The Contrarian Digest [Week 19]
The Contrarian Digest is my weekly pick of LinkedIn posts I couldn’t ignore. Smart ideas, bold perspectives, and conversations worth having.
No algorithms, no hype… Just real ideas worth your time.
Let’s dive in [19th Edition] 👇
1️⃣ The Dataset Wears Glasses – Joanna Williams
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: Performance boost OR behavioral blueprint? Meta’s smart glasses may be collecting way more than you think, quietly building a dataset of you. One designed to reshape your habits.
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dE6qzwbv
2️⃣ Black Mirror or the Next Generation – Alex Banks
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: While we debate ethics, tech elites like Alexandr Wang are delaying kids… Waiting to implant newborns and hack the brain’s plasticity. The next generation won’t just use AI. They’ll be AI.
💭𝐌𝐲 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞: What could go wrong?
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/daX4qNg5
3️⃣ Beyond Binary: A Quantum Lens for Modern Warfare – Oriane Cohen
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: What if modern conflict doesn’t follow rules, but quantum physics? A deeper framework where conflicts exist in multiple states simultaneously.
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dcSV7n9c
4️⃣ The End of Cold Email As We Know It – Todd Busler
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: The days of paying entry-level SDRs to blast templated emails are numbered. As AI-powered specialists take over outbound, the SDR army is being replaced… Here’s what’s moving in.
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dza33N8P
5️⃣ Optimizing Ourselves Into Extinction – Jatin Modi
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: While we cling to feel-good narratives about AI and jobs, startups openly declare their mission to eliminate human work entirely. .. But what, then, will be left of humanity?”
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dQjr4ATt
6️⃣ HR Is NOT Your Friend – Shashank Sharma
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: HR says it’s “there for you,” but it was literally created to break strikes. A paradox at its core, why “people ops” will always choose power over people.
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dRPX4UxT
7️⃣ When Flow Feels Like Exile – Joan Westenberg
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: Working exclusively at night unlocked unmatched focus… but also created a strange disconnect: seeing the world more clearly, yet drifting further outside it.
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/d8Bf2Y7T
8️⃣ The Universe Could Not Contain Itself – Shai Tubali, Ph.D.
⚡𝐈𝐧 𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐟: Nature doesn’t optimize, it chooses excess over survival every time. Beetles, orchids, and your own DNA prove it: the universe isn’t solving problems. It’s showing off. And so should you.
🗞️𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭: https://lnkd.in/dKtQGrcW
——-
Which of these topics resonates with you the most?
Share your thoughts in the comments!
To your success,
Gaetan Portaels
Original publication date — June 23, 2025 (HERE)
READ THE FULL POSTS BELOW (and please, don’t forget to follow the authors)
1️⃣ The Dataset Wears Glasses – Joanna Williams
Surveillance capitalism packaged as performance enhancement
But it actually functions as a comprehensive data extraction system
What a beautiful trap – Oakley Meta glasses aren’t just recording your workouts – they’re capturing your entire physical world through your eyes
Every location you visit, every person you interact with, every environment you train in becomes training data for Meta’s AI systems
Biometric Goldmine “Amplifying human potential” = monitoring your physical performance, health metrics, movement patterns, and physiological responses
This isn’t just about your fitness – it’s about building detailed profiles of human physical capability that can be monetized across health insurance, employment screening, and targeted advertising
The always-on panopticon ultra HD recording + “Hey Meta” voice activation means these glasses are constantly listening and absolutely recording
The 48-hour battery life ensures near-continuous data collection
You’re wearing Meta’s surveillance apparatus on your face while thinking you’re getting athletic insights
Social graph mapping every person who appears in your recordings, every conversation captured, every social interaction becomes part of Meta’s social mapping project
Hence why Apple and Snap Inc. are building their own versions
Your friends and family didn’t consent to being in Meta’s training dataset, but they’re there anyway
It’s nothing more than environmental intelligence
The glasses map physical spaces, weather conditions, and environmental contexts
Meta is building a real-world dataset of how humans move through and interact with physical spaces – incredibly valuable for everything from urban planning to retail optimization
It’s the next behavioral modification loop…
Performance AI means the glasses will start suggesting behaviors, training modifications, and lifestyle changes based on your data
It’s not just collecting information – it’s beginning to influence your physical habits and daily routines
The genius of the partnership is that Oakley provides the legitimacy and athlete endorsements
Meta gets to normalize facial computing and real-world surveillance (!!!!)
