Irizaurus

@deedydas @dhruv2038 The Gold Rush syndrome: very nice appraisal of a recurring phenomenon. Thanks.

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

*me* that he knew *me* because our kids went to school together. I apologized for not recognizing him. Nashville, you'll always be a small town to me.

he came south. Bob and Billy met weekly and one day, Billy wasn't there. Bob asked, Where is Billy? Billy's no more, they said. Bob's eyes filled with tears when he told me this. Another man was waiting who later in the bus told Bob, who asked, that he was from Belarus. He told

Waiting for the WeGo 77, I spoke with Bob whose NYC accent I appreciated. It turns out that Bob was best friends with Billy who was killed by the semi truck at Gallatin & Trinity Ln. Both veterans of Desert Storm, they bonded. Billy, 55, was the 1st person Bob, 62, met when

If you walk in Nashville, you'll run into randos with guitars, wherever you go.

Just say no to this Charlotte Pike "bike lane."

Nashville curiouser and curiouser.

@textkritik Auch in Tennessee gibt es einen 'Fountain Pen Club'. Ab & zu kam ein Mitglied bei mir vorbei, als ich noch in der Bibliothek war. Wir unterhielten uns über ihre Sammlung. Man erkennt Mitglieder daran, dass sie ein Paar feine Schreibinstrumente in ihrer Hemdtasche mit sich tragen.

Der Ort des Schreibens, aufgeräumt …

youtu.be/D-xTQ0fFXi4?si… Master KG, Jerusalema

This song was playing in Miami Beach a lot. I didn't know what it was, who, where from. A few days ago it's playing in a restau near me in Nashville while I walk by. A man walks out, I call to him: Excuse me, what's this song? He whips out his phone, fires up an app and shows me:

@matthewrobb22 @WorkforLife3 Honestly, everyone finds parking even when driving to their hot yoga class or pickleball at Sevier. Yawn.

@WorkforLife3 Yes they wrote an article about people who have an issue with walking multiple blocks and people who don't like when people block their driveway. I have sympathy for the latter, but that's not the fault of city planners and is a fixable problem.

Exhibit 27 of why you can't take government planners seriously. Is there any person in Nashville who didn't think parking would become an issue in 12 South? 12 South is about 7 blocks of shops on normal-sized road, bounded by residential on both sides. This didn't pop up overnight. The New York Times wrote articles about 12South in 2003 and 2014. You know the government planners all lapped up those articles. They just couldn't put 2-and-2 together and realize that popularity brings people which should bring some planning.

@WhatHoARat Pierre Ménard.

Isn't this the plot of a Borges story?

@izakaminska I'll listen to it if you have interesting guests. It's the back and forth that's attracting listeners like me, like eavesdropping at a café, say. There has to be chemistry too. Or with 2 guests, it may just be the contrast, the duet of 2 voices. Like @tracyalloway & @TheStalwart

Monetisation brainwave! What if I start a podcast focused on exposing deep truths about how finance and dollar flows really work, but I do it on the Only Fans platform? AND I use an AI avatar of my 21 year old self to host it? AND of course I do it under The Peg brand?

Who knew? The Stadtbibliothek Mannheim also made a playlist on Freeegal.

@WorkforLife3 There's no shortage of car parking in 12S. And more coming. Also, have you noticed the fleets of black SUVs, like yellow cabs in Manhattan? Those are rideshare vehicles. They don't park but drop off their passengers. Few tourists self-drive (they drink).

Some of the most strident government planners work...in 12 South.

Virtually no ink stains in Franz's cahiers. And the writing shows little fading: he knew to dip his nib before the ink ran out. But I apparently did too, as evidenced by this lone fading relic from my 4th grade in newly independent Senegal.

I asked a young person in my mini-group reading Kafka in German at the library to try writing with a nib dipped in ink, a foreign idea here. As we played with this, I remembered that there is a rhythm to dipping your nib in the ink, and the inevitable & once punishable INK STAINS

University of Tennessee, Knoxville just received between 16,000-18,000 books from Cormac McCarthy’s personal library. Cormac owned 20,000 volumes total: Texas State University received 2,000 in December of last year (the ones CM used regularly).

Adieu, salade, radis... More shall be sowed when it cools off again in the fall. Hello, melon and basil. Why is the basil next to this melon? No idea.

on art and philosophy. TLDR she thinks that Kant is wrong wrong wrong, but since Kant is a pillar of French institutions, it's tough to defend this position. radiofrance.fr/franceculture/…

I never met Jacqueline Lichtenstein irl although she lent her then Haight-Ashbury rental apt. to Jean-Luc Nancy who let both my mother and my brother stay there one winter during my stint in SF when I couldn't house them at my shared place on S Van Ness. Good 2014 ep with her->