Anonymous Cactus

@johnloeber You lost me at 2. The challenge with EVs isn't electricity cost - it's battery cost. The only way to build EVs with smaller batteries is to relentlessly focus on CdA. The key to beautiful aerodynamic cars is to focus less on Cd and more on A, i.e. fewer crossovers and more coupes

Saturday at last. 37 recent thoughts: 1. Coffee shops will play music. Bars will sometimes play sports games, or even TV or movies. But I've never been to any establishment that plays a podcast. 2. The 2005-onwards "fuel efficiency" era of cars has resulted in incredibly ugly vehicles. Regulatory standards and pressure for aerodynamics have turned everything on four wheels into giant bloblike hatchbacks. Take a good look at one of these things. Horrendous. Once we get electric power + EVs at scale, we can go back to having vehicles that look good. 3. I often think of J Robert Oppenheimer's retreat to St John's in the US Virgin Islands in the 1950s. Imagine you're the most important nuclear physicist on earth, you've gone through staggering political drama, and then you peace out to a little pre-industrial island with no telephone or radio and sit on the beach for a couple weeks or months at a time. Talk about a detox. 4. I saw an old clip of the Simpsons, where they visit a lawyer to execute a will. It's in-person in an office. Sign of the times: today this would be done over Zoom and DocuSign. (The more valuable the profession by the hour, the more it is done virtually!) Modern media struggles to capture a world in which your entire life happens on a screen. 5. It would be good for everyone to spend a few days working in construction, tilling a field, cleaning streets, or manufacturing garments to appreciate (1) what goes on in our economy and (2) the benefits of modern technology. People do not know how good they have it. (There are a lot of anti-capitalists romanticizing pre-industrial life; people need to be inoculated against these illusions.) The biggest item is to spend a week washing clothes by hand; you will never look at a washing machine the same way again. 6. Many places are named after some heritage (e.g. New York), a landmark, or a person. But a lot of places are just named after money. It's uncommon in English, but if you start translating, it's everywhere: Puerto Rico? Rich Port! 7. I suspect that a lot of AI applications are already subtly Infinite Jest machines, encouraging the user to use them more and more, hooking them on the *feeling of productivity* more so than on actual productivity. There's a big bill and rude awakening coming to some of these users. If you didn't like social media because it maximizes engagement, you've seen nothing yet. The true engagement-maximizer, vastly smarter than you, billed by the token, is just in its infancy now. 8. Demographic differences from one airport to the next are just crazy. I flew through Minneapolis recently and half the men looked like Will Stancil. (I'll let you guess about the other half.) Flying from SFO to Chicago-Midway was like teleporting into a higher-BMI parallel universe. 9. Nice hotels are like real-life Pinterest boards. At some point you're not paying for amenities but for curation and inspiration. Like paying an interior designer for a few hours to sample a fully executed vision for a feeling of living. 10. Reviews for nice hotels are funny because people are so religious about them. I was recently picking between a 1Hotel and an Edition and looking at the reviews on Reddit: half of them are "1Hotel sucks, Edition is the only way to go" and the other half is the exact opposite. As far as I can tell, these hotels are basically the same. The tyranny of small differences! 11. Cookie popups are so dumb. This is a real policy-meets-technology failure. Your cookie settings should be sent as a default browser header. But maybe that didn't get implemented because it'd make it too easy to reject them all. Economic-political forces at work... 12. I've tried reading the Odyssey a few times. I've always struggled with classical verse, I lose concentration too easily with it. I'm now listening to the Odyssey as an audiobook, and it's working a lot better. Perhaps unsurprisingly: the old epics are meant to be read aloud! 13. Hacker News has always been known for its negativity, but it's had a real uptick in anti-American and anti-corporate sentiment. Some of these threads feel like Reddit at this point. 14. There's nothing more annoying than motorized trunk hatches on cars. I want to throw in my bags and shut the trunk -- and so I put my hand on the license plate, and push -- it resists, starts beeping, and then the world's slowest motor begins whirring, it opens back up, i have to click some dumb small button with a hatch/door icon on it, and then it begins closing with a speed of maybe one inch per second. Pathetic. I have to stand there, waiting to make sure the damn thing is closing, feeling the seconds of my life leave my body 15. It is continuously amusing to me that the Bush family consists of the biggest WASPs there ever were, truly New Englanders incarnate, and then they decided to remake themselves as humble Texans 16. Sam Kriss is a talented writer but he's just so mean. I can't read his work. I'm already cynical enough, I don't need more of it injected into me 17. Looking back, it's interesting how "thin" the machine learning skill tree is now. LSTMs, Random Forests, SVMs, etc. etc. have turned out to be ~irrelevant. Depth along one particularly powerful set of techniques beats all breadth. 18. History is a strong quality filter for media: Herodotus, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc. were the best of their time, most other stuff simply didn't survive because it had to be manually replicated, and that's a high bar. Now we have a non-stop explosion of new cultural artifacts, not just due to AI, but internet-era connectedness in the first place. I wonder if (1) it's possible to measure the outputs on a relative scale, e.g. every year we produce more cultural media than we have remaining from 2000BC to 1900AD combined, and (2) if there's a similar filter in the modern day -- like, there's so much ephemeral output that the act of reviewing, recommending, or replicating something carries a huge amount of weight. 