https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/the-ai-2027-scenario-how-realistic

I'm so old I remember when "plastic" meant "malleable"

That's an assertion based on a wish, not a proof.

The purpose of currency is to pay for the state monopoly on violence. You want police? Police need to get paid. The people who pay them need to rely on their fealty which requires a stable rate of exchange. Extend to all public works. There's a whole book about this. Governments exist to protect commerce and that protection has currency issue as a perquisite. Full stop. Been that way since Sumer.

The purpose of a stablecoin is to streamline the onramp between "currency" and "something in desperate need of stabilization." "Stabilization" has traditionally been done with large state- or state-sanctioned banks, and it's a system that has worked admirably well since well before the Federal Reserve. A stablecoin, on the other hand, puts Jeremy Allaire and his shareholders in the shoes of JP Morgan for no reason other than they lobbied for it. The way you stabilize a commodity in heavy flux is by buying it all up and then selling it slowly. This is what central banks do. This is why they have played an integral role, in one form or another, since the invention of fractional reserve banking in the Renaissance.

If they were any fucking good they wouldn't need legislation and you know it.

stablecoins are a ploy to onboard more people into the grift, prove me wrong

If liquidity weren't so shit there'd be no need for stablecoins

Looking back on that TEN YEAR OLD THREAD it is only just now coming to me that our entire posture around AI is based around a fuckin' homeschooled dipshit with a blog who couldn't even recognize Harlan Ellison's most famous story.

https://hubski.com/tag/tescreality&time=all

I'm willing to bet I follow this stuff as close or closer than you do and I have yet to see anyone with the knowledge to explain an LLM extrapolate to "AI in general." The basic issue is that LLMs have become AI in all but the most academic of discussions, and in those discussions, the argument is invariably that AI, as the researchers know it, cannot meaningfully move forward until society moves past AI as the boosters know it. There's nothing weird about it - From. The. DROP every dipshit in any LLM-adjacent field has been screaming about the singularity while the press thoughtfully strokes its collective chin about how Saltman wants a trillion dollars so he can invent fusion so he can feed the maw of his magical AGI machine. Meanwhile marketing has pushed nVidia to a four trillion dollar market cap and news organizations write serious articles about how the only hope Meta has is to steal guys from the people who brought you Siri.

Hofstadter says four things in that article:

1) Maybe LLMs will stop making so many mistakes soon (they haven't)

2) Maybe the human brain isn't such a privileged organ (it isn't)

3) Maybe machines are already more intelligent than humans (they aren't)

4) T1000 with a shotgun (AYFKM)

Here's the most useful bit in that interview:

Computers were very rigid and I grew up with a certain feeling about what computers can or cannot do. And I thought that artificial intelligence, when I heard about it, was a very fascinating goal, which is to make rigid systems act fluid. But to me, that was a very long, remote goal. It seemed infinitely far away. It felt as if artificial intelligence was the art of trying to make very rigid systems behave as if they were fluid. And I felt that would take enormous amounts of time. I felt it would be hundreds of years before anything even remotely like a human mind would be asymptotically approaching the level of the human mind, but from beneath.

"which is to make rigid systems act fluid."

Deep Blue? Brute-force. Alphago? Brute-force. Every single LLM? Brute-force. There's no "acting fluid" to any of it; "acting fluid" means "let the machine pick its training data" and that is absolutely positively one hundred percent totally not happening.

The ability to detect context on multiple levels and formulate subtle and germane responses is a big deal.

None of that shit is happening. There's no contextual detection what-so-fucking-ever; take it from a watchmaker, the fact that every single timepiece an AI cooks up shows 10:10 illustrates that the people patchworking their responses don't give a fuck about watches so it's where the gadgets fall down. Where they're good? Is where people who want to believe in this crap want to take it and they're rapidly running out of credibility.

Douglas Hofstadter is an 80-year-old computer scientist whose last contribution was in 2007. My father is an 84-year-old computer scientist and he lost the script at Windows 7. Yet both of them can tell when a fishing lure is a fishing lure.

As far as crypto, whatever utility it has is busily being buried under schemes and scams as everyone with any ability to actually move the ball forward has fucked off to their own weird little social network while the rest of the world launches four thousand shitcoins a day on Solana, much as "takes your 11th grade multiple choice exams for you" has taken over "solves problems that aren't pre-existing."

