garth.eth

I still can't believe this happened between @SBF_FTX and @matt_levine.

@adamscrabble i've heard australian survivor is quite popular. as an aussie, i'd be interested to know what you like about it

This is the best of the new seasons and it’s still horrible. Meanwhile I’ve just cycled thru re-watches of the first seasons + Catugal, heroes v villains, China etc. Fantastic current season of Aus survivor

@gbrl_dick @fashi0nplayb0i saw a good distinction today where 96-2000 with older siblings makes you millennial, but younger siblings makes you zoomer

@fashi0nplayb0i you might be technically zoomer but to my mind you’re a young millenial

it's impossible to explain the early 2000s to zoomers, but just to give you a sense: in 1995, backpack rapper will i am started a backpack rap group called Black Eyed Peas with a mexican-american and a filipino guy, released two albums, added a blonde female vocalist and moved to pop-rap. the pop-rap album is recorded over the course of 2001, and is allegedly both interrupted and inspired by 9/11 9/11 album has three singles: let's get retarded, shut up, and a kind of 'do they even know it's christmas' consciousness-raising song called 'where is the love?' about how we just have to love each other. the album is now quadruple platinum after this, will i am starts a tech co and acquires an israeli machine learning company. i think he also made hardware for the early iphone this year he's teaching a course on agentic AI at ASU

@dieworkwear hard to wear that many layers in a warmer climate — i've been thinking recently that one reason fitness is taken so seriously here in sydney is because it's so hot that you can't hide your flub under multiple stylish layers for most of the year

here are eight men. the first three, shown in the first slide, have lean and athletic body types. the others are not so lean. of these four slides, which do you think look the best?

@SchmanthonyP is he sick or something

I have never seen a picture of Jim Downey that looks like any other fucking picture of Jim Downey.

@zoecabina he always points out that when they met, she was famous and he was not

Yes this is an interesting one. It's pretty rare, but it does happen, and ngl, my first instinct (and I think lots of people's) is usually that there must be something wrong with the guy. Hugh Jackman and his (now ex) wife come to mind. She's not a bad looking woman at all, but she is 13 years older and Hugh could have had a much better looking, younger woman if he wanted, but he chose her. I think this fuelled the rumours that he was gay 🤷‍♀️

@Stormdrain_5 @Brad08414464 two important points: way hotter in aus, which is very relevant obvs for a beach; and there are waves in aus, which make the beach way more fun

@Brad08414464 Fair enough but I mean, a beach in Dartmouth, UK, looks just as nice as this video provides, and if this beach ain't good enough, Spanish beaches are practically a 5 minute walk away

Americans are finally discovering the east coast of Australia. it’s basically a bigger California. picture the most beautiful and serene stretch of the Californian coast, and then quadruple it. that’s Australia x.com/echoesofworld/…

@ArpadV2 @FischerKing64 @WForest1803 i agree - map and territory is a bad one to start with. i did, then didn’t try another for years, until platform, which is a great starter

@FischerKing64 @WForest1803 Oh no dude, that one's the worst! If the person you're recommending it to is not well read, Platform is the perfect gateway drug. Quite simple, straight-forward sex talk. If they're a bit more subtle, Possibility of an Island. At least that's how I see it.

By far the best and most relevant novelist over the last 30 years is Michel Houellebecq. Every novel is still relevant. They were all prescient. They’re all filled with humor that actually lands. No one else is close.

Australian apartments love their shitty, legally-required balconies that overlook main roads!

@mean_field_zane @MTabarrok yeah maybe academic economists are immune to pride

@MTabarrok Academic economists aren’t mad that Cowen is popular on the Internet. They just don’t view it as serious.

You guys should go ask an actual academic economist what they think of Tyler Cowen, who is ostensibly supposed to be an economist. The answer might surprise you.

@ConradBastable Great thread. Have you played the Legacy ROM-hacks? They thought very carefully about how to subtly improve the first three gens while retaining everything that mattered about them.

