I got some feedback from subscribers that the template for the weekly digest that wrangles posts into one Sunday morning email was broken. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but I think I fixed it. The digest should render correctly moving forward. All apologies!
I just spent a few days in New York City at NRF 2026, the premier conference for the retail industry in the United States. For those unfamiliar, NRF is a behemoth – nearly 40,000 retail practitioners descending on the Javits Center each January.
My primary observation: AI wasn’t just present at this year’s event, it dominated everything. Every session. Every conversation. Every exhibitor pitch. Everything was presented through an AI lens. You couldn’t avoid it, even if you tried.
And I did.
NRF 2026 wasn’t billed as a “retail & AI” conference, but that’s exactly what it was. AI optimizing your supply chain. AI promising store operations efficiency. AI running wild on product catalogs to enable agentic shopping. Robots massaging data so websites are easier for other robots to navigate.
I wasn’t surprised by the saturation. Just look around. AI is being shoehorned into our daily interactions and companies are desperate to brand themselves as AI companies. The US economy is being propped up by AI investment, and retail is claiming its share.
What struck me was the opportunity cost.
In a landscape where every company fetishizes AI – in their products, in their operations, in their marketing – there’s a massive opening for companies brave enough to lean the other direction. Into humanity. Into the natural world. Into what makes us distinctly human.
I caught glimpses of this alternative path. Ryan Reynolds' keynote touched on it. My friend Justin Weinstein’s talk about grocers serving their communities embodied it. But these were exceptions in a sea of sameness.
Here’s what I’m imagining: What if a company stood up and publicly declared they would resist artificial intelligence in their operations? What if they said instead they’d invest in people – the people who make the company work and the people the company serves? And what if they went all-in on this message in their marketing?
That decision would instantly differentiate them in a meaningful, substantive way.
The irony of everyone chasing the same AI strategy is that it eliminates competitive advantage. When everyone optimizes for the same thing, nobody stands out. But a company that deliberately chooses humanity over automation? Right now that’s an admirable decision and a signal customers can’t ignore.
I don’t know about you, but that’s the kind of company I’d get in line to support.
Traveling to NYC for work today, but you know I found a biz-appropriate way to rep the Black-n-Gold. #HereWeGo Steelers!
Really digging this LP Forward from Santa Cruz-based First Day Back. They certainly have their own vibe going on, but I also hear shades of vintage Rainer Maria and The Get Up Kids. Had I discovered it earlier, it might have been on my favorites list from 2025.
Have no fear, the kids are alright.
Sarah Samms Velázquez writes about finding unexpected kindness and a long-term home in Pittsburgh after years of wanderlust:
However, in an alleyway in Pittsburgh, I woke up to homemade soup, leftovers and even a camper-sized crockpot sitting on my truck’s bumper. In Pittsburgh, folks say hello and rarely turn their nose up at one another. In Northern Appalachia, we value the blue collar and the stories that come along with hard living; and do I have some stories to tell. I sometimes wonder where I’d be if I never found the Paris of Appalachia. Probably still searching, with a pack on my back – waiting for home to find me.
This is very similar to my own personal experience, although my journey to land in this city took place about 15 years prior to Sarah’s. I didn’t ride into town as a stowaway on a freight train (legendary!), but my arrival was in the cab of a broken-down tour van.
Pittsburgh is the kind of place where strangers look you in the eye. Where people help each other when there’s no benefit other than a thank you and smile. There’s an element of ‘realness’ here that I’ve found to be very different from most other cities. I think this realness can be distilled down to the kindness that Sarah writes so eloquently about in her piece.
That kindness is what keeps me here. And that kindness is what the world needs more of right now.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette will cease operations on May 3, 2026, leaving the region without a daily print news publication. The paper has been operating as the cornerstone of reliable media in the area for nearly 240 years. This is a massive blow to the news ecosystem here in Western Pennsylvania.
Block Communications Inc. communicated the decision to shutter the paper to employees via a pre-recorded video. This is a spineless, timid act that’s unfortunately par-for-the-course for the Block family who spent years fighting against the rights of PG workers only to lose that fight in the Supreme Court of the United States.
The announcement to cease operations on the immediate heels of the Supreme Court verdict reinforces that the Blocks believe there’s no point in maintaining a valuable asset for a community if they can’t exploit the workers who toil to create that asset.
Yes, the media landscape is shifting. The news business is difficult. Journalistic institutions are reeling. But we collectively have to find a way to keep journalism alive and accessible for communities. It’s one of the most important things we can do for our future.
In a meeting earlier today, a colleague used the term user error. My ears perked up. After nearly twenty years building digital products, I’ve heard this phrase countless times and it never sits right.