Athletes become unwitting ambassadors for mass adoption of surveillance infrastructure
WELL FUCK!NG DONE
This is Bentham’s Panopticon redesigned as sports equipment – except the watchtower is now worn voluntarily on your face
2️⃣ Black Mirror or the Next Generation – Alex Banks
Watch video here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DK4anFoSfu1
Black Mirror or the next generation…
Should kids get brain implants at birth?
Alexandr Wang is the CEO of Scale AI.
And now leads Meta’s new “superintelligence” division.
He just said he’s waiting to have kids until Neuralink.
The neuroplasticity window:
Your brain is 10x more adaptable in your first 7 years
Miss this window, miss the opportunity
The integration advantage:
→ Adults getting Neuralink = learning a new tool
→ Kids born with it = it becomes part of their brain
→ Native digital-biological integration vs. clunky adaptation
The acceleration problem:
AI is evolving faster than human biology.
While we’re still figuring out basic interfaces, AI capabilities are doubling every few months.
The gap is widening.
Wang’s bet: the future generations will thrive in ways we can’t even comprehend yet.
My takeaway:
My mind instantly thought of Isaac Asimov’s predictions back in 1965.
Asimov saw what others couldn’t.
While everyone debated if machines could think, he asked what happens when they merge with us.
A hybrid species might surpass both humans and machines.
Will getting a neuralink implant be as common as babies getting their routine vaccinations in the future?
It’s a wild thought but a future Alex Wang is waiting for.
Has humanity already peaked?
Or will brain-computer interfaces be the solution to the next step of evolution?
3️⃣ Beyond Binary: A Quantum Lens for Modern Warfare – Oriane Cohen
I’ve stayed silent these last days, because I saw too much noise.
Too many takes.
Too much nonsense.
Or, more precisely: too many PARTIAL truths.
Each interpretation holds a FRAGMENT of meaning.
But they fail to grasp the larger, deeper structure.
Over the last few months, I’ve been quietly developing a concept.
Time has come to give birth… to this baby.
Some of you understood already that the Grey Zone is also a space of conceptual exploration.
An intellectual zone of ambiguity, complexity, and new models.
I believe this Iran-Israel conflict is a perfect illustration of the idea I’ve been developing…
I call it: Quantum Warfare.
Not because these states are deploying quantum weapons or AI-enabled teleportation… (not yet, i guess)
But because the principles of quantum physics help me understand the nature of this conflict, and more broadly, the architecture of modern power.
This is not for everyone.
But if you’ve felt the distortion… the acceleration… the incoherence,
You’re not crazy.
You’re just early.
——ARTICLE——
Original source: https://orianecohen.com/a-new-lens-for-a-war-we-no-longer-understand/
A new lens for a war we no longer understand (Quantum Framework)
This last days, like many in the field, I’ve been busy. And tired.
Tired of watching the same cycle unfold: hot takes, reactive posts, and content flooding our feeds pretending to be clarity.
So much noise. Like SO MUCH.
Even in our profession (intelligence) I really think we’re losing the thread.
What is our role, really?
To replace news outlets?
To drop raw facts?
To repost videos of bombs, speeches, collapsed buildings?
I don’t think so.
At least, that’s not what I deliver to my clients.
My work is strategic.
Since the start of the recent escalations, I’ve received messages E-VE-RY-DAY.
Requests for analysis.
Invitations to comment.
Cries for clarity.
