✍ Writing & Words
✍️ Back in October, I wrote a dark fiction fable that included a brief rant from an unhinged tech CEO about the connection between war and business. Yesterday morning, Alex Karp of Palantir was on CNBC making the exact same arguments:
On the battlefield, on the commercial battlefield, too, at large companies… our ability to target and take out adversaries and enemies in a way no one else can. I mean, from a not moral perspective, they’re exactly the same; what makes you lethal on the battlefield, and what makes you commercially viable?”
I’m not prescient—this is just how these guys think. They are terribly misguided, even if commercially successful.
✍️ I can smell your aura, a new blog post from yours truly is out now.
As far as I can tell, these are sense-words; adjectives meant to describe an effect that we feel but can’t necessarily link to a specific visual trait. It’s like supercalifragilisticexpealidocious, but for attentional faculties. It’s what we say when we don’t know what to say.
I pull on everything from Ivan Illich to Frank Sinatra to Gandalf to explain pop culture’s misunderstanding of “aura.” These thoughts are half-baked, but hopefully teach something about language, media ecology, and perception.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Encomiast: a person who publicly praises or flatters someone else
✏️ New Word Learned:
Riparian: relating to wetlands adjacent to rivers and streams
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Love is bringing out the play in others. Play is the mode of one who is loved. When you create conditions for another person to express themselves playfully, you have loved them. When you have been safely carried into a state of playfulness, you have been loved. Play is how we exercise the freedom that love secures for us.
Put a lot of heart into my most recent post about the relationship between play and love. Not sure how intelligible it is, but it is the type of thinking I’d like to believe is somewhat rare. Please read the full thing and let me know your thoughts: bradley-andrews.com.
🗞 A friend from my MBA program recently reached out with an idea about how entertainment follows the same life cycles as empires. Together, we wrote a paper that explores this pattern in depth, and made some predictions about what happens next. You can read the dispatch here: mercurysplaybook.com
I’ve heard many arguments for why writers should not use AI. Yet, I have never heard someone voice my particular reason.
My particular reason is that I care deeply about the quality of my prose and my prose is far better than anything AI has produced. Should this change, my stance might also. In the meantime, I will be unapologetically penning my own thoughts.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Quaintrelle: a woman who emphasizes a life of passion expressed through personal style, leisurely pastimes, charm, and the cultivation of life’s pleasures; the female equivalent of a dandy.
✍️ Just dropped some new stanzas: bradley-andrews.com
(Due to formatting, I recommend reading on wide-screen or computer)
🗞️ A new dispatch from Mercury’s Playbook is out now:
These are the Mag Sevens, the Michael Jordans, Kendrick Lamars, Albert Einsteins, Warren Buffets, Serena Williams, or Mr. Beasts. Not just excellent operators, but undeniable winners… Just like the formation of actual astronomical stars, star performers are born within extremely unique conditions which, directly or indirectly, provide the materials necessary for their emergence. In astronomy, these environments are called stellar nurseries.
✏ New Word Learned:
Skosh: a small amount, bit, smidgen
According to Merriam’s, “the word skosh comes from the Japanese word sukoshi, which is pronounced “skoh shee” and means “a tiny bit” or “a small amount.” The Japanese word was shortened by U.S. servicemen stationed in Japan after World War II. Later, in the Korean War, a small soldier was often nicknamed Skosh.”
✍️ Three Scenes in Hibino Brooklyn: bradley-andrews.com
🗞️ The latest dispatch from Mercury’s Playbook, my business/tech newsletter, is out now: mercurysplaybook.com
For this essay, I discuss the trend taking place in modern markets toward “winner-takes-all” conditions, why some AI superstars are being paid pro athlete money, and much more.
✏️ New Word Learned:
Shoobie: a slang term, mainly used in New Jersey, Delaware, and Southern California, for a tourist or day-tripper visiting a seashore area, often seen as an outsider or someone unfamiliar with local customs.
✍️ I don’t mean to sound haughty, but I think I just wrote the best breakdown of Peter Gabriel’s “And Through The Wire” you’ve ever read. Available now at bradley-andrews.com
(P.S. - it’s altogether possible that this is the only breakdown existing on the internet)
✍️ Still crafting some New Years Resolutions for 2026? How about you steal some of W.H. Auden’s timeless principles instead? Click the link to read my brief commentary on one of my favorite poems, Under Which Lyre: bradley-andrews.com
✍️ From a quick blog post of mine called Patience Is (Still) A Virtue:
I am convinced that humans are meant to live in reality, not fiction, and all spiritual health is predicated on the condition that we be faithful to the world as it is rather than as we wish it to be. An ounce of delusion costs a gallon of resilience—and rejecting what we know to be true will always be experienced by our spirit as a defeat.
Would love to know your thoughts!
✏️ New Word Learned:
Philately: the study of postage stamps and postal history
✍️ An original poem I needed to get out of my head (I am not a poet) // Read it here: bradley-andrews.com
✍️ Click here to read some of my thoughts on the new NBER paper regarding collusion and common leadership in Silicon Valley:
As an MBA student, the NBER paper reinforces something that I have discovered again and again; while capitalism will always be a very imperfect system, it’s best possible form is when it conforms closest to a game. Meaning, when it is allowed to be playful, highly competitive, and free from both arbitrary rules and bullies. I’ve said it before, but I will say it again: being pro-business requires that one also be anti-monopolist.