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Judge for yourself.

Just watched a team gather Scope 3 data for eighteen months. Today, they lost it all at review.

Sustainability execs love “audit-grade,” ESG data.

Let’s talk about what that actually costs, because nobody does that part.

I’ve sat in enough rooms to see the pattern. A team sees the promise of Scope 3 data—the faster green certifications, the stronger stakeholder trust, and the evidence that scales across the product lifecycle—and goes all in on it.

Then, reality hits. The data’s fragmented, linkage is messy, and it turns out ESG data is available, but not entirely defensible. That’s a much higher bar to clear.

So here goes, because I have a question I can’t shake. Maybe one of you can answer it.

Are we building evidence, or just collecting data without a plan and hoping it holds up down the road?

Those aren’t the same thing.

Collecting data is easy. Every supplier can hand you numbers. But evidence that an Independent Auditor will stand behind requires intent from day one, and that’s not always as accessible.

But I think I have the answer. Reverse the engine. Most teams ask their suppliers for carbon data, take all the data and numbers, and give it to an Independent Auditor. That’s a trap. Your methodology matters just as much as your numbers.

Before you build a single spreadsheet, pull your audit team into the room, figure out your emission boundary lines and data proxies, and do this on Day 1. If the auditor doesn’t sign off on this framework in month one, don’t move on to collecting data until you fix the framework.

This happens when you ask your team the hard questions early, and actually answer them:

What are you trying to prove? To whom? Against what standard?

If you can’t answer these questions before you collect a single data point—and I mean at the very start, not somewhere down the road—you can collect as much Scope 3 data as you want. It won’t save you at review.

Have you ever seen an ESG audit fall apart at the finish line? How would you have solved it?

Dealing with diabetes takes precious hours away from millions, which is why real health doesn’t start with medical advancements—it starts with ease of use.

Your health and lifestyle should go hand-in-hand, so you can afford to hang out with friends, further your education, and build your career.

That’s why MyCompany has launched a next-gen, closed-loop insulin delivery system that integrates continuous glucose monitoring with an automated infusion set for Type 1 patients.

Congratulations to our Diabetes business—who spent countless hours ensuring this new Diabetes Technology would gain FDA clearance and improving our interstitial glucose sensing systems to expand the Automated Insulin Delivery that MyCompany offers.

This technology will elevate the lives of patients with diabetes every day—allowing them to be bolder, more resilient, and feel more empowered in their choices and everyday ambitions.

I’m proud of how energized our teams around the world have proven they are: their resilience, innovation, and dedication are unmatched; and above all, they are focused on our Mission.

Grateful to Dr. John Doe for relentless efforts in bringing our Mission to a new light this quarter, and to Dr. Jane Doe and Mr. John Smith, who will be hosting our upcoming panel on this new technology. #MyCompanyStrong

USERS KEEP BUYING MY BROKEN AI TOOL. I HAVE NO IDEA WHY. I’m shipping an AI-powered MyProduct. I bootstrapped MyProduct from the ground up.

To set the stage:

It uses literally zero manual spreadsheets Gives users unlimited queries for $28/month It’s in beta. I ONLY SHIPPED TO USERS ON MY WAITLIST.

I kept it private for a reason. The first day it goes live, I get complaints from everyone.

It’s buggy as hell.

I’m freaking TF out. I’m ruined. Well, I look at the dashboard, and I don’t believe it. 3,560 user-hours and usage is up 40% in the last 12 hours.

Everybody was putting in record hours using it. Even WITH all the bugs.

Well, I HAD to find out why. I kid you not, the DM was a total disaster…

Me: So why are you still using MyProduct?

Customer: IDK. It’s buggy as hell.

Me: Okay…so why?

Customer: Well… Your setup is easy, and coverage is INCREDIBLE. Even beats on-market tools.

Me: Don’t the bugs make it not worth it?

Customer: I spent $997 on Apollo last month. If I buy MyProduct for a YEAR it’ll be like $300.

Me: Okay, cool.

=======

[I immediately call my CTO and freak out]

Me: DUDE. WTF. These people love MyProduct even though it’s buggy AF.

CTO: Well no shit, we didn’t push the latest update. I had it scheduled for this afternoon.

Me: …

=======

I couldn’t believe it.

AM I A SCUMBAG FOR NOT PUSHING THAT UPDATE SOONER???

Still…NOBODY cancelled or asked for a refund.

And over 3,500 people have signed up for the MyProduct Beta.

You can get unlimited, 100% verified contact data for $28/month. And I’m shipping the update without bugs.

Join here: [URL]

Beta starts soon.

