This written and video essay by Nilay Patel explores why AI is unpopular with the general public even as usage numbers for ChatGPT continue to skyrocket.
It’s a superb piece of commentary, and something I expect I’ll be thinking about for a long time to come.
Nilay’s core idea is that people afflicted with “software brain” - who see the world as something to be automated as much as possible, and attempt to model everything in terms of information flows and data - are becoming detached from everyone else.
[…] software brain has ruled the business world for a long time. AI has just made it easier than ever for more people to make more software than ever before — for every kind of business to automate big chunks of itself with software. It’s everywhere: the absolute cutting edge of advertising and marketing is automation with AI. It’s not being a creative.
But: not everything is a business. Not everything is a loop! The entire human experience cannot be captured in a database. That’s the limit of software brain. That’s why people hate AI. It flattens them.
Regular people don’t see the opportunity to write code as an opportunity at all. The people do not yearn for automation. I’m a full-on smart home sicko; the lights and shades and climate controls of my house are automated in dozens of ways. But huge companies like Apple, Google and Amazon have struggled for over a decade now to make regular people care about smart home automation at all. And they just don’t.
The night started like any other: I was feeling mischievous, and decided to get up to no good. I scrolled through my list of ideas, and chose to fabricate a nightmare polycule that was seeking a new member.
It’d be a beautiful blend of everyone’s favorite applications - dating docs, roommate searches, job applications1 - seeking the one perfect fit across three dimensions for the six members of my polycule.
A few days later, the polycule would have 25 million views, be the #1 and #2 topic trending on Twitter, and receive over 2,000 applications.
grok hallucinated that we were in portland as well lol
The adverts were simple, black text in Arial font, with a link to apply (which you could not click on, because it was on printed paper).
They directed interested viewers to an application on Notion. I figured a polycule in San Francisco would use Notion, so I made a Notion account. I’ve never used Notion before, but I’ve also never run a polycule before, so this would be a learning moment on many fronts for me.2
The Notion page included a description of the polycule rules, each member, and an application to fill out while listening to “calming rain noise” (Heavy Rain with Thunder 2 Hours). I included my friend Mackenzie as a member, of course.
this is a real description of my friend Mackenzie
“calming rain noise” (Heavy Rain with Thunder 2 Hours)
The next day, I taped up 10 flyers while picking up my prescription from the pharmacy. To be honest, this was done rather performatively, as I wanted to post a picture of the flyer on Twitter that day. I have zero clout on Twitter, in fact I have this sort of duel curse/blessing, the kind they dole out in fairytales, where my projects always go viral, but only from someone else’s post about them. So I am (tragically) attempting to build more Twitter presence.
A few of my flyers that’ve gone viral from someone else’s Twitter post about them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the traction, and having the right messenger can really matter. But like c’mon, let me get in there, I have so many things I could do with that power.
That same day, someone posted the flyer on Reddit, and someone else on Twitter. Which was wild considering I’d only put up 10 flyers within a 3-block radius.
the first post to really break the news
The comments on Reddit were great, my favorite was one wishing that the satire was more obvious. That’s my bad, next time I’ll make sure to footnote explanations for all my jokes.3
in the words of Avril Lavigne, can i make it anymore obvious?
other reddit comments
Encouraged by this, I brainstormed other places a seeker of love-employee-roommate might post on, and tried to post on Craigslist and Zillow, and immediately got banned from the platforms. That’s gonna really suck the next time I’m apartment-hunting, so I hope you guys appreciate the sacrifices I make for my art.
A few days later, someone with more clout posted the flyer on Twitter, and it went viral.4
it’s not, i made this up
Almost all of the commenters thought it was real, which was insane. I mean, it starts with saying the 7 polycule members enjoy long walks on the beach in a 3:4 formation, has multiple 6-7 jokes, outlines height preferences for “practical positioning” purposes, etc. I loved when one lone warrior would bravely assert, “You guys realize this is obvious satire, right?” And they’d get drowned by replies, “No way, SF polycules are just like that. It’s totally real, it’s way too detailed to be fake.”