19. With respect to the Midjourney scanner, a lot of people were commenting on the danger of "False Positives" in medical science. This seems incorrect to me: false positives just need better science. They should be a forcing function for more accurate diagnostics. It seems foolish to say that we shouldn't test because of the danger of false positives -- no, we should develop better tests and apply them more frequently. 20. Some people obtain US citizenship by birth ("anchor babies") but grow up abroad, moving to the US only as adults. There was a lot of recent debate about this and other aspects of birthright citizenship. Question: are these people paying taxes? US citizens living abroad are required to pay taxes; not filing them is a crime. If you are worried about abuse of anchor baby dynamics, then you may want to start by just enforcing the tax code. 21. If you're sending an email to ask someone for something, the probability of getting a reply is far-and-away maximized if you only ask for one thing as clearly as possible. 22. I would like to stop hearing about taste. Enough. 23. I keep a lot of notes on things to write about, but it feels like many of them are rapidly becoming irrelevant under changes due to AI. Just as parents often raise their children for the prior generation, writers publish for a world that has already disappeared. It takes great discipline to write for the present or the future. 24. I loved Wisprflow, and it taught me that dictation can be really effective -- speedy and lowering barrier to entry for outputting lots of thought. But Apple makes it inconvenient to use Wisprflow on mobile -- so I've resulted to using Apple's voice dictation, which I never would've used previously. Turns out it's good enough. (Just barely.) There's an interesting corporate-competitive dynamic here, where you start with the better, third-party tool, it teaches you the pattern, and then you use the worse, but more accessible built-in tool because you've learned the value of the pattern. Distribution is everything. 25. It appears that PPT slideshows and PDF decks are going away, in favor of AI-generated HTML websites. Just as good to present, and way more flexible. Interesting how AI means more centralization on the most common standards. 26. What exactly is "affordable healthcare"? What standard of care are we really talking about? All the politics and debate, and I'm not sure if people even agree on a definition here. 27. The great challenge with dentistry is that any operation removes all evidence that the procedure was necessary. You can see how this creates misaligned incentives. 28. Graham Platner and Palestine: if the contemporary Democrats weren't enthralled by antisemitism, they might not have not run the Guy With The Nazi Tattoo. But they are, and they did, and the non-stop cavalcade of failure and embarrassment was entirely deserved. 29. All things considered, it is surprising that the Nazis picked a Buddhist symbol as their flag. 30. Nvidia is only up ~50% since late '24. Given all the discourse, you would've expected it to be more. It's interesting how this was a great AI exposure derivative early on and appears more saturated now -- and most critically, hasn't kept up with the latest boom in frontier lab valuations. (Memory has been the new exposure trade.) 31. Sometimes I wonder about the difference between history and fiction. In many cases, our understanding of past events is probably way off. Does it matter? Being able to tell a grand narrative of humanity is important to our sense of identity and philosophical self-actualization, but to what extent is truth important to that narrative? It matters if we want to use the narrative to understand ourselves today. But beyond that, I want to say that there is intrinsic value in truth, but I struggle to make a really persuasive case to myself. 32. DFW writing Infinite Jest in response to (fundamentally) cable television of the '80s and '90s -- stuff that we would consider simply dull today -- is just incredible. To him this was already a colossally overwhelming force of entertainment, shaking the very foundations of what it means to be a human being. If he could see what we have today... 33. Under Trump's second term, the concept of a "First Lady" has almost entirely disappeared. 34. I continue to think that Bitcoin and LLMs feel like they were switched in the order in which they should have arisen: AI provides abundance, eliminating scarcity. What's scarce, and thereby valuable, in that AI era? Well, Bitcoin provides one thing: provable scarcity. Perhaps it arriving fifteen-plus years before its time and then languishing is like the 2010s all over again. There may come to be a rhyme to this history. 35. Sometimes I think about the 100 Prisoners Problem. This really blew my mind when I encountered it over a decade ago: it feels magical that there can be mathematical order like this in the world, that you wouldn't see at all unless you have the training. Like a secret hidden in plain sight. 36. Honor Codes That Work always feel remarkable to me, like a pinnacle of civilization. There is great comfort in being able to trust the honesty of others, that people will do what they say they're going to do. This may be a big part of our story: humans have been successful in part because they bias toward cooperation, even when defecting might be more rational. Conversely, I feel great unease when I see these honor/trust-systems weakened, and I suspect there is much more loss there than appears at first glance. 37. I am continuously surprised that restaurants don't copy each other better. For example, why do cafes serve bad sandwiches? It's easy to learn how to make a good sandwich! And ingredients are obviously a readily available commodity. "Efficient Markets" hypothesis blown out

