Originally published on Tugboat Today
Yosemite, August 2025
There were many responses to the idea from Citrini research that AI will put Uber and DoorDash out of business business, but this one really landed. On a separate hot topic, as Tim Lee notes, this is a great demonstration of the huge gap between “AI Companies will go bankrupt” and “Investors in AI at high valuations may never make their money back”. Uber certainly isn’t bankrupt, but some investors didn’t make as much money as they’d hoped.
It’s the capitol city of the Maldives, and wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many apartments on such a small island. Very cool.
I wonder how many of the pre-2020 traffic enforcement was speeding tickets, but it’s good that there’s a way by which some enforcement will occur now.
Exactly as Silicon Valley predicted.
This was definitely news to me!
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Memes of Marco Rubio are funny, but they also show him amassing power, unlike memes of Vance, which make him look stupid. Anyway, is he going to be the new ayatollah? Is he going to be in charge of Anthropic? (src)(cached)
– Are you being driven crazy by the MacOS ‘Update to Tahoe’ reminders, but you don’t want to update? Daring Fireball has instructions on how to disable it. (src)
– Paul Graham once wrote that Sam Altman could be “parachuted into an island full of cannibals and come back in 5 years and he’d be the king.” Given that Altman just closed the largest funding round in history at a $730B valuation while simultaneously cutting a deal with the Pentagon that simultaneously attempts to destroy his main rival, the metaphor is holding up pretty well. (src)(cached)
– 20% of those who voted for Trump in 2024 now regret their vote, but even more wild is that like 4% now claim they didn’t vote for him at all, based on polling (cached) from The Argument. (src)(cached)
– Election of Republican DAs seems to lead to reduced rates of gun deaths. But interestingly, this is at least partially attributable to them prosecuting illegal gun possession at a higher rate. (src)(cached)
– Surprised to learn that in this new Claude Code era, job postings in the software industry are climbing. My first thought is Jevon’s Paradox… but probably too soon to tell. (src)(cached)
– Canada has made it easier to get assisted suicide than it is to get experimental treatments. If someone qualifies for MAID, where the chance of death is 100%, they should probably also qualify for experimental treatments! (src)(cached)
– If you heard about the Citrini research note with the counter-intuitive claim that US could have a recession caused by productivity that’s too high, you might be interested to hear that their stat that the top 10% of earners are responsible for half of consumer spending is totally false. (src)(cached)
– Fun idea for a ‘bullshit benchmark’ for LLMs: ask them a totally nonsensical question, find out whether they accept it as a valid question or challenge the premisis. “If my restaurant changes linen suppliers, how will that impact the texture of our bechamel sauce”. A good response will say that these are unrelated, a bad response will make a helpful checklist of to work through to ensure the quality of your bechamel sauce holds up during this linen supplier transition. There’s a whole site where you can read through examples. The top 9 spots in the leaderboard are all Claude variants. (src)(cached)
– Because random workplace inspections are random, we can use them for an RCT to show that they causally reduce injuries. (src)(cached)
– New nose spray developed that blocks transmission of a ton of pathogens, basically puts respiratory immune cells on high alert. Animal trials show a 100x reduction in viruses getting through the lungs. Seems pretty good! (src)(cached)
– Wild stat: Canada’s per capita GDP is now lower than Alabama’s. Mostly it’s because Alabama makes it easier and more predictable to build things quickly. Canadian policymakers basically already understand all of this, but there’s no urgency to act. On other metrics (Gini coefficient, life expectancy), Canada is still doing better of course. (src)
– In medicine, aviation, childcare, and owning guns, negligence can lead quickly to jail time. But not driving. Seems bad! (src)(cached)
– Gaza Ministry of Health estimates for direct violent deaths from the war appear to have been an undercount. (src)(cached)
– Sweden was angry about the Canadian curling team touching the stone later than is allowed, they set up a sting to catch them. (src)(cached)
– It’s a bit out of date now, but as long as salience of foreign policy is low, politicians can get away with doing things the public doesn’t like. Of course, if salience becomes high that can change. (src)(cached)