The Dann Chronicles: August 🥽

My new favorite digital disposible camera, Holiday's birthday tips, AI chatbot horrors, the truth behind kids' smart phone use, and a fun silly iOS app

Aug 18, 2025

August 2025

Hey all,

One week from today, I'll be spending my first full day in Black Rock City. We'll be out there for a full week, catching our bus from Burning Man to Reno the following Monday.

I think I'm about as prepared as I can be. I've chatted with several people who attended previous burns (some of whom I'm camping with this year) and gotten as much advice as I can get. I've read articles and threads of tips, and purchased dozens of items. I have food, water, dust protection, a bike, and a solid tent situation.

I imagine I'm overprepared and half the items I have won't get touched. That's better than the alternative. And with events like these, anticipation and planning are part of the experience. I've become better at recognizing that as I've grown older.

Wish me luck out there in the desert. I'll see you next month when I'll be back with a fun announcement related to the upcoming fifth anniversary of this newsletter.

-Dann

🎞️ Ready, set, shoot

Burning Man is next week, and one of the things I’m most excited about is going the entire trip without touching my phone. It's such a nice feeling to be completely untethered for extended periods of time.

But no phone also means no camera, especially since I'm leaving my nice camera at home, safe from the playa dust.

I toyed with the idea of bringing a disposable camera (which are super expensive these days, by the way) when I discovered something even cooler: digital disposable cameras.

After a bit of research, and hemming and hawing for a couple of weeks, I ended up purchasing the DigiFilm Camera. It looks and feels like an old disposable camera but takes 8-megapixel digital photographs instead. There's no display, so you can't see the pictures after you take them. There's an analog dial that lets you cycle between different filters.

The camera arrived this month, and I like it even more than I thought I would. The feel of the camera in my hand is exactly like the disposable cameras of old, and the photographs look eerily similar, too (odd framing, the occasional finger in frame).

It's funny how minor changes (like removing the screen) can intrinsically change the experience of using a product. There are mobile apps (like Dispo) that mimic disposable cameras by removing the photo preview, adding retro filters, and making you wait to see the photos. But these apps still feel like using your phone.

This camera is different. It actually feels like I'm holding a true disposable camera from my youth, minus the limited photo capacity and development costs.

Plus, the price of the DigiFilm camera is approximately the same as buying and developing two disposable cameras (did I mention how expensive true disposable cameras are these days?).

I'm excited to have a new toy for the playa and after!

✍️ We're going on a Holiday...

Ryan Holiday is an interesting person. He's a prolific writer and possibly the most voracious reader I know about. He's also the de facto modern Stoicism expert who has single-handedly made this ancient philosophy trendy among tech bros.

I wouldn't call myself a fan of his, necessarily, but I do like the way he thinks and check in on what he's up to every so often. Each year, on his birthday, he publishes a list of "lessons" he's learned throughout his life. He recently turned 38, and so has 38 new lessons to share.

This one stood out to me:

Most labels are unhelpful, too—filmmaker, writer, investor, entrepreneur, executive. These are nouns. But what gets someone to that position? Verbs. Forget the nouns. Focus on the verbs.

I enjoy reading these yearly posts, especially since we're roughly the same age (although he's slightly younger and waymore accomplished than me). Still, I always feel like I can relate to the lessons he shares each year because we're at a similar stage in life.

🧠 My own private truth

We're on the cusp of a novel mental health crisis: AI-induced delusions. People with no previous history of mental illness are regularly experiencing breaks with reality thanks to sycophantic AI chatbots.

Again, I'm not talking about people currently experiencing an episode made worse by AI, although that will continue to be a big problem, too. Instead, we'll see more and more people struggling with reality due solely to their interactions with AI.

This month, while we marched in lockstep with the AI 2027 doomsday scenario thanks to the release of OpenAI's new GPT-5, there were two major stories that highlighted this oncoming crisis.

First is the story of Allan Brooks, a corporate recruiter who became convinced he was a real-life superhero. The New York Times obtained a copy of the full chat transcripts, and their analysis (gift article) makes me think this situation is going to be extremely common from this moment onward.

The second story follows Kendra Hilty and may already be on your radar, as she went super viral this month. Hilty tells a story—across dozens of TikToks—about falling in love with her therapist and her delusions related to his feelings toward her. It's a wild and enthralling story (primed for virality) that's also super sad and not worth covering in detail here. The one relevant detail, however, is her use of ChatGPT (which she's nicknamed “Henry”) to further her delusion.

I think COVID and our current political climate have shattered the perception that "truth" is universal—each individual has their own truths, and these truths can be miles apart from each other. Adding a sycophantic AI chatbot to the mix makes it even easier to slip down a rabbit hole of unreality.

📞 Freedom phones for kids

As a kid in the ’90s, I had lots of unstructured play time with my peers. We'd sneak into construction sites for new houses being built in our neighborhood, steal wood, and build ramps to jump on our bikes. We'd explore the desert expanse just beyond our Arizona backyards. We'd get dropped off at the mall with a $10 bill and somehow fill hours exploring and socializing.

Childhood today is very different. Parents fear abduction and injury so much that unstructured play is effectively nonexistent. All that time is now both supervised and planned.

The Atlantic posits an interesting hypothesis: perhaps kids' addiction to smartphones is less about evil developers programming addictive apps and more about wanting to recreate the unstructured play that no longer exists for this generation:

Children want to meet up in person, no screens or supervision. But because so many parents restrict their ability to socialize in the real world on their own, kids resort to the one thing that allows them to hang out with no adults hovering: their phones.

Thinking back to my own childhood, I fought for as much unsupervised, unstructured time as possible. If I were a kid today, that's exactly how I'd use my devices.

📼 Be kind, rewind

It's silly to look out at a crowd watching fireworks and see all the lit-up phones recording the show. "When are they ever going to watch this again?" you might think.

In fact, if you're anything like me, you probably have dozens of short videos you've recorded with your smartphone that you never watch again.

I'm always trying to figure out how best to use the content and information that I capture. It's so easy to take a quick note, snap a photo, or film a video. It's much harder to recall that content in a meaningful way in the future.

That's why I'm enjoying the new iOS app Cassette. It has a fun retro feel (putting VHS tapes into a player) but doesn't apply a filter or anything. It's more about the joy of rediscovery.

I found it through John Gruber, who has a playful description of the app:

Cassette’s tape-playing pastiche is more about putting you in the right mindset...The way I’d pitch it is that Cassette is to the videos in your Photos library what the Kodak Carousel was to your 35mm film slides back in the 1960s.

It's not useful, per se, but it's fun. Playing around with the app for 30 minutes brought up tons of videos I had totally forgotten I'd taken. Sure, I could have just browsed my photo library, but that's just not a habit I have. Plus, Cassette tickles that nostalgia itch so well.

End note

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Also, if you find anything interesting, send it my way.

The Dann Chronicles