Mak'

…Nor is the trump admin actually using it to pay down the debt…

That’s the damning thing: Any savings are going towards tax cuts for the already-wealthy…

…Anyway, defunding the NOAA to pay off the national debt is like skipping a coffee, once, to pay down a mortgage on a house.

…and then going out and buying an expensive car.

That’s pretty much it. Trump—really, the folks who control him—is going to wall us off from the rest of the world, while the rest of the world continues moving forward. In power. In technology. In medicine.

You jest, but I would seriously consider the possibility that he’ll sue anyone selling the stock, and sue the government for not investing in it expressly.

I mean, god, the tantrums he’s thrown at having advertisers take breaks—because I don’t think any of them truly left—from Twitter should be proof enough of the possibility.

He said we are still waiting for the hype to become reality, in the form of something obvious and impossible to miss, like the world economy shooting up 10% across the board.

That’s such an odd turn of phrase. “We’re still waiting for the hype to become a reality…” and “…something obvious and impossible to miss…”

So, like, do I have to time to go to the bathroom and get a drink, before I sit down and start staring at the empty space, or…?

Don’t get me wrong. I work with this stuff every day at this point. My job is LLMs and model training pipelines and agentic frameworks. But, there is something… off, about saying the equivalent of “it’ll happen any day now…”

It may just, but making forward-looking decisions on something that doesn’t exist—may not come to pass—feels like madness.

I’ve basically given up hope of the bubble ever bursting, as the market lives in La La Land, where no amount of bad decision-making seems to make a dent in the momentum of “line must go up”.

Would it be cool for negative feedback to step in and correct the death spiral? Absolutely. But, I advise folks to not start holding their breath so soon…

Very bold move, in a tech climate in which CEOs declare generative AI to be the answer to everything, and in which shareholders expect line to go up faster…

I half expect to next read an article about his ouster.

OP asked for the worst thing you’ve seen Excel used for…

I never know what to think when I come across a comment like this one—which does describe, even if only at a surface level, how an LLM works—with 50% downvotes. Like, are people angry at reality, is that it?

It may well be a matter of opinion whether Tesla, even operating at its highest potential, could now overtake the likes of BYD, which is getting extensive help from its government. But, it’s reasonably clear that Tesla’s chances get thinner with every bad decision of Musk’s.

He fucked with the engineering, chasing pennies on critical components, like the lidar. He fucked with the crown jewel of the company—its Supercharger network—by destroying the team, and thereby slowing down rollouts and critical maintenance. He ran his mouth off and chased away folks—like me—who would have otherwise bought, by espousing pants-on-head-crazy crypto-bro viewpoints. Hell, his idea of PR is a poop emoji auto-responder.

It’s just frustrating to see such a great concept—the ubiquitous electric car—be fucked up so badly by the person with the most means to succeed.

What’s hilariously tragic is that he could very likely have his full self-driving if he would just shut his shit-spewing asshole of a mouth for a hot second, and spend some of his ungodly billions on the problem.

There are incredibly bright people out there who can make this stuff a reality. But, it takes paying them well, not shit-talking or overruling them, and giving them the environment for success—e.g., not taking away the radar from the cars.

He just wants to talk a big game without spending any real effort or money on the problem. And, it’s just sad, because he could have his FSD and look like a genius.

For what it’s worth, they’ve had a “Neuro Fuzzy” rice cooker (https://www.zojirushi.com/app/product/nszcc) for years—ours is at least 10 years old at this point. And, I would bet this is a trivial extension of that—using some decision tables supplemented with heat feedback—with only the addition of a user feedback mechanism, rather than any, true “AI”.

My first temptation was to say that it might be an age thing, but then I know many people my age who still don’t care about plants.

For me, it’s like a switch flipped one day. When I was younger, I just didn’t really care, and the few times I was given a plant, it did not end well. Figured that I just had a brown thumb.

But, maybe 10-some-odd years ago, I got a peace lily, and, by then, something had changed. I wanted to see this plant thrive, and it brought me just a little bit of satisfaction to see it doing well. It doesn’t hurt that peace lilies will tell you when they need watered, and, as such are pretty easy to keep.

I’m still not the best plant dad, but I’d since gone on to buy about a dozen more and appreciate the bit of greenery around the house.

I’ll have to buy the White Album again…

Hard agree. I played through the opening twice in my first sitting. Died both times. Put it down for a year and a half.

Finally decided to try again and picked it back up. Passed the opening sequence and got into the game proper. And, I can say that I had a pretty good time—excepting a key, bullshit timed mission that I barely passed.

They really did not need to gatekeep the game behind the poor design of the opening.

I’m happy to see someone else mention Murakami.

I went on tear in university—a long time ago now—reading everything that had been translated to English by then. And, while they had the most bizarro plots, I found them to be the most compelling reads, wanting to read more and more, until I ran out of things to read.

He definitely deserves a place on this list.

I’m curious: Which station was this?

Bold of you to assume that I have family that I want to keep in touch with. Entire family tree is twisted and gnarled, and full of white-trash sociopaths and narcissists.

For the one remaining person I might keep in touch with, it’s a text message at holidays.

He’s on a rest day. Asked us if we could come round instead…

Is that like Thunderdome?

…and fabric maps, and tchotchkes, and code wheels.