2025-09-18

OpenAI’s Models Are Getting Too Smart For Their Human Teachers

OpenAI’s Models Are Getting Too Smart For Their Human Teachers — The Information

Interesting newsletter from The Information

In the fight to improve AI models, Anthropic and OpenAI have doubled down on two methods: letting models train on fake clones of apps—otherwise known as reinforcement learning environments or gyms—and getting experts in various fields to teach models new things, as I reported in this Tuesday story.

One problem is emerging, though: It’s getting a lot harder for human experts to stump the models and expand their knowledge in certain fields.

For example, one expert helping teach OpenAI’s o3 model last year told me that at the time, he could come up with three to four linguistics-related tasks per week that the model couldn’t do. Now that he’s working with GPT-5, which launched this summer, it’s been harder to come up with linguistic questions that the model can’t answer. He’s only been able to come up with one to two new tasks that the model can’t do per week.

and the kicker!

“It feels like we're training models to replace ourselves,” he said.

AI and the "good enough" principle

Artists are losing work, wages, and hope as bosses and clients embrace AI #ai #work

This is why you’ll hear artists talk about the “good enough” principle. Creative workers aren’t typically worried that AI systems are so good they’ll be rendered obsolete as artists, or that AI-generated work will be better than theirs, but that clients, managers, and even consumers will deem AI art “good enough” as the companies that produce it push down their wages and corrode their ability to earn a living. (There is a clear parallel to the Luddites here, who were skilled technicians and clothmakers who weren’t worried about technology surpassing them, but the way factory owners used it to make cheaper, lower-quality goods that drove down prices.)

Benefits of Handwriting

I’m a modern-day luddite’: Meet the students who don’t use laptops | Dazed

It might sound like another hopeless attempt to revive “cooked” student attention spans, but there’s actual science behind doing an academic digital detox. A recent study by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found that handwriting generates far more brain stimulation than typing, especially in the creative centres of the brain. The research monitored electrical activity in students’ brains when playing Pictionary, first describing images by typing, and then handwriting, with the findings showing “higher cognitive thought processes” from those using their hands. 

Audrey van der Meer, the paper’s co-author, claims the brain’s learning and memory centres are “much more involved” when handwriting. “When you’re typing, it’s very easy to type everything the lecturer says,” she says. “That information goes into our ears and out through our fingertips without being processed.” Her research shows students are forced to actually reason with what they handwrite – often through creative techniques like diagrams, which generate long-term memory patterns. This also translates to students enjoying their learning more. Van der Meer explains how, having not handwritten for years, many of the study’s participants wanted to explore their artistic side afterwards, claiming they “really treasured” the ability to create something by hand.

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2025-09-16

Oracle's Quarterly Results

Oracle and Animal Spirits - by Doug O'Laughlin

Oracle just posted the single most astonishing quarter I have seen since Nvidia’s blowout in May 2023. A reminder is that it was the quarter where Nvidia guided to 100% Y/Y growth and shocked markets after the ChatGPT moment. It has been almost a straight line to becoming the world’s most valuable company since then. Oracle’s guidance is staggering for a different reason: its sheer magnitude.

This was the largest one-day move in any stock’s history by absolute value. Larry Ellison also became the wealthiest person alive in the span of a trading day.

The driver of this sudden leap is clear: OpenAI. Microsoft has slowed its spending; Oracle has filled the gap, becoming OpenAI’s primary infrastructure partner. That single customer dominates Oracle’s RPO. And if Oracle leverages its entrenched database franchise, it could become enterprises’ default inference partner as well. In one fell swoop, they are now the addressable inference partner for the majority of enterprises globally.

It is worth recalling that Oracle’s database remains the most widely used globally—still the gold standard for ERP, CRM, and data warehousing. PostgreSQL and MongoDB may be fashionable, but feature parity remains elusive. On DB-rankings.com, Oracle remains in first place. A reminder is that this chart is logarithmic, so the gap between competitors appears wider than it actually is. Oracle actually is the most dominant database in the world.

Quarterly Reporting

Elon Musk Bought Some Stock - Bloomberg

Trust Matt Levine to come up with an insightful piece on modern shareholder-manager capitalism riffing off of random Trumpian blather.

The basic model is that a company has managers, and it has shareholders. The managers run the company; the shareholders own a share of its future profits. The shareholders want the company to maximize its profits over the long run; that is, in the classical theory, all they want.3 The managers want (1) that but also (2) other things. The managers might want to pay themselves a lot or have a lot of free time or be prestigious or hobnob with celebrities or hire their shiftless nephews; there are reasons that incentives might be misaligned. Or the managers might be entirely conscientious and loyal, but not very good at their jobs.

So the shareholders would like some way to know what the company’s long-run future profits will be, and whether the managers are doing a good job of maximizing them. There are two principal ways to find out:

1. The company will periodically disclose how it is doing now: It will report its earnings for the last year or quarter, it will talk about how business is going, etc., and from these disclosures shareholders can get a sense of how the business works and extrapolate that into the future.
2. The managers can go around saying “oh man, we are going to make so much money for you, just you wait.”

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2025-09-15

AGI Skepticism

Why I Am Agnostic About AGI & ASI - by Jon Stokes #ai #agi

Imagine my (utter lack of) surprise to see this same dynamic take hold of the AI industry. Every day, I watch the following Types of Guy post benchmark results that show LLMs going straight up and to the right in performance:

1. Founders who have untold billions at stake in a contract clause that triggers when they reach AGI. (Ok, maybe just one founder. And his investors and assorted dependents and hangers on.)
2. Patriots who want to warn that America is behind in the race to AGI.
3. Mercenaries (investors, engineers) who are arm-in-arm with the aforementioned patriots, because they want to dip their beak in some of the governent money that will flow towards efforts to beat China to AGI.
4. X-risk Doomers who sincerely believe that AGI will kill us all, therefore we need to enact shockingly illiberal, draconian global measures (which they have come up with and would be in charge of) to stop it.
5. E/accs who sincerely believe that AGI will usher in a literal post-biological utopia, free of suffering and death, and the rest of Samsara.
6. Threadbois who farm engagement.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few with this list, but you get the idea. There is a lot at stake in “AI number go up” discourse, both financially and spiritually (i.e., national pride, of either summoning all-powerful daemons or preventing the summoning of all-powerful demons).

Democracy and Nihilism

Returning to Church Won’t Save Us from Nihilism | The MIT Press Reader

Hannah Arendt similarly worried that democracy was becoming an empty ritual that was being practiced merely for the sake of practicing it. Arendt feared that politics was increasingly coming to be seen as a dirty word, as something to be avoided whenever possible, and so was becoming something people only participated in by voting in elections. Voting became all that mattered according to Arendt because voting became a way to outsource politics to politicians, thus freeing everyone else from having to be concerned with politics until the next election cycle came along.

But as Arendt warned, this reduction of democracy to an empty ritual entailed that democracy would devolve into bureaucracy, to what she called the rule of nobody. In a society where no one wants to take responsibility, bureaucrats have all the power because they know how to maintain the rituals that undergird society and so maintain the appearance of democracy. So it would come as no surprise to Arendt that we are now trying to replace human bureaucrats with AI bureaucrats in order to create a nihilistic utopia: a society where finally no human should ever have to risk taking responsibility.

What Arendt points to then as the way to combat nihilism is through the rehabilitation of politics. So rather than wanting people “to believe in belief,” or be happy that people are going to church “to have faith in something,” Arendt would probably argue that we need to work to bring back the Ancient Greek model of the polis and in particular the Ancient Greek model of politics as what gives life meaning.

According to Arendt, the Ancient Greeks did not seek to avoid politics so they could stay home, but rather sought to avoid the home so they could gather in the marketplace and participate in politics. Young people seeking out churches would indicate for Arendt not that religion will save us from nihilism, but rather that young people are desperate to find places to meet other young people that aren’t online.

So if we want to combat nihilism we need to create more places where people can meet face to face, places where people can engage in the Ancient Greek model of politics: recognizing that we each have a limited view of the world and so can only grow as humans by sharing with each other how we see the world.

Pregnancy as an aspirational aesthetic

As birth rates decline, is pregnancy now an aspirational aesthetic? | Dazed #children #kids

Today, baby bumps are not just accepted, but aesthetically aspirational. With the cost-of-living crisis, climate insecurity and our increasingly demanding work schedules, having children has become a luxury status symbol, Eugene Healey, a brand strategy consultant, argued in a recent video. Whether dressed in a custom runway look or flaunted on an influencer’s artfully domestic grid, babies and bumps are viewed as an accessory to the mother’s life. Healey ends his video with a joke: “I’ve solved the challenge of declining birth rates – just make it cool!”

Alongside conservative policies, conservative beauty ideals increasingly dominate our feeds, faces and bodies. Under these ideals, pregnant women are celebrated as beautiful because they’re fulfilling their “natural” roles of graceful wives and mothers. Many of the influencers who achieve success fit these beauty ideals: they’re often young with glowing skin, accompanied by a doting partner, and effortlessly photographed in under-the-bump maxi skirts. Just look at TikTok’s Belly Only trend, which celebrates the beauty of a growing bump while other changes (hormonal eczema, stomach hair and leaky nipples, to name a few of my own) stay unnoticeable.

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2025-09-14

Why female pop stars are lambasting mediocre men #gender #relationships

Men are pushing back it seems 😂

Yet this current wave of songs reflects a social shift. Women in the rich world are enjoying more economic power, meaning they can be choosier about their partners. Many are willing to hold out for someone who will do the washing up and put the toilet seat down. According to Pew Research Centre, 35% of American women between the ages of 25 and 54 were single in 2023, up from 29% in 1990. Across many measures, from education to politics, young men and women are drifting apart. Nearly 60% of American university graduates are women. Given that most women prefer not to date or marry down, for many it can be, as Ms Carpenter says, slim pickings.

Men are pushing back, at least musically. In August the top album on the Billboard 200 chart was “I’m the Problem” by Morgan Wallen, an American country singer. “If I’m so awful,” he sings, “then why’d you stick around this long?”

Hangovers

Do hangover supplements work? #alcohol

Hangovers are complicated. Some symptoms, including fatigue, are brought on by the negative effects alcohol has on sleep. Others, such as headaches and dry mouths, are made worse by the dehydration that results from alcohol’s suppression of vasopressin, a hormone that regulates kidney function.

But many of the more severe consequences are caused by the toxic effects of the drink itself. Whether you imbibe grape or grain, aged or fresh, neat or mixed, you will mainly experience the intoxication of ethanol. And although the human body is capable of metabolising the stuff, it does so in a slow and uncomfortable manner. First, an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) breaks down the compound into acetaldehyde, which can dilate blood vessels in the head, producing headaches, and irritate the lining of the stomach, leading to nausea. These pass when another enzyme, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), in turn breaks down acetaldehyde into less harmful chemicals.

Most hangover supplements, therefore, claim to help ADH and ALDH do their jobs a little faster

ChatGPT tells me methanol is a kind of congener, something the paragraph didn't make very obvious.

Even if further trials justify the marketing claims, such supplements can do only so much. Chemicals structurally similar to ethanol, collectively known as congeners, are also present in alcoholic drinks in small amounts, and may have their own harmful effects. When methanol breaks down, for example, formaldehyde and formic acid are produced—even tiny quantities of which cause systemic poisoning, adding to the unpleasantness of a hangover. Boringly, for a headache-free route to being headache-free, drink a little less.

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2025-09-13

Should you have kids

Should You Have Kids? - by Josh Zlatkus - Living Fossils #kids #parenting

Ezra Klein, whom I generally respect, was once puzzled by why people aren’t having more children. In particular, he was surprised that incentive programs (like free daycare) have little effect.

I would argue that his surprise stemmed from applying the wrong rationality. From an academic perspective, incentives drive behavior, so lowering the cost of parenthood should increase births. But it doesn’t, because people generally don’t factor these kinds of incentives into their decision. They rely on a different rubric, a different rationality.

For most of human history, that rubric was simple: Do I want to bang this person? If so, and a child resulted, the next question was: Do I want to protect this offspring? At no point did anyone have to ask whether to have children. At no point did they have to list their values and imagine “living into” them. Reproduction just happened, without deliberation.

However, now that the question is asked, it seems as if people ultimately rely on more ecologically rational approaches—Is it expected of me? Is it part of the good life as my culture understands it? Does the person I love have a stronger opinion?—rather than academically rational approaches, such as: Are there more Pros or Cons? Do I like other children? How does it feel to say yes? How about no? Ultimately, will it line up with my values? Will I receive financial aid from my government? Honestly, these questions are neither here nor there.

Even with ecologically rational approaches, though, thinking about whether to have children is still like those dreams where we go to buy something but discover there’s nothing in our pockets to pay for it (sometimes we don’t even have pants). Similarly, on this major question of life, we reach inside ourselves and find nothing, no tool made for the purpose.

Vibe Code Cleanup Specialists

The Software Engineers Paid to Fix Vibe Coded Messes

Linkedin has been joking about “vibe coding cleanup specialists,” but it’s actually a growing profession.

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2025-09-12

The Matcha Obsession

Deconstructing the matcha obsession - Coffee Intelligence

With the caveat that this is a publication that covers the coffee industry, and hence there might be a bias - this is an excellect guide to the current matcha obsession.

But growth is not infinite. True ceremonial-grade matcha requires shade-grown leaves, painstakingly ground between granite stones. Supplies are thin and cannot be scaled overnight. As demand surges in Europe and North America, lower-grade powders – sometimes blended with green tea dust or other fillers – are sold as “authentic” matcha.

Green by association

Why does matcha feel so different from coffee, a drink it increasingly competes with in cafés? Part of the answer lies in colour. 

Consumers often equate green with health and sustainability. Colour psychology studies reveal that many consumers equate green with nature. A matcha latte, even when drowned in syrup and sweet frothy milk, still somehow manages to convey a halo of wellness.

The health claims themselves are more ambiguous. Matcha contains caffeine – roughly 60-70 milligrams per serving, less than coffee but more than many teas – alongside L-theanine, an amino acid thought to mitigate caffeine’s jitters. Some studies suggest it may aid focus, though evidence is limited. The antioxidant narrative is stronger: matcha is rich in catechins, particularly EGCG, which in laboratory conditions have shown anti-inflammatory, even cancer-fighting, effects on the body. While studies have shown associations between matcha and better health, causation is not yet proven and factors like amount per serving matter – matcha remains even less studied than brewed green tea.

“I think that demand begins at either the healthy side or the visually exciting and decadent side of the spectrum,” says Will. “Matcha-flavoured sweets and milkshakes attract a lot of consumers, especially when they’re presented in cheerful and colorful ways.”

“The science is pretty well-established when it comes to the health benefits of things like antioxidants and polyphenols, and L-Theanine – all naturally occurring in tea. Matcha is packed full of these things. But by the time it’s mixed with 10oz of milk and 30g of sugar, the health benefits are diminished. As long as the perception – and much of the scientific research – remains murky, folks will conveniently ignore the contradictions when treating themselves.”

The irony is that coffee – unsweetened, no additives, and in moderation – long derided as an anxious vice, has better scientific backing as a healthy habit. Dozens of large studies link moderate coffee consumption with lower risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. 

Still, matcha’s presentation as a “cleaner” alternative resonates, especially among consumers who dislike coffee’s bitterness or fear its caffeine spikes. 

