Base-model Montana farm kid somehow now working on AI and data infra in The Swamp.™ Opinions my own.
D.C./Baltimore
Joined March 2007
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November exercise: every day this month, I’m gonna post about something or someone I’m grateful for. Conventional wisdom is that hedonic adaptation comes for everything eventually, but that hasn’t really been my experience: sometimes I feel almost overflowing with gratefulness for the things that surround me. But I’m not good at all about expressing this stuff out loud, so people who know me often get the impression that I’m severe and critical. Let’s go!
1/30. I’m thankful for my health, and conversely also for the opportunity that illnesses can provide to grow empathy for others’ experiences. I’ve been sick with this awful rhinovirus or whatever that’s going around for ten days now, and the accompanying anhedonia (mostly passed now) has given me maybe a small glimpse of what depression can be like. It’s strange that a virus should be able to kill my ability to enjoy and want things that I usually enjoy so much.
I wonder how much raspberries get off on us doing that thing where we press our tongues into their holes
An old family friend in Montana was telling me recently about the great time she had as a 17-y.o. visiting NYC with her friends back in the late 70s:
she: “Of course my dad would never have let me do that today…”
me: “… what do you mean? Why?”
she: “Well, it’s so dangerous now!”
My brain almost melted. The 70s!! Right-wing media is monstrously effective at creating a wholesale alternate reality.
Serious liability of knowing a bunch of memes from TV but not watching TV is that it can be near impossible to find the right GIF. Case in point: the older slender gentleman in a suit jacket putting his palms up and saying, "Don't do that": has it disappeared from the internet!?
Michael Pipolo retweeted
On bottlenecks: 1) economists have been exactly right about little extra growth despite very fast tech change. They thought a group of econs I organized were crazy >2 yrs ago at the AI labs when we said "1pp extra growth/yr through 2030". 2) bottlenecks *still* not understood 1/8
reflectance / transmittance
(very grateful to @moultano’s blog post earlier this year for raising the special beauty of transmittance into my conscious awareness!)
This is such a good autumn in Maryland. Plenty of rain + moderate temps = smooth gradient of colors. I can’t stop admiring the ginkgo trees all around my office, currently a delicious chartreuse.
So… is Pluribus sort of an allegory for (non-)parenthood, or is it just me?
Won’t you join us, Carol? You can’t imagine the happiness that awaits you, Carol. I would never dream of going back to who I was before. We’ll eventually find a way to convert you, you know.
Michael Pipolo retweeted
Claude, plz rewrite wordpress in rust. Yes all the plugins too. No I don't just mean the source code, I mean like, go replace everybody's wordpress install.
You don't have access, well funny thing...
New achievement unlocked on my journey to become a friend to all hymenoptera: feeding yellowjackets from my hand! Just hungry little guys, really.