Aspiring Renaissance Man. Polytropic. Philosophy & physiology.
Mount Vesuvius
Joined January 2020
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A while ago, I wrote a beginner-friendly intro to Peat's work and many people found it helpful.
I still get messages about it regularly.
Link is in my profile if you want to give it a read.
The bad news is my health has deteriorated significantly this year as I've worked (and stressed) more than I ever have before.
The good news is I just bought a house.
I bet lots of Real Men™ mocking these guys would be perfectly fine if they were instead listening to Lounge Jazz™, Smoking Cigars™ & Drinking Cold Beer™... when in fact both scenarios are essentially the same. I feel for them. One cannot LARP oneself out of the FagWorld.
The epitome of this is eugenics btw.
Okay. I’ll take the bait.
I went to work for Peter in 2013 with opposite politics.
He sat me down right at the beginning.
PETER: “I don’t want the (Thiel) Foundation to do good that the market can do. That is the job of the market. Likewise, I don’t want to do the good work that is seen as good. That work can be done by people richer, weaker and more needy of approval than we are. I want us to do only the work that is *deeply* good but somehow confused for being evil, because that is the work of the courageous and the strong. We strive to be both and that is where a small foundation can make the greatest positive difference. Go look for such good and let’s do that. But remember. Good has TWO different antonyms. What is “bad work”? It could be seen as shoddy work. Or it could be seen as evil work. And we can’t do shoddy work. Why? Because evil that isn’t competent never gets to be evil. It’s just pathetic. So we have to be exceptionally competent at the good work which we do to make sure it is always confused for evil.”
I thought it totally logical. So that’s the argument. And that’s classic Peter.
This is an old idea of his. And now you know.
Yago | Impero retweeted
One year in the making: semantic search engine.
6,258 documents. 202,826 passages. 490 interviews with audio synced to the timestamp. 481 books. 2,650 Haidut posts. 356 email Q&As.
Hybrid keyword + semantic + Ask.
Filter to Ray’s own words. Click a hit, play that second.
"It's Mexican Coke. It's really good."
>ChatGPeaty confirmed
This is Sam Altman at 25 years old, pitching Loopt to a person in a diner
It’s strange to watch now because he runs one of the most influential companies in the world
The app was a location-sharing app but nobody thinks about it when they think of Sam
It got me wondering how many founders are probably in their Loopt era rn?
The company they’re working on may not be the one they become known for
It might just be the company that teaches them how to sell, hire, raise money, and keep going long enough to find "it"
But at the time, it looks like a kid trying to explain a weird location app to a stranger over lunch
In the summer we enjoy watermelon with feta cheese, EVOO, honey and Maldon salt. Squeeze of lemon, too.
Watched Nolan's Odyssey. Some quick thoughts:
- Unexpectedly for Nolan, the film has no memorable score. I left the cinema unable to remember a single melody. It's a shame, especially given that one of the earlier trailers featured a promising one.
- Some of the harder-to-pull-off scenes were surprisingly good. I liked the disfigured Cyclops and found his screeches haunting. I particularly enjoyed how Circe transformed Odysseus' men into pigs. And not letting us hear the sirens was the right choice.
- Odysseus killing the suitors was probably the most disappointing scene. The fighting felt clumsy, slow, cheap. Underwhelming after a 3h build up.
- I couldn't care less about armors, columns, etc. being "unrealistic". The film has its own design language, as is to be expected. Agamemnon as a sort of giant stallion was an odd choice but it conveyed his power. The "grey-washing" also wasn't as bad as some say.
- Casting was obviously biased and often ridiculous. I would have loved to see more grand, beautiful people, rejoicing in their strength. You never get the sense that anyone is a force of nature. Profoundly un-Homeric.
- Nowhere is this clearer than in Odysseus, who is guilt-ridden and exhausted. There is no Homeric pride in him. No great hubris. He blames his trickery for unleashing 10 years of rage onto Troy and effectively suffers from PTSD. Yet another round of post-WWII Oppenheimer-y "what have I done"-ness. This is my biggest grievance.
- You would think that given how they mention "Zeus' law" (xenia) every other minute, they would remind the viewer that the Trojans broke it at Sparta by taking Helen. Or that it doesn't really apply to a war setting. Or that the war itself was sanctioned by the gods. They never do.
Overall, rather than trying to understand Homer on his own terms, the film asks Homer to conform to ours. In that sense, it is predictably disappointing. As a piece of entertainment, though, it is actually enjoyable.
In what little spare time I have lately, I'm building a World Literacy Anki deck w/ Claude. It pulls from the CIA Factbook, World Bank, IMF, etc. to make a learnable library of knowledge in geography, geopolitics, history, finance... (+ a mirrored Obsidian vault). It's great fun.
I like this post because it reflects one core feature of leftism: namely, that the world should adapt to ME—and in particular to my shortcomings—lest it be branded as shameful.
sorry you’ll never convince me that the “lateness is a moral failing” isn’t rooted in colonization and capitalism, it’s CONTROL!!! and I get we live in a society blah blah blah but if it’s ur friends you know is always late tell them an earlier time or whatever but acting like it’s a moral failing is so puritanical and silly sometimes you just got to accept people as they are
"Perfect valor is to do without witnesses what one would do before all the world", said La Rochefoucauld.
Today I learned Brad Pitt was 40 years old when filming Troy. It's not too late for you to get better.
Close to where I live is a coffee place that a lucid 93-year-old visits several times a day, every single day. She famously orders three orange juices and one or two coffees each time. Total Peaty victory.