Another person retweeted it and linked the site, and most of the commenters on that post got that it was a joke.
thank you. also - the twitter posters’ names are rosey and ivy, both plants, interesting coincidence, right?
It’s crazy how much the initial framing and messenger influenced whether people thought it was real, considering it was just one person’s one-line commentary on a multi-page site. This was an unexpectedly striking insight, and I’ll probably post on LinkedIn later about how the lesson ties back to B2B SaaS.
Someone hallucinated that the Norman Polycule has existed for years.
Even though I gave very little identifying information about any hypothetical member of the polycule, Mackenzie got a bunch of texts asking if she was really in a polycule. So I started jokingly threatening my friends that I was gonna add them to the polycule if they upset me.
subscribe or i’ll add you to the polycule
Why not?
People kept tagging this (apparently notorious) shitposter and saying she was obviously behind it, and I figured, at least they’re crediting another women. We need more female representation in male dominated fields (posting stupid shit on the internet).
Commenters were starting to get concerned for Zaid (“the least favorite member”) so we filmed a video update to reassure everyone that he was okay and loved his polycule.
Aadil did such a good job, we filmed this in the middle of our friend’s party on the roof.6
Most polyamorous commenters found it funny (the viral repost was actually by a polyamorous person, and the r/polyamory thread was laughing about it), and the people that got really pissed were staunchly anti-polyamory.7 Which is kind of beautifully ironic?
The application got meme-ified, and the fun thing about that is I would just be scrolling on my feed and get jumpscared by my own work out of context.
I still do not understand how so many people thought it was real.
self-aware king!
The “special move” quandary:
This needs its own section.
For context, my friend hooked up with a guy, who afterwards dropped out of the top university in Japan and moved internationally to stalk him full-time. When he was sending texts from one of his many burner numbers, he kept referring to my friend’s “special move,” which apparently was so great it inspired him to commit his life to stalking him.
This sparked a discussion amongst my friends of whether everyone had a “special move,” a highly divisive question: people either answered, “yes, obviously I have a special move,” or, “what the fuck are you talking about?”
Based slightly on the data collected and my superior pattern-matching abilities, I deduced that most people over the age of 25 had a special move, and so the quorum decided that by the age of 25, you must find your special move.
This led to my friends freaking out before their 25th birthday, as we all impress upon them the importance of having figured out your special move by 25.
If you’ll remember from the polycule application, I mention that during the live-in trial-period, you’ll learn each member’s “special move,” and I also ask what the applicant’s special move is, with the option to skip if they’re under 25 and haven’t figured it out yet.
My friend Christopher saw the polycule application, didn’t realize I wrote it, and thought, “wow, I guess having a special move and learning it before 25 is not just a thing among our friends, it’s like widely known.” I ran into another acquaintance at a party and he told me he’d been stressing all day about what his special move was.
I love that “special move” is now becoming part of the public vernacular, as it should tbh. If you don’t have a special move before 25 then quite frankly I don’t know what went wrong in your life.
you’re welcome alex
you better hurry
i had to google this, apparently “popping ult” is a term in gaming, meaning activating a character’s most powerful ability
Over 2,000 people filled out the application.
I’m kinda scared to look through them, because it’s filled with angry evil Twitter people, but there’s some incredible highlights, including:
For the question “what about our polycule most excites you,” the most common answer was “Deborah” (the 65-year old “mom” of the polycule), with 74 responses. To be clear, this was a write-in question, so 74 people independently wrote in that they were most excited about Deborah. I really think it’s about time that older women get the veneration in our society that they deserve.
Three people answered every question with “kill yourself,” which to be honest, I find to be a pretty lazy threat. One of them did take the time to select three hobbies: video games, painting, and yoga.
I think they should do a little more yoga if they’re getting this worked up about a little polycule application.
I also love that the hobbies were a required selection, forcing them to answer something other than “kill yourself.” Like, I’m really in charge here.
Graph time!
