august progress
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David Eisinger
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Daniel's Blog
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[1]Home [2]About [3]GitHub [4]Resume [5]Tags [6]Series [7]Favorites [8]Search
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[9]All Posts
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites
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[10]Website
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Posted on June 23, 2024.
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Table of Contents
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• [11]Sidenotes
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• [12]Tables of Contents
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□ [13]Bonus: Showing Page Progress
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• [14]Easily Linkable Headings
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• [15]Grouping Series of Posts
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• [16]Dialogues
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• [17]Code Blocks with Origin
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□ [18]Bonus: Code Blocks with Clickable Links
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• [19]Markers for External Links
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□ [20]Bonus: Different Markers for Different Destinations
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□ [21]Bonus: Link Preview
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• [22]RSS Feeds
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• [23]Links to Other Sites
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• [24]Conclusion + Anything Else?
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Some time ago, Hillel Wayne published an article titled [25]Microfeatures I’d
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like to see in more languages . In this article, he described three kinds of
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features in programming languages: fundamental features, deeply engrained
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features, and nice-to-have convenience features. Hillel’s premise was that
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language designers tend to focus on the first two; however, because the
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convenience features are relatively low-overhead, it’s easier for them to jump
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between projects, and they provide a quality-of-life increase.
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I’ve been running a blog for a while — some of the oldest posts I’ve found
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(which are no longer reflected on this site due to their low quality) were from
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2015. In this time, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to improve the site, and
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I’ve seen quite a few little things that are nice to use, but relatively easy
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to implement. They don’t really make or break a website; the absence of such
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features might be noticed, but will not cause any disruption for the reader. On
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the other hand, their presence serves as a QoL enhancement. I find these to be
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analogous to Hillel’s notion of “microfeatures”. If you’re interested in adding
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something to your site, consider browsing this menu to see if anything
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resonates!
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One last thing is that this post is not necessarily about microfeatures I’d
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like every blog or personal website to have. Some ideas I present here are only
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well-suited to certain types of content and certain written voices. They need
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not be applied indiscriminately.
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With that, let’s get started!
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[26]
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Sidenotes
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[27]Gwern is, in my view, the king of sidenotes. Gwern’s writing makes very
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heavy use of them (at least based on the articles that I’ve read). This is
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where I originally got inspiration for [28]my own implementation in Hugo. Check
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out the page on [29]hydrocephalus for an example; Here’s what a piece of that
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page looks like on my end at the time of writing:
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A screenshot of Gwern's page on hydrocephalus. The main article text is
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accompanied by notes in both the left and right margin.
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A screenshot of Gwern’s page on hydrocephalus
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Sidenotes are nice because they allow for diversions without interrupting the
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main article’s flow. You can provide additional details for the curious reader,
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or — [30]as Gwern does — use the sidenotes for citing studies or sources. In
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either case, the reading experience is significantly more pleasant that
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footnotes, for which you typically have to go to the bottom of the page, and
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then return to the top.
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Another reason I called Gwern the “king of sidenotes” is [31]this page on
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sidenotes . There, Gwern documents numerous approaches to this feature, mostly
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inspired by [32]Tufte CSS . The page is very thorough — it even includes a link
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to my own work, as unknown as it may be! I would recommend checking it out if
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you are interested in enhancing your site with sidenotes.
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[33]
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Tables of Contents
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Not all personal sites include tables of contents (TOCs), but they are nice.
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They serve two purposes:
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1. Seeing at a glance what the post will be about, in the form of headings.
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2. Being able to navigate to an interesting part of the page without having to
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scroll.
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Static site generators (I myself use [34]Hugo ) are typically able to generate
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TOCs automatically, since they are already generating the HTML and know what
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headings they are inserting into the page. For instance, Hugo has [35]
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TableOfContents . I suspect the same is true for other existing website
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technologies.
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Despite this, I actually had to look relatively long to find sites I frequent
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that have TOCs to show off as examples here. The first one I came across —
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after Gwern’s, whose site will be mentioned plenty in this post anyway — is
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[36]Faster than Lime . Take this post on [37]Rust’s Futures ; this is what the
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top of it looks like at the time of writing:
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A screenshot of the table of contents on Faster than Lime. A box with the word
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"Contents" contains links to several sections on the page bellow (off screen)
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A screenshot of the table of contents on Faster than Lime
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The quality and value of TOCs certainly depends on the sections within the page
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itself — and whether or not the page has sections at all! — but in my opinion,
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the benefits to navigation become apparent even for relatively simple pages.
