The world is waking to the fact that talk therapy is neither the only nor the best way to cure a garden-variety petite depression. Something many people will encounter at some point in their lives. Studies have shown that exercise, for example, is a more effective treatment than talk therapy (and pharmaceuticals!) when dealing with such episodes. But I'm just as interested in the role building competence can have in warding off the demons. And partly because of this meme: I've talked about it before, but I keep coming back to the fact that it's exactly backwards. That signing up for an educational quest into Linux, history, or motorcycle repair actually is an incredibly effective alternative to therapy! At least for men who'd prefer to feel useful over being listened to, which, in my experience, is most of them. This is why I find it so misguided when people who undertake those quests sell their journey short with self-effacing jibes about how much an unattractive nerd it makes them to care about their hobby. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi detailed back in 1990 how peak human happiness arrives exactly in these moments of flow when your competence is stretched by a difficult-but-doable challenge. Don't tell me those endorphins don't also help counter the darkness. But it's just as much about the fact that these pursuits of competence usually offer a great opportunity for community as well that seals the deal. I've found time and again that people are starved for the kind of topic-based connections that, say, learning about Linux offers in spades. You're not just learning, you're learning with others. That is a time-tested antidote to depression: Forming and cultivating meaningful human connections. Yes, doing so over the internet isn't as powerful as doing it in person, but it's still powerful. It still offers community, involvement, and plenty of invitation to carry a meaningful burden. Open source nails this trifecta of motivations to a T. There are endless paths of discovery and mastery available. There are tons of fellow travelers with whom to connect and collaborate. And you'll find an unlimited number of meaningful burdens in maintainerships open for the taking. So next time you see that meme, you should cheer that the talk therapy table is empty. Leave it available for the severe, pathological cases that exercise and the pursuit of competence can't cure. Most people just don't need therapy, they need purpose, they need competence, they need exercise, and they need community.

People seem to be continuously disappointed by the fact that public companies are run by professional managers who don't operate from deep principles. But they shouldn't be. It's in everyone's interest that corporations set their sails to the wind and whims of the prevailing culture. It's the essence of capitalism: Give people what they want (especially when they change their minds)!  Now, as an owner-operator, I can afford to have unpopular principles from time to time. I can afford to earn less than the theoretical maximum from the market as a consequence of these principles. That's because I'm playing with my own money. That's the privilege of being privately held. But even the most powerful professional CEO is on a short leash from the company's real owners, the shareholders. This is often maligned as the root of all evil in modern capitalism. That we've divorced the owner and the operator. And I think there's a worthy critique of that arrangement to be had, like Burnham in The Managerial Society. But I also think not enough appreciation is afforded this arrangement. Shareholders, in their Platonic ideal, only care about maximizing profits. That can occasionally be an incentive for amoral behavior, but more often, it's simply a driver towards making stuff that people want. Not what they say they want, but what they actually buy.  That's why libertarians love to talk about the free-market economy as an information system. Supply-side economics notwithstanding, demand directs production and judges the contestants. If you don't make something people want, they won't buy it, and you'll soon be out of business. I thought about this today because of two popular marketing campaigns currently running in America. The one by Nike celebrating family, the other by American Eagle celebrating "good jeans". Here's a comparison someone made online using these companies' campaigns from the early 2020s and now: Quite the contrast! Almost looks like hypocrisy, doesn't it? How can you celebrate obesity one moment, then hour-glass ideals the next? How can you embrace undirected individualism before, then exalt family values at the height of excellence now? Easy: The vibe changed. Demand changed. Selling 2020 woke platitudes into a 2025 market is a clear way to lose your job as a professional manager. Because it's no longer what people want. Hell, it's most likely not even the same managers making these diametrically-opposed value judgments. Perhaps not even managers at all, but marketing agencies in tune with said prevailing culture. The big information system of commerce is sending a billion packets of intent all day long and the current message is now crystal clear: Blond babies and boobs are back in business! This was the original killer insight by the architects of the short-lived woke theocracy: If you can capture culture, you can capture capitalism. But it's one thing to capture culture, it's quite another to hold it. So now much of mainstream American culture has simply reverted to the roots of capitalism: Making things that most people want. By course-correcting the culture, we've course-corrected commerce. No corporate principles required.

There's no country on earth that does hype better than America. It's one of the most appealing aspects about being here. People are genuinely excited about the future and never stop searching for better ways to work, live, entertain, and profit. There's a unique critical mass in the US accelerating and celebrating tomorrow. The contrast to Europe couldn't be greater. Most Europeans are allergic to anything that even smells like a commercial promise of a better tomorrow. "Hype" is universally used as a term to ridicule anyone who dares to be excited about something new, something different. Only a fool would believe that real progress is possible! This is cultural bedrock. The fault lines have been settling for generations. It'll take an earthquake to move them. You see this in AI, you saw it in the Internet. Europeans are just as smart, just as inventive as their American brethren, but they don't do hype, so they're rarely the ones able to sell the sizzle that public opinion requires to shift its vision for tomorrow.  To say I have a complicated relationship with venture capital is putting it mildly. I've spent a career proving the counter narrative. Proving that you can build and bootstrap an incredible business without investor money, still leave a dent in the universe, while enjoying the spoils of capitalism. And yet... I must admit that the excesses of venture capital are integral to this uniquely American advantage on hype. The lavish overspending during the dot-com boom led directly to a spectacular bust, but it also built the foundation of the internet we all enjoy today. Pets.com and Webvan flamed out such that Amazon and Shopify could transform ecommerce out of the ashes. We're in the thick of peak hype on AI right now. Fantastical sums are chasing AGI along with every dumb derivative mirage along the way. The most outrageous claims are being put forth on the daily. It's easy to look at that spectacle with European eyes and roll them. Some of it is pretty cringe! But I think that would be a mistake. You don't have to throw away your critical reasoning to accept that in the face of unknown potential, optimism beats pessimism. We all have to believe in something, and you're much better off believing that things can get better than not.  Americans fundamentally believe this. They believe the hype, so they make it come to fruition. Not every time, not all of them, but more of them, more of the time than any other country in the world. That really is exceptional.

According to Statcounter, Linux has claimed 5% market share of desktop computing in the US. That's double of where it was just three years ago! Really impressive. Windows is still dominant at 63%, and Apple sit at 26%. But for the latter, it's quite a drop from their peak of 33% in June 2023. These are just browser stats, though (even if it's backed up by directionally-similar numbers from Cloudflare). There's undoubtedly some variability in the numbers, by the season, and by what lives in the relatively large 4% mystery box of "other". But there's no denying that Linux is trending in the right direction in the US. As a Dane, though, I find it sad that Denmark is once again a laggard when it comes to adoption. Windows is even more dominant there at almost 70% (with Apple at 15%). Linux is just under 2%. Interestingly, though, ChromeOS, which is basically a locked-down Linux distribution, is at almost 5%. I guess I really shouldn't be disappointed because this is how it always was. It was a big reason why I moved to the US back in 2005. When Ruby on Rails was taking off, it was in America first and foremost. Danish companies were too conservative, too complacent, too married to Microsoft to really pay attention. There are early indications that a willingness to change this laggard mentality might be sprouting, but we've yet to see any evidence that a shift has actually taken hold yet. It's hard to change culture! So while the Danes continue to fiddle, the Americans continue to push forward. Linux is on the up and up!