The last human skill
Hey—it’s Matt.
I’ve been thinking about and talking to several people about the idea that taste might be one of the few things AI can’t replicate yet.
Not the surface stuff—like knowing which fonts look good together—but the deeper editorial judgment about what matters and what doesn’t.
This week’s lead article digs into this really thoughtfully. Worth reading if this question has been nagging at you, too.
Enjoy issue #122.
MOST INTERESTING
Taste
This essay argues that taste is humanity’s last competitive edge over AI—not just aesthetic preference, but the regularization function that drives cultural distillation and governance. It’s the invisible force that expands creative fields beyond what’s measurable or optimizable. Makes you reconsider every design decision as an act of curation rather than problem-solving.
SIGNAL > NOISE
The Last Days Of Social Media
Mass platforms are drowning in AI slop while users retreat to smaller, intentional spaces. The shift toward friction-based, community-governed alternatives feels inevitable when engagement algorithms optimize for everything except human connection.
Design for AI – the Invisible Features
The best AI features work like Gmail’s spam filter—completely invisible until they gracefully fail. This piece makes the case that announcing your AI capabilities is usually a sign you haven’t integrated them properly yet.
BUILDING BLOCKS
A terminal command that tells you if your USB-C cable is bad
Someone built this Go-based CLI tool in 10 minutes using AI to parse macOS system logs and identify slow cables instantly. Perfect example of how vibe-coding removes friction from utility scripts that would have taken hours to research and build manually.
Convierto: Native macOS file converter
SwiftUI-built converter that handles everything from PDFs to videos with smart format detection and batch processing. Sometimes you just want a tool that works like it belongs on your system instead of feeling like a web app pretending to be native.
DEEP CUTS
Apple has a private CSS property to add Liquid Glass effects
Apple’s hidden -apple-visual-effect CSS property suggests they’re using webviews more seamlessly than we realize. The line between native and web keeps blurring when the platform controls both sides.
Liquid Glass in the Browser: Refraction with CSS and SVG
Speaking of glass effects—here’s how to recreate Apple’s Liquid Glass using SVG displacement maps and Snell’s law physics. Chrome-only for now, but shows a path toward web-based glass refraction that doesn’t require private APIs.
World Illustration Awards 2025 winners
4,700+ entries from 85 countries, with Chu-Chieh Lee’s mixed-media film taking the overall win. Worth browsing for the range—from playful packaging to identity work that reminds you illustration is still expanding what visual storytelling can be.
CLOSING THOUGHT
My takeaways from this week’s content: Invisible beats flashy. Utility beats perfection. Knowing what to build beats knowing how to build it.
Stay sharp, stay building, and I’ll see you next week.
Matt Downey
digitalnative.news • 𝕏 • Threads
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MY STACK
These are the tools that help me run my business every day. I happily pay for each of them—they’re worth every penny. I hope you find them useful, too.
- Beehiiv → How I send this newsletter. 10/10 would recommend.
- Brain.fm → How I kickstart my productivity and find flow-state.
- Mercury → The best business banking I’ve ever used.
- Flow → Voice dictation that’s 4x faster than typing.
- Screen Studio → How I record engaging videos.
- Typefully → How I post content to my socials.
- Kick → My bookkeeping on auto-pilot.