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As an honorable mention, I’d like to show [38]Lars Hupel’s site . The pages on
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the site don’t — as far as I can tell — have internal tables of contents.
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However, pages that are part of a series — such as the [39]introduction to
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CRDTs — have tables of contents that span the entire series.
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A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel's site. A box with the
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words "Series Navigation" contains links to several other pages in the series.
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A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel’s site
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I also find this very nice, though it does miss out on headings within a page.
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[40]
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Bonus: Showing Page Progress
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I’ve mentioned that tables of contents can communicate the structure of the
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page. However, they do so from the outset, before you’ve started reading. In
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their “base form”, the reader stops benefiting from tables of contents once
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they’ve started reading. [41][ ][note: That is, of course, unless they jump
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back to the top of the post and find the table of contents again. ]
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If you want to show progress while the reader is somewhere in the middle of a
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page, you could use a page progress bar. I’ve noticed one while reading [42]
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Quanta Magazine ; it looks like this (recording my scrolling through the [43]
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most recent article at the time of writing ).
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The progress bar on a Quanta Magazine article. As the page scrolls, an orange
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bar at the top gradually fills up from left to right.
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The progress bar on a Quanta Magazine article
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One immediate thought is that this is completely superseded by the regular
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browser scroll bar that’s ever-present at the side of the page. However, the
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scroll bar could be deceiving. If your page has a comments section, the
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comments could make the page look dauntingly long. Similarly, references to
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other pages and general “footer material” count towards the scroll bar, but
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would not count towards the progress bar.
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Combining the two, you could imagine an always-visible table of contents that
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highlights the current section you’re in. With such a feature, you can always
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see where you are (including a rough estimate of how far into the page you’ve
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scrolled), and at the same time see how the current section integrates into the
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broader structure. I’ve seen this done before, but could not find a site off
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the top of my head that implements the feature; as a fallback, here’s the [44]
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CSS tricks tutorial that shows how to implement a dynamic table of contents,
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and a recording of me scrolling through it:
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The table of contents from a CSS Tricks demo. As the page scrolls, the current
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section in the table of contents becomes bold.
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The table of contents from a CSS Tricks demo
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[45]
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Easily Linkable Headings
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How can you link a particular section of a page to your friend? There’s a
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well-defined mechanism to do this in HTML: you can use the ID of a particular
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HTML element, and add it as #some-id to the end of a link to the page. The link
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then takes the user to that particular HTML element. I can do this, for
|
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instance, to link to the [46]sidenotes section above .
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How does one discover the ID of the part of the page that they want to link to?
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The ID is not a “visual” property; it’s not displayed to the user, and is
|
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rather a detail of HTML itself. Thus, on any given page, even if every element
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has a unique, linkable ID, I can’t make use of it without going into Inspect
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Element and trying to find the ID in the HTML tree.
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The simple solution is to make the elements that you want to be easily
|
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“linkable” into links to themselves! Then, the user can right-click the element
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in question (probably the heading) and click Copy Link. Much easier! To
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demonstrate a similar idea, [47]here is a link to this paragraph itself. You
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can now use the context menu to Copy Link, put it in your browser, and voilà —
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you’re right back here!
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As with [48]tables of contents , many website technologies provide most of the
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tooling to add support for this feature. Relatively often I come across pages
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that have unique IDs for each header, but no clickable links! I end up having
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to use inspect element to find the anchor points.
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A variation on this idea — if you don’t want to make the entire heading or
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title a link — is to include alongside it (before or after) a clickable element
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that is a link to that title. You can click that element to retrieve link
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information, instead (and the icon additionally tells you that this is
|
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possible). Hugo’s documentation does this: here’s a screenshot of [49]an
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arbitrary page .
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A title and paragraph from the Hugo documentation. Next to the title there is a
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blue link symbol.
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A title and paragraph from the Hugo documentation
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[50]
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Grouping Series of Posts
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Some authors like to write at length on a particular topic; to get the content
|
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out to readers faster (and to make the resulting pages less daunting), it makes
|
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sense to break a single topic up into a series. The easiest way to do this is
|
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to just… publish several articles, possibly with related names, and link them
|
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to each other. Done!
