Around the Web 27
Around the Web 27
Lab Grown Meat 🥩, The Robotics Renaissance 🦾, and Peter Thiel on Political Theology ✝
[Talking🗣️points for your next outing📍]
🦜 Parrots learn to video chat
🌴 Florida bans Lab Grown Meat.
🇬🇧UK bans default bad passwords on IoT devices
🇻🇦Pope to attend AI session at G7 summit.
📰A personal AI news anchor.
🪦Papyrus reveals burial place of Plato.
[Long Read 📰 / Video 🎥]
[I]: How to be Productive without Burning Out w/Cal Newport
I can’t stop but beat myself up sometimes when I listen to Cal Newport talking about productivity protocols.
“I could do so much better,” I often tell myself. If you are obsessed with getting more out of your day, even potentially reducing your workload, these two podcast will set you straight.
[II]: Mark Cuban on How He Made His Money.
I don’t know much about Mark Cuban (I know of him, of course), so I spent some time listening to his chat with Lex. You might find the discussion interesting too.
[III]: The Era of High-Paying Tech Jobs is Over
I am currently writing an essay on some of the ideas covered here interestingly.
I think things are going to get messy.
Whatever disparities we have on ground, AI will most likely make larger.
It will be very easy to get screwed over in the next decade as this tech matures.
[IV]: Peter Thiel on Political Theology
I particularly like listening to Peter Thiel, even when I disagree with his stance, he always gives you something to work with. In this conversation with Tyler Cowen, he discusses ‘political theology’; which sounds to me as an attempt at integrating various aspects of life to make sense of the world.
So many things went on in the conversation, such that it feels impossible to summarize: Thiel argues that the abandonment of political theology in modern society has led to problems. Cowen questions Thiel on his views on Calvinism and scapegoating. Thiel rejects Calvinism because he believes it reduces human agency and offers a bleak view of the world. He also disagrees with the idea that scapegoating is a solution to complex problems.
On the AI front, Thiel expresses concern about the potential for AI to be used by a centralized government to control people.
[V]: The Robots are at the Gates.
Very fine, detailed essay on the robotics renaissance. Again, I can’t stop myself from thinking that if some of these things discussed in the essay pans out, something is going to have to shift and fast. Deploying LLMs and AI agent is going to lead to a crap load of automation as things stand, which is already underway.
[VI]: Fully Automated Food Recyclers.
I recently came across Mill Industries from reading Tony Fadell’s book, Build. Looks like a super cool idea! Check out the video on the page. Essentially you have these fully automated food recycler, and you ship out the dirt after several weeks of collecting (and recycling) the waste in a tiny bin.
I wonder what the energy cost is? The elephant in the room is how clean the energy used for recycling and transporting the dirt is, otherwise, it is far too easy to make a fool of ourselves with these things. I would love to read something on that.
[VII]: Most Global Leaders are in there 50s and 60s.
Interesting research on the ages of current world leaders.
Main highlights: median age of current national leaders is 62, with most leaders aged between 50 and 70. It contrasts this with Joe Biden, who is among the oldest at 81, and presents Cameroon's Paul Biya at 91 as the oldest. The youngest, Ibrahim Traoré of Burkina Faso, is 36. The report notes a trend where countries classified as "not free" tend to have older leaders. It also touches on gender, showing no significant age difference between male and female leaders, though the youngest female leader is 46.
[Books 📚]
Book(s) I read recently:
All Things Bright and Beautiful by James Herriot
Numbers Don’t Lie by Vaclav Smil.
(I will write a mini review of these in due time)
What I am currently reading:
Build by Tony Fadell
