West Coast Stat Views (on Observational Epidemiology and more)
As previously mentioned, sometimes it's less about the facts and more about who's saying them.
A fun little video from science writer and YouTuber Kyle Hill
A not-so-done deal
A lack of qualifications is not a qualification and other thoughts on Platner
A concession to Mark about outsider candidates
I probably should have worked in a Matrix reference
The idea of approaching tech narratives as folklore actually works better than it did eight years ago.
AI doomsters and Dial F for Frankenstein
Patrick Boyle on the anniversary of Brexit
Peter Thiel's moments of honesty are larely limited to him saying bitchy things about Elon Musk
“It really seems like anyone with some renders and a white paper written by someone being gassed up by an overly agreeable AI can get VC funding these days,”
Precarious Times
If only we had effective, efficient technology to deal with these crises
Another one of those stories that we really need Patrick Boyle for.
NBC Blue was known for playing the uncensored version of Fibber McGee and Molly*
I've been waiting years for a good feral pig story so I would have an excuse to use these two quotes.
Newport is also the guy who suggested that Anthropic deserved the Nobel Prize in marketing for the Anthropic launch
The original Cushing oil boom was started in 1912 by a man actually named Tom Slick. Not relevant to the post but I had to mention it.
Parting shots -- following up on some recent threads
1999 AD
Question for the MBAs in the audience, is losiing $21 billion a year bad?
If you're going to do a post on index funds...
Paul Krugman has the perfect metaphor for the career of Elon Musk
A repost to commemorate Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire
It turns out that dumb money isn't an unlimited resource...
Ferguson and the deconstruction of late night
Admittedly not as entertaining as the George Santos prediction market scandal, but arguably more disturbing.
It's been ten years.
"Every fool aspired to be a knave"
If you had a writers' room brainstorming prediction market stories, someone would pitch this in the first ten minutes.
More feel-good analysis from Patrick Boyle.
CBS, Byron Allen, and the business of bad television
I voted this weekend because...
Exponential growth in demand is one of the sustaining assumptions of the AI bubble. This looks like something else
Apparently insider trading is now illegal
Hello Goodbye
Remember that company that everyone with a NASDAQ index fund is about to be forced to buy?
Memorial Day Repost
Since ed reform mania died down, we haven't had much call to mention Goodhart's Law
Nancarrow and McLaren
More irrational than the shoe company example but admittedly not as embarrassing
"Tomorrow's just a future yesterday." TV edition
AI growth and tokenmaxxing
A great Charles Bronson story.
A tale told in tweets (Make sure to use the Muppet announcer voice when you read the word "space")
It's amazing the mileage I get out of some posts
We laughed at her at the time, but in the age of AI bubble circular financing, Peg Bundy feels like a true visionary.
Remembering the world before the hyperloop -- a continuing series
ChatGPT still has trouble trouble with rise-over-run
The Organization Mad -- Parody as historical snapshot.
Meta, Microsoft, and other tech giants are losing billions on AI. Can Apple catch up?
Sixteen years ago at the blog: I'm not wasting time reading old paperbacks; I'm conducting serious research into Cold War political attitudes
What we're talking about when we talk about the AI bubble
Generational fairness
I apologize for calling AI a bubble. It is actually a bouncy house, and right now everybody's listening to the blowers.
Anthropic's Mythos: One moderate step forward for white-hat hacking; one giant leap forward for journalists' credulity
More context from Devereaux
Not one of Boyle's funny ones, but we do get the unlikely pairing of Zippy Duvall and (not the) Pablo Escobar.
I'm sure someone at the studio at some point described this project as Colossus meets Rosemary's Baby
Ten years ago at the blog when we still considered Watergate the pinnacle of political corruption
More thoughts on predictive markets
Patrick Boyle explains why it's illegal to bet on the price of onions but it's OK to bet on the Dodgers' double header
We need to talk about this clip.
ET reads the NYT
Still looks a little bubbly to me.
Sixteen years ago at the blog: That brief hopeful time when we thought we'd seen the last of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sequels
Smart people commenting on important things
We can all agree: spaceflight is cool.
You thought I was joking about the Iran War going so badly that Trump would start bringing up Epstein as a distraction.
Only slightly more absurd than some real-life cases
If podcasts are your thing and you have any interest in the business of AI...
Futurism should be careful. Gawker also criticized the NYT and learned that the gray lady doesn't take kindly to that sort of thing.
Whatever they paid Goldsmith, it wasn't enough; whatever they paid Bricusse, it was too much
Never a good sign for journalistic objectivity when the reporter says "Wow"
Probably even worse than you realized
The Double Taco
I know I said this before, but this is the last one, I promise.
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!"
