{D} cognitive surrender
Vol. 6, Issue 183 // pics + links // maybe try clicking the pics too
Hey there from the high valley of Mexico City.
Recently I spent an agonizingly large amount of time redesigning the Delightful web site.
When I was doing it I was like oh man this is gonna be so cool i’m gonna show everybody!
But now I’m so exhausted from making it I feel more like my dog when he unceremoniously drops a mole rat on the front steps: here i brought you something <plop>.
No but seriously I like it. Hope you do, too.
Since all of culture is throwback culture now, I designed it to resemble my fave DOS file manager from the 80s, XTree. Suppose that’s a good enough metaphor for making sense of complexity, which is the one constant informing the varied forms of strategy and research and content design we do.
Plus the world’s come back round to text interfaces, haven’t we.
They feel more … natural? Useful? Not crowded. LLMs are clearly a reason for the shift. For the first time since my BBS years, I feel like I’m actually navigating a space intentionally, rather than being taken on a ride through those spaces (which is what Insta and FB and all the other app experiences do). Text interfaces are a hike. GUI interfaces are monorails.
Anyway, new site has all the usuals: case studies, services, and special projects.
Oh, and you can use your keyboard to move between files, just like back in the 1900s!
The build: it’s a custom Astro website hosted on Netlify and deployed from GitHub. Content is managed in Markdown, no CMS. Lightweight and fast. I had been wanting to move it off Webflow for a while now — a great tool for building client sites, but has been overkill for managing mine.
Next step is to create a “signal room” dashboard on the site, probably at signal.thisisdelightful.com. That dashboard will hold curated shelves of this newsletter’s most popular links.
And btw if you are at all interested in what y’all have been clicking over the last 12 issues:
Nobody enjoys love or the absence of it? Y’all missin out!
stay frosty,
-s.
Last week’s most-clicked links:
The Strategy & Planning Scrapbook [STRAT_SCRAPS]
Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work [Seth Godin]
Thinking Tools [Wikiversity]
p.s. Our work for Scribd continues! Last week we published Romcoms Didn’t Die: Hollywood Replaced Them Because They Were Too Reliable, which explains the original data behind how and why studios stopped promoting romcoms in theaters.
Strategy + creativity
“Nice little personal essay you’ve got there, lady, but I know what you really are; time to get my knife out, time to start digging around under your skin until I find the wires.” If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you [Numb at the Lodge]
“My colleagues at Wharton call this “cognitive surrender,” and they documented how people would stop thinking about problems and just let the AI do the work, even when the AI was wrong.” Choosing to Stay Human [One Useful Thing]
“If you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream.” 28 slightly rude notes on writing [Experimental History]
“We put faith in the algorithm the same way we put faith in divinity.” Media artist and researcher Roopa Vasudevan on creative resistance in the digital world [The Creative Independent]
“If the leader is capable of leaning in, fully examining decisions, and making them with conviction, positioning work goes well.” Positioning is deciding [Deep Reads by Jon Itkin]
Work + career
“After he left, coworkers could still message “Wei” with technical questions, assign tasks, send voice notes, or upload pictures.” He Quit Baidu. But First He Had to Build an AI Version of Himself [Sixth Tone]
Curiosity + research
“Market leaders that can iterate quickly, test more ideas, and kill weak concepts early consistently outperform those tied to slow, episodic, siloed insight cycles.” Synthetic Customers Earn Their Stripes [Bain & Company]
“Are we going to define how they should be used or let someone else define it for us?” Synthetic Personas Aren’t the Enemy [LinkedIn]
Decks + other artifacts
ASCII Theater: Stream free text-based movies in your terminal [MSCHF]
Text-Based Websites: Minimalistic interfaces [Are.na]
Button Stealer: A Chrome extension that “steals” a button from every website you open [Anatoly Zenkov]
Prompt-Brush: The world’s first non-AI generative art model [Prompt-Brush]
DumbCo DumbPhone: everything u need 2 go out [dumb.co]
Current Rothko: See the Rothko that matches your city’s current weather [rothko.joonas.wtf]
LLMinality
“If you project the trend a little, everyone who’s not an engineer is going to code a little more, and engineers like me are going to code less.” // This is certainly true for me! // Claude Code’s creator on the end of the software engineer [Platformer]
Culture + handwringing I guess
“That sounds so obvious it feels almost silly to type out.” The Social Media Addiction Verdicts Are Built On A Scientific Premise That Experts Keep Telling Us Is Wrong [Techdirt]
“This not because of “the phones.” It is because alternative sources of information have become more compelling.” Why are you reading fewer books? [In My Tribe (Arnold Kling)]
“Everyone jumping off the bridge to feel the wind in their hair.” i drink wine, i don’t count my sleep score, i never use AI, i cancelled my amazon AND I AM HAPPIER THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [The Trend Report]
“We are living through a moment when people have never been more visible, and yet often feel profoundly unseen.” Girls Carrying Shit, Girls Who Cluster, and Girl Dinner Diaries [Community Catalysts]
“So maybe my wish for you is not that Harvard becomes the last thing people know about you, but instead that Harvard becomes the least important thing people know about you.” Conan O’Brien Delivers the Commencement Address | Harvard Commencement 2026 [YouTube]
“3. Don’t forget to bestow confidence.” How to Be Old [The New York Times]
Games people play
Love or the absence of it
“What’s more rewarding at the end of the day? A half a percentage increase in KPI, or connecting with a human being on a very real level?” Why so many young people are training to be death doulas [Dazed]
“In fact, I think it is quite chic for a woman to aesthetically outshine her partner. It suggests a good deal of confidence on his part, and a self-assuredness on hers.” Do Unstylish Men Deserve Love? [Sexual Culture]
“Make me look like more of a chad,” I then instructed the chatbot.” The rise in plastic surgeons asked to create ‘AI face’ [The Guardian]
Delightful is a 100% organic, free-range, desktop-to-inbox newsletter with links and things, usually. 1x weekly posts (free), occasional tools and research posts (paid). Your host is Steve Bryant, friendly neighborhood insights and content strategist. Let’s work together or go on a hike or something. steve@thisisdelightful.com
{ 🔒 archive }
Creativity, illustration, language, stuff like that
What did you learn about yourself today?
Notes on picking up drawing 30 years later26 things I’ve learned while learning a language
Notes from someone who’s working at itHow to write
Notes on moving and watching and paying attentionCuriosity and Research 101
Notes on how to find out about thingsA map of what you meant to say
Notes on the 3D space of languageThe A.I. isn’t a moron. She’s your wife.
Notes on making ads with AI
Brand strategy, content strategy, etc
Observational and Culture Study Cheat Sheet
A template and tools for researching people and communitiesMy content strategy toolkit
14 tools for organizing, measuring, and creating contentMy concept diagram template
A Figjam for diagramming the complex relationships between conceptsProduct Content Strategy 101
For anybody who’s creating a product that requires editorial contentThe Bento Box Method for developing topical content
A cute and useful way to structure your content topics
Thanks for reading. Be seeing you.
“Another word for creativity is courage.”
– Henri Matisse
Site looks great man