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index a594752..4098ad8 100644
--- a/content/journal/dispatch-18-august-2024/index.md
+++ b/content/journal/dispatch-18-august-2024/index.md
@@ -1,10 +1,22 @@
---
title: "Dispatch #18 (August 2024)"
-date: 2024-08-07T15:35:45-04:00
+date: 2024-08-13T00:37:47-04:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
references:
+- title: "The Limits Of The Billionaire Imagination Are Everyone's Problem | Defector"
+ url: https://defector.com/the-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+ date: 2024-08-13T03:35:16Z
+ file: defector-com-8wrecr.txt
+- title: "The Rot Economy - Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At"
+ url: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/
+ date: 2024-08-13T03:37:13Z
+ file: www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt
+- title: "AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?"
+ url: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
+ date: 2024-08-13T03:39:45Z
+ file: www-citationneeded-news-4myqvd.txt
- title: "Recently - macwright.com"
url: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
date: 2024-08-09T03:43:36Z
@@ -13,54 +25,100 @@ references:
url: https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
date: 2024-08-09T03:43:55Z
file: macwright-com-59hl5f.txt
+- title: "Time travelling for parents · Hauken"
+ url: https://hauken.io/time-travelling/
+ date: 2024-08-12T17:19:44Z
+ file: hauken-io-v7sjyb.txt
+- title: "The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz - The Verge"
+ url: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations
+ date: 2024-08-13T04:21:48Z
+ file: www-theverge-com-qbbp8t.t
+- title: "Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites"
+ url: https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/
+ date: 2024-08-13T04:23:30Z
+ file: danilafe-com-0cob7b.txt
+- title: "A Diminishing Portfolio of Enthusiasms | John P. Weiss - Blog"
+ url: https://johnpweiss.com/blog/196014/a-diminishing-portfolio-of-enthusiasms
+ date: 2024-08-13T04:25:22Z
+ file: johnpweiss-com-ta0xym.txt
---
-Some thoughts here...
+Our boy's two months old today! Look at this little dude.
-* "Who has write access to your worldview?"
-* Roof replacement (selecting a vendor)
-* Balance: family, work, health, creativity
- * (adulting, sleep)
-* Photo shoot
-* Racefest
-* Durham Library
-* Amateur woodworking
+{{}}
+{{}}
+
+We did a newborn photo shoot with [G. Lin Photography][1], though no one told Nevie she wasn't the star.
{{}}
{{}}
+[1]: https://www.glinphotography.com/
+
+We took the kids to a few Bulls games. Snacks consumed: many. Baseball consumed: none.
+
{{}}
{{}}
-{{}}
+I finished Nev's art table as well as a few other small projects. I doubt I'll ever be a great (or even good) woodworker, but I derive considerable satisfaction from building simple pieces and quickly modifying things around the house.
+
{{}}
+{{}}
+
+I signed up for [Bull City Race Fest][2] half-marathon for what'll be the third year in a row. It is so hot out right now that afternoon long runs aren't really tenable, but night runs work well with my screwed up sleep schedule (though that's how I [turned my ankle something fierce][3] last year). Knowing I need to be able to run 13 miles in a few short months is doing wonders for my discipline.
+
+[2]: https://capstoneraces.com/bull-city-race-fest/
+[3]: /journal/dispatch-8-october-2023/
+
+Randomly:
+
+* I needed to replace the roof on my house, and for the first time in my life, I needed to collect bids and select a vendor. I'm used to being in the opposite role as a consultant trying to win work, and so it was weird being the one getting pitched instead of pitching, and in a domain I know next-to-nothing about. It definitely gave me more empathy for what our clients go through in selecting a technical partner. I ended up with a company that was price competitive and just gave me a good gut feeling, and I'm happy with the result.
+
+* I've been thinking about the authors whose worldviews really speak to me, like [David Roth][4], [Ed Zitron][5], and [Molly White][6]. I was initially drawn to these folks because they were able to eloquently express thoughts and feelings I was already having about topics like blockchain, AI, and capitalism more broadly. But over time, I've consumed more and more of this content in an increasingly unquestioning way. I find my views getting increasingly extreme, and I've sort of lost the ability to relate to people who feel more positively about these things.
+
+[4]: https://defector.com/the-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[5]: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/
+[6]: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
This month:
* Adventure: Rehoboth Beach with my family. We've done this trip for the last four years, and every year the number of children in attendance has increased by one, a trend that simply cannot continue.
-* Project: [This is one of my favorite albums][1], and here's how they describe the creation process: "write and record a collection of drum-free samples, then flip them into an albums' worth of beats." I'd like to produce a track in this style this month.
-* Skill: Drum programming
+* Project: [This is one of my favorite albums][7], and here's how they describe the creation process: "write and record a collection of drum-free samples, then flip them into an albums' worth of beats." I'd like to produce a track in this style this month.
+* Skill: Finger drumming / drum programming in general
-[1]: https://birocratic.bandcamp.com/album/ninety-nine
+[7]: https://birocratic.bandcamp.com/album/ninety-nine
Reading:
-* Fiction: [_Moonbound_][2], Robin Sloan -- quite a departure from _Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore_ but I'm digging it so far; I like an absurd story told in a straightforward way
-* Non-fiction: [_The World Beyond Your Head_][3], Matthew B. Crawford -- I've read another book by this author, _Shop Class as Soulcraft_, and Tom MacWright spoke highly of this one in his [recent update][4] and [review][5]
+* Fiction: [_Moonbound_][8], Robin Sloan -- quite a departure from _Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore_ but I'm digging it so far; I like an absurd story told in a straightforward way
+* Non-fiction: [_The World Beyond Your Head_][9], Matthew B. Crawford -- I've read another book by this author, _Shop Class as Soulcraft_, and Tom MacWright spoke highly of this one in his [recent update][10] and [review][11]
-[2]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/wizard-s-design-robin-sloan/20374751
-[3]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-beyond-your-head-on-becoming-an-individual-in-an-age-of-distraction-matthew-b-crawford/8484056?ean=9780374535919
-[4]: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
-[5]: https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
+[8]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/wizard-s-design-robin-sloan/20374751
+[9]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-beyond-your-head-on-becoming-an-individual-in-an-age-of-distraction-matthew-b-crawford/8484056?ean=9780374535919
+[10]: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
+[11]: https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
Links:
-* [Title][6]
-* [Title][7]
-* [Title][8]
+* [Time travelling for parents][12]
-[6]: https://example.com/
-[7]: https://example.com/
-[8]: https://example.com/
+ > One day, you’ll pick up your child for the last time. You’ll change the last diaper, give the last piggyback ride, read the last bedtime story. But this is the crucial point: You will never know it’s the last time when it happens. It’ll slip by, unnoticed.
+
+* [The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz][13]
+
+ > Two of Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists make the case for backing Trump: that their ability to make money is the only value that matters.
+
+* [Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites][14]
+
+ > In this time, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to improve the site, and I’ve seen quite a few little things that are nice to use, but relatively easy to implement. They don’t really make or break a website; the absence of such features might be noticed, but will not cause any disruption for the reader. On the other hand, their presence serves as a QoL enhancement.
+
+* [A Diminishing Portfolio of Enthusiasms][15]
+
+ > In other words, don’t melt into your couch and stop living. Don’t give up on life just because your portfolio of enthusiasms has diminished. There are always ways to squeeze more out of life, even if you’re old and less able to do the things you used to.
+
+[12]: https://hauken.io/time-travelling/
+[13]: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations
+[14]: https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/
+[15]: https://johnpweiss.com/blog/196014/a-diminishing-portfolio-of-enthusiasms
diff --git a/static/archive/danilafe-com-0cob7b.txt b/static/archive/danilafe-com-0cob7b.txt
new file mode 100644
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/static/archive/danilafe-com-0cob7b.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,579 @@
+Daniel's Blog
+
+[1]Home [2]About [3]GitHub [4]Resume [5]Tags [6]Series [7]Favorites [8]Search
+[9]All Posts
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites
+
+[10]Website
+
+Posted on June 23, 2024.
+
+Table of Contents
+
+ • [11]Sidenotes
+ • [12]Tables of Contents
+ □ [13]Bonus: Showing Page Progress
+ • [14]Easily Linkable Headings
+ • [15]Grouping Series of Posts
+ • [16]Dialogues
+ • [17]Code Blocks with Origin
+ □ [18]Bonus: Code Blocks with Clickable Links
+ • [19]Markers for External Links
+ □ [20]Bonus: Different Markers for Different Destinations
+ □ [21]Bonus: Link Preview
+ • [22]RSS Feeds
+ • [23]Links to Other Sites
+ • [24]Conclusion + Anything Else?
+
+Some time ago, Hillel Wayne published an article titled [25]Microfeatures I’d
+like to see in more languages . In this article, he described three kinds of
+features in programming languages: fundamental features, deeply engrained
+features, and nice-to-have convenience features. Hillel’s premise was that
+language designers tend to focus on the first two; however, because the
+convenience features are relatively low-overhead, it’s easier for them to jump
+between projects, and they provide a quality-of-life increase.
+
+I’ve been running a blog for a while — some of the oldest posts I’ve found
+(which are no longer reflected on this site due to their low quality) were from
+2015. In this time, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to improve the site, and
+I’ve seen quite a few little things that are nice to use, but relatively easy
+to implement. They don’t really make or break a website; the absence of such
+features might be noticed, but will not cause any disruption for the reader. On
+the other hand, their presence serves as a QoL enhancement. I find these to be
+analogous to Hillel’s notion of “microfeatures”. If you’re interested in adding
+something to your site, consider browsing this menu to see if anything
+resonates!
+
+One last thing is that this post is not necessarily about microfeatures I’d
+like every blog or personal website to have. Some ideas I present here are only
+well-suited to certain types of content and certain written voices. They need
+not be applied indiscriminately.
+
+With that, let’s get started!
+
+[26]
+
+Sidenotes
+
+[27]Gwern is, in my view, the king of sidenotes. Gwern’s writing makes very
+heavy use of them (at least based on the articles that I’ve read). This is
+where I originally got inspiration for [28]my own implementation in Hugo. Check
+out the page on [29]hydrocephalus for an example; Here’s what a piece of that
+page looks like on my end at the time of writing:
+
+A screenshot of Gwern's page on hydrocephalus. The main article text is
+accompanied by notes in both the left and right margin.
+
+A screenshot of Gwern’s page on hydrocephalus
+
+Sidenotes are nice because they allow for diversions without interrupting the
+main article’s flow. You can provide additional details for the curious reader,
+or — [30]as Gwern does — use the sidenotes for citing studies or sources. In
+either case, the reading experience is significantly more pleasant that
+footnotes, for which you typically have to go to the bottom of the page, and
+then return to the top.
+
+Another reason I called Gwern the “king of sidenotes” is [31]this page on
+sidenotes . There, Gwern documents numerous approaches to this feature, mostly
+inspired by [32]Tufte CSS . The page is very thorough — it even includes a link
+to my own work, as unknown as it may be! I would recommend checking it out if
+you are interested in enhancing your site with sidenotes.
+
+[33]
+
+Tables of Contents
+
+Not all personal sites include tables of contents (TOCs), but they are nice.
+They serve two purposes:
+
+ 1. Seeing at a glance what the post will be about, in the form of headings.
+ 2. Being able to navigate to an interesting part of the page without having to
+ scroll.
+
+Static site generators (I myself use [34]Hugo ) are typically able to generate
+TOCs automatically, since they are already generating the HTML and know what
+headings they are inserting into the page. For instance, Hugo has [35]
+TableOfContents . I suspect the same is true for other existing website
+technologies.
+
+Despite this, I actually had to look relatively long to find sites I frequent
+that have TOCs to show off as examples here. The first one I came across —
+after Gwern’s, whose site will be mentioned plenty in this post anyway — is
+[36]Faster than Lime . Take this post on [37]Rust’s Futures ; this is what the
+top of it looks like at the time of writing:
+
+A screenshot of the table of contents on Faster than Lime. A box with the word
+"Contents" contains links to several sections on the page bellow (off screen)
+
+A screenshot of the table of contents on Faster than Lime
+
+The quality and value of TOCs certainly depends on the sections within the page
+itself — and whether or not the page has sections at all! — but in my opinion,
+the benefits to navigation become apparent even for relatively simple pages.
+
+As an honorable mention, I’d like to show [38]Lars Hupel’s site . The pages on
+the site don’t — as far as I can tell — have internal tables of contents.
+However, pages that are part of a series — such as the [39]introduction to
+CRDTs — have tables of contents that span the entire series.
+
+A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel's site. A box with the
+words "Series Navigation" contains links to several other pages in the series.
+
+A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel’s site
+
+I also find this very nice, though it does miss out on headings within a page.
+
+[40]
+
+Bonus: Showing Page Progress
+
+I’ve mentioned that tables of contents can communicate the structure of the
+page. However, they do so from the outset, before you’ve started reading. In
+their “base form”, the reader stops benefiting from tables of contents once
+they’ve started reading. [41][ ][note: That is, of course, unless they jump
+back to the top of the post and find the table of contents again. ]
+
+If you want to show progress while the reader is somewhere in the middle of a
+page, you could use a page progress bar. I’ve noticed one while reading [42]
+Quanta Magazine ; it looks like this (recording my scrolling through the [43]
+most recent article at the time of writing ).
+
+The progress bar on a Quanta Magazine article. As the page scrolls, an orange
+bar at the top gradually fills up from left to right.
+
+The progress bar on a Quanta Magazine article
+
+One immediate thought is that this is completely superseded by the regular
+browser scroll bar that’s ever-present at the side of the page. However, the
+scroll bar could be deceiving. If your page has a comments section, the
+comments could make the page look dauntingly long. Similarly, references to
+other pages and general “footer material” count towards the scroll bar, but
+would not count towards the progress bar.
+
+Combining the two, you could imagine an always-visible table of contents that
+highlights the current section you’re in. With such a feature, you can always
+see where you are (including a rough estimate of how far into the page you’ve
+scrolled), and at the same time see how the current section integrates into the
+broader structure. I’ve seen this done before, but could not find a site off
+the top of my head that implements the feature; as a fallback, here’s the [44]
+CSS tricks tutorial that shows how to implement a dynamic table of contents,
+and a recording of me scrolling through it:
+
+The table of contents from a CSS Tricks demo. As the page scrolls, the current
+section in the table of contents becomes bold.
+
+The table of contents from a CSS Tricks demo
+
+[45]
+
+Easily Linkable Headings
+
+How can you link a particular section of a page to your friend? There’s a
+well-defined mechanism to do this in HTML: you can use the ID of a particular
+HTML element, and add it as #some-id to the end of a link to the page. The link
+then takes the user to that particular HTML element. I can do this, for
+instance, to link to the [46]sidenotes section above .
+
+How does one discover the ID of the part of the page that they want to link to?
+The ID is not a “visual” property; it’s not displayed to the user, and is
+rather a detail of HTML itself. Thus, on any given page, even if every element
+has a unique, linkable ID, I can’t make use of it without going into Inspect
+Element and trying to find the ID in the HTML tree.
+
+The simple solution is to make the elements that you want to be easily
+“linkable” into links to themselves! Then, the user can right-click the element
+in question (probably the heading) and click Copy Link. Much easier! To
+demonstrate a similar idea, [47]here is a link to this paragraph itself. You
+can now use the context menu to Copy Link, put it in your browser, and voilà —
+you’re right back here!
+
+As with [48]tables of contents , many website technologies provide most of the
+tooling to add support for this feature. Relatively often I come across pages
+that have unique IDs for each header, but no clickable links! I end up having
+to use inspect element to find the anchor points.
+
+A variation on this idea — if you don’t want to make the entire heading or
+title a link — is to include alongside it (before or after) a clickable element
+that is a link to that title. You can click that element to retrieve link
+information, instead (and the icon additionally tells you that this is
+possible). Hugo’s documentation does this: here’s a screenshot of [49]an
+arbitrary page .
+
+A title and paragraph from the Hugo documentation. Next to the title there is a
+blue link symbol.
+
+A title and paragraph from the Hugo documentation
+
+[50]
+
+Grouping Series of Posts
+
+Some authors like to write at length on a particular topic; to get the content
+out to readers faster (and to make the resulting pages less daunting), it makes
+sense to break a single topic up into a series. The easiest way to do this is
+to just… publish several articles, possibly with related names, and link them
+to each other. Done!
+
+With a little more effort, though, the series-reading and series-writing
+experience could be nicer. Instead of manually inserting links, you could
+configure your website to automatically add a “next” and “previous” button to
+pages in a given series. You could also give an overview of a particular series
+and create a “navigation hub” for it.
+
+As an example, the [51]Chapel language blog has navigation buttons. Here’s a
+screenshot from [52]a post in the Advent of Code series :
+
+Series navigation buttons on a Chapel blog post. There are two buttons; one
+links to a previous page in the series, another links to the next.
+
+Series navigation buttons on a Chapel blog post
+
+I’ve mentioned this in the section on [53]tables of contents , but [54]Lars
+Hupel’s site has tables of contents that link between series. I’m not sure if
+it’s automatically generated or hand-written, but it’s definitely nice.
+
+A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel's site. A box with the
+words "Series Navigation" contains links to several other pages in the series.
+
+A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel’s site
+
+[55]
+
+Dialogues
+
+I first came across dialogues on [56]Xe Iaso’s site , but I think I see them
+used most often in posts on [57]Faster than Lime . As an example, here’s a
+little dialogue on [58]a post about Rust’s futures . At the time of writing, it
+looks like this:
+
+A dialogue with "cool bear" on Faster than Lime. The page contains chat bubbles
+that alternate between a bear character and the author.
