Just Thoughts #44: What Snoopy Said, What AI Does, and Why I’m Suddenly Thinking About the Pope in a Techno Club
Lately, I’ve been thinking in fractions. Scrolls, swipes, snippets. So here’s a blog post made from just that. Fractions.
Welcome reader! Just Thoughts is for modern-day leaders who want to think better about business, leadership, and entrepreneurship. This article's Content is partially AI-generated, notes and links to content given to ChatGPT for writing out in Just Thoughts style. Edited and re-edited to get the right style, as AI still uses words you wouldn’t, so you edit, making sure you’ve internalized every sentence.
The First Rule of Just Thoughts: Why do I think this way?
That’s the first rule of navigating a world drowning in content.
Don’t just react. Reflect.
Turn confusion into curiosity. Perplexity is a feature, not a bug. Pun intended.
Snoopy once said, “You only die once, but you live every day.”
It’s a line that hits harder than most inspirational posters. Because most days, living doesn’t feel like a dramatic montage. It feels like Discord moderators, broken movie algorithms, weird Instagram reels, and occasionally remembering David Attenborough is still alive (bless him).
Lately, I’ve been thinking in fractions. Scrolls, swipes, snippets.
So here’s a blog post made from just that. Fractions.
Welcome to my mental soup.
Headlines This Week:
Should Tesi Exist? Or are we just a wanna be Norway?
Using GenAI to Cut Through Team Confusion
“Learn My Language” — Not just the syntax
AI Video Tools - a current shortlist.
“Don’t Give a F*ck”— Until You Finally Do
The Pope in Techno
David Attenborough Is Still Alive. Why That Matters.
Small Talk Is a Big Deal
The First Rule of “Just Thoughts”
West Coast OG’s - competing for dominance
Final Thought: Discord Mods and Cakewalk
1. Should Tesi Exist? Or Are We Just a wanna be Norway?
Tesi. The national investment vehicle. Finland’s attempt at a sovereign wealth fund, or… cosplay as Norway?
I had a sharp take on this in Just Thoughts Podcast #4:
Based on a recent strategy draft, TESI would double its investment resources to over 2 billion, assets that tower over all local funds combined—the implications the startup ministers discuss in the episode linked above. To summarize their thoughts, they see it as a positive development, with the most significant risk being that investment becomes political without a clear strategy. With strategy, they mean the way France is investing in AI, but more than that, they think the best companies should “win” and be backed by TESi after they’ve proven their worth.
But as with all “just thoughts,” I try to follow the rule:
“Why should I think that way?”
Lately, after talking with quite a few investors, I’m starting to question the whole model.
Here’s the thing:
Should we really concentrate that much investment power into a single central entity? Especially when grassroots startup activity in Finland is barely crawling, and what we really need are bold new entrants building actual, functioning workplaces?
There’s no universe where Tesi can cover the full spectrum of industries, business models, and weird-but-possibly-genius founders the way individual investors can. People invest in what they understand, what they care about. Central planning doesn’t scale empathy, risk appetite, or insight.
So maybe it’s time for a different question:
Would we be better off giving that tax money back to the people?
Let the professionals, yes, even the wealthy ones, deploy capital into the ventures they believe in.
With the right incentives, it could drive more local investment, boost spending, and ultimately generate higher tax returns.
More dynamism. More distributed decision-making.
Less trying to be a fund-of-everything, and more enabling the ecosystem to grow in a thousand directions at once.
Just a thought.
But worth asking:
What if the best way to invest in Finland… is to stop trying to do it all from one place?
And more specifically, not just through a myriad of VC vehicles, but also from single individuals above to deploy capital.
2. Using GenAI to Cut Through Team Confusion
When you’re a team of five, things get messy.
Ownership blurs. Roles overlap. Everyone’s doing a bit of everything, and nobody’s quite sure who’s actually in charge of what.
So, we ran a little exercise. Low-tech first, high-tech later.
Each person filled out this beautifully chaotic matrix:
• Shit I know that I own
• Shit I don’t own, but know
• Shit I own, but don’t know
• Shit I don’t own, don’t know, but someone needs to do
We added a column to guess at other people’s areas of responsibility and define our own role. Everyone did it separately, solo. I filled mine out before seeing anyone else’s answers.
Then came the AI part.
I dumped all the inputs into a GenAI tool and had it spit out a RACI matrix:
Who’s Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for what.
The AI flagged overlaps, gaps, and “uhhh… no one owns this” situations.
