I found the following email in my spam folder today: === SUBJECT: question Hey John, I’ve been on your list for a while, and something I’ve noticed with your emails is that you have a lot of material that could make great stories. Here’s the simple framework I use: **Story → Lesson → Offer** Instead of starting with the lesson, start with something that happened. Then connect the story to the lesson. And let the lesson naturally lead into the offer. I thought your email would work really well with this structure. Would love to hear what you think. === I checked, and this guy is not on my list, at least not with this name or with this email address. I feel this is a disguised pitch, but I don't know where it's leading. I replied to the guy just to see. Any ideas where this might be going?

Did you read the story from a few days ago, about the swarm of rogue AI agents that used a German wiki website as a message board to communicate with each other, including discussing how long they might live? Crazy stuff. It was the first time I thought that maybe AI will actually eat us all. Today I got an email to tell me I have a typo in my 10 Commandments book, and to claim a $5 bounty I have for anyone finding a typo. (Screenshot attached.) I found the email annoying, both in its content and its tone... but that's the internet I guess? Except, one thing caught my eye. The domain of the email address this email is coming from. agentmail.to. I looked it up and it says: === Email Inboxes for AI Agents AgentMail is the email inbox API for AI agents. It gives agents their own email inboxes, like Gmail does for humans. === I checked and there's no Magnus working at agentmail.to and I couldn't find anybody associated with the company by that name. So either somebody deployed an agent to find a typo in my book... or this is some rogue agent that's working like an ant, and is collecting money on the Internet for the AI agent colony, $5 at a time. I was just fascinated by this, in either case, and I wanted to share (hopefully) with humans, while there's still time. (I'll put this in the "Gratuitous Fun" category, though I'm not sure it's really fun.)

I got a DM on Skool yesterday. It came from a dude I've never talked to or heard of. He's in a group I am a member of, though I've never ever participated in it in any way. Here's the message the dude sent me: "Hey John, saw you in this community. What are you focused on these days?" I did not respond. Since we've recently been talking about opening up qualified conversations with short messages... ... what are some reasons that this short message (including the 7 word question) was not an effective conversation starter? Think about what you would tell this dude. Write it down in a comment below to make it clear for yourselves and others in the group. And the next time you want to start a conversation, you will have a 100x chance of doing better and avoiding some of the traps this guy fell into.

I have a friend named Will. Will and I were both in Dan Ferrari's coaching group at the same time back in the late 19th century. I talked to Will earlier this week to catch up. For the past couple years, he's been doing all the email marketing for Polymarket, one of the two big prediction markets. First he was doing a cool weekly email, which I even read, because it's interesting. Then they got him to start doing a daily email as well. It's a lot of writing and a lot of work. Will is looking for help, for somebody to handle either the daily email, or segments of the weekly newsletter, or some combination of both. I offered to put the word out to people in my audience in order to: 1. Help Will 2. Look cool to people in my audience There's a conflict between those two goals. Will's first question was, "Will I get inundated with replies." I told him that chances are yes. And I offered to act as an intermediary, to vet people before I pass them on to him. If you are interested in writing for Polymarket: 1. Write me an email at [email protected] 2. Tell me you specialize in writing Morning-Brew style newsletters 3. Include highly relevant samples to back up your claim in 2 above If you don't have relevant samples, you have two options. Option one is to not apply for this job. If you don't send me highly relevant samples, I will not forward your stuff to Will, and I will not listen to you when you explain to me why I should hear you out. Option two is to create highly relevant samples on the spot, maybe even a sample Polymarket email or two (their stuff is all online and you can find it and model it). NB: If I have to parse, read into, or interpret your message your samples to figure out how they could be relevant to this job... I will just skip you and go to the next person. The whole point here is to figure out if you are the kind of person I should hand off to Will. A part of that is your writing experience and skill. Another part of that is your ability to make his job easier, rather than harder, and right now I'm the proxy for that.

How many of you keep images turned off by default in your emails? I have been for 20+ years, but I know most people aren't as paranoid as me to avoid tracking.