Friday Fodder #38
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Hello from Gatlinburg, Tennessee! It’s been a vacation week of Smoky Mountain hikes, Dollywood rides, and a neon gauntlet of moonshine distilleries, airbrush t-shirt shops, and pancake houses stacked on top of each other.
Gatlinburg is confusing and makes me think of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Both are rural towns guarding National Park entrances. But where Jackson whispers to you about wealth and good living, Gatlinburg screams at you to ride the rides and eat the fried chicken and do all the things for only $29.95 (per person, plus tax).
It’s the same America and similar natural beauty, but wildly different expressions. I’ve spent the days wondering why, so I had DeepResearch dig through their histories. More on that in a longer post soon! Right now, I need to finish one more cinnamon roll. No regrets.
Other than our own travel, there were other happenings this week. First and foremost, Pope Francis passed away on Easter Monday, one day after meeting with Vice President JD Vance on Easter. Pray for the Holy Father and the upcoming Conclave. There are already many lists of Papabili.
Trade deals are happening. Maybe. You never know with this President. But Italy is doing things. And India. Japan has questions, but no answers, because apparently we don’t know what we want! It’s a brilliant trade war, this. China is still trolling but now without any Ford motor cars which they are surely disappointed in since Ford is only a decade or so behind BYD in technology.
Bessent pushes for a rebalancing and fights with Musk. The James Webb Space Telescope finds dimethyl disulfide on the worst named planet ever (that’s the bucolic K2-18b) and everyone is convinced those are plankton farts. Closer to home, Mars may have a carbon cycle. TSLA 0.00%↑ earnings absolutely tanked and the markets responded with excitement.
DxGPT brings AI to the medical domain to help ignorant users exercise hypochondria even better than WebMD with all sorts of new rare diseases diagnoses. OpenAI releases the full o3 right before Easter and it somehow gets weirdly focused on the Immaculate Conception of Mary. And Biden says something kitschy about Earth Day and gets clumsily copy/pasted into his own family Easter photo.
But now, on to the reading!
Timely
Tender Love - Luke Burgis with a eulogy of Francis and what we can still learn from this tender Pope.
Don’t Look Too Closely, Love - Sherry Ning again with the most delightful answer to the conundrum of dating in modernity. “True desire doesn’t obey. True desire comes uninvited…. One doesn’t climb into love, one falls into it.”
Alien Poop Means We Are Not Alone - Erik Hoel talks about not just this most recent sign of alien live but also on our growing agnosticism about everything because it’s easier to watch real science happen from the public square.
Timeless
Questions About The Future Of AI - Dwarkesh has interviewed a lot of the big names in AI at this point. And they’re good interviews. But he still has so many good questions and most of them are not answered yet. AI is weird, man. And it’s the biggest thing happening.
Competition - A 77 word reminder that nearly EVERYONE is too afraid to try. Just do stuff. It’s how you win.
Nice Things - A simple reminder that things generate inspiration. If you curate them.
Write Till You Drop - I like sentences. Annie Dillard loves them.
Books
Travels With Charley by John Steinbeck - Another delightful book on travel and a snapshot of what the country looked like in 1960. Not what we remember in the news or on the cover of the Times, but the real country. The farms, towns, country roads, and brand new highways that made up a far larger and disconnected landscape than the America we live in today. It’s a time capsule and a reverie on travel, new adventures, culture, and the spirit of America.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
🤣
The world is amazing. Cheers!