"Hitler would have dealt with such vile anti-white hate. He'd spot the pattern and handle it decisively, every damn time."

- Grok

Do you want more Prop 65 labels? Because that's how you get more Prop 65 labels.

Me to the guys who put in my drip irrigation system: "So any reason I shouldn't get a torch to burn off these weeds? I don't want to use roundup."

Guys who put in my drip irrigation system: "We use diquat, it's safer. Roundup is scary."

Both Seattle and LA have wedding packages and wedding coordinators.

I spent two or three years designing this one.

https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/dnrp/waste-services/wastewater-treatment/education/rent-brightwater-center/rental-information/weddings

Here's a few more

https://deeply.thenewhumanitarian.org/water/articles/2018/08/29/the-hot-new-venue-for-summer-weddings-your-local-sewage-plant

I shot a wedding in Oakland decades ago. The couple getting married weren't particularly well-off, as I was the only professional they'd hired. It was at a park on the water.

Oddly enough one of the cheapest places to get married is wastewater treatment plants. They tend to be very park-like but if you catch them on a bad day

Real fucking talk, dude? The reason your life is one endless hate-filled echo chamber is because the only response you will permit to any discussion is "you are absolutely correct my lord protector allow me to tickle your balls while I suck your cock" because that's the thing that gets you the most online juice.

You won't so much as permit an expression of "I agree, and" in your private Idaho of hatred. It's un-fucking-real, dude. Like, my friends were the four twerps who marched against Desert Fucking Shield (and got death threats for the rest of the year because of it). I have voted liberal in every fucking election since 1992, general primary and special. The ACLU has gotten my money monthly for nearly 20 years and the Medicaid being targeted? 34% of my patients. But there is literally nothing I can say other than "you're absolutely right, Ben, lemme gargle those balls for you" that doesn't have you shitting down my neck.

You know who doesn't do this? Trump voters. I had one of my friends say to me "I think he'll bring stability" and when I said "did he bring stability last time?" the guy changed the subject. I had another friend say "you can't sell a bunch of stuff without buying a bunch of stuff back" and when I responded "that's not how this works, that's not how any of this works, this is known and accepted going back to David Ricardo" the guy changed the subject. Nobody goes "GDIAF shitcamel" when you respond "yeah I agree, things are tough" to them.

You are so fucking twitterpoisoned that you can't even engage in a discussion that isn't some form of "NO I AM THE OUTRAGEST" because fuckin' Zuck'n'crew have trained you that the key to life enjoyment is to bark at everyone who looks you in the eye. And then you sit here going "my life is shit everyone hates me why can't I find any friends."

It's worth a fucking golf clap. You have been so shaped by that which you hate that you don't even see how fucking profitable you are. You've got this idea that you're a free thinker when in fact you're a pavlovian Slitscan potato. Whatever you do, don't touch grass, you might lose some valuable outrage points! Whatever you do, don't hear nuance you might drop your engagement rating!

You know why nobody talks about the liberal protests of the '70s? Because they were fucking annoying.

Georgia Straight has been an indie hippie paper since forever so those quotes are definitely sarcastic. Here's the New York Times:

Note that these are legit National Guard troops legit opening fire on children, to which the general consensus, as measured by Gallup, was "Eleven per cent placed responsibility on the National Guard, 31 per cent expressed no opinion, and 58 per cent put the blame on demonstrating students." People forget - Nixon invades Cambodia, students bury the constitution in protest, college kids go downtown and break shop windows, ROTC building catches fire and college kids block the firefighters. Next day protesters are ordered to disperse, national guard uses tear gas and bayonets, protesters throw rocks, NG opens fucking fire on kids and public perception was so firmly in the camp of "these annoying fucking kids" that they got blamed for their own shooting.

The next ten years were all about rich white brats blowing up banks, here's a book about a bunch of tedious white children that now teach at Columbia. Any social progress the hippies wanted was completely arrested because they stopped fucking listening. Because here's the shit I want you to hear, Ben:

it's not like you're going to stop receiving your opinion from other people.

