ELSM - Dumb Interludes & the Smackdown of Meditations

JD Vance didn’t do that great, Mod171 delivers the late stage capitalism review of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius that we all need. Which goes double for anyone who has searched for Stoicism on TikTok after midnight. Lots of wild music like Chinese Bluegrass, Neo-Rave remixes of Four Tet, and impromptu freestyle. Pairing long form reads with short form reels, this feels like it could be a thing. So, likely, but also likely impossible. And if you need a pick me up, the World in Data has stunning progress charts for us:

JD Vance Found a Debate He Couldn’t Win (Defector) He…just didn’t seem that compelling to me. Maybe because I knew the lies he spouted, maybe because I’d never been that entranced by private equity guys, but maybe because I’m so damn tired of it all. He lied, knew he was lying, and so did everyone else. The game theory people think he did well because they believe lying is part of the game. I don’t know that it is anymore.

Book Review: Meditations (Mod171) Ethan Ludwin-Perry compares Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to philosophers bandying about fragments of Barack Obama’s notes app in the year 3868. Reading this illuminates that much of the seminal work is probably notes or journal entries from Marcus to Marcus. That it was never meant for public consumption means there’s probably an amazing conversation to be had between Aurelius and Andy Warhol.

OpenAI is A Bad Business (Ed Zitron) If anyone you know thinks OpenAI is worth their latest insane valuation, send them this. Since they won’t read it, you read it instead and invest accordingly. The financials are bad and going to get worse. Skynet could be 5 years out and they wouldn’t make it, not enough data in the world, and not enough power to consume it even if the text did exist.

The American Condition (Cooper Lund) A wonderful, if also withering piece on what the American experience has become. What we, as citizens have collectively allowed to become commonplace in this country. Best summarized by Bluesky user Pope of Chili Town: “It’s kind of crazy to think about how at any time a cop can challenge you to a game of Simon Says to the death.”

Tech Jobs Have Dried Up - and Aren’t Coming Back Soon (WSJ) The cows and crows have come home to roost. Until AI goes sideways, development, coding/programming, and the like is not the golden goose it was. The field is saturated, the conditions are bad, and once fabled job security shall never return. Not sure there is a safe industry to work in anymore, we shall see.

Fraud, So Much Fraud (Science) 25 years of fraud from the head of the National Institute on Aging. Basically, image manipulation, to the tune of a 300 page dossier on Western blots across Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s mechanisms. Just an utter nightmare, that could have been prevented by auditing this person’s work before they were elevated to NIH Head of Neuroscience in 2016. Ah well.

Yeezy does it (Sherwood) Kanye is big in China. He’s parlayed the time he spent growing up in China into a massive “homecoming” tour that’s earned $50M+ for the Chinese economy. With tens of thousands traveling to see Yeezy in China, the CCP is taking note.

An Epic Dystopia (American Prospect) EPIC sucks. Ask any of your friends and family that work in healthcare. The system is now a third rail for healthcare, forcing clinicians to spend hours doing data entry while interacting with patients, or “texting while driving” as my favorite anesthesiologist calls it.

Keep flying,tn