PLUS Five things returns to add to your AI concerns, a company that is reverting to people, the dead speak in court and a new high tech product to guess. And more!
"Popular Mechanics" seems to be where "Popular Science" went when it died. I get the online version from my library, and the science/mechanics ratio varies considerable month to month. From what I've seen, all the pop-sci magazines have a lot of clickbait headlines (and articles).
With regard to the Marriott quote, I read recently about how, in defining pop-art (music, films, literature) as "okay", we somehow managed to open the door to people who consume *only* pop-art and never expand their horizons. Pop-art isn't bad in and of itself, but it is simplistic. A steady diet of only simplistic art makes one's thinking simplistic and without nuance. And here we are.
Ties in exactly with my long-time "Death of a Liberal Arts Education" rants in explaining how we ended up like this.
I get why these magazines are doing that because they’re just scrambling to stay in business. There is no real answer to this.
In terms of popular art, I couldn’t agree with you more. Only one of our six kids including partners even read fiction, and hers is the throw away beach type. They all have a minimum of a undergraduate degree. Don’t give me going on the movies I never need to see another superhero or walking dead zombies. We went out this week to our small theater, I live on an island, and saw I’m still here a great Brazilian film. Somehow they actually programmed it in between all of the Minecraft and so on which are just rubbish films. I don’t understand why anybody wants to have a steady diet of that stuff.
James Marriott is a very interesting writer for the Times of London. I think he’s about 35 years of age and really has some interesting insights. But he also feels like a throwback because he’s into serious heart, etc.
Thanks as always for reading and engaging. Really enjoy it.
I love superhero movies, Deadpool, Everything Everywhere At Once, The Boys...
They were atypical when they just came out; I still love them for the year they were in, because it was always 'them against the world'. (Also, they took my brain on a break from the demanding work)
For the same reason, I love Thanos and Joker; Jane Eyre (the book) and Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged (the book), Charles Koch in the Koch Industries
I guess it's the mix of tragedy and heroic acts that attracts me and many others in my generation (millennials).
No matter how some of them seem pop and cheap, they give many of us hope and remind us that we might still have a chance to be heroes at some point.
My criticism of these types of movies has a few dimensions The first is the absolute overwhelming number of them. They have taken the oxygen from the production studio. Second, for the most part their themes and characters are simplistic, which reinforces the wrong messages about the stochastic complexity of life. Third, they further augment our retreat from reality to fantasy. Real human stories with depth and complexity are what is missing. As for hope: watching any number of films from the 1930s until the century turn about real people struggling gives me more hope than any super hero. “I’m still here” the 2025 Oscar foreign film winner tells a magnificent story of one woman and one family’s struggle and life against a brutal Brazilian regime,
Heh, yeah, totally with you about superheroes. That whole genre makes me think of that line about ‘putting away childish things’ as an adult. The ones that are pastiches on the genre (like “Deadpool”) are kinda cute, but those are getting old now, too. I’ve had some good luck with Asian films. They still focus on telling a good story. Some from India, as well. Haven’t dipped my toe much in South American films, but that sounds like another good axis. Hollywood is usually disappointing.
Back when I was dating, I paid a lot of attention to how many books the women I dated had in their place. Depressing how often the number was zero. And, yeah, it’s almost surprising when you meet young people who managed to avoid the shallowness of most of their generation. They always give me a ray of sunlight and hope.
I agree with the putting aside comment. My wife and I had a discussion last night on how many movies have zombies in them. It is bizarre. Deadpool was fun but how many do we need. We watch a lot of non-English and old films. I love Indian films.
I think a major reason younger people don’t read, watch more serious films, go to the theater or concerts is literally the hours daily spent “in the scroll”. I work 1 day per week in a used vinyl store. No one buys any classical music anymore. Young people are hooked on the top sellers from 50 and 60 years ago. Just seems odd
Heh, yeah, zombies are hugely popular. I never really cared for them, except in a few off-beat cases ("Shaun of the Dead", "Juan of the Dead", or "Cockneys vs Zombies"). Old films are great. When you don't have special effects or other whiz-bang tricks, all you have left is story.
We're now a culture that consumes McDonald's hamburger art. Simple, easy, everyone is doing it, and it doesn't require thinking or going outside one's comfort zone. Nothing wrong with a fast-food burger once in a while, they're quite tasty, but a steady diet of them doesn't have a good outcome.