@hrlomax It's possible to support the free market and also support a limited rate of rent increase, on the basis that housing is not perfectly liquid - i.e. it's harder for a renter to move than it is for a landlord to raise rent. That said, direct inflation-blind price controls are dumb.

if you ask someone if they're in favor of "rent control", what they hear is "am i in favor of limiting my landlord's ability to jack up my rent 500% for no reason when the lease expires", and the obvious answer to that question is "yes" even if that's not what rent control actually is in practice, that is all people actually want it to be ive had 3 friends within the last couple of weeks tell me that they got notices their rents were increasing anywhere from $300 to $1,000 A MONTH, for places they've all lived in for multiple years, and there's nothing any of them can do about it (other than move out)

@DP_LTS @hecubian_devil Okay, well even in that hypothetical, prices would end up lower than they would end up in a scenario where fewer boomers sell.

@spynoodle2 @hecubian_devil Not if demand continues to outpace supply.

It’s good when property taxes force seniors to move out of their 3bd homes and downsize so young families can move in

@DP_LTS @hecubian_devil That is not how the free market works. If enough owners need to sell their house (i.e. if they can't afford the property taxes) then they will be forced to lower their sale price.

@spynoodle2 @hecubian_devil Doesn't matter how many houses are available to buy if nobody can afford the taxes on them

@DP_LTS @hecubian_devil Or, get this: the increase in supply caused by boomers selling will result in falling home values which allow young families to buy, and also further allow the remaining boomers to more easily stay. It's due to this wacky new concept called supply and demand.

@hecubian_devil Right, because if the "wealthy boomer" can't afford the property taxes, a "young family" should have no problem covering them. Fucking retard.

@LAClippers Huge addition to the team; we've needed a strong PF for years. Very pumped for Rui to be a Clipper!

He is hereeeee 😁🏡 #ClipperNation, join us in welcoming Rui Hachimura!

@smuglydismissed @cremieuxrecueil I used to get sinus infections all the time until I started using a neti pot every time I started feeling sick. Highly recommend if this is something you suffer with.

@cremieuxrecueil 99 per year plus visits? so if i have regular sinus infections i can sign up for this and request an antibiotic and off we go? I'm assuming it has limitations on what it can prescribe

Amazon Medicine is incredible. You can go and request some medicine, tell a robot you have X, Y, and Z symptoms and no conflicting medical history, and then four hours later, they'll hand deliver whatever it is you asked for. And it costs basically nothing!

@Kathleen_Tyson_ We should be doing the same thing in the U.S., but we won't because all our politicians and central bankers are deathly afraid of triggering even a mild recession. Instead of a Volcker shock, we just get years of stagflation.

This is brilliant and should be studied by central bankers everywhere! Peoples Bank of China was the first to deflate a massive, leveraged housing bubble without a single quarter of economic contraction or loss of growth momentum in the real economy. A success for the history books.

@RepThomasMassie 100% agree; this is one of the most disappointing policies of Trump 2.0. The free market cannot create innovation through competition if the federal gov't has a stake in who wins. Imagine if the government owned Boeing shares when SpaceX came around!

Republicans decrying communist involvement in the Democrat party just looked the other way when this administration nationalized ownership of these private companies: • Intel 10% • MP Materials 15% • Lithium Americas 5% • Trilogy Metals 10% • U.S. Steel “golden share”

@zcabrams Unfortnately for LA (but fortunately for those in the burbs) the LA metro has dozens of inner ring suburbs with basically the same density and amenities as LA proper, but with far more functional government. It makes fixing LA difficult because most reasonable people just leave.

imagine living in LA right now. it must feel helpless. SF was bad. but we forced change. school board recall in 2022, chesa recall, lurie as mayor. now it feels like a different city.

