I read a lot of random stuff. Link Dumps are the things I think are worth remembering. Every Sunday (if I remember) I will send out my weeks worth of links. You can always check out my Link Dump Tag if you’re looking for even more to read and please forward these if someone might find them interesting.
Noah Smith: What if our biggest problems aren’t economic? I think this is an interesting question to be asking as we get more and more material wealth. We have more than any generation before us with Ordinary Abundance and yet we are discontented. Why?
Bill Gates: The Turbulent AI is Here. I think this is probably a must-read, especially for parents.
The rise of electoral democracy is a great piece that is worth keeping in perspective even as we see regressions in many forms. I particularly liked this graph though where you can move the timeline back and forth to see how the world has changed. Incredible.
Comedians have grown tired of making fun of Trump. So have I, and yet here America is.
Stratechery on the Hugging Face incident and some overall thoughts on where AI is heading. Good stuff.
US Military at War with it’s own newspaper. Problematic.
Tattoo ink sold on Amazon has high levels of weird and rare bacteria. No fucking way? How could this possibly be true?
XKCD: Dependency — very relevant even in the age of AI.
Ships are spending millions of dollars to line jump at the Panama Canal and I am fascinated by this.
AI slop harder to hide was a good read. I expect/hope that being open about when one is using AI, and when one is not, is going to be where the world ends up but I am interested to see…and I use AI every day to assist in writing and do even more than that with things like code.
So how much of a problem is AI water usage really? Smells a bit like a moral panic to me.
The Mystery of the Bloomfield Bridge. This is a great read all around.
You have to beat the models at something. This seems like saying the obvious but maybe not, maybe this is exactly what people need to hear - when software does a part of your job better than you then you move on to the things software cannot do. Welcome to the evolving space of technology where we’re always trying to innovate ourselves out of the current job.
Forget TL;DR, what about AI;DR? Honestly probably the strongest argument against all the AI slop writing I’ve seen in many ways. If nobody is listening what even is the point?
Following on this is an interview with the CEO of Pangram.
Good writeup on guardrails and things after HuggingFace — How to control an agent swarm.
Oh hey, look it reappeared the next day. Also Neat!
Restaurants thinking about just…not doing the lettuce? Down with rabbit food?
New knobs for the human brain. I didn’t know what chemogenetics were and, I mean,I still don’t but…this is a hell of an interesting read
91 year old dude just completed the Appalachian Trail and set the record. Damn.
I think it’s really interesting, like a capitalist economy in microcosm, that there are problems with valuable cards unbalanced Magic: The Gathering best-in-class decks.
Interesting poll: Which animals are fair game for hunters in America?
‘Right to Repair for Your Body’: The Rise of DIY, Pirated Medicine — why can’t you make your own insulin or other drugs? Interesting questions to ask…