Fold 34, Forgotten Torahs, and the Futility of Trying to “Manage” What’s Coming for All of Us
Fold 34 is here, and business plans just got spiritual
TL;DR
We're seeing a reversal of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles in real time
We're at the Fold 34 of human history
Schoolboy error in Air India B787 Ahmadebad crash?
Use AI to think better and deeper, not save you time
What on earth is "redemptive business planning"?
Israel and Iran
HUMAN
We are probably witnessing the decline of the American Empire ...
But the ball game is still only bottom of the 8th inning - not over. Brilliant interview of
by in yesterday. I don't agree with everything Niall writes, but as he's known to say, "Ach! Agreement is overrated". I agree with him more often than I disagree, and his assessment is spot on in this one. It covers lots more than just the US. Really good brain food.
thinks Trump secretly gave Israel the green light to attack Iran.
This was my suspicion as well, but it was interesting to see a well-seasoned journalist say the same. It's purely an analysis, mind - nobody's leaked anything (yet). If they do leak, Ken will likely be the first recipient - he's got a reputation for this now.
TECHNOLOGY
Air India B787 crash in Ahmedabad looks like pilot error
Just because of what I used to do for a living, I can't help but be fascinated with stories of plane crashes, morbid though they are. Based on the little info currently available, this looks to me like pilot error - they retracted the flaps rather than the landing gear. Catastrophic mistake, if that's what happened. But IF that's what happened, I am slightly incredulous - I would have thought the flight control logic on an aircraft as modern as B787 would inhibit a schoolboy error like this.
How to do exponentially-deeper research in 2025
This Substack put out by
is really appetite-whetting. He used ChatGPT o3-Pro, Deep Research, Notebook LM to do a really deep study on post-labour economics, in which he challenged the tools' thinking and got the tools to challenge his own. This is what I;m increasingly realising I need to use AI for - not getting faster and more efficient, but thinking more clearly, and asking deeper questions.
WHAT I’M DOING
This is going out a day early, because tomorrow I'm attending a Redemptive Business Planning workshop.
Don't ask. I'll find out when I get there. I just know Colt Charlebois (whom the NerdLetter profiled back in April) excitedly recruited me to attend two days ago.
Flow, the Vivaldi browser, career lies, and growing up as an anglo-Quebecer
Sheesh, Friday again, and there are still a bunch of thoughts banging around in my head I haven't time to fully develop. That's the blessing and curse of curiosity: So many rabbit holes, so little time.
The Business Planning bit, I get. Most entrepreneurs are flying without a plan, and I’m possibly guilty as charged. It's the Redemptive bit I'm curious about - you don't typically see those two expressions joined at the hip. I'm guessing there's a covert Christian angle to it, but I'll know more tomorrow - will report back next week.
In parallel, I am now writing emails for two new clients (or more accurately, clients of my client). This will be fun. There are few things more fun for me than to interview people, capture their stories, and put them in emails in an entertaining way.
VIEW FROM THE LAPTOP
FOLD 34
This is a metaphor I first heard mentioned by
, though the idea is not really new. (Have mentioned Jeff before - see below.)The health hazards of skis and throwaway lines in memos, and house prices dropping 83%
Oh the best-laid plans of mice and men …
The Ice Man ain't coming, he's here
Few weeks ago, I posted a short clip of the ice making delicious crackling noises along the shore of the Ottawa River.
Fold 34 is just a label for an idea - the idea being that exponential technological progress (driven partly by Moore’s Law) is reshaping economics and society.
The analogy comes from the famous thought experiment:
If you could fold a piece of paper in half 50 times, how high would it reach?
Most people will answer, A couple of inches, maybe?
Some, suspecting that the answer's probably surprising, apply a Surprise Factor, and say, Oh, maybe the cruising altitude of a typical airliner?
Their suspicions are correct, but they're still going to be surprised.
A typical sheet of paper is roughly 0.004in, or 0.1mm.