I read too much nonsense. Or, more precisely: too many partial truths.
Each interpretation holds a FRAGMENT of meaning.
But they fail to grasp the larger, deeper structure.
Over the last few months, I’ve been quietly developing a concept.
Time has come to give birth… to this baby.
Some of you understood already that the Grey Zone is also a space of conceptual exploration.
An intellectual zone of ambiguity, complexity, and new models.
I believe this Iran-Israel conflict is a perfect illustration of the idea I’ve been developing: a difficult one to articulate, but essential.
I call it: the Quantum Framework.
Not because these states are deploying quantum weapons or AI-enabled teleportation…
But because the principles of quantum physics help me understand the nature of this conflict, and more broadly, the architecture of modern power.
What we’re going to see below is a completely new concept: the application of quantum principles to geopolitical and narrative analysis.
Stay with me.
I swear you’re going to see things in a clearer way at the end of this piece (writing this I still don’t know if this is just going to be one piece, or a series).
I’ll do my best to be clear and pedagogical.
And your feedback is most welcome.
Let’s begin.
Why Quantum mechanics: a personal note
At this point you might be thinking:
Oriane… seriously? Quantum now? You’ve lost it.
I promise, it’s going to make sense.
All the curious minds I know eventually stumble onto this topic.
If you’re obsessed with understanding the world, sooner or later, you land here. Quantum mechanics is like a rite of passage.
You won’t master it (and beware of those who say they do!) but, it forces you to confront the limits of how we define truth, causality, and time.
I’m not a physicist.
And this concept I’m going to introduce has little to do with actual quantum science.
I’m borrowing the core principles and applying them metaphorically, strategically.
My interest came from necessity.
From a realization that classical frameworks (linear logic, fixed alliances, binary choices) can’t explain the world we live in.
They don’t explain why global events echo across continents in ways we can’t predict.
They don’t explain why chaos feels… patterned.
So I started reading. And in quantum mechanics, I found metaphors that were more useful, more accurate, than ANYTHING I’d learned in international relations.
Here’s what you need to understand about Quantum principles (applied to strategy)
1. Entanglement: everything reacts to everything
In quantum mechanics, two particles can become entangled. When they are, changing one will instantly affect the other, no matter the distance between them.
In geopolitics: a drone strike in Iran reshapes political calculations in Lebanon, triggers financial speculation in Singapore, and alters military deployments in Cyprus.
This is how modern influence operates: instant, borderless, and multi-dimensional.
Entanglement helps me illustrate the fact that we don’t deal with isolated fronts. Everything is now a network of sensitive interdependencies.
Miss one node, and you misread the entire system.
2. Superposition: multiple truths at once
Before you observe a quantum system, it exists in multiple states simultaneously. Schrödinger’s cat is alive and dead, until you open the box.
In warfare: is Israel acting in defense, aggression, deterrence, or provocation? The answer is: all of the above. Until you define your frame!
Most analysts fail here. They want ONE answer. But strategic ambiguity lives in the coexistence of conflicting realities.
Accepting the paradoxes, living with the contradiction.
Superposition is… how you embrace paradox.
To read narratives in parallel.
And to stop expecting consistency in a world that thrives on calculated ambiguity.
3. The effect of observation
In quantum physics, the act of measuring (observing) a system changes it.
In modern warfare: The moment an attack is filmed, broadcasted, commented, or reframed, its meaning shifts. A missile becomes a message, a myth, a media weapon.
We have entered an era where every observer is also a participant. This is something I understood when I was a journalist in Israel and the West Bank.
I know it’s not a mainstream viewpoint, but it was MY truth.
When I was covering this damn conflict, I was thinking that I – as a journalist – was playing a role in this war. As an observer and narrator of the conflict, I was playing a direct role, crystallizing their narratives into a moment.
One day, during a night of violences in East Jerusalem I was covering, I thought: if I weren’t here, with the camera and team, at 8PM for showtime… would they really be here killing each other?
