This weekâs episode is best paired with a hot cup of coffee and Wild Ways by Josh Ritter playing in the background. Last episode was too LLM heavy, for which I apologize. Iâve done my best to group all of that into LLM corner so as not to let it overshadow everything.
Worth your time
Uri says we should not allow 18 year olds to sign long term contracts. So, so many thoughts here.
1. I remember a conversation I had with my best friend when he was a brand new army officer out of college ROTC about all the 18 year old privates he worked with that had 19% car loans.
2. Jonathan Haidt opened my eyes to the way social media companies get teenagers to agree terms of service that they very obviously should not be able to agree to without their parents consent. I cannot believe we allow this!
3. Matt Levineâs Certificate of Dumb Investment continues to seem underrated to me.
PSA: How to fold fitted sheets, via the Browser. I sent this to my wife and she very nicely said to me something to the effect of âisnât this the same way I taught you to do it?â đ¤Ł
âWhen outsiders succeed, itâs usually through reframing problems in âparadigm shiftsâ. They benefit from not being too attached to existing theories.âFrom a thread on outsiders solving problems.
Our parenting hack of the year so far is having cut vegetables ready at the table when our kids get home from school. The percentage of vegetables consumed is up like 10x and compliance to the routine of coming in, washing hands, and sitting down at the table has risen as well. Recommended and thanks to Emily Oster for the suggestion.
Things I learned
German chocolate cake was invented in United States, via the Kroger App. Someone needs to figure out why the Kroger app has so many delightful facts in it. This is someoneâs passion project! I'll buy you a nice bottle of wine if you find this person and introduce them to me.
80% of Swiss are satisfied with their lives. I am not sponsored by the Swiss government, but I am open to it if they are reading.
The Pangolin is the only mammal with scales. Peacock is the name of the males only; the female are peahens. The species is called peafowl. Via The Animal Book.
âShe does that to her family. She does that to her friends. She does that to me,â he lamented. âShe doesnât seem to be capable of creating her own social interactions anymore.â
I worry a lot that the sycophancy of the agents have made me less flexible with people who (of course) are less likely to defer to me. I am not sure how to measure this, but I wish I could.
Sort of a musing, but I think we owe Blake Lemoine and apology.
I'm blatantly stealing this from Matt Holden who taught it to me, but I think about it all the time and I want a reference page to be able to point myself and others too.
When working on a team, there are three levels to work on:
Level 1: Agree on the problem to be solved
Level 2: Agree on the approach to solving the problem
Level 3: Agree on the details
Many disagreements happen when you skip these levels or give level 3 feedback when people are looking for level 1 recognition.
This is a book with a handful of big ideas:
1. There are considerable similarities between the UFO stories of the 1950s and 1960s (then current, the book was published in 1969) and the stories of fairies / angels and demons / other mythical creatures from before the space age
2. Those similarities are interesting even if you donât believe that UFOs come from extraterrestrial life
3. Even if these phenomena arenât real the way the Empire State Building is real, they still impact the world in real ways
4. The (then current) UFO stories are folklore in the making, which makes it interesting in its own way
Iâve never gone deep on aliens / UFOs so Iâm not up on the lore, but I think most of the points above are now mainstream?
Beyond this, there were a ton of stories about weird things happening, including a series of stories from 1890s America that just seemed bizarre. The one that will stick with me is the Mystery Airship of 1896 and 1897 where (potentially?) an airship floats around the western and midwestern states, occasionally stopping and having conversations with local farmers. You can choose to believe this or not, but either way itâs a fun wikipedia read.
On the whole, this increased my belief in the supernatural marginally.
Matt Holden and I are doing a YouTube show about building with AI called --dangerously-skip-permissions. The first episode is âHow did we get here?â. Matt and I have been having 1:1 conversations for more than a year now about what tools weâre using and how weâre using them⌠and now weâre having those conversations in public. I especially enjoy the way that Matt is able to connect whatâs happening with LLMs today with previous eras of computing innovation. Give it a listen if thatâs your thing!
OpenRouter has market share by LLM model. Interesting and unexpected in some ways!
On fact checking with AI. I really enjoyed this one. I have a draft blog post in my head called âVibe Craft: How to do serious work with AIâ but every time I try to write it, it falls flat. This is spiritually related to that.
Office building visits are up among people that live less than 5 miles from their office. As someone who made major life changes during the pandemic, I feel the pang of regret.
Musings
âA soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.â â Napoleon
âEveryone has a plan until they get punched in the face.â â Mike Tyson
Yucca man. Iâm a sucker for âdoes this Bigfoot like creature actually existâ stories (see season 1 of the Wild Thing podcast), but this one also has so many great Southern California places in it. Like taking a mini vacation.
Nuclear batteries. âA 157W Voyager-based RTG that launched in 1977 will produce about 88W today.â The clean up problem seems insurmountable.
Why Swiss Kids Walk to School Alone. This is one of the things that made me fall in love with Switzerland. They do this as 5 year olds! Part of it is safety but part of it is teaching agency. The walk to school is a part of the education. This should be our aspiration for American neighborhoods.
Your idea sets the ceiling for your videos potential and other good advice from Paddy Galloway.