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With a little more effort, though, the series-reading and series-writing
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experience could be nicer. Instead of manually inserting links, you could
|
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configure your website to automatically add a “next” and “previous” button to
|
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pages in a given series. You could also give an overview of a particular series
|
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and create a “navigation hub” for it.
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As an example, the [51]Chapel language blog has navigation buttons. Here’s a
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screenshot from [52]a post in the Advent of Code series :
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Series navigation buttons on a Chapel blog post. There are two buttons; one
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links to a previous page in the series, another links to the next.
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Series navigation buttons on a Chapel blog post
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I’ve mentioned this in the section on [53]tables of contents , but [54]Lars
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Hupel’s site has tables of contents that link between series. I’m not sure if
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it’s automatically generated or hand-written, but it’s definitely nice.
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A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel's site. A box with the
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words "Series Navigation" contains links to several other pages in the series.
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A screenshot of the table of contents on Lars Hupel’s site
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[55]
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Dialogues
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I first came across dialogues on [56]Xe Iaso’s site , but I think I see them
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used most often in posts on [57]Faster than Lime . As an example, here’s a
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little dialogue on [58]a post about Rust’s futures . At the time of writing, it
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looks like this:
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A dialogue with "cool bear" on Faster than Lime. The page contains chat bubbles
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that alternate between a bear character and the author.
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A dialogue with “cool bear” on Faster than Lime
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Using dialogues — even for technical writing — is not a particularly novel
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idea. I know I’ve seen it in a textbook before; probably this part of [59]
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Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces . It can help ask questions from a
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less-experienced point of view, and therefore possibly voice concerns that a
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reader might themselves be having. And of course — as with “cool bear” and Xe
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Iaso’s [60]many characters — it can change the tone and make the page a bit
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more fun.
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[61]
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Code Blocks with Origin
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This one was recommended to me by a reader, and so I’ll be talking about my
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page specifically!
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When I was [62]writing about making a compiler, a reader emailed me and pointed
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out that they were getting lost in the various code blocks. My page displayed
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the code that I was writing about, but the project had grown beyond a single
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file. As a result, I’d be making changes midway through one file at one moment,
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and another file the next. This prompted me to add decorators to my code blocks
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that look something like this:
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From [63]patterns.rb, lines 3 through 8
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3 def sum_digits(n)
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4 while n > 9
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5 n = n.to_s.chars.map(&:to_i).sum
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6 end
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7 n
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8 end
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The decorator says what file the code is from, as well as what lines are being
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presented. If you click the file name, the decorator links to my Gitea
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instance, allowing you to read the code in context.
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Though it’s not quite the same (in particular, it’s unfortunately missing
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links), the Crafting Interpreters online book does something similar. It
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describes changes to the code in words next to the changed code itself, like
|
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“added after MyStruct”. Here’s a screenshot of the page on [64]local variables
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at the time of writing.
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Location notes on code in Crafting Interpreters. On the right of code blocks, a
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margin note describes the file and nature of the change.
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Location notes on code in Crafting Interpreters
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I think it looks quite elegant, and in some ways — specifically in the verbal
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descriptions of what each change does — might be superior to my approach.
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It’s not quite the same thing, but [65]GitHub Gists can help approximate this
|
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feature. A Gist could contain multiple files, and each file can be individually
|
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embedded into your page. Hugo in particular has [66]built-in support for Gists
|
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(and I’ve snagged that link using the docs’ [67]easily linkable headings ); I
|
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suspect that other website engines have some form of support as well. At the
|
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time of writing, an embedded Gist looks something like this:
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Code embedded in Hugo documentation using a GitHub Gist.
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Code embedded in Hugo documentation using a GitHub Gist
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Clicking list.html takes you to the source code of the file.
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[68]
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Bonus: Code Blocks with Clickable Links
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If we’re going for fancy code blocks, another fancy feature is provided by the
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[69]Agda programming language . Agda can generate HTML code blocks in which
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every symbol (like a variable, record name, function name) are linked to where
|
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they are defined. So if you’re reading the code, and wonder “what the heck is
|
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x?”, you can just click it to see how it’s defined.
