Tyler Cowan on “Liberation Day”:
This is perhaps the worst economic own goal I have seen in my lifetime. I cannot think of any credentialed economist colleague—Democrat, Republican, or independent—who would endorse it.
Related: I subscribed to The Free Press, which you can do at 15% off
Skylight Social won’t make a dent in TikTok and maybe that’s not the point. Regardless, I think short form video is doing serious harm to our attention, especially in kids. All that said, it’s nice to see things happening on the AT Protocol.
Jon Haidt’s appearance on The Ezra Klein Show was a good listen. If you’ve read The Anxious Generation, you will have some idea of what to expect, but I thought the conversation was insightful and Ezra’s questions were generally good. He’s had some great guests on recently.
People will die. Diseases will not be cured. Treatments will not be developed. And so on. This is very very bad for America.
I’m excited to play around with ente, a new open-source, encrypted and private photo service and app that has been in the making for some time. I’m not sure I can be bothered to switch away from Apple Photos and Google Photos, which I find to be a better product, but I love ente’s mission.
I appreciate the thought that Adam is putting into omg.lol’s stance on generative AI. I’m still formulating my own personal policy, which of course is different than a policy for a platform. Given how fast things are changing, I feel an obligation to use all of the tools a lot. I don’t believe you can formulate informed positions on things by taking other people’s word for how you should think about them. You have to use them and do some soul searching of your own. One thing that is non-negotiable is that we MUST figure out how to get artists paid for their work. I fear it will ultimately be the pennies music artists see from streaming, but it can’t be nothing. The central issue of provenance must be solved. It’s a difficult problem, but then so is getting a computer to “think”.
I don’t plan to talk about the news often, but OpenAI closed the largest round on record – a whopping $40B, valuing the company at $300B, which is absolutely bonkers.
Andrej Karpathy finds the best sleep tracker. I don’t wanna spoil it for you, so I’ll just say I was happy to see where he landed.
Simon Willison posted a quote from this great read by Ned Batchelder today. It’s one of those great posts you can send to your non-technical friends as well.
Winnie’s latest post was a wonderful read, especially her point about being relentlessly bombarded with psychological noise. It is not uncommon to catch myself thinking a certain way about something only to realize it doesn’t feel right. It’s almost always because the thought isn’t actually mine.
Now would be a good time to download HHS data.
This $159 sling from gnuhr is cool. Dyneema is plastic, which I don’t love, but in terms of design this hits a sweet spot for me.
I believe Matt Webb is right about how not only are humanoid robots coming sooner than we think, but they are going to be exceptionally capable.
Just switched the DNS for my main blog over to micro.blog. Previously it was on a subdomain. Feels good to be all in on micro.blog. I’m sure I screwed something up in the move, so I’m doing some testing over the coming days. Still have to figure out what to do with the 20+ years of WordPress posts.
I’ve noticed more frequent posts from Bijan Sabet in my RSS feed. It’s nice to see him blogging (and posting photos) so frequently again. No surprise to see him posting intelligently about the shit show unfolding in our country.
McSweeney’s, probably best known for its indisputably good humor, is cataloging Trump’s cruelties, collusions, corruptions, and crimes. No joke.
The safer you are in an environment of rising authoritarianism, the more obligation you have to make some noise on behalf of the people who are more vulnerable than you. Indeed, this is the only way you might avoid having the leopards eat your face. – Eva Galperin
23andMe has filed for bankruptcy. Bottom line: You have no idea who will buy 23andMe and what they will do with the data (your genetic info). Delete your genetic data as well as your test sample from 23andMe NOW. Please repost. The California AG even issued a consumer alert.
“Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it burned in one” - John Heywood
That was quite the finale.
Seriously though, how come no one has been able to do better than Plaxo for contacts. The paradigm is so old and broken and dumb.
The videos in this research on discrete-time hybrid automata learning are hilarious.
Nicholas’s newsletter link saving workflow is interesting. I’m not currently publishing a newsletter, but it gave me some things to think about as it relates to my own workflow for posting links to my microblog (or main blog).
Related: I hate managing a separate microblog and probably should just consolidate everything here, especially because unlike most other platforms, micro.blog supports titleless posts, which is huge.
One of my biggest pet peeves when I come across a thing on the web that references another thing, often with a screenshot, with no link to the thing and zero attribution. It’s such a colossal dick move. And it’s lazy AF. Hanlon’s razor, I guess.
I had to drive east at an unreasonable hour, which meant I had some time to listen to a podcast. I’m so glad I listened to the Dissect episode, featuring Rob Markman, celebrating the 10-year(!!) anniversary of one of the greatest albums ever, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly. Incredible episode!