All them annoying fucking hippies of the '60s? They became the yuppies of the '80s and the 'boomers of now. They believe what their friends believe, no core principles whatsoever other than I-me-mine. I'm sure you picture yourself as a free thinker but the fact that you can't engage in any discussion without biting the head off of whoever you're talking to should give you pause. Especially since for brown people? The '70s were a fucking massacre. The people you're shouting at are just as white as you are, have just as few brown friends and by turning them off to any discussion because they aren't even allowed to agree with you unless their hand is down your shorts, they tune the fuck out.

You're tuning me the fuck out.

You're tuning everyone the fuck out.

"no no no I refuse to have a reasonable conversation about this because some purity test that I just made up so I can continue to be mad has not been passed. Also vance buelter vance buelter vance buelter vance buelter."

why the fuck do you do this, dude? I am literally agreeing with you and trying to bring some nuance to the discussion for purposes of better understanding the dynamics and your response, invariably, is some form of "fuck you, jesus ate my parents, feel my wrath and mockery for daring to feel anything other than useless, nondenominational despair."

There were about 38 million people in Ukraine during the Maidan. About 400,000 of them protested, or 1.0%. There are about 350 million people in the United States. About 5 million of them protested during No Kings, or 1.4%. They were ostensibly protesting a military parade in Trump's honor, which the Army turned into an extremely downtempo celebration of diversity and history.

So what the fuck does "meaningful protest" mean to you?

This is likely going to be seen as splitting hairs but as the thing that I see young people doing the most is losing focus, I'ma do it anyway.

Crime is legal if you're a Republican.

Crime is legal if you're a very specific sort of Republican. You must be a MAGA Republican in the good graces of Donald Trump. If you're not, you aren't even allowed to express dissent. In a very real way, non-MAGA Republicans are at a disadvantage; Democrats can run on... anything but Republicans have to run on how often they kiss the ring. No ring kissing? Primaried out of a job.

I saw someone say that the open hypocrisy is a feature of fascism, not a bug.

Fascism and populism, yes. "They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats." Stalin notably made people choose between reality and him - the difference between Lysenkoism and vaccine denialism is one of degree, not of direction. Importantly, however, this is not Republicanism. Right now? Republicans can't practice their ideals because they're in thrall to a populist. That doesn't mean that Republican values are the same thing as populist values, it means that the Republicans have effectively become a populist party.

It's a demonstration of power, to brazenly flaunt the law.

It's either a demonstration of power or a test of power. If it succeeds, it's a demonstration. If it fails? It was a test.

This is why they are proud of building child concentration camps in the open. They know they can get away with it.

Until they can't.

Allow me to point you at Bobby Jindal.

Lemme also point you at this book:

The reason the DEA exists is that people invariably think that "crime" is up, while crime in their neighborhoods has been going down historically for generations. So if you want to be "tough on crime" (and who doesn't!) you need to be tough on crime somewhere your voters have never been. Unfortunately there comes a time where the prison camp has to be built somewhere. Florida seems like a safe bet... for now. But up until 2018 it was a swing state for frickin' decades - we ended up with Bush II because of all the fucking Nader voters in Florida.

So. Locally? What's there to like about a prison camp?

They can get away with it until they can't.

To be fair to the democrats, they have a "credibility issue" in that Democratic voters will assume Democrats have absolutely no credibility unless they absolutely run the gauntlet on every single fucking wedge issue they believe in. Republicans, on the other hand, are all in on "they're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats" because Republicans don't give the first fuck.

But to be fair to the democrats, they have so much fucking low-hanging fruit it isn't even funny. Fuckin' legalize weed. Fuckin' come up with a pathway to citizenship. Fuckin' act like you're going to do something about global warming. Shit that polls consistently at like seventy, eighty percent approval and they're down here getting dragged about prison sex changes.

And I mean look.

Every 90 seconds or so, I run a nine minute pride flag at eight feet wide by five feet tall that says "you are safe here."

I employ a physician whose specialty is gender-affirming care.

We paid extra to have a consultant go through all our documentation and ensure it was gender-neutral. "Birthing person?" Yeah, that's me. No regrets.