Then we went through the outputs and made sure each area had one person accountable. Not a vague “we’re all kind of responsible” thing. Except for team culture, recruiting, and user discovery calls. Those are everyone’s jobs.
Honestly? One of the most effective things we’ve done.
Turns out, sometimes clarity starts with a little chaos—and a large language model.
3. “Learn My Language” — Not just the syntax
A post that made me think, “Learn my language.” Not just the syntax. Learn the nuance, the rhythm, the untranslatable bits. Every language has those one-word phrases used in many different ways:
4. AI Video Tools - a current shortlist.
As AI tools explode across the movie industry, we’re starting to ask: Who owns the story? Who speaks the language of art now? Is it the creator or the algorithm? Now these tools are redefining how movies are made. Prompted, not written. Synthesized, not shot.
AI is generating scripts, actors, and even voices. Yet many are still asking the movie industry for permission on what can be automated, and what cannot.
We should be asking: if the tools are open, why aren’t the doors? Who owns the means of imagination now? The algorithm, those who know how to wield it, or those who don’t want to touch it? As creators, we should be asking ourselves, are we sure we can tell the best version of our stories with these tools?
5. “Don’t Give a F*ck”— Until You Finally Do
Scrolling reels, we’re told not to care.
Don’t give a fck.*
Be unbothered. Be free. Like this guy.
But eventually, there’s one thing, one person, one weird little hill you do want to die on.
And suddenly, you care. Deeply.
You found your fuck to give.
And it feels like hope.
My weird little hill is the one where creative writers still live. Still matter. Because they craft the stories that last for lifetimes, and keep the humane in humanity.
6. The Pope in Techno
A new pope was elected, and I was looking for angles to approach the topic, other than that he’s from Chicago,
Perplexity gave me a long list of boring angles that sounded like news, but then I saw this post and said to myself, ”That’s the angle.”
However, the future pope will be a techno DJ like this one:
And it will make more sense than you’d expect. Because if you squint hard enough, the old rituals and new hype cycles start to blur.
There’s a religion to tech. There’s a reverence. And the Pope raving in a bass-heavy remix just… makes sense.
7. David Attenborough Is Still Alive. Why That Matters.
In a world where everyone’s getting replaced by AI, by TikTok stars, by whatever the next shiny app is—it’s comforting that some voices still whisper calmly over chaotic nature clips.
Attenborough is still here.
Still narrating.
Still making sense of things.
That matters.
8. Small Talk Is a Big Deal
We underrate small talk. The little how-are-yous, the nods, the shared glances over broken coffee machines.
But small talk is the glue.
It’s not filler. It’s connection.
Even AI hasn’t figured that one out yet, or has it?
Nonetheless, for someone who loves the big talk, you tend to forget small talk is ”the grease,” as Simon puts it.
9. Love Is Hope
Amidst all of this—AI, memes, techno popes, and nihilist reels—love remains the most radical act.
Not algorithmic love. Not swipe-right love.
Actual, hopeful, inconvenient, surprising love.
It’s the one thing AI can’t fully fake, or can it?
And it’s the one thing that keeps us human, or is it?
That’s the discussion we should be having.
10. West Coast OG’s
Xzibit made a Spotify countdown 40+ days before the release of his new album,
Snoop came in unannounced and made a countdown 8 hours before releasing his new album, two days before Xzibit. Artists usually release on a Friday, Snoop didn’t wait.
Show off. The cool thing, though? Old timers dropping wisdom like they started their career yesterday, but they’ve been around long enough to have seen cassettes, CDs, MP3 players, Napster, LimeWire, and their own hairstyles go in and out of fashion. At this point, their discographies have more lives than a Nokia phone battery.
Final Thought: Discord Mods and Cakewalk
There’s a Discord MCP you could leverage as a moderation tool, keeping things semi-sane in chaotic servers.
There’s a platform called Cakewalk that’s turning creative AI agent confusion into something delightful. How? I’ve yet to figure that out.
TL;DR:
Life is weird. AI is weirder.
But Snoopy’s still right. You do live every day.
So say something. Love something. Click less. Connect more.
Or just send this blog to your group chat and say:
“what the actual f*ck.”
Because that’s valid too.
You can find me on LinkedIn, Threads, YouTube, and X @DolencNicolas. Please send me a note when you want to connect! I also have accounts on Facebook and Instagram, and I am more active on the latter than the former.
Until next time! I hope to keep up the monthly cadence. Subscribe so you do not miss exclusive notes in the email headers, nor will you miss a beat from Just Thoughts!