Matcha’s cultural cachet has also been bound up with social performance. Online, the drink is often used as a prop in videos that parody hyper-optimised masculinity: the matcha-latte-drinking, feminist-literature reading, vinyl touting “performative male.” 

In that sense, matcha has become less a taste than a lifestyle symbol. And beyond social currency, like protein powders and collagen shots, it reflects a wider consumer shift where drinks are expected to stack functions like to energise, beautify, or detoxify rather than merely be a beverage.

The matcha craze may follow a similar trajectory: stabilising as a premium category, with a smaller base of genuine regulars once the hype ebbs. Already, hojicha – roasted green tea with a toasty flavour profile – is being hailed by many as “the next matcha.” The cycle of discovery and commodification continues to spin.

When consumers demand infinite growth from finite goods, the result is scarcity, price spikes and often quality erosion. The matcha craze is less about the drink itself, and more about the marketing playbook it represents: colour as health, scarcity as status, and ritual as lifestyle.

Models of Taxation

The Five Faces of the Taxman - by Brett Scott

This is a really good article which describes how different folks with different ideologies percieve the system of taxation. I really like this approach to look at different mental models, instead of arguing from one entrenched position - Robber, Provider, Redistributor, Technocrat and finally the most interesting one, the Anchorman.

I also like this description of chartalism (which underpins the MMT approach to money in recent times)

In the vision of the taxman as Robber, Provider, Redistributor, and Technocrat, it’s just assumed that money is a some kind of mysterious ‘commodity-like’ thing that exists outside of the state, hence the state needing to grab it, or to pull it from some to give to others.

Since the early 1900s, however, a school of thought called Chartalism has argued that the monetary system is anchored by the tax system, and that tax is required to make money work.

The basic chartalist observation is that states spend money into existence, pushing it out in exchange for real goods and services. Crucial to understanding this, is to understand what the state wants. The state does not want people’s money, much like an oak tree doesn’t want to collect its own acorns from squirrels. Rather, what the state wants is labour, and they get it by issuing credits that they want people to take.

In order to get people to take those credits, though, the state needs to create demand for them. It does this by imposing taxation - in other words, by imposing an obligation on people to give the state those credits back at certain points.

What I’ve just said normally horrifies libertarians, because in their imagination capitalism is peaceful and markets are natural. In the chartalist worldview, and also in the worldview of many economic anthropologists, large scale markets are constructed by states and are always underpinned by violence. The tax circuit used by states to extract labour for themselves, underpins the subsequent monetary system, which in turn catalyses, kickstarts and grows markets to scales previously unimaginable, and therefore scales up private wealth accumulation too.

In this view, state violence is symbiotic with private wealth accumulation, rather than parasitic upon it, because there would be no such thing as large-scale capitalism with its large-scale billionaires if there wasn’t a large-scale monetary system anchored by state taxation. Eliminating taxation would not ‘save capitalism’ from states. It would undermine the entire structure of capitalism. The state isn’t a needy parasite extracting from a host, but rather the very thing that leads to the host growing.

How to look at social media

how to look at social media - by Adam Aleksic

I like the different terms that the author uses for the different modes to consume social media - umsicht (immersion), flânerie (a mode of detached viewing) and the dérive (interact, but from a state of observation)

The philosopher Martin Heidegger would identify this pre-reflective mode of looking as umsicht: a state of immersion in our environment, where perception occurs without active thought. In umsicht, you intuitively know how to cope with your experience, but you don’t actively think about it.

To me, this alternate state of perception is analogous to the nineteenth-century French concept of flânerie: a mode of detached viewing, originally for the purpose of observation while walking through elements of urban life. To be a flâneur of the algorithm, you have to similarly embrace your role as an observer and coolly analyze events as they occur. This is a conscious, actively reflective state of consumption.

This third mode is inspired by another theory of walking: the dérive, a type of unplanned journey formulated by the Situationist philosophers in reaction to the overstimulation of media and spectacle. By allowing you to intuitively “feel out” an urban environment, dérive lets you interact, but from a state of observation. You still dissociate into umsicht, but you take note of disruptions. Over time, you can train yourself to both experience and learn from that experience.

The solution is to radically build up your awareness through the very way you perceive the scroll state. Let yourself engage, but not fall victim. Feel, detach, learn, repeat. It’s going to be work, but it’s how we start reclaiming power for ourselves.

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2025-09-11

Third Places

What Is A Third Place? And How To Find One - The Good Trade

A third place is a familiar public spot where you regularly connect with others known and unknown, over a shared interest or activity. The term was coined by Ray Oldenburg in the early 1990s, as increasing work hours and more heavily siloed communities (think: Suburbs) became the norm. Because when you have access to everything you could possibly want or need at home (or online), leaving the house becomes optional.

The best kind of third place is accessible and is one that invites us into close proximity with people we may not meet otherwise. These days, third places look like a bar or cafe with an affordable happy hour, but they can also look like community meeting spaces, churches, or libraries. Particularly, these locations can be especially important for seniors and for anyone living in areas facing economic hardship. By breaking down social siloes, third spaces put people in touch.

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2025-09-06

How Anime Took Over America

How Anime Took Over America: From Pokemon to Demon Slayer and Dragon Ball Z - The New York Times #anime #america

From this early stage on, Black Americans were overrepresented in anime fandom. Arthell Isom, whose D’ART Shtajio is Japan’s first Black-owned animation studio, shared his theory with me that Black Americans identified with anime protagonists who often come from the margins of society. Perhaps, he suggested, they were also so used to being absent from the media they consumed that they had an easier time watching and identifying with Asian protagonists than white audiences did.

No aspect of pop culture has remained untouched: In the fashion world, the streetwear label Supreme marketed a line of clothing festooned with images from “Akira,” and in recent years a number of Olympians and professional athletes have modeled their victory poses on anime characters.

Above all, though, anime may be saved by its sheer madness. There is nothing especially marketable, after all, about a film like “My Neighbor Totoro,” in which a pair of children whose mother may or may not be dying follow anthropomorphic dust mites into a hidden world where they befriend a cat who is also a bus. The psycho-spiritual trauma of the mecha-versus-monsters epic “Neon Genesis Evangelion” can scarcely be described, much less audience-tested for the sake of nervous financial backers. Anime is the realm of the underdog and the weirdo, whose fantastically bizarre imaginations have created a medium defined by its difficulty. And if there’s one thing Hollywood doesn’t seem up for right now, it’s a challenge.

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2025-09-05

LLMs are slot machines

Pluralistic: LLMs are slot-machines (16 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow #llms #ai #coding

Glyph proposes that many LLM-assisted programmers who speak highly of the reliability and value of AI tools are falling prey to two cognitive biases:

1. The "availability heuristic" (striking things are easier to remember, which is why we remember the very rare instances of kids being kidnapped and killed, but rarely think about the relatively common phenomenon of kids dying in boring car-crashes); and

2. The "salience heuristic" (big things are easier to remember, which is why we double-check that the oven is turned off and the smoke alarms are working after our neighbor's house burns down).

In the case of LLM coding assistants, this manifests as an unconscious overestimation of how often the LLM saves you time. That's because a coding program that produces a bug that you have to "futz with" for a while before it starts working is normal, and thus unmemorable, while a coding tool that turns a plain-language prompt into a working computer program is amazing, so it stands out in your memory.

But that's not the only way in which an LLM coding assistant is like a slot machine. Reg Braithwaite proposed that AI companies' business model is also like a casino's, because they charge every time you re-prompt the AI. He writes:

When you are paying by the "pull of the handle," the vendor's incentive is not to solve your problem with a single pull, but to give the appearance of progress towards solving your problem.

But there's an important difference between an intern and an LLM. For a senior coder, helping an intern is an investment in nurturing a new generation of talented colleagues. For a reverse-centaur, refining an LLM is either an investment in fixing bugs in a product designed to put you on the breadline (if you believe AI companies' claims that their products will continue to improve until they don't need close supervision), or it's a wasted investment in a "dense intern" who is incapable of improving.

AI Psychosis

Found in this article by Ted Gioia: Our Shared Reality Will Self-Destruct in the Next 12 Months

In this new degraded world, we will see these six behavior patterns from everybody, even (or especially) those who under other circumstances would be well integrated into their communities:

• Skepticism: If events can’t be validated, I can’t give credence to anything.
• Aloofness: If everything gets called into question, I have no basis for shared communal actions.
• Silence: If discussion no longer resolves anything, I have no purpose in speaking.
• Indifference: As I lose connection with people and events, I lose interest in them.
• Distrust: In a world without shared reality, no expert or institution can earn my total trust.
• Hostility: As these traditional connections break down, it doesn’t take much to set off conflicts and violence.

Lithuania and The Digital Euro

In Lithuania, the Digital Euro Is No Longer Theory — It’s Infrastructure

According to data from the Bank of Lithuania, the country is almost entirely dependent on international card schemes for everyday payments. Neither Lithuania nor 13 other eurozone countries currently have a domestic card system — a dependency that European officials describe as a strategic vulnerability.

In 2022, the EU paid an estimated €1 billion in card fees to U.S. providers. Lithuania alone handles nearly all of its digital transactions through Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

“That kind of reliance on external infrastructure isn’t sustainable,” Lasmanis says. “Especially when you consider that geopolitics now includes cables, chips, and payments.”

The goal is not to eliminate cash, but to create a parallel, digital means of payment: one that is free to use, widely accepted across the eurozone, and capable of functioning even during internet outages or political instability.

Key features include:

• Offline payments, even without mobile or data signal
• Free basic services for individuals, including transfers and point-of-sale payments
• No commercial data harvesting, with strong privacy guarantees
• Programmable capabilities for governments (like automatic tax refunds or disaster relief)

The plan, currently in the preparatory phase, is to roll out basic infrastructure by 2027, with a full rollout by 2030. The ECB emphasizes that it has no commercial interest in transaction data and that privacy will be “as close to cash as possible,” particularly for offline transactions.

“It’s designed to be neutral and foundational,” says Christine Lagarde, ECB President, in a recent speech. “A public option for digital money.”

The evils of social media

what the evils of TV reveal about the evils of social media

The important thing to remember about “engagement” is that it started out as a metric for “attention” but has since become the target. Now people make ragebait and clickbait just to generate engagement to go viral, giving us all content we would rather not see. This is an inherent problem of social media that didn’t exist on TV, and affects our cultural conversations at large.

I feel like echo chambers have been talked about ad nauseam, but the fragmentation of content consumption is probably an equal threat to our collective well-being. People have come to expect tailor-made videos on their “For You Pages,” creating a more individualistic culture where everybody wants to be the “main character,” and reducing our sense of community with one another.

Today, social media makes those decisions for you; the implication is that the algorithm already knows what you want to see. Even when it seems like you do have choices, like with long-form content on YouTube and Netflix, the choices that are presented are algorithmically predetermined. The simple difference of not being able to choose what channels you’re watching means you’re playing a less active role in shaping your own identity.

The instant access and connectivity completely changes our interaction with the medium, engendering a greater sense of immediacy and further blurring the line between media and reality.

…

The phone is the culmination of the other dangers—it’s simultaneously designed to be engaging, and personalized, and remove agency. It makes sense that social media as a whole mirrors these attributes.

Online Disinhibition Effect

Insulation Makes Artists and Assholes - by Josh Zlatkus

Taken together, these protections make digital life a textbook case of evolutionary mismatch. Humans evolved in small groups where every word and action carried physical, emotional, social, and reputational consequences. When those consequences are diluted, distorted, delayed, or erased online, people unsurprisingly act like jerks. Psychologists even have a name for it: the Online Disinhibition Effect.

Well, the distortion—or downright absence—of social feedback from online environments creates something of an incubator for behavior that would not be viable in the face-to-face settings humans lived in until very recently. This is why I was not surprised that Musk might have become his Twitter personality: having successfully product-tested a new personality online, he felt comfortable bringing it into the real world. Twitter gave him the chance to try out a side of himself that may not have gotten off the ground otherwise. The same has been true for millions of people on thousands of platforms worldwide.

Viewing human behavior through the lens of self-interest can feel bleak, especially if you were raised to believe people are naturally selfless. But to me, it isn’t depressing. It’s clarifying. It gives society a clear goal: create conditions that channel selfishness into cooperation. In other words, get the incentives right.

Evolution has already solved much of this puzzle. Emotions like anger, empathy, shame, and gratitude both advance the selfish gene and hold groups together. They represent a blueprint for “selfish cooperation.” As we continue to build new environments, we should be careful about tampering with these ancient levers. Predictable results follow when people can act anonymously, with no reputation at stake, or when they exist disembodied, with no risk of a punch in the face.

By scrambling the old checks and balances on behavior, the Internet helped engender a version of Elon Musk—and countless others—that would never have existed otherwise.

Is ADHD Real

Went back and read this article again: Is ADHD Real? - by Josh Zlatkus - Living Fossils

Mostly because this article showed up on HN: Notes on Managing ADHD | Hacker News After having read so many Living Fossils articles, this articles and the comments on HN seemed so ham-fisted. Instead of going deeper into the subject matter, everyone is just posting "hacks".

Here was one sensible comment tho

Further, of course ADHD has a biological cause - human beings are biological beings so every human behavior has a biological cause when you come down to it. But the implication that proscriptions drugs designed based on a deep and verified understanding of the mechanisms of ADHD is completely false - ADHD drug prescription, like all behavior-altering drug prescription, is based on just "bucket chemistry", maybe-educated guess work. Which isn't implying drugs don't work for some people. But I think it's important to be clear the various drugs aren't ADHD cures in the way that antibiotics are cures for infection. But again, I support the right of people want ADHD drugs to have them. But I think drug use shouldn't be automatic.

Below are the quotes from the Living Fossils article that I found useful, especially the evolutionary approach to overcome ADHD like symptoms.

To me, the evidence is clear and the logic straightforward. ADHD isn’t a “disorder” of the person as much as it is of the modern world and its expectations. People with ADHD are probaby part of a normal spectrum, living in an abnormal and unfortunate (for them) world. We could even say that the modern world preys on the distractible. The easier it is to grab a piece of someone’s “mindshare,” the better for those who can monetize it.

Finally, remember that the reason a spectrum of distractibility evolved is that in some situations it will be good, and in others bad. High distractibility or impulsivity isn’t bad in general, just in specific circumstances. The way the environment has changed since hunter-gatherers roamed the earth has been in the direction of rewarding those who have lower distractibility and less impulsivity. But each of us has the power to shape our environment to some extent. For example, travel, socializing in big groups, and certain kinds of jobs might all benefit from higher distractibility and more impulsivity. These traits will obviously interact with other dimensions of personality, e.g. introversion/extroversion, but by themselves will thrive in some situations as they detract in others.

There is no doubt, though, that people vary in the dimensions that ADHD tries to measure. So what’s a person to do who is (relatively) highly distractible, inattentive, hyperactive, and/or impulsive?

The evolutionary approach is typically much more straightforward, practical, and realistic than alternatives. Instead of assuming that there is something wrong with the person, it locates the problem between the person and their environment. And it locates the solution there, too. Here are a few solutions that seem like easy pickings to me:

Develop a healthy lifestyle:

• Exercise (especially in natural settings)
• Sleep more or less, depending
• Watch diet (sugar and caffeine in particular)
• Meditate (one of the easier ways to reacquaint yourself with slow thinking)9

Reduce or eliminate routine distractions:

• no phones in schools; fewer notifications on phone; keep phone silent and hidden if you can; delete time-consuming apps
• close out of email, or pause it, for meaningful chunks of time at work
• make anything analog that you can (print out recipes, read physical books)

Create focus:

• lean into structure and routine (read every day during the same block of time, make the same lunch throughout the week)
• prioritize long-form activities (walk with a friend, clean entire apartment)

Lower expectations:

• do less
• be OK with doing less

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2025-09-04

You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

I once read that "a complex system usually reflects an absence of good design." It's brilliant. True. And if you're prepping for a system design interview, forget it immediately.

