AM / FM

AM vs FM — and no, not the radio. This is about something else. It’s a lens I’ve been using to evaluate the stuff people try to sell me, especially in design and engineering: is this Actual Machines (AM), or is it Fucking Magic (FM)?

It’s way easier to sell fucking magic.

Take the Boring Company’s tunnels in Las Vegas. Single-lane car tubes underground. The pitch is it will revolutionize transit, solve traffic, save the city. But really, it’s just cars… on roads…in a tunnel. It’s not a solution — it’s repackaging. That’s FM. Fucking Magic. It sparkles. It distracts. But when you look under the hood, there’s just a regular-ass car in a hole.

Compare that to something like public transit. Buses. Trains. Bike infrastructure. Super unsexy. These are Actual Machines (AM). They’re constrained by gravity, cost, maintenance, and political will. They have trade-offs. But they work. They scale. You can run the numbers. There’s no miracle needed.

That’s what I mean by AM vs. FM. Once you start thinking this way, you can’t unsee it.

The AM vs. FM lens is a tool. It helps me step back when I see something shiny and ask: is this a machine with real inputs and outputs, or is someone selling me magic beans?

The truth is FM is fun. FM gets headlines. FM wins pitch decks. But AM is what makes the world run. If you’re designing something — a product, a system, a city — you better know which one you’re building. Or worse, which one are you buying?