GreigOBrien

On the morrow

We’re deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Sam Kieth. From The Maxx to his work across comics, Sam brought a completely unique look and voice to the industry. His art was raw and unmistakably his. Sam's influence will be felt for generations. Our thoughts are with his family, friends, and fans.

The selfie of the year❤️🥹

I saw a man with a sign: Will Work for Food. I pulled over. "I have a fence that needs painting," I said. "I can pay you $50 and lunch." He lit up. "Yes ma'am." He worked for four hours. Hard work. He did a perfect job. We ate sandwiches on the porch. "I used to be a contractor," he told me. "Then my wife died, and I started drinking. I lost it all. I've been sober 3 months, trying to get back." I gave him the $50. And a recommendation to my brother who runs a construction crew. He starts Monday. Everyone has a story. Stop scrolling and start listening. Anonymous

Good point.

For millennia, jocks ran everything. The nerds finally take over. And what do they do? Develop AI that wipes out their own coding/math/analysis moats. Creating a social premium on interpersonal skills. The irony.

On Valentine’s Day 36 years ago, at the request of Carl Sagan, NASA turned Voyager 1's camera back toward home for one last look. From 3.7 billion miles away, it captured this: a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Here is how Carl Sagan beautifully described it: “Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

By studying samples analyzed by the Curiosity rover, scientists have taken another step toward understanding whether life could have ever existed on Mars. A new study suggests that non-biological sources cannot fully account for the abundance of organic compounds found in a sample collected by the rover. Dig into the details: go.nasa.gov/46AGzG5

“This is not a time to be dismayed. This is punk rock time, this is what Joe Strummer trained you for. It is now time to go. You’re a good person and that means more now than ever” - Henry Rollins Happy birthday, @henryrollins

He was so good in this show.

My friend had an abscessed tooth. Dental insurance denied the root canal. "Maxed out benefits for the year." He couldn't afford the $1,500 out of pocket. So he waited. The infection spread to his blood. Sepsis. He was rushed to the ER. Spent 4 days in the ICU. Total bill: $56,000. Medical insurance paid it instantly. They refused to pay $1,500 to prevent the problem, but happily paid $56,000 to fix the near-death experience caused by the problem. The system isn't just cruel. It is mathematically stupid.

I was shopping for a new microphone this morning and had a moment: I didn't even look at Amazon reviews. I went straight to Wirecutter's recommendation. That's wild when I think about it. The entire 2010s was built on this promise of democratized information. Crowdsourced reviews. Wisdom of the crowds. Data-driven everything. We were supposed to route around traditional gatekeepers and let the people decide. Turns out all of it is gamed now. Amazon reviews are mostly bot farms and incentivized 5-stars. The FTC just sent warning letters to 10 companies in December about fake reviews. Bot traffic crossed 51% of all web traffic in 2024 and hasn't looked back. It's only getting worse with AI-generated content and AI agents everywhere. So I'm back to expert curation. Wirecutter. Consumer Reports. Specialist forums where real humans who actually know stuff talk to each other. The exact model we thought we were disrupting. The irony: the democratized system became easier to manipulate than the old gatekeepers ever were.

There is nothing about political parties in the Constitution (despite people saying we live in a "two-party system"). In fact, several prominent founders warned of the dangers of "factions". If we got rid of the big two parties today it's hard to see how we'd be any worse off.

remember when we fired Elon Musk and he just ignored it

I can’t think of a better analogy for America than the Epstein files. Mountains of evidence about powerful men raping children. And the only person in prison is a woman.

👇

Bingo.

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible." — Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune