Month: June 2026

Om Malik entered immortality on June 24th, after a couple of months in the Stanford ICU – from which he continued doing what he does. His last blog post, other than to say he was stepping away for a bit and might be some time, was a teardown of Anthropic, Mythos, and how the current state of Silly Con Valley is all about indulging myth rather than fact, and it was classic Om all the way down.

I was not lucky enough to know Om, except through his writing, which was always vital and always incisive. The first picture I ever saw of him was outside some event in Palo Alto, ever-present Yankee cap on head, with a cigarette and a Nokia 8800 in one hand, and my immediate thought was “this is a guy who will know where all the bodies are buried.” And he did, for a long time, first at Red Herring and other magazines and then at GigaOM, which was an indispensable source of industry news and opinion for years. And when he gave up being the 24/7 news guy, he became the incisive commentary guy, always experimenting with one format or another for his writing and his pictures and his conversations. And now he is gone, and this godforsaken Valley is far poorer for the loss of a teller of truth with institutional memory and no one to keep happy.

I thought for a long time that was the career arc I would follow – hot young firebrand turned wise elder – and until seven years ago it felt possible. But now it doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to happen, because institutional memory is not valued anywhere any longer and even my day-to-day work is an afterthought to the people who make decisions about whether we even need system administrators. When genuine Business Idiots (h/t Ed Zitron) don’t understand what AI can’t do and are always chasing buzzword compliance, stupid decisions will get made and ordinary workers will catch the shrapnel when it blows up in their faces. Sam Altman will probably be just fine when ChatGPT fails to be worth the money and OpenAI collapses like a flan in a cupboard, but will the people who patrol his buildings be all right? Will the people forced to retool their workflows to rely on burning as many tokens as possible for the sake of looking like they’re up with the times? Will the people who lost jobs because their managers were completely assured that AI could do what they did?

At some point, we as a society lost the ability to call bullshit what it is and cast it aside. Now, if someone says their ratchet chatbot will drive creation of data centers in space and address a larger market than the GDP of the United States, or if someone says Helen Keller never existed, or if someone says that terrorists are gouging the pool lining out of a reflecting pool, we are somehow obliged to engage with that as if it is valid, let alone important, and the energy necessary to refute bullshit remains an order of magnitude greater than it took to create it. And bullshit is the sea we swim in, the dank brown miasma that darkens the world and against which we have to constantly struggle just to stay upright.

Om was a light in that darkness. Now that light is no longer with us. I hope there are more lights like his and that we just haven’t seen them yet.

Switzerland isn’t cheap. Upon getting home, there was a realization that the spending needs to be cut down for a while. And for the most part, it has. Looking around the house, I have craft beer and highball makings to last the month. I have all the American Giant I need for the time being. I even have two unworn pair of LC King jeans in reserve, which is good, because apparently they went out of business two years ago.

And the urge for new stuff has subsided. I’m content with the Yeti situation at the moment, the hat situation is fine, the MacBook Neo is no longer on the board now that we know Apple Intelligence wants 12 GB of RAM for best results, and with a heat wave on the way, buying outerwear for winter seems like the height of foolishness. Even the brief bout of lightsaber glee has subsided. The “souvenir” knife-but-not-a-knife is as tactile a satisfying fidget as I could have hoped for, and feeds my need for metal things that will last the rest of my days in a world where my watch and phone have an expiration date.

At this point, honestly, the only thing I want is the chance to step back from the world. I take it every chance I get, for however long I can manage it. Sunday night, maybe fifteen minutes in the morning, every evening before a chance to work from home, wherever it can be found. And I always appreciate it, no matter how brief. That in and of itself might be the best new thing I’ve gotten.

Honestly? Not that many. There’s a slowly diminishing return on new and different things to bring back from abroad, especially when you’re visiting a country for the second time. The biggest takeaways from Switzerland, for me, were less about Switzerland and more about travel in general. I learned that I’m just fine with premium economy on the return trip, but trying to actually sleep on the eastbound flight is a pain. I learned that SAS is a fine airline to fly with. I learned that the best part of flying is the airport lounge (more on this in a minute).  I learned that I really miss not having the Bonvoy lounge in the hotel when it’s not there (more on this in a minute). I learned that you’re better off planning to stack multiple light layers in a pinch than bringing more than one Legitimately Warm Garment (I had three, a huge botch on my part, sadlling me with surplus bulk under tight packing conditions). I learned that if you’re going to carry a day pack, you’d damn well better bring a bigger bottle than 12 ounces, especially if you’re trafficking ice around.

The lounges have been revealed as the apotheoisis of going out, because it feels like you’re at home – comfy chairs or sofa, you’re not paying for the booze in the fridge, and it’s quiet – but you’re not. You’re in a unique liminal space, nowhere exactly, but on the way to somewhere in the case of the airport and definitely away in the case of the hotel. The feeling suggests a private club more than anything, which is sort of a “duh” observation, but it drives home the idea that we don’t really have that club space in the modern world (outside of London, probably). I think membership of the Diogenes Club would suit me down to the ground.

But the other thing is this: I have realized how much of my relaxation comes from not *doing* anything. Just the chance to be sat in a cool place (temps and atmospheres alike), drink to hand (of adequate size for its potency, as it turns out), nowhere to be and no schedule to keep. Like on the patio at Grutschalp, just gazing out at the mountains under the shade of the umbrella with my Coke Zero and the music in my earbuds.

And the kicker: this is easily replicable at home. We have the palm tree in the yard, the string lights in the copper beech above the outdoor sofa, I have the space I carved out of the shed (and can see the palm tree out the open door, and in the morning when the sky is gray and the air is cool, it’s a vacation all of its own. Almost every year brings either a trip to Tahoe or to camp in the woods, either way just lounging in nature quenching my thirst and maybe reading. It’s not unlike what we used to do long ago, hanging out on the patio of the Ritz in Half Moon Bay, and if I could do it on a workday in the nearby downtown, it would be perfect.

Oh yeah, and the “huustee” of the Swiss restaurants, everyone’s own bespoke blend of fruits and herbs to make iced tea. Gimme that.