Episode 207 — September 18th, 2025 — Available at read.fluxcollective.org/p/207
Contributors to this issue: Neel Mehta, Boris Smus, Justin Quimby, MK
Additional insights from: Ade Oshineye, Ben Mathes, Dart Lindsley, Erika Rice Scherpelz, Jasen Robillard, Lisie Lillianfeld, Robinson Eaton, Spencer Pitman, Stefano Mazzocchi, Wesley Beary, and the rest of the Flux Collective
We’re 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 we’ve noticed in recent weeks.
“The system always kicks back.”
— Chemist Henri Louis Le Chatelier, 1884
🪄🎩 Magical systems thinking
FLUX has been writing about systems thinking for a while (207 episodes, in fact!). But one challenge about thinking about complex systems and how to surf the waves of chaos and uncertainty is that one can get sucked into thinking that, if one understands enough about complexity, then one can move from a place of reaction to a place of potential control.
And now that we have the fevered adherents to the new Silicon Valley generative AI religion, one might think that we now have the computation and intelligence (be it silicon or organic) to “solve” system design.
Ed Bradon’s new essay “Magical Systems Thinking” does a fantastic job of exploring why Le Chatelier’s 1884 quote that “the system always kicks back” is more meaningful than ever. Complexity is continuing to rise, outcomes are becoming worse, and voters’ goodwill is being eroded. Do not look for the “one true ring” in systems thinking. All it can do is provide an erratic compass to navigate the ever-larger waves of change and uncertainty.
🛣️🚩 Signposts
Clues that point to where our changing world might lead us.
🚏🇳🇵 Amidst a revolution, Nepal’s “parliament” on Discord chose its next prime minister
The Nepali government attempted to ban most social media (including Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube) earlier this month, but that quickly led to explosive protests that culminated in the country’s parliament building being burned down, its Prime Minister resigning, and the army taking power. But now, with Nepal having no clear leader, over 100,000 Nepalis (including many Gen Z’ers) are meeting on a Discord server to plan the country’s future. “The Parliament of Nepal right now is Discord,” said one influencer who’s in the group.
It’s no idle chat room: the army met with the channel’s organizers and “asked them to put forth a potential nominee for interim leader.” The chat room interviewed several candidates in “hourslong meetings,” and the organizers ultimately recommended former chief justice Sushila Karki during in-person meetings with the Nepali army. And just last Friday, Karki was sworn in as Nepal’s interim prime minister.
🚏🦆 Teens promoting a memcoin might have leaked a new Drake song
Many crypto “memecoins” are launched on Pump.fun, a site that lets anyone launch Solana-based coins with no technical effort. Pump recently launched a livestream feature that lets people promote their coins with live video. Last weekend, two teenagers were promoting their memecoin $BAGWORK on a livestream when they played “what sounded like an unreleased single from Drake’s upcoming album Iceman,” since the song has the same beat as a clip that the rapper teased earlier. Clips from the livestream went viral, temporarily shooting the coin’s market cap to $53 million before ‘dumping’ to $31 million. The coin’s creators raked in at least $83,000 in commissions from people buying and selling the coin.
🚏🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea shut off internet access for a year after residents complained to the government
Last July, residents of Annobón Island, a tiny island in the Gulf of Guinea that’s part of the nation of Equatorial Guinea, wrote to that country’s government complaining about a Moroccan construction company that was setting off dynamite explosions on the island. The government responded by imprisoning many of the signatories of that complaint and by cutting off internet access to Annobón. The island still doesn’t have internet more than a year later, which has crippled banks and hospitals while leaving residents largely cut off from the rest of the world. It’s part of a pattern across Africa: internet shutdowns have become a common tactic for cracking down on protests, with notable examples in Eswatini, Senegal, Sudan, and Nigeria just this decade.
🚏🍥 The Mac App Store is getting flooded with ChatGPT clones
If you look up “AI chat” on the macOS App Store, you’ll get dozens of results of apps with nearly identical black-and-white swirling icons, with names like “Chatbot AI : Ask Assistant” or “AI ChatBot - Ask Anything Bot.” The actual ChatGPT app is indeed on the App Store, but it’s very hard to pick out. (In the below image, it’s the 4th row from the top and 3rd column from the left.) Not to be outdone, Claude and Gemini are also drawing clones.