Robert Harrian leaned against the old wooden bar. It’d been polished clean by the thousands before him who nursed their whiskey in the exact place he nursed his now. The cigarette between his fingers smoldered to embers, ashes falling silently to the wood below. Just another thing left forgotten. The clock ticked. Zero three fifteen hours.

“Another one, Rob?”

“Nah, no need,” Harrian said, and pushed his drink back toward the bartender. “Night, Zot.”

“See you again tomorrow, Rob.” The machine behind the counter buzzed slightly as its voice modulators adjusted, then it scooted away to serve another customer drinking to forget their memories.

Harrian stepped out into the night air. The sky above was brutal, painted red—the same color it’d been that morning. It was a sign of the dying sun that hung above Earth 1-3. Not that it mattered, he thought, pulling the brim of his hat low over his eyes, adjusting the gear on his shoulder, and stamping the cigarette—remembered, finally, by him at least—into the ground with the heel of his shoe.

It was finished. Old. Useless.

Hell—he’d die from lack of work years before the planetary migration took place, and the tickets needed to be secured.

He walked along, kicking up dust from the cobbled streets, purposefully making his steps louder than usual. Let someone try to stop him.

A voice behind him made him freeze.

“Fuck. That you, Rob?”

He spun around, finger pointed at her chest like the barrel of a gun—then relaxed a moment later, almost sheepishly.

“Shit. Mariah, don’t sneak up on me like that. Coulda killed you.”

“Been years,” Mariah said. She stood barely a foot from him, her auburn hair glinting in the reddening night sky. Her eyebrows were raised slightly, her crimson lips parted as if startled by his reaction.

But she wasn’t scared. Never scared.

I bend down and peer under the bed. I’m careful to make sure that when I lift the bedding—tucked neatly into the frame like it was this morning—I put it back exactly where it was. My hands are trembling.

It isn’t there. Of course it isn’t.

I know where it is.

My hands shake faster as I straighten and glance toward the radiator—my heart beats hard enough to feel painful, because I can’t look in enough wrong places to convince myself I’m innocent. I know I shouldn’t be in here. If Harry finds me in Marcus’ room, I’ll have to lie. But after what I saw yesterday, I can’t just pretend like this is normal any longer.

Yesterday afternoon, I brought up his laundry and opened the door without knocking. Harry always tells me to knock. But I didn’t, and maybe I was quiet enough when I froze, because I saw him standing there. Just smoothly standing up like he was my age. The moment I shifted and my feet creaked against the floorboards, he dropped back into the wheelchair, slumped his shoulders, and started drooling again.

The dementia, the wheelchair—it’s all a lie.

But that’s not why I’m kneeling in front of the radiator, now, my knee aching from where I slipped on the ice last Tuesday, scraping my fingernails against the baseboard until I feel it.

I’m searching because when he was standing, I saw him slip something behind it.

My nails scrape leather.

My mouth is dry. I fumble with it for a second—it’s heavy, thick—and pull it free. I look at the door behind me. I didn’t lock it. If I locked it, Harry would be suspicious if he found me in his father’s room. But there are no sounds. No feet on the stairs, and no creak of the floorboards in the upstairs hallway.

I turn back to the book—or journal, whatever the hell it is—lick a finger, and flip it open. The pages smell fresh. They’re not dusty at all. I read the first line in a whisper:

“Left house at 9:15. Slipped on ice near the mailbox. Knee vulnerable.”

I rub my aching knee, less aware of the pain than I am afraid. Did Marcus write this? I read further, and it’s more of the same—a log, meticulously recorded by the hour, of what I do every day. I stand, still holding the journal, and brush the heavy curtains aside, peeking out. The Maine snow has fallen heavy and wet on the ice and trees. Our driveway stretches nearly half a mile from the house. But Harry isn’t home from work yet.

And Marcus is downstairs.

Thank God.

I flip another page. I nearly drop the book.

“Distracted her. Marcus mixed the sleeping pills into her drink,” I read. “She took them at 10:30. Unconscious by 11.”

But the handwriting has changed. I read it again. And again.

There’s no mistaking it. The cursive M. The sharp cross of the lowercase T. I know this handwriting. I almost don’t want to believe it, but each time I read the entry, I know it’s the same handwriting that I treasured for years—the same handwriting on every birthday card, every Valentine’s Day gift that I’ve ever gotten. The handwriting on this page is my husband’s.

“Harry…what the fuck…” I whisper.

I flip to the next page.

I don’t have time to read the words before I hear the creak of a floorboard in the hallway.

My head whips around in panic, and I nearly fall as I stumble to my feet.

There’s a shadow of a man—I see it through the crack.

The brass doorknob starts to turn.

It floated above him in the sky like a cube-shaped will-o’-the-wisp.

