these issues that we did, until I saw Swifties everywhere rallying behind her fight over these last few years. It’s been exciting to watch, especially in light of what’s been happening on the internet, and in technology at the same time. Great artists inspire the entire culture to change. And it was obvious that Taylor’s fans are ready to fight, and they have her back.</p><h2>Gathering Intelligence</h2><p>The single biggest conversation in every creative community right now is the enormous impact that the recent rise of artificial intelligence is having on creators. Virtually all of the biggest AI companies are training their models on massive amounts of creative work gathered almost entirely without consent, and very often without any respect for licensing or permissions. Worse, the models that are trained on those works are then very often used to create poor facsimiles of the works that were ingested into these systems, attempting to displace the very art that made them possible.</p><p>Now, I’m of the belief that <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2025/05/02/what-would-good-ai-look-like">AI systems don’t actually have to work this way</a>, but the reality is that, at least right now, they almost all do. The big tools from the big companies have all been created this way, and the people running these companies largely treat the use of content without consent or compensation as an inevitability.</p><p>It’s worth noting, this is true <em>despite</em> the fact that many of the coders and programmers who create today’s technologies don’t necessarily agree with this ethical stance. Many developers and coders see themselves as much more aligned with other creators like writers and artists than they are with the management of tech companies. Coders recognize that their work has been used to train AI tools without consent or compensation as well — and that their management is just as eager to displace them with AI tools, too. So even within the “tech” world, there isn’t a unified consensus that this approach to intellectual property and the work of creators is the right one.</p><p>Even if people don’t have the right technical words for it, there’s a broad sense that things aren’t quite fair.</p><h2>Bad Blood</h2><p>Where that leaves us is with an enormous and passionate fan base of millions of people who know that an artist they care deeply about has fought for years for control of her work. They undoubtedly believe that she should have the right to say who has access to that work, and how they can profit from it. And nobody is more notorious than extremely-online fan bases when it comes to figuring out clues about how someone might be transgressing against their favorite artists.</p><p>It is almost a certainty that one of the big AI models has <em>already</em> trained its system on Taylor Swift’s music without her consent. It is nearly inevitable that their tools might start generating content based on having learned from her work, whether that is music or videos or lyrics or any other kind of media. And these companies are already charging money for that output, profiting from the things they derive from this work.</p><blockquote><p>Once it becomes obvious to the global community of Swifties that a big AI company has taken Taylor’s Version without permission — has done to Taylor <em>again</em> what those creepy old record execs did to her as a young artist — how do they think that is going to go?</p></blockquote><h2>Don’t Blame Me</h2><p>A lot of people are working on technical solutions to figure out what to do about all of the good and interesting and creative parts of the internet being sucked up into AI tools without any regard for what happens to the creators when that happens. Some are working on making sure people get paid when that happens. Some are just trying to block it all and stop it from happening. Some are working on even more complicated solutions. And I expect that we’ll see a combination of all of these approaches in the years to come.</p><p>But that’s looking at the problem as a <em>technical</em> issue. It’s much more of a social and <em>cultural</em> issue. And in that context, I would never count out the massive cultural force that is fan culture. The sheer cultural power that can be wielded by Swifties, or k-pop fans, or the Beyhive, or any other activated fanbase deciding that they really, <em>really</em> care about tech companies showing some damn respect to the artists that they love is going to turn out to be far more powerful than any technological approach to solving these issues.</p><p>This is especially key because most of the people creating the AI platforms, or the super-technical solutions to moving content around the internet, are nearly illiterate in the contemporary aspects of fan culture. They’re boomers (either literally or figuratively) who seldom consume today’s most relevant music or streams or tiktoks, they are unfamiliar with most influencers or cultural figures. They’re too often incurious about why people even love these artists and creators to begin with.</p><p>So as we try to figure out how to protect artists and creators, how to keep the open internet vital and flourishing, and how to preserve the culture and inspires and engages so many, the answer might be right in front of us. The biggest underestimated factor is the power of fan culture and the passion of people standing behind the artists and creators who they love, and the technologists and platforms that embrace that sentiment, and work <em>with</em> those fan communities, and tap into that feeling instead of fighting against it, are the ones that are destined to succeed in the long term.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>The Emancipation of the Chris Gaines of Mimi</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/09/29/mariah-chick-chris-gaines/"/> <updated>2025-09-29T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/09/29/mariah-chick-chris-gaines/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>Anyone who knows me know that I love the esoteric, confusing and complicated aspects of pop music's greatest artists. When a Garth Brooks goes on a detour to become Chris Gaines? I'm there.