In real-world engineering, simplicity is king. In interviews, complexity is currency.

Job interviews aren't assessments. They're auditions for a job title: The Architect Who Solves Hard Problems™.

You're not being evaluated on whether you can build the described system efficiently. You're being evaluated on whether you can perform the role of someone who could theoretically build Google.

I'm not advocating dishonesty, I'm acknowledging reality. Interviews are a ritual, and rituals have rules. Here's how to navigate them:

Separate Performance from Practice: Playing the interview game doesn't make you a hypocrite. It makes you pragmatic about a broken system. You can excel at interview theater while still being a principled engineer once you're hired.

Learn the Sacred Texts: Study distributed systems patterns even if you'll never use them. Memorize the CAP theorem even if it's mostly irrelevant to your daily work. Practice drawing architecture diagrams that look impressive on whiteboards. Think of it as learning a foreign language you'll only speak during interviews.

Embrace the Tropes: Always start discussions with "At scale, we'd need to consider..." Mention monitoring and observability early and often, even for simple systems. Add redundancy everywhere, even for non-critical components. Use the magic words that signal competence in interview-land.

Then Drop the Act: Once hired, advocate ruthlessly for simplicity. Be the voice of reason who asks "Do we actually need this complexity?" Use your hard-earned credibility to push back against unnecessary over-engineering. This is where the real engineering work begins.

The “Selvedge” of Knitwear

What is Loopwheeled Cotton? All About Loopwheel Goods #selvedge #cotton

The AI Jobs Crisis - Translator Edition

AI Killed My Job: Translators - by Brian Merchant #ai #jobs #automation

To wit: After I put out the call for AI Killed My Job stories, I heard from a lot of translators, interpreters, and video game localizers (essentially translators for in-game text, design and dialogue). Of all the groups I heard from, translators had some of the most harrowing, and saddest, stories to share. Their accounts were quite different from those described by tech workers, who were more likely to lament managements’ overuse of AI, a surfeit of dubious code in digital infrastructure, hasty layoffs, or the prospect of early retirement.

In an interesting—and rather telling—wrinkle to the AI boom story, many translators noted that generative AI didn’t usher in any revolutionary improvement to already-existing technologies that have been used to automate translation for years. Long before AI became the toast of Silicon Valley, corporate clients had been pushing lower-paying machine translation post-editing (MTPE) jobs1, or editing the output of AI translation systems, though many translators refused to take them. Others said Google Translate had long been able to essentially what ChatGPT does now.

Yet many describe a dramatic disruption in wages and working conditions over the last two years, coinciding with the rise of OpenAI. Though my sample size is small, these stories fit my thesis that the real AI jobs crisis is that the drumbeat, marketing, and pop culture of "powerful AI” encourages and permits management to replace or degrade jobs they might not otherwise have. More important than the technological change, perhaps, is the change in a social permission structure.

Not one but two accounts detail how many translators dismissed ChatGPT at first, because they’ve heard companies tout many automation technologies over the years, all with limited impact—only to see the floor drop out now. And it’s not that ChatGPT is light years better than previous systems (lots of post-AI translation editing is still required), it’s just that businesses have been hearing months of hype and pontification about the arrival of AGI and mass automation, which has created the cover necessary to justify slashing rates and accepting “good enough” automation output for video games and media products. Everyone else is doing it, after all.

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2025-08-30

Anki Mastery Course

Anki Mastery Course | The AnKing

Someday I will master the intricacies of Anki

Learn everything you need to know about using Anki in a comprehensive series of lessons and video tutorials designed by the original AnKing team. Read about why we made this course here!

The Way to Cofeee

The Way to Coffee

The Way to Coffee is a passion project that has been running for 10+ years to promote dedicated specialty coffee shops, roasters, importers and farmers worldwide. It’s a resource platform for thousands of coffee and travel enthusiasts and closely monitors recent developments in the coffee industry to provide up-to-date, relevant content. On The Way to Coffee you find city guides featuring the best specialty coffee shops worldwide, brew guides and helpful tips to take your coffee business to the next level.

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2025-08-21

Stop talking about AI

Stop talking about AI: Financial Times #ai #hype

So, be doubtful when someone likens AI to the industrial revolution in importance. It will do well to match even the telephone and the incandescent lightbulb. (Incomes really surged as 1900 approached.) Perhaps the test of AI isn’t economic, though. Perhaps the test is quality of life. Well, before the phonograph, your favourite piece of music was something you only ever heard a few times, when an orchestra passed through town and fancied playing it. Before air travel, crossing an ocean was a Homeric saga. Now it is easy. AI will be as life-enhancing as these inventions, will it?

I so want to side with the AI sceptics. But look at their (my) own intellectual howlers. The two paragraphs above are too “inductive”: too reliant on the past as a guide to the future. There is also no technical detail because, unlike most of those who talk up AI, I don’t work in or around the field. And there are even worse AI-sceptic arguments. At least I didn’t lapse into anecdote, of the “ChatGPT told me to take heroin as a cold cure” variety. 

As for the sensible line on AI, “wait and see”, that could be said about anything. It doesn’t tell investors what to do, or citizens how to prepare for the future.

In the end, there is just nothing very interesting to say about AI. There is lots of superb reporting. The major companies, the national strategies, the tech itself: keep abreast of it all. But when it comes to rumination and prognostication — the world of columnists and panel events — has there ever been a discourse so weak relative to its overall scale?

I have found there to be just one useful feature of the AI discourse. It reveals a person’s existing temperament. The people I know who think AI will be seismic and disastrous are the most highly strung anyway. The ones who think it will be seismic and life-improving are the most chipper and prone to believing in things. (Tony Blair.) Those who doubt it will be seismic at all are people like me, who are even-keeled to the point of complacency. The AI hubbub goes on and rancorously on because it is, in the end, about us.

Populism and the median voter

A median voter theory of right-wing populism - Marginal REVOLUTION #democracy #voter #populism

Quote of a quote:

Populists are often defined as those who claim that they fill “political representation gaps” -differences between the policymaking by established parties and the “popular will.” Research has largely neglected to what extent this claim is correct. I study descriptively whether representation gaps exist and their relationship with populism. To this end, I analyze the responses of citizens and parliamentarians from 27 European countries to identical survey policy questions, which I compile and verify to be indicative of voting in referendums. I find that policymaking represents the economic attitudes of citizens well. However, I document that the average parliamentarian is about 1SD more culturally liberal than the national mean voter. This cultural representation gap is systematic in four ways: i) it arises on nearly all cultural issues, ii) in nearly all countries, iii) nearly all established parties are more culturally liberal than the national mean voter, and iv) all major demographic groups tend to be more conservative than their parliamentarians. Moreover, I find that demographic differences between voters and parliamentarians or lack of political knowledge cannot fully account for representation gaps. Finally, I show that right-wing populists fill the cultural representation gap.

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2025-08-20

Alternative to Silicon Valley's Hegemony on Tech

Abolishing Silicon Valley, Building the Commons–A Different Way to Spend Your Life: A Conversation with Wendy Liu

This podcast with Wendy Liu was a very inspiring listen.

Wendy wrote a biography in which she covers her disillusionment with the Silicon Valley dream which led her from being a failed startup founder to studying inequality at LSE, and then coming back to SF and working as a bartender while pursuing a writing career on the side.

Her book: Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism

There is also a reference to another book about abolishing rent: Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis

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2025-08-16

Evolution and Irrationality

Flat Earthers on a Cruise: How evolution wired us to act against our own best interests | The MIT Press Reader #evolution #rationality

All of these behaviors illustrate our evolutionary inertia. We are descended from animals that had to make fast decisions — about food, threats, and reproduction. There was no time for deliberation; quick but flawed judgment meant survival. Thus, irrationality, or at least a limited and pragmatic rationality, has made it possible for us to survive (which does not implicitly mean that it is justified today). This compromise between speed and accuracy generates a cascade of imperfections and snap judgments.

As psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer argues, from our evolutionary past, we have inherited an adaptive, contextual form of reasoning that is neither logical nor probabilistic, but good enough to keep us alive. We’re wired to scan for threats, anticipate others’ behavior, and infer meaning, even when none exists. This explains why we tend to attribute cause-and-effect relationships between totally unrelated phenomena, such as stepping under a ladder and failing an exam, and draw broad conclusions from anecdotes. A great deal of the data from developmental psychology, anthropology, and neuroscience confirms that, for adaptive reasons that no longer exist, our minds have evolved a strong tendency to distinguish between inert entities, such as physical objects, and entities of a psychological nature, like animate agents. We thus are dualists and animists by nature. As a result, we attribute purposes and intentions to things, even when none exist, and imagine hidden motives and conspiracies where there are none. For us, stories always have a purpose, which can be evident or hidden.

We are, in short, belief machines, and we manufacture a lot of those beliefs. And when belief comforts us or helps us make sense of a chaotic world, we cling to it, no matter how irrational. We’re even willing to endure ridicule, as in the case of flat-earthers who set out on a cruise to reach the ends of the earth. They never reached it, but afterward, many found ways to explain why.

Levi saw technical and narrative invention as forms of tinkering, building on existing materials and constraints, just like evolution itself. For Levi, humanity is capable of both sublime achievement and unimaginable horror. In his appendix to “If This Is a Man,” he writes that the extermination camps are nonhuman, even counter-human inventions. But there can be no return to Arcadia; we must forge ahead as our own blacksmiths. The only true antidote to falling back into “inhumanism,” according to Levi, is critical and self-critical rationalism. Not a perfect logic, but a skeptical and methodical approach, whose first lesson is simple: Distrust all the prophets that manipulate the imperfections of the human mind.

The Performative Man

Social media is obsessed with ‘performative men’ – also known as men

The contestants at the “Performative Male Contest,” dozens of young men, milled around the park conspicuously but nonchalantly, waiting to be noticed and judged by an audience of several hundred onlookers.

To encourage this attention, they donned T-shirts with feminist slogans, baggy jeans and pink Nikes. They buried their noses in the first few pages of noticeably uncreased copies of “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom” by Christiane Northrup, “Period Power” by Maisie Hill and “Becoming” by Michelle Obama. In their requisite canvas totes, they toted disposable cameras, albums by pop chanteuse Clairo (on vinyl of course) and, if room remained, their ukuleles (employed to deploy unsolicited and aggressively twee covers of Beyoncé songs). Almost uniformly, they sipped bright green iced matcha oat milk lattes from clear plastic cups.

This freshly minted archetype is the amalgamation of a trove of tropes, precisely selected and arranged by men to convey an air of progressively enlightened, nontoxic masculinity. This can be signaled through fashion choices (a little shirt, somewhat large pants, a ludicrously capacious bag), ostensibly non-sartorial accessories (the matcha, the book of essays by bell hooks) and strategic public displays of existence (the table for one at a crowded cafe).

If the dating coach and the gymfluencer count as relatively rare birds, the podcast bros are the pigeons. The rise of “The Joe Rogan Experience” has spawned an epidemic of young men with large microphones, sitting in cramped home studios and holding meandering, unedited conversations about dating (or not), lifting (or not) and how wokeness is eroding the very possibility of living authentically as a man (it’s not).

Self-termination

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse | Environment | The Guardian #history #collapse

I’m pessimistic about the future,” he says. “But I’m optimistic about people.” Kemp’s new book covers the rise and collapse of more than 400 societies over 5,000 years and took seven years to write. The lessons he has drawn are often striking: people are fundamentally egalitarian but are led to collapses by enriched, status-obsessed elites, while past collapses often improved the lives of ordinary citizens.

Today’s global civilisation, however, is deeply interconnected and unequal and could lead to the worst societal collapse yet, he says. The threat is from leaders who are “walking versions of the dark triad” – narcissism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism – in a world menaced by the climate crisis, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence and killer robots.

Collapses in the past were at a regional level and often beneficial for most people, but collapse today would be global and disastrous for all. “Today, we don’t have regional empires so much as we have one single, interconnected global Goliath. All our societies act within one single global economic system – capitalism,” Kemp says.

He cites three reasons why the collapse of the global Goliath would be far worse than previous events. First is that collapses are accompanied by surges in violence as elites try to reassert their dominance. “In the past, those battles were waged with swords or muskets. Today we have nuclear weapons,” he says.

Second, people in the past were not heavily reliant on empires or states for services and, unlike today, could easily go back to farming or hunting and gathering. “Today, most of us are specialised, and we’re dependent upon global infrastructure. If that falls away, we too will fall,” he says.

“Last but not least is that, unfortunately, all the threats we face today are far worse than in the past,” he says. Past climatic changes that precipitated collapses, for example, usually involved a temperature change of 1C at a regional level. Today, we face 3C globally. There are also about 10,000 nuclear weapons, technologies such as artificial intelligence and killer robots and engineered pandemics, all sources of catastrophic global risk.

If citizens’ juries and wealth caps seem wildly optimistic, Kemp says we have been long brainwashed by rulers justifying their dominance, from the self-declared god-pharaohs of Egypt and priests claiming to control the weather to autocrats claiming to defend people from foreign threats and tech titans selling us their techno-utopias. “It’s always been easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Goliaths. That’s because these are stories that have been hammered into us over the space of 5,000 years,” he says.

“Today, people find it easier to imagine that we can build intelligence on silicon than we can do democracy at scale, or that we can escape arms races. It’s complete bullshit. Of course we can do democracy at scale. We’re a naturally social, altruistic, democratic species and we all have an anti-dominance intuition. This is what we’re built for.”

Kemp rejects the suggestion that he is simply presenting a politically leftwing take on history. “There is nothing inherently left wing about democracy,” he says. “Nor does the left have a monopoly on fighting corruption, holding power accountable and making sure companies pay for the social and environmental damages they cause. That’s just making our economy more honest.”

He also has a message for individuals: “Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is to stop destroying it. In other words: don’t be a dick. Don’t work for big tech, arms manufacturers or the fossil fuel industry. Don’t accept relationships based on domination and share power whenever you can.”

Raw and selvedge jeans

We Recommend These $250 Raw Selvedge Denim Jeans. Here’s Why. | Reviews by Wirecutter #jeans #raw #selvedge

Selvedge denim and raw denim are often conflated and considered interchangeable, but they are two different things. If you recall APC jeans from the mid-aughts, you’re probably picturing a stiff, raw jean. “Raw” is a term used to describe denim that has not been washed or notably pretreated prior to its landing in the buyer’s hands, with the fabric arriving in what is usually a rich indigo color that will fade over time. Part of the appeal of raw denim is the initial stiffness that then breaks in as the jeans are worn, as well as the fading that develops as indigo dye flakes away from the cotton yarns.

Raw denim isn’t necessarily selvedge denim, and “selvedge” doesn’t even necessarily need to be denim — instead, the term refers to the way in which the fabric is manufactured. Selvedge is a type of fabric with a finished edge that doesn’t unravel, and it doesn’t fray at the ends. The word itself comes from the term “self-edge,” which is still a good way to identify it.

