1. IST: Indian Spotlight Time:

   Exploring the India that often escapes headlines through the lived experiences of an ABCG: American Born Confused Gora. It’s a look beyond polished narratives and the obvious into the beautiful contradictions that actually power the country.

2. SD

   Sam D'Amico@sdamico · Aug 24

   A giant disconnect I see in society right now is the fact that self driving will absolutely take over, AI will absolutely enable 1:1 tutoring for every child, and the past benefits of “good school districts” and housing built around driving personal vehicles will make less sense.

   View on X

3. tokens are getting more expensive: A good discussion of why the AI Labs might stuggle with profitability.

   while it's true each generation of frontier model didn't get more expensive per token, something else happened. something worse. the number of tokens they consumed went absolutely nuclear.

4. Patrick OShaughnessy podcast with Joe Liemandt, Principal @ Alpha School

5. Failure of imagination is the only thing holding us back!

   “

   “paula”@paularambles · Aug 27

   my mom just found a new use case for chatgpt

   

   View on X

1. Why Is Martha’s Vineyard Going Vegan? It’s All About Tick Bites. (NYT):

   On the porch of the Chilmark General Store and at sunset-watching parties on Menemsha Beach, conversations circle ineluctably to the lone star tick, which after a single bite can leave people with a life-threatening allergy to most meat and dairy.

   Known as alpha-gal syndrome, the condition is changing the way many people shop, cook and eat in a place long known as a food-lover’s retreat for its thriving independent farms and restaurants. These new habits may prove to be lasting, as some islanders who initially avoided beef and cheese temporarily, out of necessity, later give them up for good out of preference.

   “It’s sort of supersized vegetarianism,” said Rebecca Miller, a farm owner who has the syndrome herself.

2. Are Samosas Unhealthy? Some Indians Find Official Advice Hard to Swallow.:

   So, when a recent government advisory put samosas — along with other deep-fried Indian snacks and Western foods such as burgers and French fries — on a list of things that should be eaten in moderation because of their high oil and sugar content, there was an unsurprising outcry. Social media erupted with memes, and Indian media chimed in to say the country’s most iconic bites were under attack.

3. @rivatez:

   That animals seemingly anticipate events should humble us more. Changes in groundwater chemistry, electromagnetic fields and sound waves make animals restless, distressed and even relocate

   In the West it is seen as ‘woo’ to contemplate that energy/weather humans don’t consciously experience can affect our psychology, and yet we forget that we are animals too.

   Even outside extreme weather events, the lunar cycle moves oceans, huge bodies of water. We are, like all animals, primarily made of water. The word ‘lunacy’ comes from the ancient understanding that our minds can be affected by it

   An interesting experiment is to log your daily mood for a few months- ups and downs, anxiety / joy levels, big arguments with loved ones etc. Then afterwards, retroactively chart it against lunar cycles and NASA space weather data that tracks geomagnetic storms, solar flares etc.

   Be open- minded and try it. I, too, used to think this stuff was BS

   Now I think much of modern psychiatry is giving people drugs to tune down people’s individual responses to these external inputs, eg ‘bipolar’ might just indicate high sensitivity

   How many important scientific breakthroughs lie on the other side of our collective dismissal of ‘woo’?

   

4. Why I believe in AGI (again):

   First, I’m now convinced that ChatGPT understands what it reads. Second, reasoning models persuade me that ChatGPT is creative. Third, ChatGPT summarizes texts extremely well, which I believe to be a robust measure of intelligence.

5. Derek Thompson:

   "The better news is that this is happening at a time when exercise seems to be increasing for many groups, especially the young and old. The bad news is ... deep Medicaid cuts and declines in childhood vaccine uptake are not exactly optimistic predictors of American health."

6. Your Review: Dating Men In The Bay Area: Not what it says on the label at all! Recommended.

7. Adults Are Going to Sleep-away Camp to Make Friends. It Seems to Actually Work.:

   “Anyone that has worked at camp or grown up in the camp world understands there is a powerful people connection that forms at camp,” said Liam Macleod, a longtime camp professional and marketing director at Camp No Counselors. “It’s camp magic and it’s hard to replicate in the regular world.”

8. What is the most profitable thing you have done with ChatGPT? on Reddit via Simon Willison: In dollar terms, probably crafting fundraising messages for charity event organized by my Alumni Association. In real terms, physiotherapy for my back and legs. So far. Some great examples at the link. Failure of imagination remains the biggest hurdle in getting value from LLMs.