</p><p>So, for decades, I've been a bit obsessed with Mariah Carey's long-lost side project <em>Someone's Ugly Daughter</em>, which she created under the name "Chick", as a grunge-influenced emotional release from the stresses she was under during the creation of her 1995 album <em><a href="https://amzn.to/4o06Unw">Daydream</a></em>. A not-very-veiled dig at the frustrations she had with her then-husband and label head Tommy Mottola, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGnWobn1zmkmPnaAgjs4nXmv7bgmbgluS">songs themselves</a> have been circulating amongst fans for years</a>, with lead vocals from Clarissa Dane, Mariah's friend and collaborator on the project. (Mariah herself was barred from taking lead on the project due to her commitments to Sony at the time.)</p><p>The <em>Daughter</em> project came to much higher visibility, though, after Mariah mentioned it in her (incredible! highly recommended!) memoir "<a href="https://amzn.to/42KW0JW">The Meaning of Mariah Carey</a>", which came out in 2020. The book taught a lot of people who saw Mariah as primarily a pop artist or merely a remarkable vocalist that she's a truly gifted songwriter, and the breadth of her catalog was exemplified by the revelation to many more casual fans that she had things like an entire Hole-inspired grunge album sitting unreleased in her vault.</p><p>But at long last, we're seeing Mariah finally acknowledge this hidden part of her catalog in the promotional tour for her latest record, <em><a href="https://amzn.to/3ILSyYM">Here For It All</a></em>. After a fan flashed a (presumably homemade?) album cover for <em>Daughter</em> at an event, Mariah began to talk about the record, and even let the crowd listen to one of the best songs on the record, "Love Is A Scam".</p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/d6d5gjdnYuE" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen class="video"></iframe><p>It's hard to imagine, at the same moment that "Always Be My Baby" was still all over the radio, and when she was recording "Fantasy", that Mariah was listening to acts like Garbage and recording this harder-edged album at night, art-directing an album cover featuring a dead cockroach on the front. But I do have a theory that nearly all great pop artists have at least one great alter ego hiding inside them, and perhaps Chick is that one for Mariah. I'm hoping this belated acknowledgment of the <em>Someone's Ugly Daughter</em> record is a major step towards its eventual, long-overdue, release.</p><p><strong>Update:</strong> Well, I should have known. Back in January of 2021, the best interview that Mariah's ever done was, to no surprise, her <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/qls-classic-mariah-carey-part-1/id1485250501?i=1000505167210">appearance on Questlove Supreme</a>, which was the first time she publicly talked about the Chick album at length. Quest and I have talked about our appreciation of the record a few times since then, debating its place in her catalog, but I guess his opinion is settled now: best in her catalog! (I still think Emancipation of Mimi might be better.)</p><iframe src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8scjjPEJohE?t=200s" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen class="video"></iframe> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>The Unexpected New Threat to Video Creators</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/10/07/the-threat-to-video-creators/"/> <updated>2025-10-07T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/10/07/the-threat-to-video-creators/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>Much of the conversation about video and content over the last few weeks has been about the silencing of Jimmy Kimmels's show and the fact that we're seeing a shockingly rapid move towards the type of censorious media control typical of most authoritarian regimes.</p><p>But there's a broader trend that poses a looming threat to online video creators that I think is going a bit under the radar, so I took a minute to pull together a quick short-form video on the topic:</p><iframe width="563" height="1001" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3cK51sT6R9A" title="The Threat to Video Creators Online" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe><p>The key things that have shifted can be summarized with three points:</p><ol><li><strong>TikTok Takeover:</strong> The cronyism exploited to hand TikTok to Larry Ellison for a fraction of its worth, setting up the danger of its platform amplifying content controlled by the administration, and silencing dissenting voices.</li><li><strong>Vimeo Vulnerability:</strong> The consolidation of a number of the major streaming video infrastructure providers (including Vimeo, one of the most important) under Bending Spoons, the notorious conglomerate which not only tends to enshittify its products, but which will now also present a unified target for the same censors who went after voices like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.</li><li><strong>Creator Capture:</strong> The lack of available and accessible open alternatives to major distribution platforms like YouTube and TikTok — there's no "BlueSky for video" or "Mastodon for video", meaning there isn't the same opportunity for video creators to make themselves resilient to a platform takeover.</li></ol><p>All of this is trying to make clear to video creators that they need to embrace the same <a href="https://www.anildash.com/2024/02/06/wherever-you-get-podcasts/">radical control that podcasters have always had</a>.</p><p>Separately, I'm also (obviously!) using this as a chance to start sharing a bit more of the videos I've been making lately. It's still very early, and I'm not quite sure what direction they're headed, so please do share any feedback you've got.</p><p>In general, I'm going to try to complement my writing here with some videos from time to time, just to make some of these concepts more accessible to different audiences. If you're inclined, please do take a look, and share them with people who might find them interesting. (I'm expecting to use both quick vertical formats and more substantive traditional horizontal videos, and to post across most of the major social networks so as to not be overly dependent on any one platform.)