Find real power by saying No, reading Isaiah, and watching Claude clean up ChatGPT’s mess
Plus: Student-based consulting, prayer, and why Youth ain't better
A plea off the top:
What, in the NerdLetter, do you particularly appreciate?
And what do you NOT appreciate?
Tell me. Because I have no idea. I only know what I appreciate, which is all of it. But I'm entirely happy to quit wasting space on bits that the majority of my readers don't like ... and conversely, to ADD to bits that the majority DO like.
Message me on Substack. Leave a comment. Or email me. Doesn’t matter which.
TL;DR
Scathing critiques of Western indifference toward Syrian minorities and demonisation of Israel.
Rising anti-male and anti-family sentiment clashes with counter-feminist voices gaining ground.
Trump’s trade leverage exposes Europe’s political impotence.
Honest reflections on pretending to be someone you’re not—and finally stopping.
AI is running out of quality data; hallucinations and odd behaviors may rise.
Anthropic launches Claude Academy; Dia browser intrigues, but only for newer Macs.
Cool student-consulting startup (Uniworx) connects SMEs, universities, and students for MVP building.
Using Claude + Perplexity + ChatGPT? Claude’s winning (for now).
Rediscovering prayer as powerful, personal, and possibly the engine room of God’s action.
Would you go back to your youth? Hell, no.
HUMAN
is scathing about the West's ignorance of the Syrian massacre of the Druze and Syrian Christians. Also of the West's demonisation of Israel, no matter what it does or doesn't do. I have not done nearly as much homework as she has, not probably have I access to her sources. Nevertheless I am disgusted (but not surprised) by how Western governments have turned on Israel, on Jews, now also the Druze and my own brothers and sisters in Christ.
Scintillating piece by
in . It's not really about Yahya Sinwar - or at least, it is only indirectly. It's really about the sick, sick Jew-hatred that's infected the West for 2,000 years and seems now to be a rampant pandemic of an idea.
THIS was interesting. Not because I'm following the Trump Tariff Saga closely, but because of
's suggestion that European elites signed a deal (with Trump) they do not want, because they're toothless. They are bargaining from a position of Zero Power, and Trump knew it. posted a brutally honest Note about single women desperately pretending they have no maternal instinct, and how it leaks out in ways everyone but them can see. This problem isn't specific to young women, of course. One of the things I'm glad of is, I've quit thinking I should be someone I'm not. Sooner you figure THAT out, the happier you get.TECHNOLOGY
Took in a webinar put on by the Good Governance Academy, featuring James Bonar and John Barker of the Bonar Institute. Interesting takeaway: AI is running out of data on which to train LLMs. They are now increasingly training on synthetic data (what's THAT?), which is likely to lead to more frequent hallucinations, and possibly emergent behaviours we haven't seen to date. In John's view, this is a big hurdle for the big AI players to jump in their efforts to bring about AGI & ASI. WEBINAR LINK:
Been hearing lots about this new AI browser called Dia. Wanted to download and start hacking around with it. Unfortunately, it's only available for macOS 14 or later, specifically on Apple M1 (or newer) chips ... and I have a Mac that was produced back when they Ford was still making Model T's. If you want to learn more about it (and you've upgraded from your Model T), here's what Perplexity told me (feel free to extend the thread).
just posted a speech gave to students at National Taiwan University. This is the kind of guy I wish I'd had the guts to be in my younger days. He's turning youthful idealism into something practical. Wish all those 20-something climate change activists would take a leaf out of Palmer's book, start a useful business with their passion, and quit protesting.IDEAS & DISCOVERIES
Conventional business wisdom is usually wrong. Case in point: Cartier Jewellery. To make more money, be the best in the room at saying NO. Specifically, No to giving discounts or reducing your prices, No to anything you don't want to do, No to racing to the bottom, No to Black Friday sales, No to budging your boundaries in any way.
put out a great piece on this last week. Some of her great lines: "Cartier Jewellery doesn't sell jewellery. They sell the privilege of waiting." "Desire isn't created by availability. It's created by distance." "When I reduced my consulting spots from 20 to 5, my income tripled." "Every time I've raised prices, I've attracted better clients." I think my prices just went up😀.
WHAT I’M DOING
Met up with an old mate from my engineering days in the UK.
Super chap. He and another old mate have spotted a gap in the market and kicked off a biz called Uniworx to fill it.
Nutshell: Big engineering firms and universities generally only have ears for each other. But 50% of the economy is SME-powered. They often have tons of "bottom-drawer" ideas they'd like to trial, but insufficient man-hours (and know-how to do it with). Students have the time (though they'd probably beg to differ), energy and up-to-date tech savvy (e.g. AI), but no money. University academics need to give their students useful and interesting projects as part of their training, but are notoriously bad at coming up with idea.
