Friday Fodder #23
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Jensen releases a superchip for your desktop at CES. Obama and Trump scheme in hushed tones at Jimmy Carter’s funeral while Kamala fumes. Trump renames the Gulf of America. LA and some of the most expensive real estate in the country burns while the mayor is in Ghana and the state has no water. But don’t worry! You can use your computer to get help: just go to URL. Trudeau resigns and the 51st state is now without a governor. Zuck does an about face to embrace freedom of speech, adopts Community Notes, and the International Fact-Checking Network — a real thing — freaks out. The media has no idea what to do and this was an actual NY Times headline: “Meta Says Fact-Checkers Were the Problem. Fact-Checkers Rule That False”. Oh, and we’re buying Greenland.
It’s all so crazy that barely anyone is even talking about RFK leading HHS any longer. But I just bought some high fiber, zero sugar, 3 ingredient, keto, paleo, grass-fed, zero vax Cinnamon Toast Crunch to add to my raw milk. Make America Healthy Again!
On to the reading!
Timely
TikTok Is Harming Children at an Industrial Scale - From the “as if you didn’t know” and “stating the obvious” departments, I bring you an in-depth look at the many ways TikTok is capital-B Bad. They want as much of your attention as they can get, but they want the attention of your kids even more. I’m all for a nuanced, reasonable discussion about the how’s and when’s for social media to be introduced to teens, but TikTok is not a part of the conversation. The Supreme Court will weigh in on their divestiture later today.
Reflections - Sam Altman has been poking at the AGI/ASI debate and then dropped a new long form post that everyone expected to have more about the future than the past. That proved false, but it’s still required reading both for the (biased) summary it provides of the last couple of years and the glimpse of what they plan to build soon. Hint: they’re going to replace spots in the “workforce”.
Emperor Elon - Nellie Bowles is a treasure. Seriously, even without all the other great stuff happening at The Free Press I would be a subscriber only for her sardonic and so very extra TGIF weekly column. She turns her wit to Elon and dives into just how influential he has become. My biggest takeaway: people love to love him and love to hate him, but either way, he’s still defining what you think about.
The Alchemists - A look at the changes to expect from the new Washington elite, if you want to call them that, from the Chief Investment Officer of JP Morgan. A by-the-numbers look at tariffs, regulation, energy, AI, China, and crypto. Michael sees the introduction of China to the WTO in 2000, and the US production slowdown it caused, as the primary motivator for the next administration’s moves but this global summary spans a vast swath of issues..
Timeless
Two stupid facts that rule the world - I love everything about this from the writing style, to the casual drop of Goodhart’s Law, to the ridiculous and not at all related squirrel photo. Adam Mastroianni is back to remind us that attention is always good but it’s best when you can ignore it.
Phones Don’t Prepare Kids For The World - It’s still too easy to think that we’re doing our kids a disservice by not giving them enough tech. We forget that we never had a functioning iPhone until we were adults and most of us get along just fine thanks very much. Key takeaway: human skills matter more.
Everything that turned out well in my life followed the same design process - Karlsson talks beautifully about the common attributes in all the good building and designing in his life with references to Christopher Alexander and John Stuart Mill and the importance of context. And I can hear Tyler Cowen in my head: “context is that which is scarce.”
The Fall of Rome - One of my all time favorite poems by WH Auden. Decadent. Sad. Better than Ozymandias. Not much to say except to read it, and that the last stanza is my favorite. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Books
The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander - A very good friend recommended this book way before I ever got into woodworking. I wish I had paid more attention to it then, but I love it now. This is a pretty uncommon book that more people need to know about! It is particularly about building beautiful buildings, but it applies to so much more. It’s all about “the quality without a name” - the character that makes a building alive and satisfying - and the patterns that will let a builder make it happen.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
The world is amazing. Cheers!