Best enjoyed this week in a sunny corner of a park
Worth your time
If youâve ever wanted to buy a life sized dinosaur, now is your chance. Someday my son is going to find out I had this opportunity and didnât take it and will never look at me the same way again.
The Quiet Ones by Nikunj Kothari. An ode to the people that do the little things to make a company or a team effective.
I now realize that everything I lorded over other peopleâall the things I gatekept without consciously understanding that this was what I was doingâI didnât need to do that. It really didnât help anything. For some number of people who interacted with me, Iwas the problem. I couldâve been more tolerant or forgiving, I couldâve said âletâs find out together,â I couldâve let other people have the fun once in a while.
Iâve become obsessed with the tops of trees, in particular in the morning or the evening when the sun is hitting them. For some insect or bird or leaf that spot is the center of the world.
Letâs see if I can land the plane on this one. Iâm surprised that there isnât more nostalgic fiction about growing up in evangelical Christian circles. Thereâs satirical stuff like Saved but nothing that Iâm aware of like The Big Sick that both pokes fun at being a child of immigrants while also on some level clearly feeling affection for it. Is this out there and I just donât know about it?
Are we at the point where âyes, andâŚâ is overrated? If not, how long until we get there?
Something I struggled with this week: for someone like you and me, in 2025, what does it mean to live a good life? At 19, it was easier for me to articulate an answer to this question I actually believed than it is now in many ways. If you feel like you have a good answer to this, consider this me humbly requesting that you write it and share it.
Things I learned
Apparently Marie Antoinette never said âLet them eat cakeâ, according to a recent Rest Is History Bonus episode. Iâm a sucker forthings we think that arenât actually so. Also from a RIH bonus episode: apparently the US now requires people to share their social media handles to get a travel visa. What are we doing here people?
China installed more industrial robots last year than the rest of the world combined. This is one of those stats that a 17 year old is going to be citing in an AP History Exam in 2084 about why China won the war for Taiwan.
This weekâs episode is best paired with a hot cup of coffee and Wild Ways by Josh Ritter playing in the background. Last episode was too LLM heavy, for which I apologize. Iâve done my best to group all of that into LLM corner so as not to let it overshadow everything.
Worth your time
Uri says we should not allow 18 year olds to sign long term contracts. So, so many thoughts here.
1. I remember a conversation I had with my best friend when he was a brand new army officer out of college ROTC about all the 18 year old privates he worked with that had 19% car loans.
2. Jonathan Haidt opened my eyes to the way social media companies get teenagers to agree terms of service that they very obviously should not be able to agree to without their parents consent. I cannot believe we allow this!
3. Matt Levineâs Certificate of Dumb Investment continues to seem underrated to me.
PSA: How to fold fitted sheets, via the Browser. I sent this to my wife and she very nicely said to me something to the effect of âisnât this the same way I taught you to do it?â đ¤Ł
âWhen outsiders succeed, itâs usually through reframing problems in âparadigm shiftsâ. They benefit from not being too attached to existing theories.âFrom a thread on outsiders solving problems.
Our parenting hack of the year so far is having cut vegetables ready at the table when our kids get home from school. The percentage of vegetables consumed is up like 10x and compliance to the routine of coming in, washing hands, and sitting down at the table has risen as well. Recommended and thanks to Emily Oster for the suggestion.
Things I learned
German chocolate cake was invented in United States, via the Kroger App. Someone needs to figure out why the Kroger app has so many delightful facts in it. This is someoneâs passion project! I'll buy you a nice bottle of wine if you find this person and introduce them to me.
80% of Swiss are satisfied with their lives. I am not sponsored by the Swiss government, but I am open to it if they are reading.
The Pangolin is the only mammal with scales. Peacock is the name of the males only; the female are peahens. The species is called peafowl. Via The Animal Book.
âShe does that to her family. She does that to her friends. She does that to me,â he lamented. âShe doesnât seem to be capable of creating her own social interactions anymore.â
I worry a lot that the sycophancy of the agents have made me less flexible with people who (of course) are less likely to defer to me. I am not sure how to measure this, but I wish I could.
Sort of a musing, but I think we owe Blake Lemoine and apology.
Matt Holden and I are doing a YouTube show about building with AI called --dangerously-skip-permissions. The first episode is âHow did we get here?â. Matt and I have been having 1:1 conversations for more than a year now about what tools weâre using and how weâre using them⌠and now weâre having those conversations in public. I especially enjoy the way that Matt is able to connect whatâs happening with LLMs today with previous eras of computing innovation. Give it a listen if thatâs your thing!
OpenRouter has market share by LLM model. Interesting and unexpected in some ways!
On fact checking with AI. I really enjoyed this one. I have a draft blog post in my head called âVibe Craft: How to do serious work with AIâ but every time I try to write it, it falls flat. This is spiritually related to that.
Office building visits are up among people that live less than 5 miles from their office. As someone who made major life changes during the pandemic, I feel the pang of regret.
Musings
âA soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.â â Napoleon
âEveryone has a plan until they get punched in the face.â â Mike Tyson
Yucca man. Iâm a sucker for âdoes this Bigfoot like creature actually existâ stories (see season 1 of the Wild Thing podcast), but this one also has so many great Southern California places in it. Like taking a mini vacation.
Nuclear batteries. âA 157W Voyager-based RTG that launched in 1977 will produce about 88W today.â The clean up problem seems insurmountable.
Why Swiss Kids Walk to School Alone. This is one of the things that made me fall in love with Switzerland. They do this as 5 year olds! Part of it is safety but part of it is teaching agency. The walk to school is a part of the education. This should be our aspiration for American neighborhoods.
Your idea sets the ceiling for your videos potential and other good advice from Paddy Galloway.
Adding an age check reduced online porn traffic in the UK by 47%. Whether or not you believe it is right, I believe it is unlikely that ten years from now people will be unable to get porn online without verifying their age in some way.
Iâm in love with the conspiracy theory that the terra cotta warriors are fake. I donât believe it is true, but I love going down the rabbit hole. Someone make the definitive YouTube video on this!
Product / Market Experiments:âExperimentation is a skill developed via learning-by-doing, and angels have a skill advantage in that domain because of having more operational experienceâ. Filed under âwe all experiment too little.â