iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

always trade-offs. the companies I'm talking about here have both money and time, and mostly lack focus/conviction

works *with* it. it's an episode where they'll use Replit's integration with a partner tool, so trying to find people who are already comfortable with Replit so it's not asking them to learn two things at once

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 4h

sure! but I'd argue that some of the most creative stuff in the tech field came from a solo creator with zero budget

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 4h

I think there's a way that these tools can be used that doesn't bypass the imagination entirely. (ab)using technology creatively is a foundational aspect of a lot of art! right now, though, it mostly feels like people are trying to avoid work, and the results feel that way

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 4h

do I know anyone who works with Replit frequently? I've got a time-sensitive project coming up that I'm casting for — looking for a team of US-based devs to participate. please hit me up and tag people you know who might be a fit!

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 4h

it feels like the cycle for companies is to do one thing really well, make lots of money, try to expand because growth-at-all-costs and whatnot, end up being an Everything Company, do most of everything at mid- to poor levels, calcify, get beat out by a new company that does one thing really well

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 4h

it's bleak out there

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 5h

you could smash the Easy Button™ to get "grandmas talking about using this product" but it would never feel like this does: www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAN5...

youtube.com

This is the new ChatGPT Voice, powered by GPT-Live

YouTube video by OpenAI

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 5h

the strongest proof of this is that the AI companies go HARD on human-made video. OpenAI has in-house video crew + dedicated sets and put a lot of funding and effort behind the grandmas and kids campaigns. Google AI is pushing a very practical whack-a-mole campaign your company should do this, too

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 5h

apologies to @toddmorey.bsky.social for Thought Leadering in his comments

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 5h

when everyone can generate anything with a prompt, how do you stand out? most app promo videos I see are indistinguishable from each other (because they were likely made w/the same basic prompt) the only way to stand out is to care and to put actual effort into what you make. been true. still true

LinkedIn screenshot of Todd Morey's post, which begins, "Life comes at you fast. I've been so flooded by animated demo videos I can't scroll past them fast enough. That's mostly because they don't demo anything about the product; they only demo the motion design Al is now capable of.
(Linkedin became a rave club over the last 10 days. My eyes...)
Now that Al has built decent competence in motion design, a flashy promo video is just another Al tell. So... what's next? love the art and craft of motion..."

Below, Jason has commented, "My hunch is that 'obviously made by human hands' is going to start carrying a 'premium quality' association even more than it used to.

"At CodeTV we've been leaning into practical effects (physically creating visual assets, moving the camera to 'animate' them, interacting with 3D props vs. having animated illustrations flying around the screen) to give more personality and perceived weight to videos.

"Al and other low-effort video gives the sense of, 'They didn't care at all about the quality of this. I wonder if they care about the quality of their product?'

"Going the other way with content sends the right signals, I think: 'Wow, these folks care! They're willing to do a harder thing because it produced a better result.'

"Feels like the best approach when everyone's smashing the Easy Button™ over and over again is to actually give a shit about quality."

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 03/10/2026

this wave of buddybots (Muse, etc.) was such a genius strategy for the data mining companies to work around ad blockers

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Jacky Alciné @jacky.wtf · 03/10/2026

I make a job at the end of this thread but it's a good thread from Jason on why focus helps you ship quality features versus chasing the smell of cheese

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Bailey Townsend 🦀 @pds.dad · 02/10/2026

You see, the simple solution is just do everything right. Make no mistakes. Then success just happens and all the problems are solved.

static.klipy.com

Bart Simpson's Hugh Hefner Bubble Pipe

ALT: Bart Simpson's Hugh Hefner Bubble Pipe

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 01/10/2026

April-ish, I believe? we're going to @beyondtellerrand.com and prooobably @atmosphereconf.org so we'll most likely be in London for a few days in between

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 01/10/2026

sometimes you know what you want, you know?

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🄼a͛s𝙤͜𝐧⃖ 𐌀𝒎𝚊͢deu̽s͓ ✆ @wickedinterest.ing · 30/09/2026

I would be an immense asset to just about any media production or broadcast team. 8 years in radio, 1 as an accidental IT manager; my podcast Digital Folklore hit #16 on Apple's 'Top Shows' chart in all categories, I've won 3 awards for radio commercials; I know how audio works down to electricity.

bodgelab.com

About Mason

My pronouns are he/him. I don't really know how to describe myself succintly. I've had a weird, non-traditional academic and career path. My personal goal...

