I read Empire of Silence recently. Pretty solid overall. It's the start of a 7-book Sun Eater series (plus novellas) about a space opera set 20,000 years in the future, where humanity has colonized a third of the galaxy. And this is not a spoiler since it's from the first page: the protagonist blows up a sun at some future point in his story, resulting in the deaths of billions of people during war against aliens. It's written from his perspective in the future, as he goes into his life and how he got into that huge decision. It's a slow-burn read. Excellent prose. Subverts a lot of expectations, while also having clear influences from books like Dune, and maybe Name of the Wind. Some of the characterization and plot details could be a bit stronger, at least for this opening book (can't comment on the full series yet). Solid 4/5 stars imo.

When it comes to AI, philosophical people often ask "What will happen to people if they lack work? Will they find it hard to find meaning in such a world of abundance?" But there is a darker side to the question, which people intuit more than they say aloud. In all prior technological history, new technologies changed the nature of human work but did not displace the need for human work. The fearful rightly ask: what happens if we make robots, utterly servile, that can outperform the majority of humans at most tasks with lower costs? Suppose they displace 70% or 80% of human labor to such an extent that 70% or 80% of humans cannot find another type of economic work relative to those bots. Now, the way I see it, it's a lot harder to replace humans than most expect. Datacenter AI is not the same as mobile AI; it takes a couple more decades of Moore's law to put a datacenter supercomputer into a low-energy local robot, or it would otherwise rely on a sketchy and limited-bandwidth connection to a datacenter. And it takes extensive physical design and programming which is harder than VC bros tend to suppose. And humans are self-repairing for the most part, which is a rather fantastic trait for a robot. A human cell outcompetes all current human technology in terms of complexity. People massively over-index what robots are capable of within a given timeframe, in my view. We're nowhere near human-level robots for all tasks, even as we're close to them for some tasks. But, the concept is close enough to be on our radar. We can envision it in a lifetime rather than in fantasy or far-off science fiction. So back to my prior point, the darker side of the question is to ask how humans will treat other humans if they don't need them for anything. All of our empathetic instincts were developed in a world where we needed each other; needed our tribe. And the difference between the 20% most capable and 20% least capable in a tribe wasn't that huge. But imagine our technology makes the bottom 20% economic contributes irrelevant. And then the next 20%. And then the next 20%, slowly moving up the spectrum. What people fear, often subconsciously rather than being able to articulate the full idea, is that humanity will reach a point where robots can replace many people in any economic sense; they can do nothing that economicall outcomes a bot and earns an income other than through charity. And specifically, they wonder what happens at the phase when this happens regarding those who own capital vs those that rely on their labor within their lifetimes. Scarce capital remains valuable for a period of time, so long as it can be held legally or otherwise, while labor becomes demonetized within that period. And as time progresses, weak holders of capital who spend more than they consume, also diminish due to lack of labor, and many imperfect forms of capital diminish. It might even be the case that those who own the robots are themselves insufficient, but at least they might own the codes that control them. Thus, people ultimately fear extinction, or being collected into non-economic open-air prisons and given diminishing scraps, resulting in a slow extinction. And they fear it not from the robots themselves, but from the minority of humans who wield the robots.

My husband has this wallpaper on his desktop to troll me. He didn’t know the full context; he just found it amusing. I googled it and found its source:

Cointelegraph Magazine

TradFi fans ignored Lyn Alden’s BTC tip — Now she says it’ll hit 7 figures: X Hall of Flame

Lyn Alden said many of her TradFi fans ignored her BTC recommendation. “OK, so like other than my best call. You like my work.” she laughs.

There are so many awesome musicians out there. One of them is Korey Cooper. At 52 she's still rocking with Skillet, which she's being doing for like 25 years or so. It's also really cool to see so many bands I've been following for 20-25 years still putting out new music, still active, still great.

I’m reading urban fantasy for maybe the first time. Not my usual genre. Do you read this genre? If so, what are your favorites?

Writing villains' points of view in fiction is so fun. It's because it's an exercise in other-thinking. You dislike this person, but you imagine and understand how they got to their mindset. Some of them in that mindset are kind of gross. But other ones are kind of hilarious.

The reason my husband is the first person who edits all of my important pieces, is because he’s the only one who will look me in the eye and be like “this, this right here? It’s fucking retarded.”