+
+A dialogue with “cool bear” on Faster than Lime
+
+Using dialogues — even for technical writing — is not a particularly novel
+idea. I know I’ve seen it in a textbook before; probably this part of [59]
+Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces . It can help ask questions from a
+less-experienced point of view, and therefore possibly voice concerns that a
+reader might themselves be having. And of course — as with “cool bear” and Xe
+Iaso’s [60]many characters — it can change the tone and make the page a bit
+more fun.
+
+[61]
+
+Code Blocks with Origin
+
+This one was recommended to me by a reader, and so I’ll be talking about my
+page specifically!
+
+When I was [62]writing about making a compiler, a reader emailed me and pointed
+out that they were getting lost in the various code blocks. My page displayed
+the code that I was writing about, but the project had grown beyond a single
+file. As a result, I’d be making changes midway through one file at one moment,
+and another file the next. This prompted me to add decorators to my code blocks
+that look something like this:
+
+From [63]patterns.rb, lines 3 through 8
+
+3 def sum_digits(n)
+4 while n > 9
+5 n = n.to_s.chars.map(&:to_i).sum
+6 end
+7 n
+8 end
+
+The decorator says what file the code is from, as well as what lines are being
+presented. If you click the file name, the decorator links to my Gitea
+instance, allowing you to read the code in context.
+
+Though it’s not quite the same (in particular, it’s unfortunately missing
+links), the Crafting Interpreters online book does something similar. It
+describes changes to the code in words next to the changed code itself, like
+“added after MyStruct”. Here’s a screenshot of the page on [64]local variables
+at the time of writing.
+
+Location notes on code in Crafting Interpreters. On the right of code blocks, a
+margin note describes the file and nature of the change.
+
+Location notes on code in Crafting Interpreters
+
+I think it looks quite elegant, and in some ways — specifically in the verbal
+descriptions of what each change does — might be superior to my approach.
+
+It’s not quite the same thing, but [65]GitHub Gists can help approximate this
+feature. A Gist could contain multiple files, and each file can be individually
+embedded into your page. Hugo in particular has [66]built-in support for Gists
+(and I’ve snagged that link using the docs’ [67]easily linkable headings ); I
+suspect that other website engines have some form of support as well. At the
+time of writing, an embedded Gist looks something like this:
+
+Code embedded in Hugo documentation using a GitHub Gist.
+
+Code embedded in Hugo documentation using a GitHub Gist
+
+Clicking list.html takes you to the source code of the file.
+
+[68]
+
+Bonus: Code Blocks with Clickable Links
+
+If we’re going for fancy code blocks, another fancy feature is provided by the
+[69]Agda programming language . Agda can generate HTML code blocks in which
+every symbol (like a variable, record name, function name) are linked to where
+they are defined. So if you’re reading the code, and wonder “what the heck is
+x?”, you can just click it to see how it’s defined.
+
+It’s not simple to integrate Agda’s plain HTML output into an existing webpage,
+but some projects do that. I took a stab at it in my [70]post about integrating
+it with Hugo. I wager this would be even harder for other languages. However,
+it leads to nice results; my go-to is [71]Programming Languages Foundations in
+Agda . The online book introduces various concepts from Programming Language
+Theory, and each code block that it shows is fully linked. This makes it
+possible to jump around the page like so:
+
+Navigating code blocks on a page from PLFA. I hover over then click a plus sign
+to see how addition is defined. I then do the same to see how natural numbers
+are defined.
+
+Navigating code blocks on a page from PLFA
+
+[72]
+
+Markers for External Links
+
+Some sites I’ve seen mark links that go to a different domain with a little
+icon. If you’ve read this far, you’ve likely noticed that my site does the
+same. Another good example of this — even though the CSS is little rough at the
+time of writing — is [73]James’ Coffee Blog ☕ . I’ve taken the (small) liberty
+to adjust the color of the icon, which I suspect is buggy in my browser.
+
+An external link on James' blog. The link is displayed as normal, and an
+additional diagonal arrow aiming up and to the right and surrounded by a square
+is displayed to the right of the link text.
+
+An external link on James’ blog
+
+Some websites ([DEL:this one included:DEL]) also make such links open in a new
+tab automatically. That way, you tend to not lose the original article by
+clicking through one of its references.
+
+[74]
+
+Bonus: Different Markers for Different Destinations
+
+[75]Gwern’s website takes this idea further, by changing the icon for external
+links depending on the destination. For instance, links to Wikipedia articles
+are stylized with a little “W”, links to Haskell.org are stylized using a
+lambda (λ\lambdaλ), and links to .zip files have a little archive icon. There
+are more; [DEL:I’ve found the [76]link processing code on GitHub , and even the
+[77]list of websites that get their own icons .:DEL] I could not find a verbal
+description, though.
+
+Edit: Gwern has pointed out that the links I provided go to obsolete code. The
+link processing functionality is [78]documented in comments here and the [79]
+link icon rules are here . A [80]non-code list of icons exists too.
+
+Now for some pictures. Here are a ton of links from the [81]“About” page!
+
+Links to Wikipedia on Gwern's blog. Each link is followed by a superscript "W".
+
+Links to Wikipedia on Gwern’s site
+
+A link to Haskell.org on Gwern's blog. The link is followed by a superscript
+lambda.
+
+A link to Haskell.org on Gwern’s site
+
+Links zip files on Gwern's site. Each link is followed by an archive icon.
+
+Links zip files on Gwern’s site
+
+[82]
+
+Bonus: Link Preview
+
+[83]Gwern’s website has no shortage of cool ideas. Among them showing link
+previews on hover. When hovering over a link, the site displays a popup window
+that contains a view into that page. I suspect that this view is also archived
+somehow, so that it retains a view into the page that matches it at the time of
+writing.
+
+To be perfectly honest, I found this feature a little jarring at first. As I
+would try to click links, I would get surprised by an additional overlay.
+However, as I spent more time browsing the site, I grew quite accustomed to the
+previews. I would hover over a link to see the first paragraph and thus get a
+short synopsis. This worked really well in tandem with [84]per-destination
+marker icons ; I could tell at a glance whether a link was worth hovering over.
+
+Here’s what it looks like:
+
+Hovering over a link on Gwern's site. After the link is hovered over, a
+rectangular popup displays a section of the Wikipedia page the link goes to. I
+scroll through the section to the table of contents.
+
+Hovering over a link on Gwern’s site
+
+[85]
+
+RSS Feeds
+
+RSS is a feed standard that allows sites to publish updates. Blogs in
+particular can make use of RSS to notify readers of updates. RSS feeds are
+processed by a feed reader, which is a program that polls a website’s index.xml
+file (or other similar files) and reads it to detect new content. If you opt in
+to full-text RSS feeds, users can read the entire post entirely from their
+reader.
+
+RSS makes it easier to keep up with your site. Rather than having to check in
+on every author whose content I enjoy on the internet, I can add their feed URL
+to my list, and have my feed reader automatically aggregate all updates for me
+to read. It’s kind of like a social media or news feed, except that I control
+what’s shown to me, and authors of the blogs I follow don’t need to create
+accounts and explicitly share their work on social media!
+
+I don’t have any particular website to show off in this section; instead I’ll
+show you a list of websites that I’m following in my feed reader of choice. You
+might notice that a lot of these websites are listed here as inspiration for
+other microfeatures.
+
+A screenshot of my Feedbin list. Some sites include Hillel Wayne's, Faster than
+Lime, Drew DeVault, and the Chapel Language Blog
+
+A screenshot of my Feedbin list
+
+[86]
+
+Links to Other Sites
+
+This feature I first noticed on Drew DeVault’s blog. Every page on Drew’s blog,
+at the bottom, has a section titled “Articles from blogs I read”. For instance,
+on [87]a sample post , at the time of writing, I’m seeing the following footer:
+
+Links to other blogs from Drew DeVault's blog. The links consist of three
+side-by-side boxes, each with a title and brief excerpt.
+
+Links to other blogs from Drew DeVault’s blog
+
+As indicated in the image, Drew’s site in particular uses a program called [88]
+openring , which is based on RSS feeds (another [89]microfeature I love ).
+However, how the site finds such articles (statically like openring, or on page
+load using some JavaScript) isn’t hugely important to me. What’s important is
+that you’re promoting other content creators whose work you enjoy, which is the
+ethos of my favorite slice of the internet.
+
+[90]
+
+Conclusion + Anything Else?
+
+Those are all the microfeatures that I could think of in a single sitting. I
+hope that you have been inspired to integrate features like these into your own
+site, or at the very least that you think doing so would be a good idea.
+
+This list isn’t exhaustive. I’ve probably missed some good microfeatures! If
+you can think of such a feature, let me know; my email address is linked in the
+footer of this article.
+
+Thank you for reading, and cheers!
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Liked this article? Have any questions or comments? Please don't hesitate to
+reach out to me at [91]danila.fedorin@gmail.com! I love receiving emails from
+readers, and I'm always happy to provide any additional clarification or
+assistance.
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://danilafe.com/
+[2] https://danilafe.com/about/
+[3] https://github.com/DanilaFe
+[4] https://danilafe.com/Resume-Danila-Fedorin.pdf
+[5] https://danilafe.com/tags/
+[6] https://danilafe.com/series/
+[7] https://danilafe.com/favorites/
+[8] https://danilafe.com/search/
+[9] https://danilafe.com/blog/
+[10] https://danilafe.com/tags/website/
+[11] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#sidenotes
+[12] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#tables-of-contents
+[13] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-showing-page-progress
+[14] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#easily-linkable-headings
+[15] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#grouping-series-of-posts
+[16] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#dialogues
+[17] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#code-blocks-with-origin
+[18] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-code-blocks-with-clickable-links
+[19] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#markers-for-external-links
+[20] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-different-markers-for-different-destinations
+[21] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-link-preview
+[22] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#rss-feeds
+[23] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#links-to-other-sites
+[24] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#conclusion--anything-else
+[25] https://buttondown.email/hillelwayne/archive/microfeatures-id-like-to-see-in-more-languages/
+[26] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#sidenotes
+[27] https://gwern.net/me
+[28] https://danilafe.com/blog/sidenotes/
+[29] https://gwern.net/hydrocephalus
+[30] https://gwern.net/hydrocephalus#sn4
+[31] https://gwern.net/sidenote
+[32] https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/
+[33] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#tables-of-contents
+[34] https://gohugo.io/
+[35] https://gohugo.io/methods/page/tableofcontents/
+[36] https://fasterthanli.me/
+[37] https://fasterthanli.me/articles/understanding-rust-futures-by-going-way-too-deep
+[38] https://lars.hupel.info/
+[39] https://lars.hupel.info/topics/crdt/01-intro/
+[40] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-showing-page-progress
+[42] https://www.quantamagazine.org/
+[43] https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-the-square-root-of-2-became-a-number-20240621/
+[44] https://css-tricks.com/sticky-table-of-contents-with-scrolling-active-states/
+[45] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#easily-linkable-headings
+[46] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#sidenotes
+[47] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#linked-paragraph
+[48] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#tables-of-contents
+[49] https://gohugo.io/content-management/markdown-attributes/#overview
+[50] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#grouping-series-of-posts
+[51] https://chapel-lang.org/blog/
+[52] https://chapel-lang.org/blog/posts/aoc2022-day09-elvish-string-theory/
+[53] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#tables-of-contents
+[54] https://lars.hupel.info/
+[55] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#dialogues
+[56] https://xeiaso.net/
+[57] https://fasterthanli.me/
+[58] https://fasterthanli.me/articles/understanding-rust-futures-by-going-way-too-deep#it-s-waiting-for-the-first-one-to-finish
+[59] https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/dialogue-virtualization.pdf
+[60] https://xeiaso.net/characters
+[61] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#code-blocks-with-origin
+[62] https://danilafe.com/series/compiling-a-functional-language-using-c++/
+[63] https://dev.danilafe.com/Web-Projects/blog-static/src/branch/master/code/patterns/patterns.rb#L3-L8
+[64] https://craftinginterpreters.com/local-variables.html
+[65] https://gist.github.com/
+[66] https://gohugo.io/content-management/shortcodes/#gist
+[67] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#easily-linkable-headings
+[68] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-code-blocks-with-clickable-links
+[69] https://agda.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting-started/what-is-agda.html
+[70] https://danilafe.com/blog/agda_hugo/
+[71] https://plfa.github.io/
+[72] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#markers-for-external-links
+[73] https://jamesg.blog/
+[74] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-different-markers-for-different-destinations
+[75] https://gwern.net/
+[76] https://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/blob/959ba9c50d327a960e07241b2c7f13630bf8b80c/js/old/links.js
+[77] https://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/blob/959ba9c50d327a960e07241b2c7f13630bf8b80c/js/old/links.js#L380-L387
+[78] https://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/blob/959ba9c50d327a960e07241b2c7f13630bf8b80c/build/LinkIcon.hs#L15
+[79] https://github.com/gwern/gwern.net/blob/959ba9c50d327a960e07241b2c7f13630bf8b80c/build/Config/LinkIcon.hs#L83
+[80] https://gwern.net/lorem-link#link-icons
+[81] https://gwern.net/about
+[82] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-link-preview
+[83] https://gwern.net/
+[84] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#bonus-different-markers-for-different-destinations
+[85] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#rss-feeds
+[86] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#links-to-other-sites
+[87] https://drewdevault.com/2024/05/24/2024-05-24-Bunnix.html
+[88] https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/openring
+[89] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#rss-feeds
+[90] https://danilafe.com/blog/blog_microfeatures/#conclusion--anything-else
+[91] mailto:danila.fedorin@gmail.com
diff --git a/static/archive/defector-com-8wrecr.txt b/static/archive/defector-com-8wrecr.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..83a9f3b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/static/archive/defector-com-8wrecr.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,529 @@
+[1]Skip to Content
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+[36]Politics
+
+The Limits Of The Billionaire Imagination Are Everyone’s Problem
+
+[37][Vic]
+By [38]David Roth
+
+3:46 PM EDT on March 24, 2023
+
+ • [39]Share on Bluesky
+ • [40]Share on X (formerly Twitter)
+ • [41]Share on Reddit
+ • [42]Share on Facebook
+ • [43]Share on WhatsApp
+
+Silicon Valley entrepreneur Marc Andreessen onstage at the TechCrunch Disrupt
+festival in 2016.Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
+[44]
+309Comments
+
+There's no good reason to think about what I would do if I was rich enough to
+own a magazine, and a number of better and much more urgent reasons not to
+think about it at all. The most obvious of those is that while I am not rich, I
+already sort of own [45]something that is sort of like that, and so there is
+usually something I could be doing there that's more useful than musing over
+what I might might do as, say, the gentleman publisher of a small literary
+journal called The Peppermill Review or Frontispiece or a political quarterly
+named Publius or I guess Frontispiece could also work here. But there's another
+reason not to bother with this particular daydream, which is that being that
+rich would seem to render the idea moot.
+
+I am just going by what I see, here. The people in our culture with enough
+money to do whatever they want—the sort of objectively immoral benefactor-grade
+wealth that is currently warping and cheapening our public life through its own
+obscene scope and its owners' relentless craven self-interest—seem
+categorically opposed to doing anything interesting with it. Or, anyway, they
+seem opposed to doing anything more interesting than watching that money grow
+and maybe remarking upon how that experience of all that having and watching
+has been for them. It may be that all that dull abundance has flooded their
+circuits, leaving them incapable not just of wanting anything but more of what
+they already have, but unable even to imagine anything else that a person might
+want. They also just might not care about anything but each other, and their
+stuff. Because these people and what they want are so determinedly
+uninteresting, it's not a very interesting question; because what they do is so
+strange, it's natural to wonder if maybe all that money, and all the time spent
+thinking about it, hasn't been good for them.
+
+In a non-material sense, I mean. Materially they are doing great, and the
+liberating civic atrophy that was the goal of their rich-guy forebears—the
+seething gray men gone by who [46]spent their money creating and promoting the
+incoherent, prissy-vicious, intermittently libertarian politics to which this
+class mostly subscribes—has softened not just the state but the broader culture
+into something that can only glancingly inconvenience them. The "not good for
+them" part is the way in which all that ease and all those eager supplicants,
+the warm bath of clubby gossip and passive income in which they've all gone
+pruney, has shrunken and shortened them. They prosper and prosper and [47]speak
+bitterly about how unappreciated they are, but they seem somehow incomplete.
+It's as if the money had crowded something important out.
+
+They keep busy. Generally they pass their money around the rich person
+community in various ways—investments, patronage, lawsuits, alimony, [48]weird
+political stunts—and sometimes spend some on lobbying designed to guarantee
+that nothing they or their businesses do will ever become more inconvenient or
+subject to public scrutiny. Even when and where this bustling uselessness
+produces something the broader public could notionally use—a big building with
+a rich person's name on it in big letters, say—there isn't really much mystery
+to why. The answer is already right there to read, in big letters.
+
+This super-class's singular drive to preserve and affirm a status quo that
+doesn't serve anyone but themselves speaks for itself, and it is fucking always
+talking. You can look at a wary and confused culture overrun by financialized
+rot and recursive grievance and raw sadism, and at a politics mostly concerned
+with managing that miserable status quo while maintaining the maximum in
+Punishment Capacity. And then you can look at the objectively mediocre and
+preposterously wealthy people so anxiously and imperiously presiding over it,
+and venture a pretty confident guess about the effects of letting the broader
+culture not just soak in all that stagnant wealth but move mostly according to
+whatever currents periodically stir its surface.