Introducing the Trump Pressure Index
I've started a new drinking game where I take a shot whenever a tech bro uses the term "Kardashev scale."
Yes, I know I said we'd drop the subject, but that was before I knew the Onion was going to pick it up.
Today in 11-year-old hyperloop news
Another angle on housing costs
"[I]sn't necessarily a systemic catastrophe" is not the most comforting of phrases.
Yes, I am about to unironically post a Joe Rogan interview with Ben Affleck.
I read the Financial Times because of its sharp insights, witty prose, and the fact that they have writers with names like Robin Wigglesworth
Blah blah Ginger blah blah blah
MAHAspital
Patrick Boyle lays out the ugly details of Elon Musk’s ultimate scam (perhaps in both senses of the word).
When it comes to agentic AI, a Newhart Airline is the best is the best case scenario.
Old Sheldon
Strategic Airpower
BTFD
Buying the Dip
Bit of a spoiler with the Silicon Valley clip, but it's a great gag
And to think of all the fun we made of Rumsfeld for known unknowns -- mostly trivial items for the penultimatepost of the week
If nothing else, the image of Wall Street investors as extras from Oliver! was worth the price of admission
We just point out the patterns; we don't try to explain them.
The prediction market thread got very relevant very quickly.
The very fact that this article calls to mind a Roald Dahl short story is probably a red flag
Good analogy, though under the circumstances, I'm a bit surprised he didn't go with Zelig.
More takes on Citrini (I'm not the only one using scare quotes around "report")
Traders who have ignored threats to Fed independence, erratic trade policy, and the deportation of much of the American labor force just panicked over a citation-free piece of fan fiction.
A Tale of Two Logics (This is what you get when an old math and English teacher weighs in)
What Jamie Dimon meant when he talked about "the next DOJ"
Aerodromes and LLMs
Imagine telling people twenty years ago that two of the most important stories in political media would revolve around late night network talk shows.
We haven't complained about television for a while
The harder-problem fallacy (which is about to become relevant again)
If you want to get a feel for the post–Musk Silicon Valley, you really should watch these videos.
Pleasantly surprised to see the NYT actually connect the dots here
The Voss Chronicles
The AI and the Super Bowl Commercial Bubble Curse
When threads collide: Epstein, Musk, and the New York Times.
In the war on data, even the CIA isn't safe
When you're trying to weather a scandal, it helps to have the NYT on your side.
A quick midweek film review by Bob Chipman
"because a 'stock' no longer refers to a unit of ownership in a company so much as it is a chip at a casino where the house constantly changes the rules."
Elon doesn't think things through
Tesla to transition out of the making of real things in order to focus on vaporware
As if Mike Johnson didn't have enough to worry about...
The Musk Credibility Market
The War on Data -- part [I've lost count]
"ICE > MN" -- even for this administration, you seldom encounter the quiet part this loud
Where's your Ed at? Right here.
Early seventies socially relevant DC has, as a rule, not aged well
Acknowledging what these people are while being realistic about what they can and can't do
I didn't expect to be recommending a nearly hour long video essay on Hopalong Cassidy...
Have a safe and contemplative Martin Luther King Jr. Day
An AI conversation older than me (we just won't say by how much)
I’m going to try to be a little nicer to David Roberts in the future…
Just one more, I promise.
Wow, that was even quicker than I expected.
A sane market would be going crazy right now.
Still not sure why editors in NYC were more traumatized by the LA fires than those of us in LA were...
In Elon's defense, maybe people who stayed on X are just disproportionately creepy
“In this vale / Of toil / and sin / Your head goes bald / But not your chin. ...Burma-Shave.”
Welcome to Pottersville
Things the NYT thinks are less news-worthy than Kimberly Guilfoyle's party schedule
Everyone complains about the traffic. In LA, the guerrilla artists do something about it.
New Year's Day greetings from Winsor McCay
New Year's Eve greetings from Winsor McCay
How Christmas goose and Christmas turkey switched places. The economics and agriculture behind changing holiday traditions.
It's basically the story of the mechanical Turk but with a really dystopian final act
Dystopia Watch -- Surveillance State Edition
Little Nemo Meets Lieutenant Kijé
Christmas Eve greetings from XKCD
Christmas Eve Eve with the California Raisins — more on commerce and Christmas.
Fun little online poll from the people at Tech Won’t Save Us.
The most famous reindeer -- more on Christmas and commerce
FT: "OpenAI is a money pit with a website on top."
Three tweets and a picture presented without comment
Asking the right question about the humanoid bubble
I'm really starting to hate Last Christmas.
It's Hollywood, you knew there'd be a cliffhanger.
Still waiting for the episode where Don Draper pitches the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory
Funny how often a quote from Germany in the late Thirties seems appropriate these days.