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||||
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
|
||||
529
static/archive/defector-com-8wrecr.txt
Normal file
529
static/archive/defector-com-8wrecr.txt
Normal file
@@ -0,0 +1,529 @@
|
||||
[1]Skip to Content
|
||||
[2]Defector home
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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
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||||
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||||
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• [42]Share on Facebook
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• [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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Read More:
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[93]55Comments
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[94][hea]
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[95]Patrick Redford
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August 12, 2024
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[96]TAMPA, FLORIDA - SEPTEMBER 25: Haason Reddick #7 of the Philadelphia Eagles
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[97]MLB
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[98]
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Nobody’s Waiting Around For Jarren Duran
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[99]101Comments
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[100][ima]
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[101]Kathryn Xu
|
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August 12, 2024
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[102]Jarren Duran #16 of the Boston Red Sox catches a fly ball during the first
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[103]
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[105]
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[106]277Comments
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[107][dre]
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[108]Drew Magary
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August 12, 2024
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[109]Indianapolis Colts Quarterback Anthony Richardson (5) looks on during the
|
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|
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August 11, 2024, at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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[110]Racing
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[111]
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[112]85Comments
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[113][Pro]
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[114]Chris Thompson
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[115]Austin Dillon and Joey Logano drive side by side.
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[116]Olympics
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[117]
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[118]99Comments
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[119][ima]
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[120]Patrick T. Dorsey
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August 12, 2024
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[121]Hailey van Lith #9 of Team United States attempts to fight past a screen
|
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by Gracia Alonso #44 of Team Spain while Sandra Ygueravide #13 of Team Spain
|
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drives past during a Women's 3x3 basketball semifinal game between the United
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[37] https://defector.com/author/david-roth
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[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
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[44] https://defector.com/the-limits-of-the-billionaire-imagination-are-everyones-problem#coral_thread
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[45] http://defector.com/
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[46] https://defector.com/billionaire-who-broke-the-world-lol-oops
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[47] https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2023-03-24/column-how-afraid-should-silicon-valley-be
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[48] https://www.businessinsider.com/anti-woke-bank-backed-peter-thiel-folds-after-three-months-2022-11
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[49] https://defector.com/everything-is-silicon-valley-now
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[53] https://defector.com/meta-will-continue-burning-billions-of-dollars-until-something-happens
|
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[54] https://time.com/6256529/bing-openai-chatgpt-danger-alignment/
|
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[55] https://mobile.twitter.com/IMAO_/status/1628534439071318016
|
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[56] https://defector.com/ai-art-only-looks-like-art-if-you-dont-care
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[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/
|
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[70] https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/wga-contract-negotiations-march-20-amptp-1235531974/
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[94] https://defector.com/author/patrick-redford
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[95] https://defector.com/author/patrick-redford
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[96] https://defector.com/jets-quarterback-dysfunction-temporarily-overshadowed-by-pass-rusher-dysfunction
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[100] https://defector.com/author/yueling-kathryn-xu
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[101] https://defector.com/author/yueling-kathryn-xu
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[107] https://defector.com/author/drew-magary
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[108] https://defector.com/author/drew-magary
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[110] https://defector.com/category/racing
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[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/
|
||||
86
static/archive/hauken-io-v7sjyb.txt
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86
static/archive/hauken-io-v7sjyb.txt
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|
||||
[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?