Most denim fabric comes off the loom with an unfinished edge, leaving the individual yarns exposed; to turn that fabric into pants, manufacturers simply sew up the edge. When a panel of selvedge fabric is woven, however, it comes off the loom with a narrow strip at the very edge of the cloth so that there are no exposed yarns. On a pair of selvedge jeans, manufacturers join two of those finished edges at the outer leg seam of the pants. As it pertains to denim, this type of finished edge usually requires specialized looms that produce fabrics in low quantities — a process that drives up the cost of a pair of jeans from the start.

You can easily learn to spot a pair of selvedge jeans from the self-edge on the cuff of the trouser legs — typically a white strip with a single red stripe. This edge, unlike a seam covered in stitches, delivers a much tidier overall look.

Raw and selvedge are often paired together. This is because both raw (which describes the fabric treatment) and selvedge (which describes the way the fabric was manufactured) are components of a slow, antique process that can yield results that differ from industrial-scale denim, such as desirable irregularities in the feel and in the visual texture of the cloth.

Although neither necessarily denotes high quality, the use of selvedge in jeans — whether on raw or treated denim — is often a sign that a designer was purposeful in their fabric selection and is likely to have been thoughtful about a lot of other aspects of those jeans too. That, plus selvedge’s association with high-end jeans, means that most prized denim fabrics are selvedge.

In short, the coolest and most interesting jeans are probably going to be made with raw, selvedge denim.

Mankeeping

Why ‘Mankeeping’ Is Turning Women Off - The New York Times #masculinity #relationships

Much of the time, Mr. Lioi said, his straight male clients tell him that they rarely open up to anyone but their girlfriends or wives. Their partners have become their unofficial therapists, he said, “doing all the emotional labor.”

That particular role now has a name: “mankeeping.” The term, coined by Angelica Puzio Ferrara, a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, has taken off online. It describes the work women do to meet the social and emotional needs of the men in their lives, from supporting their partners through daily challenges and inner turmoil, to encouraging them to meet up with their friends.

Rather than viewing “mankeeping” as an internet-approved bit of therapy-speak used to dump on straight men, experts said they see it as a term that can help sound the alarm about the need for men to invest emotionally in friendships.

“The reality is, no one person can meet all of another’s emotional needs,” said Tracy Dalgleish, a psychologist and couples therapist based in Ottawa. “Men need those outlets as well. Men need social connection. Men need to be vulnerable with other men.”

Chopped

What Does It Mean When Gen Alpha Says Chopped? - The New York Times #genz #slang #language

Today's GenZ slang of the day is Chopped.

First came ate, served and cooked. Now chopped has found its way from the kitchen to the vernacular of Gen Z and Gen Alpha.

Before you start using it, one thing should be made clear: It’s not a very nice thing to say.

Simply put, chopped has been adopted by many as a synonym for ugly or unattractive, said Morgan Ugoagwu, who posted a video on TikTok on the “six signs you’re a chopped woman.” It has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.

“There’s mid and that’s like someone who’s maybe like a 5, like average looking,” she said in an interview. “Chopped is like, it’s worse than being what’s considered mid.”

“Chopped is like maybe you’re like a 1 or 2, just straight ugly,” she added.

​7 Books To Read When It Feels Like The World Is Falling Apart

Books To Read When The World Is Falling Apart – The Painted Porch Bookshop

• Montaigne by Stefan Zweig

• Gifts From The Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

• Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent And Start Making A Difference by Rutger Bergman

• How To Keep Your Cool by Seneca

• Thoughts of a Philosophical Fighter Pilot by James B. Stockdale

• On Character: Choices that Define a Life by Stanley McChrystal

• Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

• The Girls Who Would Be Free (children’s book)

• Her Right Foot (children’s book)

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2025-08-15

Rationalist Cults

Why Are There So Many Rationalist Cults?—Asterisk

Great article which makes the movie Mountainhead seem very team in comparision.

The rationalist community as a whole is remarkably functional. Like any subculture, it is rife with gossip, personality conflicts, and drama that is utterly incomprehensible to outsiders. But overall, the community’s activities are less drinking the Kool-Aid and more mutual support and vegan-inclusive summer barbeques. 

Nevertheless, some groups within the community have wound up wildly _dys_functional–a term I’m using to sidestep definitional arguments about what is and isn’t a cult. And some of the blame can be put on the rationalist community’s marketing.

The Sequences make certain implicit promises. There is an art of thinking better, and we’ve figured it out. If you learn it, you can solve all your problems, become brilliant and hardworking and successful and happy, and be one of the small elite shaping not only society but the entire future of humanity. 

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, not true.

Migraines

Why Hasn’t Medical Science Cured Chronic Headaches? | The New Yorker #headache #migraine

Why are migraines such a common part of human experience? Zeller notes that animals do not seem to suffer chronic headaches. “I’ve never seen one of my pets lie in its bed with its paw over its head,” an Australian pharmacologist tells him. This may indicate that migraines are produced by the interaction of the most primitive parts of our brain and the cortical structures that have evolved more recently. Zeller suggests that evolutionary biology may hold an explanation for chronic headaches. “It’s not hard to imagine that an acutely sensitive nervous system, attuned and highly responsive to sounds, sights, smells, and threats, would be valuable to our primitive forebears on the predatory savannah,” he writes. “Maybe the desirability of these triggerable, keenly attentive senses meant that our internal wiring would evolve to a razor’s edge, forever spring-loaded, but prone, in some of us, to errant firing under the wrong conditions.”

Despite our limited understanding of the biology of chronic headaches, there have been recent advances in identifying molecules in the brain which mediate pain. The discovery of a neurotransmitter called calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) has markedly advanced the understanding and the treatment of migraine. This discovery came about when researchers inserted cannulas around patients’ fifth cranial nerve to sample the release of proteins during migraine and found CGRP in abundance. It was released from trigeminal nerve endings surrounding cranial blood vessels. Subsequent experiments found that intravenous infusions of CGRP invariably produced migraines.

GenZ and their love life

What unrestricted internet access did to Gen Z’s love life #genz #love #relationships

Welcome to life at the sharp end of the romantic recession, where today’s under-30s are more likely to be single than either their parents or grandparents were at their age. On TikTok, Nashville-based creator Jordy makes videos explaining what it’s like to go through your twenties without a partner. “This era of dating is actually HORRIFYING,” commiserates one of her followers. “No boyfriends no talking stage no situationships no NOTHING.”

Every generation is supposed to rebel against the ones that came before — making choices that baffle their elders. But who could have predicted that Gen Z’s rebellion would be one of abstinence?

The potential culprits for this romantic estrangement span high house prices (which force young people to live at home), pandemic social-distancing, overly protective parents and a growing political divide driving a wedge between liberal young women and more conservative young men.

But the real villain is the internet. Growing up with access to an online content free-for-all appears to have produced a generation with progressive attitudes and puritanical habits, who are increasingly likely to be teetotal, prefer not to see nudity in films and opt out of relationships. Dr Amanda Gesselman, research scientist at the Kinsey Institute, has described the change as a shift towards “self-sourced intimacy”.

As for the tech sector, its response has been to double down. Accused of creating the circumstances that have increased societal isolation, it has found a way to monetise the situation. In the past year, generative AI companies have released new tools marketed more as friends than productivity aids. At the tame end of the spectrum is Microsoft’s Copilot Appearance — a cute, squishy cartoon cloud. Talk to the AI chatbot in voice mode and the cloud will spin and jump and react with facial expressions as it talks back to you. (Sample chat: “I can’t WAIT to learn more about you.”)

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2025-08-08

affinity

affinity - bookbear express

The idea that affinity can free you is simple. But people have complicated relationships with knowing what they actually like. Yesterday at dinner J used a metaphor for having the wrong job that went, Sometimes people think they should play basketball because they like dribbling. Which I interpret as, It’s very easy to think something is right for you because parts of it are pretty awesome. But what about the other parts? And what’s the main part, the crux of it all? Do you like that? You can like dribbling and shooting and passing and not actually like basketball.

the power of immediacy

The Imperfectionist: The power of immediacy #burkeman

In collecting all those articles and bookmarks, I’d been engaging in what the Substacker Harjas Sandhu, in an insightful post, calls “hoarding-type scrolling”. The hallmark of this behaviour, he writes, is “saving good posts for later instead of reading them now… I feel like a squirrel looking for fat nuts to stash in my little tree hole. The strangest part of it all? I have more saved content than I could possibly consume in the entire next year… thousands of hours of thought-provoking pieces to read and videos that might actually change how I see the world.”

The most obvious problem here, of course, is that you far less frequently get around to actually reading or watching – and thus letting yourself be changed by – the ideas you encounter. But the other problem is that it generates a huge backlog to slog through – so that even if you do get around to reading or watching, you’re no longer responding from the place of aliveness and excitement that first drew you in, but from a duller sense of obligation to clear the backlog, extract the important bits, and move on to something else.

This makes sense, because I think the reason we engage in all this hoarding behaviour is that it’s a more comfortable alternative to the uncomfortable intensity of actually living. To take an action is to risk that it might fail, or that it might succeed; that it might lead to big changes, or no changes at all. And it means using up a chunk of your finite time, and maybe also money, instead of just continuing to add to the list of things you potentially could do — which stretches off into the infinite future, where mortality doesn’t apply.

beauty as an average

My scar makes beach outings an ordeal. How can I care less about it? | Well actually | The Guardian #beauty #standard

Averageness is “the most important aspect” of one’s understanding of beauty, said Dr Neelam Vashi, an associate professor of dermatology at Boston University’s medical school, on the Apple News in Conversation podcast. It refers to how closely any given face or body matches that of the average person within their population. “Our population could be me looking at 1,000 images,” Dr Vashi explained. “What my brain does is looks at all of them, and then it makes a prototype [of beauty] in my head.”

Thanks to the prevalence of filters, photo-editing technology and AI-generated imagery, people’s prototypes now reference digitally altered inputs, said Vashi. This means scarred, middle-aged skin might not fit your brain’s idea of attractiveness, or even normality.

The good news: brains are malleable! Vashi cited a 2009 study in which researchers squished and stretched the faces of storybook characters and found that, after viewing altered images, children’s sense of what was beautiful subtly shifted toward the distortions.

So start with some amateur exposure therapy. Go to the beach! Go to the pool! Go to a communal spa or a nude spa (Korean spas, known as jjimjilbangs, are my personal happy place). Notice different bodies, faces, skin types, textures – not to compare, judge or objectify, but to observe.

Doing versus Delegating

Doing versus Delegating - by Matt Basta - Basta’s Notes

When we frame our successes and failures not in terms of the code but on the outcomes of the project, delegating gets more intuitive. If you’re evaluated on outcomes, you’re being measured on literally anything that goes into that project, not just time spent writing code.

Maybe you wrote some specs. Maybe you met with people about requirements and constraints. Maybe you talked with stakeholders to address details that don’t make sense. Perhaps you updated the roadmap to avoid extra work caused by a parallel project. All of these things matter just as much as the time spent coding, if not more. If your coding output is the bottleneck for your projects being successful, it’ll be valued more highly than the other skills. But if you’re a Senior engineer working towards Staff+, it’s understood that your coding skills are essentially at a point of diminishing returns.

You can instead spend your time doing things that help other people spend more time coding, and writing that code faster:

1. Offering domain expertise to other engineers
2. Making sure folks aren’t blocked
   1. effectively communicating project details and context
   2. code reviews
   3. answering questions
   4. connecting people across the company to address mismatches
   5. pointing out drawbacks
3. Avoid problems (and avoiding time sinks)
   1. making sure everyone is working in the same direction
   2. making sure the output of the project is well-understood by stakeholders
   3. making sure the project sufficiently addresses the problems it intends to solve
4. Tracking other projects with similar requirements or shared work
   1. avoiding duplicated effort
   2. avoiding conflicts between the projects
5. Effectively spinning up other engineers on a project and distributing work (multiplying efficiency)
6. Ensuring prerequisites are met
7. …endless other items…

You can be the fastest coder in the west, but if these things aren’t done well, the project is probably going to go poorly. And if they are done well, the project will be done faster with others than if you did it yourself.

Tacit knowledge in programming

On bad advice #programming #software

Programming practices are mostly tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge isn't easy to share. An expert will relate some simple-sounding rule of thumb, but then grilling them on specific cases will quickly uncover a huge collection of exceptions and caveats that vary depending on the specific details of the situation. These are generated from many many past experiences and don't generalize well outside of the context of that body of experience.

Trying to apply the rule of thumb without knowing all those details tends to result in failure. Phrases like "don't repeat yourself", "you aren't going to need it", "separation of concerns", "test-driven development" etc were originally produced from some body of valid experience, but then wildly over-generalized and over-applied without any of the original nuance.

The way to convey tacit knowledge, if at all, is via the body of experiences that generated the rule. For this reason I find much more value in specific experience reports or in watching people actually working, as opposed to writing about general principles.

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2025-08-06

What the heck is ADHD

What the heck is ADHD? #adhd #mentalhealth

A good article summarizing the latest research

As a result, the field began to fracture into specialized theories. You can roughly place these theories of ADHD into four buckets :

1. Executive dysfunction. One of the earliest and most enduring views. ADHD involves difficulty managing internal control systems like planning, remembering what to do next, or stopping an automatic response. This explains impulsivity and disorganization, but not motivation issues or mood swings.

2. Delay aversion. This view proposes that some symptoms of ADHD arise not just from difficulties with cognitive control, but from how people react emotionally to waiting. Delays don’t just feel boring but can be unbearable. This can lead to choices that prioritize immediate relief, like quitting a task early or avoiding anything that involves waiting.

3. Default mode interference. The brain has a default mode network that becomes active when we’re not focused on the outside world. In ADHD, this system seems to stay active even during tasks, creating interference – like background noise interrupting a conversation. This might help explain those mid-sentence lapses or zoning out during simple tasks.

4. Dopamine models. ADHD has been linked to how the brain handles dopamine, a chemical involved in reward and motivation. In many people with ADHD, the brain appears less able to anticipate rewards or maintain interest over time. This can make long-term goals feel flat and distant.

And to complicate things further, theories of ADHD operate at different levels of explanation:

• Genetic: ADHD has a strong inherited component. No single gene causes it, but many genes each with small effects seem to contribute to it.

• Neurobiological: Brain networks involved in attention, timing, and reward seem to behave differently in ADHD, sometimes more variable, less connected, or slower to mature.

• Cognitive-behavioral: ADHD traits affect how people think, learn, respond to feedback, and regulate effort.

• Environmental: Stress, trauma, classroom and work demands, sleep, and parenting style might all interact with ADHD traits.

• Evolutionary: ADHD traits such as hyperfocus, hypervigilance and hypercuriosity might have once been adaptive in nomadic, high-stimulus environments, and might have become mismatched to modern life.

Today, most researchers agree that ADHD isn’t explained by any single mechanism. Instead, we see integrative frameworks that suggest ADHD arises from multiple interacting systems, shaped by genetics, brain development, and environment.

So... is ADHD a thing? Yes and no.

So yes, ADHD is a thing. But it’s likely not one thing. It’s currently a useful label for multiple, interacting processes that vary from person to person, giving clinicians a way to support patients, educators a lens to support students, and researchers a map to explore.

The explosion of theories isn’t a failure of science but a sign of a complicated, deeply human condition we’re still working to understand.

