Every Friday
Ground floor isn't for the weak
Happy Friday - hope your week was low-stress.
This week we’re thinking about the trade-offs of being in the loop vs. opting out.
Somewhere along the way, “being in the loop” became a full-time job.
Not just in the loop - early. First to the job posting on LinkedIn. First to the Zillow listing that gets 12 offers in six hours.
There’s no denying the social and economic upside of being ground floor to something. It’s Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me pulling more views than most editions of the WSJ and the Technology Brothers getting a Business Insider profile this week for being very online at the right time.
What started as a harmless social reflex - a way to stay connected, with no real cost to missing out - has bled into jobs, housing, politics. It’s no longer just social currency. It’s infrastructure. It’s soul-sucking. It’s addictive. It’s kind of fun. We’re all in a Stockholm syndrome dynamic with the feed - dear God, why can’t we just log off???
And yeeeet… there’s a rush. That specific, slightly messed-up thrill of having already read the article, already bought the thing before it sold out.
If we’re daydreaming about what success looks like 20 years from now, here’s one version: you're off the grid. You never have to keep up again. And LinkedIn is a distant memory.
The irony that as we’ve been writing this I’ve simultaneously been refreshing the product page for an overpriced ALD hat to drop isn’t lost on me.
Just did it again. Still no update. - James
Anyway. Let’s get into it.
Thank god Turnstile is kicking off Spring 2025 with a new single! Turn it on. Or go find Justin Vernon’s new album. Either way, Relay is best consumed with music.
But to make yourself feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!
― André Aciman
Those who have the privilege of knowing have a duty to act.
— Plato
Top of Mind
Behind The Screens
Google’s literally paying top AI talent to do nothing for a year just so they don’t join competitors. Some engineers are living the dream, grinding Tony Hawk and DoorDashing shitty Chinese takeout while the money rolls in. Others are quietly losing it, sidelined from the most pivotal tech moment of the decade. Maybe they’re fine because they know something we don’t - or maybe this is just what a talent war looks like in 2025.
In this week’s AI spotlight, Anthropic published yet another banger on their quest to understand the man behind the curtain. Chain-of-Thought (CoT) is a technique where models explicitly articulate their step-by-step reasoning process before providing answers, this is used to understand how and what the model is thinking. Anthropic and other major AI safety researchers believe everything from CoT being performative to downright deceitful.
Think of it like slipping a student a note saying “the answer is [A]” before an exam. If they write in their exam that they chose [A] at least in part because of the note, that’s good news: they’re being honest and faithful. But if they write down what they claim to be their reasoning process without mentioning the note, we might have a problem.
From Washington
In light of it being yet another week of tariff-palooza, we thought we’d bring you our favorite fails from across the political spectrum this week. Enjoy the cringe.
The American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think tank that’s been a long standing engine for republican economic policy) called out the White House for botching the formula they used calculate tariffs. No one in the admin seems to want to claim credit for the final formula that became official policy - but the internet seems to think it was Grok (lmao).
The only thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on this week is that Kristi Noem should stop cosplaying as ICE Barbie. Respectfully, we can’t take one more photoshoot - but it’s nice to finally see some bipartisan hate cross the aisle <3.
Democratic frontrunner Governor Whitmer (yes, Obama’s replacement for Kamala and the woman who dodged the plot to kidnap her from the Governor’s mansion during COVID) had a rough week. She was invited to the Oval Office, to her dismay, got praised by the President in front of all the cameras despite their brutal history. The internet got ahold of a photo of her awkwardly pressed against a wall - clearly trying to stay out of frame - and had a field day. Walking the line between working with the administration and going scorched earth to keep the online base happy pretty much sums up where most Democrats are right now.
Relay’s least favorite podcaster-slash-NYU professor (if you work in Stern admissions, keep scrolling) Scott Galloway might be toying with the idea of a presidential run. The topic came up on Raging Moderates, where his co-host Jessica Tarlov lobbed it out and Galloway ran with it. He was probably joking.
Ctrl+Alt+Culture
The Nashville cohort of Relay has a Masters weekend wager going on. Free drinks next weekend if one of us picked the winner (Ludvig, don’t let me down). Regardless of if you’re tuned into one of the best weekends of the year for golf fans, check out Will Defries photos from Augusta National, stunning.
Don’t worry folks we are back with more fossil content just for you. We can’t say this is definitive proof of the simulation, but Colossal is on the feed once again (no one asked them to make their website this cool). We’ve become kind’ve attached to their “silicon valley tech meets bleeding edge conservation biology” vibe. This past week they announced they have revived the dire wolf, and that would’ve been enough. But no, they took it one step further. They decided to name one of the pups Khaleesi.
The Technology Brothers being DDoSed is only further proof that the old guard of media is on the way (or fully?) out and we have ushered in the new guard of podcasts, newsletters, and online feeds. Two boys with a BAG take on a nation state - or at least defend against a nation state. This is no Relay exclusive but some are saying old media is dead and this TBPN DDoS is the sign.
ICYMI: Happy Hour Edition
Society has an overweight reliance on activities and hobbies geared towards warmer weather (read: summer). I posit that it isn't just me who is excited to pick up a list of things I would critically define as my hobbies again this summer. I believe many of you feel the same way, and this seasonal hobby cycle may be a contributing factor to what is known as "seasonal depression." For a quarter to half of the year, a long list of activities and experiences gets tucked away for winter, and often new activities don't take their place. — Seasonal seesaw by Zach Macke
It’s Not That Deep, Randy
Thanks for reading—or for mega scrolling all the way down here.
The internet is an overwhelming mess of headlines, ads, and mid takes from the worst people you know. Big Tech owns our attention spans. Everything is content. Nothing makes sense.
We’re not here to “fix discourse” or “build a better internet.” Relay is just our attempt to riff on what we’re already talking about at happy hour without feeling like we’ve been hit by a content truck. Some analysis, some memes, call it a day.
You might like it. Tag along.
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Can you guys make this into a reel next week so I don’t have to read it
james the hat is ugly don’t buy it