|
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||||
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|
||||
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|
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|
||||
|
||||
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
|
||||
563
static/archive/johnpweiss-com-ta0xym.txt
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563
static/archive/johnpweiss-com-ta0xym.txt
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|
||||
• [1]Home
|
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• [2]About
|
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• [3]Journal
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• [4]The Saturday Letters
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• [5]Books
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• [6]Contact
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• [7]
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||||
• [8]
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||||
• [9]
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||||
• [10]
|
||||
• [11]
|
||||
• [12]
|
||||
• [13]
|
||||
|
||||
[14]John P. Weiss
|
||||
|
||||
• [15]Home
|
||||
• [16]About
|
||||
• [17]Journal
|
||||
• [18]The Saturday Letters
|
||||
• [19]Books
|
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• [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.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[47118_5633]
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Support my creative work.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
This site is free of ads and paywalls. If you enjoy my work, please leave a
|
||||
donation of any amount. Just click the secure link below. I appreciate your
|
||||
support.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[46][5035687org]
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
[47]Privacy Policy & Legal Stuff
|
||||
|
||||
Related Posts
|
||||
|
||||
• [48]How to Carry the Burden of Someone You Love
|
||||
• [49]Life Is So Terrible and Beautiful at the Same Time
|
||||
• [50]The Unheard Songs of Life
|
||||
• [51]Days of Grace
|
||||
|
||||
Share This Post
|
||||
|
||||
• [52]
|
||||
• [53]
|
||||
• [54]
|
||||
• [55]
|
||||
• [56]
|
||||
|
||||
•
|
||||
•
|
||||
•
|
||||
|
||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
||||
|
||||
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
|
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[34] https://johnpweiss.com/?keyvalue=47118&page=Blog&Topic=Introspection
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[36] https://johnpweiss.com/?keyvalue=47118&page=Blog&Topic=Life
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[40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Harrison
|
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[41] https://www.amazon.com/Legends-Fall-Jim-Harrison/dp/0802126227/ref=asc_df_0802126227/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=692875362841&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12005831232321227983&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9198064&hvtargid=pla-2281435178538&psc=1&mcid=15680b19171b3190a2531d19cd6a5b06&hvocijid=12005831232321227983-0802126227-&hvexpln=73&gad_source=1
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[42] https://turnerfineart.com/russell-chatham/
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[43] https://explorepartsunknown.com/montana/bourdains-field-notes-montana/
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[45] https://johnpweiss.com/email-newsletter
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|
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[50] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/193736/the-unheard-songs-of-life
|
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[51] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/191812/days-of-grace
|
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[52] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/196014/a-diminishing-portfolio-of-enthusiasms#POSTCOMMENT
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[53] https://johnpweiss.com/email-newsletter
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[56] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/196014/a-diminishing-portfolio-of-enthusiasms#
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[57] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195030
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[58] https://vimeo.com/509576413/0d86416709?share=copy
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[59] http://theideavirus.com/
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[60] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[61] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195031
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[62] http://www.timeless-transformations.net/
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[63] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[64] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195032
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||||
[65] http://www.marshasavage.com/
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||||
[66] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[67] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195033
|
||||
[68] http://donnaskeelscygan.com/
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||||
[69] https://johnpweiss.com/
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||||
[70] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195034
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||||
[71] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[72] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195036
|
||||
[73] http://ronkelleher.com/
|
||||
[74] https://johnpweiss.com/
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||||
[75] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195037
|
||||
[76] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[77] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195039
|
||||
[78] https://johnpweiss.com/
|
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[79] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195040
|
||||
[80] https://johnpweiss.com/
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||||
[81] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195042
|
||||
[82] https://johnpweiss.com/
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||||
[83] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195044
|
||||
[84] https://johnpweiss.com/
|
||||
[85] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195049
|
||||
[86] https://comeonaileenblog.com/
|
||||
[87] https://johnpweiss.com/
|
||||
[88] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195057
|
||||
[89] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[90] https://johnpweiss.com/comment/195059
|
||||
[91] http://13373canyonridgelane/
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||||
[92] https://johnpweiss.com/
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[109] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/196014/a-diminishing-portfolio-of-enthusiasms#CAPTCHA
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[115] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/195994/change-the-world-within-you
|
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[116] https://johnpweiss.com/blog
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[124] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/196014
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[125] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/195994
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[126] https://johnpweiss.com/blog/195930
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[128] https://johnpweiss.com/workshop/11519
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[18]( ) [19]( ) [20]( )
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||||
[21]( ) [22]( ) [23]( )
|
||||
[24]Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
|
||||
|
||||
AI can be kind of useful, but I'm not sure that a "kind of useful" tool
|
||||
justifies the harm.