9. AI Is Designing Bizarre New Physics Experiments That Actually Work:

   It took months of effort to understand what the AI was doing. It turned out that the machine had used a counterintuitive trick to achieve its goals. It added an additional three-kilometer-long ring between the main interferometer and the detector to circulate the light before it exited the interferometer’s arms. Adhikari’s team realized that the AI was probably using some esoteric theoretical principles that Russian physicists had identified decades ago to reduce quantum mechanical noise. No one had ever pursued those ideas experimentally. “It takes a lot to think this far outside of the accepted solution,” Adhikari said. “We really needed the AI.”

10. GPT-5 prompting guide:

    GPT-5, our newest flagship model, represents a substantial leap forward in agentic task performance, coding, raw intelligence, and steerability.

    While we trust it will perform excellently “out of the box” across a wide range of domains, in this guide we’ll cover prompting tips to maximize the quality of model outputs, derived from our experience training and applying the model to real-world tasks. We discuss concepts like improving agentic task performance, ensuring instruction adherence, making use of newly API features, and optimizing coding for frontend and software engineering tasks - with key insights into AI code editor Cursor’s prompt tuning work with GPT-5.

    We’ve seen significant gains from applying these best practices and adopting our canonical tools whenever possible, and we hope that this guide, along with the prompt optimizer tool we’ve built, will serve as a launchpad for your use of GPT-5. But, as always, remember that prompting is not a one-size-fits-all exercise - we encourage you to run experiments and iterate on the foundation offered here to find the best solution for your problem.

    And a tutorial by Anthropic.

11. Class Dismissed: Alpha School is getting a lot of coverage all of a sudden. Long piece about the people and the tech behind it.

1. Face it: you're a crazy person:

   I meet a lot of people who don’t like their jobs, and when I ask them what they’d rather do instead, about 75% say something like, “Oh, I dunno, I’d really love to run a little coffee shop.” If I’m feeling mischievous that day, I ask them one question: “Where would you get the coffee beans?”

   If that’s a stumper, here are some followups: Which kind of coffee mug is best? How much does a La Marzocco espresso machine cost? Would you bake your blueberry muffins in-house or would you buy them from a third party?

   The point of the Coffee Beans Procedure is this: if you can’t answer those questions, if you don’t even find them interesting, then you should not open a coffee shop, because this is how you will spend your days as a cafe owner. You will not be sitting droopy-lidded in an easy chair, sipping a latte and greeting your regulars as you page through Anna Karenina. You will be running a small business that sells hot bean water.

2. 50 things I know. And wish I'd known sooner:

   41. It’s almost impossible to have an easy life and be interesting. Suffering is what gives people texture.

   and

   47. Heaven is a set of gradually increasing but attainable challenges.

   Listicle has become a bad word but there is a reason they are popular. A well done one is *chef's kiss *.

3. 27 Notes on Growing Old(er):

   6. The physicist Michael Nielsen tells us that the Polish-American mathematician Stanislaw Ulam perceived his life as sharply divided into two halves: “In the first half, he was always the youngest person in the group. In the second half, he was always the oldest. There was no transitional period.” There was no transitional period.

   and

   17. ... The human condition is that we want it all, and we’re not willing to make trades… ‘deathbed regrets’ typically have the bias of wanting the other path—the path they could have taken—without considering the cost of that path. So they say, “Hey I was really successful and I did all these things, but you know, I would give it all up today to have my family.” It’s like, well yeah, but you didn’t, because you actually chose the path that you’re on, and you weren’t willing to do that. What you are saying right now is that you want it all. Sure. So does everyone.

4. Mad respect for whoever decided that there was a business opportunity here and then made it happen.

   JB

   JUNK BOND ANALYST@junkbondanalyst · Aug 10

   First time hearing about this for me. There’s platforms for buying someone else’s non-refundable vacations at a discount.
   
   There’s always a trade to do.

   

   View on X

5. Space Rock That Punched Through Roof Almost Struck Resident (NYT):

   “I suspect that he heard three simultaneous things,” Mr. Harris said of the person whose home was hit. “One was the collision with his roof, one was a tiny cone of a sonic boom, and a third was it impacting the floor all in the same moment.”