The real question isn’t whether ADHD is “real.” The question is: can we get comfortable with that complexity so people can find what actually works for them?

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2025-08-05

stay on your phone

stay on your phone - by Adam Aleksic - The Etymology Nerd #social-media #phones #dumb

The No Phone Person is an elusive creature. They tend to be educated, upper-to-upper middle class, and endearingly pretentious. They’re off social media, will answer emails a few times a week, and usually have a “dumb phone” that can only take calls and texts. When they’re not at “phone free parties,” they’re probably frolicking in a meadow or something. Good luck finding them.

As much as I hate to agree with a Silicon Valley billionaire, though, I think the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is correct in identifying this as a form of “reality privilege.” A blue-collar single mother working two jobs is not going to have the time or energy to seek out in-person events or alternative forms of media. She’s going to put her kids to sleep and have thirty minutes to scroll TikTok before going to bed and then returning to work the next day.

This disconnect is turning non-algorithmic time into an upper-class status symbol, which I find highly concerning.

For one, it’s the equivalent of sticking your head in the sand and pretending like the algorithm doesn’t exist. Whether you like it or not, our culture is still being shaped by these platforms, and they won’t go away by themselves. All of our music and fashion aesthetics are either defined by or against the algorithm, which means that even the “countercultural” tastes of the No Phone People are necessarily influenced by it. Engaging with algorithmic media—in a limited, deliberate manner—is thus important to understanding your experience in society as a whole.

Not engaging, meanwhile, makes you vulnerable to being blindsided by sudden social or political shifts. Each Reddit argument and YouTube comment war is an epistemic basis for understanding the current state of cultural discourse. If you ignore those, you lose touch with reality as most people experience it.

If you have “reality privilege,” and you care about society, don’t just disengage; use your privilege. Educate yourself, and stay online strategically. Broaden your being-in-the-world so we can eventually fight back. And then you should totally go listen to that new record you just bought.

Cory Doctorow on AI Assistants

Pluralistic: AI software assistants make the hardest kinds of bugs to spot (04 Aug 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow #ai #assistant

on automation blindness

It's not like people are very good at supervising machines to begin with. "Automation blindness" is what happens when you're asked to repeatedly examine the output of a generally correct machine for a long time, and somehow remain vigilant for its errors. Humans aren't really capable of remaining vigilant for things that don't ever happen – whatever attention and neuronal capacity you initially devote to this never-come eventuality is hijacked by the things that happen all the time. This is why the TSA is so fucking amazing at spotting water-bottles on X-rays, but consistently fails to spot the bombs and guns that red team testers smuggle into checkpoints. The median TSA screener spots a hundred water bottles a day, and is (statistically) never called upon to spot something genuinely dangerous to a flight. They have put in their 10,000 hours, and then some, on spotting water bottles, and approximately zero hours on spotting stuff that we really, really don't want to see on planes.

So automation blindness is already going to be a problem for any "human in the loop," from a radiologist asked to sign off on an AI's interpretation of your chest X-ray to a low-paid overseas worker remote-monitoring your Waymo…to a programmer doing endless, high-speed code-review for a chatbot.

on the economic and labor implications of AI assistants

The AI bubble is driven by the promise of firing workers and replacing them with automation. Investors and AI companies are tacitly (and sometimes explicitly) betting that bosses who can fire a worker and replace them with a chatbot will pay the chatbot's maker an appreciable slice of that former worker's salary for an AI that takes them off the payroll.

The people who find AI fun or useful or surprising are centaurs. They're making automation choices based on their own assessment of their needs and the AIs' capabilities.

They are not the customers for AI. AI exists to replace workers, not empower them. Even if AI can make you more productive, there is no business model in increasing your pay and decreasing your hours.

AI is about disciplining labor to decrease its share of an AI-using company's profits. AI exists to lower a company's wage-bill, at your expense, with the savings split between the your boss and an AI company. When Getty or the NYT or another media company sues an AI company for copyright infringement, that doesn't mean they are opposed to using AI to replace creative workers – they just want a larger slice of the creative workers' salaries in the form of a copyright license from the AI company that sells them the worker-displacing tool.

AI companies are not pitching a future of AI-enabled centaurs. They're colluding with bosses to build a world of AI-shackled reverse centaurs. Some people are using AI tools (often standalone tools derived from open models, running on their own computers) to do some fun and exciting centaur stuff. But for the AI companies, these centaurs are a bug, not a feature – and they're the kind of bug that's far easier to spot and crush than the bugs that AI code-bots churn out in volumes no human can catalog, let alone understand.

The New Yorker on Longevity Science

How to Live Forever and Get Rich Doing It | The New Yorker #longevity #anti-aging

This is a good overview of the current landscape of longevity science and its proponents.

Our bodies, technically speaking, are just really fucking complicated. The Buck’s Eric Verdin told me, “Peter Diamandis says we’re thinking linearly in an exponential world, and we’ll be able to solve all these problems. But the biological problems to solve also get exponentially harder as you go deeper.” Even the indicators are baffling. Hearing loss has been linked to dementia, as has failing to floss. An impaired sense of smell is more strongly predictive of all-cause mortality than heart disease. And the mysteries do multiply the deeper you go. People who have four organs that are “youthful” for their age are much less likely to experience kidney disease or arthritis, yet those with seven youthful organs—which must be even better, right?—have a greatly heightened risk of diabetes and Parkinson’s.

In trying to live longer, we’re fighting our own imperfection: every time a cell divides, a few thousand mistakes can be introduced into its DNA. We’re also fighting the entropic forces—time, gravity, and oxygen—that ravage pretty much everything. The authors of a seminal paper in Cell distinguished twelve hallmarks of aging: such signs of impaired self-regulation as DNA instability, mitochondrial dysfunction, chronic inflammation, cellular senescence (when burned-out cells start oozing toxic sludge), and stem-cell exhaustion. Though the authors noted that all twelve hallmarks “are strongly related,” they could not establish whether the indicators were diverse expressions of one fundamental process or whether they evolved independently.

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2025-08-04

Are we in an AI Bubble

The AI bubble is so big it's propping up the US economy (for now) #ai #bubble #economy

I’ll just repeat that. Over the last six months, capital expenditures on AI—counting just information processing equipment and software, by the way—added more to the growth of the US economy than all consumer spending combined. You can just pull any of those quotes out—spending on IT for AI is so big it might be making up for economic losses from the tariffs, serving as a private sector stimulus program.

To me, this is just screaming bubble. I’m sure I’m not alone. In fact I know I’m not alone. I’m thinking especially of Ed Zitron’s impassioned and thorough guide to the AI bubble; a rundown of how much money is being poured into and spent on AI vs how much money these products are making, and surprise, the situation as it stands is not sustainable. Worrying signs abound, and not least that so far, the companies benefitting most from AI are those selling the tools to simply build more of it (Nvidia, Microsoft), or who have monopolies through which they can force AI tools onto users en masse with limited repercussions (Google, Meta). Consumers routinely evince negative sentiment towards AI and AI products in polls, outweighing enthusiasm. And meanwhile, what I’d say is the only truly runaway, organically popular AI product category, chatbots, largely remain big money losers due to the resources they take to run.

As such, these massive valuations feel fishy. I asked Ed for his thoughts on Microsoft’s $4 trillion earnings report. He said:

Microsoft broke out Azure revenue for the first time in history, yet has not updated their annualized revenue for AI since January 29 2025. If things were going so well with AI, why are they not providing these numbers? It's because things aren't going well at all, and they're trying to play funny games with numbers to confuse and excite investors.

Also, $10bn+ of that Azure revenue is OpenAI's compute costs, paid at-cost, meaning no profit (and maybe even loss!) for Microsoft.

Look, I’m no prophet, clearly. I’ve predicted that we were probably witnessing the peak of the AI boom nearly a year ago, and while I think I was right with regard to genuine consumer and pop cultural interest, obviously the investment and expansion has kept right on flowing. It’s to the point that we’re well past dot com boom levels of investment, and, as Kedrosky points out, approaching railroad-levels of investment, last seen in the days of the robber barons.

I have no idea what’s going to happen next. But if AI investment is so massive that it’s quite actually helping to prop up the US economy in a time of growing stress, what happens if the AI stool does get kicked out from under it all?****

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2025-08-03

How to travel

How to travel #travel #tips

Janan Ganesh has a nice set of tips for travel

First, the journey itself. Carry-on is a mistake. The time saved in baggage claim at the other end isn’t worth the stress of finding overhead storage space. Even for business class passengers, with their dedicated lockers, it is still better to move around an airport unencumbered. This is meant to be a break, not arm day.

Beware the “authentic” experience. This is the ultimate intellectual trap. At least in countries with a decent-sized middle class, “real” life will be less distinctive than the visitor hopes or imagines. In much of south-east Asia, it is authentic behaviour to spend time in malls. First, because these are air conditioned. Second, because countries with fresh memories of being poor tend not to regard material consumption with ennui or distaste. By all means, in Bangkok, ride the canal boat. But don’t kid yourself that it is truer to local experience than taking mass transit from a suburban new-build to a nine-hour office shift. In a Gulf city, do visit the “old town”. But remember that it is the old town precisely because it is divorced from how lives are lived now. 

If an Asian visitor cycled through Paris in a striped top and an onion necklace, saying “ooh là là” at intervals, we wouldn’t think, “There goes someone who has mastered the local culture.” We’d know that real Parisians are doing banal things. But westerners, especially the educated ones, can make the same error of over-romanticisation in other places. It is the supposed suckers in the tourist traps who are often clearer-headed about what they want and are getting out of their trip.

It is a point that flows into the largest of all lessons about travel. Don’t expect it to be educational. At worst, it can go the other way, in that you over-index what you happen to see in person. (“I went to Russia and it was sweetness itself,” was a widely heard sentiment between the 2018 World Cup and the war in Ukraine.) It is better to be merely ignorant of a place than confidently wrong about it. If you travel a fair bit, those who don’t can go all sheepish and deferent around you. This advantage is unwarranted, which isn’t to say I make no use of it.

Power and Heirarchy

Pt4: Power Hierarchies #power #heirarchy

Loved this article, even though I only read the ChatGPT summary, which I am reproducing below

This article explores the nature of power hierarchies, emphasizing that rulers depend on key supporters whose loyalty must be maintained through resource distribution. It discusses how status and identity are deeply intertwined with navigating multiple overlapping hierarchies and how toxic power dynamics, such as those in cults, isolate individuals by cutting off other sources of status and identity.

Key Takeaways

• Power depends on maintaining loyalty of key supporters by distributing resources strategically.

• Status is relative and context-dependent, shaped by multiple overlapping hierarchies.

• Toxic power, like in cults, isolates individuals by restricting access to alternative hierarchies, causing trauma upon exit.

Theme Wise Breakdown

Misconceptions About Historical Power

The author reflects on their initial naive belief that kings ruled absolutely, only to learn that historical rulers had precarious positions dependent on keeping their councils and armies loyal. Using the example of Roman emperors, the author highlights the constant threat of being overthrown or assassinated if key supporters were dissatisfied.

Rules for Rulers: The Role of Keys in Power

Summarizing CGP Grey’s "Rules for Rulers," the article explains that rulers cannot govern alone and must rely on "keys" — people controlling military, finances, etc. The ruler’s primary job is managing treasure flow to keep these keys loyal, as keys can defect if rivals offer better rewards. This creates an incentive to minimize the number of keys to maximize loyalty, explaining why dictators purge former allies after gaining power.

The Fractal Nature of Hierarchies

Power dynamics repeat at every level: each key manages their own subordinates similarly, balancing resources to maintain loyalty. If a key fails to satisfy their subordinates, they risk being overthrown themselves, creating a fractal pattern of power maintenance.

Benedict Arnold: A Case Study in Key Loyalty and Betrayal

Benedict Arnold’s story illustrates the consequences of a key feeling undervalued. Despite his heroism, Arnold was repeatedly denied deserved promotions and recognition, leading him to consider defecting to the opposing side. This exemplifies how keys may overthrow or abandon leaders who do not reward them properly.

Status as Hierarchy Competition

Status is not absolute but depends on which hierarchy one is competing in. People gain status by possessing what others in their relevant social group value. The author notes that status is more visible when gaps between ranks are large (e.g., celebrities) but often subtle and overlapping in everyday life, leading to plausible deniability about rank differences.

Navigating Multiple Overlapping Hierarchies

Individuals simultaneously compete in many hierarchies, some large and some niche. People tend to care about status in hierarchies relevant to their social circles. The author shares personal examples from polyamory, where jealousy arises when others encroach on one’s status in specific hierarchies, but comfort is found in having unique advantages in others.

Identity as a Product of Hierarchy Competition

The author reflects on how much of personal identity is shaped by social positioning within hierarchies. Preferences and self-concepts often serve as strategies to secure social safety and status. Even seeming immune to status is itself a high-status position. The author acknowledges that identity is largely strategic but hints at some genuine aspects to be discussed later.

Formative Years and Hierarchy Selection

During development, people explore which hierarchies they can succeed in and gravitate toward those that fit their traits. For example, athletic ability might lead to joining a sports team, while personality traits might align with certain social groups. This process shapes social identity and status.

Status Competition in Everyday Life

Social interactions often involve subtle battles over which hierarchies to prioritize. People try to pull others into hierarchies where they rank higher by emphasizing their expertise or values. Avoiding low status in unfamiliar hierarchies explains why people stick to familiar social groups or niches.

Toxic Power and Cults

The author discusses cults as extreme examples of toxic power, where leaders isolate followers by cutting off access to all other hierarchies. This monopolization of loyalty prevents subordinates from gaining alternative sources of status or identity, making them more exploitable. Cults justify isolation as a gift or sacrifice for a greater goal.

Trauma of Leaving Cults

Leaving a cult is traumatic because individuals transition from a narrow, controlled hierarchy to a vast world of many hierarchies where they lack status or skills. Betrayal by trusted leaders compounds this trauma, as does the loss of identity and social support.

Frame Control and Hierarchy Manipulation

Cults use frame control to keep followers within their hierarchy by denying legitimacy to outside influences. This control is a form of power that prevents followers from recognizing or accessing alternative sources of value and status.

Final Reflections on Status, Anxiety, and Identity

The author connects social anxiety to low status, noting that rising in status reduces anxiety and increases confidence. They also question how much of the self is constructed through social strategies versus genuine preference, concluding that identity is mostly strategic but not entirely so.

Dating Like a Savarna

Dating Like a Savarna | The Swaddle

I found a reference to this article in the book Meet The Savarnas, which I began reading last week. The book is wonderful and a must read, especially for folks who are oblivious to caste (due to their privilege) or haven't been exposed to anti-caste literature.

One of the most hallmark features of Savarna culture is its distinctive sameness, which is exemplified in the world of online dating.

A certain aesthetic language and cultural sensibility have come to be positioned as markers of taste and refinement – to the exclusion of people who don’t or can’t adhere. It’s unrecognizable as particularly Savarna culture because of its ubiquity: whether it be the lanky boy with a head full of curly hair who busks at Church Street in Bangalore, the spoken poetess who is perennially in a bindi and a saree handed down from her grandmother (which she never fails to mention), or the Djembe-carrying shayar sahab who runs his own drum circle in Pune and quotes Juan Elia in Urdu (because Faiz is too mainstream after the CAA/NRC protests) – it’s an aspirational aesthetic. One that draws heavily from US popular culture and White, Western social imaginations and that, through unspoken codes, belongs exclusively to Savarnas.