“All you have left is story” is where I want a movie to start. I think they now are sold on elevator pitches which I was always against, even in business
I love how you walk us through the insanity and inanity of this all. Moronogenic is funny but apt. I appreciate your conversation with Jing Hu a lot. Much to ponder here. Thanks!
Dario’s ‘150 by 2030’ claim is the logical endpoint of tech’s obsession with exponential curves. Sure, life expectancy doubled since 1900, mostly because we stopped dying from dirty water and now die from processed food. But Silicon Valley treats aging like a software bug.
Truly, they do.
‘Just refactor the mitochondria, folks!’
Meanwhile, the richest tech bros still can’t beat male pattern baldness.
Thanks as always for your comments. The exponential growth in our lifespan increases actually stopped a couple decades ago as we reached herd with most vaccines. I guess they don’t look to closely at the math.
There is so much insane thinking / values in Silicon Valley. Maybe you’re right. They think software development methods apply to everyrhing
Indeed. They are the biggest driver of the lifespan increases. My comment about variability is that if a person go through the childhood illnesses and led a temperate, they lived to ripe old ages. The top end hasn’t gone up that much
There is just so much to keep up with regarding AI. Every time I scroll on my Google feed it's some new AI product that's gonna solve all your problems. I still have to look at that program you sent me through LinkedIn. I'm still going to do that. And I used napkin again in my article that I wrote today. I used a couple different graphs that I created. You might want to take a peek. You can even edit the output so that makes it nice. So far I'm pretty impressed with it.
I haven’t used napkin yet. I tend to spend all my time on my iPad and not on my laptop or desktop, which is upstairs and in my office.
I’m going make a joke about the number of AI tools this week as I read, very deep, a Microsoft announcement that they have over 1900 AI tools in as Azure. That’s insane. I regularly see articles saying the top 25 AI tools that you must know. That’s also insanity.
The problem is that you can't use them all and you certainly can't be an expert in all of them. It takes time to experiment with them and really form an educated opinion.
"Popular Mechanics" seems to be where "Popular Science" went when it died. I get the online version from my library, and the science/mechanics ratio varies considerable month to month. From what I've seen, all the pop-sci magazines have a lot of clickbait headlines (and articles).
With regard to the Marriott quote, I read recently about how, in defining pop-art (music, films, literature) as "okay", we somehow managed to open the door to people who consume *only* pop-art and never expand their horizons. Pop-art isn't bad in and of itself, but it is simplistic. A steady diet of only simplistic art makes one's thinking simplistic and without nuance. And here we are.
Ties in exactly with my long-time "Death of a Liberal Arts Education" rants in explaining how we ended up like this.
I get why these magazines are doing that because they’re just scrambling to stay in business. There is no real answer to this.
In terms of popular art, I couldn’t agree with you more. Only one of our six kids including partners even read fiction, and hers is the throw away beach type. They all have a minimum of a undergraduate degree. Don’t give me going on the movies I never need to see another superhero or walking dead zombies. We went out this week to our small theater, I live on an island, and saw I’m still here a great Brazilian film. Somehow they actually programmed it in between all of the Minecraft and so on which are just rubbish films. I don’t understand why anybody wants to have a steady diet of that stuff.
James Marriott is a very interesting writer for the Times of London. I think he’s about 35 years of age and really has some interesting insights. But he also feels like a throwback because he’s into serious heart, etc.
Thanks as always for reading and engaging. Really enjoy it.
🙋 Allow me to defend my superheroes.
I love superhero movies, Deadpool, Everything Everywhere At Once, The Boys...
They were atypical when they just came out; I still love them for the year they were in, because it was always 'them against the world'. (Also, they took my brain on a break from the demanding work)
For the same reason, I love Thanos and Joker; Jane Eyre (the book) and Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged (the book), Charles Koch in the Koch Industries
I guess it's the mix of tragedy and heroic acts that attracts me and many others in my generation (millennials).
No matter how some of them seem pop and cheap, they give many of us hope and remind us that we might still have a chance to be heroes at some point.
haha... I think I made it a bit dramatic now.
