Friday Fodder #39
What's Trending? What's Transcendent?
Happy Friday in another week where I allowed AI to do more things for me, ostensibly to test its limits and see where it could go, but actually because I’m a conflicted mess of willpower and laziness and comfort like any other human and it’s really fun to just vibe out and see what happens. And so, I’m starting this week’s Fodder off with a delightful poem from Joseph Fasano called For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper:
Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.
That student is all of us. Love the work.
On the other hand, Dean Ball had a delightful answer to the question “[what are the] things that AIs will remain worse than the best humans at 20 years from now?”
Giving massages, running for President, knowing information about the world that isn't on the internet, performing Shakespeare, tasting food, saying sorry.
That sounds right. Both are true, and this is the world we live in.
And in the news? Amazon gets “hostile and political” by showing customers the effect of tariffs. Tesla may or may not be looking for a new CEO. Bitcoin is back up near $100K and, if you’re keeping track, Michael Saylor is now well over 500,000 BTC. Stripe is building Stablecoins. DeepSeek R2 specs leaked. Huawei is building chips without ASML.
World leaders were in the Vatican for the funeral of Pope Francis. While there, the most meme-able President yet created another meme with a 1-on-1 meeting with Zelenskyy. China and the US — “they” — had meetings. Trump had another cabinet meeting celebrating 100 days in office. The transparency and openness are a nice change but the sycophancy and performances are pretty gross. Still, nobody in the cabinet can top Lindsay Graham, who even agrees with Trump that he should be the next Pope!
Meanwhile, Canada voted and stayed Liberal in reaction to Trump, and the Babylon Bee responds with a classic headline. Portugal and Spain embrace true Net Zero in their energy practices. The PELOSI Act is introduced in Congress to stop Congress from trading securities, and the owners of the Pelosi investment tracker on X go through it. The US has a new car company and it’s selling electric trucks for under $20,000 with great marketing. And the market is up this week, but it’s apparently Biden’s market not Trump’s.
And pray for the Church. The Conclave is 6 days away.
But now, on to the reading!
Timely
Avoiding Skill Atropy In The Age Of AI - We’re just starting to touch the dangers of letting our skill atrophy. Vibecoding is only the early harbinger. A look at all the direct and indirect effects that occur when we don’t know what we’re doing.
ARK’s Price Target for Bitcoin in 2030 - As we near $100k per BTC, it’s worth recapping ARK’s investment thesis on Bitcoin. Cathie Wood may not have the same unstoppable reputation she had in 2021, but there’s still a lot to pull apart here (base case: 7x multiple).
Watching o3 guess a photo’s location is surreal, dystopian and wildly entertaining - I did some of these experiments soon after ChatGPT let you upload photos. I took pictures near my local town center and soon ChatGPT was looking up locations of hardware stores to figure out exactly where I was. It’s freaky. What price privacy?
Slate Auto Hacker News Comments - Slate Auto is cool, and the HN comments on this thread is insanely long. But it’s a great set of discussions around electric vehicle policy, where Elon’s gone wrong, Chinese cars, tax policies, and product simplicity. Sometimes you should read the comments.
Timeless
What fully automated firms will look like - As insane as it might seem, Dwarkesh thinks that people are still sleeping on the crazy differences that AI will bring to the world. He makes the case that the real unforeseen changes come not from individual AIs, but from replicating them billions of times.
A Love Letter To People Who Believe In People - An homage to fandom, mentors, and the art of confidence.
Ultra-Processed Minds: The End of Deep Reading and What It Costs Us - Reading is becoming a lost skill. Everyone knows this, but not everyone so artfully articulates what we might be losing.
Peter Thiel And The Motivation Problem - I’m not sure how we get so succinctly from a conversation where Joe Rogan and Peter Thiel talk past each other to the epistemic implications of eigenvalues.. but here it is.
Books
Shop Class As Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work by Matthew Crawford - While reading this I thought it was good but not recommendably good. But then it sort of just stuck with me and I kept coming back to it. In a world filled with spreadsheets and “knowledge workers”, analyzing the value of manual labor feels both countercultural and necessary. Crawford himself received a PhD in philosophy and then went and started a motorcycle repair shop. He has found for himself that there is far more intelligence waiting to be used in his hands than in his head, sort of a practical version of Polanyi’s Paradox. It made me think of my own very small workshop.. I’m convinced that I learn more in that messy, dirty, disorganized room than in any other place that I frequent. If you want to understand why, this is the book for you.
Tweets
Some good ones, so you don’t need to scroll!
🤣
The world is amazing. Cheers!