</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Era of DEI</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/10/07/dadt-dei/"/> <updated>2025-10-07T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/10/07/dadt-dei/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>So many of the best, most thoughtful, most caring and talented people I’ve collaborated with in my career have had a focus on inclusion and equity as either the primary role or the supporting and enabling context of their work. But thanks to a well-funded, decades-long concerted effort, the reasonable and moral consensus that we should care for one another and offer opportunities to those who haven’t had them has become a vulnerability that those in political power right now are using to target anyone who is trying to empower or uplift the marginalized.</p><p>It’s a war on DEI, and it’s left good people feeling afraid to make basic statements of plainly human dignity, like “we should work to undo the harmful effects of decades of racist exclusion”, or “we should fix the pay inequities that have kept women from being paid fairly when they do the same work as men”. These were uncontroversial statements for decades <em>even amongst the most conservative segments of America</em> and the extremist takeover of both social media and conventional media has quickly normalized such a radical shift that people are now often afraid to plainly state these kinds of fundamental truths in public, especially in the workplace.</p><p>But there are so many good people who <em>care</em> about this work, whose values have not been corrupted just because the authoritarians currently in power have decided to persecute others, or to strip funding from organizations, if they dare to use “forbidden” language when describing the way they’re going to take care of people. The MAGA extremists aren’t content just to take television shows off the air, or to ban books in schools — they’ve also provided lists of words that can cause organizations to lose federal funding, and now have escalated their attack on empathy and kindness to include firing people who have expressed sympathy or solidarity for communities through demonstrations such as kneeling in a gesture of support.</p><h2>The Mother of Invention</h2><p>The net result is a situation I’ve come to describe as the “**Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era of DEI. Much of the work of inclusion and support is still going on, because the spirit of kindness and justice is an unstoppable one. But just as there have always been LGBTQ+ people in the military, and the DADT legal framework just allowed institutions to continue to be in denial about reality, many pragmatic organizations have begun evolving to say “fine, we won’t call it DEI if these delicate MAGA crybabies can’t hear those words — but we can still do the work”.</p><p>Because the truth is, communities focused on justice and community care have <em>always</em> been able to provide for each other, even when persecution or circumstance required that they be clandestine about it. It was never easy, but there was indeed a railroad that did run underground. And it has always been communities on the margins that invent and evolve language anyway; when the right decided to demonize the word “woke” after belatedly (mis-)appropriating it from Black and queer cultures, I was angry about the injustice of the intellectual dishonesty of that campaign. But I’ve <em>never</em> worried about whether these communities would find even more expressive and joyful ways to communicate the vibrant and vital ideas that vexed these soulless fascists so completely.</p><p>And there’s some shedding of the old that might even be a small silver lining to the cloud. Within our communities of practice, many of us have felt some degree of fatigue or burnout at the cynicism and ineffectiveness with which many organizations embraced their DEI efforts, especially those that tried to engage at a superficial level in 2020 and then only maintained a cosmetic embrace of the work without proper resourcing or structural support in the years since. In truth, I think a lot of the institutions whose leaders have followed that pattern were just waiting for this excuse to drop the pretense, and at least now we can all stop the charade.</p><h2>Back Into The Light</h2><p>Not being able to speak plainly about the vital work of inclusion is, to be clear, a grave injustice. But the fact that the petulant children in this administration are desperately hoping that a network of quislings will tattle on their coworkers for using the forbidden word “diversity” reveals just how fragile – and importantly, how <em>unpopular</em> this attack on equity really is.</p><p>Though the right wing has been able to game the refs in media for the last decade enough that many people feel “this woke thing has gone too far!”, in reality, most people also <em>really do</em> like the idea that things should be fair. They <em>really do</em> like the feeling that they’re being good to those who’ve been mistreated, and they liked when The Muppets taught them how to be nice to people who were different from them. It’s not fair that we have to endure these indignities and attacks but there is also some solace and comfort in knowing that so many people also know intrinsically what is good and right, even when they may be afraid about how and when they can say it.</p><p>So the specific wording we have been using may be dormant for a while, and many people who used to use these descriptions may have to refrain from doing so. Maybe these particular names for these concepts will even slip from popular vernacular, replaced by updated names that reflect a new generation’s sensibilities. I’ll never stop being furious about these liars having misrepresented the work of good people and twisted acts of kindness and love into something that is vilified.