Author: Chill

Rodin

Chill Rant

I’ve always know this, but people just cannot think credibly. Being able to think clearly and assess data, information and the world as it actually coheres is so rare that I can call to mind — maybe — five people in the entire world (of living, public-ish figures) who do this routinely.

I don’t even agree with all of them. Or even most of them most of the time. But they are thinking. Which is so incredibly rare that in a world of eight billion people that only five make the cut. Fuck, that’s grim.

A great example of this lack of cognitive capability is AI. Tons of people write about it. Loads of people have opinions. Few of them understand it or use it. Most have no clue other than (most of them) hate it. Here’s where the cognitive breakage occurs. To some extent the inverse is true of the cheerleaders but among the AI-haters, they are not able to separate these three very-much-disparate contentions:

1) A lot of the AI companies are scummy.

2) I personally hate AI.

3) AI is often misused.

4) And that in many contexts and for many use cases, AI works incredibly well and is improving rapidly all the time.

How, just how, can people not separate these drastically different postulates? And truly, I am not here to defend AI. It’s here and it’s not going anywhere. My aim is to attempt to reason — as much as is possible — about how very poorly nearly all of humanity cogitates. They just cannot do it. It is absolutely beyond them. High IQ, low IQ. It doesn’t matter. They cannot think in any real sense.

By the way, my list of the five living people who can actually, credibly think:

  • Zeynep Tufecki
  • Tyler Cowen
  • Nancy Cartwright
  • Murray Shanahan
  • Camille Paglia

Chill Links

Russia’s 1.2 million casualties in Ukraine dwarf all its conflicts since World War II, report says.

Algae blooms are expanding worldwide, Florida scientists say in first ever global study.

Milky Way is embedded in a 'large-scale sheet' of dark matter, which explains motions of nearby galaxies.

The origin story of syphilis goes back far longer than we thought.

Japan lost a 5-ton navigation satellite when it fell off a rocket during launch. Oopsie-doopsie.

Europe should be ‘realistic’ about tech sovereignty, says top chips exec.

Berlin’s push to favor its own arms-makers snarls Ukraine’s €90B EU loan.

Goodbye to the idea that solar panels “die” after 25 years. A new study says the warranty does not mark the end, and performance can last for decades. Arrays built in the late 1980s still produced more than 80% of their original power.

I think Docker is Bad Actually. I think Kubernetes is bad and Flatpak is bad and Snaps are bad and App Stores are bad and the Wayland security model is also bad. Specifically, they’re bad for humans and human-scale computing.

Superfluids are supposed to flow indefinitely. Physicists just watched one stop moving.

Deforestation is drying out the Amazon rainforest faster than previously thought.

Ab Worth

Chill Lying Liars

Same. I don’t think a single adult “You’ll agree with me when you’re older” or “You’ll know better when you’re older” or “You’ll understand when you’re older” ever happened. All those adults were either wrong or attempting to manipulate or harm me in some way.

A part of that is due to where and when I grew up. It was probably better in other areas. But most adults at any time aren’t particularly wise nor particularly knowledgeable, so their advice and what is “obvious” to them is typically absolute crap and worthless.

FA’s Last Hurrah

Chill Annoying, Clowns

We're finally learning the true side-effects of weight-loss drugs.

This is probably part of a front in the Fat Acceptance/Early Death backlash to GLP-1s. It was inevitable. That camp hates that these drugs exist. And this is why:

The vast majority of FA types are women and that someone can get so massively hotter in such a short time triggers their big (pun very much intended) intrasexual competition feelings. And that leads to real-world attempted actions.

Don’t let them get away with it.

Chill Links

Harsh reality in today's market: you could work for Microsoft for 3-5 years then end up at Walmart as a retail worker.

Miami Overtakes New York as the Major U.S. City With the Most $1 Million Homes as Wealthy Buyers Head South.

430,000-Year-Old Wooden Tools Are the Oldest Ever Found.

Extremophile molds are invading art museums.

Google to pay $68 million over allegations its voice assistant eavesdropped on users.

UPS retires its fleet of MD-11 cargo aircraft involved in deadly Kentucky crash.

Population Growth Slows to Crawl, Net Migration May Turn “Negative”: Census Bureau’s New Population Estimates.

Hard to Imagine an Economic Slowdown until this Business Investment Boom Fizzles. Core Capital Goods Orders Show Why.

Sources of America’s Hidden Inflation. How market power jacks up prices, and how Trump’s policies add to the pressure.