Conga line preferences:
people disproportionately desire to be in position #4 of the conga line, and the least desirable position in the conga line is #2
Age (years) and Waist (inches):
Onset of familial baldness, when applicable:
The most common hobbies in San Francisco (stat sig):
TIL basketball is the least common hobby in San Francisco, even less popular than sports
“Please select a time” heatmap:
I linked all the responses in the appendix, with PII and slurs redacted.8 (I also removed applicants who appear to have filled it out in earnest, because I don’t want to make them feel bad! I hope they find a loving polycule that treats them right, and is not evil like my make-believe one.)
The application made its rounds on other subreddits, Instagram, Threads, Tiktok, even Facebook, which is how you know it’s really been passed around.
You might be wondering, what was the point of this?
To be honest, it’s mostly because I find it pretty funny.
Also, I enjoy melding the connectedness/reach of the online world with the authenticity/humanness9 of the physical world in unexpected ways. Most easily through flyering, and I really relish in the brute force, the humanness of flyering. You have the optionality to look at this thing that I made, because you exist in the same time and space as me. And then when a flyer does end up riding the algorithmic waves, it does so in unexpected ways, because it compelled unknown people to post about it.10
A more potent format involves a gathering of some sort; I had a run of hosting satirical events, like Sit Club (run club without the bad parts), “Death Duel” (to fix the gender ratio in SF), Strippers for Charity (self-explanatory), etc… and although these were really fun, it felt like everything was just a lead up to one day, which is more means-to-an-end than I’d like.
So I’ve been thinking of other form factors in the melding of online and IRL, this was a rather low-effort experiment, but I have some other thoughts in the works. Projects more like The Advice Line (my reverse advice line you call to give advice), but I don’t want just communication between a stranger and myself, I want to facilitate IRL interaction between strangers. How do I do that without it being an event?
A principle I believe is crucial to this is some level of absurdity; I think absurdity is at the core of sparking interaction between strangers, because most people won’t care enough to break out of their everyday normalcy if there isn’t something to shake them, to make them look up and take notice.
What exactly does this look like? I think the pieces are somewhere in that gargantuan ideas list of mine, and when I figure it out, I’ll let you guys know.
Alright, enough of this earnestness.
Final reflections: I think this was my third most viral scheme (after the fake steakhouse I made real for one night only, and the personal ads site to find love for my friends), but it had the greatest ROI by far, considering I spent all of two hours making it.
The key takeaway: people are much more gullible than I thought.
In retrospect, I should’ve shoehorned a college application in there somehow too. Although that would’ve drastically reduced my applicant pool, and limited it to underage kids, so probably not the best idea after all.
I didn’t realize you could see the name of my Notion workspace somewhere, which was called Dan Yell’s Workspace, but literally no one noticed this except for my friend Matt. Also, I have a pretty distinct writing style and sense of humor, so all my friends should’ve immediately realized I was behind this. Many did, but one friend said that although he thought it sounded exactly like me, he didn’t think I would use Notion, so he figured someone else made it. I’m multi-disciplinary bro.
He also made fun of me for asking around at the party if anyone knew morse code, but like c’mon, this is San Francisco. I’m willing to bet at least one person at the party knows morse code. He’s blinking “SOS” in morse code FYI, we ended up googling it. The only person to notice this was also my friend Matt.
I realize that saying that I’m driven by “authenticity” in a story in which I tricked a bunch of people is pretty ironic, but in my defense, I thought this was really obvious satire and so the tricking was mostly accidental.
Richard Culatta, CEO of ISTE+ASCD, one of the largest education organizations in the country, and former director of educational technology at the U.S. Department of Education.He believes that banning devices as Natasha Singer described in previous post, is mistaken.
His article appeared April 20, 2026 in 74.
When it comes to tech and kids, America has made serious mistakes. For years, children have been allowed unsupervised access to social media apps in school and at home that were not designed with their safety in mind. This has contributed to an unprecedented rise in adolescent anxiety, depression, cyberbullying and suicide. Americans have every reason to be concerned — and every reason to act.