A black dot adorned each side of the cube, entirely matte and a stark contrast to the glowing, blue-green cube itself. The light from the cube would have been enough to see several yards at night, and yet it proved to be entirely useless now. With the sun shining as brightly as it did, the cube’s light did not affect the burning sand it hovered above. The sand itself was hot—burning and hissing, steam emitting from between each grain and spindling upward like thread and needle. In the distance—hazy from the steam—were several tall spires, each more jagged than the last, cutting through the otherwise wavy sandscape as if to remind him the planet was entirely alien.

“Where are we?” Etmos asked, shading his eyes carefully with his hand. The scarf drawn tight around his neck itched, but it kept off the heat somewhat.

The cube shimmered, its fluid surface glowing brighter.

“World 805, Pandam district,” it finally answered in an asynchronous, slightly robotic voice.

Etmos nearly cursed. He bit his cheek. His mouth was dry, and his eyes would have been watering had there been any water left to flow from his ducts. Pandam District was the last place he wanted to be in this condition, and he quickened his pace. The hissing sands sank slightly beneath his feet as he walked, giving way and making the journey twice as difficult as it should have been. It took an hour, maybe—maybe two, maybe three. He didn’t ask the cube, and it didn’t volunteer the answer, even if it suspected what he was thinking in his own head. Eventually—with his head down, his eyes focused on the sand a yard in front of him, and his hand still shading his eyes—it appeared in his vision.

A shadow, so utterly dark, so devoid of the glare from the reddish-purple sun above, that he blinked for several seconds. It felt as if he’d suddenly stepped from a surgical room to the basement below. No more heat—at least, not the same hammering, relentless heat that penetrated his every piece of clothing—and no more bright-white rays of sun blinding him as he walked. Now, he was blind until his eyes adjusted—and, fifteen seconds later, they did. His hand fell limp to his side. Above him—a thousand meters tall, perhaps more—towered the smallest of the jagged spires he had seen hours ago, cutting harshly against the oppressive rays of the sun and providing respite in what was otherwise an unforgiving environment.

“God…damn.” He swallowed and regretted it instantly. His throat hurt. “Hey, remind me what we’re looking for here again? Why are we even—”

“Because,” the cube interrupted, its glow finally registering in the shade, “You are looking for the registered atmostructure located in Pallae District. If you proceed in the same direction you are going, you should reach the border of your destination in an estimated—” the cube turned slowly for several seconds, calculating the route, “—an estimated 13 kilometers.”

Etmos coughed, sitting down cross-legged in the sand. “Okay. And where’s the closest water source?”

“On the route to your destination?”

“No, I want it in the other direction.”

“Calculating…”

“I was joking. Yes, on my route.”

“Calculating…” This time, after several seconds, the cube continued, its voice vibrating annoyingly. “According to the latest infrastructure maps and plat-maps, the nearest reliable water source is 59 kilometers distant.”

“...So further than the border.”

“Considerably so, Etmos.”

He leaned back and closed his eyes. That was a mistake—his eyelids felt like sandpaper rubbing against his pupils. His shoulders ached, and he could feel each bone in his spine protesting, making him grit his teeth like some wounded animal. His scarf damn itched. Even his teeth felt woolly, now, and his mouth no longer produced spit. It hurt to blink, hurt to sit, hurt to stand, and hurt to think. The sand beneath his hands felt gritty, but cool compared to the sizzling sandscape he’d spent the last three-something hours trudging through. It was, he decided, a better condition than he had been in before, but a worsening condition if he didn’t find water, and find it soon. Not thinking—because it hurt—he held a handful of sand between his fingers, slowly letting it run through the gaps and back to the ground below. Suddenly, a noise stirred him from his delirium. He opened his eyes after a considerable effort, and stared up at the cube. It was spinning slowly, blinking and pulsing, as it usually did only when answering his questions.

“...And what are you doing?”

“A vehicle is approaching from the west, Etmos. Eleven kilometers out.”

“And why, exactly, can you detect it that far?”

“The sand is vibrating even now.”

The brain fog vanished. He straightened, then stood a second later, bending down only to press his palm against the dunes. The cube wasn’t lying. He could feel it himself, now. The sand trembled beneath every fingertip, beneath his palm, even beneath his feet planted firmly on the surface of 805’s Pandam District. He waited for a second, uncertain. Pandam District wasn’t supposed to be inhabited. It was a vast, grit-laden nothingness that stretched nearly 500 kilometers at the widest part, and deterred travelers for its inhospitable nature alone.

“Still coming this way?”

“Seven out. And closing fast.”

“Shit.”

He raised his head slightly. It was enough. In the distance, Etmos could see a plume of dust erupting from the ground, split down the middle like the wake of a speedboat.