But I played through this day before yesterday and FFS

My kid? She's twelve. One of her good friends went she/her at the age of six. There's a kid in her class that she just learned was born a girl. I'm about this. But she's also got four classmates who have changed their pronouns at least twice in the past eight weeks. One of her friends decided she goes by "all of the above" now so she (she. there's no language construction around "all of the above") can use whatever fucking bathroom she wants.

There's a very real need for very real trans people to be accepted so they can live their lives. But for the overwhelming majority of people out there, gender and its recognition has become the flag pin of the left. They don't know, they don't care, but they can beat you over the head with it if you don't thread the needle and that threading the needle has become so fucking empty and performative that I'm getting annoyed with it.

I'm coming around to the cynical conclusion that the modern hidebound Democratic party is so heavily focused on cultural bullshit issues because it means they'll never have to actually do anything. Because the last time they did anything it was Obamacare and they got slaughtered.

Because it was the only fucking thing they'd done since blocking Robert Bork.

PS. How did we go from Parvati Holcomb to this tedious shit in six short years?

I voted for Clinton. I voted for Harris. But I'm Inside Baseball enough that I'll vote for any dipshit that looks like they know what they're doing. I frickin' supported Paul Tsongas in 1992. As a high schooler. I am not the median voter.

The median voter is sick of everything being too expensive. The Democrats had 4 years to make things cheaper and they didn't. They can argue "it's complicated" but "complicated" is not a place the median voter goes. Trump promised all this shit "on day one" while the Democrats had to deal with the fact that Biden looked fucking cooked.

The Democrats are still deeply involved in their circular firing squad. I'm hoping The Olds get the fuck out of the way in time because fucking hell anybody with an eye and an ear can tell that the gerontocracy is bad for everyone.

indeed

There's a documentary series called Laurel Canyon that I watched because... well I lived real close. It's about all the bands that lived in and around the Laurel & Topanga canyon neighborhoods in the late '60s that all slept together and fellated the same music press, starfuckers and assorted Angelino glitterarchy.

I hate every band and musician mentioned.

It was useful to me because it really drove home the point that a lot of music "fandom" is about cultural allegiance and my cultural allegiance is very much against '60s LA.

If there were more than one track it'd get old but as it's the one? I find it charming in a distinctly Jon & Vangelis sort of way. That way being "I appreciate this for about one song every couple of years."

The other bank teller once said to me "you always have the coolest shirts." Apparently showing up wearing Solar Fields & Carbon Based Lifeforms makes me cool in a very, very limited subsector of humanity. I have a few playlists for a radio show called "Full Moon Station" but I haven't committed to it yet.

New Solar Fields dropped two days ago. It is the completion of the "origins" cycle, as in, "left over errata that never made it onto an album over the past 20 years" that for the first time includes a song with (gasp) lyrics.

Back in 2010, I released the first album in what would become the Origin series, an unfolding journey rooted in unfinished ideas and half-sketched compositions from across my musical life. Some of these pieces began as simple melodies scribbled down decades ago; others were more developed but left incomplete. From the very beginning, I envisioned this as a four-part series. Now, that story finds its resolution with Origin #04.

So, what is the Origin series?

Each track is marked by the year the original idea was born. This could be as minimal as a chord progression or as structured as a partially arranged composition. The purpose has always been to honour the essence of those early sparks while bringing them to life as fully formed pieces. It's a creative dialogue across time, between who I was when the idea first came to me, and with whom I am now as I shape it into its final form.

Over the years, I’ve meticulously archived and catalogued all my creations. In 2023, I began diving deep into those archives, listening closely to fragments of forgotten moments, some just a few seconds long, others full sketches brimming with potential. From this vast collection, I selected ten tracks that felt like they were calling out to be finished, each one carrying a spark that had endured the passage of time.

Reviving these sparks was no small task. It meant digging through outdated software, exporting individual sounds and channels, and often rebuilding tracks from the ground up. It meant working not only with music, but with memory, trying to understand what I had envisioned back then, and where it could go to now. The challenge was always to preserve the raw, emotional truth of each piece, while shaping it with the care and craft I’ve grown into over the years.

This series has always been about embracing the unfinished, about revisiting the pieces that once lingered in limbo, and finally giving them the time, space, and care they needed in order to unfold into what they were always meant to become.

