Like most of my elderly peers, I can’t remember where I parked the car or why I’m sporting a fake mustache and wearing a tutu on the bus, but I do remember all kinds of undelivered promises from tsunamis past.

The internet was going to make us all smarter and more connected to each other. Nuclear energy was going to eliminate air pollution and slash electricity prices. Space exploration was going to give us rocket belts and vacations on Mars. Instead, we got an explosion of isolation, Three Mile Island…and Tang.

The memories are coming back as I listen to AI zealots, and I really have to wonder if anyone has thought this through. I’m not even talking about the oft-stated odds (10-20%) that some AI model will create an extinction event. It could be a perfectly logical nuclear war or an absolutely irrefutable assessment of humans as a dangerous species to be eradicated or a decision to replace agricultural lands with data farms. However it happens, we’re toast.

(And don’t you just love the fact that people talk about an “extinction event”? Doesn’t it sound so much nicer than “AAAAGHHHH!!! WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!”)

I’m not sure there is anything I would do on any given day if I knew it had a 10-20% chance of getting killed. Those percentages are much worse than any airplane trip, bike ride, bungee jump…possibly even worse than that greasy, cheesy thing Taco Bell is hawking this week. To be fair, though, 10-20% is still better than my odds any time I go to Chipotle.

I can ignore the extinction problem for as long as the Valium holds out, maybe longer. The experts say AI-rmageddon will take a while to unfold and one of the big benefits of being very, very old is that I probably won’t live to see it, anyway. Sucks for the rest of you, but it’s one of the few advantages I have as I head into the home stretch.

No, I’m thinking about other issues, and the whole thing really makes no sense.

First, the numbers are impossible. The total amount of AI investment announced by major corporations will require more energy and more dollars and take more time than is everyone thinks. Costs will exceed forecasts, projects will take much longer than planned, and data centers will overwhelm the electrical grid. Some of these companies will fail, taking suppliers and/or customers with them, and the environmental impact is going to be huge. Some of these snags have already developed, so this isn’t “someday” stuff.

Everyone on Wall Street knows this, but the train has left the station, stocks are bubblicious, and the experts believe they’ll know the exact moment to exit before the, um, correction. This is why Warren Buffett says it’s so hard to make money from transformational technologies. Too many competitors enter the market, speed bumps delay and derail progress, and a large percentage of investor money gets cremated. Somebody will come out on top, but (SPOILER ALERT!) it won't be you.

Before that happens, though, we have to deal with AI’s immense drain on corporate efficiency. Yes, I said drain. We’ll read a million stories about some job that’s getting done in half the time, but history is written by the victors. Throughout the economy, people will be submitting erroneous reports that cost their companies both money and customers. New products will explode, sometimes literally. And, we’ll all be spending hundreds of hours double-checking the answers we get from formerly reliable searches.

If every search now includes a disclaimer that, “AI can make mistakes, so double-check responses,” why am I using it? Even worse, if every search engine is using AI, where do I go to verify anything?

That brings us to people, who will be a drag on the system until AI has the courage to do the right thing and kill us all. If there’s one thing we learned during Covid, it’s that people are dumber and lazier than we ever thought possible. Giving us access to AI tools is like giving a hand grenade to a toddler.

Every day, millions of us will be churning out reports and analyses generated by AI and never, ever checked for errors. Recipients will be assigning AI tools to read and assess those missives. Humans will voluntarily step aside, let the LLMs do their work, and then act surprised when they get cut out of the chain.

Finally, let’s talk about money. Ultimately, capitalism depends on people buying products and services, which they pay for with the money they earn making the products and delivering the services. As companies shed workers in order to invest their former salaries in new AI technology, the number of people who can buy stuff declines as well.

Businesses always want to get more revenue with fewer employees, but there is a tipping point and we have no idea when we’ll hit it…if we haven’t passed the point-of-no-return already.  The natural progression is to have more machines talking to other machines and, eventually, they won’t need people to oil their bearings. At that point, what supports the economy?

Some seers suggest we'll need a Universal Basic Income, an idea so popular it got Andrew Yang nearly twelve votes in 2020. But UBI requires that every company pay the government to give money to unemployed people so they have enough cash to buy stuff. I’m not sure if that’s socialism or communism, but it doesn’t matter. Eventually, the robots will conclude that money is 100% unnecessary if they simply get rid of those pesky humans.

