
Episode 183 โ March 27th, 2025 โ Available at read.fluxcollective.org/p/183
Contributors to this issue: Erika Rice Scherpelz, Neel Mehta, Boris Smus, MK
Additional insights from: Ade Oshineye, Alex Komoroske, Ben Mathes, Chris Butler, Dart Lindsley, Dimitri Glazkov, Jasen Robillard, Jon Lebensold, Julka Almquist, Justin Quimby, Kamran Hakiman, Lisie Lillianfeld, Melanie Kahl, Robinson Eaton, Samuel Arbesman, Scott Schaffter, Spencer Pitman, Wesley Beary
Weโre a ragtag band of systems thinkers who have been dedicating our early mornings to finding new lenses to help you make sense of the complex world we live in. This newsletter is a collection of patterns weโve noticed in recent weeks.
โPart of the appeal of the fantastic is taking ridiculous ideas very seriously and pretending they're not absurd.โ
โ China Mieville
๐คฏ๐๏ธ From โgetting itโ to โbuilding itโ
You're sharing a new direction with the team. Itโs a strategy youโve thought through deeply. You know where itโs going and why it matters. At this point, it seems so obvious. Someone asks a clarifying question. Itโs reasonable, but you wave it off: โYouโll get it once youโve seen it in action.โ A few people nod. Others go quiet. No conflict, no uproarโbut a subtle divide opens up: those who โget it,โ and those who donโt.
And if they donโt? Some part of you wonders if itโs even worth trying to bring โthose peopleโ along.
Itโs a subtle pattern, but a consequential one. When conviction meets complexity, itโs tempting to conserve energy by focusing on those who instantly align. Youโve done the work to connect the dots, and the friction of going back to basics feels costly. But over time, this stance can harden. We stop building shared understandingโbecause weโve already decided who can get it.
It can sound like: โPeople just need to do it.โ
It can feel like: your growing frustration when the team doesnโt click fast enough.
It can manifest as: writing off someoneโs questions as proof theyโre not a fit.
We donโt do this because weโre intentionally dismissive. We do it because weโre navigating ambiguity while trying to preserve momentum. However, when we treat understanding as a fixed attribute instead of a shared construction, trust becomes a test of loyalty. Doubt is mistaken for deficiency.
So whatโs the alternative?
We need to treat alignment not as a prerequisite, but as a process. โGetting itโ isnโt a static qualityโitโs a product of access, timing, exposure, and experience.
One method is to design for shared sensemaking. That might mean narrating your mental model instead of assuming itโs obvious. It might mean making space for dissent even when time feels tight. It looks like asking what someone else is seeing instead of doubling down on being understood.
Instead of trying to explain your insight, the most powerful move can be to design an experience that allows others to feel the tension for themselves. Insight often lands not through explanation but through recognitionโwhen someone hits the same friction, feels the same constraints, or bumps into the same blind spot.
Ultimately, clarity that canโt be shared isnโt strategyโitโs soliloquy.
๐ฃ๏ธ๐ฉ Signposts
Clues that point to where our changing world might lead us.
๐๐ค Open-source site admins are adding proof-of-work challenges to stymie AI bots
AI crawling bots have reportedly been overwhelming the websites and Git repositories of open-source projects, destabilizing servers and driving up bandwidth costs; one report found that, for some open-source projects, bots comprised 97% of all traffic! Website admins have tried filtering traffic or blocking crawlersโ user agents, but many crawlers have evaded these checks with residential proxies or spoofed user agents (i.e. pretending to be a normal browser). So, some devs have taken more drastic measures: โproof-of-workโ challenges that force browsers to solve crypto-style math problems before they can access a page, or even banning all traffic from some countries (one admin blocked all visitors from Brazil after seeing a surge of scrapers from there).
