Hot Takes

I said it. Dragon fantasy romance is not it. I understand the appeal in theory: dragons, war academies, a love interest who's probably a red flag in any other context. But the writing reads like a Wattpad draft that got a book deal because BookTok needed content. The worldbuilding is paper-thin, the dialogue makes me cringe, and the "twists" are visible from orbit.

If you love it, I genuinely respect that. Reading is personal and joy is joy. But as someone who's read Sanderson, Abercrombie, and Kristoff, this felt like someone described a fantasy novel to an AI and asked it to make it "spicier." Hard pass.

Humans have never hit a ceiling on what we want to create and consume. Every time tech makes something cheaper, we invent new categories of demand. Cheap computing didn't just speed up accounting. It gave us the internet, streaming, and the app economy. AI will do the same. The scary part isn't the destination, it's the speed: skillsets can go obsolete faster than people can retrain. The transition is where the pain lives, and we don't talk about it enough.

Related reading: AI Won't Take All Our Jobs (Bob Hutchins) · What If AI Moves Faster Than Society Can Adjust? (The Hub)

Look at the track record. Reusable rockets that land themselves. A global satellite internet network. Electric cars that drive themselves and smoke $190K sports cars off the line. Tunnels. Brain implants. An AI company. The velocity of execution across that portfolio is unlike anything else in tech history. As a PM who lives and breathes shipping, I'm not going to pretend that isn't extraordinary because the person is complicated.

Fun fact: I bought a Tesla Model Y, and the social whiplash was hilarious. First, my blue-collar neighbors gave me grief for being "a silly liberal who cares about the environment." A year later, when Elon threw in with Trump, I got it from the other direction. Everyone suddenly had opinions about a car that drives itself, costs $30K, and is faster than almost anything on the road. Meanwhile I'm sitting in a self-driving car laughing.

Politics aside, the man ships at a level most people can't comprehend. That's the take.

Games when I grew up were helpful. You could actually learn stuff from them. Not "educational games" with math quizzes disguised as platformers. Real games that taught you real things: resilience, trying again and restarting from scratch, figuring out a completely new approach to a problem, changing the way you think about challenges. You died, you lost progress, you had to get better. That was the point.

Most games now are hot garbage that teach you dependence. Everything is a golden yellow road that leads you to the next objective. Get stuck? Here's a hint. Too hard? The difficulty scales down automatically so anyone can win no matter what. The game auto-saves so you never have to spend more than five minutes trying again. It practically apologizes if it challenges you. The real metric they're optimizing for isn't fun or growth. It's money and time played. Addiction by design.

The positive side of gaming is real and underdone: growing, playing, being creative, forming community. But the industry doesn't optimize for any of that. They optimize for consumerism. Maximum revenue from the youngest audience as early as possible. Get them addicted, get them nostalgic later in life, turn them into lifelong consumers of that product. Not players. Consumers.

Want proof? Look at what happened to local multiplayer. As consoles found they could charge more, they killed side-by-side games. There was a total shift away from local co-op: groups of people playing in the same room, on the same console. That made half as much money as selling two copies and two online subscriptions, so they moved away from it. The community aspect of gaming, the part that was actually magical, got sacrificed for subscription revenue.

Here's the upside though: the indie game scene is already in a golden era, and AI is about to make it supernova. The rate at which indie games are exploding in quality and creativity right now is incredible, and with AI tools dropping the cost of creation even further, we're about to enter a period where you can make games just for individual people. Custom experiences for couples, for friend groups, for families. Everyone becomes a creator. That's going to be awesome, and it's the future I'm excited about.

Look, the science is in. Alcohol is bad for you. Not "complicated" bad, not "depends on the study" bad. Just bad. Dr. Sarah Wakeman at Harvard (Medical Director for Substance Use Disorder at Mass General, whose own parents both died from alcohol-related liver disease) has been very clear: alcohol damages sleep, mental health, memory, relationships, and increases cancer risk even in small amounts. Andrew Huberman dedicated an entire episode of Huberman Lab to walking through the neuroscience, and his conclusion was blunt: the best amount of alcohol is probably zero.

And you know what? I still enjoy a drink. Because life is short, a good bourbon with friends is one of my favorite things, and I refuse to optimize every single input like I'm a biohacking spreadsheet. The key word is "informed." I know the tradeoff I'm making. I'm not pretending moderate drinking is healthy. I'm just deciding that the social and experiential value, for me, is worth the cost. That's an adult decision and I'm comfortable with it.

What's fascinating is that the culture is shifting fast. The U.S. adult drinking rate has dropped to 54%, the lowest Gallup has measured in nearly 90 years. Gen Z is leading the charge: 65% of Gen Zers planned to drink less in 2025, and nearly 40% planned to go fully dry. Non-alcoholic beer volume has risen 175% since 2019. The sober-curious movement is real and it's reshaping entire industries.

The economic ripple effects are everywhere. The global alcohol industry lost an estimated $830 billion in market value between 2021 and 2025. Restaurants are scrambling: 27% added non-alcoholic drink options to menus in 2025. The entire culture around dining, socializing, and nightlife is shifting. Bars that used to be defined by their cocktail menu are now competing on mocktails and "experience." Fashion brands are pivoting away from the aspirational drinking lifestyle they sold for decades. Even Dry January participation jumped 36% in a single year.

I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'm just saying the data is clear, the culture is moving, and pretending a glass of red wine is a health food is over. Make your own informed choice. Mine happens to include the occasional old fashioned.

Sources: Andrew Huberman on Alcohol · Dr. Sarah Wakeman on Diary of a CEO · Gallup: U.S. Drinking Rate at New Low · Dr. Wakeman on Mel Robbins