Game Freak dropped Gold/Silver in 1999. A sequel, except it included the whole first game too. You could connect it to the n64. Its 2009 rerelease (17 years ago!) tops fan lists of the best pokemon games. But there’s no handheld anymore. Nintendo killed the form factor. I don’t want to give my kid a tablet (switch), and even if I did it’s way too big for him. The form factor isn’t really conducive to an on-the-go portable “pocket” monster experience. So instead of iterating on the winning formula, we get attempts to make a non-pokemon pokemon game. Because that makes much more sense for the hardware Nintendo is trying to sell you. The market is crying out for a simple handheld, so retro companies have filled the gap left by first parties. The whole ecosystem only really exists because Nintendo wants to sell switches to millennials instead of handhelds to kids. Going back to Gold/Silver: Nintendo gave Gamefreak better technology during development (4MB cartridge instead of 2MB). They used this tech to expand the game, while keeping it connected and rooted to the first one. Once the tech went 3D-first with the 3DS, you saw a whole bunch of things change. The narrative went softer and younger, because it’s tougher to show kids fully 3D versions of violence. The designs went “Furry” as animating 3D models is easier if you can borrow generic humanoid rigs. The art went Disney because soft rounded edges look better in low poly 3D environments. And all these things shape the franchise direction in small but meaningful ways. And they make it hard to go back to gambling dens, mafia bosses, chopping tails off slowpoke, and unnamed “experiments” on our loveable companions. Obviously this is insane “new game bad” Pokeboomer posting, and alongside my prior Halo posting I’m clearly dating myself as a child of the 1996-2008 era. Everything was peak when you were a kid, everything new is terrible. But I think it’s bad for Nintendo that I’d rather get an Analogue3D for my kid’s first game console than a Switch 2. Perhaps that’s because im just a Pokeboomer? But I think Mario Kart 64 is a better game for a young kid than open-world free-roaming confusing-objectives Mario Kart World. My point in all this boomer ranting is just that the medium is the message, changing tech changes the message, and the more graphical fidelity you’re able to deliver on an experience for kids the more “Furry-Disney-slop” your product will become and the less you’ll be able to recreate, repackage, and expand on the product that first built your franchise.

@zeta_globin what's weird about weekly prices, other than it being different if you're not used to it?

ever since I learned the major cities in australia post rental prices BY THE WEEK and BY DEFAULT the abundance of australians in SF makes way more sense

@Scholars_Stage hahaha i think your mistake was saying there was no way she could be claimed to be one of the ten greatest writers. i don't know for sure, but i think you can make a good case, as i tried to. the case for ten greatest thinkers is imo pretty obviously small

Conversation with my wife today: Me: “Yeah a lot of people are mad me on Twitter again.” Her: “why this time?” Me: “Jane Austen” Her: “oh is it because you wrote about how you love her so much more than most guys do?” Me: uh…

@DmitriyMolla When architects show you their renders.

@Scholars_Stage @h03607037 do you think many people are arguing that she is one of the top ten geniuses to live across human history?

@h03607037 I actually think she had a real streak of genius in her. But genius is relative and I would not put her in "top ten geniuses to live across human history" not at all

austen wrote about romantic love (ie a human experience that majorly animates most people today) in a way that still finds a huge audience two hundred years later. she did it with an innovative prose style (free indirect discourse) with very few excellent english novels having preceded her. she did this despite women being at huge disadvantage back then.

@RhianSasseen x.com/scholars_stage…

One of the best novels of all time was written by a man who was very fond of staying inside his cork-lined bedroom, contemplating his own neuroses

@2024dion the value of the land underneath (and its attractiveness for housing)?

To curb inflation we need stricter regulation around billionaires' marriages

@jacksondahl yeah my three biggest examples of this were casablanca, the godfather, and oasis's second album

I watched Casablanca for the first time yesterday. Not sure there's anything better than when a thing that is extremely hyped is as good as advertised: The Godfather, Lake Como, Nina Simone, Sgt. Pepper's, The David...

@phokarlsson my plan is to make sure i don't criticise the early stages of any activity too much — my folks would do that a lot and it made it easier for us to just not try anything in response

Curious: if you have kids, what, if anything, do you do to help them cultivate agency? (When I say agency, i’m sort of thinking about the twin capacities of digging inside yourself to figure out a project you’d find meaningful, and the self-direction, tenacity and creativity to make it happen)