๐๐ฌ Signal downloads spiked after the Yemen war plans scandal
The encrypted messaging app Signal has been in the news because it was the venue for several top US officialsโ discussion of classified war plans (a group chat where they accidentally added a journalist and revealed precise plans of attack hours in advance). After the scandal erupted, Signal downloads jumped 28% worldwide; downloads were up 45% in the US and 42% in Yemen compared to the 30-day average.
๐๐ฌ CanadaโUS flight bookings for this summer are down 70+%
As geopolitical tensions between the United States and Canada have risen, demand for cross-border flights has cratered. Compared to last year, the number of CanadaโUS flights booked for every month from April to September is down over 70%. Airlines have only reduced the number of cross-border flights for this period by between 1.6% and 3.5%, so we may see some severe cuts in capacity to match the fall in demand.
๐๐น๏ธ GameStop announced itโd buy Bitcoin, prompting sudden stock swings
MicroStrategy, the publicly-traded company thatโs part of the NASDAQ 100, became famous for investing large chunks of its balance sheet into Bitcoin, thus giving stock market investors an indirect way to invest in crypto. GameStop announced itโs doing the same and plans to spend some of its $4.8 billion in cash on Bitcoin. The meme stock jumped 12% on the news. However, just a day later, GameStop announced it would raise $1.3 billion to buy the coins, prompting a nearly equivalent crash in its share price.
๐โณ Worth your time
Some especially insightful pieces weโve read, watched, and listened to recently.
Motion, Thought, Systems and AI (Sam Schillace) โ Observes that, when horses were the dominant source of mechanical power, they were too large to power a kitchen appliance, but also too small to pull a locomotive. It was only steam and electricity that unlocked the up- and down scaling of horsepower. The AI revolution may have a similar scaling effect on human intelligence; what will this unlock?
Congestion Pricing is a Policy Miracle (Sam Deutsch) โ Shows some of the remarkable second-order benefits that the simple congestion pricing policy has brought to New York City: Broadway show attendance is up 21%, restaurant reservations are up 7%, retail sales are up $900M, subway crime is down 37%, and more. (The first-order effects are impressive too: train ridership is up, buses are faster, pedestrian injuries have decreased, and honking complaints are way down.)
The Better Boarding Method Airlines Wonโt Use (CGP Grey / YouTube) โ Shows that the way airlines load planes is close to the mathematically least efficient strategy. However, airlines arenโt optimizing for efficiency: some time-inefficient strategies (like letting first-class passengers board at the front of the plane first) make pricier tickets more attractive and encourage customers to use loyalty programs, which is good for business. Plus, several mathematically optimal methods donโt account for real-world constraints, like passengers wanting to board with their families or people not following instructions.
Becoming a Magician (Autotranslucence) โ Asks: Have you reached a plateau? Is your well-worn strategy bringing you diminishing returns? Take a pause and consider who you want to be next. What are the fears that hold you back? Who are you actually impressed by? Surround yourself with those people who look like magicians to you, learn from them, articulate your new goal, and find a new strategy to get there.
๐๐งธ Lens of the week
Introducing new ways to see the world and new tools to add to your mental arsenal.
This weekโs lens: beginnerโs mind.
Being able to hold multiple lenses at once helps us think better. One way to build this skill is to use the well-known, but hard to practice, beginner's mind.
The term comes from Zen Buddhism: shoshin, or โbeginnerโs mind,โ refers to approaching a situation with openness, curiosity, and a lack of preconceptions, even whenโespecially whenโweโre already experienced. As Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki wrote: โIn the beginnerโs mind there are many possibilities, but in the expertโs there are few.โ
Having a beginnerโs mind doesnโt mean being naรฏve. It means resisting the reflex to slot new inputs into old categories. When we approach a systemโor a personโas if we already understand it, we stop noticing what doesnโt fit. Complexity gets filtered out in favor of confirmation. And then we mistake recognition for understanding.
Beginnerโs mind is a choice: to delay judgment, to decenter expertise, and to stay open to emergent structure. Itโs a posture that invites insight not through mastery, but through presence.
Itโs not about knowing nothing.
Itโs about noticing everything.
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