These archetypes gather on the servers of Hinge, Bumble, and Tinder, where romance, belonging, sex, and intimacy are all wrapped up in the neoliberal technocratic promise of an app that can deliver it all – especially if you pay the extra money for a premium upgrade. But in a caste-segregated society, technology is no match for what a thousand generations of social conditioning have normalized.

Decades of half-hearted reservation implementation has nonetheless, against all odds, created a very small class of SC/ST/OBC youth who have had a similar quality of education and exposure to pop culture as most urban elite Savarnas. Although these micro-communities also end up in the dragnet of dating apps – because there is no caste-based filter on the apps yet (something that is sure to come as more Dalit and Bahujans get on it) – their experiences on these apps are still different. Ultimately, speaking the same pop culture language and smooth English gets you only so far and no further.

I remember a few years ago, a close friend had matched with a Brahmin girl. Their conversation had organic chemistry and she decided to come to his place. The first thing she noticed upon entering his flat was a portrait of Babasaheb near the doorway. “Ey, why do you have this? Bhimtas have this in their homes” was her immediate reaction. He froze at the slur but somehow managed to tell her that she was correct about why the picture was there. It then dawned upon the girl that he was not Savarna. She exploded with anger and accused him of trying to “trick” her into a relationship, of not being fully “honest.” As she poured her derision and fury upon him, he stood there silently, with his head hung and burning with a shame familiar to all marginalized caste folks. Traditional patriarchal power tropes in reverse, she threatened that she would call her brothers and they would come to beat him up. He begged for her forgiveness. She softened and then patronizingly counseled him to not try and dupe Brahmin girls like this. He agreed cringing inside, but hoping to avoid any further untoward scene. She made him book her an Uber to take her home. He stayed off dating apps for years after that out of internalized trauma that he did not dare unpack.

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2025-08-02

ARR as an often abused metric

How Much Money Do OpenAI And Anthropic Actually Make? #arr #ai #startups #revenue

If you're an avid reader of the business and tech media, you'd be forgiven for thinking that OpenAI has made (or will make) in excess of $10 billion this year, and Anthropic in excess of $4 billion.

Why? Because both companies have intentionally reported or leaked their "annualized recurring revenue" – a month's revenue multiplied by 12…

…

These do not, however, mean that their previous months were this high, nor do they mean that they've "made" anything close to these numbers. Annualized recurring revenue is one of the most regularly-abused statistics in the startup world, and can mean everything from "[actual month]x12" to "[30 day period of revenue]x12" and in most cases it's a number that doesn't factor in churn. Some companies even move around the start dates for contracts as a means of gaming this number. 

ARR, also, doesn’t factor seasonality of revenue into the calculations. For example, you’d expect ChatGPT to have peaks and troughs that correspond with the academic year, with students cancelling their subscriptions during the summer break. If you use ARR, you’re essentially taking one month and treating it as representative of the entire calendar year, when it isn’t.

Sidenote: I want to make one thing especially obvious. When I described ARR as “one of the most regularly-abused statistics in the startup world,” I meant it. ARR is only really used by startups (and other non-public companies). It’s not considered a GAAP-standard accounting practice, and public companies (those traded on the stock market) generally don’t use it because they have to report actual figures, and so there’s no point. You can’t really obfuscate something that you have to, by law, state publicly and explicitly for all to see with crafty trickery.

These companies are sharing (or leaking) their annualized revenues for a few reasons:

• So that the tech press reports them in a way that makes it sound like they'll make that much in a year.
• So that the tech press reports a number that sounds bigger and better than the monthly amount. For example, calling a startup a "$100 million ARR" company (like vibe-coding platform Lovable) sounds way better than calling them an "$8.3 million a month company," in part because the number is smaller, and in part because, I imagine, it might mislead a reader into believing that's what they've made every month. Yes, saying the ARR figure does that already.
• So that investors will believe the company looks bigger and more successful than it is.

In any case, I want to be clear this is a standard metric in non-public Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) businesses. Nothing is inherently wrong with the metric, save for its use and what's being interpreted from it.

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2025-08-01

High Agency and Owning the Outcome

Impact, agency, and taste | benkuhn.net

I think of finding high-leverage work as having two interrelated components:

• Agency: i.e. some combination of the initiative/proactiveness to try to make things happen, and relentlessness and resourcefulness to make sure you’ll succeed.
• Taste: you need a good intuition for what things will and won’t work well to try. Taste is important both “in the large” (picking important problems) and “in the small” (picking approaches to solving those problems that will work well); I usually see people first become great at the latter, then the former.

A common trait of high-agency people is that they take accountability for achieving a goal, not just doing some work.

There’s a huge difference between the following two operating modes:

1. My goal is to ship this project by the end of the month, so I’m going to get people started working on it ASAP.
2. My goal is to ship this project by the end of the month, so I’m going to list out everything that needs to get done by then, draw up a schedule working backwards from the ship date, make sure the critical path is short enough, make sure we have enough staffing to do anything, figure out what we’ll cut if the schedule slips, be honest about how much slop we need, track progress against the schedule and surface any slippage as soon as I see it, pull in people from elsewhere if I need them…

Found this on another blog which has some good commentary on the original essay

Striving for “inevitability”, as Kuhn frames it, isn’t about achieving perfection or eliminating all risk. That’s clearly impossible in most nontrivial areas of human endeavor. Instead, I think the real value lies in cultivating the mindset itself.

Adopting this agentic mindset takes conscious effort, especially initially. It means spending more time up-front planning, anticipating, and communicating, which can sometimes feel less immediately productive than jumping into writing code, or whatever the immediate “work” may be. However, investing time in up-front strategic thinking consistently pays off later. Having a strategy results in less frantic firefighting, fewer deadline slips, and a generally calmer, more predictable process for delivering impact.

The benefits of cultivating personal agency are beyond “merely” delivering reliable outcomes to achieve some abstract team/company/personal OKR. There’s a certain confidence and personal satisfaction that comes from knowing you’ve done the work to truly understand the problem, anticipate hurdles, and steer yourself toward success, rather than hoping things work out or leaning on someone else to keep the project unblocked. Agency also generalizes well across different domains of life. Developing agency in a professional context usually results in a higher ability1 to exercise agency in other contexts (e.g. personal, social, relational). Professional contexts are a good environment for developing agency too: in healthy workplaces, there is a clear feedback loop and ample opportunity to exercise agency.

Newsletters and RSS

Curate your own newspaper with RSS #rss

RSS solved the distribution problem a long time ago. It is really sad that it's been sidelined now, and we have to depend on email to bypass the enshittification of distribution platforms. But at least these outlets are realising the issue with giving up control over their own distribution.

These intermediary platforms between news organizations and readers are undergoing a type of predictable decay Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification”: rip off others’ work while expecting high-quality journalism to magically continue to appear, even as journalists are starved of audience and revenue.

The newsletter strategy aims to bypass these rapidly enshittifying intermediaries and instead establish more direct relationships with subscribers. “I don’t intend to ever rely on someone else’s distribution ever again,” wrote Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel on Bluesky.3 Although email has undergone some enshittification of its own,b its fundamental nature as a protocol rather than a platform has provided one essential prophylactic to enshittification: the escape hatch. If your email provider suddenly inserted ads two sentences into every email, you could easily switch providersc and still receive emails from everyone you previously emailed. As a result, email has become a go-to refuge for news outlets fleeing their abusive relationships with deeply enshittified platforms they grew reliant upon.

But the surge in newsletters has been overwhelming. Whether it’s writers like me who’ve never worked in a traditional newsroom, journalists who’ve left or been laid off from traditional jobs, or established newsrooms entering the newsletter business, there’s a newsletter around every corner. Instead of subscribing to a single newspaper for columns and articles by a dozen journalists, now you have a dozen separate newsletter subscriptions, with articles appearing haphazardly in your email inbox amid bills, business communications, marketing spam, order confirmations, and two-factor authentication codes.

Male Anxiety and the morning routine

How male anxiety built the hyper-optimised morning routine | British GQ

This article has a hilarious beginning.

It’s 3.30 a.m. Besides a few night-shift workers, insomniacs and ravers, the world is unconscious. Not Mark Wahlberg. His alarm has just gone off, jolting him into life for a long morning of eating, praying, working out, and sitting in his cryo recovery chamber. Not far behind him is Apple CEO Tim Cook, whose eyelids flicker open at 3.45, so he can tackle some of the hundreds of customer feedback emails in his inbox before starting the meat of his day. At 3.52 exactly, the fitness coach and influencer Ashton Hall – whose elaborate, Patrick Bateman-esque morning routine has recently gone obscenely viral – is up and at it, ready for several hours of fitness, dunking his face in iced Saratoga mineral water, and rubbing said face with banana peel.

Now it’s 4 a.m., and the ranks of the successful and productive are really getting going. Robin Sharma, the self-help guru and author of The 5 a.m. Club, is up — “4 a.m. is the new 5 a.m.”, he told GQ recently — for a “victory hour” of “meditation, visualisation and prayer”. Disney CEO Bob Iger is ready to begin his morning workout. At 5, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel is centring himself for 45 minutes of meditation, JP Morgan boss Jamie Dimon is flicking through the first of five newspapers, and Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur turned longevity obsessive, is checking his inner ear temperature “to assess if anything is amiss” heath-wise.

This is funny, given how, historically, a marker of male success was being able to afford to do as little as possible, especially before noon. Glamorous aristocrats and playboys were more likely to be in the casino than the gym in the early hours of the morning. Sprezzatura, the Italian concept of effortless, nonchalant grace, was coined in the 16th century and has been invoked ever since. So why has one masculine ideal, of effortlessness and indulgence, been overtaken another, of ceaseless hustle culture?

but the reason cited doesn't seem like a good diagnosis

In a word: anxiety. Anxiety hums in the background of all these morning routine videos. Even the hyper-precise time stamps and jerky editing instil a baseline level of tension. This new age of male anxiety comes from male success being a rarer beast than it once was.

Arguably, all those popular morning videos are put up by folks who are arguably successful by most metrics. What exactly is making them anxious? I can understand the urge to consume this kind of content and aspiring to an ambitious and elaborate early morning routine, and that stemming from anxiety. But that doesn't seem to be the argument the author is making.

AI is a Floor Raiser, not a Ceiling Raiser

AI is a Floor Raiser, not a Ceiling Raiser - Elroy #ai #programming

Learning:

AI Assisted Learning:

Is fitness culture making us sad and boring?

Is fitness culture making us sad and boring? | Dazed #exercise #fitness #culture

Ethan was over-exercising before today’s social media fitness challenges, like 75 Hard, existed. Still, he exhibited a similarly regimented discipline: working out multiple times a day, sticking to a restrictive diet and swapping social events for “self-improvement” activities. While the broad consensus is that 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week (or half as much if it is intense) – which can equate to about 8,000 steps a day – is enough to lower the risk of premature death and many diseases, this is rarely the message we see plastered across gym inspiration posts online. As fitness influencers proudly proclaim their gym “addiction” causes them to work out twice a day every day and high schoolers gloat about skipping prom for a workout, getting sucked into extreme gym culture can pull your goals and aspirations away from being well-rounded, interesting and socially connected. So, is over-exercise culture making us sad and boring?

Over-exercising can also look like using the gym for mood modification, or even emotional avoidance. We see this when people talk about post-breakup “glow-ups” or post about fighting off “sad girl” season by going to the gym twice a day. “I live such a lonely and boring life that I just spend hours at the gym and go twice a day because I have nothing else better to do and no one to go home to. The gym is one of the only things that can distract me from this void,” exercise influencer @liftwithspooky wrote on TikTok. In the comments, there are hundreds of people who share the same routines, and perhaps even go to the same gyms, but never speak to each other. A large part of this has to do with many treating exercise as a means to an end, instead of a potentially enjoyable and connecting experience itself, downplaying rest days and the importance of rest and leisure.

The mainstream aesthetic-driven approach to going to the gym is, unfortunately, inextricably tied to wellness and diet culture. We often talk about what exercise can do for our bodies, before how it’s enriching our lives and energising us for other things. For this reason, over-exercising tendencies can easily slip through the cracks. “When you talk to a doctor, nobody complains to you about exercising, even though you're overexercising,” says Ethan. “You can hide the brutal reality of it in a self-serving way so that you get to have the aesthetic appeal that you want to develop.” In the midst of a beauty backslide, where we’re seeing a broader return to conservative, skinny ideals, there’s currently a hyper-focus on gaining and maintaining muscle. “This can lead people to make exercise have this really giant role in their life,” says Dr Ertl. “Poor body image continues to be a factor that's linked with exercise addiction and disordered eating generally.”

Competitive Exams in India

Would you pass the world’s toughest exam? | The Economist #exams #india #unemployment

This article explores the intense and highly competitive railway entrance exams in India, one of the many such exams in India for public sector jobs. The breadth of coverage is very extensive, and the stories are moving. It just left me sad and the desperation and absurdity of the situation.

Since India started liberalising its economy in the 1990s, its GDP per head has increased eightfold. The country now has the world’s fastest-growing large economy.

Yet many Indian graduates struggle to find work. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) nearly a third of them are jobless. Walk-in interviews draw massive crowds. At the start of this year a video went viral showing thousands of engineers queuing to apply for open positions at a firm in the western city of Pune (local media reported that only 100 were available).

This is partly an indictment of the education system, which has been criticised for its outdated curriculum and tendency to prioritise rote learning over critical thinking. But it also reflects the fact that the private sector is simply not creating enough jobs for the growing number of graduates, while public-sector jobs continue to be cut.

For all the buzz around India’s unleashed entrepreneurial spirit, government jobs remain stubbornly popular. They promise a position for life, regardless of competence – a sharp contrast with the precariousness of the private sector. They come with pensions and other benefits. Some offer the chance to augment income through corruption.

Indian society accords public-sector jobs a special respect. Grooms who have them are able to ask for higher dowries from their brides’ families. “If you are at a wedding and say you have a government job, people will look at you differently,” said Abhishek Singh, an exam tutor in Musallahpur.

The worldwide nursing crisis

The shocking hit film about overworked nurses that’s causing alarm across Europe | Film | The Guardian #nursing #unemployment #caregiving

This is ostensibly a movie review but I learned more about the nursing crisis than the movie itself.

The world could face a shortage of 13 million nurses by the end of this decade. For her new film, Swiss director Petra Volpe imagined the consequences of just one missed shift on a busy night at a hospital, and found herself making a disaster movie.

With Late Shift, Volpe aimed to shine a light on the frontlines of the looming healthcare catastrophe through the eyes of the dedicated, exhausted Floria. Played by German actor Leonie Benesch, the young nurse shows an initially acrobatic grace in her workday, whose first half resembles a particularly hectic episode of the restaurant kitchen series The Bear, but with life-and-death stakes.

Agentic AI and the new "semantic web"

Pluralistic: Delta's AI-based price-gouging (30 Jul 2025) #agents #ai #semantic #website

As an aside, this reminds me of one of the AI industry's most egregious hoaxes-du-jour: the pretense that "agentic AI" is just around the corner, and soon we will be able to ask a chatbot to (e.g.) comparison shop across multiple website for the best airfare and book us a ticket:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/25/06/17/apple-may-look-late-to-ai-but-its-aiming-for-something-different

This absolutely totally does not work. You should not give your credit-card number to a chatbot and ask it to go out an buy you anything, lest you end up paying $30 for a dozen eggs and buying tickets to a baseball stadium in the middle of the ocean:

https://futurism.com/openai-new-ai-agent-food-stadium

AI agent demos are so dismal that AI companies are no longer claiming that "agentic AI" will involve chatbots that nagivate the web as is. Rather, they're claiming that every website will eventually re-tool so that it can be reliably and predictably addressed by an AI agent, with all of its user interface elements well-labeled and/or addressable programatically, via an API.