+
+This is where inequality and the politics it's bought becomes not an
+abstraction but a fact of daily life. That this class does not really make or
+do anything—or make anything but a nine percent annual return every year, or do
+anything but congratulate itself and groan about how unfair its critics are—is
+everyone's problem, because those idle demands made on high arrive downhill,
+onto the rest of us, as an avalanche. Or, less metaphorically, as layoffs, and
+austerity, and ever more optimized and anti-human efficiencies, and a
+claustrophobic and airless culture being squashed flat by their algorithms and
+incuriosity. If this class had less power, the obvious limits of their
+imagination would mostly be their problem; because they have so much, those
+limits wind up imposed on everyone else. We are all [49]trapped in there, with
+them.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Because these extremely rich people mostly just talk to each other, and because
+they mostly have the sort of bad ideas that a person might have if the only
+people they knew also hung out in Marc Andreessen's Twitter mentions all day
+saying "absolutely" and "indeed," their big ideas lately tend to register
+mostly as abstractions when they register at all. "The average person’s life is
+changed when the things they do each day are both faster and better," [50]Ed
+Zitron wrote in his newsletter, "and it’s hard to point to products that have
+meaningfully done that in quite some time." The money still moves, but it's
+hard to say to what end. Sometimes one of these entities invests in another
+one, or consumes it. Sometimes a half-dozen nearly identical companies show up
+promising to have a man on a bike bring you a pint of ice cream at any time of
+day, in 10 minutes, or eight, or six, and then a few months later they are all
+gone.
+
+It is important, if also pretty funny, to remember that the very rich people
+doing all this stuff believe that they are shaping the future by doing it.
+Normal people just, like, work and consume and live wherever they live and do
+whatever it is they do, while at the same time 300 men in fleece vests push
+history forward in world-historically wack Slack channels or by writing things
+like "Web 4?" on dry-erase boards. When the people ruling this moment dare to
+imagine what the next might be like, the result is almost poignant in its
+childish shabbiness—a colony on another planet for them to rule; a new type of
+money [51]for them to have; a wholly digital world in which they could charge
+rent and [52]convene meetings or, when the rest of humanity [53]decided that
+didn't sound cool at all, a future in which a predictive text generator they
+have deemed artificial intelligence, an algorithm somehow trained to [54]get
+upset and [55]botch easy logic questions, could efficiently obviate all those
+messy and inefficient and disagreeable other people. Of course there's [56]no
+real art in that future, although the rich men plowing millions of dollars into
+[57]grimly de-aging their bodies so they can be rich forever suggests that
+David Cronenberg's work might at least survive in spirit.
+
+It is axiomatic that these people get bored extremely easily. They are panicky
+and fad-prone and gossipy and move as a herd; the billionaires who see
+themselves as anointed change-makers and shapers of the world to come get upset
+about the same fake-o bullshit that keeps Fox News casualties indoors on sunny
+days. The billionaire venture capitalist with a bugout compound in New Zealand
+and a portfolio of future-shaping disruptions grouses in private about Critical
+Race Theory In The Schools and shoplifters at Walgreens in cities in which they
+do not live, but they naturally prefer more richly marbled fare. Their [58]pet
+intellectuals tell them that they are being robbed by the masses and deserve to
+live as kings; their [59]chosen political candidates say it, too. Some of them
+have lately become concerned that the predictive text generator they like is
+[60]politically biased against them. These people talk (and talk, and talk)
+online in more or less the same register as the average Cobra Commander
+monologue. If there is anything useful about their discourse, it has less to do
+with the substance than the shape of it; both are [61]absolutely off-the-rack
+conservative rich person lorem ipsum stuff, and profoundly grating and dull as
+such, but the familiarity is instructive.
+
+Recently, an influential corner of this cohort [62]caused a bank run by
+abruptly pulling their money from the one bank at which, implausibly, all of
+them seemed to do all their business. When the bank collapsed, they took turns
+posting that its collapse was an extinction-level threat to the nation's
+economy, and a national security issue, and perhaps also a threat to the planet
+itself. The bank was [63]a self-dealing mess, as it turns out, but so was the
+community it served. All of them plainly regarded [64]both the best practices
+and the literal laws that govern this kind of thing as nothing they'd have to
+worry about. Some of this is hubris, and some of this is just assessing how the
+reality they've purchased actually works. They're awful, but they're not really
+wrong. Of course they were bailed out.
+
+The story of that bank run is already in its woozy afterlife. Some other wobbly
+and variously shitty banks were absorbed into bigger banks; those tended to be
+both highly exposed to the things this super-class likes (cryptocurrency, most
+notably) and dedicated to servicing their weird whims. Fox News started blaming
+those failures on woke-ism and then just moved on to other outrages; there were
+briefly [65]vague intimations of potential legislative fixes to the stupid laws
+that made the collapse possible; there are lingering questions, none of which
+seem likely to be answered anytime soon, about why, as one Silicon Valley
+investor put it, all these extremely powerful and influential venture
+capitalists were "letting all of their companies put all of their money in
+one—I mean, best case—[66]C-minus financial institution."
+
+There has been kind of a lot of this lately: crises that don't quite resolve
+into crises, things that are clearly bad but somehow not in ways that
+necessarily lead to any learning or change. So much depends upon things staying
+more or less the same, and things generally do. Again, this reality was
+purchased, at a surprisingly low price and over the course of just a few
+generations, by the class of heedless and wildly distractible dunces that it
+keeps on absolving. It would be much easier to appreciate the low satire of all
+it if everyone wasn't living not so much with as within the consequences of it.
+
+It's not just about so few people having so much of everything, although that
+is plenty odious and offensive on its merits. The problem, as it is experienced
+moment by moment and day by day, is how little they have done with it, and how
+little what they have done with it has done for everyone else. That inequality,
+when compounded over time and amplified by the cretinous and absolutely joyless
+mediocrity of the people in whose accounts that compounding gets done, winds up
+not just freezing the world in place, but shrinking it to the size of their own
+incuriosity. Sometimes this is more obvious than others—a billionaire buys and
+closes [67]a publication about books; a Koch scion with literary ambitions gets
+bored with her literary journal, scuppers it, and is treated to a strange
+feature in the New York Times about [68]her pivot to wellness. Mostly it
+reveals itself in the negative; squint and you can almost see the possibilities
+that might have happened, but didn't, trailing in the wake of the useless
+things they launch as those innovations describe their familiar course up and
+then down.
+
+There's more than one obvious problem with this, but keeping all this wealth in
+the same small and tremendously prideful network—in the same bank!—is grounded
+in the idea that only the people who have all this power and influence would
+know what to do with it. That belief has persisted within that community, and
+to a distressing degree outside of it as well, despite what is by now copious
+evidence that all this new elite really wants to do with that money is gamble
+it amongst themselves and find new methods and venues to charge everyone else
+rent. If these billionaires are correct in their perception that the general
+public has increasingly had it with them, it's worth noting that some of that
+is just a natural response to being insulted. How else, I wonder, did they
+expect people to react upon being told that their betters saw them as so much
+surplus, and their aspirations—the finer ones, and also just the basic
+dignities that people naturally believe they deserve—as impracticalities, or
+debris on the road ahead.
+
+If this class seems about spent in its creative capacity, that is by no means
+true of the rest of humanity. It is easy to see the conflict this creates: a
+small group sitting atop a vast supply of resources, doing nothing much, and a
+larger, striving group thinks about what better use that all might be put
+toward. "Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power
+which holds it hostage," the critic Adrienne Rich wrote, and [69]the
+screenwriter Charlie Kaufman quoted at the Writers Guild of America Awards. He
+was receiving a lifetime achievement award from the organization, but also
+speaking as a member of a union [70]getting ready to strike.
+
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+[81][Vic]
+[82]David Roth[83]@david_j_roth
+
+Editor. Co-host of The Distraction.
+
+Read More:
+
+ • [84]Our Mediocre Elites,
+ • [85]Rich People Things,
+ • [86]silicon valley,
+ • [87]The App That Brings You Ice Cream,
+ • [88]The Future
+
+Stay in touch
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+
+[91]NFL
+[92]
+
+Jets’ Quarterback Dysfunction Temporarily Overshadowed By Pass-Rusher
+Dysfunction
+
+[93]55Comments
+[94][hea]
+[95]Patrick Redford
+August 12, 2024
+[96]TAMPA, FLORIDA - SEPTEMBER 25: Haason Reddick #7 of the Philadelphia Eagles
+warms up prior to a game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Raymond James
+Stadium on September 25, 2023 in Tampa, Florida. (Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty
+Images)
+[97]MLB
+[98]
+
+Nobody’s Waiting Around For Jarren Duran
+
+[99]101Comments
+[100][ima]
+[101]Kathryn Xu
+August 12, 2024
+[102]Jarren Duran #16 of the Boston Red Sox catches a fly ball during the first
+inning against the Colorado Rockies.
+[103]
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+[104]Why Your Team Sucks
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+Why Your Team Sucks 2024: Indianapolis Colts
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+[106]277Comments
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+[108]Drew Magary
+August 12, 2024
+[109]Indianapolis Colts Quarterback Anthony Richardson (5) looks on during the
+NFL Preseason game between the Denver Broncos and the Indianapolis Colts on
+August 11, 2024, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
+[110]Racing
+[111]
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+NASCAR Driver Goes Hungry Uncle Mode In Overtime To Steal A Controversial
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+[112]85Comments
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+[114]Chris Thompson
+August 12, 2024
+[115]Austin Dillon and Joey Logano drive side by side.
+[116]Olympics
+[117]
+
+Who Is 3×3 Olympic Basketball For?
+
+[118]99Comments
+[119][ima]
+[120]Patrick T. Dorsey
+August 12, 2024
+[121]Hailey van Lith #9 of Team United States attempts to fight past a screen
+by Gracia Alonso #44 of Team Spain while Sandra Ygueravide #13 of Team Spain
+drives past during a Women's 3x3 basketball semifinal game between the United
+States and Spain on day ten of the Olympic Games Paris 2024 at Esplanade Des
+Invalides on August 05, 2024 in Paris, France.
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+[17] https://defector.com/category/nhl
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+[19] https://defector.com/category/arts-and-culture
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+[26] https://defector.com/how-to-comment-on-defector
+[27] https://defector.com/freelancer-policies
+[28] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vsMt8kzQug6h9qe9B2LObcxUFt0T-ESp/edit
+[29] https://defector.com/masthead
+[30] https://defector.com/defector-hall-of-fame
+[31] https://defector.com/login
+[32] https://defector.com/products
+[33] https://x.com/DefectorMedia
+[34] https://www.twitch.tv/defectormedia
+[35] https://www.bsky.app/profile/defector.bsky.social
+[36] https://defector.com/category/politics
+[37] https://defector.com/author/david-roth
+[38] https://defector.com/author/david-roth
+[39] https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem%20-%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[40] https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[41] http://www.reddit.com/submit/?title=The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[42] https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[43] https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?text=Check%20out%20this%20story%3A%20The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[44] https://defector.com/the-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem#coral_thread
+[45] http://defector.com/
+[46] https://defector.com/billionaire-who-broke-the-world-lol-oops
+[47] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-24/column-how-afraid-should-silicon-valley-be
+[48] https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-woke-bank-backed-peter-thiel-folds-after-three-months-2022-11
+[49] https://defector.com/everything-is-silicon-valley-now
+[50] https://ez.substack.com/p/the-uncanny-valley
+[51] https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird
+[52] https://defector.com/facebook-meta-asks-wouldnt-it-be-nice-to-die
+[53] https://defector.com/meta-will-continue-burning-billions-of-dollars-until-something-happens
+[54] https://time.com/6256529/bing-openai-chatgpt-danger-alignment/
+[55] https://mobile.twitter.com/IMAO_/status/1628534439071318016
+[56] https://defector.com/ai-art-only-looks-like-art-if-you-dont-care
+[57] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-25/anti-aging-techniques-taken-to-extreme-by-bryan-johnson?leadSource=uverify%20wall
+[58] https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/curtis-yarvin-thiel-carlyle-monarchism-reactionary
+[59] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/07/blake-masters-peter-thiel-donald-trump-arizona-senate-mark-kelly/
+[60] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/24/woke-ai-chatgpt-culture-war/
+[61] https://defector.com/the-eternal-mystery-of-a-rich-mans-politics/
+[62] https://defector.com/the-collapse-of-silicon-valley-bank-is-testing-techs-loudest-evangelists
+[63] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-21/svb-s-loans-to-insiders-tripled-to-219-million-before-it-failed
+[64] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-03-13/svb-couldn-t-ignore-its-losses-but-the-fed-can
+[65] https://prospect.org/economy/2023-03-13-silicon-valley-bank-bailout-deregulation/
+[66] https://www.businessinsider.com/vcs-almost-took-the-whole-system-down-billionaire-ceo-2023-3
+[67] https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/91526-catapult-to-shutter-online-magazine-writing-classes.html#:~:text=Catapult%20has%20announced%20that%20it,%2C%20and%20Soft%20Skull%20Press.%22
+[68] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/23/business/elizabeth-koch-perception-box.html?searchResultPosition=1
+[69] https://deadline.com/2023/03/wga-awards-charlie-kaufman-1235279921/
+[70] https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-negotiations-march-20-amptp-1235531974/
+[71] https://defector.com/login
+[74] https://defector.com/products
+[76] https://bsky.app/intent/compose?text=The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem%20-%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[77] https://x.com/intent/tweet?text=The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[78] http://www.reddit.com/submit/?title=The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem&url=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[79] https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[80] https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?text=Check%20out%20this%20story%3A%20The%20Limits%20Of%20The%20Billionaire%20Imagination%20Are%20Everyone%E2%80%99s%20Problem%20https%3A%2F%2Fdefector.com%2Fthe-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem
+[81] https://defector.com/author/david-roth
+[82] https://defector.com/author/david-roth
+[83] https://x.com/david_j_roth
+[84] https://defector.com/tag/our-mediocre-elites
+[85] https://defector.com/tag/rich-people-things
+[86] https://defector.com/tag/silicon-valley
+[87] https://defector.com/tag/the-app-that-brings-you-ice-cream
+[88] https://defector.com/tag/the-future
+[91] https://defector.com/category/nfl
+[92] https://defector.com/jets-quarterback-dysfunction-temporarily-overshadowed-by-pass-rusher-dysfunction
+[93] https://defector.com/jets-quarterback-dysfunction-temporarily-overshadowed-by-pass-rusher-dysfunction#coral_thread
+[94] https://defector.com/author/patrick-redford
+[95] https://defector.com/author/patrick-redford
+[96] https://defector.com/jets-quarterback-dysfunction-temporarily-overshadowed-by-pass-rusher-dysfunction
+[97] https://defector.com/category/mlb
+[98] https://defector.com/nobodys-waiting-around-for-jarren-duran
+[99] https://defector.com/nobodys-waiting-around-for-jarren-duran#coral_thread
+[100] https://defector.com/author/yueling-kathryn-xu
+[101] https://defector.com/author/yueling-kathryn-xu
+[102] https://defector.com/nobodys-waiting-around-for-jarren-duran
+[103] https://defectorstore.com/products/defector-pommel-horse-t-shirt
+[104] https://defector.com/category/why-your-team-sucks
+[105] https://defector.com/why-your-team-sucks-2024-indianapolis-colts
+[106] https://defector.com/why-your-team-sucks-2024-indianapolis-colts#coral_thread
+[107] https://defector.com/author/drew-magary
+[108] https://defector.com/author/drew-magary
+[109] https://defector.com/why-your-team-sucks-2024-indianapolis-colts
+[110] https://defector.com/category/racing
+[111] https://defector.com/nascar-driver-goes-hungry-uncle-mode-in-overtime-to-steal-a-controversial-victory
+[112] https://defector.com/nascar-driver-goes-hungry-uncle-mode-in-overtime-to-steal-a-controversial-victory#coral_thread
+[113] https://defector.com/author/chris-thompson
+[114] https://defector.com/author/chris-thompson
+[115] https://defector.com/nascar-driver-goes-hungry-uncle-mode-in-overtime-to-steal-a-controversial-victory
+[116] https://defector.com/category/olympics
+[117] https://defector.com/who-is-3x3-olympic-basketball-for
+[118] https://defector.com/who-is-3x3-olympic-basketball-for#coral_thread
+[119] https://defector.com/author/patrick-dorsey
+[120] https://defector.com/author/patrick-dorsey
+[121] https://defector.com/who-is-3x3-olympic-basketball-for
+[122] https://defector.com/all
+[123] https://defector.com/
+[124] https://defector.com/
+[127] https://x.com/DefectorMedia
+[128] https://www.twitch.tv/defectormedia
+[129] https://www.bsky.app/profile/defector.bsky.social
+[130] https://defector.com/tips
+[131] https://defector.com/other-stuff
+[132] https://defector.com/other-stuff
+[133] https://defector.com/other-stuff
+[134] https://defector.com/defector-hall-of-fame
+[135] https://defector.com/masthead
+[136] https://defector.com/privacy-notice
+[137] https://defector.com/terms-of-use
+[138] https://joinlede.com/
diff --git a/static/archive/hauken-io-v7sjyb.txt b/static/archive/hauken-io-v7sjyb.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5ecd28c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/static/archive/hauken-io-v7sjyb.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+[1]
+Marius Hauken
+
+ • [2]Blog
+ • [3]About
+ • [4]Made
+ • [5]Work
+
+[paren]
+
+Time travelling for parents
+
+16 Jul 2024 • about 1.5 minutes reading
+
+[parent-per] Parenthood is the ultimate paradox. Nothing is more wonderful,
+nothing is more challenging. My third child is now 2 months old, and we’re
+drowning in sleepless nights and endless cries where we don’t know what to do.