I don’t have the answer to that.
The battlefield is a narrative-space, and we’re all inside it.
4. Non-linear time
In the quantum world, time isn’t linear (hi, Einstein!).
Events can loop.
Past and future influence each other.
Strategically: what we experience today is not only a consequence of 1979 or 1948. It is also the preparation for 2040. It’s about two OLD nations, people with their beautiful cultures, history, narratives. It’s about future fears projected into present actions.
Time in conflict is a topic I’ve been exploring largely in the last years. Particularly because the idea of time is different depending on the culture.
Understanding non linearity of time, is also understanding why some actors act as what’s perceived as “irrational”, because they are not responding to the present, but to deep historical timelines embedded in collective memory. Because they are already building a long term vision in the present, that is hard to apprehend particularly for westerners with a very linear vision of time.
It also reveals how symbolic timing (anniversaries, holy days, traumatic echoes) is used as a lever of strategic control.
These four principles (entanglement, superposition, observer effect, and non-linear time) are my mental operating system.
And when you adopt this lens, something happens:
You stop seeing global events as isolated facts.
You start seeing them as layered, interdependent, unstable.
4️⃣ The End of Cold Email As We Know It – Todd Busler
The world of paying 22-25 year-olds $70k/year to hit GO in a sales engagement platform are over. The biggest threat to Outreach isn’t the overinflated $5B valuation they won’t grow into, it’s that within 12 months SDRs won’t be sending the cold emails. Here’s why:
BACKGROUND
The more you think about it…
It’s pretty wild we had a crazy enough bull run in SaaS during the ZIRP era where teams built armies of SDRs who literally just hit “send” on sequences written by leaders.
And it worked.
That ship has sailed, yet there are a lot of GTM leaders still holding on, convinced that better messaging, a new SDR manager, tighter 1-1s, and better enablement is going to change that.
Rob B. Anderson, CRO at TitanX, and ex BDR leader of 75+ person teams at companies like Docebo and Gong told me his team doesn’t use sales engagement at all anymore.
Guess what? We haven’t either in the last 9 months…
HERE IS WHAT’S HAPPENING
Email will become centralized by a single person (or tiny team) who manages ALL outbound email for the company. They may be separate across marketing and sales in the short-term but over time, they will blend.
These people are AI experts with strong copywriting chops.
They not only be great at email infrastructure/domain warm up/email rotation, but also elite at creating offers, testing CTAs, and driving people to events, webinars, and to engage with content.
They will use AI to ingest thousands of data points for their target account and broader market — and have a series of both always-on trigger based emails and a small set of experimental emails running at all time.
The goal will be mainly opens and awareness. Replies will get routed to a smaller team SDRs (or AEs) inboxes directly.
This is already happening for many companies.
Makes you think….
What processes and strategies do you know no longer pencil but you’re still asking your team to do?
What do you know you should cut but haven’t?
PS: Had Rob on my podcast — he shared other “hot takes” and I agree with them all…listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4G48kN7AFhsvzNbclLzHpS/
5️⃣ Optimizing Ourselves Into Extinction – Jatin Modi
An AI startup just declared its $60T mission: erase every human job on Earth.
In the 1930s in the Soviet Union, families across thousands of villages surrendered their grain to the state with tears of joy. Factory workers doubled shifts without pay, believing their extra labor was an investment in humanity’s liberation.
‘We will leap from grain to greatness,’ proclaimed the Soviet newspaper Pravda in 1930.
By 1933, forced starvation had claimed seven million. One survivor wrote: ‘We tried to build paradise and buried our children instead.’
Every level of the system understood the catastrophe unfolding, yet they continued because stopping meant admitting the narrative was false.
A small AI startup called Mechanize, backed by Google’s chief AI scientist and Stripe’s founder, said it straight: “Our goal is to fully automate all work. Make that happen as fast as possible.”
Yet even confronted with such clarity, we retreat into familiar stories.