@BenAxelrod My favorite is when they merge the precheck line into a regular security line so that you need to recalibrate yourself to an entirely different set of rules 0.5s before your bag hits the conveyor belt.

Airports really need to reach a consensus on whether we’re leaving laptops in the bag in the security line.

@HunterBiden @Suzierizzo1 Well said. Now the big question to ask is: how did we get here, and how do we fix it? I believe that it's primarily a money supply issue. If the Fed infinitely prints money and drives excessive inflation, asset holders benefit disproportionately and wage earners suffer.

Right! And we are all brainwashed to think it’s something to aspire to. I know this is old but the difference between one million and one billion is so vast I think people can’t comprehend it. One million seconds equals is 11.5 days. One billion seconds is 31.7 Years. And Elon is about to be a trillionaire. That would be 31,700 years. Now do the math in dollars. And the fact is that no one in the history of the world has ever attained that wealth by any other means then some form of domination over others. I do not begrudge financial success, but I do have a real problem when the the top 0.1% (130,000 families) hold 6 times the wealth as the bottom 66 million households combined. Put another way 905 individuals in America have twice the wealth of the entire bottom half of the country- 165,000,000 people. And it wasn’t always this way. The top 0.1 percent’s share of the U.S. wealth pie has grown 59.6 percent since just 1989.

The Fact That Billionaires Still Want More Money Should Be Studied By The Same People That Study Serial Killers!

@NancyMace No, actually I don't agree with this braindead boomer slopulist policy take

Seniors shouldn’t pay property taxes, do you agree?

@hthieblot Gaiaonline without a doubt. All the flash games - especially Zomg - were amazing as a kid. Just a fun site all around.

Anyone who surfed the early web between 1995-2010. What’s the one website/app you still think about?

@Linus200712345 I didn't have based Hunter Biden on my 2026 Bingo card but here we are

I kneel. Hunter Biden is a king

@GaryMarcus I do think that Google is in a unique position with their massive legacy search business. They have the revenue to keep dumping money into AI, and they also probably need to become the top LLM in order to protect the legacy search cash cow. It's an existential Catch-22.

Why things will eventually fall apart: 1. Everybody, even Google, seems to be treating AI as if it were some kind of winner take all competition like web search was, in which Google taking over 95% 2. But everybody is building essentially the same technical solution with essentially the same data, so there is no moat. 3. If there is no moat, nobody is going to take 90% of the market. 4. With no clear winners, nobody can charge monopoly prices; instead, you get price wars and commodity pricing. 5. Which means everybody will wind up overpaying compared to the modest profits they will be able to make in an intensely competitive regime. Am I missing something?

The situation unfolding right now is the perfect example of why the majority of the American people have either outright rejected or are at least requestioning the US-Israeli relationship. Currently, there is an obvious divergence between the US interests and the goals of the Israeli government. We desperately need a deal to end this disastrous war and save the global economy. Trump obviously wants that at this point and has already said Israel was forbidden from attacking Lebanon. (You may recall every pro Israel account on here claiming this as proof that Trump calls the shots). The ceasefire that the President of the United States of America wants depends on Israel not attacking southern Lebanon. So, Israel announces they’re doing it. The best Trump can say is no boots on the ground and he won’t even hold on that. This is a country whose very survival let alone ability to conduct any of these elective wars is completely dependent on US tax payer money, and support. We unconditionally support them even as they undermine our nation. This is beyond intolerable. You can call all of us every name in the book but it’s just too obvious.

@KobeissiLetter "Axios: Sources claim a deal is maybe kinda gonna happen" >>> market rips a full percent. "Iran says the deal is fully off" >>> market is down ten basis points and fully recovers by EOD. It's like an infinite money glitch.

BREAKING: Iran announces it is ending all negotiations with the US and vows to "completely" block the Strait of Hormuz, per CNBC. Iran says it is ending negotiations due to repeated ceasefire violations including Israeli strikes in Lebanon. Iran also threatens to block the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

@BrianNorgard True - I could definitely see that being a factor

@spynoodle2 Mostly agree with you but my core thesis on south of Los Angeles will be people retiring.

What happens to the SoCal housing market after the SpaceX IPO? The communities closest to Hawthorne see the first wave. Manhattan, Hermosa, Redondo, and PV get bid up 25% or more. But those markets are already supply-constrained. Today, there are only 39 properties for sale in the Sand Section of Manhattan Beach. The spillover moves south… Laguna, Newport, Dana Point, San Juan Capistrano, eventually San Clemente. One company can reshape an entire coastline.