   Looking at the photos, I think he would have died if it had struck him. Here's another amazing ancient rock story from the NYT.

6. Performance Art?

7. The ratio of members!

   RL

   Reddit Lies@reddit_lies · Aug 11

   Dating AI is an almost exclusively a female trait fyi.
   
   The movie "Her" should have been about a woman.

   

   View on X

8. Great thread from a master. Love how he says so much without saying anything. See the photos in the third tweet for a masterpiece (as he puts it, the 3rd and the 4th slide.).

   DG

   derek guy@dieworkwear · Aug 13

   Have you ever noticed that people dressed better in the past? Even in the summer, when it was scorching hot?
   
   Why is this? 🧵

   

   View on X
   DG

   derek guy@dieworkwear · Aug 13

   Even the details had shape: a camp collar, boat neck, or button-down.
   
   Over the years, these details have shrank, if not disappeared altogether. Compare the 3rd and 4th slides. One button-down collar has a full roll; the other looks like its apologizing for its own existence.

   

   View on X

9. The Infinite Well: How Innovation Keeps Water Flowing:

   Solutions from experts follow a familiar pattern, claiming that the only way to avert a crisis is to adopt radical social and behavioral changes, driven by moral proselytizing, government intervention, or both, to save the water supply. Environmentalists urge people to replace old toilets with low-flow models, avoid running faucets while brushing their teeth or washing dishes, and switch to eating less water-intensive foods. Meanwhile, activists pressure elected officials to impose usage restrictions, ban certain crops in arid regions, and regulate everything from swimming pools to car washes.

   Fortunately the economics of water innovation reveals why the apparent scarcity tends to be self-correcting, without requiring us to adopt ascetic lifestyles or perform symbolic actions like picking up dropped ice cubes to water house plants or writing letters to elected officials. Rising prices, not moralizing pleas, lead people to conserve, look for substitutes, recycle resources, and innovate helping to meet demand through alternative means or improved efficiency.

   The same principles apply to many other things too.

10. RP

    Ross Pomerantz@TheRealCorpBro · Aug 7

    Product review of my 4 month old son

    

    View on X

1. How to Teach Your Kids Poker, the Easy Way:

   The right way to begin is with one-card poker. Everyone antes one chip and gets one card, face down. You look at your card. There’s a single round of betting, which proceeds around the table: If no one else has bet, you can bet or check (do nothing); if anyone in front of you has bet, you can call (or match the bet), raise or fold. When everyone has called the last bet or folded, those who are left in the hand show their card. The highest card wins: Ace is highest, then king, so on down to two.

   That’s it. No pairs, no flushes, no full houses, no complicated order of hands to remember, though you do have to remember that a queen beats a jack. But you learn a lot of poker. You will always win with an ace, but you have to learn to maximize the value of your ace, to induce other people to bet into you and call your raises. One of my proudest moments as a parent was when my daughter first check-raised me with an ace.

   You’ll probably win with a king, but if someone raises you, does that mean that they have an ace (and have you beat), or a queen (and are overconfident), or a six (and are bluffing)? There are 52 cards, so you can estimate the probabilities if you are mathematically inclined, though if you are four you probably won’t.

   You probably won’t win with a six, but if you bet it confidently you might bluff everyone else out. If everyone else checks, and you’re the last person to bet, you might as well bet: You have “position,” everyone else has a weak hand, and you might be able to steal a pot. The essentials are there.

   Once the kids have mastered this, you can introduce the order of hands gently with two-card poker. (Any pair beats a high card, highest pair wins.) Then teach the rest with five-card straight poker. This isn’t a great game, but it’s a brief stopover on the way to five-card draw, which is a perfectly respectable poker game. Texas hold’em is not far behind.

2. My Father's Instant Mashed Potatoes:

   The chuño-chomping Incans were not the last military to rely on dehydrated potatoes for sustenance. In World War II, the US Army experimented with various forms of potato dehydration to help stretch supply lines. The easiest way to get a uniform potato commodity into the hands of G.I.s was to pulverize the potatoes into granules, dehydrate them, and then plan on bringing them back to life with boiling water in an imitation of “mashed potatoes”.

   Deeper than I would have imagined from the title.