This is a remarkable sleight of hand! First of all, re-engineering every website to embrace a common set of labels and API fields is a gigantic engineering feat – formally called "the semantic web" – that has been attempted since 1999 without any meaningful progress:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_Web

In fact, the first viral article I ever published online was "Metacrap," a critique of semantic web efforts. That essay is now 24 years old:

https://people.well.com/user/doctorow/metacrap.htm

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2025-07-31

Slop as a way of life

Slop as a Way of Life - by Drew Austin - Kneeling Bus #slop #ai #enshittification

Yesterday morning, I walked past the small grocery store on my block and heard REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” emanating from inside. I’d usually ignore that kind of thing but here it suddenly struck me as absurd—it was 9:30 am on a weekday and there was absolutely no reason for that song to be coming out of an empty grocery store. Not even annoying or dissonant, it was just the least appropriate accompaniment for the moment, in its own subtle way. And of course there was no reason for it—no person had chosen the song and the process that led to it playing then had no audience in mind.

…

The popularity of “slop” as a concept points to something significant about how we experience digital culture in 2025, just as “algorithms” did last decade. In each case, the term’s usage gets less precise as it’s overloaded with everything we hate about the internet. And while the word itself becomes less meaningful, it reveals more about how we feel. It’s tempting to define slop as Potter Stewart did pornography (“I know it when I see it”) but that would just further obfuscate an already murky concept. Today, “slop” implies AI more than anything else, and primarily refers to the AI-generated content that is flooding the internet. The subtext is that slop is being dumped on us against our will—that it’s something that happens to us—but that lets us off the hook far too easily. Most of the slop we see is still made and distributed by real people, often with no AI assistance. If AI is able to suddenly pump slop into our environment it’s only because we already turned on the faucets ourselves. Just think about all the garbage content that people you actually know send you via text, or the DMs that feel like they’re from bots but are actually from real people driven by platform incentives (Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc). The arrival of AI slop is simply the culmination of a long process of cultural slopification, and one of AI’s unexpected functions has been to launder the human slop so we can pretend we didn’t create it.

I call the REM song I heard slop because it’s a good example of this process: The automation of personal music listening, a process accelerated by Spotify but long underway in places like the supermarket aisles, is ultimately a process of “learning to care less about details and perceive distinct things as interchangeable,” as I wrote last year. In slop utopia, there is no right or wrong place or time for anything to happen, because context has been eliminated. The end result of this process, as Liz Pelly has described, is an opportunity for AI content creation, which barely registers because the human-made content with which it coexists has already become fungible. The appearance of AI slop is not something new, just a sign that an ongoing slopification process has been completed.

The Living Fossils Compendium

The Fossil Record So Far - by The Living Fossils #evo-psych #psychology #mentalhealth #evolution

The Living Fossils blog is one of the most high-value blogs I have discovered in the last year or so. They just posted a recap of their posts under the most common thematic categories. This is a great set of links!

• Emotions Measure & Motivate: Thesis: Emotions can be understood as adaptations designed to help humans measure important information and motivate action that would have been adaptive over the course of human evolution.
• Evolutionary Mismatch: Thesis: Much of modern psychological suffering stems from the mismatch between the environments we evolved for and the ones we live in—far more than clinical psychology tends to acknowledge.
• Bashing the Academy: Thesis: Academic psychology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry—not to mention academia more broadly—are overdue for reform. Clinical psychology, in particular, needs a genuinely scientific framework. And no, we don’t mean CBT—we mean evolution.

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2025-07-30

Hope admist the climate crisis

Less rain, more wheat: How Australian farmers defied climate doom #farming #climate

A great Reuters investigation on how Australian farmers overcame climate change to get record wheat harvests. Normally climate news is always doom and gloom, with this being a rare exception.

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2025-07-29

Monk Mode

The growing allure of running away to a monastery | Dazed #wellness #spirituality

As a growing number of young people embark on spiritual journeys, including those attending church and turning to prayer, the idea of ‘disappearing into the woods’ is becoming more compelling. “Given the political climate, technology and expenses, it’s a very romanticised ideal that I think people are drawn to,” says MC. Where once crunchy yoga and meditation retreats may have appeased the crowds, some people are turning their attention to traditional religions like catholicism. Across social media, people are using the term #MonkMode with wellness connotations similar to a 75-day challenge, promoting disappearing as a new way to “level up” and come back as a “completely unrecognisable version of yourself”. Somewhat ironically, instead of focusing on the faith, there’s a certain level of wellness culture embedded in the discussion. There are “monk schedules” for building your work routine and #MonkMode inspo pics for bare-bones living.

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2025-07-28

People who dislike agentic AI coding

HN: on Claude Code is a Slot Machine

Spotted an interesting comment on HN.

I've been noticing the pattern among the kind of people who like/dislike AI/agentic coding:

1. people who haven't programmed in a while for whatever reason (became executives, took a break from the industry, etc)

2. people who started programming in the last 15 or so years, which also corresponds with the time when programming became a desirable career for money/lifestyle/prestige (chosen out of not knowing what they want, rather than knowing)

3. people who never cared for programming itself, more into product-building

To make the distinction clear, here are example groups unlikely to like AI dev:

4. people who programmed for ~25 years (to this day)

5. people who genuinely enjoy the process of programming (regardless of when they started)

I'm not sure if I'm correct in this observation, and I'm not impugning anyone in the first groups.

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2025-07-27

Why are we all so weird about cheating?

Why are we all so weird about cheating? | Dazed #relationships #cheating #infidelity

Writer Amanda Montei highlighted the nonsensical ways we attempt to punish and scold those who have cheated in her essay on the film Babygirl for her Substack newsletter, Mad Woman. She mentions that when Romy (Nicole Kidman) reveals her affair with Samuel (Harris Dickinson) to her husband, played by Antonio Banderas, he yells at her and asserts that she has jeopardised their children and kicks her out. Montei simply asks, “How exactly has she hurt her children?” By having the kind of sex she actually wants to have? By acting and living for herself and not her children or husband? These are very different situations, obviously, and I am not here to cast moral judgement on these behaviours. But why should someone be stripped of everything for behaving the “wrong” way?

Overtourism in Japan

Overtourism in Japan, and How it Hurts Small Businesses — Ridgeline issue 210 #japan #tourism

A great city is typified by character and the character of great cities is often built on the bedrock of small businesses. Conversely: Chain shops smooth over the character of cities into anodyne nothingness. Think about a city you love — it’s likely because of walkability, greenery, great architecture, and fun local shops and restaurants. Only psychopaths love Manhattan because of Duane Reade. If you’ve ever wondered why overtourism can be a kind of death for parts of a city (the parts that involve: living there, commuting there, creating a life there) it’s because it paradoxically disincentivizes building small businesses.1 Nobody opens a tiny restaurant or café to be popular on a grand, viral scale. Nor do they open them to become rich.2

So why do people open small shops? For any number of reasons, but my favorite is: They have a strong opinion about how some aspect of a business should be run, and they want to double down on it. For example, forty years ago Terui-san, the owner of jazz kissa Kaiunbashi-no-Johnny’s up in Morioka, was like: Hmm, nobody is spinning wa-jyazu (Japanese jazz),3 so I’m only going to rock it. That led to a bunch of cool knock-on connections, not the least of which was a lifelong friendship with the incredible Akiyoshi Toshiko. That singular thing can drive an initial impulse, but small business purpose quickly shifts into: Being a community hub for a core group of regulars. That — community — is probably the biggest asset of small business ownership. And the quickest way to kill community (perhaps the most valuable gift for running a small business) is to go viral in a damaging way.

At risk of oversimplifying: Most “problems” in the world today boil down to scale and abstraction. As scale increases, individuals become more abstract, and humanity and empathy are lost. This happens acutely when the algorithm decides to laser-beam a small shop with a hundred-million views. If you cast a net to that many people, a vast chunk of them will not engage in good faith, let alone take a second to consider the feelings of residents or owners or why the place was built to begin with. Hence: The crush, the selfish crush.

Overtourism brings with it a corollary effect, what I call the “Disneyland flipflop.”8 This happens when visitors fail to see (willfully or not) the place they’re visiting as an actual city with humans living and working and building lives there, but rather as a place flipflopped through the lens of social media into a Disneyland, one to be pillaged commercially, assumed to reset each night for their pleasure, welcoming their transient deluge with open arms. This is most readily evident in, say, the Mario Kart scourge of Tokyo — perhaps one of the most breathtakingly universally-hated tourist activities. I dare you to find a resident who supports these idiots disrupting traffic as the megalopolis attempts to function around them.9

This overtourism is happening mostly because of algorithms collimating the attention of the masses towards very specific activities / places. There’s also a slightly nutty narcissism / selfish component to it, too — fueling that impulse to, at all costs, “get” a photo at a specific spot to share on a specific social media service. (See: Fushimi Inari.) If the algorithm is the gas, cheapness is the spark. Because, damn, is it cheap to travel these days. Combined with the fact that there have never been more “middle class” people in the world, and you get overtourism. In a way, overtourism complications and disruptions are what happens when “humanity wins” and more people have more time and money to go “do things.”

Because! Here’s the heartening bit: More people than ever are traveling, and while, sure, the majority of those travelers are just following trends and lists, there is another group, a small cohort of self-aware travelers who are genuinely, deeply curious about the places they’re visiting, who desire to engage directly without being disruptive, who want to engage fully and “authentically” (that is: visiting people and places that haven’t twisted themselves for the sake of transient visitors (i.e., no renaming things “samurai spice”)). And that “small cohort” (let’s say 15% of global travelers) is larger than the total number of travelers the world saw twenty years ago. Omotesando? Gion? They’re lost, like villages washed away by a tsunami. Much like I don’t understand the heart of a wave, I do not understand the hearts of those who come to Japan to buy a Rimowa suitcase. (Quite frankly, it really freaks me out!) And it is not our job to understand.

…

These kinds of folks buoy the chest, elevate the soul (like witnessing a person stand on an escalator and just stare into the distance, refusing the Siren call of their smartphone). I don’t know if there’s some Platonic or deontic mode of travel, but in my opinion, the most rewarding point of travelling is: to sit with, and spend time with The Other (even if the place / people aren’t all that different). To go off the beaten track a bit, just a bit, to challenge yourself, to find a nook of quietude, and to try to take home some goodness (a feeling, a moment) you might observe off in the wilds of Iwate or Aomori. That little bundle of goodness, filtered through your own cultural ideals — that’s good globalism at work. With an ultimate goal of doing all this without imposing on or overloading the locals. To being an additive part of the economy (financially and culturally), to commingling with regulars without displacing them.

algorithmic performativity

algorithmic performativity - by Adam Aleksic #social-media #algorithms

Chat, we all act differently when we’re being watched. There’s a pressure to avoid embarrassment, to present “authentically,” to put others at ease.

Sociologist Erving Goffman calls this performance—the idea that all public interactions are a kind of theatrical act. You’ll put on a different performance for your college friends and your grandmother; TV broadcasters will put on a different performance when on air and behind the scenes.

In the same way, social media algorithms are uniquely changing how we present ourselves online, since they come with a completely new type of spectator: the algorithm itself.

how social media subjugates us

how social media subjugates us - by Adam Aleksic #social-media #dominance

Throughout this parasocial interaction, we’ve both adopted social roles that come with an imbued set of norms and behaviors. You, the viewer, are in an assigned role of docility. I, the influencer, am in an assigned role of dominance. With each repetition of this dance, we internalize our roles a little bit more. Even though I started out as some random guy yapping on the internet, my role over time is mutually legitimized and I begin to take on greater credibility in your mind.

To be clear, I as an influencer also submit myself to the platform, much like a supplicant to a ruler. I need to replicate “viral-looking” mannerisms and expressions; I need to perform for the algorithm by submitting to its constraints. My studio lighting and “influencer accent” are forms of aesthetic labor validating the platform’s priorities. Then you perceive my message on the toilet and do the same, and we both give more power to the technology mediating our interaction.

what i'm looking for in my marriage

What I'm looking for in my marriage - by Sasha Chapin #marriage #relationships

• Relationship as crucible that allows both people to confront their central insecurities and grow through them together
• Goal of relationship is to create a space for both people to have full range of emotions and be cared for, not to manage each other into having nice feelings all the time
• Openness about sexuality and ongoing care in giving everyone what they actually want in that department
• Both partners taking accountability for having an outside support network (no attempt to make each other everything)
• Both partners taking accountability for their reactions, you understand how to soothe yourself when triggered rather than taking it out on each other
• Ongoing see-saw balance is struck between togetherness and separation, don’t smother and don’t abandon
• Conflict is a non-problem, an expected occurrence that is handled ASAP skillfully

• Both partners try to give 100%, accept that there are imbalances, keep scorekeeping to a minimum
• Self-disclosure is very frank but not completely uninhibited or thoughtless

The complications of measuring things

The Luxury of Fudged Numbers - by Josh Zlatkus #numbers #money #measurement

The drawback to money as a concrete and concentrated form of value is that it crowds out other valuations. At many a cocktail party, wealth is the lowest common denominator of worth. Another downside is that many people are tempted to pursue money well beyond what would represent the best use of their time. Golden handcuffs have imprisoned many in the most productive years of their lives.

Now here’s the thing: even after reading this, you’ll be tempted to filter by height. Why? Because height is a preference, after all, and when accurate information is available, why not use it? The problem is that when something is easy to measure, it tends to crowd out better—but fuzzier—metrics. For example, is weight the best proxy for health? Absolutely not. But it’s easier to capture than VO₂ max. Similarly, is bench press the best determinant of overall strength? No, but it’s more concrete than core strength. So we run with it.

One overlooked consequence of numbers is that they enable the quantification of things that were never meant to be that precise. Without numbers, you can’t specify height. You can’t reduce a person’s value to how much money they make. You can’t compare thoughts, jokes, or creative projects by how much attention they receive. Essentially, much of the harm this essay talks about loses its razor-sharp edge.

Many small-scale societies developed additional ways to blunt the edge of social competition. In Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, James Suzman describes how the Ju/’hoansi assign credit not to the person who shoots the animal, but to the maker of the arrow that brings it down. The purpose of this and related practices is to “cool young men’s hearts”—to temper pride and prevent vanity.

Other examples include the many games of chance that foraging peoples play—often for hours on end. As Sahlins said of the Hazda: “[The] men seem much more concerned with games of chance than with chances of game.” By minimizing the role of skill, these games ensure that every dog has its day. I find something very wise in these old and various ways of softening a loser’s pain, given that most of the time, most people are losing.

Modern metrics give unnatural precision to inherently fuzzy social dynamics. When social life remains loose and informal, and advantages remain imprecise, emotions soften. But the more we quantify, the sharper the comparisons become—and the more those comparisons hurt.