+
+But I’ve found two perspective shifters that reveal the magic in the mayhem:
+
+1. The 80-Year-Old You
+
+Close your eyes. You’re 80. Your joints creak and your kids are grown.
+Suddenly, you’re time travelling back to now. This moment, with a crying baby
+and bags under your eyes. How much wouldn’t you give to be back in this exact
+moment?
+
+2. The Last Time Illusion
+
+One day, you’ll pick up your child for the last time. You’ll change the last
+diaper, give the last piggyback ride, read the last bedtime story. But this is
+the crucial point: You will never know it’s the last time when it happens.
+It’ll slip by, unnoticed.
+
+Embracing the Chaos
+
+Night wakenings have become my trigger for these perspective shifts. When the 2
+AM cry jolts me awake, I pause and imagine my 80-year-old self, cherishing this
+fleeting moment of midnight connection. It doesn’t magically erase the
+exhaustion, but it does make those hushed, drowsy moments feel more meaningful.
+
+One day, you’ll miss these endless crying sessions. You’ll long for reading
+that same book for the 20th time. These chaotic moments are the good old days
+in disguise.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+Do you want to get an e-mail when I publish something new?
+
+[6][ ]
+Subscribe
+[8]Built with ConvertKit
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Related blog posts
+
+ • [9]
+
+ Kids mode for iPhone and iPad
+
+ A great tips for vacation (and frankly everyday life) is learning how
+ Guided Access makes your life easier when kids borrow your iPhone or iPad
+ [child]
+ • [10]
+
+ Why selling our car and buying a cargo bike is the best investment we've
+ ever done
+
+ Three years ago we sold our car and bought two e-bikes as a replacement.
+ Purchasing a cargo bike is by far one of the best choices we've made over
+ the last few years.
+ [cargo]
+
+[11]
+[noscript]
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://hauken.io/
+[2] https://hauken.io/blog/
+[3] https://hauken.io/about/
+[4] https://hauken.io/made/
+[5] https://hauken.io/work/
+[8] https://convertkit.com/features/forms?utm_campaign=poweredby&utm_content=form&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=dynamic
+[9] https://hauken.io/kid-mode-for-ios/
+[10] https://hauken.io/why-selling-car-buying-bike-best-investment/
+[11] https://hauken.io/atom.xml
diff --git a/static/archive/johnpweiss-com-ta0xym.txt b/static/archive/johnpweiss-com-ta0xym.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..75a8b74
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@@ -0,0 +1,563 @@
+ • [1]Home
+ • [2]About
+ • [3]Journal
+ • [4]The Saturday Letters
+ • [5]Books
+ • [6]Contact
+ • [7]
+ • [8]
+ • [9]
+ • [10]
+ • [11]
+ • [12]
+ • [13]
+
+[14]John P. Weiss
+
+ • [15]Home
+ • [16]About
+ • [17]Journal
+ • [18]The Saturday Letters
+ • [19]Books
+ • [20]Contact
+ • [21]
+ • [22]
+ • [23]
+ • [24]
+ • [25]
+ • [26]
+ • [27]
+
+Blog
+
+8/10/2024 2:10:16 AM
+
+A Diminishing Portfolio of Enthusiasms
+
+John P. Weiss / [28]14 Comments
+Topics: [29]Aging | [30]death | [31]Encouragement | [32]Hope | [33]inspiration
+| [34]Introspection | [35]Jim Harrison | [36]Life | [37]Life lessons | [38]
+Wisdom | [39]Thomas McGuane
+
+Everyone disburses
+
+[47118_5740]
+
+Selfie of me and my mother
+
+My mother’s room was on the third floor at Sunrise Senior Living.
+
+The third floor is the memory care unit because everyone living there has some
+form of dementia, except for my mother. Her body was shriveled up and mostly
+frozen from late-stage Parkinson’s disease, but her mind was sharp.
+
+When we first moved to Nevada and I was choosing an assisted living community
+for my mother, Sunrise Senior Living stood out as the most beautiful and
+professional. But they only had two rooms available—one on the second floor,
+and one on the third floor.
+
+My wife, a hospice nurse, recommended we select the third-floor unit.
+
+“But that’s the memory care unit. Everyone there has dementia or some form of
+memory loss,” I told my wife.
+
+“I know, but that means the staff-to-patient ratio will be higher. And since
+she can’t walk or leave her room, she’ll see the staff more. You know how
+social your Mom is,” my wife said.
+
+My wife is brilliant.
+
+We chose the third-floor room, and sure enough, Mom loved it. There were views
+of the mountains outside her bedroom window, and the staff loved visiting with
+her because she was outgoing and of sound mind.
+
+I frequently visited Mom and brought her cupcakes, snacks, and new books to
+read. And when she could no longer hold books, I hired a woman to come and read
+to her. But then she and the woman became good friends and often spent an hour
+chatting, which was fine with me.
+
+All I wanted was for my mother to be comfortable and happy.
+
+We’re both still here, for now
+
+In the last year of my mother’s life, she loved to reminisce and talk about the
+past.
+
+Sometimes it’s unhealthy to wallow in the past or romanticize days gone by with
+rosy retrospection. You can get stuck there, and forget how to live in the
+present. But when your life is reduced to a bed and four walls, sometimes the
+past is all you can escape into.
+
+Mom would tell me about the old haunts in Long Island where she grew up and
+used to play at the beach. I’d bring my iPad during our visits, look up those
+old places, and show Mom photos and videos. This delighted Mom, and soon we
+were looking up her old friends, “to see if they’re still alive,” Mom would say
+with a laugh.
+
+We found one of her childhood friends, Elsie, and even located a phone number.
+We called, and amazingly, Elsie answered.
+
+For the next thirty minutes or so, Mom and Elsie traversed the landscape of
+their early days and all the fun they had in the sun and surf of Long Island,
+New York. As they spoke, I envisioned the sunny skies and seagulls flying over
+them. I heard the surf crashing on the beach not far from their blanket on the
+sand where their picnic lunch included sandwiches, sodas, and laughter.
+
+Eventually, my Mom and Elsie said their goodbyes.
+
+After the phone call, Mom became a bit quiet and reflective. Then she looked at
+me and said, “You don’t know how wonderful those years are until they’re gone.
+Most everyone disappears.”
+
+“Well, we found Elsie. She’s still here,” I said.
+
+Mom nodded in agreement, looked out the window, and said, “We’re both still
+here, for now.”
+
+Freshen up your feelings about being alive
+
+On the shelves in my home library are several books by the late author [40]Jim
+Harrison, perhaps best known for his novella, [41]“Legends of the Fall,” which
+became a movie starring Anthony Hopkins and Brad Pitt.
+
+Harrison was a friend of the late painter [42]Russell Chatham, whose beautiful
+tonalist paintings adorn the covers of many Harrison novels. Harrison and
+Chatham appeared once in an episode of Anthony Bourdain’s popular television
+series, “Parts Unknown.”
+
+In the episode, the three talked about food and life, as they enjoyed an
+amazing home-cooked meal and loads of wine. Sadly, Harrison died not long after
+that episode.
+
+On his [43]website, Bourdain wrote the following about Jim Harrison:
+
+ “Shortly after the filming of this episode, Jim passed away, only a few
+ months after the death of his beloved wife of many years, Linda. It is very
+ likely that this is the last footage taken of him. To the very end, he ate
+ like a champion, smoked like a chimney, lusted (at least in his heart)
+ after nearly every woman he saw, drank wine in quantities that would be
+ considered injudicious in a man half his age, and most importantly, got up
+ and wrote each and every day—brilliant, incisive, thrilling sentences and
+ verses that will live forever. He died, I am told, with pen in hand.”
+
+Recently, a thoughtful reader of my work sent me an email with a link to a
+documentary titled, “All That Is Sacred.” [44]IMDb.com described the film as
+follows:
+
+ “In the late 1960s, poets, writers, and musicians descend upon Key West to
+ pursue their love of literature and fishing (and cocaine and acid). Tom
+ McGuane is soon joined by friends Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Russell
+ Chatham, and Jimmy Buffett. They create some of their generation’s best
+ art.”
+
+Watch the documentary trailer below.
+
+It’s a wonderful documentary with interviews and film footage from long ago
+when all these writers and artists were young, full of life and promise. But we
+also see a few of them, the ones still alive, wistfully reflecting on those
+earlier days of fun and friendship.
+
+And then the film shares the following quote from Jim Harrison:
+
+ “We go through life with a diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms.”
+
+Harrison goes on to say that we must seek, “jolts of enormous electricity,” to
+“freshen up your feelings about being alive.”
+
+In other words, don’t melt into your couch and stop living. Don’t give up on
+life just because your portfolio of enthusiasms has diminished. There are
+always ways to squeeze more out of life, even if you’re old and less able to do
+the things you used to.
+
+We have to make the special moments count.
+
+The astonishing thing about growing old is that everyone disburses
+
+My mother never let Parkinson’s disease or her contorted body stand in the way
+of enjoying a great conversation or buttercream cupcakes and cheesecake.
+
+[1]Mom and her desserts. Photo:[45] John P. Weiss
+
+Mom kept up on the news, enjoyed discussing politics and books, and often
+dispensed life lessons and advice for the young assisted living staff members
+who came to her to share boyfriend problems or other worries.
+
+No doubt, Mom probably confronted her own diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms,
+but she always had the capacity to bounce back. She made new friends, even
+though so many of her old friends were disappearing.
+
+In the “All That Is Sacred” documentary, writer Thomas McGuane says the
+following:
+
+ “The astonishing thing about growing old is that everyone disburses.”
+
+Sadly, I have found this to be true.
+
+Retirement and aging mean that people often move. Some pass away. Others lose
+touch because their lives have changed, and new priorities emerge, like
+grandkids, doctor appointments, and such.
+
+What do we do when confronted with this diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms
+and everyone disburses?
+
+We follow Jim Harrison’s lead. We make new friends. We enjoy good food and
+drink. We celebrate the great outdoors. We continue loving those close to us,
+including our animal companions.
+
+And most importantly, we continue to embrace our creative passions. To the best
+of our ability.
+
+Jim Harrison, despite his aging and decrepit body, got up every day to write by
+hand. On his last day, before a heart attack ushered him beyond the veil, he
+was seated at his writing desk with pen in hand composing a poem.
+
+Now that’s the way to go out.
+
+
+
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+Related Posts
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+ • [49]Life Is So Terrible and Beautiful at the Same Time
+ • [50]The Unheard Songs of Life
+ • [51]Days of Grace
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+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Comments
+
+14 Responses to A Diminishing Portfolio of Enthusiasms
+
+[57][20]
+
+my mom working on a piece of art a week before she passed at 93::
+
+[58]https://vimeo.com/509576413/0d86416709?share=copy
+
+Posted by [59]Walter Paul Bebirian · via [60]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[61][73]
+
+Just beautiful. I read your writing every Saturday. I look forward to it! I
+love when you write about your Mother!
+
+Posted by [62]Frankie Jackson · via [63]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[64][46]
+
+I know I have said it before ... "This is one of the best you have written!" I
+shared it to my FB page because I believe in all that you have written here...
+having lost my Mom three years ago, and Dad three years before that. These
+things you mention are extremely important... life is so worth living!
+
+Posted by [65]Marsha Hamby Savage · via [66]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[67][b0]
+
+John - you write beautifully, and I thank you for sharing your talent with us.
+This essay contains important lessons to help us maneuver life's ups and downs.
+
+Posted by [68]Donna Skeels Cygan · via [69]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[70][af]
+
+Great piece, John. My mom turns 90 in September and I'm planning a surprise
+party with her remaining friends and family (don't tell her!). She had six
+sisters and three brothers. Only four remain and she's the oldest still living.
+In sending out the invites, I was aware of the people who have "dispersed". Mom
+is still sharp and we speak regularly. I greatly enjoy when she tells stories
+of her life and have tried to record some of them. I'm sentimental like her and
+know that in years to come, I will be playing them back. But for now, I just
+want to appreciate her today.
+
+Posted by Jim Edmonds · via [71]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[72][8d]
+
+I can't help it, I always smile when I see a picture of your mom. How precious
+she is all dressed up with her hair coifed, her pearls, and always a smile. She
+reminds me so much of my mom. I think they would have been great friends. The
+city girl from Long Island, and the farm girl from Washington would have shared
+stories of life and love spending the afternoon lounging over their favorite
+desert and a cup of coffee!
+
+Posted by [73]Ron · via [74]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[75][15]
+
+What a beautiful essay, particularly your lovely and loving writing about your
+mom! I read a book a while back , Live Life in Crescendo, I believe the title
+was, that embraced this essay's main point - even as you age, keep discovering
+and contributing. Thank you John, for this insightful writing today.
+
+Posted by Shirley · via [76]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[77][av]
+
+This one really hit the mark today! I forgot how much change and adventure is
+needed so I don't become so sedentary! I can keep my mind busy most days but
+occasionally a person needs the extraordinary to feel that enthusiasm of life
+as time goes on day to day.
+
+Posted by julie · via [78]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[79][4f]
+
+What a wonderful way to be ushered into your meaningful and poetic stories.
+Recently, life has been keeping me too busy for much of anything beyond the
+necessaries. Thank you for the fresh breath
+
+Posted by Ruby Boddie · via [80]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[81][bf]
+
+I really think life is more enjoyable if lived fully! I loved the message of
+this article! It's not only up to me, but in my power, to make the most of my
+life, and how I approach living is how I will experience life. I am a product
+of my own viewpoints. But I would like to make a comment about admiring Jim
+Harrison. Yes, his natural talent and serious devotion to writing gained him a
+large audience, but I want to challenge admiration of his lifestyle. As someone
+who has lived a lifestyle of rapacious unrestrained lascivious abandon, and as
+someone who has also experienced the greatest sort of adventure, fulfillment,
+and accomplishment practicing a different sort of lifestyle guided by diligent,
+clean, and healthy, nourishing and enriched abundance, I would like to assert
+that to admire his behavior is misguided. He may have been a great and
+accomplished writer, but to what higher planes and novel achievements may he
+have reached if he cared for his mind and body? Such a great potential as
+Harrison possessed was surely sadly less than the lofty or ground-breaking
+writing he would have produced if he took good care of himself? I will soften
+this remark by saying that it is each person's responsibility to make decisions
+about who they are, and for all I know, he has lived the most glorious
+existence of any person ever, but I can't fail to speak up for the lessons
+learned from my own life
+
+Posted by Leslie Elizabeth Taylor · via [82]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[83][3e]
+
+Jim was part of a circle of movie people I mingled with, as was Sam Shepherd
+and Buck Henry, among others. . He had an aura of melancholy.. Gentle, deeply
+kind, an empathic listener he was often quiet in the middle of groups. His
+personality seemed deeply rooted in the Northern Woods. I loved the simplicity
+of his books. They were bare boned and raw. Ruthlessly carved down to the
+sacred heart of the characters and their stories. I especially loved Legends of
+the Fall. He drank his whiskey with one ice cube and leaned in while talking to
+a friend.
+
+Posted by Sam Crespi · via [84]johnpweiss.com · 2 days ago
+[85][45]
+
+Love this! It is entirely possible to live well in old age, even with a
+"diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms." Attitude is everything. My mother
+taught me by example, and I am practicing now. Greet each day with gratitude
+and look for its gifts. Don't focus on what you've lost; relish what you still
+have. Notice people. Engage. And by all means, eat dessert and keep writing!
+
+Posted by [86]Aileen Gronewold · via [87]johnpweiss.com · 1 day ago
+[88][4d]
+
+I look to your Saturday letters every week. They inspire me to live life better
+and notice the important things around me. I also love your cartoons. Please
+keep adding them!
+
+Posted by Betty · via [89]johnpweiss.com · 12 hours ago
+[90][2d]
+
+I love this piece and your writing in general. I have stockpiled several of
+your letters so that I may enjoy them slowly and in depth. I purchased your
+first book and am looking forward to the release of The Morning Fox soon.
+
+Posted by [91]Meg Volk · via [92]johnpweiss.com · 2 hours ago
+Success
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+[49] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/187270/life-is-so-terrible-and-beautiful-at-the-same-time
+[50] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/193736/the-unheard-songs-of-life
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+[1] [citation needed]
+a newsletter by Molly White
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+/1311.164082
+[29][0 ]1×[33][100 ]
+Listen to a voiceover of this post, [34]download the recording for later, or
+[35]subscribe to the feed in your podcast app.
+
+As someone known for my criticism of the previous deeply flawed technology to
+become the subject of the tech world's overinflated aspirations, I have had
+people express surprise when I've remarked that generative artificial
+intelligence tools^[36]a can be useful. In fact, I was a little surprised
+myself.
+
+But there is a yawning gap between "AI tools can be handy for some things" and
+the kinds of stories AI companies are telling (and the media is uncritically
+reprinting). And when it comes to the massively harmful ways in which large
+language models (LLMs) are being developed and trained, the feeble argument
+that "well, they can sometimes be handy..." doesn't offer much of a
+justification.
+
+Some are surprised when they discover I don't think blockchains are useless,
+either. Like so many technologies, blockchains are designed to prioritize a few
+specific characteristics (coordination among parties who don't trust one
+another, censorship-resistance, etc.) at the expense of many others (speed,
+cost, etc.). And as they became trendy, people often used them for purposes
+where their characteristics weren't necessary — or were sometimes even unwanted
+— and so they got all of the flaws with none of the benefits. The thing with
+blockchains is that the things they are suited for are not things I personally
+find to be terribly desirable, such as the massive casinos that have emerged
+around gambling on token prices, or financial transactions that cannot be
+reversed.