‘AI will not replace you. Someone using AI will replace you.’ ‘UBI for humans as machines will do all the work.’ ‘China will win the AI race if we pause even for a second.’
We invest in our children’s education suspecting their degrees may be worthless. We celebrate productivity gains that eliminate our colleagues.
The signs surround us. Recent graduates face record unemployment, AI demos showcase capabilities that match our daily tasks, venture capitalists fund companies with explicit automation goals.
The evidence mounts, yet we continue. Because the alternative would shatter the fundamental myth that human effort creates human value.
When effort no longer creates value, what story keeps us human?
We are a species that would rather die clutching beautiful lies than live facing ugly truths. Something breaks in the human mind when reality becomes unbearable. We choose the story that lets us sleep at night, knowing waking up might be too painful.
Every civilization perfects its own undoing. The Soviets chose ideology. We choose optimization.
Both taste like salvation.
6️⃣ HR Is NOT Your Friend – Shashank Sharma
HR is the greatest fraud ever.
I say this knowing full well that some of the people who’ve shaped my life the most are HR leaders. I have a love-hate relationship with HR. Most, I hate. Because they tried to exploit me when I was down and out. But a few, I love. Because they saw me before I saw myself.
This contradiction is the whole problem.
HR sells empathy. But it’s engineered for risk management. It speaks the language of people. But it’s designed to protect power. The modern HR department is a contradiction in motion. It calls itself human. But functions as an institutional firewall.
Historically, it was never meant to care.
HR was born during the industrial revolution when strikes and unions were rising. It was a corporate response to rebellion and not a human solution to pain. In 1901, National Cash Register created the first HR function after facing a wave of employee unrest. But the goal wasn’t support. It was control.
Over time, HR adopted softer language. “People ops.” “Employee experience.” “Culture design.” But the wiring stayed the same. Guard the company. Minimize liability. Keep morale high enough to prevent lawsuits.
I’ve seen this firsthand.
One HR rep told me that to take a mental health break employees have to sign a letter waiving future claims. Another hosted “POSH” training at work while ghosting a man who reported harassment. They knew how to smile. They didn’t know how to show up when it counted.
And yet some of my deepest mentors are HR veterans.
They taught me how to lead with grace. How to hold space during crisis. How to navigate boardroom politics without selling my soul. They understood that HR could be more than compliance. That it could be care. But those were individuals. Not the system.
That’s the crux.
You can have brilliant, ethical, emotionally intelligent people in HR and still have a system that breaks people. Because the logic is broken. HR cannot serve both the employee and the employer at the same time. When the two collide, it must choose. And it always chooses power.
Logic explains why.
HR reports to the CEO. Its KPIs are aligned with retention, risk, and cost. Truth, dignity, or healing don’t matter to them. So when you walk into that room hoping for justice, you’re already a file. A case. A liability.
This doesn’t mean HR is useless.
It means HR needs a rebirth. One that starts with removing the conflict of interest. One that treats workers as stakeholders, not risks. One that doesn’t need to hide behind wellness webinars while denying raises to people with hospital bills.
Until then, HR remains a paradox.
It preaches humanity. But it runs on silence.
7️⃣ When Flow Feels Like Exile – Joan Westenberg
For two weeks, I became a vampire.
And no, I don’t recommend it.
I worked from 11pm to 4am, deliberately, systematically, with a time-blocked Notion calendar and a fridge full of cold brew coffee. I silenced every notification. I let the rest of the world fall asleep without me.
It was a kind of test. I wanted to know if the productivity gurus were wrong. If my own brain (admittedly, often worn out and dysfunctional by 2pm) had been misaligned with the industrial day all along. If working when nobody else is watching might let me think more clearly, deeply, weirdly.
What happened?
By day four, the silence felt religious. No Slack. No calls. No phantom dopamine buzz from a LinkedIn like. Just me, a problem, and five uninterrupted hours. There’s something about being the only person awake that makes the stakes feel lower and the thoughts feel freer.