Responsible legislation could limit the dangers by requiring age verification before kids can sign up for social media accounts, making learning content easier to access and demanding that cellphone providers provide safety tools for families. Instead, a huge wave of poorly constructed bills is working its way through state legislatures that could cause unintended consequences and set young people back even further.
For example, in Missouri, a bill recently passed the statehouse that will require 70% of elementary school assignments to be completed with pencil and paper and prohibit schools from assigning any homework that uses technology. In Tennessee, legislators passed a bill to ban all technology in grades K-5 for students and teachers. A proposed Kansas measure would mandate that all K-5 instructional materials be “print-based.” Virginia’s Senate has passed legislation directing the state to cap instructional screen time by grade level. And in Utah, a package of bills signed by the governor will sharply curtail the use of technology to support learning.
There are two consistent problems in the current wave of bills. First, they treat distracting entertainment media and research-based educational technology as if they are the same. But not all screen time is created equal, and these bills completely ignore that distinction. Lumping TikTok together with a math tutoring app, or Instagram with a text-to-speech tool for a student with dyslexia, is a practice that has been repeatedly called out by educators.
Second, they assume that the best way to limit tech use is with a timer. But the issue is quality, not quantity. Many of these bills set a daily time limit (e.g., one hour of digital instruction), though any amount of time would be too much for a student who is not using the technology effectively. On the flip side, technology used thoughtfully to increase student engagement and creativity should not be constrained by an arbitrary time limit, especially when supporting evidence-based pedagogical practices. What’s worse, not one of the bills requiring paper-based worksheets to be used in place of technology imposes any quality standards on the types of activities assigned. According to these bills, a teacher could replace a highly effective math app with a dot-to-dot worksheet, and it would be totally fine. That’s an “out of the frying pan into the fire” situation.
As a parent and former educator, I understand the desire for distraction-free schools. Personal devices and non-learning apps that don’t support educational goals can hijack students’ attention and try any teacher’s patience. But when learning is not engaging, literally anything will become a distraction. Limiting instruction to filling out paper-based worksheets would be mind-numbing for any student.
In contrast, the key to get kids to love learning is to make it meaningful, and this is where ed tech can be a game-changer. Recently, I visited a school in Los Angeles that was transforming math instruction by having students play a research-based math game, which informed the teacher exactly who needed extra help with specific concepts. Other technologies adapt learning activities based on students’ interests or skill levels, let teachers know which kids need help before they fall behind and enable educators to meet each student’s needs in ways that would otherwise be impossible. The effectiveness of these tools is backed by decades of research. A bill like Missouri’s would make this kind of data-informed teaching nearly impossible.
For children with disabilities, assistive technology — screen readers, text-to-speech software, adaptive learning systems and language translation tools — is not just a nice-to-have; it supports millions of students whose needs might otherwise go unmet. Today, nearly 8 million children in the U.S. receive special education services, many of which include technology as part of their individualized education plans. For students with dyslexia using a text-to-speech app, for example, technology isn’t a distraction — it’s how they access learning. Tennessee’s original proposal would have barred teachers from even using digital devices for instruction, meaning the very tools these students depend on could have been eliminated.
In today’s economy, there is no college or career path that doesn’t require the effective use of technology. Students who develop digital literacy skills early find greater academic and professional success than those who don’t. Essentially all jobs — 92% — now require applicants to have digital proficiency. Preventing K-12 students from learning to use technology for writing, research and collaboration would undermine their future employability and the nation’s economic competitiveness.
This is even more striking in a global context. While America’s state legislatures debate whether to let elementary students touch a keyboard, other countries are doubling down on teaching students how to use technology — including artificial intelligence —to solve complex problems. They recognize that technology can enhance curiosity, critical thinking and other essential skills, ensuring their graduates can thrive in the workplace and beyond.
With the emergence of artificial intelligence, the world is at the dawn of a new era for learning and life. If the nation’s goal is to prepare kids to thrive in a complex and modern economy, it cannot retreat to the tools of the last century.
