A completely serious retrospective on everything that's happened since last Thursday

[Tel75]

In the grand sweep of technological history, few periods have been as transformative as the four days since last Thursday. Historians will surely look back on this era, and by era we mean roughly ninety six hours, as a genuine turning point, or at the very least, a period during which several push notifications were received and at least one of them was actually read.

Thursday itself began, as these things often do. With someone somewhere announcing a new AI model that was faster, cheaper, and more capable than whatever came out the previous Tuesday, prompting the usual cycle of benchmark screenshots, cautiously optimistic takes, and someone in the replies insisting it changes nothing.

By Friday, at least one previously confident prediction had already aged badly enough to become a screenshot itself, joining the proud and ever growing tradition of hot takes that did not survive contact with the following weekend. Saturday and Sunday passed in the traditional manner, largely uneventful except for the deeply held belief among several people that they would definitely catch up on notifications first thing Monday.

Monday brought the inevitable return of actual news, several launches, at least one earnings call, and a general sense that the brief weekend ceasefire on developments was officially over. By Wednesday, genuine historians, or at least people who read a lot of headlines, generally agree that enough had happened to make Thursday's events already feel like ancient history.

So here we are, four days later. Surveying the wreckage and triumph of this brief but apparently consequential stretch of time, and can say with total confidence that whatever happens next will almost certainly also feel like it happened extremely fast, because at this point that is simply the actual pace everything seems to move at now