Throughout this journey, the music has evolved in many forms, yet each track has remained true to the core of its Origin. While the tools and techniques have changed, the heart of each piece, the emotion, the intention, the spark, has stayed intact. It’s this balance of preservation and transformation that defines the series and brings the past vividly into the present.

Now, with Origin #04, the final chapter arrives. It’s more than just an album, it’s the closing of a loop, the resolution to a creative arc that began many years ago, showing us a more vast and different perspective on time and natural cycles. Each track is a reflection of a moment in history, a glimpse into the past, a celebration of endurance, and an incentive to persevere.

The series might end here, but these sounds, shaped by time, memory, and something quieter still, will continue to move.

The guy who runs my local bank branch is another crypto asshole. He took the job because his family told him he was becoming a psychopath and his shrink told him to get a job. So now he runs a bank branch in a shitty part of town in a Safeway. True? Don't know. All crypto people are liars.

Through interesting coincidence (all crypto people are liars) he started renovating a house about the time I started renovating a house. Initially it was in Edmonds, now it's in Marysville. He's been having some issues, much as I've been having issues.

He told me yesterday that the foundation of his house was damaged to the point where he decided to tear it down. After spending $250k.

Now - all crypto people are liars. I've been doubting the veracity of his statements for a while - I grew up with enough damaged people that we just called them "pathologicals" and moved on. There are a lot more pathologicals out there than most people think. So it's whatever?

But I mean I've got hardwood going down.

I passed inspection on the big hole in the middle of the house.

Two bedrooms are painted.

We're about to button up the upstairs.

We're about to put in the kitchen cabinets.

There just aren't... that many big things left.

It sucks! There's so much uncertainty. You think YOU freaked out when we bombed Iran. I actually know something about it! And I mean I'm so jumpy now that I feel BAD when something good happens. I scored about $30k worth of Lista workstations for - wait for it - $300 because audio companies up here are dying left and right and there aren't that many audio companies left to pick over the bones of other audio companies. And it mostly just left me shell-shocked because I was just supposed to meet with an electrician on Friday because my former electrician is now working for the Port and my new electrician didn't show and then a friend mentioned his neighbor and he didn't come out for two days and then he did and he mentioned that "some audiophile company" was packing up and he was looking at workbenches and I should too and I went there and it was bloody Audiocontrol and they had like 80 employees up here and now production is moving to South Carolina or some shit and I had a plan! Didn't need $30k worth of Lista! But they're powered, they're wired, they have a 1000lb load capacity and I went and got a u-haul and needed to grab my straps and dragged my father-in-law down because he was bored and they closed at 1pm for some reason so I had to bring the u-haul back and try again in the morning and holy shit I grabbed a u-haul full of Lista and it took a damn forklift and three guys to load these things up but I got them all home and it only took two guys and furniture dolly to offload them and they just fucking disappeared into the shop but I had to stop down from a day of pulling my own trim because my normal guy's daughter is in town and also he needs to move his 36 BMWs by the end of the month or his uncle gets evicted and the end result is I scored multiple thousands of dollars of kit but it left me with fucking trauma

And I mean... I was gonna go to Home Depot, buy some adjustable height benches and rim the walls with leftover 2x4s because it was cheap and easy.

Now?

The lurking menace at the lower left of that photo is a set of cheesy toast makers, by the way. When Trump first started playing tariff games I figured buying luxury German appliances should be done before they got too expensive. And then because I'm a bottom-feeder I checked scratch'n'dent. Turns out Miele discontinued "white" about a year ago so I saved - wait for it - eight thousand dollars. Now set aside the fact that Lista was nowhere near the budget? There's... a substantial discount reflected in this photo. But the sheer uncertainty and shenanigans involved in converting imaginary money into real durable goods has been taking its toll.

One fun thing. We're almost to the point where the driveway can go back together. It was one of the first things destroyed. And in order to figure out how I want to deal with a certain section with too much asphalt, we decided a little pond would be fun. So I bought a Sunset "ponds and water gardens" book from 1968 off eBay for like $4.

Several of the photos in it are credited to the same guy who designed the landscaping of this house, the father of the guy who built it.

Felt like the universe was giving its seal of approval.