This is how I’ve found it usually plays out: Someone uses our product in an unexpected way. Something breaks or doesn’t work like they thought it would. A product team member then asserts:
Next comes the verdict: user error. The person is making the mistake, not us. They need to adapt to our design, not the other way around.
This mindset is poison for great product work.
Every unexpected behavior, every “misuse,” every bug report from someone navigating our product differently than we imagined aren’t errors. They’re signals. They’re opportunities to learn about actual usage patterns, understand what people are really trying to accomplish, and iterate toward something better.
The phrase user error lets us off the hook too easily. It places blame on the person trying to get something done rather than on the system we designed. It assumes our mental model of how the product should work is the only valid one.
Users don’t care about our mental models. They care about their goals. If our product makes it easy to take a wrong turn, that’s a product problem, not a user problem.
There’s no such thing as user error. There’s only unwillingness to acknowledge that we might have gotten things wrong and a refusal to recognize opportunity to make things better.
I’m looking forward to being back in New York City next week for NRF 2026. The big things on my radar this year are learning about ways to create progressive clienteling experiences for our customers, flexible & unified checkout technologies, and task management tools for store teams.
Also, I’m extremely keen to meet up with other people working in store tech product management at other retailers. If you’ll be at NRF and you’re interested in similar things or offer these types of services/products, let’s connect.
Also, also! The unofficial NRF Pittsburgh Steelers wild card watch party will be at Printer’s Alley on W 40th in Midtown on Monday night. I hate that I won’t be in the Steel City for this game, but the next best place to watch is at NYC’s Steeler Nation headquarters. Pack your Terrible Towel and swing by.
Watched: Marty Supreme 🍿
Absolutely loved this wild cinematic ride. Beautifully shot, exquisitely written and expertly performed. Chalamet and Paltrow were outstanding. I will not be surprised if this film cleans up during awards season.
We finally got a chance to taste John’s of Bleeker Street, after several attempts and refusals to queue around the block for pizza. So many people have told us that John’s is pinnacle pizza and yesterday we decided to see what the fuss was about.
I might be about to say something controversial:
It was a solid pie, but I found it to be just OK. The sauce was sweet and the crust was a bit flimsy for my liking. Above average for sure, but definitely not worth the hour-long wait in the rain.
There is better pizza in NYC, even in the Village. For my money, Joe’s Pizza around the corner on Carmine remains the best slice I’ve tasted anywhere.
Finished reading: The Anomaly by Herv Le Tellier 📚
This was a great read. A gripping story chronicling the duplicate lives of passengers on an Air France flight from Paris to NYC.
Amtrak 42, also known as The Pennsylvanian, runs from Pittsburgh to New York City. When possible, we love traveling by train. It’s a slower pace than flying and allows for taking in the passing landscapes in a way traveling by car does not.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care. Happy holidays to you and yours.
New to me: the News Product Alliance, a nonprofit that supports product professionals in newsrooms with the goal of elevating the product practice and expanding the diversity of product thinkers in decision-making roles at news organizations.
Our vision is to empower the news industry with a new generation of diverse leaders – News Product Thinkers – who have the empathy and know-how to build resilient news organizations, deliver quantifiable business results, and rebuild trust by ensuring we truly serve our communities.
This is a worthwhile cause. I hadn’t thought about how product thinking might play a role in the future of journalism, but it makes complete sense. Grounding media strategy in product foundations and understanding desirability, viability, feasibility and usability (through a constant lens of journalistic integrity) may just be a winning playbook to breathe much-needed life into the industry.
Big win for the Steelers in Detroit. That was a crazy game with a wild final play! Now it’s time to root for the Patriots. 🏈
Today I learned there is an annual parallel parking championship held here in Pittsburgh. I’ve lived here for 25 years and I’m still regularly surprised by the quirkiness of this town. Stay weird, Steel City.
What a year it’s been for music! There have been so many awesome records released this year and it’s been extremely difficult narrowing this list down to my ten favorites. So hard, in fact, I’ve included five honorable mentions at the end. Please take no pretense or judgement in these choices, they are simply the albums released this calendar year that I connected with most. Without further ado and in no particular order, here are my favorite records of 2025.
Sunshine and Balance Beams by Pile
I know these are in no particular order, but this record may be favorite of the year. It’s definitely my most played record. The songwriting on this one is just impeccable. Pile brings an intensity and sharp edge to their performance, but the melodies and lyrics are just as solid as the musicality. They’ve been around for a long time, but this record was my gateway into their back catalog, which is also very good.