At that point, an extinction event will be the most logical, efficient solution. By then, maybe the robots will be right.

 
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I’ve always thought of myself as a hard-working, mission-first kinda guy, but lately I’m realizing that lazy people are wayyyyyyy smarter than I am. In fact, laziness might be a bigger sign of smarts than any IQ test, or even Wordle.

Giving credit where it’s due, I owe this remarkable insight to my trainer, who has disabused me of my erroneous assumptions while abusing me in almost every other way imaginable. Every week, he has me doing 2,000 squats or 800 pushups or 500 crunches and, like any good student, I struggle and strain to complete the task.

But here’s the thing. Once I’ve finished the job, I don’t get a break. Nope, the reward for lifting a couple thousand pounds is the opportunity to lift another thousand, and a thousand after that. Pretty soon, I’ll have quads the size of Philadelphia, but I don’t think that will appease him a bit.

I had a few moments to think about it the other day, while I was walking off a leg cramp, and it occurred to me that this exercise thing is not an outlier. When I had an office job, I was one of the hardest workers in the place. No matter what the boss threw at me, I tackled it and completed it and took pride in my capabilities.

And we all know what happened next, don’t we? Instead of a bonus or a day off, my reward for working hard was the opportunity to work harder. At first, I felt all warm and fuzzy when someone said, “You’re really good at this. Why don’t you take the first crack at it?” Eventually, though, I realized that I was at the desk until ten and all the people who weren’t as "really good at this" were living real lives outside the office.

My sister used to tell me, “Once you take on a job, you own it.” It turns out she’s much smarter than I thought, because that’s one pattern that continues as infinitely as a Mobius strip. Whether it’s work or exercise or cooking or cleaning or making the vacation plans or the social plans…you get the idea…the person who does the work is doomed like Sisyphus to do even more.

That’s why lazy people are so much smarter, and probably happier, than the rest of us. If the boss wants a job done, she doesn’t give it to a lazy bum who’s likely to miss the deadline. If someone gives up after lifting only three Volkswagens, the trainer doesn’t give them a fourth. If someone wants dinner, they don’t ask the person who won’t remember to turn on the oven.

And so on.

To be fair, every lazy person has to work, at least sometimes. Even the biggest sloth in the office needs to put in just enough effort to keep their job. There’s no point in dodging tasks if there are no assignments to evade. Clearly, laziness is a talent that requires great intellect and skill...an ability to be just sluggish enough to avoid work, without being so slow that you avoid a paycheck, as well.

That’s a talent I’d love to develop at some point, and I’m 100% willing to work nonstop to become the laziest person you’ve ever known. 
 
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Everyone’s panicked about the price of oil these days, but I really don’t see what the big deal is here. After Venezuela and Iran follow Greenland, Canada, Cuba and Mexico as our newest states, gas will be less than a buck a gallon and we’ll all be laughing about the whole thing.

That’s the problem with the mainstream media, politicians, economists and talk-show hosts. They’re always focused on the same thing and, almost always, it’s not even the thing that’s most important. They even come up with fake gimmicks like THE MISERY INDEX to measure the pain caused by higher prices for things like gas or rent or mortgages or dominatrices.*

Per usual, they’re missing the point. Prices go up and down all the time, but 99% of our economic misery is driven by just one metric: $50 pizzas.

It doesn’t matter who the president is or what mortgage rates are or how many Bitcoin you need to buy a dozen eggs. The battle is lost as soon as you need a portrait of U.S. Grant to pay for a decent pizza…and that means the battle has been lost.

I doomscrolled through the offerings on Door Hub a few days ago, just to see how much it would cost to have dinner with a couple of friends, if I ever made any friends. A medium pizza with sausage, mushroom, onion and green pepper—the minimum number of toppings for a Chicago pie—came in at $38.39, plus another $11.07 for delivery and fees, plus the 20% tip that’s a necessity if you don’t want the driver desecrating your dinner before you get it.

That totals up to roughly $59, basically a Grant and a Hamilton, if the delivery services sullied themselves with actual cash. And, did I mention, the pizza arrives ever-so-slightly colder than when it came out of the oven?

If misery loves company, $50 pizzas can create enough demand to fill a football stadium. Of course, the pizza in one of those facilities would be $50 per slice, but at least the fans would be too sloshed on $87 beers to feel the pain, at first.

