2024

notes bookshop link i’m glad i got this on kindle, because i slogged through this for far too long. this is an amusing sequel to the rise and fall of D.O.D.O. which was done with neal stephenson as the co-author. this builds on the whole time travel via witchcraft thing which is an amusing trope that i had fun reading. superficially, the premise is kind of neat; a rogue witch who’s engaged in the government’s time travel project decides that she’s going to make witchcraft supreme and stunt the emergence of “technology”....

links, etc 2024 MADE Bike Show People and Products – Spencer Harding, Jade Elhardt, & John Watson | The Radavist | A group of individuals who share a love of cycling and the outdoors. so. much. delicious bike pr0n. tags: bikes

links, etc Harder Drive: Hard drives we didn’t want or need a delicious waste of network bandwidth and linux network drivers. quite amusing. Have we stopped to think about what LLMs actually model? • The Register no. tags: linux, ai, hacks

links, etc Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art i read pretty much anything that ted chiang decides he wants to publish to the world at large. he’s been particularly critical of AI over the past few years and i have a difficult time arguing with the ground that he’s staked out. this article is well worth the time to read. it’s full of solid, nuanced perspective on the topic of art and human engagement with art....

range: why generalists triumph in a specialized world (david epstein) i had to bail on this after dragging myself well over halfway through it. i just couldn’t take the repetition any more. if there was something revelatory in the last 100 pages, my skimming did not surface it. i feel fine with this. key points/messages: subjecting your kid to focus on a single sport early in life is a bad idea....