+
+When I boil it down, I find my feelings about AI are actually pretty similar to
+my feelings about blockchains: they do a poor job of much of what people try to
+do with them, they can't do the things their creators claim they one day might,
+and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that
+beneficial. And while I do think that AI tools are more broadly useful than
+blockchains, they also come with similarly monstrous costs.
+
+[37]Subscribe
+
+I've been slow to get around to writing about artificial intelligence in any
+depth, mostly because I've been trying to take the time to interrogate my own
+knee-jerk response to a clearly overhyped technology. After spending so much
+time writing about a niche that's practically all hype with little practical
+functionality, it's all too easy to look at such a frothy mania around a
+different type of technology and assume it's all the same.
+
+In the earliest months of the LLM mania, my ethical concerns about the tools
+made me hesitant to try them at all. When my early tests were met with mediocre
+to outright unhelpful results, I'll admit I was quick to internally dismiss the
+technology as more or less useless. It takes time to experiment with these
+models and learn how to prompt them to produce useful outputs,^[38]b and I just
+didn't have that time then.^[39]c But as the hype around AI has grown, and with
+it my desire to understand the space in more depth, I wanted to really
+understand what these tools can do, to develop as strong an understanding as
+possible of their potential capabilities as well as their limitations and
+tradeoffs, to ensure my opinions are well-formed.
+
+I, like many others who have experimented with or adopted these products, have
+found that these tools actually can be pretty useful for some tasks. Though AI
+companies are prone to making overblown promises that the tools will shortly be
+able to replace your content writing team or generate feature-length films or
+develop a video game from scratch, the reality is far more mundane: they are
+handy in the same way that it might occasionally be useful to delegate some
+tasks to an inexperienced and sometimes sloppy intern.
+
+Still, I do think acknowledging the usefulness is important, while also holding
+companies to account for their false or impossible promises, abusive labor
+practices, and myriad other issues. When critics dismiss AI outright, I think
+in many cases this weakens the criticism, as readers who have used and
+benefited from AI tools think "wait, that's not been my experience at all".
+
+Use cases
+
+I've found AI tools to be useful to my writing, though not for the actual
+writing bit. When I'm writing, I often find myself with a word on the "tip of
+my tongue" (so to speak), and I've had more success with ChatGPT than with
+Google for these circumstances — although I can usually find the word with
+Google if I try hard enough.
+
+[Screenshot-2024-04-16-at-4]User: What's a word for something that will not
+affect the final outcome Assistant: Inconsequential
+
+Like many people, I also find it challenging to proofread my own writing, and I
+sometimes miss typos or weird grammar accidentally left in from changing a
+sentence halfway through.
+
+USER Please proofread the following text and point out any spelling or grammar
+problems, typos, and other such issues. Do not change the tone of the writing
+or try to adjust the reading level. Do not repeat the entire corrected text
+back to me, simply identify with brief quotes of the flawed text where changes
+need to be made. Bitcoiners are all aflutter as the halving date
+approaches in about a week. This is very exciting for them, because the past
+three halvings look like they've precipitated major price increases
+(particularly if you use a log scale, which bitcoiners love). Bitcoin prices in
+linear scale (blue) and log scale (black) since 2010, with halvings marked by
+the red lines (chart via Bitbo) The "halving" is the moment when bitcoin block
+rewards that is, the amount of bitcoin issued as a reward to the miner for
+successfully mining a block are reduced by half. This is a strategy to ensure
+the total supply of bitcoin gradually tapers... RESPONSE Here are the spelling,
+grammar, and typo issues I found in the text: 1. "kind of the thought process"
+should be "kind of thought process" 2. "beliefs of guaranteed double-your-money
+returns" should be "belief of guaranteed double-your-money returns" 3. "2024"
+is used instead of "2023" in several places, likely typos: • "Notice of appeal
+filed on April 11, 2024." • "Letter motion filed on April 8, 2024." • "Tweet by
+Inner City Press, April 9, 2024." • "Tweet by Inner City Press, April 12,
+2024." • "Order filed on April 8, 2024." 4. "Committee on Committee on Banking"
+should be "Committee on Banking" 5. "consider proposals" should be "considers
+proposals" 6. "BitBoy" Armstrong's name is inconsistently capitalized as
+"Bitboy" in one instance 7. "coinflips" should be "coin flips" 8. There is an
+inconsistency in the number of Web3 is Going Just Great entries between April 1
+and April 12. The text states "11 entries" but only 7 are listed.Proofreading a
+newsletter post with Anthropic's Claude model
+
+LLMs are pretty decent at proofreading, and although they sometimes spit out a
+few false positives, this example from proofreading my most recent recap issue
+shows where it caught several mistakes (points 1, 2, 4, and 8; point 5 was also
+a genuine error, but it was within a quote).
+
+However, I don't think I need generative AI to do this, either. There are a lot
+of proofreading tools^[40]d that work quite well, and, helpfully, don't invent
+errors that weren't in the original text (as I've found the ChatGPT models are
+particularly wont to do).
+
+Coding has been the far more compelling use case for me. Copilot, Github's AI
+coding assistant, integrates directly into VSCode and other [41]IDEs. I've also
+played with using the more general models, like ChatGPT, for coding tasks. They
+are certainly flawed — Copilot has an annoying habit of "hallucinating"
+(fabricating) imports instead of deferring to VSCode's perfectly good non-AI
+auto-import, for example — but in other cases they are genuinely helpful.
+
+I've found these tools to be particularly good at simple tasks that would
+normally pull me out of my workflow to consult documentation or StackOverflow,
+like generating finicky CSS selectors or helping me craft database aggregation
+operations. On at least one occasion, they've pointed me towards useful
+functionality I never knew about and wouldn't even think to look up. They're
+also great at saving you some typing by spitting out the kind of boilerplate-y
+code you have to write for things like new unit tests.
+
+The tools can also do the kind of simple, repetitive tasks I'd previously write
+a quick script to do for me — or they can generate that quick script. For
+example, here's me asking ChatGPT to write a quick Python script to turn my
+blogroll OPML file into the JSON file I wanted while I was adding a [42]
+blogroll page to my website:
+
+Suggest some python code to turn an OPML file like this into a JSON file with
+fields for "text", "xmlUrl", and "htmlUrl":
+Feeds of molly.white5 tagged as Blogroll from Inoreader [https://
+www.inoreader.com]
+
+After changing the feeds.opml file path to the location of the file on my
+computer, the code it suggested worked without any modification:
+
+ASSISTANT python import xml.etree.Element Tree as ET import json tree =
+ET.parse('feeds.opml') root = tree.getroot() feeds = for outline in
+root.findall('.//outline'): feed = { 'text': outline.attrib.get('text'),
+'xmlUrl': outline.attrib.get('xmlUrl"), 'htmlUrl': outline.attrib.get
+('htmlUrl') } feeds.append(feed) json_data = json.dumps(feeds, indent=4) with
+open('feeds.json', 'w') as f: f.write(json_data) This code will read the OPML
+file 'feeds.opml', extract the 'text', 'xmlUrl', and 'htmlUrl' attributes from
+each outline element, and save the data into a JSON file 'feeds.json' with
+proper indentation.
+
+Besides my own experimentation, others are using these tools in ways that are
+really hard to argue aren't useful. Someone I know in real life has told me
+about creating a custom model based on their own emails, which they then query
+as needed, or use to create some fairly boilerplate documents they previously
+had to spend hours on. Open source developer Simon Willison has been
+documenting his own AI coding experiments on his blog, and has described how
+LLMs have [43]made him more ambitious with his projects and more likely to
+embark on what he calls "[44]sidequests".^[45]e Sumana Harihareswara [46]uses
+OpenAI's speech recognition tools to create subtitles for her videos and
+recorded talks, or to "mine" them for material she can later reuse. Elsewhere
+on the internet, those who speak English as a second language have spoken of
+LLMs' usefulness in revising their professional communications. Others use it
+to summarize meeting notes. Some use it as a starting point for documentation.
+
+Reality check
+
+Despite some unarguably useful features, the limitations of these tools make
+themselves readily apparent.
+
+When it comes to coding, while it can make for a handy assistant to an
+experienced developer, it can't replace an experienced developer. Microsoft's
+[47]Super Bowl commercial, which shows a person prompting Copilot to "Write
+code for my 3D open world game", is pure fantasy.
+
+molly Write code for my 3D open world game GitHub Copilot Used 1 reference >
+Sorry, but writing code for a 3D open world game is a complex task that
+requires a lot of time and effort. It's not something that can be done in a
+single response. However, I can help you get started by creating a basic
+structure for a game using a game development framework like Unity or Unreal
+Engine. Here's a simple example of a Unity script in C# that moves a game
+object: using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using
+UnityEngine; public class PlayerMovement: MonoBehaviour { public float speed =
+10.0f; void Update() { float moveHorizontal = Input.GetAxis ("Horizontal");
+float moveVertical = Input.GetAxis ("Vertical"); Vector3 movement = new Vector3
+(moveHorizontal, 0.0f, moveVertical); transform.position = transform.position +
+movement * speed * Time.de } } This script should be attached to the player
+object. It takes input from the keyboard and moves the player object
+accordingly. The speed variable can be adjusted to control how fast the player
+moves.
+
+And in my experience, it sometimes gets in the way more than it helps, as when
+I experimented with it while working on a [48]Chrome extension I was writing
+recently and ultimately had to turn it off. It constantly suggested plausible
+but completely non-functional code, scaffolded the project in an outdated
+format, and autogenerated CSS classes that looked like they could be Bootstrap
+classes, but weren't. It's good at short functions and common boilerplate, but
+it's not going to architect a project for you, and, as with writing, it's not
+going to "think" of novel ideas. I like it for getting annoying, repetitive
+tasks out of my way; I don't worry it's going to take my job.
+
+Arguably the most widely-described use case for generative AI is writing.
+Indeed, as media companies lay off journalists in droves, [49]some [50]outlets
+are replacing their work with shoddy, AI-generated approximations. Freelance
+writers are reporting challenges in finding work as their former clients decide
+that ChatGPT can do a good enough job. But what these companies and clients
+fail to recognize is that ChatGPT does not write, it generates text, and anyone
+who's spotted obviously LLM-generated content in the wild immediately knows the
+difference.
+
+You've gotten this far into my article, so you're recently familiar with a
+couple dozen paragraphs of purely human writing. Contrast that with LLMs'
+attempts, from prompts with varying degrees of detail, with my very best
+efforts put into trying to get it to sound halfway normal:
+
+A table with a range of LLM prompts provided to three models: ChatGPT, Claude,
+and Gemini([51]spreadsheet)
+
+Yikes. I particularly like how, when I ask them to try to sound like me, or to
+at least sound less like a chatbot, they adopt a sort of "cool teacher"
+persona, as if they're sitting backwards on a chair to have a heart-to-heart.
+Back when I used to wait tables, the other waitresses and I would joke to each
+other about our "waitress voice", which were the personas we all subconsciously
+seemed to slip into when talking to customers. They varied somewhat, but they
+were all uniformly saccharine, with slightly higher-pitched voices, and with
+the general demeanor as though you were talking to someone you didn't think was
+very bright. Every LLM's writing "voice" reminds me of that.
+
+Even if the telltale tone is surmountable, LLMs are good at generating text but
+not at generating novel ideas. This is, of course, an inherent feature of
+technology that's designed to generate plausible mathematical approximations of
+what you've asked it for based on its large corpus of training data; it doesn't
+think, and so the best you're ever going to get from it is some mashup of other
+peoples' thinking.^[52]f
+
+LLM-generated text is good enough for some use cases, which I'll return to in a
+moment. But I think most people, myself certainly included, would be mortified
+to replace any of our writing with this kind of stuff.^[53]g
+
+Furthermore, LLMs' "hallucination" problem means that everything it does must
+be carefully combed over for errors, which can sometimes be hard to spot.
+Because of this, while it's handy for proofreading newsletters or helping me
+quickly add a fun feature to my website, I wouldn't trust LLMs to do anything
+of real import. And the tendency for people to put too much trust into these
+tools^[54]h is among their most serious problems: no amount of warning labels
+and disclaimers seem to be sufficient to stop people from trying to use them to
+provide legal advice or sell AI "therapy" services.
+
+Finally, advertisements that LLMs might someday generate feature-length films
+or replace artists seem neither feasible nor desirable. AI-generated images
+tend to suffer from a similar bland "tone" as its writing, and their
+proliferation only makes me desire real human artwork more. With generated
+video, they inevitably trend towards the uncanny, and the technology's inherent
+limitations — as a tool that is probabilistically generating "likely" images
+rather than ones based on some kind of understanding — seem unlikely to ever
+overcome that. And the idea that we all should be striving to "replace artists"
+— or any kind of labor — is deeply concerning, and I think incredibly
+illustrative of the true desires of these companies: to increase corporate
+profits at any cost.
+
+When LLMs are good enough
+
+As I mentioned before, there are some circumstances in which LLMs are good
+enough. There are some types of writing where LLMs are already being widely
+used: for example, by businesspeople who use them to generate meeting notes,
+fluff up their outgoing emails or summarize their incoming ones, or spit out
+lengthy, largely identical reports that they're required to write regularly.
+
+You can also spot LLMs in all sorts of places on the internet, where they're
+being used to try to boost websites' search engine rankings. That weird, bubbly
+GPT voice is well suited to marketing copy and social media posts, too. Any
+place on the web that incentivizes high-volume, low effort text is being
+inundated by generated text, like e-book stores, online marketplaces, and
+practically any review or comment section.
+
+But I find one common thread among the things AI tools are particularly suited
+to doing: do we even want to be doing these things? If all you want out of a
+meeting is the AI-generated summary, maybe that meeting could've been an email.
+If you're using AI to write your emails, and your recipient is using AI to read
+them, could you maybe cut out the whole thing entirely? If mediocre,
+auto-generated reports are passing muster, is anyone actually reading them? Or
+is it just middle-management busywork?
+
+As for the AI [55]enshittification of the internet, we all seem to agree
+already that we don't want this, and yet here it is. No one wants to open up
+Etsy to look for a thoughtful birthday gift, only to give up after scrolling
+through pages of low-quality print-on-demand items or resold Aliexpress items
+that have flooded the site.
+
+[Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-5]
+[Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-5]
+
+Your AI model is showing
+
+No one wants to Google search a question only to end up on several pages of
+keyword-spam vomit before finding an authoritative answer.
+
+But the incentives at play on these platforms, mean that AI junk is inevitable.
+In fact, the LLMs may be new, but the behavior is not; just like [56]keyword
+stuffing and [57]content farms and the myriad ways people used software to
+generate reams upon reams of low-quality text before ChatGPT ever came on the
+scene, if the incentive is there, the behavior will follow. If the internet's
+enshittification feels worse post-ChatGPT, it's because of the quantity and
+speed at which this junk is being produced, not because the junk is new.
+
+Costs and benefits
+
+Throughout all this exploration and experimentation I've felt a lingering
+guilt, and a question: is this even worth it? And is it ethical for me to be
+using these tools, even just to learn more about them in hopes of later
+criticizing them more effectively?
+
+The costs of these AI models are huge, and not just in terms of the billions of
+dollars of VC funds they're burning through at incredible speed. These models
+are well known to require far more computing power (and thus electricity and
+water) than a traditional web search or spellcheck. Although AI company
+datacenters are not intentionally wasting electricity in the same way that
+bitcoin miners perform millions of useless computations, I'm also not sure that
+generating a picture of a person with twelve fingers on each hand or text that
+reads as though written by an endlessly smiling children's television star
+who's being held hostage is altogether that much more useful than a bitcoin.
+
+There's a huge human cost as well. Artificial intelligence relies heavily upon
+"[58]ghost labor": work that appears to be performed by a computer, but is
+actually delegated to often terribly underpaid contractors, working in horrible
+conditions, with few labor protections and no benefits. There is a huge amount
+of work that goes into compiling and labeling data to feed into these models,
+and each new model depends on [59]ever-greater amounts of said data — training
+data which is well known to be scraped from just about any possible source,
+regardless of copyright or consent. And some of these workers suffer serious
+psychological harm as a result of exposure to deeply traumatizing material in
+the course of sanitizing datasets or training models to perform content
+moderation tasks.
+
+Then there's the question of opportunity cost to those who are increasingly
+being edged out of jobs by LLMs,^[60]i despite the fact that AI often can't
+capably perform the work they were doing. Should I really be using AI tools to
+proofread my newsletters when I could otherwise pay a real person to do that
+proofreading? Even if I never intended to hire such a person?
+
+Finally, there's the issue of how these tools are being used, and the lack of
+effort from their creators to limit their abuse. We're seeing them used to
+generate disinformation via increasingly convincing [61]deepfaked images,
+audio, or video, and the [62]reckless use of them by previously reputable news
+outlets and others who publish unedited AI content is also contributing to
+misinformation. Even where AI isn't being directly used, it's degrading trust
+so badly that people have to question whether the content they're seeing is
+generated, or whether the "person" they're interacting with online might just
+be ChatGPT. Generative AI is being used to [63]harass and [64]sexually abuse.
+Other AI models are enabling [65]increased surveillance in the workplace and
+for "security" purposes — where their well-known biases are worsening
+discrimination by police who are wooed by promises of "predictive policing".