</p><p>But I’m also heartened to remember past eras of resilience and adaptability when an imperfect and inelegant compromise helped navigate through a tumultuous time until everyone in a community could come out stronger on the other side. If the cruelty of this moment forces all of us to again face a situation where there are no good choices, at least we’ve seen that there are ways we can help preserve the progress that’s been made so far, by any name.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> <entry> <title>The Majority AI View</title> <link href="https://anildash.com/2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view/"/> <updated>2025-10-17T00:00:00Z</updated> <id>https://anildash.com/2025/10/17/the-majority-ai-view/</id> <content type="html"> <![CDATA[ <p>Even though AI has been the most-talked-about topic in tech for a few years now, we're in an unusual situation where <em>the most common opinion</em> about AI within the tech industry is barely ever mentioned.</p><p>Most people who actually have technical roles within the tech industry, like engineers, product managers, and others who actually make the technologies we all use, are fluent in the latest technologies like LLMs. They aren't the big, loud billionaires that usually get treated as the spokespeople for all of tech.</p><p>And what they all share is an extraordinary degree of consistency in their feelings about AI, which can be pretty succinctly summed up:</p><h3>Technologies like LLMs have utility, but the absurd way they've been over-hyped, the fact they're being forced on everyone, and the insistence on ignoring the many valid critiques about them make it very difficult to focus on legitimate uses where they might add value.</h3><br /><p>What's amazing is the reality that virtually <em>100% of tech experts</em> I talk to in the industry feel this way, yet nobody outside of that cohort will mention this reality. What we all want is for people to just treat AI as a "<a href="https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology">normal technology</a>", as Arvind Naryanan and Sayash Kapoor so perfectly put it. I might be a little more angry and a little less eloquent: stop being so goddamn creepy and weird about the technology! It's just tech, everything doesn't have to become some weird religion that you beat people over the head with, or gamble the entire stock market on.</p><h2>AI Hallucinations</h2><p>If you read mainstream media about AI, or trade press within the tech industry, you'll basically only hear hype repeating the default stories about products from the handful of biggest companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and the like. Once in a while, you might hear some coverage of the critiques of AI, but even those will generally be from people outside the tech industry, and they will often solely be about frustrations or anger with the negative externalities of the centralized Big AI companies. Those are valid and vital critiques, but it's especially galling to ignore the voices within the tech industry when the first and most credible critiques of AI came from people who were working within the big tech companies and then got pushed out for sharing accurate warnings about what could go wrong.</p><p>Perhaps the biggest cost of ignoring the voices of the reasonable majority of those in tech is how it has grossly limited the universe of possibilities for the future. If we were to simply listen to the smart voices of those who aren't lost in the hype cycle, we might see that it is <em>not</em> inevitable that AI systems use content without the consent of creators, and it is <em>not</em> impossible to build AI systems that respect commitments to environmental sustainability. We can build AI that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhW5M18cvGM">isn't centralized under the control of a handful of giant companies</a>. Or any other definition of "<a href="https://www.anildash.com/2025/05/02/what-would-good-ai-look-like/">good AI</a>" that people might aspire to. But instead, we end up with the <em>worst</em>, most anti-social approaches because the platforms that have introduced "AI" to the public imagination are run by authoritarian extremists with deeply destructive agendas.</p><p>And their extremism has had a profound chilling effect within the technology industry. One of the reasons we don't hear about this most popular, moderate view on AI within the tech industry is because <strong>people are afraid to say it</strong>. Mid-level managers and individual workers who know this is the common-sense view on AI are concerned that simply saying that they think AI is a normal technology like any other, and should be subject to the same critiques and controls, and be viewed with the same skepticism and care, fear for their careers. People worry that not being seen as mindless, uncritical AI cheerleaders will be a career-limiting move in the current environment of enforced conformity within tech, especially as tech leaders are collaborating with the current regime to punish free speech, fire anyone who dissents, and embolden the wealthy tycoons at the top to make ever-more-extreme statements, often at the direct expense of some of their own workers.</p><p>This is all exacerbated by the awareness that hundreds of thousands of technical staff like engineers have been laid off in recent times, often in an ongoing drip of never-ending layoffs, and very frequently in an unnecessarily dehumanizing and brutal process intended to instill fear in those who remain at the companies afterward.</p><p>In that kind of context, it's understandable that people might fear telling the truth. But it's important to remember that <em>there are a lot more of us</em>. And for those who aren't insiders in the tech industry, it's vital that you understand that you've been presented with an extremely distorted view about what tech workers really think about AI. Very few agree with the hype bubble that the tycoons have been trying to puff up. There are certainly a group of hustle bros on LinkedIn or social media trying to become influencers by repeating the company line, just as they did about Web3 or the metaverse or the blockchain (do they still have .ETH after their names?), but the mainstream of tech culture is thoughtful, nuanced and circumspect.</p> ]]> </content> </entry> </feed>