📖⏳ Worth your time
Some especially insightful pieces we’ve read, watched, and listened to recently.
Picks, Shovels, Superstars, and Poachers: Explaining the AI Investment Boom (Gojiberries) — Uses economic and Bayesian modeling to reconcile two odd facts about the AI boom: companies are investing massive amounts into AI infrastructure, yet real-options theory predicts that, in periods of rapid technological advancement, firms should wait to invest (“the option value of deferring irreversible investments dominates the value of moving early”). In the author’s view, the economic theory is right and the overinvestment is irrational, driven by “overoptimism about market size,” inelastic supply of inputs (talent, GPUs), and a slow rate of Bayesian learning due to noisy signals. The upshot is that input providers (AI engineers and infra providers) can temporarily collect massive rents.
Epizone AI — Outside the Code Stack (Kevin Kelly) — Suggests that cultural evolution, which transformed humanity from small bands of primitive tree dwelling primates to the unstoppable force it is today (see The Secret of Our Success), could do the same for artificial intelligences, who could develop a culture in order to evolve faster, just as humans did. But this will take a long time, perhaps decades, because that’s what the pace layering model predicts.
When Is a Tent Too Big? (Ned Resnikoff) — Argues that the Abundance thinkers’ proposed movement is so broad as to be incoherent: “what sort of political coalition could possibly incorporate both Zohran Mamdani” and the Trumpist “NatCons”? Every social or political movement definitionally needs to have a set of values, ideals, and boundaries; otherwise, there’ll be nothing to hold it together. Indeed, “there is no such thing as a movement with no labels and no ideology, because ideology itself is an escapable fact of human social organization.”
The Social Media Trend Machine Is Spitting Out Weirder and Weirder Results (Bloomberg Businessweek) [Archived] — Observes that modern fads like Labubus and Dubai chocolate don’t have a clear reason for their popularity, unlike the crazes of old like Beanie Babies or Stanley cups. Instead, social-media algorithms plucked them out of obscurity and propelled them to worldwide popularity. It’s telling that these fads (toys and candy) are the kinds of things normally marketed to children; it shows that we live in an age of impulse and dopamine-seeking. At least these fads require us to go into the real world to buy them, pulling us off our screens and into some kind of consumer community.
🔮📬 Postcard from the future
A ‘what if’ piece of speculative fiction about a possible future that could result from the systemic forces changing our world.
// What might be the cultural consequences of ongoing waves of layoffs in Silicon Valley?
// Excerpt from the 2026 blog post “Teamwork as Bloodsport.”
Chapter 3: The Performance Review Hunger Games
The quarterly performance review cycle has evolved into something unrecognizable from even five years ago. 360-degree reviews are now intelligence-gathering operations. Smart operators maintain detailed logs of every missed deadline, every production incident involving their teammates, not for improvement, but as ammunition. The most successful engineers spend 20% of their time on actual coding and 80% on defensive documentation and political positioning. Every interaction is both a collaboration and a calculation. You need your teammates to succeed enough that the product ships, but not so much that they outshine you. You are in a three-legged race where you need to trip your partner at the finish line.
Knowledge sharing is dead. “Knowledge monopolists” deliberately remain the only ones who can debug certain systems or interface with key clients, participating in knowledge transfers while always holding something crucial back. Asking too many questions marks you as either a threat or dead weight.
Loyalty is for the foolish. Managers maintain continuously updated team stack ranks, knowing exactly who gets cut at 10%, 20%, or 30% reductions. The smartest employees recognize this reality and act accordingly: they maintain warm relationships with managers but never confuse pleasantries for protection. They build connections across multiple teams and companies, and embrace the manager’s mindset of every relationship being temporary and transactional. As one staff engineer put it: “My manager and I both know our arrangement expires the moment the math changes. Planning your career around loyalty is like planning retirement around lottery tickets.”
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