There is no disputing the need for guidelines and guardrails for children using consumer technology. But by treating math software the same as Netflix, and assistive technology the same as TikTok, the ed tech bans gaining momentum in statehouses around the country guarantee that the students who can least afford to fall behind will be the ones hurt most. If these bills become law, America won’t have protected its children — it will have forced them to learn for a paper-based world that no longer exists.
Banning technology for learning doesn’t make us principled — it makes us negligent.
The gravitational constant, affectionally known as "Big G," is one of the most fundamental constants of our universe. Its value describes the strength of the gravitational force acting on two masses separated by a given distance—or if you want to be relativistic about it, the amount a given mass curves space-time. Physicists have a solid ballpark figure for the value of Big G, but they've been trying to measure it ever more precisely for more than two centuries, each effort yielding slightly different values. And we do mean slight: The values vary by roughly one part in 10,000.
Still, other fundamental constants are known much more precisely. So Big G is the black sheep of the family and a point of frustration for physicists keen on precision metrology. The problem is that gravity is so weak, by far the weakest of the four fundamental forces, so there is significant background noise from the gravitational field of the Earth (aka "little g"). That weakness is even more pronounced in a laboratory.
In the latest effort to resolve the issue, scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) spent the last decade replicating one of the most divergent recent experimental results. The group just announced their results in a paper published in the journal Metrologia. It does not resolve the discrepancy, but it gives physicists one more data point in their ongoing quest to nail down a more precise value for Big G.
Pentominoes are shapes made from 5 squares joined edge-to-edge. There are 12 of them:
Next, let's define what an enclosed area is with these shapes. The pentominoes must create a fence where they touch edge-to-edge with no overlaps. Note that corners touching is not closed because it is not edge to edge:
Activity
Build a fence with all 12 pentominoes, edge-to-edge, no overlaps. If you have manipulatives, Polypad or toys that can make them you can use those, or use the tool below (full page version).
Now that you've made an area here are some challenges:
Maximize the amount of area
Maximize the number of separate areas you can get
Make the area inside a rectangle
Make the shape on the outside a rectangle
Make the shape on the inside and outside a rectangle
A quick note: These challenges have a rich history. Pentomino fences have been explored in Martin Gardner's 1960s columns, and by Solomon Golomb, Sivy Farhi, Michael Keller, Rodolfo Kurchan, and many others. Any variation I add has almost certainly been thought about before.
Educator Resources
Spoiler alert — go play before proceeding (this means you too).
Activity Structure
This is a 30–60 minute activity. If you haven't derived the pentominoes prior to this you might want to ask how many shapes are possible first to find the 12 shapes. Here is a toy to explore.
Make an initial garden (5-10 minutes)
This can be done with manipulatives, Polypad, or with the tool earlier in the post. The advantage of using something manual is getting to think about how the area is measured first.
Using the number bars in Polypad is its own activity. Using this for the first area or on paper has its benefits to count.
In Polypad, using arrow keys nudges pieces to align with the grid.
Iterate on the gardens - maxing (10-15 minutes)
Take the first garden and then tweak it with different ideas to see if more area can be created. This is where having a tool to count for you might help with having immediate feedback on small changes. Small changes to try:
Flip one piece
Swap a few pieces
Swap some corners
More to play with (5 min - the rest of your life)
What other ways could you optimize this fence? What other challenges are there?
Max the number of enclosed regions
Make the area inside a rectangle
Make the shape on the outside a rectangle
Make the shape on the inside and outside a rectangle
Maximum number of enclosed 1x1 regions
Maximum of two regions that are completely separate
Make a game of it
Discussion Questions
If all 60 squares came unglued, what's the largest garden you could build?
Which pentomino is the best fencer? Which is the worst?
When two pentominoes touch along an edge, how much fence is lost?
Does a rounder garden beat a longer one?
Did you plan the shape first, or place pieces and see what happened?
What strategy would you share with a friend for building a fence?
What's the best garden you can grow without the X?
Can you grow two separate gardens of the same size? Three? Four?
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