+The [66]list goes on.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+I'm glad that I took the time to experiment with AI tools, both because I
+understand them better and because I have found them to be useful in my
+day-to-day life. But even as someone who has used them and found them helpful,
+it's remarkable to see the gap between what they can do and what their
+promoters promise they will someday be able to do. The benefits, though extant,
+seem to pale in comparison to the costs.
+
+But the reality is that you can't build a hundred-billion-dollar industry
+around a technology that's kind of useful, mostly in mundane ways, and that
+boasts perhaps small increases in productivity if and only if the people who
+use it fully understand its limitations. And you certainly can't justify the
+kind of exploitation, extraction, and environmental cost that the industry has
+been mostly getting away with, in part because people have believed their lofty
+promises of someday changing the world.
+
+I would love to live in a world where the technology industry widely valued
+making incrementally useful tools to improve peoples' lives, and were honest
+about what those tools could do, while also carefully weighing the technology's
+costs. But that's not the world we live in. Instead, we need to push back
+against endless tech manias and overhyped narratives, and oppose the
+"innovation at any cost" mindset that has infected the tech sector.
+
+Footnotes
+
+ 1. When I refer to "AI" in this piece, I'm mostly referring to the much
+ narrower field of [67]generative artificial intelligence and [68]large
+ language models (LLMs), which is what people generally mean these days when
+ they say "AI". [69]↩
+
+ 2. While much fun has been made of those describing themselves as "prompt
+ engineers", I have to say I kind of get it. It takes some experience to be
+ able to open up a ChatGPT window or other LLM interface and actually
+ provide instructions that will produce useful output. I've heard this
+ compared to "google-fu" in the early days of Google, when the search engine
+ was much worse at interpreting natural language queries, and I think that's
+ rather apt. [70]↩
+
+ 3. ChatGPT was publicly released in November 2022, right as the cryptocurrency
+ industry was in peak meltdown. [71]↩
+
+ 4. Many of which are built with various other kinds of machine learning or
+ artificial intelligence, if not necessarily generative AI. [72]↩
+
+ 5. As it happens, he has also [73]written about the "AI isn't useful"
+ criticism. [74]↩
+
+ 6. Some AI boosters will argue that most or all original thought is also
+ merely a mashup of other peoples' thoughts, which I think is a rather
+ insulting minimization of human ingenuity. [75]↩
+
+ 7. Nor do I want to, by the way. I performed these tests for the purposes of
+ illustration, but I neither intend nor want to start using these tools to
+ replace my writing. I'm here to write, and you're here to read my writing,
+ and that's how it will remain. See my [76]about page. [77]↩
+
+ 8. Something that is absolutely encouraged by the tools' creators, who give
+ them chat-like interfaces, animations suggesting that the tool is "typing"
+ messages back to you, and a confident writing style that encourages people
+ to envision the software as another thinking human being. [78]↩
+
+ 9. Or, more accurately, by managers and executives who believe the marketing
+ hype out of AI companies that proclaim that their tools can replace
+ workers, without seeming to understand at all what those workers do. [79]↩
+
+Loved this post? Consider [80]signing up for a pay-what-you-want subscription
+or [81]leaving a tip to support Molly White's work, which is entirely funded by
+readers like you.
+
+Read more
+
+[82] An image of Donald Trump at a podium, pointing, with a logo behind him
+reading “robconf2024”
+
+Issue 63 – RobConf 2024
+
+Coinbase responds to campaign finance violation allegations, Trump panders to
+bitcoiners, and I chat with Lyn Alden about sexism in bitcoin.
+
+Aug 7, 2024
+[83] The Coinbase logo and the US Marshals seal overlaid on a photo of two
+people shaking ha
+
+Coinbase appears to have violated campaign finance laws with a $25 million
+super PAC donation
+
+Actively involved in contract negotiations with a federal government agency,
+Coinbase was likely prohibited from making its $25 million contribution to the
+Fairshake cryptocurrency-focused super PAC in May 2024.
+
+Jul 30, 2024
+[84] A person dropping an orange envelope with a white bitcoin symbol into a
+ballot box
+
+When did cryptocurrency policy become a voter issue?
+
+I don’t believe that it has.
+
+Jul 29, 2024
+[85] Rolls of artificial turf in a shop
+
+Issue 62 – Grassroots
+
+Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto Alliance fudges the numbers, a (former) crypto
+industry CEO has a meltdown, and another exchange suffers a nine-figure hack.
+
+Jul 23, 2024
+
+Citation Needed features critical coverage of the cryptocurrency industry and
+of issues in the broader technology world.
+
+It is independently published by Molly White, and entirely supported by readers
+like you.
+
+[86]Subscribe
+
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+© 2024 Molly White.
+
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+[38] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-2
+[39] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-3
+[40] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-4
+[41] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment
+[42] https://www.mollywhite.net/blogroll
+[43] https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/27/ai-enhanced-development/
+[44] https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/22/claude-and-chatgpt-case-study/#not-notable
+[45] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-5
+[46] https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2022/speech-to-text-with-whisper-how-i-use-it-why/
+[47] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaCVSUbYpVc
+[48] https://github.com/molly/courtlistener-download
+[49] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/sports-illustrated-found-publishing-ai-generated-stories-photos-and-authors
+[50] https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/01/17/cnet-ai-articles-journalism-corrections/
+[51] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSYCmj-hH51Yz8uc0W55lYYvrCD3464Jb2uULI9_aqsZ6ZGsLl-5IXYv1HkNiNagLFyYgtMubGQx-Ns/pubhtml
+[52] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-6
+[53] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-7
+[54] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-8
+[55] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
+[56] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing
+[57] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_farm
+[58] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_work
+[59] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-training-data-synthetic-openai-anthropic-9230f8d8
+[60] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-9
+[61] https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-elections-disinformation-chatgpt-bc283e7426402f0b4baa7df280a4c3fd
+[62] https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/ai-tracking-center/
+[63] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/technology/ai-4chan-online-harassment.html
+[64] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084164/deepfake-porn-scandal-pushing-us-lawmakers/
+[65] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/07/artificial-intelligence-surveillance-workers
+[66] https://incidentdatabase.ai/
+[67] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence
+[68] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
+[69] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-1
+[70] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-2
+[71] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-3
+[72] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-4
+[73] https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/22/claude-and-chatgpt-case-study/#llms-are-useful
+[74] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-5
+[75] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-6
+[76] https://www.citationneeded.news/about/
+[77] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-7
+[78] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-8
+[79] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-9
+[80] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
+[81] https://donate.stripe.com/14k8AseTNaqLaZy7ss
+[82] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-63/
+[83] https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/
+[84] https://www.citationneeded.news/when-did-cryptocurrency-become-a-voter-issue/
+[85] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/
+[86] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
+[87] https://www.citationneeded.news/page/2/
+[88] https://www.citationneeded.news/tag/weekly-recaps/
+[89] https://www.citationneeded.news/podcast/
+[90] https://followthecrypto.org/
+[91] https://www.citationneeded.news/about/
+[92] https://www.citationneeded.news/rss/
+[93] https://donate.stripe.com/14k8AseTNaqLaZy7ss
+[94] https://www.citationneeded.news/privacy/
+[95] https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/
+[96] https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff
+[97] https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki
+[98] https://www.youtube.com/@molly0xfff
+[99] https://www.tiktok.com/@molly0xfff
+[100] https://www.mollywhite.net/
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+[1]Skip to main content
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+ • [4]The Verge homepageThe Verge logo./
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+
+The moral bankruptcy of Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz
+
+Two of Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists make the case for backing
+Trump: that their ability to make money is the only value that matters.
+
+By [14]Elizabeth Lopatto, a reporter who writes about tech, money, and human
+behavior. She joined The Verge in 2014 as science editor. Previously, she was a
+reporter at Bloomberg.
+
+Jul 24, 2024, 12:00 PM UTC
+
+Share this story
+
+ •
+ •
+ •
+
+If you buy something from a Verge link, Vox Media may earn a commission. [19]
+See our ethics statement.
+
+3D illustration of a red elephant surrounded by wireframe dollar signs.
+In venture capital, you are what you fund. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
+3D illustration of a red elephant surrounded by wireframe dollar signs.
+In venture capital, you are what you fund. Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
+
+Last week, the founders of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz declared
+their allegiance to Donald Trump in their customary fashion: talking about
+money on a podcast.
+
+“Sorry, Mom,” Ben Horowitz says in an episode of The Ben & Marc Show. “I know
+you’re going to be mad at me for this. But, like, we have to do it.”
+
+Marc Andreessen and Horowitz insist they voted for Democrats until now. They
+are friends with liberals. They claim to be nervous about the social blowback
+they will receive for this, especially because of the historically progressive
+nature of the tech industry and the Bay Area.
+
+“It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care about.”
+
+But given the general movement among their class toward Trump, I think those
+claims about being nervous are overblown, if not performative. There is, for
+instance, Elon Musk’s [20]pro-Trump super PAC, which has support from Sequoia
+Capital’s Shaun Maguire and 8VC’s Joe Lonsdale, among other notables. (The Wall
+Street Journal reported Musk is planning to [21]donate $45 million a month,
+which Musk has denied.) There’s the [22]$160 million the crypto movement has
+put forward in support of crypto-friendly candidates. We can’t forget their VC
+pal [23]David Sacks speaking at the Republican National Convention. And last
+but not least, there’s Trump’s running mate choice of JD Vance, [24]a former
+venture capitalist whose firm’s investors included Peter Thiel, Eric Schmidt,
+and Andreessen himself.
+
+This isn’t a movement. It’s a clique.
+
+The podcast itself is an extraordinary performance. At one point, Andreessen
+concedes that their major problems with President Joe Biden — the ones that led
+them to support Trump — are what most voters would consider “subsidiary”
+issues. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the big issues that people care
+about,” he says. If we take this podcast at face value, we are to believe that
+these subsidiary issues are the only reason they’ve chosen to endorse and
+donate to Trump.
+
+These subsidiary issues take precedence for Andreessen and Horowitz over, say,
+mass deportations and [25]Project 2025’s attempt to end no-fault divorce. We
+are looking at a simple trade against personal liberty — abortion, the rights
+of gay and trans people, and [26]possibly democracy itself — in favor of
+crypto, AI, and a tax policy they like better.
+
+For Horowitz, “probably the most emotional topic” is crypto — [27]a16z started
+a $4.5 billion crypto fund in 2022, and the pair believe that the Biden
+administration has been deeply unfair to crypto. In Horowitz’s view, the Biden
+administration “basically subverted the rule of law to attack the crypto
+industry.”
+
+“We’re the largest crypto investors or largest blockchain investors in the
+world.”
+
+[28]Certainly much of the crypto industry prefers Trump. But it seems obvious
+that there has been a lot of [29]intra-agency squabbling as Congress dithered
+on passing any laws. To place the blame squarely on Biden is bizarre,
+particularly when we have Trump’s chaotic previous term as guidance. Sure,
+Trump is no longer saying Bitcoin is “[30]a scam against the dollar,” as he did
+in 2021; he is scheduled to speak at the Bitcoin conference this year. But his
+record in office is not exactly pro-crypto. During the Trump administration,
+financial regulator FinCEN initially asked the public to provide comments on a
+crypto rule change [31]over a 15-day period that included Christmas Eve,
+Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day, which effectively shortened
+the comment window by four working days. There is also the Ripple Labs
+enforcement case, [32]in which the SEC is seeking a $1.95 billion fine; it,
+too, dates to the Trump administration.
+
+The pair’s complaints about Gary Gensler, the current head of the Securities
+and Exchange Commission, are striking. They are particularly annoyed that he
+won’t pay attention to them. “We’re the largest crypto investors or largest
+blockchain investors in the world, and we’ve requested meetings with him at
+least a half a dozen times,” Horowitz says. Gensler has not met with them.
+Neither, they say, has Senator Elizabeth Warren or Biden himself.
+
+In fact, Andreessen makes it clear that he expects presidential attention,
+something he’s been getting since he was 23. Given the number of times
+Andreessen and Horowitz make references to various meetings with various
+politicians, it’s easy to get the impression that they are mostly insulted that
+they are being treated like ordinary constituents.
+
+From crypto, we move to AI, which Andreessen and Horowitz don’t think is being
+regulated correctly either. According to Horowitz, AI is as powerful as, or
+more powerful than, the internet and the global computer industry from the
+1950s on. “This may be the biggest technological boom of all time,” Andreessen
+says.
+
+These regulations have little to do with technology and a lot to do with
+old-fashioned lying
+
+Andreessen says in his newsletter-cum-manifesto, “[33]The Little Tech Agenda
+,” that he is worried that AI will face similar scrutiny to crypto. The FTC has
+[34]issued guidance to the AI industry that indicated it will pursue companies
+that exaggerate what their AI can do, say they are using AI when they are not,
+and recklessly put products on the market without properly analyzing the risks.
+Meanwhile, [35]the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has told lenders that
+they must supply a reason for a credit denial that’s better than just “[36]
+computer says no” when using AI models. These regulations have little to do
+with technology and a lot to do with old-fashioned lying.
+
+In the podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz single out [37]Biden’s executive order
+about artificial intelligence. The order requires companies to disclose the
+presence of very large models, as well as to provide the government information
+about what the plans are for the model, what cybersecurity measures are taken
+to protect those models, and the results of red-team testing for sensitive
+subjects, among other things. This is in keeping with Horowitz’s assertion
+about the seriousness of the technology.
+
+So what’s the problem? The two focus on computing power. The disclosure
+requirements apply to “any model that was trained using a quantity of computing
+power greater than 10^26 integer or floating-point operations, or using
+primarily biological sequence data and using a quantity of computing power
+greater than 10^23 integer or floating-point operations.” Andreessen and
+Horowitz think specifying such a limit is ridiculous. Little tech “will be
+snuffed out by this kind of regulation,” Horowitz says.
+
+It is perhaps worth noting that nothing above the size specified in the
+executive order — the size Andreessen and Horowitz object to — [38]even exists
+yet, according to Arati Prabhakar, Biden’s top tech advisor.
+
+The irony is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to point it out
+
+The fundamental complaint here is that these two believe that the Biden
+administration’s approach to AI “enshrine[s] the two or three companies that
+they believe are the only companies that matter as sort of permanent
+monopolies,” Andreessen says. “And they’re going to just basically destroy the
+startup ecosystem underneath that.” [39]Andreessen Horowitz is, of course,
+invested in that ecosystem, having earmarked $2.25 billion for AI applications
+and infrastructure.
+
+The anti-monopoly rhetoric is in keeping with a16z’s latest marketing push.
+According to Andreessen’s newsletter, startups are threatened by the
+government, which is “now far more hostile to new startups than it used to be.”
+Besides his objections to the way the SEC has increased its oversight of
+crypto, he is also upset that a stepped-up interest in antitrust has made it
+more difficult for him to exit investments. “Regulatory agencies are punitively
+blocking startups from being acquired by the same big companies the government
+is preferencing in so many other ways,” Andreessen writes. After all, the
+Federal Trade Commission [40]has launched an inquiry into Big Tech’s
+partnerships and investments with startups — with the goal of seeing if those
+partnerships squash competition.
+
+The irony is so obvious it’s almost embarrassing to point it out. Andreessen
+says he is upset that Big Tech is too powerful, but he opposes antitrust action
+because that blocks a route for VCs to exit. Either you’re comfortable with Big
+Tech getting bigger, in which case acquisitions are fine, or you want little
+tech to be competitive, which means blocking industry consolidation. Mainly, it
+seems that Andreessen believes in cashing out.
+
+In the podcast, Andreessen and Horowitz pointedly name Google as a threat to
+startups. “Google, I think we would all agree, is more powerful than probably
+95 percent of countries in the world,” Horowitz says at one point. Google,
+specifically, is a sore spot with the right wing. Vice presidential nominee
+[41]Vance has already said it should be broken up. Vance believes Google is
+controlling information and [42]skewing too far left. Of course, Google’s
+moderation policies don’t just apply to Google News — they also affect YouTube,
+which hosts a great many right-wing podcasts without issue.
+
+Tax reform was “the final straw for me, the thing that tipped me hard.”
+
+It’s unclear how seriously to take Andreessen and Horowitz’s complaints about
+Big Tech because the complaints don’t quite square with their behavior. For
+instance, Facebook is similarly powerful and influential, especially in AI.
+[43]Andreessen sits on its board. A16z is invested in OpenAI, which has a
+partnership with Microsoft — and both have lobbied strenuously for more
+regulation around AI. It sure seems like if a16z wants to change things at
+those big companies, someone could simply pick up the phone.
+
+At this point in the podcast, you could squint and say maybe the concern about
+AI and crypto is really about technology and progress. But from those two
+topics, we move on to classic rich guy shit of the most tedious kind: [44]tax
+reform. Andreessen says it was “the final straw for me. This is the thing that
+tipped me hard.” They are upset about a proposal to alter capital gains taxes.
+
+Capital gains are paid on investment assets, and they are typically paid when
+the investment is sold and the gains are, in industry terms, “realized.” The
+[45]new Biden treasury proposal means that for people whose wealth is worth
+more than $100 million, any unrealized capital gains will be taxed, too. This
+is what has Andreessen and Horowitz in a tizzy. It means that if they own a
+clutch of highly valued startup shares, they will have to pay taxes on them
+before they cash out. This is a “very scary proposal,” Horowitz says.
+
+Startups are illiquid assets, Andreessen points out. “Startups never go up and
+down. They’re never overvalued,” says Horowtiz, dryly. “There’s no bubbles.”
+Andreessen notes that the way the value of a startup is calculated for the
+purposes of this proposed tax has to do with the latest round’s valuation.