Glory by Perfume Genius
Glory is what happens when amazing musicianship meets smart & evocative songwriting meets unique production. Seriously, listen to this one with headphones. Not airbuds, but really good headphones. You will hear layers upon layers of dynamics that seem to surround in 360º. And the voice. It’s a thing of majesty.
Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams
I never got into Paramore. I think I just missed them when they were doing their thing back in the day. Williams was the frontwoman for that band, but I can’t really hear much Paramore influence in these songs. And these songs are fire. Eighteen of them and not one is a dud. My favorite track is True Believer. If you haven’t seen her performance of this song on Jimmy Fallon, check it out.
The Future is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed by The Armed
This record is shot out of a cannon. One hundred miles an hour from start to finish. The Armed doesn’t have much in common with bands like Refused or At the Drive-In, but the first time I heard this record I had the same feeling I had when I heard The Shape of Punk to Come or In Casino Out back in the day. It feels like they’re earnestly pushing forward with something important and new with these songs.
Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs by Saintseneca
Have you ever had that weird feeling after you spin a new record for the first time and it feels like it’s one that’s been in your collection forever? Not it a trite or unoriginal way, but like when your nose catches a scent of something memorable from your past and transports you back there instantly, subconsciously. That’s what Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs feels like to me. It’s folky and yodely, but in a head-noddin' way. Really beautiful mandolin & guitar melody lines layer themselves under shaky & pained vocals. There are some seriously great songs on this record.
Essex Honey by Blood Orange
I drove to the beach last September. It was a spur of the moment add-on to a work trip that had me in New Jersey anyway. The excursion to the shore was an occasion to meet up with some good friends from high school, who were all remarkably in town from disparate areas of the country for disparate reasons. The hang was spontaneous and real. There was 30 years of history among us. There were intoxicants. There was a seafood boil. There were memories. We shared laughs and tears. As the sunset brilliantly over the bay, someone put on this record and I lost my shit. It was the perfect vibe for that moment. Mellow, relaxed, orchestral. Deeply layered. Intense. Familiar but fresh. A fantastic record to enjoy with the ones you love.
SAYA by Saya Gray
There’s something about Saya Gray’s voice that I connect with. It has a unique texture. It’s rhythmic in a cool way. The songs on SAYA bring together acoustic artistry and digital production that create a sound that pulls you in and keeps you in from top to bottom. The melodies are wandering, from joyful to solemn, and they take you on a journey to someplace different from where you started listening.
Something to Consume by Die Spitz
It’s the year of our lord 2025, but the 90s are alive and well. The songs on this record from Die Spitz sound like they could have been performed on the stage at one of the early Lollapallooza tours. Simply put, these women shred and this record is one of my favorites released this year.
LOTTO by They Are Gutting a Body of Water
I don’t know much about They Are Gutting a Body of Water and I can’t remember how I heard about this record, but I love it. It’s so different. Some songs are noisy and experimental, some songs have hints of pop laced throughout. I hear something different each time I listen, and to me that’s the sign of a great record.
45 Pounds by YHWH Nailgun
This record is insane. I’ll admit, after Justin recommended it and I first listened, I wasn’t totally into it. But after a few more listens I was fully on board the YHWH Nailgun train. I’ve never heard anything like this before. Complex time signatures, guitar synth, roto toms and some of the most guttural/spastic vocals make for a truly unique sound.
Julia Bensfield Luce writing for the BBC about lost digital images from the early aughts:
There’s a black hole in the photographic record that spans across our entire society. If you had a digital camera back then, there’s a good chance many of your photos were lost when you stopped using it.
Joan Westenberg on the death of everything:
In the beginning, there was the pure thing. Then came corruption, commercialization, normies, and death. We’re all walking around with these little creation myths about every domain we care about, and they all end the same way: with us as witnesses to a decline that began right after we showed up.
Culture is cyclical. I think it’s helpful to think about culture not as a binary between alive and dead, but rather an evolution from one point to another. Culture builds on culture builds on culture. It’s progressive, derivative and organic.
Pittsburgh’s Public Source investigates the uptick of Mister Rogers deepfakes permeating the social internet:
Lobbing curse-laden insults with TV’s famously serene painter Bob Ross. Cracking jokes about school shootings. Being escorted in handcuffs by federal authorities. No, it couldn’t be Pittsburgh’s beloved icon Mister Rogers — the picture of moral clarity and togetherness. But it sure looks and sounds like him. What gives?
Show me one useful, positive output from these deepfake engines. I’ll wait. What value do they contribute to our lives? How do they improve the world? Again, I’ll wait.
These image and video generators are the bottom feeders of this AI bubble. They provide no respectable use and no societal value. They are detrimental theft machines.