Tag: skill-estate
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EA fable
Interesting dream this morning. I was working with a Balaji type. He was talking fast, in long sentences with lots of NUMBERS. He was building fences all over the world, trying to cell off all the humans so they would die and he would be the only survivor. I tried to tell him that he…
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Soundscapes
Sarah Hepola’s latest smoky podcast is intensely based in NYC, with NYC sounds in the background. She’s discussing the difference between NYC and Dallas soundscapes, garbage trucks and jackhammers vs crickets and frogs. Reminded me of a couple items I’ve done on the subject. From 2022, a fable based in NYC’s earlier soundscape, dominated by…
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More consequences of QT
Half-baked thought, continuing along the lines of WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN PHILOSOPHERS? Now that the free money of QE/ZIRP has dried up, many pointless projects and pointless IPOs are going away, starting with the huge totally pointless project of bitcoin. Corporations are suddenly realizing that they need customers. Free-money woke idiocy doesn’t work any more,…
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Rembrandt, Picasso, NFT
As usual Sailer manages to ask an off-the-field but provocative question. Why were the women in Old Master paintings usually ugly? The most important fact is that the Great Masters were serving the rich. The rich can afford beauty but they DON’T LIKE BEAUTY. This is an older version of the NFT quandary that I…
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That’s more like it!
Might as well continue this topic. DailyMail is showing off another set of fancy souvenirs for the upcoming crowning. This time the royals are doing it properly: The items going on sale today include a £75 cup and saucer, £50 tankard, £50 dessert plate, £40 pillbox and a £30 coffee mug. The production involves 50…
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The editor is the inventor
Reading an old article about GM’s dream cars and Motorama shows. When AI produces a car to match a prompt, its result often has the same flavor as GM dream cars, which were NOT manufacturable or drivable. Everyone has dreams. If you’re familiar with cars, you’ll dream about impossible combinations of cars. If you’re familiar…
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So close…
Leah Libresco is worrying about AI cheating. There’s an important and valid worry in this area, but the cheating itself is not the serious problem. These companies use machine-learning models to count how many times per minute a student blinks or shifts his gaze (while taking an online exam, for example); they then compare this…
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More establishment flip
Lately I’m impressed by some ordinary establishment types who seem to be grasping the truth of our predicament, while the alleged independents have either converged to Gaia or veered off into denser and denser underbrush. This ordinary economist, Steve Hanke, SEES the war situation and the public “health” situation with stark clarity. “This war against…
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What would Steinbeck think?
Peter Biles at MindMatters uses an old literary interview with Steinbeck to speculate on Steinbeck’s views of AI. Biles concentrates on the way an author writes, and concludes that Steinbeck would dislike the way AI writes. There’s a much bigger and simpler answer. I was reading Steinbeck constantly for most of my early life. I’m…
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Two graphy Californians
I’ve been reading Steve Sailer and Wolf Richter for many years. Both are longtime Californians, both are keen observers who know how to look beyond the partisan crap, and both use a lot of data and graphs. Recently Sailer has been losing his sharpness and Wolf has been gaining. Today’s articles are a good example.…
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Be your own magnet
Lately I’ve been trying to expand the analog side of my life, after retracting into a digital shell during the hottest part of the NAZI TORTURE. I was functioning in OBEYING ALL ORDERS VERBATIM SIR! NAME RANK AND SERIAL NUMBER SIR! mode. Now I’m trying to recapture the analog/digital proportion that I had before the…
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Sucking, not blowing
MindMatters notes an increasing discontent with AI among musicians. “We tried to use these machines to express something extremely moving that a machine cannot feel, but a human can,” he continued. “We were always on the side of humanity and not on the side of technology.” Bangalter said that the timing of Daft Punk’s 2021…
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Postmodern dream
This morning’s dream was set in a future without social media. Achievements were no longer recognized by blue checks or Likes. Achievements were recognized by fastening a metal plate to a giant kiosk or carousel, something like the carousel formerly used for order tickets in restaurants. I knew a black lady who was doing an…
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Not snark
Yahoo Financial was interviewing an expert on gold and silver. Announcer asked “Gold is the boomer metal. What’s the millenial metal? Is it lithium, or the other rare metals that go into EVs?” My instant snarky answer was BITCOIN! The expert’s NON-SNARKY answer was BITCOIN! We’re fucked. = = = = = More seriously, The…
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It’s simple.
I noticed that a lawsuit by publishers against Archive.org has been decided in favor of the publishers. The web coverage of this decision is uniformly one-sided, calling it unfair and illegal. After reading the actual decision, it’s obviously correct and should be uncontroversial. There’s no question of free speech or censorship. The books in question…
Polistra's Mill 