The Peter Principle - by Nicholas Decker - “Promotions are used as incentives, even if they don’t always match future competence."
Trumpian policy as cultural policy - Using culture-blitz to incrementally change society.
Hee-haw cars and slinky kinks
Today it’s all wastebook.
Garbage Chairs of Amsterdam, June Bug edition.Wastebook“gizmocrat” and ”gizmocrats,” new govt IT outsourcing term?
“Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was tweeting about guacamole prices over the weekend as Musk took over key functions of the government.” Two weeks in.
“Anything threatening to be a subculture is commodified before it can walk,” attributed to William Gibson.
“Tariffying,” The Economist.
“There’s probably a couple of kinks in that slinky,” Sen.
Links and fun finds for February 2rd, 2025
Hello. How are you today?
Wastebook"MAGA makeover' and “Texas Blowout.” US hair news from the UK.
“your dissimilar appearance to other social media influencers.” Aaron on my influencer aesthetics.
“Some people want something else, and that’s fine for them.” John Dickerson, Political Gabfest, Jan 30th, 2025.
”romantasy, which blends spicy sex scenes and romance tropes with supernatural elements, is not a fleeting trend." At which Rebecca Yarros excels.
"groyperfication, "John Ganz.
Clouded Judgement 1.30.25 - The Year of AI Applications - Finance-nerd explanation of the “this is actually great!” case for last week: “What’s happened over the last 12 months is the cost per API call (ie the cost for inference) for these models has plummeted. Open source models like Llama, R1 from DeepSeek, etc have all contributed to this. It’s become even more clear the model calls themselves are commoditizing quickly. And this is great! If the variable ‘COGS’ component of marginal API call approaches zero, many of the questions listed above start to go away. You don’t worry about your margins shrinking, changing the pricing doesn’t become a must, etc. This in turn leads to a LOT more experimenting with AI features / functionalities. The radius of complexity shrinks."
Some Kind Of Monster (Type) - “The convoluted agreements common to many Fey are an aspect of their adherence to a particular vector of existence. If they agree to something, everyone has to agree that their perspective is the perspective through which the fey are experiencing reality.” // Ponderous! This seems derived from the idea that Fey take oaths very seriously. In the other side, this similar to fiends (devils) being bound by contracts.
Dell ends hybrid work policy despite remote work pledge - “Overall, our results do not support the argument that managers impose these mandates to increase firm values,” the authors state in their paper. “Instead, these findings are consistent with managers using RTO mandates to reassert control over employees and blame employees as a scapegoat for bad firm performance."
Purely AI-generated art can’t get copyright protection, says Copyright Office - If you can’t control it, you can’t copyright it.
ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. DeepSeek: The Battle to Be My AI Work Assistant - Good overview of what Claude is good for and what ChatGPT is good for.
Links and strange finds, January 31st, 2025
“Socrates drawing at a whiteboard with a rapt audience set in ancient Athens, but the whiteboard is like a contempory whiteboard,” Midjourney, January, 2025.Socrates Didn’t WhiteboardThis week’s Software Defined Talk: “This week, we discuss the latest news about DeepSeek, how to make sense of the countless hot takes, and a review of The Nvidia Way. Plus, some thoughts on Valentine’s Day.” Take a listen, or watch the unedited recording, and subscribe if you don’t already.