you know, there’s a word for people who both (1) view themselves as the arbiter of what constitutes a particular group and (2) advocate for the killing of people in that group

Killing people for their political views is not good, actually

#26: Bitcoin Without a Fight Dial the clock back by thirteen years. Bitcoin is trading at five dollars a coin. You ask me “what will the world look like when Bitcoin is at $100,000?”

New essay from me: substack.com/@loeber/note...

Bitcoin has won.

And the big fight with the regulators, that so many anticipated, never happened. Some things turned out very differently from what early Bitcoiners expected.

Some reflections on the last thirteen years and the Strategic Reserve:

Just FYI a 250GB microSD card is:
1. Often fake if buying via Amazon, reliable ones are marginally more expensive
2. not a durable storage medium at all. Flash memory rots. You want an HDD

We live substantially in the digital world now. That’s where I make money and hold most of my conversations with friends. AGI’s impact on the digital world can be very quick

The physical world will be slower. But we shouldn’t let that make us underestimate speed/size of change in the digital world

Correct

#25: Nobody's Thinking Enough About AI A very strange thing is happening.

A very strange thing is happening. Everyone's talking about the latest AI products. It's exciting! But nobody's looking a few years into the future and asking what this all means.

If AGI by 2030 might be possible, then we're not thinking nearly enough about it.

loeber.substack.com/p/25-nobodys...

Wow!

The resource curse applies just in the same way to tax revenue (California) as if does to oil deposits (Venezuela)

I find it very discomforting that bluesky appears to have no true rules, and that users can be banned arbitrarily

I still think it is unjust that the user who assembled a bluesky message dataset was banned: the API is freely available and public.

Bluesky needs a much more credible ruleset.

Reviewing a ~370,000 word, 2.4lb brick of a book with “a punctilious attention to detail that I honestly cannot fault” is the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen all week

“Finished Monday, January 2, 2017. 4:47 AM. It was, after all, compelling towards the end. (Also in the start. There was a bit of a lull in the midsection — repetition of some material, and a punctilious attention to detail that I honestly cannot fault.)”

I like scribbling thoughts in my books. Every one becomes a personal item. And sometimes I can go back and nostalgically revisit my marginalia.

And sometimes it’s hilarious.

Today I flicked open my copy of Titan, a biography of John D Rockefeller, 774 pages of fine print…

And so I never eat my avocados. Whenever I think about eating one, I think it's best saved for when I'm hungry enough to eat a full one, not just half

This moment never really occurs though

And so my avocados became overripe, and I throw them away, never having even eaten half

Posting a Short and Frequent Tragedy

I buy avocados because they are sometimes nice to eat

I have several avocados sitting on my counter

When I think about opening one, I know I really am only going to eat half and throw the other half away, which would be wasteful...

bsky.app/profile/john...

Every great engineer has a little toolbox of their own idiosyncratic but highly effective tools and tricks

Every now and again, one of those tools escapes into the real world and becomes a “best practice”

Interesting growth hack… someone using their Substack email to sign up for my corporate landing page form. Now I know about one more newsletter

Would probably make a decent bisque

Average marketing email unsubscribe flow

Same. Peer review is broken

If you don’t care and you don’t feel like googling, why ask me?

?

Something something endless blue sky

I didn’t really own much. I’ve always just thrown out my furniture when moving, and then rented furnished apartments for the past few years.

My “stuff” was mostly a big pile of books and some skis in a storage unit, which I have since retrieved

Forbidden knowledge

I have muted the menswear guy because (even given that he is often right, or on “my side”) his whole shtick is dunking and being mean to people. I don’t think you should expose yourself to that in perpetuity

So it’s a strange feeling. I’ve spent a few thousand dollars on stuff from a few vendors and now… I’m set?

There are flights of fancy, like it’d be neat if I had a sauna and an extra room full of gym equipment, but again — that’s not really motivating, I know I don’t really care

I am aware of expensive furniture that I could buy, but I don’t see the point. I could buy much more space, but I also don’t greatly care there — I am happy with what I have.

If I wanted to spend like $100M+ I suppose there’s original art from masters, but I don’t find that very motivating