3. A lot more than you wanted to read on College and College Admissions. Depressing.

4. The Imitation Game: Defending against AI's Dark Side!:

   A few weeks ago, I started receiving a stream of message about an Instagram post that I was allegedly starring in, where after offering my views on Palantir's valuation, I was soliciting investors to invest with me (or with an investment entity that had ties to me). I was not surprised, since I have lived with imitations for years, but I was bemused, since I don't have an Instagram account and have not posted on Facebook more than once or twice in a decade. In the last few days, those warnings have been joined by others, who have noted that there is now a video that looks and sounds like me, adding to the sales pitch with promises of super-normal returns if they reach out, and presumably send their money in. (Please don't go looking for these scams online, since the very act of clicking on them can expose you to their reach.)

   It was a matter of time.

5. GPT-5: It Just Does Stuff:

   GPT-5 just does stuff, often extraordinary stuff, sometimes weird stuff, sometimes very AI stuff, on its own. And that is what makes it so interesting.

   To be clear this wasn't my experience. I gave it a PDF and asked it to estimate something based on the data in the file. It made up all the numbers and suggested they were in tables and pages that didn't exist in the PDF. I was not able to get it focused on the actual information in the PDF despite multiple reminders and other attempts. Apparently though, there was a bug in their system yesterday that made it appear dumber. I will try again.

1. Philosopher–Builder Summer Reads:

   These aren't generic "tech books." They're works that can shape how serious builders think about what they're creating and why.

   And the original essay.

2. DOGE builds AI tool to cut 50 percent of federal regulations:

   The tool, called the “DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool,” is supposed to analyze roughly 200,000 federal regulations to determine which can be eliminated because they are no longer required by law, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post that is dated July 1 and outlines DOGE’s plans. Roughly 100,000 of those rules would be deemed worthy of trimming, the PowerPoint estimates — mostly through the automated tool with some staff feedback. The PowerPoint also suggests the AI tool will save the United States trillions of dollars by reducing compliance requirements, slashing the federal budget and unlocking unspecified “external investment.”

   A worthy goal for DOGE and possibly the right use of AI. If done well.

3. America's AI Action Plan Is Pretty Good:

   Otherwise, while this is far from a perfect plan or the plan I would choose, on the substance it is a good plan, a positive plan, with many unexpectedly good plans within it. There is a lot of attention to detail in ways those I’ve asked say reflect people who actually know what they are doing, which was by no means something to be taken for granted. It is hard to imagine that a much better plan could have been approved given who was doing the approving.

4. JF

   Jim Fan@DrJimFan · Jul 25

   I'm observing a mini Moravec's paradox within robotics: gymnastics that are difficult for humans are much easier for robots than "unsexy" tasks like cooking, cleaning, and assembling. It leads to a cognitive dissonance for people outside the field, "so, robots can parkour & breakdance, but why can't they take care of my dog?" Trust me, I got asked by my parents about this more than you think ...
   
   The "Robot Moravec's paradox" also creates the illusion that physical AI capabilities are way more advanced than they truly are. I'm not singling out Unitree, as it applies widely to all recent acrobatic demos in the industry. Here's a simple test: if you set up a wall in front of the side-flipping robot, it will slam into it at full force and make a spectacle. Because it's just overfitting that single reference motion, without any awareness of the surroundings.
   
   Here's why the paradox exists: it's much easier to train a "blind gymnast" than a robot that sees and manipulates. The former can be solved entirely in simulation and transferred zero-shot to the real world, while the latter demands extremely realistic rendering, contact physics, and messy real-world object dynamics - none of which can be simulated well.
   
   Imagine you can train LLMs not from the internet, but from a purely hand-crafted text console game. Roboticists got lucky. We happen to live in a world where accelerated physics engines are so good that we can get away with impressive acrobatics using literally zero real data. But we haven't yet discovered the same cheat code for general dexterity.
   
   Till then, we'll still get questioned by our confused parents.

   

   View on X

5. Two long & good pieces on India this week though I have yet to fully read both.

6. Jhanas and Jhourney:

   So I went down to the beach. "Kinda nice", I thought. The sky had a particularly vibrant blue color, the waves had 'the right size', their roar was pleasant. I started to walk around trying to continue meditating. I focused my awareness on an arising sensation of open heartedness and then I noticed my eyes tearing up ("Huh? I thought"). I looked again at the ocean and then I saw it. It was fucking amazing. So much color and detail: waves within waves, the fractal structure of the foamy crests as they disintegrate back into the ocean. The feeling of the sun on my skin. I felt overwhelmed. As tears ran down my face and lowkey insane grin settled on my face I found myself mumbling "It's... always been like this!!!!" "What the fuck??!" followed by "This is too much!! Too much!!!". The experience seemed to be demanding from me to feel more joy and awe than I was born to feel or something like that. In that precise moment I felt what "painfully beautiful" means for the first time in my life. I had to look away. I calmed a bit. I walked a few steps and looked back. The exact same thing happened. "It's reproducible, hihihihi", and I started laughing. Then I found a log to sit on, calm down, and look back at the ocean. Now it wasn't overwhelming, but "kinda nice" was now "fucking amazing".

