On Monday morning my twin Dave texted me out of the blue: "Did you see that Claude now marks all AI writing? Moving forward, there's an invisible watermark in the semantics. Everyone is talking about it on Twitter." I responded instantly, "No. I didn't, but this makes sense." I wanted to learn more, so naturally asked Claude. It turns out Anthropic had just announced that its new Claude models will weave an invisible watermark into the text they generate. Supposedly this mark survives copying

Over the Fourth of July weekend, I was staying with family in Lake Placid and working out in the garage. Between sets, as I was catching my breath, I wandered over to the workbench and noticed something I somehow missed in dozens of visits: "How to Be an Artist," by the artist and author SARK. I read it several times, not just because I needed an extra breather. Invite someone dangerous to tea. Make friends with freedom and uncertainty. Do it now. Have wild imaginings. Play with everything. Li

A few of you have written lately wondering why Field Notes doesn't have comments. It's a fair question. Comments are baked into nearly every corner of the web, especially on blogs and social media. I shared in When Nobody's Watching that I designed this site to have no likes, reposts, or comments. This was driven, in part, by not wanting a scoreboard that would fuel self-validation loops and status games. A former client asked whether sharing his reactions would just feed the validation cycle

Every time I sit down to write one of these notes, it dawns on me that not many people are going to see or engage with them. Field Notes is just a week old and has few subscribers. I deliberately designed this site to have no likes, no comments, and no reposts. I've even turned off all notifications. There's no scoreboard. I didn't want to get caught in the dopamine loop. Every time I join a new platform or reengage with an old one, I tell myself this time will be different, and it never is.

I've had a love-hate relationship with social media since COVID. After years of being active on X, LinkedIn, and Substack, I've decided I no longer want to play the game. The feeds have been optimized for growth and engagement. Most users are vying for attention and optimizing for reach. When I'm active on social media and opening the apps daily, I become the worst version of myself. My attention becomes fragmented and I'm pulled in a dozen directions throughout the day. That's not how I want t