I have a yellow sticky note that says: “Move it forward!” It means: stop procrastinating. Stop thinking. Don’t think. Now is not the time for that. Now is the time for acting. Take action. Do one thing to move the project forward. No matter how small. Read a thing. Format a thing. Edit a thing. Talk through a thing. Doing one small thing will kick-start the engine and get things moving again. ...
I think Michael Crichton’s “Eaters of the Dead” is cool. I watched the movie adaption “The 13th Warrior” first, probably when it came out in ‘99. Watching it, I was thinking: this is Vikings + Arabs. Historical fiction. Fighting. Yay! I read the novel later, I was thinking: this is like cooler version of Beowulf. Here’s the synopsis (via grok3): Published in 1976, Eaters of the Dead is a historical fiction novel that blends fact, legend, and adventure. The story is narrated by Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century Arab courtier from Baghdad, who is sent as an ambassador to the Bulgars but becomes embroiled in a journey far beyond his original mission. Based loosely on the real Ibn Fadlan’s historical account of his travels, the novel takes a fictional turn when he encounters a band of Norse warriors led by Buliwyf, a Viking chieftain. ...
I re-read a ton. Maybe 1/4 of the books I read in a year. Sometimes more. Taking “Do you have books you re-read regularly?” as a prompt, I commented the following: I re-read the following each year: Ambergris (3 books), Vandermeer Area X/Southern Reach (3 books), Vandermeer Hyperion, Simmons Enders Game, Scott Card Flowers for Algernon, Keyes Some others I’ll re-read every other year: Blood Meridian, McCarthy The Fountainhead, Rand Do the Work, Pressfield Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig Solaris, Lem Antifragile, Taleb Why? I guess to recapture the feeling of that first read :) ...
Just read the following on the benefit of writing to help thinking: Write to Escape Your Default Setting Fantastic piece. Great writing too. For those of us with woefully average gray matter, our minds have limited reach. For the past, they are enthusiastic but incompetent archivists. In the present, they reach for the most provocative fragments of ideas, often preferring distraction over clarity. Love it. Especially “reach for the most provocative fragments of ideas” and “often preferring distraction over clarity*”. ...
There’s a scene in Authority that freaks out most who read it (as evidence on r/SouthernReach). Its in Chapter “03: Break Down”. The “Whitby” scene. Oh man. “Control”, our protagonist has climb up into the roof cavity in the store room of their large scientific installation next to the southern reach. He’s found a horrible mural panted on a wall up there with the faces of the staff. He’s also found a sleeping bag like someone is spending a lot of time up there. ...
Found fiction is like the movie genre “found footage”, but for books. I typically like reading it. It’s often called simply epistolary, e.g. letters or diary entries, but other examples include chat messages, emails, other documents. For example “Exegesis” is a series of email messages between a women and an AI. And “The Illuminae Files Series” is chat messages between teenagers and an AI and each other. But “found document” rolls of the tongue (only slightly) better than epistolary. ...
Google’s LLM agent-based co-scientist looks interesting: Google builds AI ‘co-scientist’ tool to speed up research Early tests of Google’s new tool with experts from Stanford University, Imperial College London and Houston Methodist hospital found it was able to generate scientific hypotheses that showed promising results. And: Accelerating scientific breakthroughs with an AI co-scientist We introduce AI co-scientist, a multi-agent AI system built with Gemini 2.0 as a virtual scientific collaborator to help scientists generate novel hypotheses and research proposals, and to accelerate the clock speed of scientific and biomedical discoveries. ...
I exercise 5-7 days per week, for about 1-2 hours per day. Weights and cardio, interleaved. It’s good for now, I feel/look better, but really it’s for the future. After each workout I feel like I am making a deposit in my saving account (e.g. ideas like hormesis and antifragility and to a less degree post-traumatic growth). I’m building strength, excess capacity, that will help me over the decades to come, as long as I stick with it. ...
I’ve been using grok3 for a few days, since release (4-5 days now?). https://grok.com/ Chatting is fine. I still do ad hoc chat with gpt4o and deepseek. DeepSearch is great. I have not used this much, but I like it. I guess I don’t trust the open web. I’d rather specify sources. I LOVE “Think” in grok3. I’ve compared reasoning results to o1 and o3 mini and for my recent use cases, I prefer grok3. Taste I guess. ...
Tyler Cowen shared his reasons why he thinks AI take-off, really LLM dissemination through society will be slow: Why I think AI take-off is relatively slow I’ve touched on this before in AI/LLM Diminishing Returns, but this has more reasons and more detail. Lots of economic concepts I don’t grok. I asked for a summary via deepseek: The author discusses the potential economic impact of AI, emphasizing that while AI has significant capabilities, its integration into the economy will face numerous challenges. These include slow adoption in inefficient sectors like government, human bottlenecks (e.g., regulatory constraints), and the O-Ring model, where human limitations may hinder AI’s effectiveness. Historically, new technologies take time to diffuse, and GDP growth tends to remain stable around 2%, suggesting AI’s impact will be gradual. The author estimates AI might boost growth by 0.5% annually, leading to significant long-term changes but not immediate, noticeable shifts. Market prices also do not indicate rapid transformation. Overall, the author remains optimistic about AI’s potential but cautious about its near-term economic effects. ...