In a way, I’m encouraged by the fact that nobody wants to be my friend, so I don’t have to invite anyone to dinner and I can avoid paying $59 (plus beer!!!) to stuff their fat, ungrateful faces. Yes, I could order a pizza from Little Caesars or Pizza Hut or someplace else that’s really cheap, but I tried that already and that’s why nobody wants to be my friend anymore.

This is where I’d usually digress into a hazy memory of kids on bikes delivering pizzas as a part-time gig and no middlemen to grab 30% of the total transaction as their technology toll. Don’t worry, though, because I’m not even going to mention those things.

Frankly, I’m just too miserable.

*Also, I looked up how to spell dominatrices while researching this post and I can't wait to write about all the ads I'm about to get every time I'm online. Seriously, folks, the sacrifices I make for my readers are immeasurable.

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I’m crossing the street with two of the grandkids when some jackass blows through the stop sign and head towards us. I pulled the kids back to the curb and, in a moment of pique, I chuck my water bottle at his car.

One of my better throws, too, because he’s about 100 feet down the street and the bottle hits his rear hatch with a resounding thud. Not accurate enough to reach home plate from center field, but absolutely good enough to grab his attention. And it does, too, because he suddenly remembers that his car came with brakes (standard equipment these days) and he screeches to a stop. He gets out of the car, leaves it in the middle of the street, and heads toward me—and the grandkids—while traffic backs up behind his SUV.

I’m right at my building, so I shuffle the kids in to a safe spot and turn to face the guy. He is furious, yelling, and extremely angry that I damaged his MERCEDES. Not his car. His MERCEDES. He reminds me many times that he is a MERCEDES owner and he will not tolerate some guy throwing a water bottle at his, did I mention, MERCEDES.

Eventually, he notices that a crowd has gathered to watch the MERCEDES OWNER screaming at an old guy wearing a U.S.S. Nimitz hat. He’s bigger than me and younger than me, and much angrier. I checked my surroundings and I already know how he’s going down, but I’ve got two frightened kids waiting for me and I don’t need the aggravation. Finally, he storms off and I go inside to restore some sense of safety for the children.

As I calm myself down, I’m thinking about guys who think their cars give them some sort of special license. Mercedes is a status car, like Beemers and, in ancient times, Cadillacs. They’re the cars that get vanity plates like, UNVME and BIGTIME and YESIATA. “Never in my life,” I said to myself, “will I ever be one of those guys.”

Full disclosure: I had a couple of Trans Am models that I referred to by brand name and I had license plates that said, “DADSV8.” That said, I was compensating for my lost youth, while my new friend was clearly compensating for, um, something else.

At the time of this incident, I was driving a 21-year-old Lexus sedan that I was determined to get past the 200,000-mile mark. I was close, too, until a fine young man drove his fine old car into mine and ended that quest. Back in the car market after well over a decade, I spent more than a month on the hunt and ended up with…you guessed it…a Mercedes.

It’s used, not new, although the price I paid at Autohaus on Edens got me much closer to new-car smell than I think was reasonable. Maybe the extra bucks were penance for all the times I’d mocked MERCEDES owners in the past. Who knows? As of now, I am a MERCEDES OWNER.

Now that I’m really, really special and a few levels above all the rest of you, I’m blowing through stop signs all day long. I wait for lights to turn red before I step on the gas. I take up at least two parking spaces in every parking lot I enter. It’s good to be the king.

JK. Nothing has changed inside the car, although I know people are making assumptions about me the same way I have done (almost 100% correctly) about status-car drivers in the past. Maybe I need to get a vanity plate that says, “NOTTA.”

That’ll work, right?
 
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It’s been a tough start to 2026 in the land of the free. All the stocks you thought were too expensive are up another 4,000%, citizens are being pulled off the streets and loaded onto planes for Guatemala, and the weather has been so damned cold that some people are secretly hoping they can get deported, too, if only for the next few months. (Too soon? Probably.)

Good news is harder and harder to find, but have no fear, dear readers. As always, the incredible jolliness team at Dad Writes is coming to the rescue. We’ve searched everywhere and we have discovered the absolute best feel-good message for you. (And only you. Millions of readers think I’m talking about them, too, but you and I know this is for you and you alone.)

What message could possibly bring such joy? Only this:

No, you absolutely did not do everything you could, and, no, you didn’t do it right.

