Alien Thought | AI, Branding, Psychology & Business Culture

May 27, 2026

Ideas from outside the obvious

CULTURE / October 7, 2026

Congratulations, It’s a Bag of Chips.

Balenciaga would like $2,050.

SYSTEMS

They Closed the Loophole. They May Take CBD With It.

The new federal hemp law was supposed to solve an intoxicating THC problem. Instead, it could hurt legitimate CBD businesses that were never the problem.

PSYCHOLOGY

Lindsay Clancy: Same brain, different excuse.

I have an opinion that will probably piss off several completely different groups of people at the same time.

PSYCHOLOGYMay 2026

AI Didn't Create Sameness. It Revealed It.

LATEST THINKING

01Lindsay Clancy: Same brain, different excuse.September 14, 2026

02Congratulations, It’s a Bag of Chips.October 7, 2026

03They Closed the Loophole. They May Take CBD With It.October 4, 2026

04Hiring as PredictionMay 7, 2026

05Depth Is the Missing VariableMay 21, 2026

All Articles

SYSTEMS

Hiring as Prediction

Every hire is a bet on who someone will become inside your specific environment.

CULTURE

Depth Is the Missing Variable

Most of what feels broken right now isn't actually broken. It's shallow.

PSYCHOLOGY

Borrowed Convictions

Most people's opinions were not formed. They were absorbed. And the mechanism of absorption has almost nothing to do with thought.

DESIGN

Cold Spaces Are Making Us Unwell (And We're Still Pretending It's Fine)

At some point, we collectively decided to live inside Apple Stores.

CULTURE

The New Aesthetic of Power

Power used to announce itself loudly. Now it dresses like a librarian.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Ruthless Practice of Standing Alone

Most people are waiting. They don't call it waiting. But underneath the activity is a quiet belief that someone, eventually, is going to pull them forward. That belief is the thing holding them back.

Stop Using AI to Sound Smart on LinkedIn: It's Killing Your Credibility

AI-generated bios that scream fake. They're painfully obvious.

CULTURE

Brands as Psychological Structures

The strongest brands are not selling products. They are selling identity.

Bible Study

We were made to create. Then we did.

AI Didn't Create Sameness. It Revealed It.

Every week, another article warns that artificial intelligence is making everything look the same. There's one problem with that argument.

SYSTEMS

The Internet Solved Access. It Never Solved Thinking.

We have access to more information than any civilization in history. We should be experiencing a golden age of original thought. Instead, many people seem to be thinking less independently than ever.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Space Between

There is a specific kind of loneliness that no one warns you about before you start a company.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Most Dangerous Advice Comes From People Who Love You

The people most likely to talk you out of your best idea are the ones sitting at your kitchen table.

RELATIONSHIPS

People Are Starving For Unperformed Conversation

Deep connection became harder to find because modern conversation became performance.

SYSTEMS

Invisible Incentives

The hidden architecture shaping decisions, behavior, and entire industries.

Synthetic Intuition

Why AI doesn't think - but simulates the feeling of thought.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Anxiety Operating System

An exploration of how anxiety became the default human interface.

SYSTEMS

The Attention Extractors

A taxonomy of the systems built to extract, commodify, and deplete human attention.

PSYCHOLOGY

10 Ways Intuition and Pattern Recognition Will Grow Your Business in 2026

2026 is not about louder marketing or more tactics. It is about sharper perception.

Rethinking AI Through the Lens of Fungi

What if we viewed AI not just as human-made, but as an interconnected network, like the mycelial webs of fungi?

CULTURE

Post-Identity Business

In the attention economy, identity is a strategy. Not a truth.

DESIGN

The Quiet Collapse of Standards

How the aesthetics of quality have been systematically decoupled from quality itself.

SYSTEMS

The Architecture of Exhaustion

Why modern systems are designed to extract attention, commodify behavior, and generate fatigue as a feature, not a bug.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Foundation of Your Success: Why Believing in Yourself Is the Ultimate Business Strategy

You are your greatest asset. Not your business plan, not your product, not your network - you.

CULTURE

The Power of Leaving Room

There is a point in business where you realize that work is never just work.

RELATIONSHIPS

The Shutdown Was Correct

You are not emotionally unavailable. You are running a mechanism that once kept you safe and has not been told it can stop.

POETRY

Annabel Lee

From the archive.

PSYCHOLOGY

The Same Thread

What your mind keeps doing, no matter what you're doing.

PSYCHOLOGY

Why Nothing Feels Real Anymore

On derealization, hyperreality, and the psychological cost of living in mediated reality.

CULTURE

Desire by Design

Chanel was my first real job. What I learned in those rooms changed how I understand everything about why people want things.

SYSTEMS

Stop Wearing All the Hats: Build Your Business Like a True Leader

Trying to do it all yourself isn't a long-term strategy. It's a fast lane to burnout.

SYSTEMS

Work Culture: Building Success Through Empathy and Support

The heart of any company isn't just its products or services - it's the people who make them possible.

POETRY

Ode to The Doors

An original poem inspired by Jim Morrison and The Doors