top of page



Gates vs. Kildall: The Lesson We Don’t Like but Can’t Ignore
Not every founder story survives the passage of time. But some stick around because the pattern keeps repeating. Over and over. The story...

Rich Washburn
Sep 163 min read


Hacking the Runner’s High: Harvard Proves What I’ve Been Doing All Along
For most of my adult life, I’ve been experimenting on myself. Call it biohacking, call it stubborn curiosity, call it refusing to let...

Rich Washburn
Sep 153 min read


The XAI Espionage Case: Why This Isn’t Just About One Engineer
The lawsuit Elon Musk’s XAI just filed against a former engineer reads like a spy thriller: a trusted insider cashes out millions in...

Rich Washburn
Sep 92 min read


Civilization’s All-In Moment
Every once in a while, a moment comes that’s so big, so layered, so everywhere at once, that we don’t even realize how historic it is...

Rich Washburn
Sep 53 min read


The AI Boom Heard ’Round the World
I keep coming back to this: my whole life, I’ve heard people throw around the term “paradigm shift.” The internet was a paradigm shift....

Rich Washburn
Sep 54 min read


An Open Letter on America’s AI Moment
This week, something historic happened. Rivals sat shoulder to shoulder. Billions were pledged. Apple at $600B. Microsoft at $80B in data...

Rich Washburn
Sep 53 min read


Apple Got Sued for Failing at AI. Then They Showed Up With This.
So let’s rewind for a second. Apple’s been selling this “Apple Intelligence” dream for over a year now. They pitched the iPhone 15 Pro as...

Rich Washburn
Sep 43 min read


One Person, Billions in Market Cap
One person with the right AI fluency can move market cap by billions. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the current state of play. Look at...

Rich Washburn
Sep 13 min read


Google’s Triple Threat AI: Mangle, Nano Banana, and the Rise of the Autonomous Dev Army
Happy Friday, folks. If you’ve been heads-down this week, you might’ve missed the fact that Google went full mad scientist—dropping not...

Rich Washburn
Aug 293 min read


90% of You Are Already Using AI—It’s Basically Coffee at This Point
Right now—today, this very moment—90% of your workforce is already using AI. Not in some pilot program. Not in some sanctioned tool. Not...

Rich Washburn
Aug 263 min read


Exhibit A: How Cracker Barrel Broke More Than a Logo
One week later, the memes are funny, the backlash is bigger than Bud Light, and the soul is still missing It’s been about a week since...

Rich Washburn
Aug 254 min read


Rocket Ships Without Pilots Are Missiles: The AI Literacy Crisis
In Q2 of 2025, the “Magnificent Seven” tech giants spent over $100 billion on AI infrastructure . One quarter. Three months. That’s $1.1...

Rich Washburn
Aug 254 min read


The Pandemic IT Rehab Road Trip: Better Late Than Never
You ever hear a friend describe an IT mess so vivid you can smell the burnt plastic? A buddy called me recently, pacing through the kind...

Rich Washburn
Aug 249 min read


A Surprisingly Easy Way to Learn About Anything (That Also Happens to Be Free)
This wasn’t a grand strategy. It just kind of… happened. As part of the AI side of my web business, I’ve been doing more blog...

Rich Washburn
Aug 234 min read


The Genius Act: Financial System 2.0?
Imagine trying to stream Netflix through dial-up. That’s basically how our financial system has been operating behind the scenes—slow,...

Rich Washburn
Aug 233 min read


The Consciousness Question: Why Today’s “No” Might Be Tomorrow’s “Maybe”
Every few months, I get asked the same question: “Is AI conscious?” For years, my answer was easy. No. Flat out. No hesitation. These...

Rich Washburn
Aug 233 min read


Meet NOVA: My New GPT-5 Workhorse (And a Gift for You)
If you’ve followed me for a while, you know about ARIA . What started years ago as a recursion experiment snowballed into a full-blown...

Rich Washburn
Aug 223 min read


Profit Arena: The AI Benchmark That Could Reshape the Markets
Not long ago, my buddy Todd and I were having one of those conversations that keeps coming up these days: “How can I use AI in the...

Rich Washburn
Aug 213 min read


Why AI Needs a Jobsian Visionary
Civilizations don’t progress in straight lines. They don’t crawl forward on quarterly earnings or incremental feature releases. They...

Rich Washburn
Aug 195 min read


The Meaning Economy: Replacing What We Do With Who We Are
For most of human history, our lives moved in time with the planet. Work wasn’t a set number of hours on a clock—it was a rhythm in sync...

Rich Washburn
Aug 143 min read
bottom of page