   To do list.

7. Yes, Adam Sandler really is a pickup basketball god (NYT Paywall):

   Jackson was struck by the man’s attire: extra-baggy shorts and an extra-baggy yellow T-shirt. “I’m trying to figure out: Does he buy clothes? Did he buy them and then just stop buying them? His clothes really might have been from 2008.” It soon became apparent, however, that the guy could play. He was a true court general. He impressed Jackson with his basketball IQ.

8. RW

   Rob Wiblin@robertwiblin · Aug 1

   Google now spends more on physical capital like datacentres ($85 billion / year) than the entire UK defence budget ($79 billion / year).

   

   View on X

9. Life in deep:

   When her three-person submersible descended more than 30,000 feet into one of the Pacific Ocean’s deepest trenches, Mengran Du wasn’t sure what they would find.

   What she saw, she recalled, was “unbelievable”: Dense clusters of tubeworms with tentacles tinged bloodred, jutting up like skyscrapers. Iridescent snails scaling the worms, like window washers. Bristly, white creatures wriggling between them like rush-hour commuters trying to get home for dinner.

10. UJ

    UAP James@UAPJames · Jul 31

    NEW: Senator Mike Rounds says credible U.S. Govt whistleblowers have provided him with testimony in classified settings on transmedium UAP.
    
    “It can be both underwater and in the air and can apparently move to very, very high altitudes in a very short period of time.”
    
    “They’re not making this stuff up. There’s something there. We just don’t know what it is.”

    

    View on X
11. J

    John_Hempton@John_Hempton · Jul 26

    Fartcoin market cap is still over a billion dollars.
    
    The boys who started this one have probably cashed >100 million.
    
    You have the wrong career. So do I.

    

    View on X

Some readers have commented that I am obsessed with AI. This is not correct. I wish I was. But is there anything more interesting happening in the world right now? I don't think so.

1. Musician Who Died in 2021 Resurrected as Clump of Brain Matter, Now Composing New Music:

   Art can outlast the artist — but what about their artistic impulses?

   A new art installation project in Australia, titled "Revivification," raises this question with a very literal interpretation of "impulse": using his DNA, the team behind the project have performed a quasi-resurrection of the late experimental American composer Alvin Lucier, creating a sort of brain that continuously composes music on the fly with its errant electrical signals.

   At the center of the piece is an "in-vitro brain," grown from blood that Lucier, who passed away in 2021, donated in the final years of his life. Housed in a plinth, it's grown on top of an electrode mesh that connects it to twenty large brass plates placed around the room. Visitors can listen as the brain fires off electrical pulses that trigger a transducer and a mallet behind each plate, striking them to produce sound.

   Is this art? Is this science? Is this composing?

2. Gross(ery) Confusion:

   Teachout’s idea that suppliers “make up the difference” by charging smaller stores more is also economically incoherent. Profit-maximizing firms already charge what the market will bear. If Costco’s volume justifies a discount, that doesn’t mean suppliers can or should charge higher prices to other buyers. Yes, there are models where costs change with volume but costs could go down with volume and, in any case, those models don’t rely on the folk theory of “making up the difference.”

3. AIs and Spontaneous Order:

   This isn’t to say AI won’t help improve economic policy—it might, if we listen. But the future economy won’t look like a centrally planned machine. It will look like an economy of von Neumanns—autonomous agents buying, selling, and strategizing in complex interaction.

4. I Analysed 25,000 Hotel Names and Found Four Surprising Truths:

   And yes, the cat’s out of the bag: there are over 200 Hotels Bristol worldwide, and the reason goes all the way back to an 18th-century English aristocrat whose hotel preferences turned into a naming tradition.

