Links

• Not being specific about your goals
• Not asking it to reduce its output (ask to reduce, remove, compile, or rewrite)
• Mixing topics in a single chat
• Asking only 1 thing at a time
• Prompting in the negative (instead of “without X”, add “delete X” to the end of prompt)
• Not giving examples
• Asking it to do math
• Not iterating

Impurities (lime clasts) that heal cracks when water runs through them.

some of my favorites:

1. Now and then, break out the fancy china and drink the good wine for no reason at all.
2. Dance at weddings until your feet are sore.
3. Don’t fear sadness, as it tends to sit right next to love.
4. Treat your body like a house you have to live in for another 70 years.
5. Do one good deed every single day, but never tell anyone about it.
6. Time doesn’t heal anything when it comes to relationships. Don’t delay difficult conversations.
7. Find the things that make your eyes light up. Do more of those.
8. Always remind yourself that your track record for making it through your bad days is perfect.
9. If something has a minor issue, repair it. Minor issues become major issues over time. Applies equally to love, friendships, health, and home.
10. Getting old is no picnic, but it’s much better than the alternative.
11. You may occasionally disappoint others, but make sure to never disappoint yourself.
12. Never let a good friendship atrophy. Send the text, make the call, plan the trip. Good friendships must be treasured.
13. The “good old days” are always happening right now.
14. Whenever you hug someone, make sure they are the one to let go first.
15. Taking no risk is the biggest risk you can take. Regret from inaction is always more painful than regret from action.
16. It doesn’t have to be perfect for it to be wonderful.
17. When in doubt, love. We can always use more love.
18. Stop trying to change people who don’t want to be changed.
19. Do one thing that challenges your mind every single day. A crossword puzzle, math problem, anything. Daily “exercise” will keep your mind sharp for the long haul.
20. There’s nothing wrong with shedding old relationships as you grow and change.
21. Laugh loudly and unapologetically whenever you feel like it.

From 1999, on the Netscape-Microsoft browser wars.

Aella takes LSD

Some craaazy facts about microbes in there. And I actually came away convinced! Have previously taken the same argument NASA made for space exploration originally - all the incidental inventions and discoveries made make it worthwhile. But the extreme cost (and risk of contamination) make sending humans to Mars seem like a not great idea. Just let robots do it.

Humans in space is more of a biology problem than an engineering problem. Or at least the engineering of life support systems is the bigger challenge than building rockets.

Quite fantastic range in there. Just got Remarkably Bright Creatures

Modal seems like a winner.

The word trauma is too loaded - they use the word “splitting” to describe the response of setting painful things aside, until you are ready to process them. But then instead of processing them, you just keep putting off dealing with them, or avoiding things that remind you of them.

macro predictions of major changes to markets

It seems to me that a significant portion of all the money investors made over this period resulted from the tailwind generated by the massive drop in interest rates. I consider it nearly impossible to overstate the influence of declining rates over the last four decades.

People who came into the business world after 2008 – or veteran investors with short memories – might think of today’s interest rates as elevated. But they’re not in the longer sweep of history, meaning there’s no obvious reason why they should be lower.

Treating houses as an investment is bad for people who want to live in them. Houses suffer wear and tear, but still just appreciate in value over time.

To make housing affordable, it needs to be cheap and widely available. Things that are cheap and widely available are not typically good investments.

Archived version

on scaling laws of language models. I still know too little about all of this to make much sense of it.

The risk of bots filling in critical knowledge/skill gaps, preventing experts in those areas.

A good lengthy rant of eventual downfalls of online socials

Four papers on ways to make people happier: express gratitude, give compliments, offer to help, reach out to people.

for whenever you next need to C

A four day Rust course developed by the Android team. Should set aside some days for this I guess.

Sam Altman and some YC people on startup essentials

Songs and lyrics by Tom Lehrer, freed into the public domain.

Within a week it was cloned and put up on a nice domain
with a different logo and the copycat was impersonating
me on social media and ranking quite well on Google.
It’s no longer open source.

CIA experiment of hiding surveilance equipment inside cats

Links to this Forbes piece, that 40% of global shipping is for fuel

The very bad image dataset bias issue

love this