💬 Quotes
🖋️ Caveat - Not My Words ...
… but there for the grace of whatever power you hold true - do we all go. Sometime sooner. Sometimes very much later. But go we do. Few have the power to control ‘when’.
🖋️ They Buried Smiths. Now They Might Have To Bury TG Jones
The rebranding of WH Smith to TG Jones led to large and rapid declines in revenue - which means that the buyer of the brand did not actually undersatand what they were buying.
🔗 Anthropic, AI and The “Numbers” Problem.
A $40 billion run rate with 40 percent net revenue retention is a different company from a $40 billion run rate with 130 percent net revenue retention. From outside, the two are indistinguishable. The valuation gets the same multiple in both cases. The first company is worth a fraction of the second. This is not a small problem. It is the entirety of the problem.
💬 Om
It’s not an earth shattering observation. Anyone in ‘the business’ knows this. So it isn’t ignorance - it is deception.
Also important … Om gets to it in a paragraph to get to where Ed Zitron arrives after a 20 minute monologue. Am I wrong?
I wouldn’t worry too much about CBS becoming another Fox News. Roger Ailes, who created Fox News, was a genius - an evil genius, but a genius nonetheless in the practice of manipulating the medium of television for political ends. Bari Weiss is not this sort of genius. Rather than being transformed into a sophisticated right wing propaganda operation, it is more likely that CBS News is just made dumb and pointless.
💬 Hamilton Nolan
Which is why I dislike this whole trend of digital twins, that has become gospel in Silicon Valley. The Wall Street Journal recently wrote about how prominent names in the industry are creating digital twins, because they are just so busy and it is better for the rest of us to engage with a copy.
💬 Om
The problem with modern tech is that they don’t have any historical perspective. Did they never see 🔗🎬 Multiplicity
Congrats to my friend Manton Reece, a San Antonio fan, for their victory in the Western Conference last night. The Knicks will be playing them starting on Wednesday for the NBA championship. Knicks representing the east, Spurs for the west.
💬 Dave Winer
@dave / @manton - I am thinking ‘Cage Fight’❓
Or is that a spectacle strictly reserved for tech billionaires running surveillance states?
I am often accused by Jax of being a ‘music snob’. ‘No’. I say. ‘I just know what I like’. According to Lin Fisher who writes: 🔗 I Confess, I’m a Snob seems to agree. Music is just one domain she looks at. Another is food .. on which topic Jax is an absolute ‘snob’ - though of course being a gentleman, I would never bring it up.
In fairness to Jax, she sent me the link.
One kind of snob looks down at others.
The kind I’m describing looks inward at self.
One is about superiority. The other is about alignment.
And the difference between the two is everything.
💬 Lin Fisher
I’ve hesitated at calling FeedLand a feed reader.
💬 Dave Winer
🔗 Read his post - I know what @dave means - one of the ‘category design’ conundrums.
Use a category name that everybody understands - or at least ‘thinks they do’ - and you are one of many - competing with all. Use a new name - and forever be answering ‘what’s that then’?
Wrestling with exactly that with a product we are beginning to roll. #StillThinking #NotCommitted
🔗😂 Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Not in the cartoon ….
This is what is meant when AI Alignment researchers refer to “PhD-Level Intelligence.”
💬 Zach Weinersmith
… it’s his usual additional punchline - with emphasis on ‘punch’ today.
🔗 Day 3: Einstein Made Us A Loaf - LLBBL Blog
Philosophers Hilary Putnam and C.W. Rietdijk worked this out in the 1960s. Their argument, roughly: if my “now” overlaps with your “now,” and your “now” overlaps with someone else’s, and that someone else’s “now” overlaps with an event in my future, then by transitivity that future event exists right now. Not metaphorically. Actually exists.
💬 'Logan'
Now read: Day 4: Does the Future Already Exist?
A paywalled Atlantic piece - but not paywalled on the Wayback machine: 🔗 The Lure of a Fully Randomized Life
When I first learned about Max’s experiment, I thought he had found a convenient way to dodge taking responsibility for his decisions. Sorry, the computer made me do it. But I came to see that no matter where the algorithm sent him, Max had cultivated an admirable equanimity about where he ended up. He’d traded the security of knowing exactly where he was going for the serenity of being present wherever he arrived.
💬 Simone Stolzoff
The whole piece reminded me of 🖇️ The Diceman
Ben seems to think the IPO is a good idea .. (His paraphrased conclusions)
1] Musk … has already pushed humanity forward on multiple vectors, including electric cars, self-driving, reusable rockets, satellite Internet, etc., and I’m excited to see him try and do more. 2] Musk is proposing an alternative path to unlimited compute is a relief. 3] This IPO is a return to what an IPO should be: the opportunity for people to contribute capital to actually build the business, and to benefit if it works out.
💬 Ben Thompson
Sure there are some nuanced caveats.
‘Your network is your net worth’ have none of you ever heard of just having friends?
💬 Joan Westenberg
Another Smithsonian - this from 1910.
Resent the Attempt to Smash the British Constitution by American Dollars" poster. Lithograph in black and red ink on white paper showing a caricature of John Redmond armed with a club called “Home Rule” with a large money bag containing US dollars in each hand, produced for the Unionist Party in December 1910.
💬 The Smithsonian
It’s all about fighting the use of American Dollars to ‘break Britain’. Apparently it used to be frowned on. Fast forward 100 years and ….
well, here we are. Again.
A lot of images from the Smithsonian are on Unsplash for free use. This one caught my eye.
This sign was designed to be placed in the window of a home so that all who passed would know that the woman within had exercised her right under the 19th amendment and registered to vote. It also served as a reminder to other women to do the same. ca 1920.
💬 Smithsonian: Record ID: nmah_1414548
… and here we are 100 years later.
🎛️🎙️ 🔗 Scripting News
I need an easy way to do a mini-podcast. An idea that should be said verbally, but it’s short and self-contained, about the length of an untitled blog post, like the one you’re reading now.
💬 Dave Winer
I had the same idea back in 2019 @dave - I even created a 🔗🎙️snicklecast to describe what a 🔗🎙️snicklecast - and why it is.
Never cracked the ‘simple’ part though.
I THINK there is something like this in MicroBlog on a higher tier than I sit at.