5. I Drank Every Cocktail:

   The International Bartenders Association, or IBA, maintains a list of official cocktails, ones they deem to be “the most requested recipes” at bars all around the world. It’s the closest thing the bartending industry has to a canonical list of cocktails, akin to the American Kennel Club’s registry of dog breeds or a jazz musician’s Real Book of standards. As of 2025, there are 102 IBA official cocktails, and as of July 12, 2025, I’ve had every one of them.

   Legend.

6. How the System Works

   An essay series on the hidden mechanisms that support modern life — and what happens if we don’t maintain them

   This should be amazing. So far, Agriculture, Water and Electricity.

1. The Diaspora Paradox Second in a series from Samir Varma

   But here's the paradox that has haunted me for decades: Why do so many Indians who escape India's constraints become more Indian abroad? Why does the uncle who couldn't be bothered to visit temples in Mumbai suddenly become a founding member of the Hindu temple in New Jersey? Why does the software engineer who rebelled against arranged marriage in Bangalore now insist their American-born daughter marry within the community?

2. The First in 30 Years: Scientists Discover New Class of Antibiotics:

   Led by scientist Gerry Wright, the team has discovered a powerful new molecule called lariocidin. This promising candidate shows the ability to fight some of the toughest, most drug-resistant bacteria known to science. Their groundbreaking findings were published in the journal Nature.

3. Why We’re Surrounding Our Kids with AI:

   We also don’t plan on perpetuating modern Western parents’ egregiously hands-off nature with regard to their kids’ dating and marriage prospects. We already have a going list of agentic, thoughtful, high-achieving families whose kids are close to our kids in age; as our kids get older, we’ll start organizing gatherings for families in this network where our kids can hang out and get to know each other (trips, summer camps, discord servers, study groups, etc.). As our kids reach their late teens and early 20s, we’ll begin organizing modern versions of the London Season—a series of events and gatherings at which our single kids ready for marriage can meet, mix, and get to know each other.

   Did not see this coming.

4. Babies made using three people's DNA are born free of hereditary disease:

   Eight babies have been born in the UK using genetic material from three people to prevent devastating and often fatal conditions, doctors say.

   The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mum and dad with a second egg from a donor woman.

5. The Sputnik vs. Deep Seek Moment: The Answers

   I pointed out that the US response to Sputnik was fierce competition. Following Sputnik, we increased funding for education, especially math, science and foreign languages, organizations like ARPA were spun up, federal funding for R&D was increased, immigration rules were loosened, foreign talent was attracted and tariff barriers continued to fall. In contrast, the response to what I called the “DeepSeek” moment has been nearly the opposite. Why did Sputnik spark investment while DeepSeek sparks retrenchment? I examine four explanations from the comments and argue that the rise of zero-sum thinking best fits the data.

6. Reflections on OpenAI:

   I left OpenAI three weeks ago. I had joined the company back in May 2024.

   I wanted to share my reflections because there's a lot of smoke and noise around what OpenAI is doing, but not a lot of first-hand accounts of what the culture of working there actually feels like.

7. ChatGPT Agent and Gold-medal level performance in International Math Olympiad (IMO). More on the IMO.

8. Psychological techniques to persuade AI.

9. Spud-tacular: How India became a french fry superpower:

   Gujarat has become India's capital of french fry production, home to huge factories churning out chips, including facilities belonging to Canadian giant McCain Foods and India's biggest maker of French Fries, HyFun Foods.

10. Bill Ackman changed Tennis forever.

1. Terrified Girls, Helicopters and a Harrowing Scene: A Rescuer’s Account at Camp Mystic (NYT):

   Scott Ruskan, a Coast Guard swimmer, is credited with saving 165 people at the all-girls’ camp from deadly floods in Central Texas.

   Mr. Ruskan realized that staying on scene would free up two extra spots on his helicopter for the evacuees, he said, so he told his unit, “I’d love to stay, I could do a lot more good on the ground.”

   He became the main person on scene to both triage and provide emotional support to the survivors.

   Hero.

2. Death of partying in the USA:

   DT

   Derek Thompson@DKThomp · Jul 9

   New newsletter: The death of partying in the USA
   
   The latest American Time Use Survey came out last month. I wanted to follow up on @elcush's declaration that Americans need to party more. The new data confirms: America's social crisis is dire.
   
   - Between 2003 and 2024, the amount of time that Americans spent attending or hosting a social event declined by 50 percent.
   - Young people aged 15-to-24 spent 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties in 2024 than they did in 2003.
   