Gaza

Chartbook 400: Murder not crisis - Why Israel's starvation of Gaza is exceptional in a global context. #gaza #palestine #israel #genocide

For many months, it has been beyond reasonable doubt that the Israeli government, the Israeli military, sections of Israeli politics and society as well as their aiders and abetters abroad, have been deliberately starving the population of Gaza with a view to forcing the population either to flee or to face intensifying misery and ultimately an agonizing death. There is clear evidence of deliberate intent going back to 2023. This clearly warrants charges of genocide.

Those who style themselves “defenders of Israel” will be quick to insist that, in fact, there is a feeding operation in Gaza. But, as the famine historian and aid expert Alex de Waal demonstrates in powerful piece in the Guardian, “Israel’s food points are not just death traps – they’re an alibi … The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation system is like standing at the edge of a big pond and feeding the (starving) fish by throwing breadcrumbs. Who gets to eat its rations?” Air drops of food, are simply more of the same.

Ethnic cleansing by means of starvation is the actual policy.

Death by starvation in Gaza is not the collateral, unintended consequence of an obscure, anonymous, amorphous crisis. It is the results of deliberate policy on the part of the Israeli government, bent on using the resources of a highly sophisticated state to render Palestinian life in Gaza impossible.

GenZ

Why everyone hates Gen Z workers - by Ellen Scott #genz #workplace

far back as the fourth century BC there’s evidence of Aristotle criticising the generation below him for the way they approach hard graft: “They are high-minded, for they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of necessity”. In the first century BC, “the beardless youth” are described as not knowing how to manage their money. There’s no hard evidence of younger-generation-bashing in the years of children working in factories, but I’d confidently bet it happened, especially when young people dared to ask for better working conditions. In 1894, the Rooks County Record in Stockton, Kansas, published a reader’s letter that accused ‘nobody wants to work these hard times’.

In 1990, Gen X were referred to as the slacker generation, with Time magazine stating that workers born between 1965 and 1980 “would rather hike in the Himalayas than climb a corporate ladder” and have attention spans “as short as one zap of a TV dial”. In 2017, it was millennials who were called “spoilt, full of themselves [and] averse to hard work”. Now it’s Gen Z’s turn in the firing line.

But why does this happen? Why do we keep viewing the generation below us as bad at work? Why did everyone hate Gen X, then millennials, and why do we now hate Gen Z?

Why does everyone hate Gen Z workers? Because we’ve all been told to. Because an ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality, with Gen Z workers as ‘them’ is far better for bosses than one in which it’s all workers versus those at the top. It’s better that we keep squabbling at each other like crabs in a big bucket, rather than us pausing and questioning the very structure of the bucket, or deciding to group together and attack the crab fisherman. And if that squabbling can be monetised, even greater news!

I urge you, the next time you’re lured in by Gen Z sniping, pause and consider what’s going on behind the take you’re being served up by your algorithm. Are Gen Z workers really lazy, entitled, or rude? Or is your own outrage being manufactured and weaponised against you? Who’s benefitting when we see work/life boundaries and those who ask for them negatively? And who’s losing out? Spoiler: It’s not just Gen Z.

Ageing accelerates at 50

Ageing accelerates around age 50 ― some organs faster than others #ageing

It is a warning that middle-aged people have long offered the young: ageing is not a smooth process. Now, an exhaustive analysis of how proteins change over time in different organs backs up that idea, finding that people experience an inflection point at around 50 years old, after which ageing seems to accelerate.

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2025-07-23

When curiosity doesn’t fit the world we’ve built

When curiosity doesn’t fit the world we’ve built #adhd #curiosity

However, three interconnected forces might be conspiring to push hypercuriosity toward its maladaptive expressions:

1) Social media is designed to trigger but never satisfy our information-seeking drives. Algorithms exploit our curiosity gaps (the space between what we know and want to know) and deliver just enough novelty to keep us scrolling. For hypercurious minds, this creates an endless loop of stimulation.

2) Nonlinear exploration is discouraged in educational institutions. Traditional education rewards sustained attention to predetermined tasks. The result is that many hypercurious kids feel miserable suppressing their natural curiosity rather than learn how to leverage it.

3) Most modern workplaces measure value based on efficient output. In high productivity + low creativity work environments, hypercurious employees might burn out and/or leave to become self-employed (which might be why there is an association between ADHD and entrepreneurship).

So how do we fix this? I believe solving this requires three fundamental shifts:

1. Rewilding education. We need to redesign learning environments to support hypercuriosity. This means welcoming neurodivergent thinking, embracing experimental learning, and encouraging nonlinear paths.

2. Reclaiming attention. The attention economy hijacks hypercuriosity. We must treat attention as a precious resource worth protecting both individually and culturally by resisting algorithmic distraction and setting boundaries around our focus.

3. Reimagining technology. Digital tools should support hypercuriosity, not exploit it. We need interfaces (including AI) that help us ask better questions, discover new information, connect ideas, and integrate knowledge.

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2025-07-16

Google Finds a Crack in Amazon’s Cloud Dominance

Google Finds a Crack in Amazon’s Cloud Dominance — The Information #gcp #google #aws #amazon #ai #startups

AWS generates more than twice as much revenue as Google Cloud and has long dominated the market for selling cloud services to startups. But the Dia episode and other examples show how Google has become competitive in attracting AI startups to its cloud, thanks to Gemini and other capabilities AWS doesn’t have.

AWS’ struggle to develop a strong AI model of its own has fueled a perception that it is trailing Google in developing cutting-edge AI.

That’s a big turnaround after Google’s earlier struggles with previous versions of Gemini and startups’ widespread complaints about the difficulty of setting up Google Cloud accounts for AI computing.

Google Cloud has even landed business from two high-profile AI startups its own AI teams compete with: Safe Superintelligence Inc., led by former OpenAI Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever; and Thinking Machines Lab, helmed by former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati. (AWS may have wanted Murati’s business, too: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy met with her in San Francisco earlier this year.)

Google Cloud also recently won business from an even fiercer rival, OpenAI, which has been a major customer of Microsoft cloud servers but has been branching out to other providers.

Aruna Roy on Jane Austen

Social activist Aruna Roy on Jane Austen’s enduring appeal  - The Hindu

As we mark the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth, I am reminded of British-American poet W.H. Auden’s remark about her in his ‘Letter to Lord Byron’.

…It makes me most uncomfortable to see

An English spinster of the middle-class

Describe the amorous effects of ‘brass’,

Reveal so frankly and with such sobriety

The economic basis of society…

Raising Children

Learning to Parent in Community – SAPIENS #parenting #caregiving #culture #anthropology

Bebuna, a woman in her 60s, sits in front of her hut breastfeeding her granddaughter. I had never seen an older woman nursing and—even as an evolutionary anthropologist—didn’t realize it was biologically possible.

“Are you producing milk?” I asked.

Bebuna squeezed her breast, and white droplets appeared.

It turns out that lactating people can produce milk indefinitely, as long as they continue breastfeeding baby after baby. Bebuna has been doing just that for decades, as a midwife and caregiver to many children in her community.

Bebuna is a member of the BaYaka, a collective name for several forest-living forager groups west of the Congo River. [1] Her community lives in the northern Republic of Congo and speaks the Mbendjele language. In 2013, I began visiting Mbendjele BaYaka camps to research how people learn from others in a hunter-gatherer society.

There are countless ways to raise children, shaped by cultural traditions or, in more individualistic societies, by personal choices among various parenting philosophies. All approaches bring benefits and challenges. But community-oriented cultures like the BaYaka get at least one thing right: Parenting should not be learned in isolation or all at once—it is a lifelong process embedded in daily life long before one has a child and long after.

Unlike me, the BaYaka learn to parent before they become parents.

Among both babies under 1.5 years and children aged 1.5–4, around 40 percent of their close care, including holding and physical contact, was provided by “allomothers”—caregivers other than the biological mother. On average, each child had 14 people within arm’s reach throughout the day.

Mothers responded to just under half of all crying bouts. Allomothers soothed the rest—over 40 percent on their own, the remainder alongside the mother. Soothing often meant drumming on the child’s back or yodeling to gently calm the child.

And who were these allomothers? Mostly, other children. These young helpers were more involved, collectively, than fathers or grandmothers.

Parenting is never perfect. Cultures raise children differently, shaping adults valued by their own standards. But, based on my experiences, one truth emerges: Learning to care for others should start long before having a baby.

Two years into parenthood, I have more questions than answers. Growing up in Turkey, studying across Europe and Canada, and working in the U.K., I had never held a newborn until I had Eren. I spent my childhood and early adulthood learning subjects like math, physics, and literature—what my societies valued most. My first months of motherhood were emotionally overwhelming because of the steep learning curve I had to scale.

I wish, like the BaYaka, my parenting lessons had followed a gentler slope, stretched across my lifespan. The same could be said about other essential life skills like growing food, caring for our elders, and dealing with death.

For those of us living in individualistic societies, what happened that people stopped caring to learn life’s basics? Take a note from the BaYaka and other community-oriented cultures: Bring these lessons back into learning journeys.

What’s Happening to Reading?

What’s Happening to Reading? | The New Yorker #reading #ai

What will happen to reading culture as reading becomes automated? Suppose we’re headed toward a future in which text is seen as fluid, fungible, refractable, abstractable. In this future, people will often read by asking for a text to be made shorter and more to-the-point, or to be changed into something different, like a podcast or multi-text report. It will be easy to get the gist of a piece of writing, to feel as if you know it, and so any decision to encounter the text itself will involve a positive acceptance of work. Some writers will respond by trying to beguile human readers through force of personality; others will simply assume that they’re “writing for the A.I.s.” Perhaps new stylistic approaches will aim to repel automated reading, establishing zones of reading for humans only. The people who actually read “originals” will be rare, and they’ll have insights others lack, and enjoy experiences others forgo—but the era in which being “well-read” is a proxy for being educated or intelligent will largely be over. It will be difficult to separate the deep readers from the superficial ones; perhaps, if A.I.-assisted reading proves useful enough, those terms won’t necessarily apply. Text may get treated like a transitional medium, a temporary resting place for ideas. A piece of writing, which today is often seen as an end point, a culmination, a finished unit of effort, may, for better and worse, be experienced as a stepping stone to something else.

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2025-07-15

Coffee and aging

Coffee May Promote Longer, Healthier Living - Bloomberg #caffeine #anti-aging

If you're like me, you climb out of bed each morning feeling like a zombie -- until you slug back that first cup of coffee.

Turns out that morning jolt may benefit more than just energy levels. It could help slow down the aging process of the body's cells, potentially helping to fend off ailments including cancer and neurodegeneration.

Caffeine flips a biological switch in our bodies called AMPK, which monitors our cells' energy levels and, when they're low, tells them to slow down their growth processes and instead focus on repairing damage, according to a paper recently published in the journal Microbial Cell.

In doing so, caffeine inhibits the cellular growth regulator TOR, explains Babis Rallis, the paper’s senior author and a reader in genetics, genomics and fundamental cell biology at Queen Mary University of London. TOR is highly active when we're embryos and fast-growing kids, helping us develop into adults. Once we're older, it will contribute to our body’s ability to, say, renew skin, grow hair and heal wounds.

TOR, however, is "pro-aging." When it's too active, it's implicated in problems including metabolic disorders, neurodegeneration, inflammation and cancer, according to Rallis. 

By studying caffeine's effect on cell growth, Rallis is hoping to get a better handle on some of the factors that promote longevity, a field known as biogerontology. That could inform future research into how we can trigger these virtuous cellular effects through diet, lifestyle and new medicines to achieve healthy aging, he said in an interview.

"We're not saying that you have to take hundreds of pills, like we have seen in the news by certain billionaires," he said. "We mostly try to uncover biological mechanisms and understand how you can then change your habits."

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2025-07-13

What I could have learnt from René Girard #mimetic #culture

René Girard might have found metaphorical use for this. The French theorist’s great idea was that religion and culture grow out of what he called mimetic rivalry. Human beings, uniquely, choose the objects of their desire largely on the basis of what other people desire. “There is nothing, or next to nothing, in human behaviour that is not learned, and all learning is based on imitation,” he writes. But while mimesis helps us learn, it also leads to escalating competition, and ultimately violence. Religion evolved as a means for containing rivalry by projecting communal violence on to an arbitrarily chosen sacrificial victim, the scapegoat.

As always happens when an intellectual becomes popular, distortions have followed. The main problem, though, is not misinterpretation. It’s omission. What is often left out of discussions of Girard is the most challenging part of his theory, about how we break the cycle. Here he turns to one of the firmest messages of the gospels: the injunction to love our enemies. Girard knew, as we all know, that renunciation and mercy are almost impossibly hard, and quite alien to human culture. Yet he argues that it is the moments when the mimetic crisis has reached a hysterical crescendo, when “the vanity and stupidity of violence have never been more obvious”, that it is possible to see our enemies in a new way. Might we not be living in such a moment right now?

Extraction vs Creation

From Dollar Dominance to the Slop Machine - by kyla scanlon #economics

The US has become an extraction economy.

• We extract value from our existing position through dollar dominance, military supremacy, and technological leadership and now are choosing to tear down the foundations that created that position in the first place.
• We extract attention through spectacle without creating the trust that makes spectacle meaningful.
• We extract wealth from our own institutions without replenishing the capacity that generated that wealth.
• The UFC image captures this well - it takes the symbolic power of American institutions and converts it into entertainment value, with no consideration for what that conversion costs us in terms of credibility or coherence.

China, meanwhile, has become a creation economy1.

• They're building electrical generation capacity, training engineers, developing industrial policy that spans decades.
• They're creating an “electrostate” with an economy driven by the technologies that will determine 21st-century competitive advantage.

Immigration Policy of the Danish left

Denmark’s left defied the consensus on migration. Has it worked? #denmark #immigration

These are uncomfortable facts, so much so that to point them out is to invite the disgust of European polite society. Whether in France, Germany, Italy or Sweden, parties of the hard right have surged as they—and often only they, alas—persuaded voters that they grasped the costs of mass migration. But the National Rally of Marine Le Pen in France and Giorgia Meloni’s post-fascist Brothers of Italy have an unexpected ally: Denmark’s Social Democrats, led by the prime minister, Mette Frederiksen. The very same party that helped shape the Scandinavian kingdom’s cradle-to-grave welfare system has for the past decade copy-pasted the ideas of populists at the other end of the political spectrum. Denmark is a generally well-run place, its social and economic policies often held up for other Europeans to emulate. Will harsh migration rhetoric be the next “Danish model” to go continental?

The Danish left’s case for toughness is that migration’s costs fall overwhelmingly on the poor. Yes, having Turks, Poles or Syrians settle outside Copenhagen is great for the well-off, who need nannies and plumbers, and for businesses seeking cheap labour. But what about lower-class Danes in distant suburbs whose children must study alongside new arrivals who don’t speak the language, or whose cultures’ religious and gender norms seem backward in Denmark? Adding too many newcomers, the argument goes—especially those with “different values”, code for Muslims—challenges the cohesion that underpins the welfare state.

The upshot of the left’s hardline turn on migration has been to neutralise the hard right. Once all but extinct, it is still only fifth in the polls these days, far from its scores in the rest of Europe. For good reason, some might argue: why should voters plump for xenophobes when centrists will deliver much the same policies without the stigma? Either way, that has allowed Ms Frederiksen to deliver lots of progressive policies, such as earlier retirement for blue-collar workers, as well as unflinching support for Ukraine. The 47-year-old is one of few social-democratic leaders left in office in Europe, and is expected to continue past elections next year.

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