
The picture was never the plan.
In August I handed my wife an AI rendering of a garden that didn’t exist. The builder took the picture as the spec until I told him it was a sketch. Then he made it his, and so did she. On AI in teams, and why a rendering is a question.
Read the essayI was trained for this.
№ 12The day I became a matter of national security.

Measure your writing against your own hand.
Your own hand is the baseline. Eight measurements and a test you can run tonight.

One plan of attack for my health.
A WHOOP band, a Renpho scale, and Claude, connected through one small homemade hub.

Being read is the new being found.
Two months of GEO on my own site, and why almost nobody clicks.

No trophies this year. Everybody got a card.
Trading cards instead of trophies, and how to make them.

What Adam Lovallo leaves out.
Adam Lovallo has sold three businesses. Over sushi he told me how LivingSocial taught him to keep score, and left out the part I know best.

Her mother went back first.
Teri Markle went back for her master's at 47, the year her mother died. Now she teaches working adults at the University of Denver who are making the same call.

Three names at a time.
Michael Semanchik has spent twenty years freeing innocent people from California's prisons. He thinks legal AI is the biggest improvement yet, and he knows where it still gets things wrong.

The Human in the loop.
One email, every Sunday morning — for people making a life and a living while the machines learn to do both.
Read every essay first.
Free. One email a week. Unsubscribe in one click.
Next issue: Sunday morning.
Thank you — see you Sunday.

Writer, founder, father — the human in the loop.
Joseph Lapin writes this site before the house is up. He doesn’t know how to write code — and built everything here anyway. The machine does the part he can’t. He does the part it can’t.
The whole storyLooking for Joseph Lapin and his company? That’s Campbell Learn.
Story-led growth for companies and institutions — the true story at the center of a business, and the brand, content, and AI systems that carry it. Higher ed is where the method was proven. It isn’t the ceiling. The work itself lives on the company site.

Subscribers read every essay first.
I write one essay a week — family, AI, and the ordinary week, looked at hard — and send it Sunday morning, before it’s on the site. If today’s was worth your time, the next one is free.
Thank you — you’re on the list. The next essay arrives Sunday morning.






