Weeknotes 39
- On Tuesday, we were invited to go watch the live filming of a local PBS gardening show, Virginia Home Grown, that our neighbor cohosts. It was really neat to see behind the scenes how a live tv production is made.
- We’re close to ticking over 600 miles on the new bike, so preparing to do the first oil change. We rode down to Williamsburg today, and on the return trip got caught in a monster of a thunderstorm. Cyn and I both would’ve been less wet after jumping into a swimming pool. It kind of sucks riding in the rain, but once totally soaked, it sucks slightly less than you’d think.
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Had a fun spousal cheese-related communication mishap. Context: Cynthia was making pesto.
Her: “Can you grate 3 or 4 cups of parmesan cheese?”
Me: “Dang! That’s a lot of cheese. You sure?”
Her: “Yup! I’m making a lot of pesto”
Me: “Ok then” <grates 3 cups of cheese>
Her: “Whoa! That’s a lot of cheese, man!”
Me: “Uh. Yea? You said 3 or 4 cups”
Her: “No! I said 3 of 4. Like 3 slash 4. How do you say that?” - We watched Squid Games S3. I don’t understand how the writing is so bad. I know it’s originally in Korean, and grant some room for translation silliness. But even the English-speaking characters’ lines are just so unbelievably cheesy. Like the Saw movies, it feels like so much of the success of Squid Games came from the initial shock factor. Then they just didn’t know what to do from then on, but plowed ahead anyway. Don’t recommend.
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Edward Zitron’s essay titled Make Fun of Them is well worth a read.
A few gems:
“But Ed!” you cry. “You can’t just call Sam Altman an idiot! He isn’t stupid! He runs a big company, and he’s super successful!”
My counter to that is, first, yes I can, I’m doing it right now. Second, if Altman didn’t want to be called stupid, he wouldn’t say stupid shit with a straight face to a massive global audience.
Few things are more irritating than insisting Sam Altman is anything but a grifter. He’s a slightly less incoherent version of Donald Trump. It’s clear as day, he has no clue what he’s talking about. He is a con man, through and through.
[…] the reason the powerful sound like idiots is because, well, they’re idiots. They sound like Business Idiots and create products to sell to Business Idiots, because Business Idiots run most companies and buy solutions based on what the last Business Idiot told them.”
Ed goes on a bit from here, describing the monkey-see-monkey-do behavior anyone who’s worked in the tech industry has no doubt noticed. Fads must be followed. Why? Well… everyone else is doing it, and I want to look smart among my peers of business idiots, too!
The reality is far simpler: we have an industry that has spent nearly half a trillion dollars between its capital expenditures and venture capital funding to create another industry with the combined revenue of the fucking smartwatch industry. What I’m writing isn’t inflammatory — in fact, it’s far more deeply rooted in reality than those claiming that OpenAI is building the future.
Brutal.