   More charts and analysis on the 50-year collapse of the social calendar in the link below.

   

   View on X

3. The forests are coming back: 36 countries, including India and China, gained more tress than they lost, between 2000-2020.

4. @levelsio speaks to John Collison

5. For a few days this summer, your days will be just a smidge shorter (WaPo)

   During the summer, the northern hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, which minimizes the difference in temperature between the equator and Earth’s poles. This smaller temperature variation slows down the jet stream — a narrow band of strong winds around 30,000 feet above us — and moves it northward.

1. John Oliver on AI Slop:

   John Oliver is always funny and often insightful.

2. Defeating a Virus That Killed Half a Billion People - The Plea. Timely and important. Trigger warning: Images of diseased people.

3. Operation Midnight Hammer: What a story.

4. Helicopter Money. Literally. Talk about going out in style.

5. Does CPS Investigate One Third of All Children in the US? Yes. But...

   The scale of CPS investigations in the US is staggering. Like all things, this trend began in the late 60s and early 70s as mandatory reporter laws expanded and caused massive growth in child maltreatment reports. Since the 90s, the number of reports has stayed pretty stable and the number of substantiated investigations and interventions has been falling.

   The CPS could probably scale back it’s interventions for cases of maltreatment that only involve neglect, especially those that only involve lack of supervision rather than physical neglect. Other tradeoffs between false positive and false negative investigations and interventions are more difficult to have a strong opinion on given the terrible outcomes on both sides of the trolley track.

   There are probably some available pareto improving moves. The most straightforward in my view would be increasing staffing and state capacity in family courts so that cases can be reviewed more accurately and without requiring months or years of effort and tens of thousands of dollars on the part of the parents.

6. Tech C.E.O. Pays $400,000 to Conduct the Toronto Symphony (NYT):

   After the performance, Cheung and the orchestra received a standing ovation. He said he was grateful for the opportunity.

7. Will AI Drive 20%+ Annual GDP Growth?:

   Steam, electricity, computers delivered enormous benefits while their economic importance shrank through success. AI will transform society profoundly. But 20% GDP growth? History says no.

8. Medical Superintelligence from Microsoft?:

   Microsoft's LLM is not only designed for multiple-choice questions, but also for real medical diagnoses in realistic scenarios – and outperforms even top models such as o3.

   In a large-scale study with over 300 case studies from the New England Journal of Medicine, the system achieved a diagnostic accuracy of over 80%. This is not only four times higher than the participating doctors, but also marks a qualitative leap: the AI was not only more accurate, but also made more economical decisions – with around 20% lower costs because it avoided unnecessary tests.

9. A Doctor Responds

   Microsoft claims their new AI framework diagnoses 4x better than doctors.

   I'm a medical doctor and I actually read the paper. Here's my perspective on why this is both impressive AND misleading ...

   ...

   Final thought: We don't need AI that can diagnose every rare disease. We need AI that knows when to diagnose and when to reassure. That's the real art of medicine.

10. Gymnastics Bot using LEGO SPIKE Prime. My weekend project.

A jumbo edition this week after a two-week break that was really not necessary.

1. At Secret Math Meeting, Researchers Struggle to Outsmart AI:

   On a weekend in mid-May, a clandestine mathematical conclave convened. Thirty of the world’s most renowned mathematicians traveled to Berkeley, Calif., with some coming from as far away as the U.K. The group’s members faced off in a showdown with a “reasoning” chatbot that was tasked with solving problems they had devised to test its mathematical mettle. After throwing professor-level questions at the bot for two days, the researchers were stunned to discover it was capable of answering some of the world’s hardest solvable problems. “I have colleagues who literally said these models are approaching mathematical genius,” says Ken Ono, a mathematician at the University of Virginia and a leader and judge at the meeting.

2. Hajj on Horseback (NYT):

   More than 1.5 million people traveled to Saudi Arabia this year for the hajj. Only three of them rode on horseback all the way from Spain, recreating the pilgrimage of Andalusian Muslims centuries ago and sharing their travels in the most modern way with big followings on social media.

3. Festivo, All Festivals, Everywhere (in Asia, for now): A calendar of all festivals.

4. Did She or Didn’t She? She Did, and She’ll Tell You Exactly How. (NYT): I am surprised it took so long to get here and not at all surprised who made it happen. Smartest family?