Fold it in half 50 times, and it will be approximately 114 million kilometres, or 76% of the distance from the earth to the sun. Far enough that even light needs 6 minutes to travel it. Do the math. (I just did, for the express purpose of checking my facts, and putting those numbers in print.)
Point being, the human mind vastly underestimates the power of compounding, just as they underestimate how fast technology is advancing. Human intuition is powerful, but not that powerful.
"Fold 34" piggy-backs on Moore’s Law, the observation that computing power doubles roughly every two years. The dawn of computing was roughly 1958, so it's been 67 years, or roughly 45 "doublings", since then.
Technology has been developing far longer than that, of course - in fact, ever since our caveman ancestors realized that if they could reproduceably control fire, they could keep themselves warm, pre-digest their food, have some light on dark nights, and be more secure from sabretooth tigers.
We might therefore be well past Fold 34, and there's nothing to say we have to stop folding at 50, either. Doesn't really matter.
What matters is that for the first few folds, the paper layer hardly looks any different, and everyone goes back to sleep. Then they wake up thousands of years later to discover it's most of the way to the sun, and they've got more intellectual climbing to do than they can comprehend. That's where we are now.
Humanois don’t do exponential.
Now let's let that observation collide with 3 other observations:
1. Most employers out there are simultaneously realizing:
(a) What these exponential technologies can do for them;
(b) Most of their employees are pretty much useless - they barely create more value for the company than the cost of their salaries.
2. Human nature is not changing exponentially at all.
In fact, it's not even changing linearly. We still have the same problems and insecurities we've always had. We are still as foolish, selfish and wicked as we've always been.
3. Governments are even slower and more lumbering than individual humans are.
They just don't grok (pun very definitely intended) the impact of these exponential technologies, and by the time they even think about responding with relevant legislation, the tech (and legislation) is way obsolete.
I’m not smart enough to know how this is going to end, or even if it will end, and neither are you. But here’s where human intuition is sufficient:
The ride is going to be bumpy.
FROM THE SOURCE
Hard not to think about Israel an Iran this week.
At the same time, I'm wending my way through two parallel books (2 Kings, 2 Chronicles), both documenting the gradual decline (political and spiritual) of Israel. The contrast with present-day Israel could not be more stark ... and similar, at the same time.
In 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles, we have the joint kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Israel is the larger of the two, but its spiritual decline has been more rapid, because of their quick embrace of idolatry, and their habit of violence. They will be defeated and forcibly carried into exile in Babylon first.
Judah, conversely, has had good, righteous government, through several kings, with the occasional hiccup.
They will survive longer as a nation, but once King Jehoshaphat dies, the slide begins in earnest. Righteous Kings Hezekiah and Josiah will provide some respite, but only because the kings themselves wholeheartedly seek God out.
The people do not.
They pay God lip service, and do as they're told ... and when a wicked king like Manasseh comes along, they are happy to once again worship Baal and Asherah unencumbered.
By the time Josiah comes to the throne, we learn that the Book of the Law (i.e. Torah) had to be "discovered" - in short, it had been completely forgotten and abandoned for generations until it was literally discovered by some blue collar workers in the Temple, almost like archaeologists do in Europe and Asia when some bit construction project is getting startred.
Josiah gets kudos for reinstituting Torah, but even he is astute enough to know that this is just postponing the LORD's wrath; the exile will still come, just not in Josiah's time.
Now contrast that all with today. After 2,000 years, Israel is a united nation once again, back in the land they once occupied. They are still tiny in geographical size, but man, do they punch above their weight! Technologically and militarily (though not spiritually? yet?)
And this week, they have done what no western government has had the guts to do - they have knocked out Iran's military might, singlehandedly (though perhaps only temporarily - the Fordow nuclear reactor as yet still exists). The Iranian regime was a threat not only to Israel, but also to the whole of the west ... and most of all, to the Persian people.
Israel was once exiled to not far from Iran. And even one book of the Bible (Esther) takes place in ancient Iran. Today, the tables have been turned.
What a difference. What an achievement.
And yet, Jesus' words still haunt me: "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom". War is still, sadly, a thing. A necessary thing, at that. Doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon.