histories

Seeing Roger Waters performing the entirety of The Wall in 2013 was nothing short of life-changing for me

I suppose earlier generations had to sit through all this huffing and puffing with the invention of television, the phone, cinema, radio, the car, the bicycle, printing, the wheel and so on, but you would think we would learn the way these things work, which is this:

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

Apply this list to movies, rock music, word processors and mobile phones to work out how old you are.

-- Douglas Adams, "How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet"

https://douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

And her given first name [...] is Lantian, meaning blue sky in Mandarin

I love this

Maybe they're talking about the Tolkien references (just kidding)

He is not.

He gave some controversial statements, that's true, but "diehard worshiper" is simply false.

"The invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation was illegal. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms," he said via video link.

"Also, the Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked, so I also condemn the provocateurs in the strongest possible terms."

He continued: "So what do the voiceless millions have to say? They say thank you for hearing us today. We are many who do not share in the profits of the war industry.

"We do not willingly raise our sons and daughters to provide fodder for your cannons.

"In our opinion, the only sensible course of action today is to call for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine. Not one more Ukrainian or Russian life is to be spent, not one, they are all precious in our eyes."

source: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-64580688

Best summary of Jaynes' theories: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/01/book-review-origin-of-...

The gold standard of Icelanders Sagas is: https://sagas.is/vara.php (love for the little old website). It's complete, as it contains all the sagas and tales.

This is a good selection from above: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/53454/the-sagas-of-the-icela... (notably missing: Njal's Saga, but that's also available separately).

There are more sagas, though. Just not of the Icelanders.

For example the saga of the Volsungs.

If you are interested in general norse mythology then yes, Gaiman's book is really nice. The Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda are primary sources and not a difficult read.

Everything I mentioned (except Gaiman's) is published by Penguin and is a good translation.

Every time I read some Alan Moore interview, I find myself agreeing with him.

Also his masterclass on writing was great to listen to, and I'm not interested in writing. His ideas about writing/creation = magic have stuck with me.

He's always lucid, and clear, and has a stark sense of observation.

One of my favorites: https://alanmooreworld.blogspot.com/2019/11/moore-on-jerusal...

Here's an excerpt:

----

What was the impact of popular heroes comic books in our culture? Why are people fascinated by alternative realities?

I think the impact of superheroes on popular culture is both tremendously embarrassing and not a little worrying. While these characters were originally perfectly suited to stimulating the imaginations of their twelve or thirteen year-old audience, today’s franchised übermenschen, aimed at a supposedly adult audience, seem to be serving some kind of different function, and fulfilling different needs. Primarily, mass-market superhero movies seem to be abetting an audience who do not wish to relinquish their grip on (a) their relatively reassuring childhoods, or (b) the relatively reassuring 20th century. The continuing popularity of these movies to me suggests some kind of deliberate, self-imposed state of emotional arrest, combined with an numbing condition of cultural stasis that can be witnessed in comics, movies, popular music and, indeed, right across the cultural spectrum. The superheroes themselves – largely written and drawn by creators who have never stood up for their own rights against the companies that employ them, much less the rights of a Jack Kirby or Jerry Siegel or Joe Schuster – would seem to be largely employed as cowardice compensators, perhaps a bit like the handgun on the nightstand. I would also remark that save for a smattering of non-white characters (and non-white creators) these books and these iconic characters are still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race. In fact, I think that a good argument can be made for D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation as the first American superhero movie, and the point of origin for all those capes and masks.

----

A different Ataraxia: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nHKqvc54TVjIEe...

Impossible to pick one... best I can do is five-ish, all fiction:

The Odyssey; David Copperfield; Moby-Dick; Anna Karenina; Borges' short stories, in particular Ficciones & The Aleph

Some related links:

- Emily Wilson insights on some of her translations: https://www.emilyrcwilson.com/emilyrcwilson-scholia

- Compare a few passages from the Odyssey: https://www.exodusbooks.com/odyssey-comparisons.aspx

- "The Homeric version", by J.L. Borges: https://gwern.net/doc/borges/1932-borges-thehomericversions....

I too, like the author, read (almost) everything Dickens wrote a couple of years ago. Definitely the best of times.

You can still see the trailer everywhere on youtube, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NA5ydinNXiE

Someone re-designed the Berlin map and every day I hope it becomes the official one: https://www.berlintransitmap.de/

I think this is the most interesting read: https://blog.ajay.app/voting-and-pseudo-randomness-or-sponso...

It's surprisingly (well) similar in italian, where "etto" is 100 g and "ettaro" is 10000 m².

My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammelled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses--the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions--which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.

I wonder how many people, with English as the mother tongue, could write even this paragraph.

I am also a fan of lists, and I would say that as far as lists of "great books" go, an aggregated view would look like:

To the Lighthouse > Mrs. Dalloway > Orlando > A Room of One's Own = The Waves

Thank you, I missed it

Care to provide sources for your statements?

Then do it illegally. And having storage is cheaper than having subscriptions.

Berlin is already very walkable, but I love the proposition to close the whole inside of the Ring to cars: https://volksentscheid-berlin-autofrei.de/

One can only only hope, but I have my doubts it will ever happen

Just from the name my mind raced to LLMs trained on the Pali canon

OpenAI is selling this a a tutor for your kids.

The Diamond Age.

This book is a great one: "Stanley Kubrick and Me: Thirty Years at His Side", by Emilio D'Alessandro

Now I want a tool that analyzes my last.fm history and tells me how many new artists (= artists I never scrobbled before) I scrobble every year.

For european investors: Vanguard LifeStrategy. Pick the specific etf based on your risk level (percentage of stocks, 20% or 40% or 60% or 80%) . Adjust if needed. Buy regularly, never sell until retirement.

MANGA Carta

That's japan.

Top 10 Takeaways

AI beats humans on some tasks, but not on all. AI has surpassed human performance on several benchmarks, including some in image classification, visual reasoning, and English understanding. Yet it trails behind on more complex tasks like competition-level mathematics, visual commonsense reasoning and planning.

Industry continues to dominate frontier AI research. In 2023, industry produced 51 notable machine learning models, while academia contributed only 15. There were also 21 notable models resulting from industry-academia collaborations in 2023, a new high.

Frontier models get way more expensive. According to AI Index estimates, the training costs of state-of-the-art AI models have reached unprecedented levels. For example, OpenAI’s GPT-4 used an estimated $78 million worth of compute to train, while Google’s Gemini Ultra cost $191 million for compute.

The United States leads China, the EU, and the U.K. as the leading source of top AI models. In 2023, 61 notable AI models originated from U.S.-based institutions, far outpacing the European Union’s 21 and China’s 15.

Robust and standardized evaluations for LLM responsibility are seriously lacking. New research from the AI Index reveals a significant lack of standardization in responsible AI reporting. Leading developers, including OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, primarily test their models against different responsible AI benchmarks. This practice complicates efforts to systematically compare the risks and limitations of top AI models.

Generative AI investment skyrockets. Despite a decline in overall AI private investment last year, funding for generative AI surged, nearly octupling from 2022 to reach $25.2 billion. Major players in the generative AI space, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Hugging Face, and Inflection, reported substantial fundraising rounds.

The data is in: AI makes workers more productive and leads to higher quality work. In 2023, several studies assessed AI’s impact on labor, suggesting that AI enables workers to complete tasks more quickly and to improve the quality of their output. These studies also demonstrated AI’s potential to bridge the skill gap between low- and high-skilled workers. Still, other studies caution that using AI without proper oversight can lead to diminished performance.

Scientific progress accelerates even further, thanks to AI. In 2022, AI began to advance scientific discovery. 2023, however, saw the launch of even more significant science-related AI applications— from AlphaDev, which makes algorithmic sorting more efficient, to GNoME, which facilitates the process of materials discovery.

The number of AI regulations in the United States sharply increases. The number of AIrelated regulations in the U.S. has risen significantly in the past year and over the last five years. In 2023, there were 25 AI-related regulations, up from just one in 2016. Last year alone, the total number of AI-related regulations grew by 56.3%.

People across the globe are more cognizant of AI’s potential impact—and more nervous. A survey from Ipsos shows that, over the last year, the proportion of those who think AI will dramatically affect their lives in the next three to five years has increased from 60% to 66%. Moreover, 52% express nervousness toward AI products and services, marking a 13 percentage point rise from 2022. In America, Pew data suggests that 52% of Americans report feeling more concerned than excited about AI, rising from 37% in 2022.

2001: A Space Odyssey

The Tree of Life

The Matrix

very basic answers I guess, but they are among my very favorite.