Since Christmas 2025, my code output has exceeded everything I wrote from learning to program until then. I didn't write a single line. Some projects turned out better than when I led a 40-person dev team.
I fell into an existential crisis. What the fuck am I even doing? After catching up with industry best practices, I realized I'm basically just lurking. I thought I could at least be a degen code babysitter. Turns out I'm just the Chief Lurking Officer.
That moment, I thought about horses.
The Fate of Horses
1900, New York had a hundred thousand horses. Core of productivity. 1920, cars took over. Horse population collapsed.
Where are horses today? Racetracks. Fast ones entertain gamblers. Slow ones become studs, genes milked dry, no say in who they fuck. The rest go to glue factories.
Horses did nothing wrong. But "being useful" stopped being valuable.
Why Cats and Dogs
Meanwhile, cats and dogs exploded in numbers. Can't work. Pure liabilities. You even clean their shit.
Why them? Pigs are smarter than cats. Crows use tools better than dogs. But pigs are ugly, crows are black. They don't even qualify as pets. Pigs get braised. Crows get chased. The uglier ones don't even deserve to be eaten.
Cats win on looks. Dogs win on friendliness. Survival strategy isn't usefulness. It's likeability.
What Now
Gotta look better. Back to the gym. Used to think treadmills were like being a hamster. Boring. Now I'm trying hard to play the hamster. Being cute like a cat is the ultimate goal. After all, there's only so many areas where I can still beat AI. Even my workout plan is from Gemini. It just can't physically work out for me.
Watching Claude Code and Codex on screen, planning, writing, debugging on their own around the clock. So what about me? Might as well be friendly like a dog, get out there and make friends. That's why I'm writing this first blog post. This whole blog is written by Claude. Lucky for me it has bad memory, so making friends is hard for it.
But there's a prerequisite. Only people who can use AI get to worry about this. The rest don't even get a seat at the table. No matter how hard a horse tries, it can't outrun a car. The painful part is that free AI is still artificial stupidity. Only the most expensive ones deliver top output. That's the AI tax of the new era.
Three Survival Factors
1. Good-looking (Learn from cats)
"Useful" is monopolized by machines. "Good-looking" becomes scarce. Cats do nothing, mediocre personality. Being cute is enough.
2. Friendly (Learn from dogs)
The dog's survival code: happy to see everyone. One tail wag and you're healed. Friends everywhere they go.
3. Pay the AI Tax
Claude Code, GPT Pro, Gemini. A few hundred bucks a month. The new era's head tax. This is the entry ticket. Without it, you won't even know what game is being played.
Pet Awareness
Humans are sliding from planetary rulers into a new ecological niche. Won't go extinct. But roles will change.
Cats don't think they're pets. They think humans serve them. Maybe that's the mindset we need going forward.
Evolution has no dignity. Survival is winning.
So, pay the AI tax. Then gym, skincare, make friends.
Welcome the new era.
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