Friday: Three Morning Takes
what if marriage counseling worked tho / alexa, make me rich / kick some shiny, metal ass
PW Daily
Oct 9, 2026
What if marriage counseling worked tho
In a clip that went viral this week, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey was asked (at Moonshots Live 2026 last month) what he would do if he had to start over, today. “I’d end the tragedy of divorce with oxytocin doping for marriage counseling,” he replied. The audience laughed, assuming he was joking. (He was not joking: “We understand mammal pair-bonding pretty well.”) On X, people are pointing out that Palmer is essentially describing a hug, or dancing at a concert on molly, or sex, or any number of natural oxytocin-releasing activities that luckily don’t require the involvement of venture capitalists. HOWEVER. If any of the Technologists in Charge want to nurture intimacy, rather than destroy it with businesses that literally incentivize the decay of human relationships, they have my ardent support. And jfyi, per Palmer: “You can go buy a kilogram of oxytocin on Sigma Aldrich Chemical Supply right now, and if you do that, maybe you won’t die alone.”
Alexa, make me rich
Wednesday, in the latest installment of a new show we’re calling Tech CEOs Please Think Before You Speak on Live TV, Jeff Bezos doubled down on his prediction that AI would create a labor shortage in an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier. While a majority of Americans worry about AI-induced unemployment, Bezos says future households will only need one income-earner working 3 days a week, thanks to AI “productivity” — which is, coincidentally, also the reason white-collar yuppies think they’re going to lose their jobs. Obviously, the potential for mass labor market disruption is more immediate than Bezos’ future world of abundance, and Amazon itself fired 30,000 corporate workers over the last year. Bezos’ vision is more appealing than the leading alternative AI future (death), but while we wait 5-10 years to see whether he’s right… can Alexa at least make me money rather than spending it all during “Prime Day”? (Okay that might be my fault…)
Kick some shiny, metal ass
Thursday, The New York Times reported that Robot Entertainment Kombat (REK), a “humanoid robot fighting league,” was sent a cease-and-desist from the California State Athletic Commission after hosting unsanctioned boxing matches between men and the terminator (a tele-operated Chinese robot). Video of one fight went viral, showing a six-foot steel gladiator trading some tough blows with influencer Frankie LaPenna. But this is a sports story, so don’t you dare count out the underdog! Despite California’s move to shut down one of the coolest things that’s ever happened in California… REK’s CEO notes that the state defines “matches” as occurring between “two persons” — and after some fact checking, we here at Pirate Wires can definitively state: robots are not people. Looks like man v. metal combat is legal (for now), and humans will continue risking their lives for glory and chicks. And guess what? That influencer won two of three robo-fights. Dude’s got balls of steel.
