DD

And just like that, Elon Musk's last xAI cofounder is out. Ross Nordeen has left the company, according to people with knowledge of his exit. If you're still counting, Nordeen is the eighth cofounder to leave this year and the seventh since SpaceX acquired xAI.

Once there was a planet with a huge asteroid heading toward it. Stopping the asteroid would have required a few large countries to cooperate a moderate amount. That seemed hard. Some people became worried. A cult arose which said the asteroid would grant its believers eternal life, when it struck the planet. Nobody knew how to make the asteroid do that. But the cult said you couldn't prove it wouldn't. So there was no need to worry, and you could set your mind at ease. They called it the Asteroid of Immortality. Some of the world's most famous astronomers tried to explain in more detail what would happen when the asteroid smashed into the planet, and that it didn't involve eternal life. The cult said that nobody had seen that disaster actually happen, so it wasn't scientific to believe in it. (Other astronomers joined the cult of the Asteroid of Immortality. It regarded astronomers who joined them very favorably and warmly -- the cult did, that is; not the asteroid.) "If the asteroid *doesn't* hit our planet, everyone dies!" said the cult. "Like, because of old age, get it? Ha ha!" They thought this reply very clever. Transhumanists tried to point out that cryonics was in fact a thing, if somebody was that desperate to grasp any chance of escaping death by old age; that you could desperately grasp at immortality *without* endangering all life on the planet. Skeptics tried to explain that putting your faith in a falling asteroid to save you, just because it seemed big and powerful, wasn't much of a chance to grasp however desperately, because a falling asteroid would actually just kill you. People who cared about something other than themselves, tried to say that it was different for everyone to all die at the same time, including everyone's children; and leave no legacy for the children's children who might have been. "Everyone will die," said those trying to rally the world, "including your children; or your friends' children, if you've none of your own; they'll die before they have a chance to grow up, and have lives or children of their own. Every story ends in time; that's not the same as ending all stories." "Everyone will die all at the same time, if we don't stop the asteroid, and that will be the end." This didn't work to talk most believers out of their faith. Thinking it clever to reply "Ah ha ha, but everyone dies even if the asteroid *doesn't* hit!" usually meant having too little wisdom to understand the counter-replies. If you couldn't figure out the problems for yourself, before your mouth uttered such words, you usually wouldn't recant when somebody else tried to explain. Instead the cult decided to call the anti-doom coalition "doomers", and thought that very clever too. The cult spent vast amounts to build huge electromagnets to try to pull in the asteroid faster. The cult knew, their faith held, that the asteroid would fall in time regardless. But the prospect of pulling down the asteroid a little sooner, let them feel powerful and in control, and like *they* were the ones making history. (Indeed, many splinter factions within the cult each said that if their followers invested enough to build the *most* powerful magnet, that would make it be *their* Asteroid of Immortality, and *they* would become the rulers of the new world.) Above all, the cult worked to stoke enmity between the couple of large countries that would have needed to work together to deflect the asteroid. And at that task, unfortunately, the cult succeeded. For it was ever easier to push people downhill than uphill, to fight alongside entropy rather than fighting back against it; and call the default sad outcome your victory. Coordination was hard and not the default, and maybe it wouldn't have happened either way. But the cult did fight on the side of entropy, and entropy did win. The cult likewise succeeded at pulling down the asteroid with electromagnets, if you wanted to look at things that way. They got the default outcome they'd defined as their own victory. They managed to let a falling asteroid fall. And then everyone died, all at the same time including all the children, and that was the end of all stories.

Perhaps I should get married again so that the media has a more recent man they can reference any time they mention me or my work.

Fitness YouTuber Jeff Nippard has announced that his fiancée Dr. Stephanie Buttermore has died at the age of 36

Everyone is saying GPT-5.4 Pro is the smartest model, AGI-level intelligence, but do you have AGI-level questions to ask?

The number of MARRIED women I know who’ve had MULTIPLE children and whose husbands STILL refuse to get vasectomies is a radicalizing event I fear. What do you MEAN you let your wife go through all that and still won’t do a 20 min procedure so she doesn’t have to put potentially harmful substances in her body?

The new product management

TRUMP to reporters while wrapping a tech energy roundtable: “I have to go back and look at the war.”