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NCHLS

Hi, I’m Nicholas. This is a place for my thoughts.

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Latest noteAug 1, 2026

New blog post about AI below. More content on the way through December.

The Drum Machine Argument

Why Dr. Dre and Rick Rubin Are Betting on AI

AI’s sudden arrival

A few years ago, AI mostly meant a chatbot that could write you a limerick. Now it drafts contracts, writes production code, generates ad campaigns, and increasingly runs multi-step tasks with almost no human in the loop. The speed of that jump — from novelty to infrastructure in what feels like a handful of product cycles — is what makes this moment feel different from past tech shifts. It's worth asking honestly: is this growth breaking the economy, or just breaking the old version of it. The ...

Can you go 82-0?

If you’ve been anywhere near basketball social media in the past week, you’ve probably seen the numbers 82-0 trending. The reason? A deceptively simple browser game at 82-0.com that asks one tantalizing question: can you build an NBA starting five that goes undefeated? The answer is almost always no. And that’s why millions of people can’t stop playing it. The Setup: Randomness Meets Strategy

Fully loaded and ready to win

Every offseason comes with a thousand promises. Hype is cheap. But what the San Francisco 49ers have assembled heading into the 2026 NFL season isn't hype — it's hardware waiting to happen. With a retooled receiving corps, a defense poised to reclaim its identity, and one of the most intriguing rookie classes in recent franchise history, Kyle Shanahan's squad is built to make a serious run at Super Bowl LXI. Last season ended in heartbreak in Seattle. Nick Bosa and Mykel Williams went down with ...

The app that wants to sound human

There's a particular moment in every AI voice interaction that breaks the spell. The assistant finishes its perfectly accurate sentence, and instead of responding naturally, it waits — silently, patiently, like a customer service machine — for you to give it the next command. The rhythm is wrong. It feels like filling out a form, not holding a conversation. Sesame AI, the startup co-founded by Oculus co-founder Brendan Iribe, has spent the last several years obsessing over that exact problem. Th...

Betting on the future

In a college dorm room in Austin, a 20-year-old pre-med student turned a $500 deposit into $4,800 betting that a particular election outcome would unfold exactly as he predicted. He shared the screenshot. It went viral. What didn't go viral was the follow-up: six months later, he had lost everything he'd deposited — and then some — chasing that same high on subsequent events. His story is not unique. It is, increasingly, the template. Prediction markets — platforms where users buy and sell contr...

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