Friday Fodder #8

Sep 27, 2024

Three Mile Island nuclear plant to restart, power Microsoft data centers - In case you missed it, AI needs lots and lots of watts. So many watts that Microsoft wants a reactor for its very own, so it can buy more GPUs and do more matrix math. Expect an ever-increasing appetite for energy.
The Myth of Degrowth - Remember when those eccentric Easter Islanders built a bunch of giant statues and ruined their ecosystem in the process? Weird, because it turns out it didn’t really happen. Lack of a good analog does not a dead philosophy make, but degrowth still needs to be a dead end.
Amazon, Tesla and Meta among world’s top companies undermining democracy – Report - From those honest reports over at the Guardian, a factual and misinformation-less report (their fact-checkers checked!) on how the biggest, most profitable companies in the world are actually evil because it doesn’t espouse identical political views or, God forbid, doesn’t espouse any and simply follows market direction.
A New Era Of Writing Code - AI is creating new dev workflows and changing the most important parts of programming. If the narrator economy becomes a real thing, the canary will be developers.

Excuse me but why are you eating so many frogs - “I think the devil is real and he wants you to be more productive. He’s everywhere, spreading wickedness disguised as wisdom.” Not sure there’s a better two sentence open to an anti-productivity essay anywhere! Have fun, work hard, and make sure you’re doing both of those in ways that bring you joy.
The Double Headed Model of Obesity - Obesity as a control system changes the paradigm in interesting ways: How do we move the thresholds so that our normal biology is in an ideal range?
The Mind Is A Computer - Information processing rules biology and information processing rules physics, so of course it runs our brains. Like Scott, I believe the evaluation of how the brain works and what consciousness is, is one of the most exciting questions alive today. And I can’t wait to see how AI informs this question next.

Pappyland by Wright Thompson - It’s been a slow reading week over here, so just one book recommendation this week. This is the story of a famous bourbon hiding a much deeper rumination about lifetimes and legacies. I proudly own one half gone bottle of Pappy’s 20 and I thought I’d love this book as a matter of pride, but it ended up being a lot more than I bargained for. Thompson explains why legacy matters, why it’s so hard to live up to it, and why bourbon is the patron drink of the indefatigable American spirit.

Shaan Puri highlighted this tweet and took it one step further and came up with the K-shaped economy:

Cheers!

Brains Are Plastic