Don’t you feel better already? Of course, you do. How can you not?

I went to a dinner a couple of weeks ago and the topic was how to comfort/console/help friends and relatives who are about to die. Yes, I could have opted for the comedy club, but this is an important topic and the situation is much more common as I stride confidently toward the Reaper. If we’re lucky to live long enough, it’s a situation we’ll all face.

Unsurprisingly in a group of people over 60, everyone at the event had faced this reality or was facing it now. For those who shared their experiences with me, the stories were all similar and the after-thoughts were almost universally the same:

Did I do everything I could? Did I do the right thing? Did I make a mistake about holding on or letting go or focusing on reality or building hope or…? The situations were all different, but the questions were the same. Could I have done just one more thing? Could I have said something more wise or not said something that could hurt? Could I have paid one more visit, baked one more pie, made one less comment, given one more hug?

Hidden in the questions, I think, is a belief in the impossible. Even if we know with 100% certainty that there was nothing we could have done to alter the course of nature, we still wonder if there was some button we could have pushed to change the destination. Every one of the people I spoke with could have done something more or different, something smarter or warmer or more comforting. For every single one of them, though, it would not have made a difference.

When it really, really counts, we all make a mistake or two or three. We all miss a beat or make the wrong joke or get sidetracked on the way to a visit. Most people, usually the ones who really do make the effort, will have some regrets. Sometimes, the regret is an indicator of how much they did right. Sometimes, the people who wonder if they did all they could are the same people with a very, very long list of the things they did.

None of us can offer any real insight if we weren’t in the room where it happened, because every situation is a sample size of one. The best we can do is to listen and to reassure the mourner that they did their best. Usually, that reassurance is enough, if only for the moment at hand.

You're never too old to learn the lessons of life, but I've noticed the tuition gets more and more expensive...

• Shop shop. My car got totaled a few weeks ago and it’s a while before the Chicago Auto Show. I’ve been forced to settle for the next best thing: wandering around parking lots and checking out the cars. I’ve learned a lot from this exercise, including the fact that parking lot security guards have no sense of humor.
  
• Dashed dots. I wrote recently about how valuable I am to all the companies that want nothing more in life than my data. Nobody actually wants to sell me anything; they just want to sell my search history. I’m starting to wonder, though, if they’re doing it wrong. Mom always told me to save everything because it would absolutely, 100%, guaranteed be worth something someday. Then, and I know this will be a shock to any parent who has offered precious heirlooms to their adult children, it turns out nobody wants all the crap I’ve been saving for 50 years. Is it possible that all these data hoarders had moms like mine?
  
• Red eyes. Speaking of data points, I went to the eye doctor for my annual check-up a few weeks ago and they did a half dozen screening tests before the doctor showed up. When he called up the results, the screen pulsated with numbers highlighted in RED RED RED. Not a problem, he said, because I’m doing just fine…FOR MY AGE. Sigh.
  
• Era sure. For almost two decades, we divided history into pre-and-post-9/11. Now, it’s pre-and-post-Covid. I can’t wait to see what the next crisis will be and…strike that…I’m fine with waiting a long, long time.
  
• Vintage cab. I know I’d get lectured about it in a Progressive ad, but I’m one of those old guys who starts up conversations with people on the elevator. Sometimes, I’ll make a small joke that makes them smile or laugh, and I know it gives them new energy as the doors open on their floor and they run off to their next adventure. 
  
• TBC. I’m listening to a very successful man as he relates his life story and just about all his narration includes his father’s story. After a while, I get the sense that he sees his own life as a continuation of his dad’s journey, which seems to make sense. We’re all continuing on a path that our parents continued from their parents in a stream of history we cannot trace beyond a handful of years.
  
• Whaddya know? I’m taking photos of surfers off a California beach when a guy with a board comes up to me to ask about conditions. I pointed to a bunch of people in the water and said, “None of these guys is finding the waves they want,” so he decided to try his luck further down the beach. He probably should have asked me if I knew anything at all about surfing before asking for advice, but that’s a life lesson for another day. 
• Looking down on people. Every time I take a flight across the country, I look at the small towns and giant farms that fill the landscape and think about how the folks below might see the world. Rufus Miles observed that where you stand depends on where you sit, which probably explains a great deal about differing perspectives. In many ways, the people in flyover country are living in a completely different universe from me, even if we share the human condition in almost every way.

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