|
||||
|
||||
[25] Molly White
|
||||
|
||||
[26]Molly White
|
||||
|
||||
Apr 17, 2024 — 15 min read
|
||||
AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
|
||||
audio-thumbnail
|
||||
AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
|
||||
0:00
|
||||
/1311.164082
|
||||
[29][0 ]1×[33][100 ]
|
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Listen to a voiceover of this post, [34]download the recording for later, or
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||||
[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. <document> 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": <opml version="1.0"> <head> <title>
|
||||
Feeds of molly.white5 tagged as Blogroll from Inoreader [https://
|
||||
www.inoreader.com]</title> </head> <body> <outline text="Blogroll" title=
|
||||
"Blogroll"> <outline text="Adactio" title="Adactio" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://
|
||||
adactio.com/rss/" htmlUrl="https://adactio.com/"/> <outline text="Anil Dash"
|
||||
title="Anil Dash" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://feeds.dashes.com/AnilDash" htmlUrl
|
||||
="https://dashes.com/anil/"/> <outline text="Ben Werdmüller" title="Ben
|
||||
Werdmüller" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://werd.io/?_t=rss" htmlUrl="https://
|
||||
werd.io/"/> <outline text="Birch Tree" title="Birch Tree" type="rss" xmlUrl=
|
||||
"https://birchtree.me/rss/" htmlUrl="https://birchtree.me/"/> <outline text=
|
||||
"cabel.com" title="cabel.com" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://cabel.com/feed/"
|
||||
htmlUrl="https://cabel.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
|
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like you.
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[86]Subscribe
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• [87]Archive
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© 2024 Molly White.
|
||||
|
||||
References:
|
||||
|
||||
[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/
|
||||
[4] https://www.citationneeded.news/page/2/
|
||||
[5] https://www.citationneeded.news/tag/weekly-recaps/
|
||||
[6] https://www.citationneeded.news/podcast/
|
||||
[7] https://followthecrypto.org/
|
||||
[8] https://www.citationneeded.news/about/
|
||||
[9] https://www.citationneeded.news/rss/
|
||||
[10] https://donate.stripe.com/14k8AseTNaqLaZy7ss
|
||||
[11] https://www.citationneeded.news/privacy/
|
||||
[13] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#/portal/signin
|
||||
[14] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
|
||||
[24] https://www.citationneeded.news/tag/newsletter/
|
||||
[25] https://www.citationneeded.news/author/molly/
|
||||
[26] https://www.citationneeded.news/author/molly/
|
||||
[34] https://www.citationneeded.news/content/media/2024/04/2024-04-16-AI-isnt-useless-voiceover.mp3
|
||||
[35] https://www.citationneeded.news/podcast/
|
||||
[36] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-1
|
||||
[37] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
|
||||
[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/
|
||||
577
static/archive/www-theverge-com-qbbp8t.txt
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577
static/archive/www-theverge-com-qbbp8t.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,577 @@
|
||||
[1]Skip to main content
|
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[2]The Verge logo.[3]The Verge homepage
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|
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• [4]The Verge homepageThe Verge logo./
|
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• [5]Tech/
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• [6]Reviews/
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• [7]Science/
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• [8]Entertainment/
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• MoreMenu
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[11]The Verge logo.
|
||||
Menu
|
||||
|
||||
• [13]Business
|
||||
|
||||
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
|
||||
|
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Share this story
|
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|
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•
|
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•
|
||||
•
|
||||
|
||||
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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|
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from the side. It’s a bread loaf-shaped van. glossy white and black on the
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front of a sunset.Artwork of apparent workers wearing hardhats around a
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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/
|
||||
[95] http://theverge.com/
|
||||
[96] https://www.theverge.com/
|
||||
[98] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/terms-of-use
|
||||
[99] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/privacy-notice
|
||||
[100] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/cookie-policy
|
||||
[101] https://www.voxmedia.com/pages/licensing
|
||||
[102] https://www.voxmedia.com/legal/accessibility
|
||||
[103] https://status.voxmedia.com/
|
||||
[104] https://www.theverge.com/pages/how-we-rate
|
||||
[105] https://www.theverge.com/contact-the-verge
|
||||
[106] https://www.theverge.com/c/tech/22579076/how-to-tip-the-verge-email-signal-and-more
|
||||
[107] https://www.theverge.com/community-guidelines
|
||||
[108] https://www.theverge.com/about-the-verge
|
||||
[109] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement
|
||||
[110] https://www.voxmedia.com/vox-advertising
|
||||
[111] https://jobs.voxmedia.com/
|
||||
[112] https://www.voxmedia.com/
|
||||
526
static/archive/www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt
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526
static/archive/www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt
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@@ -0,0 +1,526 @@
|
||||
[2] Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
|
||||
|
||||
• [3]Home
|
||||
• [4]About
|
||||
• [5]Better Offline
|
||||
|
||||
[7]Log In [8]Subscribe
|
||||
[9] Sign up [10] Sign in
|
||||
|
||||
• [13]Home
|
||||
• [14]About
|
||||
• [15]Better Offline
|
||||
|
||||
• [16]Sign up
|
||||
|
||||
[17] Log in [18] Subscribe
|
||||
[19]Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
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
|
||||
Comments
|
||||
More from Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
|
||||
[81]Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
[82]Empty Laughter
|
||||
|
||||
Amongst the sludge of AI-powered everything at last week’s Consumer Electronics
|
||||
Show, a robbery took place. “Dudesy —” allegedly a
|
||||
[83]Ed Zitron Jan 16, 2024 15 min read
|
||||
[84]Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
[85]A Continual Christmas
|
||||
|
||||
Editor’s note: Platformer has announced it will leave Substack and be moving to
|
||||
Ghost next week. Casey did the
|
||||
[86]Ed Zitron Jan 10, 2024 9 min read
|
||||
[87]Newsletter
|
||||
|
||||
[88]Software Is Beating The World
|
||||
|
||||
Editor’s Note: Due to the length of this piece, you may need to click a button
|
||||
to read the
|
||||
[89]Ed Zitron Dec 18, 2023 14 min read
|
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|
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Welcome to Where's Your Ed At!