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 30/09/2026

please do not continue this essay

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 30/09/2026

your career is a pie-eating contest where the prize for winning is more pie

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 29/09/2026

highly likely that it's a skill issue on my part, but whatever I'm doing now is not adding value to my life in any way that I can't achieve through other means in a more satisfying (to me) way

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 29/09/2026

most of my pain is human-to-human (e.g. casting, talking to stakeholders) and legal (e.g. contract language, vendor onboarding), and those are things that I shouldn't outsource to AI (human communication) or have too many expensive consequences if anything goes wrong

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 29/09/2026

not too terribly many. the video stuff that sucks is largely hardware: get the files off cards, onto the SSD, onto the RAID at the studio, onto the backup RAID at home, converted to proxies, uploaded to Frame

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

yeah I didn’t want to get onto a tangent but if I’m going to spend the same money I like the idea of giving someone an early career opportunity vs. paying for more SaaS

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

I imagine AI will get better and the ecosystem will evolve in ways that make it easier to build that context, but right now I still feel like AI agents are mostly for people who like tweaking their setups and don’t mind that it’s not actually faster/cheaper because they’re having fun

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

and whenever I think about how much work it would take to train an agent, and how much it would cost in tokens/subs, and how often my schedule shifts in ways that would require extensive tweaking, I realize I could pay an assistant and they’d be able to manage most of the context change themselves

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

I have routines, but almost weekly the routine requires some small modification due to a conflict or abnormal situation (visiting friend, terrible night of sleep, local event). managing this requires so much context that I don’t have time to load and manage in an agent

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

this is a problem I’ve hit many times in my career, which is a mistaken belief that human problems can be solved once and for all with a proper system and while McDonald’s proves you *can* systematize that hard, very few workflows are exactly the same on every run. and variance breaks automation

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

“do the thing” is easy if I know what the thing is, but I find that in most cases, for me at least, figuring out what the thing is that I’m supposed to do is 95% of the work, and spending the time to load enough context into an agent will take at least as long as the phone call/web search

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

what I’m struggling with as everyone tells me how they’re revolutionizing their lives with AI agents is this: very few things in my day to day are repetitive enough to merit building software to automate them, and for irregular tasks I don’t know enough to effectively delegate

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

yeah I think you’re in a different boat where you’ve been running a real business for years already. I’m talking more to the “you can build any business in a day now what’s your excuse” discourse in the original thread

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

seriously. very much one of those “last 10% is the hardest 90% of the project”

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

I’m definitely posting from the top of a pile of dead ideas

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

yeah I think you’d be very good at this

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Amy Hoy @amyhoy.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i agree. the vast majority of new businesses fail because of purely internal factors. if you manage to fail to an external factor, you’ve practically succeeded

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 28/09/2026

AI makes it instantaneous to chase every idea, spin up agents for every stray thought, ask the LLM instead of talking to customers, skip marketing in favor of launching the same AI-generated assets as everyone else easier than ever to go fast. hard as always to do it well

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 27/09/2026

most of the startups I’ve seen struggle/fail did so because they tried to build every fun idea they had, ignored feedback from their customers because the things they wanted were hard/boring to implement, never marketed because they couldn’t focus long enough to follow through

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 27/09/2026

the hard parts of building a business are - solving a real problem for real people - ignoring shiny ideas that are fun but distracting - prioritizing boring stuff that moves the needle - connecting with customers if anything, AI makes it *harder* to build a successful business

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 25/09/2026

(posting this mostly for myself as I wallow in misery trying to push one of the biggest things I've ever done forward, feeling very much like Sisyphus getting rolled over by his boulder)

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 25/09/2026

doing big things takes a long time, and knowing how hard you worked to achieve the result is part of what makes the big thing rewarding. don't give up. you can do this

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 24/09/2026

strategically cropping out the battery indicator in the screenshot 👀

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 24/09/2026

heck yeah! let me know if you set it up and we can go on tour 😆

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Marisa @marisamorby.com · 23/09/2026

The USDA wants to repeal the 2001 Roadless Rule, and you have until October 6th to comment. Submitted comments must be reviewed, and if they aren't, it sets the basis for litigation. Here's the impact if the Roadless Rule is repealed: 1. Increased risk of fire: 88% of wildfires are started by

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CodeTV @codetv.dev · 23/09/2026

In which @scottmoss.bsky.social and @brianholt.me invent the torment nexus, from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Invent The Torment Nexus. Witness the horror on the latest Web Dev Challenge

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 23/09/2026

no deep fried Mars bar? how can a trip to Edinburgh be complete without eating something so unhealthy you might actually perish from the experience?

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Jason Lengstorf @jason.energy · 23/09/2026

the pass on both Gado Gado and Eem made me gasp

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