Writing

• AI Is Not Automation

  August 8, 2026

  Two clients tried to tell me AI and automation are the same thing. They aren't, and the confusion gets expensive at scale. Two systems I run at home, and where AI actually belongs in them.

• Seeing the Next Rung

  July 25, 2026

  A lit hot-sheet tray in a 1968 patrol car, an early automation that worked so well it vanished. The floor of normal keeps rising, so the real test of anything you build is whether it compounds or just accumulates.

• The Voice Book

  July 11, 2026

  What voice rules? Here's mine. One page, mostly a list of things I refuse to write, and why a refusal list beats an inspiring adjective. Plus how the same idea scales from one writer to a whole company.

• How I Review My Own Writing

  June 27, 2026

  Five dimensions I run on any piece of writing in 2026: three letter grades, two percentages, one of them scoring how much it reads as AI. How I grade my own essays before they ship, and the AI-shaped pitches that land in my inbox.

• An LLM With a Logo

  June 13, 2026

  Pull ten artifacts from one company in 2026 and read them back to back. They sound like ten different companies. The brand book has a guardian. The voice book doesn't have one yet, and the company pays for it.

• AI and the Poisoning of Professionalism

  May 30, 2026

  A colleague discovered AI for email replies last month. The recipients can tell. The sender can't. Notes on what AI-curated correspondence is doing to your voice, your relationships, and your inbox.

• The Last Moat Is Your Voice

  May 16, 2026

  Speed and cost stopped being the AI differentiator. When everyone uses the same models with the same defaults, the last moat is whether your output still sounds like you.