From a writer's perspective, one of the characters in fiction I find most interesting is Jaime Lannister. The reason is that the story immediately puts him past the moral event horizon, but then *still* gets you to kind of like him. That's really hard. I'll focus on the show rather than the books. In the first episode of the show, he pushes a child out of a window to their near-fatal death. Jaime is royalty, and he's an asshole, and the kid did nothing wrong. And he's casual about killing a child. There's nothing more bad than that, so we hate him immediately. Enemy #1. So the narrative starts in hard mode. How to make this character semi-likeable. What made him do such a crazy thing. Jaime loves his sister. At first that's another red flag. We almost all cringe at incest. An incestual killer is like bottom-of-the-barrel, almost comically bad. But... they're legit in love and have c hildren. The kid saw them together, and Jamie tried to kill the kid to preserve the secret. So as an audience we're like, "Well, fuck, okay this is a medieval England/Westeros world where almost everyone is dirty, and his own royal sister is the hottest person to him, and they fell in love." It's not like they have the Internet to keep them entertained and knowledgeable; these things could happen in their palace. They had children, and now are in a tough position, since the sister is married to the king and are assumed to be his heirs but are really Jaime's. They can never say they this to anyone, because both they and the children would be killed. So regardless of what one may think about the young versions of them that got into this mess, once they are in this mess as adults, the audience is kind of like, "well, who wouldn't take extreme action for their own kids if it came down to it, especially in such a brutal world?" Jaime then becomes an understandable villain. We hate him, but we understand him. He's not evily twirling his mustaches for no reason; he's dealing with a chain of events that started when he was young. And then over time, the narrative crosses the bridge into actual likeability. He loses a war, he gets captured, he gets humbled and has a rough time. And he's a charismatic top-tier swordsman. We also learn more about his backstory. He was a kings' guard that killed the king, which gives him widespread dishonor. But the king was a monster, and he killed him for good reasons. So, that's interesting. Even people who disliked that king tend to dislike Jaime since his action was so dishonorable ("one does not kill the king they guard, even if the king is bad"), whereas Jaime has more of the pragmatic anti-honor approach of "Well, he was fucking bad, though. I had to." He then escapes with Brienne of Tarth, which has a typical buddy-cop narrative or fantasy guy/girl semi-romance narrative, since they don't like each other but then eventually grow to like each other amid their travels. And then he gets his hand cut off, which in addition to being painful attacks his main attribute (top-tier swordsman) and humbles him. He also does his best to keep Brienne safe, since he grows to respect her and even maybe love her. We see his good side. We almost see him as a boy in this arc, just some guy who we feel bad for and is kind of simple and meaning to do well. And from then til the end, he's always a more likable character. Most readers and audience members find themselves generally on Jaime's side. An anti-hero, who once pushed a kid out of a window.

So I’m driving around in suburbia on a rainy Saturday, and there’s this one guy on the roof of a bank with a ladder. Part of me is like “who works alone on a roof on the weekend?” And the other part is like “Nobody robs banks anymore, and I mean it’s right in daylight on a crowded corner, so of course it’s legit.” Probably the funnier point, regardless of what this guy is doing, is that if you just do something with enough confidence, a lot of people will believe you probably belong there.

I’m a fan of removing DEI from government. But having worked with the FAA and to some extent NASA for a period time, and knowing people still there, DEI hiring is overestimated among the public. I checked with one of my close NASA friends and he was like:

That’s a pretty legit list. Are zaps tips? 🤔

I have very good, close reason to believe this is Leo’s real new account. It’s also a reminder on how easy it can be to lose private keys. Make sure to use this as an example lesson. View quoted note →

Woke up and it’s raining. That’s fine, decided to check the weather forecast to see when it’ll be sunny next. Answer: literally never.

I'm pretty bad at explaining things to 10 people, but pretty good at explaining things to 100,000 people. I don't know why.

Your government can kind of just take away your passport, trap you inside, and make it hard to get a passport elsewhere. By controlling your access to your own identity documentation. It happens to little out-of-favor groups primarily. But it's important to remember that power is there.

In fiction, underdogs often win. And underdogs are often tend to be shown as virtuous whereas in reality they have often turn pretty brutal after long oppression. In reality, those with power usually win. Power begets more power for a long time until things structurally change, usually after centuries. Fiction does tend to emphasize the exceptions. We don’t focus on the norms; we focus on the outliers. So reality is filled with norms, and fiction is filled with outliers.

I feel like we're due for an evil Canada arc. They've always been so nice. Imagine they get really hardcore for a while.

Gm. Canada exports $400B+ in stuff to the U.S. per year. Mexico does another $400B, and China does $500B.

Glad to see Three Days Grace is still putting out new tunes after 30 years. Hard to believe some of my favorite active bands have been around that long, and that I've been following them the majority of the time.