Birthright citizenship
Notes on Netflix + WB -- in retrospect, my biggest mistake was not realizing what a dumpster fire Disney+ would be under Bob Chapek
You're going to hear a lot of bad Christmas music this month.
The fallacy of equivocation
When it came to Elon Musk, the hyperloop was my reindeer moment.
Everybody's talking about affordability, but only Marketplace thought to bring in a linguist.
Our annual Toys-for-Tots post
Explaining the finances of OpenAI remains a job for Patrick Boyle
"As God as my witness..." is my second favorite Thanksgiving episode line [Repost]
Happy Thanksgiving Eve
Apologies in advance but I just have to share this one
Elon really, really doesn't think things through
The funniest part of the latest XKCD cartoon isn't on XKCD
Cacti, Goats, Charcoal -- we do it all
After you've cleaned your room, you can go outside and play with Foamy.
Edison on the power grid of the future
Actually a P/E ratio of 200 would be an enormous improvement
Finally, a piece of data visualization that truly captures the moment.
We really should set aside more time for cool math
Reason 53 Why Wikipedia Is Better Than Mainstream Media: They Actually Fix Their Mistakes
More from the vaunted fact-checkers of the New Yorker
One of the most challenging parts of living in profoundly abnormal times is avoiding a false sense of normalcy.
Having robots follow criminals around to prevent all crime sounds like a perfectly workable plan that's not at all dystopian
"But believe it or not, you won't find it so hot If you ain't got the do re mi. "
"Indefensible on any artistic level but..."
If Mamdani wins, please keep your think pieces to yourself
I don't think the administration is going to try to suppress the vote in L.A. (because I don’t think they can).
Twelve years ago at the blog -- a Halloween themed repost
Halloween Deep Cuts
"Back in my day, the internet was really something."
It's important to note these Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether moments
Notes on Mr. Arkadin
Boyle's slightly less pessimistic take on the Gen AI bubble.
"Did you hear the one about the huge bubble threatening to take down the economy?"
A bubble story that's not about AI.
Cheering for fire trucks and crossing with the light- - notes on a Portlandia/Spirit Halloween protest.
Tweet-posting History
Corollary: when comics started printing "Collector's Edition" on the cover, they ceased being financially worth collecting.
There's an ongoing war against the very concepts of public domain and fair use and it's something we should be talking about.
And you thought consultants were overpaid before...
Fourteen years ago at the blog: the "a pervasive fetish" line actually holds up better today than it did then
Eleven years ago at the blog: This one had legs
NYT on the SAT -- then and now
"If there's fear in the market, it's wearing noise canceling headphones."
It’s like a buy-one-get-one-free deal, except with billions of dollars’ worth of chips and 10% of AMD.
The Libertarian Movement and Women -- It's not just a Robin Hanson thing
Guess what I got in the mail this weekend?
When "create more wealth before the bubble bursts" is the bull case
To address the oversupply of soybeans, RFK Jr. announced that the Health Department has developed new crackers combining the legume with lentils for a tasty and nutritious snack.
West Coast Stat Views Correction: it turns out August wasn't the worst possible time to start playing Kriegspiel with the US economy
Making sense of the senseless
The Iger Sanction*
That was quick
Weekend Videos -- Would-Be Tyrants and Real-Life Giants
Back on the cautionary beat
Kimmel part 2 -- the business
Kimmel Part 1 -- the politics
I was going to start a two-part post on the Kimmel suspension, but given the news, I though I'd hold off
Fill in the _____
Bluesky, Dark Clouds
My Bluesky
The tech right and fascism—Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Marc Andreessen have been checking this Overton window for years.
Insider trading is bad and other quaint notions
"Wonderful news, comrade! Based on the results of your tissue match, you have been awarded an all-expenses-paid vacation to..."
On Tuesday, the world’s richest man was a far-right, Ivermectin-loving loon who used his money to buy major media platforms. By close of trading Wednesday, the new world’s richest man was a far-right, Ivermectin-loving loon who uses his money to buy major media platforms for his son.
It's not true that all techno-optimist ideas come from old sci-fi shows. Some of them come from old back issues of the National Review.
It took some tough bargaining, but the Tesla board managed to keep Musk's pay plan under $1 trillion
Not so much the fact itself as the fact people are talking about the fact
Dispatches from a still-not-burning Los Angeles.
Nothing to worry about here -- Nvidia edition
More (non)weird weather
This is probably a non-story, old news about the president's health blown up by internet buzz and wishful thinking, but it's also a reminder of how strange and unstable the dynamic of this White House is and of the gaping double standard in recent press coverage.
It's Labor Day, so we're taking time off and running a repost