5. New York City’s Best Chefs Pick Their Favorite Restaurants (NYT)

6. Is it any surprise he won? (The Pope):

   As a bishop in Peru, Robert Prevost was often on the lookout for used cars that he could buy cheap and fix up himself for use in parishes around his diocese. With cars that were really broken down, he'd watch YouTube videos to learn how to fix them.

7. I used to be a high-performing robot and Maybe you’re not Actually Trying. "Agency" is having a moment online as seen in all the "You can just do things" memes. Interesting.

8. LLMs in Kitchen?: I made Tofu with peanut sauce today based on a receipe created by Claude. Honestly, the proportions were off but it wasn't half bad.

   are LLMs 10X-ing anyone else in the kitchen? I am so much more confident cooking when I can ask infinite dumb questions and brainstorm ideas, backup plans, substitutes, etc.

   in the last couple weeks I’ve made jerk chicken with coconut rice and mango salsa, chipotle turkey tacos, honey-lime sriracha chicken & sesame snap peas, skillet-blistered tomato and ravioli, and a fancy dessert. some of these things were just me looking in the fridge and saying “uhh this is what I have, help me turn it into something good” and so far they’ve all been great.

   I’m the stereotypical guy that knows how to make ~3 variations on a protein bowl and maybe ~2 nicer dishes for impressing girls when I was single and that’s about it.

   it’s fun feeling my agency expand and confidence quickly increase in this very practical domain. AI is great.

9. Andrej Karpathy's Keynote at YC. Self recommending as some say.

10. Kitty Olympics: AI Video is getting better.

11. Texan guy recites his electric bill like he’s a character in a William Faulkner novel. Hilarious.

12. AI is transforming Indian call centers.:

    For three years, Kartikeya Kumar hesitated before picking up the phone, anticipating another difficult conversation with another frustrated customer.

    The call center agent, now 29, had tried everything to eliminate what a colleague called the “Indian-ism” in his accent. He mimicked the dialogue from Marvel movies and belted out songs by Metallica and Pink Floyd. Relief finally arrived in the form of artificial intelligence.

13. Using AI Right Now: A Quick Guide by Ethan Mollick:

    Every few months I put together a guide on which AI system to use. Since I last wrote my guide, however, there has been a subtle but important shift in how the major AI products work. Increasingly, it isn't about the best model, it is about the best overall system for most people. The good news is that picking an AI is easier than ever and you have three excellent choices. The challenge is that these systems are getting really complex to understand. I am going to try and help a bit with both.

14. How cultures heal:

    Every digital platform is flooding the market with short videos, but the audience is now spending more time with longform video—and by a huge margin.

15. Flying on Frying Oil:

    The noodle hawkers in Kuala Lumpur are getting a nice little bump in profit but who is going stall to stall to check that the oil is in fact used? And what counts as used? One fry or two? Clever entrepreneurs have cut out the middleman. Virgin palm oil can be substituted for used cooking oil and voila! Sustainable aviation fuel is contributing to deforestation in Malaysia. Malaysia exports far more “used” cooking oil than oil that it uses. No surprise.

16. The search for MH370 has resumed. (NYT). What a mystery.

17. Rick Perry: I’m dedicating my life to fighting for a psychedelic drug. (NYT): Yes, Rick Perry.

    Marcus had lived with my wife, Anita, and me at the governor’s mansion after coming home from war. He was in constant pain from his injuries and dependent on opioids just to get through the day. He also drank heavily and used nicotine to cope with stress. Worse, he was carrying the burdens that come with war: grief, trauma and survivor’s guilt. For years, we tried to find him help. And for years, nothing worked. But after undergoing ibogaine treatment at a clinic in Mexico, Marcus came back changed. He no longer needed opioids. He hasn’t touched alcohol in years. He even quit chewing Copenhagen, a longtime habit.

18. When your father is a swimming coach

19. Alpha School:

    I first heard about Alpha in May 2024, and in the absence of randomized‑controlled clarity, I did what any moderately obsessive parent with three elementary-aged kids and an itch for data would do: I moved the family across the country to Austin for a year and ran the experiment myself (unfortunately, despite trying my best we never managed to have identical twins, so I stopped short of running a proper control group. My wife was less disappointed than I was).

20. Your semi-regular reminder to subscribe to Don't Worry About the Vase.