+
+“Presto chango, we’re Argentina!”
+
+Historically, one of the ways that [46]Andreessen Horowitz has approached
+startup investing is to inflate a company’s valuation; it is “[47]the OG when
+it comes to doling out speculative startup valuations.” The new proposed tax
+punishes this kind of behavior — a high valuation means a high tax. “This makes
+startups completely implausible,” says Andreessen. “Venture capital just ends.
+Firms like ours don’t exist.”
+
+This is followed by [48]an anxiety spiral that is sort of difficult to convey
+in text; I suggest you listen for yourself. “California is done,” says
+Andreessen. “It’s total destruction.” The taxes won’t just target the wealthy;
+they’ll come for everyone. “Once the structure gets established, the
+politicians do what they do: they’ll walk the numbers up,” Andreessen says.
+“Presto chango, we’re Argentina!” says Horowitz.
+
+Finally, Horowitz gets [49]ahold of himself. “By the way, this one probably
+won’t get all the way through the system,” he says. “But it might!”
+
+There is another issue that might cause wreckage throughout Silicon Valley. It
+is immigration. An awful lot of immigrants comprise Silicon Valley’s talent
+pool — a huge swath of engineers in the US [50]are on H-1B visas. The Trump /
+Vance ticket is virulently anti-immigrant.
+
+“The crypto industry is uniquely international, and so immigration law is
+crypto law.”
+
+The current CEOs of Google, Microsoft, Adobe, and IBM are all immigrants. So
+are Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates are involved in
+Fwd.us, a lobbying group dedicated to immigration reform that Musk and Sacks
+both left. If there were an issue that would rally the people who care most
+about progress, innovation, and talent, you’d think protecting the immigrants
+who’ve built lives and careers in tech would be it.
+
+Stopping immigration is a core issue of the Trump campaign. During the
+Republican National Convention, delegates held up signs saying “[51]Mass
+Deportation Now.” Trump [52]has called the H-1B, the visa many tech workers use
+to come to Silicon Valley, “very bad” and “unfair” to US workers. In his
+previous term, he targeted H-1B visa applications specifically; in the fiscal
+year 2018, almost 25 percent of applications were denied, up from about 13
+percent the year before. In fiscal year 2019, 20 percent of H-1B applications
+were denied. The denials plummeted after several Trump administration rules
+were thrown out by courts; the denial rate in 2022 was just 2 percent.
+
+Immigration plainly matters for crypto — as [53]Ethereum founder Vitalik
+Buterin says, “The crypto industry is uniquely international, and so
+immigration law is crypto law.” Buterin is one of the most influential voices
+in crypto, and Ethereum is the foundation for a swath of Andreessen Horowitz’s
+investment portfolio. Among the investments that rely on it are MakerDAO,
+VeeFriends, Dapper Labs, and EigenLayer. It is remarkable that the founder of
+Ethereum is saying that voting for Trump is against the crypto ethos, and the
+big crypto investors are doing it anyway.
+
+The word “immigration” is only mentioned by Andreessen and Horowitz in the
+podcast when they discuss the rally in which someone attempted an
+assassination: Trump had turned his head to look at a chart that [54]purported
+to show illegal immigration into the US as the bullet whizzed by. I wondered
+why such an important issue for tech wasn’t addressed, so I emailed Margit
+Wennmachers, a16z’s PR guru, to ask. She didn’t reply.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+After I finished listening to the podcast, a few things kept nagging at me.
+Take the very beginning of the podcast. Once upon a time, Andreessen says, you
+could get very rich and then give the money away in philanthropy, “and you get
+enormous credit for that. And, you know, it absolves you of whatever.”
+
+At some point in the last 10 years, some people suggested that maybe rich
+people should pay more taxes instead of giving their money away — that perhaps
+the whims of some random rich person are not the best way to support the most
+vulnerable in our society. Andreessen and Horowitz suggest that this critique
+of philanthropy is simply jealousy. It also unbalanced “the deal.”
+
+“The deal,” as described on the podcast, is vague. To my ear, it sounds like
+this: Tech companies could basically do whatever they wanted, as long as people
+who worked there paid high taxes and donated enough money to charitable causes.
+The money — taxes, donations — made them the good guys.
+
+The one thing all these hype cycles had in common was VCs talking their books,
+as publicly as possible
+
+Andreessen and Horowitz point to the mid-2010s — that is, the era of low
+interest rates — as the time of “the deal” unraveling. Notably, this is around
+the time that the tech hype cycle became obvious even to people who weren’t
+paying attention. This year, it’s scooters! Now it’s [55]viral media companies!
+Now it’s metaverse! Now it’s crypto! Now it’s AI!
+
+These ideas were more or less rejected by the market, except possibly AI. The
+one thing all these hype cycles had in common was VCs talking their books, as
+publicly as possible. That charge was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
+
+So now, instead of investing in things the market wants, Andreessen and
+Horowitz appear to be gambling on legislation instead. Their timing is
+remarkable; not even a week after their Trump endorsement, Biden dropped out of
+the race, rallying the Democrats behind Vice President Kamala Harris. In the
+hours immediately following the announcement, [56]small-money donors raised
+$46.7 million for her campaign. By endorsing Trump, Andreessen and Horowitz
+have effectively lost whatever leverage they might have had with the Harris
+campaign.
+
+But maybe that doesn’t matter. Near the end of the podcast, Horowitz says that
+he was shaken by the assassination attempt on Donald Trump because he’s friends
+with Ivanka, his daughter, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law. “Ivanka and the
+kids were just at my house,” Horowitz says, of learning Trump was shot. “We
+went to see David Copperfield and all that. So my brain was almost frozen
+because I had this feeling about, ‘Oh my god, Grandpa just got shot.’”
+
+“Ivanka and the kids were just at my house.”
+
+[57]As for Andreessen, he has been inveighing against [58]“woke” capital,
+engaging in [59]Twitter culture wars, and complaining about [60]what he views
+as the media’s hostility to free speech for [61]a while now. In Andreessen’s
+2023 “[62]Techno-Optimist Manifesto,” he lists what he terms “patron saints” of
+the movement. They include Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian futurist who
+was [63]also the co-author of The Fascist Manifesto; Nick Land, [64]whose
+writing is a foundational text for the so-called alt-right; Neven Sesardic, a
+philosopher who [65]argues that race is biologically real and not socially
+constructed; and [66]Vilfredo Pareto, who [67]argued that [68]democracy is an
+illusion.
+
+And this talk about democracy brings me to Curtis Yarvin, [69]personal friend
+of vice presidential candidate Vance. Yarvin, a software developer, [70]is
+openly anti-democracy. (Yarvin’s [71]recent newsletter, in response to Biden
+dropping out, enthusiastically advocates for a return to monarchy. Freak shit.)
+One of Yarvin’s ideas, called “retire all government employees” or RAGE, is
+part of [72]Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation proposal for what Trump should
+do if he wins. This rhetoric [73]was echoed by Vance in 2021, who called out
+Yarvin by name.
+
+So this VC cabal is trading against the basic principles of America — not
+merely against personal freedom, but democracy itself — in the hopes of profit.
+It’s not the first time tech has made the trade against freedom; [74]IBM made
+it during the Holocaust.
+
+In venture capital, you are what you fund. Andreessen and Horowitz understand
+this, even embody it. But they aren’t just funding the issues they discuss on
+their podcast; they are funding Trump and Vance. That means those donations are
+anti-abortion, anti-immigration, and possibly even anti-democracy because that
+is what the Trump / Vance ticket stands for. These are not subsidiary issues:
+these are now what two of Silicon Valley’s most prominent figures now stand
+for, too. Is that a good investment?
+
+Correction July 24: An earlier version of this article misstated the donation
+strategy of a crypto super PAC. The group also spends money on Democratic
+candidates, not just right-wing ones.
+
+Most Popular
+Most Popular
+
+ 1. [76]
+
+ The Elon / Trump interview on X started with an immediate tech disaster
+
+ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+ 2. [77]
+
+ Good luck with the PlayStation VR2 PC Adapter — you’ll need it
+
+ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+ 3. [78]
+
+ A nightly Waymo robotaxi parking lot honkfest is waking San Francisco
+ neighbors
+
+ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+ 4. [79]
+
+ Signal has been blocked by Venezuela and Russia
+
+ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+ 5. [80]
+
+ Is the US finally getting ‘all aboard’ with electric trains?
+
+ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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+ [90]GM ditches Cruise’s custom-designed driverless car
+
+ • An illustration of the Google logo.An illustration of the Google logo.
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+ [91]Wiz rejects Google’s $23 billion takeover in favor of IPO
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+References:
+
+[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/24/24204706/marc-andreessen-ben-horowitz-a16z-trump-donations#content
+[2] https://www.theverge.com/
+[3] https://www.theverge.com/
+[4] https://www.theverge.com/
+[5] https://www.theverge.com/tech
+[6] https://www.theverge.com/reviews
+[7] https://www.theverge.com/science
+[8] https://www.theverge.com/entertainment
+[9] https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence
+[11] https://www.theverge.com/
+[13] https://www.theverge.com/business
+[14] https://www.theverge.com/authors/elizabeth-lopatto
+[19] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
+[20] https://fortune.com/2024/07/23/elon-musk-backs-down-from-45-million-a-month-pledge-to-trump-says-he-doesnt-subscribe-to-cult-of-personality/
+[21] https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/elon-musk-has-said-he-is-committing-around-45-million-a-month-to-a-new-pro-trump-super-pac-dda53823
+[22] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-06-14/crypto-titans-160-million-war-chest-threatens-senate-democrats?sref=M8H6LjUF
+[23] https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/1813280502327222511
+[24] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/17/technology/jd-vance-tech-silicon-valley.html
+[25] https://time.com/7000900/project-2025-divorce-law/
+[26] https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-05-06/donald-trump-is-putting-america-on-notice-again-he-wont-accept-a-loss
+[27] https://www.ft.com/content/47b05080-67ac-4468-b530-76325d6aba35
+[28] https://time.com/6999569/crypto-trump-vance-project-2025/
+[29] https://www.theverge.com/2023/6/15/23761117/crypto-regulation-binance-coinbase-sec
+[30] https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/trump-2024-campaign-bitcoin-crypto-donations-b0638147
+[31] https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/22/22195834/cryptocurrency-fincen-regulations-private-wallets
+[32] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/04/23/ripple-says-10m-penalty-enough-rejects-secs-ask-of-195b-fine-in-final-judgment/
+[33] https://pmarca.substack.com/p/the-little-tech-agenda
+[34] https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2023/02/keep-your-ai-claims-check
+[35] https://www.consumerfinance.gov/about-us/newsroom/cfpb-issues-guidance-on-credit-denials-by-lenders-using-artificial-intelligence/
+[36] https://go.skimresources.com/?id=1025X1701640&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dx0YGZPycMEU
+[37] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/10/30/executive-order-on-the-safe-secure-and-trustworthy-development-and-use-of-artificial-intelligence/
+[38] https://www.theverge.com/24197237/arati-prabhakar-ostp-director-tech-policy-science-ai-regulation-decoder-podcast
+[39] https://www.ft.com/content/fdef2f53-f8f7-4553-866b-1c9bfdbeea42
+[40] https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/ftc-launches-inquiry-generative-ai-investments-partnerships
+[41] https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1761041871617278246
+[42] https://x.com/JDVance1/status/1761042197061763247
+[43] https://investor.fb.com/leadership-and-governance/
+[44] https://www.vox.com/money/23634085/biden-2024-budget-billionaire-tax-capital-gains
+[45] https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/briefing-room/2024/03/11/fact-sheet-the-presidents-budget-cuts-the-deficit-by-3-trillion-over-10-years/
+[46] https://www.theverge.com/23697708/andreessen-horowitz-a16z-investing-tech
+[47] https://www.newcomer.co/p/good-times-in-the-great-revaluation
+[48] https://youtu.be/n_sNclEgQZQ?si=fFz-aRB2PD1DnfvT&t=4270
+[49] https://youtu.be/n_sNclEgQZQ?si=PuhkNBfQQP3m3Rw7&t=4612
+[50] https://www.epi.org/blog/tech-and-outsourcing-companies-continue-to-exploit-the-h-1b-visa-program-at-a-time-of-mass-layoffs-the-top-30-h-1b-employers-hired-34000-new-h-1b-workers-in-2022-and-laid-off-at-least-85000-workers/
+[51] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-massive-deportation-plan-echoes-concentration-camp-history/
+[52] https://apnews.com/article/trump-truth-social-business-visa-h1b-51c5a41faff696709a2d2cc6ec4e2695
+[53] https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2024/07/17/procrypto.html
+[54] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/14/us/politics/trump-chart-rally.html
+[55] https://www.theverge.com/23697708/andreessen-horowitz-a16z-investing-tech
+[56] https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/biden-drops-out-election-2024/card/small-dollar-donors-give-46-7-million-to-back-kamala-harris-actblue-says-N4CH0Bhk0uMpNzgQkfUO
+[57] https://x.com/pmarca/status/1605740889581592576
+[58] https://go.skimresources.com/?id=1025X1701640&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dd0EPKbsKPI0
+[59] https://x.com/pmarca/status/1605740889581592576
+[60] https://x.com/pmarca/status/1518440650705805313
+[61] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/16/21325678/venture-capitalists-vc-media-silicon-valley-clubhouse-tech-journalists
+[62] https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/
+[63] https://www.wired.com/story/italy-futurist-movement-techno-utopians/
+[64] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/behind-the-internets-dark-anti-democracy-movement/516243/
+[65] https://philpapers.org/archive/SESRAS.pdf
+[66] https://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/pareto.htm
+[67] https://www.realclearhistory.com/articles/2021/01/12/skeptics_of_democracy_and_defenders_of_freedom_656142.html
+[68] https://oll.libertyfund.org/publications/liberty-matters/2018-11-13-democracy-s-decline-pareto-and-fascism
+[69] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets
+[70] https://newrepublic.com/article/183971/jd-vance-weird-terrifying-techno-authoritarian-ideas
+[71] https://graymirror.substack.com/p/more-reflections-on-the-kamala-koup
+[72] https://www.vox.com/politics/360318/project-2025-trump-policies-abortion-divorce
+[73] https://go.skimresources.com/?id=1025X1701640&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Flive%2FPMq1ZEcyztY%3Fsi%3DhP2BnIyELNvQRZnr%26t%3D1522
+[74] https://www.amazon.com/IBM-Holocaust-Strategic-Alliance-Corporation/dp/0609607995?tag=theverge02-20
+[76] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/12/24219121/donald-trump-elon-musk-interview-x-twitter-crashes
+[77] https://www.theverge.com/games/24216389/psvr2-pc-adapter-review
+[78] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/11/24218134/waymo-parking-lot-livestream-honking-4am-san-francisco
+[79] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/9/24217008/signal-blocked-venezuela-russia
+[80] https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/12/24218547/caltrain-electric-train-us-lags-behind-india-china-eu
+[83] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use
+[84] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice
+[85] https://policies.google.com/privacy
+[86] https://policies.google.com/terms
+[87] http://theverge.com/
+[88] http://theverge.com/
+[89] https://www.theverge.com/business
+[90] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/23/24204251/gm-cruise-suspends-origin-robotaxi-production-chevy-bolt-ev-self-driving
+[91] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/23/24204198/google-wiz-acquisition-called-off-23-billion-cloud-cybersecurity
+[92] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24203960/california-forever-billionaire-city-environmental-impact-study
+[93] https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24203893/google-cookie-tracking-prompt-ad-targeting-privacy-sandbox
+[94] http://theverge.com/
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diff --git a/static/archive/www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt b/static/archive/www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt
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+[2] Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
+
+ • [3]Home
+ • [4]About
+ • [5]Better Offline
+
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+[9] Sign up [10] Sign in
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+The Rot Economy
+
+[20]Ed Zitron Feb 9, 2023 13 min read
+
+At the center of everything I’ve written for the last few months (if not the
+last few years), sits a cancerous problem with the fabric of how capital is
+deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along with the
+markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the concept of what
+“good” business truly is, focusing on one metric — one truly noxious metric —
+over all else: growth.
+
+“Growth” in this case is not necessarily about being “bigger” or “better,” it
+is simply “more.” It means that the company is generating more revenue, higher
+valuations, gaining more market share, and then finding more ways to generate
+these things. Businesses are expected to be - and rewarded for being - eternal
+burning engines of capital that create more and more shareholder value while,
+hopefully, providing a service to a customer in the process. In the public
+markets, that means that[21] companies like Google, Meta, and Microsoft were
+rewarded for [22]having unfocused, capital-intensive businesses that required
+mass layoffs when times got tough, because the market loved the idea that
+they’d found a way to save money. They weren’t punished for their poor
+planning,[23] their stagnating products, their mismanagement of human capital,
+or their general lack of any real innovation because the numbers kept going up.
+
+[24]Subscribe
+
+[25]When I wrote in October that Mark Zuckerberg was going to kill his company,
+the street responded in kind, savaging Meta’s stock for burning cash building a
+metaverse that was never going to exist. Yet once Zuckerberg fired 11,000
+people and claimed that 2023 would be the “[26]year of efficiency,” the market
+responded with double-digit increases in the price of Meta’s shares, despite
+the fact that Facebook’s active user growth declined and they[27] lost $13.7
+billion on the same metaverse department that caused the stock to drop the last
+time.
+
+The markets[28] seemed to ignore the $410 million fine that Meta received for
+GDPR violations, along with the fact that European users will now have to
+deliberately opt-in to sharing their data - which is bad, considering only
+about[29] 25% of iOS users choose to opt-in to app tracking, and their business
+model is intrinsically linked to the repurposing of customer data into ad
+targeting telemetry.