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[92] [93]
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• [96]Better Offline
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References:
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[2] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
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||||
[3] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
|
||||
[4] https://www.wheresyoured.at/about/
|
||||
[5] http://linktr.ee/betteroffline
|
||||
[7] https://www.wheresyoured.at/signin/
|
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[8] https://www.wheresyoured.at/signup/
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[9] https://www.wheresyoured.at/signup/
|
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[10] https://www.wheresyoured.at/signin/
|
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|
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|
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[49] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/05/how-the-22-year-old-founders-of-brex-built-a-billion-dollar-business-in-less-than-2-years/?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[50] https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/29/less-than-1-year-after-launching-its-corporate-card-for-startups-brex-eyes-2b-valuation/?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[51] https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/19/brex-applies-for-bank-charter-taps-former-silicon-valley-bank-exec-as-ceo-of-brex-bank/?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[52] https://techcrunch.com/2021/08/17/brex-buys-weav-a-universal-api-for-commerce-platforms-for-50m/?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[55] https://ez.substack.com/p/crypto-web3-and-the-big-nothing?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[67] https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b20qb0dsfp3m4l/VCs-Poured-41-Billion-Into-Crypto-in-the-Past-18-Months-Is-There-Any-Hope-for-a-Profit?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[68] https://mpost.io/metaverse-industry-has-raised-120-billion-in-2022-cryptomeria-capital-reports/?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[69] http://www.twitter.com/punkey0?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[70] https://elonmusk.today/?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[71] https://www.businessinsider.com/fire-blame-ceo-tech-employee-layoffs-google-facebook-salesforce-amazon-2023-2?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[72] https://www.lightreading.com/service-provider-cloud/google-still-losing-money-on-cloud-and-talent-war-wont-help/d/d-id/779292?ref=wheresyoured.at
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[73] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/#/portal/signup
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[74] https://twitter.com/share?text=The%20Rot%20Economy&url=https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/
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[75] https://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/
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[76] https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/&title=The%20Rot%20Economy&summary=The%20Rot%20Economy
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[77] mailto:?subject=The%20Rot%20Economy&body=https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/%20The%20Rot%20Economy
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[79] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
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[80] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
|
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[81] https://www.wheresyoured.at/tag/newsletter/
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[82] https://www.wheresyoured.at/empty-laughter/
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[83] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
|
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[84] https://www.wheresyoured.at/tag/newsletter/
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[85] https://www.wheresyoured.at/a-continual-christmas/
|
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[86] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
|
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[87] https://www.wheresyoured.at/tag/newsletter/
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[88] https://www.wheresyoured.at/software-has-beaten-the-world/
|
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[89] https://www.wheresyoured.at/author/ed-zitron/
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[92] https://twitter.com/edzitron
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[93] https://www.wheresyoured.at/rss
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[94] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
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[95] https://www.wheresyoured.at/about/
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[96] http://linktr.ee/betteroffline
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[97] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/#/portal/
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[98] https://www.wheresyoured.at/
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[99] https://ghost.org/
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[100] https://brightthemes.com/themes/tuuli/
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