🔗 WWW
There are a lot of links out to different parts of the web on this site. I try to mark them all so they get listed here.
📺 Just finished Legends .. based on a true story it says - and seemingly not wrong according to 🔗The Radio Times Not half bad - with ‘Alan Partridge’ playing the boss - straight down the middle. That said - a lot of the full story definitely not in the show. Future series?
★★★
🔗😂 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
Meanwhile as we 🖇️ seek to spend trillions in getting to Mars - we barely understand our own backyard.
🔗📸 In a Single Year, Ocean Census Scientists Discovered More than 1,100 New Marine Species.
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.
I used to read Cringely a lot and then I didn’t. He disappeared from my feeds - life moved on and then BOOM - in the feed today.
🔗 Where the heck have I been all this time? | I, Cringely
HOLY CRAP!
The Catch Up continues. Read 🔗📚Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari
📺 Finished Imperfect Women last night. Really rather good. Seem to be more and more of these ‘secrets wrapped up in Russian Dolls’ stories. They aren’t always great.
★★★
👁️ TIL that Ukiah is the palindrome of Haiku … which is why Ukiah has an 🔗 annual Haiku festival.
🖋️ Careful What You Wish For California
A wolf in sheep’s clothing? Or maybe the emperor has bought new clothes.
🔗 On God and LLMs … my bold.
I don’t have definitive answers here. But one thing that seems clear is that the newly emerging field of digital ethics (in which I’m currently active) is in the same place today as bioethics was five decades earlier, when new medical technologies began to force tough moral quandaries.
Which is all to say: before we blindly embrace whatever AI product Sam Altman or Dario Amodei declares to be inevitable, we still have a lot of work to do in figuring out what we’re willing to accept.
💬 Cal Newport
🔗 Renewables Beat Coal for First Time Since 1919
Renewables generated 33.8% of global electricity in 2025, surpassing coal for the first time since 1919.
🔗 iPhones sales in China grew 3% year-over-year over the May Day holiday.
The iPhone was up against a set of new product launches but still managed to grow while the market declined. It’s a remarkable story. Apple guided to similar growth for the June quarter as for the March quarter. Signals are coming in that this is not a fluke.
💬 Horace Dediu
Clearly Apple is doomed.