For about ten minutes this morning, I thought I'd figured out money.
Here's what happened. I read that a startup called Span, backed by Nvidia, built a little data center you can put in your backyard. Plug and play. Sixteen of the fancy GPUs in a box dressed up to look like an air conditioner. You give it power and Wi-Fi, it crunches AI stuff for the big companies, and they pay you. Around $1,000 a month. For basically nothing.
A thousand dollars. A month. For hosting a humming box.
Bro, I stood up.
This was it. My way out. Passive income. I was finally going to be one of those people the money "works for."
Then I remembered I rent.
I do not have a backyard. I have a windowsill, and it is already at capacity, holding one plant that is staying alive purely out of spite.
I once asked my landlord if I could put up a shelf. He has not responded. That was March. I don't think the backyard AI air conditioner is in the cards for me.
So I made no money. I just stood in my kitchen for a minute, quietly rich in my imagination, and then sat back down.
Which would've been fine, except then I read the other money story of the day, and it hurt me a little.
Some company, which has very wisely declined to tell anyone its name, gave every employee unlimited access to Claude. No limits. No spending cap. Just go nuts, everybody.
The bill came back at $500 MILLION.
In one month.
I have a spending cap on myself. I watch my usage like a heart monitor. I have closed a tab mid-thought because I could feel it getting expensive. And somewhere out there is a company that lit half a billion dollars on fire because nobody thought to check.
Some of them were apparently leaving the AI running all night, doing nothing, just to win some internal usage leaderboard. Burning money to look busy.
The robots aren't taking the jobs. They're taking the expense reports.
Hang on, I need to water this plant.
...
Okay. It looked at me. We're good.
And the spending just keeps going. TikTok's parent company casually announced $70 billion into AI this year. With a B. TikTok. The app I open to feel nothing for two hours at a time.
So here's where I landed today.
I'm not getting the backyard box. I'm not spending half a billion dollars. I am not TikTok.
I've got a windowsill, a spite plant, and a newsletter.
And you, reading it, for free, which is the only line on my entire balance sheet that has ever made any sense.
See you tomorrow.
-Melly