Daily one-pagers about AI, leadership, technology, and being human.

johnmaconline

I'm writing to think, learn, and remember in public. I'll be here everyday.

April 19, 2026 1 minute read

Trust Stories

Evidence. Data.
Hypotheses. Findings. Conclusions. “This is what this means.”

The first should be objective (assuming proper instruments, methods, and measurements) and hopefully complete. That’s the truth.

The second is the story about the first. Human interpretation.

If the humans do their job correctly, and the evidence and data are complete, the second should also be truth. We want them to be truth. The pursuit of science.

But trust comes to the table here. Do you trust the humans drawing the conclusions? Do you trust their methods, motivations, and perspectives? Do you think their data is complete? Do you believe their stories?

Because if you don’t, or your tribe doesn’t, you might not trust their answers.

Maybe AI will help us here. I think it can, but also, AI only knows what we know. Plus there’s the whole question of “how is this AI incentivized?”

So we’re back to trust. Which is a story.

Humans lean more on trust than they do evidence.

April 18, 2026 1 minute read

Toxic Work Environment

Human Leadership The250

We have legal definitions of a toxic work environment.

As such, we have HR training that mitigates the legal risk of working in such an environment and provides an actionable process by the company if situations arise.

However, there are many more types of toxic work environments for which there are no legal definitions, no trainings, and hence, no actionable recourse by a company:

Oppressive
Constant crises
Distrust
Chaos
Backstabbing

You are the only one that can take action in these cases.

It’s up to you.

April 17, 2026 1 minute read

Infinite Capabaility, Finite Ability

AI Human Technology

With an AI Agent Army at my beck and call, I’m sure I can do almost anything. I feel infinitely capable. I just need enough time and tokens.

However, I’m still me. I’m bounded by my attention, imagination, and energy.

AI increases both capability and ability. Capability feels infinite.

But it’s how you turn capability into ability that really matters.

April 16, 2026 1 minute read

What’s the Price?

Human The250

What’s the price of…

Happiness
Dignity
Health
Love
Self worth
Ego
Fun
Status
Contentment
Joy
Convenience
Knowledge
Solid ground
Calm
Energy
Ability
Capability
Renewal
Reset
Confidence

Everything has a price, and price is a story.

Change the story, change the price.

April 15, 2026 1 minute read

Hating it Enough

Human Leadership The250

What’s enough?

Well, it’s not to complain or think about it or even lose some sleep.

It’s to do something about it.

Do you hate it enough to do something about it?

April 14, 2026 1 minute read

The Same Things

Human Leadership The250

We do some of the same things every day.

Some of these help us, some hurt, and some may not matter that much.

But they are not you. They are not, “this is just who I am.”

It’s helpful to be honest with yourself about separating who you are from your habits. You can change habits.

You can’t change you.

April 13, 2026 1 minute read

Token Cost Vs Model Excellence

AI Technology The250

We’re quickly coming to an inflection point for using AI to build stuff.

Until the near future, most companies encouraging AI-usage amongst their workforce have been worried mainly “that” they’re using it. Use more tokens. More token usage means our team uses it. We think that’s a good thing.

However, that will soon change because a developer all-in on AI now costs the company between $500 and $1500 extra per day in tokens.

Like all tool and resource costs, organizations will quickly have to start managing token budgets. Here’s a current list of token costs for the mainstream models:

Model	Input Cost	Output Cost	Cache Read Cost
`glm`	0.6	2.2	0.11
`kimi-k2.5`	0.5	2.8	—
`gemini-3-flash`	0.5	3.0	—
`gpt-5.3-codex`	1.75	14.0	0.175
`gpt-5.4`	2.5	15.0	0.25
`claude-sonnet-4-5`	3.0	15.0	0.3
`claude-sonnet-4-6`	3.0	15.0	0.3
`gemini-3-1-pro`	2.0	12.0	0.2
`claude-opus-4-6`	5.0	25.0	0.5

Is Opus 4.6 2X better than GPT-5.4 for software?
What is safe for GLM use?
I’ve heard gemini is good at docs, can we use it for that?

Much like figuring out which person should do which task, we now have to do this with models based on token cost.

Figure out how to get AI working for you, or you’ll be working for AI.

April 12, 2026 2 minute read

Over-Documenting

AI Technology The250

Documentation has always been a problem in engineering.

We hate writing it. We think it’s a waste of time. Less is more.

I started my career before we had computers with word processors on our desk. We wrote documents by hand, on paper, handed it to the admin. She’d type it, make the figures, and make it publishable. That’s two people, for several hours, but all the engineer had to deal was the content itself. The admin handled the look and feel.

Then we got our own computers with word processors. That eliminated the 2nd person, but it put us in charge of publishing. The figures, the typos, the format. Now we had to create the content and the look and feel.

Word processors and templates got incrementally better over the years, but that workflow has largely remained the same since the mid-90s.

The result was sparse documentation at best.

Now we have AI.

AI unlocks all of the documentation. Literally all of it.

“Create the design document for…”
“Create the API spec for…”
“Create the user document for…”
“Create an analysis of the differences between…”

Now we’re awash in documentation.

You want documentation? You got it.

More than you could ever hope for.

April 11, 2026 1 minute read

The AI Social Media Dilemma

AI Human Technology

The LinkedIn feed looks a bit useless to me right now.

It’s dominated by content about AI, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that AI’s generating the content with what looks like no human oversight.

Here are the smoking guns:

Emoji’s
Dashes and lots of line breaks.
List posts.
Overly strong or drama-infused first sentences.
“I need to tell you…”
“Nobody talks about this…”
“Here’s what I learned…”
“Most people…”

All social media platforms either already are or will be dominated by AI content generation (for a time, at least). I think this works great if the platform was built for AI.

I can’t wait for the humans to insist that the platforms push the needle back towards humans.

April 10, 2026 1 minute read

Clarity with AI

AI Leadership Technology

Good leaders provide clarity.

Clarity of purpose, priorities, direction, requirements, things we care about, mission, procedure, etc. When you’re part of a team, this helps you focus on and deliver your part.

With AI, everyone’s a leader. You too.

AI can appear as if it reads your mind. It can’t, any more than your colleague or partner.

Get clear. Clear in your mind and then clear on the paper (or the markdown file).

The clearer you are, the better AI can help you.

johnmaconline

Trust Stories

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Toxic Work Environment

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Infinite Capabaility, Finite Ability

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What’s the Price?

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Hating it Enough

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The Same Things

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Token Cost Vs Model Excellence

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Over-Documenting

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Clarity with AI

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