+
+Let’s be abundantly clear: Meta’s core advertising models depend heavily on
+things that likely become impossible to do legally (or even technically, given
+Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, Alphabet’s retirement of the third-party
+tracking cookie, and the Chromium Project’s planned blocking of non-cookie
+fingerprinting technologies) in the next decade. Their other products simply do
+not make that much money. Their CEO’s big idea to make more money has lost them
+billions of dollars, and likely won’t make them any for quite some time. Yet
+Meta remains beloved, because the numbers are going up.
+
+Killing Innovation
+
+Google has a similar yet slightly different story, where their core product -
+search - has gone from a place where you find information to an
+increasingly-manipulated labyrinth of SEO-optimized garbage shipped straight
+from the content factories.[30] As Charlie Warzel put it last year: “Google
+Search, what many consider an indispensable tool of modern life, is dead or
+dying.” Users have to effectively find cheat codes - adding things like “
+[whatever you’re searching]+Reddit” to get reliable answers. Despite its
+decades-long efforts to improve the quality of organic results, Google remains
+easily-gamed by anyone who knows how to craft an algorithm-friendly headline.
+
+Without finding a way to negotiate with Google Search, you’re offered a
+fragmented buffet of content provided by Google’s algorithm, either based on
+how much they’ve been paid to prioritize said content or by how companies have
+engineered content to rank higher on search. Google no longer provides the
+“best” result or answer to your query - it provides the answer that it believes
+is most beneficial or profitable to Google. Google Search provides a “free”
+service, but the cost is a source of information corrupted by a profit-seeking
+entity looking to manipulate you into giving money to the profit-seeking
+entities that pay them.
+
+The net result is a product that completely sucks. “Googling” something is now
+an exercise in pain, regularly leading you to generic Search Engine Optimized
+content that doesn’t actually answer your question. Google’s push to
+hyper-optimization has also led it to serve results based on what it *thinks*
+people mean, rather than what they actually said. It’s frustrating, upsetting
+and annoying. A problem that likely hits hundreds of millions of people a day,
+yet Google doesn’t have to change a thing, because the street likes that they
+have found more innovative ways to get blood from a stone. These moves are
+unquestionably hurting Google, to the point that Microsoft’s Bing (paired with
+OpenAI’s ChatGPT), has gained major[31] headlines for providing the service
+that everybody wished Google would.
+
+That’s because Google has, like every major tech company, focused entirely on
+what will make revenues increase, even if the cost of doing so is destroying
+its entire legacy.[32] Google has announced their own “Bard AI” to compete with
+Bing’s ChatGPT integration, and I’ll be honest - I feel a little crazy that
+nobody is saying the truth, which is that Google broke the product that made
+them famous and is now productizing fixing their own problem as innovation.
+
+That’s because the markets do not prioritize innovation, or sustainable growth,
+or stable, profitable enterprises. As a result, companies regularly do not
+function with the intent of making “good” businesses - they want businesses
+that semiotically align with what investors - private and public - believe to
+be “good.”
+
+Despite its ubiquity, companies like Uber should not exist. Uber has not made a
+profit from its businesses. They had a net loss of 1.21 billion last quarter,
+yet the street fell over itself to praise the company because “[33]gross
+bookings grew 19% year-over-year” for their unprofitable businesses that
+largely hinge upon the government failing to impose sensible labor laws,[34] a
+con that will eventually come to an end, and indeed, has ended in some
+territories like the UK, where Uber drivers are now recognized as employees,
+and are therefore entitled to pensions, paid vacation time, and a minimum wage.
+London, I note, is one of Uber’s most important markets.
+
+Yet as of writing, Uber’s stock is up 5%.
+
+The media itself somewhat fuels this economy of growth-mongering. CNBC reports
+earnings like many other media entities, but their[35] reports on, say, Uber
+fail to acknowledge the fact that Uber has spent nearly 15 years burning money.
+It has never turned a profit. Even with its push into freight and food
+delivery, it may never turn a profit,[36] no matter how much it contorts its
+financials to pretend otherwise. Yet acknowledging the truth is that much worse
+because Uber will not be killed, because people keep buying the stock, because
+it is a “valuable company” in the eyes of markets that have fucking cataracts.
+
+This is why we see such vast oscillations of hiring and firing - because these
+companies are never, ever punished for failing to operate their businesses in a
+sustainable way, or even with a view for the future, particularly when it comes
+to macroeconomic trends that literally everyone else saw coming.
+
+Their business models were predicated on an endless supply of cheap money, even
+though the Fed steadily ratcheted interest rates in the years leading up to the
+Covid pandemic, only slashing them to mitigate the pain of Covid and (to a
+lesser extent) the US-China trade war.. The specter of inflation reared its
+ugly head as early as 2020, first driven by the lockdown-induced chaos on
+supply chains, and then exacerbated further by the war in Ukraine, the
+collateral damage of China’s Zero Covid policy, and a chronic labor shortage in
+most industrialized countries.
+
+The markets do not react when they are mass-hiring people to capture consumer
+demand. They do not react to the fact that Microsoft, for example,[37] seems to
+be[38] laying[39] off[40] people[41] almost every year. In 2020, CEO Satya
+Nadella called for a “[42]referendum on capitalism,” telling businesses to
+start to grade themselves on the “wider economic benefits they bring to
+society, rather than profits.” To be clear,[43] this was four months after
+Microsoft laid off 1000 people,[44] one year before they hired 23,000 people,
+and a few months after which they laid off 10,000 people to “[45]deliver
+results on an ongoing basis, while investing in [their] long-term opportunity.”
+
+Where’s Your Ed At is a free newsletter, but if you like my work and want to
+kick me a few dollars, [46]you can do so here. I really appreciate your
+support.
+
+Everything Ventured, Nothing Gained
+
+Before these companies reach the public markets, they are fueled by an even
+more violently reckless form of funding - venture capital. Venture capitalists
+are regularly incentivized to create businesses that look valuable but aren’t
+necessarily of value.[47] When I wrote about the Liches of Silicon Valley last
+year, I remarked upon how many valley companies experience volatile, erosive
+cycles of growth with the goal of being acquired or going public, burning as
+much venture capital as it takes to find an outcome:
+
+ They repeat a very specific cycle - company is[48] the next big thing,
+ company is[49] now worth over a billion dollars,[50] company is
+ experiencing “unheard of growth” (with no question as to whether they are
+ sustainable or profitable),[51] company is now challenging ‘the big dogs’
+ of industry,[52] a little M&A,[53] an absolutely insane valuation, and then
+ a sudden realization that actually,[54] perhaps this wasn’t a good business
+ at all? I am hammering on TechCrunch links here because I am being lazy -
+ they are far from the only outlet to assume that a company like Brex would
+ not simply run itself into the ground through virtue of existing - but the
+ path is always the same - growth, growth, growth, legitimization, growth,
+ growth, acquisition, and then an eventual reckoning with real life.
+
+Venture pumps millions or billions of dollars into ideas that might sell a
+product or a service, but ultimately resemble things that can be sold to other
+companies or put on the public market for a profit higher than what was paid on
+a per-share basis. I once suggested that Silicon Valley conflated “making great
+ideas work” with “making ideas I like work,” but on consideration, many of
+these companies aren’t even things venture capitalists like - they are things
+that resemble things that they can sell. Do I genuinely believe that everyone
+who invested into the Web3 grift was a strident believer in the brave new
+decentralized economy? Hell no. They just went where the winds blew — or where
+they seemed to be blowing.
+
+Andreessen Horowitz was the lead participant in arguably the biggest con in
+venture capital, pumping billions into Web3 companies that didn’t have any real
+product, but[55] stapled together enough buzzwords and websites to resemble
+actual entities. A16Z found a way to vastly accelerate the
+idea-to-business-to-profit cycle of venture. Despite claiming it was “[56]Time
+To Build” in 2020, Andreessen Horowitz realized that there wasn’t ever really
+much of a need to build at all - you could create things that semiotically
+aligned with what “valuable” looked like and profit off of that. While the
+public markets may (at least, before the rise of the SPAC) have required some
+sort of business - even if said business wasn’t graded on being a “good” one -
+the cryptocurrency markets allowed the vaguest of ideas to get even vaguer
+valuations.
+
+This same insipid thought process applies to the rest of their portfolio too.
+Adam Neumann,[57] a guy who is most famous for running WeWork into the ground,
+got a second at-bat with his new startup “Flow,” a company that Neumann is
+still not able to fully describe, but that may involve you renting to own an
+apartment that Flow owns somewhere at some point. Just like Silicon Valley
+can’t help itself from reinventing the bus, Neuman is seemingly attempting to
+reinvent the rental market — a diseased, exploitative industry in its own right
+— in his own image. He’s replacing one cancer with another, only even more
+aggressive and metastatic.
+
+Neumann was, is, and will always be full of shit. Appropriately, in[58] a video
+A16Z released yesterday, Neumann used the following analogy to describe Flow:
+
+ The founder turned to a toilet metaphor to explain one aspect of his idea
+ of ownership. “If you’re in an apartment building, and you’re a renter, and
+ your toilet gets clogged, you call the super,” he said. In contrast, “if
+ you’re in your own apartment, and you bought it and you own it and your
+ toilet gets clogged, you take the plunger.” For Neumann, fixing up your own
+ apartment means shifting from “being transactional to actually being part
+ of a community” and “feeling like you own something.”
+
+In a functioning society, Adam Neumann would not be given a single dollar. This
+quote proves that he has never unclogged a toilet, because in the event that
+you could unclog your toilet in an apartment you rented, you’d probably do it.
+If the clog was so severe it required the super, you would probably still call
+a plumber if you owned the place, because your nasty business has created a
+problem you cannot solve.
+
+What I am suggesting is that Adam Neumann doesn’t know anything about home
+ownership, or unclogging toilets, or toilets, or the regular experience of
+being a human. Yet he is given unfathomable amounts of capital to address
+problems related to these things, because he has the resemblance of the kind of
+messianic white guy that is able to take a product and sell it,[59] even if he
+is quite literally the guy who failed to do this before.
+
+Neumann turned a (nominally) $47bn company into a $2.9bn company. In a sane and
+just world, he wouldn’t see a dollar of funding for the rest of his life.
+
+There are tons of other examples of colossally stupid assholes and stupid ideas
+getting money.[60] As I wrote about on Monday, the largest investment rounds of
+the last few years have gone to companies that got obscene valuations based on
+nothing other than a vague sense of them “looking like a winner.” There is no
+reason[61] a weight loss app should need $540 million to operate - that is not
+a sustainable enterprise considering[62] the entire weight loss industry is
+worth about $3.8 billion. Clubhouse was never worth the billions of dollars
+pumped into it,[63] considering the [64]entire radio industry only makes about
+$12 billion a year combined. While capital is required to get a company off the
+ground, the only way to justify these massive surges of capital is that venture
+capitalists are putting companies on life support in the hopes that they can
+flog them for a profit.
+
+And this corrosive capital system gets continually rewarded. Companies like
+Uber are taken public,[65] making massive windfalls for venture capitalists
+without[66] ever having to run a profitable business.[67] Venture capitalists
+crammed $41 billion into crypto in the space of 18 months, despite there being
+no real use cases for crypto.[68] Metaverse companies raised $120 billion in
+2022 for a concept that has yet to really exist, and perhaps never will. Yet
+these concepts get vast amounts of money because venture capitalists are
+incentivized to pump cash into “good companies to invest in” over “good
+companies.”
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+As my friend [69]Kasey put it in a recent conversation, growth is a fire. If
+you build a nice, sustainable fire, it’ll keep you warm, cook food and sustain
+life. And if the only thing you care about is how big your fire is, then it’ll
+set fire to everything around it, and the more you throw into it, the more
+it’ll burn. Eventually, you’ll have nothing left, but if you desperately desire
+that fire, you will constantly have to find new things to burn at any cost.
+
+And we, societally, have turned our markets and businesses - private and public
+- over to arsonists. We have created conditions where we celebrate people for
+making “big” companies but not “good” companies.
+
+Venture capital and the public markets don’t actually reward or respect “good”
+businesses or “good” CEOs - they reward people that can steer the kind of
+growth that raises the value of an asset. Elon Musk’s success with Tesla didn’t
+come from the inarguable point that he ended the monopoly of the internal
+combustion engine - it came from his[70] canny manipulation of the symbolic
+value of a stock through lies and half-truths, meaning that there was always a
+perpetual reason that Tesla was a “growth” company and a “good stock to buy.”
+[71] Sundar Pichai isn’t paid $280 million a year because he’s a “good CEO.”
+ After all, Google has all but destroyed its search product. He’s paid because
+he finds ways to increase the overall growth of the company [72](even while
+their cloud division still loses money), and thus the stock goes up.
+
+The consequences are that these companies will continue to invest in things
+that grow the overall revenue of the company over all else. They will mass-hire
+and mass-fire, because there are no consequences when the markets don’t really
+care as long as the company itself stays valuable. Venture capitalists
+certainly don’t mind - after all, it’s “less burn” to “get you through” tough
+climates that were arguably created by the poor hiring decisions of a company
+that was never incentivized to hire sustainably or operate profitably.
+
+Until we see a seismic shift in how major investors treat the companies they
+invest in, this cycle will continue. I guarantee that we will see each and
+every one of the companies doing mass layoffs do mass-hirings in the next few
+years, and then do another mass layoff not long after, because they are simply
+treating human capital as assets to be manipulated to increase the value of a
+stock. They are not structured to evaluate whether the business is
+“sustainable,” because their only interest is seeing their current profits grow
+by multiples that please Wall Street.
+
+“Good companies” should not have to repeatedly lay people off. They should not
+be mass-hiring for fear that the demand they are capturing is temporary, and
+those new employees will soon find themselves at the receiving end of a pink
+slip.
+
+The lens through which we evaluate businesses is cracked, and until we fix it,
+we will continue to experience these punishing cycles of binging and purging on
+human capital.
+
+This is the problem at the center of almost everything I’ve written. Why are
+bosses mad they can’t bring people back to the office? Because their alignment
+of business success isn’t really tied to profit or “success,” but rather the
+sense that they are “big” and “successful,” which requires a bustling workplace
+and “ideas.”
+
+Why did billions of dollars get pumped into crypto’s countless non-companies?
+Because “success” as defined by capital has been reframed to mean “number go
+up.” As a notion, it is divorced from any long-term thinking, fiscal probity,
+or even what you and I would call “morality.”
+
+Why did these companies never seem to get blamed for hiring and then quickly
+firing tens of thousands of people? Because at the heart of the business media
+and the markets, workers were necessary casualties of the eternal struggle for
+growth. Layoffs are inevitably reported as a large number (“10,000 employees at
+Microsoft”), which makes it all too easy to remove the human element. When
+confronted with numbers of this scale, it’s easy to ignore the individual human
+agony that comes with losing a job. The uncertainty and shame that follows a
+firing.
+
+The truth is that nothing lasts forever. Companies can (and should) die — or,
+at the very least, understand that there is an inevitable limit to growth, and
+eventually they must reconcile with being a stable, albeit plateaued, business.
+
+A product may be profitable for a while, but there is a line at which
+profitability comes at the cost of functionality, and your company may simply
+not be able to grow more. A business that cannot generate profit is not a good
+business, and a business that can never generate a profit deserves to die.
+
+And the net result of all of this is that it kills innovation. If capital is
+not invested in providing a good service via a profitable business, it will
+never sustain things that are societally useful. Companies are not incentivized
+to provide better services or improve lives outside of ways in which they can
+drain more blood from consumers. And the street doesn’t care either - just look
+at Facebook and Instagram, two products that have grown endlessly profitable
+and utterly useless in the process.
+
+If capital wishes to call labor entitled, capital must acknowledge that it is
+the most entitled creature in society, craving eternal growth at the cost of
+the true value of any given service or entity.
+
+[73]Subscribe
+Share
+[74] [75] [76] [77]
+About the author
+
+[79]Ed Zitron
+
+[80]View all
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+More from Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
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+[82]Empty Laughter
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+Amongst the sludge of AI-powered everything at last week’s Consumer Electronics
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+[83]Ed Zitron Jan 16, 2024 15 min read
+[84]Newsletter
+
+[85]A Continual Christmas
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+Editor’s note: Platformer has announced it will leave Substack and be moving to
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+[86]Ed Zitron Jan 10, 2024 9 min read
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+[88]Software Is Beating The World
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+[89]Ed Zitron Dec 18, 2023 14 min read
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+References:
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+[2] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
+[3] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
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+[73] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/#/portal/signup
+[74] https://twitter.com/share?text=The%20Rot%20Economy&url=https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/
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+[79] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
+[80] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
+[81] https://www.wheresyoured.at/tag/newsletter/
+[82] https://www.wheresyoured.at/empty-laughter/
+[83] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
+[84] https://www.wheresyoured.at/tag/newsletter/
+[85] https://www.wheresyoured.at/a-continual-christmas/
+[86] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
+[87] https://www.wheresyoured.at/tag/newsletter/
+[88] https://www.wheresyoured.at/software-has-beaten-the-world/
+[89] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
+[92] https://twitter.com/edzitron
+[93] https://www.wheresyoured.at/rss
+[94] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
+[95] https://www.wheresyoured.at/about/
+[96] http://linktr.ee/betteroffline
+[97] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/#/portal/
+[98] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
+[99] https://ghost.org/
+[100] https://brightthemes.com/themes/tuuli/