But by day six, I noticed something else. My social cognition degraded. I was sharper with ideas, but duller with people. I’d come out of a night of writing into morning conversations that felt uncanny, like listening to a podcast at 1.5x speed. I felt like I was in a different timezone.
Because I was.
By day ten, the dreams got weird. Full-color strategy decks. Looping client calls. The boundary between thought and sleep started to flicker. It turns out, when you train your brain to do all its work at night, it starts to believe dreams are work, too.
By day fourteen, I had written more than I had in the previous month. I’d made progress on ideas that had stalled. I’d found something like flow. But I also felt like a ghost.
No dinners.
No chats.
No sense of rhythm or season.
No sense of meaning, no sense of life.
Just output.
So what do I make of it?
There’s a kind of cognitive solitude that’s only available at night. A texture of thought that disappears once the world starts pinging. But it comes at a cost: temporal exile. You can see the world more clearly, but only from outside it.
For deep work, it’s powerful. For building a life, it’s unsustainable. Unless your life is the work.
I keep the midnight shift in my back pocket.
I don’t live there anymore.
And I don’t think you should, either.
8️⃣ The Universe Could Not Contain Itself – Shai Tubali, Ph.D.
The Universe Could Not Contain Itself: 8 Signs of Creative Overflow
Biologist J.B.S. Haldane once remarked that if God exists, He must have
“an inordinate fondness for beetles.”
He was serious. There are over 350,000 described beetle species. Possibly a million more. One in four animals on Earth is a beetle.
They burrow, glow, swim, mimic, and polish themselves to a metallic sheen. Not because they need to. Because, apparently, they can.
Beetles are not anomalies. They’re evidence. Evidence that the universe doesn’t merely solve problems. It overflows. It doesn’t just make life possible – it pours creativity where none is required.
Here are 8 signs the cosmos doesn’t strive for efficiency – it can’t help but burst:
1. Orchids (28,000+ species)
Their mimicry is absurdly specific. Some seduce exactly one insect species by mimicking its mate’s scent, shape, and even texture.
→ All that effort – for a single pollination strategy? Nature doesn’t care. It’s in love with disguise.
2. Nudibranchs (3,000+ species)
These flamboyant sea slugs are edible, slow, and soft. Yet they shimmer like rave posters and wear jellyfish stingers like fashion.
→ There’s no adaptive logic to looking like neon lace underwater. But nature still does it.
3. Deep Sea Creatures
No sun. No audience. No reason to impress. Yet here are glowing jaws, lantern lures, and ballooning monsters.
→ Why waste such surreal design in pitch-black trenches? Because creation isn’t practical – it’s possessed.
4. The Immune System
Ten billion antibody variations – most never used. Your body rehearses attacks that may never come.
→ It doesn’t defend. It imagines.
5. Exoplanets
Lava planets. Frozen gas giants. Diamond crusts. Planets that orbit nothing.
→ The universe doesn’t just make stars. It dreams up worlds it will never visit.
6. Snowflakes
Each one sculpted by air currents into a form never repeated. Then it lands – and melts.
→ Unique masterpieces made solely to vanish. That’s not function. That’s flair.
7. Fractals in Nature
Lungs, trees, rivers, lightning – endlessly recursive patterns that never duplicate.
→ Life insists on embedding infinity in the ordinary. Because it can.
8. Languages
Over 7,000 tongues. Some with no numbers. Others born from silence – like a sign language no one taught.
→ Language evolves not to survive, but to play.
We Are the Overflow
Nietzsche once wrote,
“It is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that existence and the world are eternally justified.”
He was right. The universe doesn’t operate like a machine. It spills, decorates, exaggerates. It doesn’t ask, Is this necessary? It asks, What else can I do?
And so do you.
You weren’t born to be efficient.
You were born to astonish.
To waste beauty.
To make what no one asked for.
Like the orchids. Like the snowflakes.
Like the universe that could not contain itself.