LIVE IN THE FUTURE · 1% BETTER EVERY DAY · STRONG OPINIONS, LOOSELY HELD · LIVE IN THE FUTURE · 1% BETTER EVERY DAY · STRONG OPINIONS, LOOSELY HELD · 
LIVE IN THE FUTURE · 1% BETTER EVERY DAY · STRONG OPINIONS, LOOSELY HELD · LIVE IN THE FUTURE · 1% BETTER EVERY DAY · STRONG OPINIONS, LOOSELY HELD · 
TRUST = CONSISTENCY × TIME · HEALTH IS WEALTH · GREAT DESIGN IS INFALLIBLE · TRUST = CONSISTENCY × TIME · HEALTH IS WEALTH · GREAT DESIGN IS INFALLIBLE · 
TRUST = CONSISTENCY × TIME · HEALTH IS WEALTH · GREAT DESIGN IS INFALLIBLE · TRUST = CONSISTENCY × TIME · HEALTH IS WEALTH · GREAT DESIGN IS INFALLIBLE · 
THE TRUTH IS OFTEN A WEIGHTED AVERAGE OF EXTREMES · OCCAM'S RAZOR · THE TRUTH IS OFTEN A WEIGHTED AVERAGE OF EXTREMES · OCCAM'S RAZOR · 
THE TRUTH IS OFTEN A WEIGHTED AVERAGE OF EXTREMES · OCCAM'S RAZOR · THE TRUTH IS OFTEN A WEIGHTED AVERAGE OF EXTREMES · OCCAM'S RAZOR · 
SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION · SLEEP, STRENGTH, CARDIO, FLEXIBILITY, DIET · SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION · SLEEP, STRENGTH, CARDIO, FLEXIBILITY, DIET · 
SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION · SLEEP, STRENGTH, CARDIO, FLEXIBILITY, DIET · SIMPLICITY IS THE ULTIMATE SOPHISTICATION · SLEEP, STRENGTH, CARDIO, FLEXIBILITY, DIET · 
RECENT PROJECTS
LATEST WRITING
First Principles: The Physics of Money, Energy, and Financial Intelligence

First Principles: The Physics of Money, Energy, and Financial Intelligence

Adam BaitchAdam Baitch • June 7, 2026New

What is money? If you ask an AI chatbot that question, it will probably say something like: money is a unit of account, a store of value, and a medium of exchange. While that’s technically accurate, it misses the point. I’ve contemplated the nature of money throughout my career, from my time on Wall Street, to investment research tech, to exploring programmable money and blockchains, and now building AI to help businesses run their finances. I’ve collected definitions over the years, and they ge...

Anthropic's Ingenious Product Strategy May Not Be What it Seems

Anthropic's Ingenious Product Strategy May Not Be What it Seems

Adam BaitchAdam Baitch • May 14, 2026

Anthropic just shipped updated finance and legal skills for Claude, meant to encode workflows built for the daily grind of bankers, research analysts, lawyers, paralegals, and more. The market did what it does when Anthropic ships into a new vertical. Stocks of incumbents wobbled. Headlines asked whether the next generation of finance tools would be “ Sherlocked “ by a model provider. Every vertical AI company within range—Figma for design, Rogo for banking, Harvey for legal, Glean for enterpris...

Slopmaxxing: The Perverse Incentive Hiding Inside Your AI Leaderboard

Slopmaxxing: The Perverse Incentive Hiding Inside Your AI Leaderboard

Adam BaitchAdam Baitch • May 4, 2026

“When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.” - Charles Goodhart In the early 2010s, something weird happened in China. Hundreds of billions of dollars were spent constructing brand-new cities across the country. But very few people ended up moving into these developments , many of which are now decaying and being dismantled. And GDP tracks production, not consumption. So while it looked like China’s economy was growing by a meaningful measure, China’s real economic growth —...

In the Age of Agents, Your Company Needs a Brain. Here's How to Give It One.

In the Age of Agents, Your Company Needs a Brain. Here's How to Give It One.

Adam BaitchAdam Baitch • March 9, 2026

The law figured out long ago to treat companies as people. There’s a lot of wisdom in this, and it’s not just a legal convenience. In addition to responsibility, companies have personalities, strengths, weaknesses, a backstory. They have a tone of voice, a speed of response, a way of handling problems. When you interact with a brand, you’re interacting with something that feels like a person. The best companies know this. Product, support, marketing, checkout: it all hangs together. One personal...

The Model vs. the Harness: Which Actually Matters More?

The Model vs. the Harness: Which Actually Matters More?

Adam BaitchAdam Baitch • March 4, 2026

The Model vs. the Harness: Which matters more? Every product and engineering team is debating whether the strength of an AI system depends more on the model itself or the scaffolding around it, the “harness”. The answer has real implications: how systems get built, and where R&D effort should go. The model side points to benchmark leaderboards. The harness side points to case studies where the same model doubles its score when the scaffold changes. Both have evidence, and advocates. The answer i...

March of the Lantern Flies

March of the Lantern Flies

Adam BaitchAdam Baitch • February 27, 2026

A few summers ago, media outlets started encouraging people to squash invasive Spotted Lantern Flies. That year, our high rise building was having exterior work done. Flying scaffolding hung from the roof on long ropes that dropped 400 feet to the sidewalk. I was working from home, my desk by the window on a floor near the top, so I had a front-row seat to something I didn’t expect. Spotted Lantern Flies were slowly climbing the ropes to the top. Not flying. Climbing. One after another, straight...

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