Solution: A student-powered consulting firm called Uniworx, that connects the students, universities and SMEs. SME floats the idea, pays the student a relatively low hourly rate, to do technical work they don't know how to do, student makes better money and has lots more fun that working at McDonald's, SME walks away with a new MVP.
Example: A yoga practitioner wanted to build an online yoga buddy, but had no idea how to go about it. Uniworx sourced the student, and the yoga practitioner paid the student through Uniworx to develop the MVP. (Nothing stopping the arrangement from taking it further to working feature-product, btw.)
I think this is a great idea, and the two old mates who've kicked it off are top-drawer. Going to help them move this forward.
Having a ton of fun tweaking and perfecting a blog-posting process.
Which involves a sequence of prompts. Have found Claude to be just awesome for this. I'd personalised both Claude and ChatGPT to push back on any of my prompts, ask me clarifying questions, and reframe the problem. Claude does this very well, and it respects a word count requirement well - ChatGPT does not, even when you ask it a second time.
I have not properly assessed Claude's research ability (with Sonnet 4) against ChatGPT. However, it seems adequate at the moment, and when I have push back and asked it to check its sources, it does, and corrects them.
And then I discovered that I'd been the reason why it wasn't getting its sources correct the first time.
I asked Claude to suggest improvements for the sequence of prompts. It did. Subsequently, it's getting its sources right first time, chopping one step out of the sequence.
I've found my Claude experience so satisfactory that I shelled out for a Pro-level paid version. I'm now using paid versions of ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity (and I have access to Grok through a colleague). If I had to drop one right now for some reason, I'd drop ChatGPT. However, ChatGPT still gives you access to tons of custom GPTs, which I find myself using 2-3x per month. And ChatGPT will generate decent quality images, which Perplexity doesn't do well, and Claude not at all.
Two features of the above tools that I'm chomping at the bit to try out are Perplexity Labs, and Claude Code.
's gushing about Perplexity Labs on YouTube, and Daniel Miessler is about Claude Code.FROM THE SOURCE
“I have posted watchmen on your walls, Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the Lord, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.” - Isaiah 62:6-7 NIV
The last year has seen me completely rediscover Prayer.
Think I only ever paid it lip service before. Then I started getting to know a chap at my local church who prays publicly like his hair's on fire. Never heard anyone pray publicly like that before. I realised, My gosh, he actually thinks his prayers are powerful.
What if he's right???
Am I missing out??? (FOMO alert)
Answer: I'm running the experiment. Since then, I've been joining him and a few others on Monday evenings for an hour on concentrated prayer.
I subsequently discovered the book Destined For The Throne, by Paul Billheimer. Published 50 years ago. Why have I never heard of this book before? Blew my mind.
His main argument:
God is abundantly capable of working his plan in the world with our prayers. But if he did that, we would not get the warfare training that He needs us to have in the Kingdom above. Hence he waits (and waits, and waits) for us to pray. Then, and only then, will He act.
But in parallel with that, He also tells us to trust, and Rest in Him.
So I find that quote from Isaiah very curious. As if God is saying, "Rest in Me ... except when it comes to prayer. Don't rest from prayer. And don't let ME rest either, until I have accomplished what I've promised to accomplish."
Walking with God, and living by His ways, therefore, requires us to relinquish the steering wheel of the car to Him ... but WE must move into the engine room of prayer. Prayer is the Motive Force for seeing anything good happen on this planet.
VIEW FROM THE LAPTOP
If it were possible to roll the clock back 40 years, and regain your youth, would you do it?
I, for one … would absolutely NOT.
The world seems absolutely Youth-obsessed. Makes no sense to me. You couldn’t pay me enough money to go back to my younger days.
I had so many rough edges back then. So many insecurities … from which I am now free.
Sure, I don’t look as pretty as I did back then 😀. Can’t do as many press-ups, either.
But the clarity, the chill, the curiosity, the gratitude, the FREEDOM …
I’m not trading that for anything.
I keep stumbling upon female writers who have completed turned counter-feminism.
Their writing is really well-thought-out. They pull no punches.
Latest cases in point: @Radically Pragmatic, and @The Feminist Turned Housewife's Substack.
I cannot tell if this is a real trend. Is there really a wave of anti-marxism-toxic-feminism? Or am I the one waking up, and it's just the Substack algo doing what it does? I’m really not sure.
Conversely, I read (over the weekend) several posts put out by the Substacks of @Critiquing Feminism and @James Pew, which left me quite shaken. They suggest that vitriolic hatred for men is widespread, and has been for some time. Is it really?
So many gold nuggets in here. Appreciate the mention also <3