My criticism of these types of movies has a few dimensions The first is the absolute overwhelming number of them. They have taken the oxygen from the production studio. Second, for the most part their themes and characters are simplistic, which reinforces the wrong messages about the stochastic complexity of life. Third, they further augment our retreat from reality to fantasy. Real human stories with depth and complexity are what is missing. As for hope: watching any number of films from the 1930s until the century turn about real people struggling gives me more hope than any super hero. “I’m still here” the 2025 Oscar foreign film winner tells a magnificent story of one woman and one family’s struggle and life against a brutal Brazilian regime,
Heh, yeah, totally with you about superheroes. That whole genre makes me think of that line about ‘putting away childish things’ as an adult. The ones that are pastiches on the genre (like “Deadpool”) are kinda cute, but those are getting old now, too. I’ve had some good luck with Asian films. They still focus on telling a good story. Some from India, as well. Haven’t dipped my toe much in South American films, but that sounds like another good axis. Hollywood is usually disappointing.
Back when I was dating, I paid a lot of attention to how many books the women I dated had in their place. Depressing how often the number was zero. And, yeah, it’s almost surprising when you meet young people who managed to avoid the shallowness of most of their generation. They always give me a ray of sunlight and hope.
I agree with the putting aside comment. My wife and I had a discussion last night on how many movies have zombies in them. It is bizarre. Deadpool was fun but how many do we need. We watch a lot of non-English and old films. I love Indian films.
I think a major reason younger people don’t read, watch more serious films, go to the theater or concerts is literally the hours daily spent “in the scroll”. I work 1 day per week in a used vinyl store. No one buys any classical music anymore. Young people are hooked on the top sellers from 50 and 60 years ago. Just seems odd
Heh, yeah, zombies are hugely popular. I never really cared for them, except in a few off-beat cases ("Shaun of the Dead", "Juan of the Dead", or "Cockneys vs Zombies"). Old films are great. When you don't have special effects or other whiz-bang tricks, all you have left is story.
We're now a culture that consumes McDonald's hamburger art. Simple, easy, everyone is doing it, and it doesn't require thinking or going outside one's comfort zone. Nothing wrong with a fast-food burger once in a while, they're quite tasty, but a steady diet of them doesn't have a good outcome.
“All you have left is story” is where I want a movie to start. I think they now are sold on elevator pitches which I was always against, even in business
I love how you walk us through the insanity and inanity of this all. Moronogenic is funny but apt. I appreciate your conversation with Jing Hu a lot. Much to ponder here. Thanks!
Thanks for engaging Hans. My voice is to be satirical / sarcastic because of its inanity but there are so many serious issues
Dario’s ‘150 by 2030’ claim is the logical endpoint of tech’s obsession with exponential curves. Sure, life expectancy doubled since 1900, mostly because we stopped dying from dirty water and now die from processed food. But Silicon Valley treats aging like a software bug.
Truly, they do.
‘Just refactor the mitochondria, folks!’
Meanwhile, the richest tech bros still can’t beat male pattern baldness.
Did I just say that ???
What's up, David?
Happy Tuesday!
Thanks as always for your comments. The exponential growth in our lifespan increases actually stopped a couple decades ago as we reached herd with most vaccines. I guess they don’t look to closely at the math.
There is so much insane thinking / values in Silicon Valley. Maybe you’re right. They think software development methods apply to everyrhing
I sometimes wonder if they’re secretly building a beta version of death. 😂😂
But you only can access it in Mars 😂😂
Also, we developed vaccines that we are now hellbent on ending in favor of mushrooms or something.
to be fair mushrooms are good too 😂 but cannot replace vaccines …
Indeed. They are the biggest driver of the lifespan increases. My comment about variability is that if a person go through the childhood illnesses and led a temperate, they lived to ripe old ages. The top end hasn’t gone up that much
There is just so much to keep up with regarding AI. Every time I scroll on my Google feed it's some new AI product that's gonna solve all your problems. I still have to look at that program you sent me through LinkedIn. I'm still going to do that. And I used napkin again in my article that I wrote today. I used a couple different graphs that I created. You might want to take a peek. You can even edit the output so that makes it nice. So far I'm pretty impressed with it.
I haven’t used napkin yet. I tend to spend all my time on my iPad and not on my laptop or desktop, which is upstairs and in my office.
I’m going make a joke about the number of AI tools this week as I read, very deep, a Microsoft announcement that they have over 1900 AI tools in as Azure. That’s insane. I regularly see articles saying the top 25 AI tools that you must know. That’s also insanity.
The problem is that you can't use them all and you certainly can't be an expert in all of them. It takes time to experiment with them and really form an educated opinion.