All-American dirtbag. Writer, performer, musician. @SFNeoFuturists. Wavering between Neutral Good and Chaotic Neutral. For banality, try @boring_clizzin.
Yay Area
Joined July 2007
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every time either SF or California proposes a tax, people are like "nooooo they're gonna leave!!!!" and every time, i'm like "babe, it's okay, you're beautiful, you just have to believe in yourself"
have you ever tried being 39 years old and sitting in a coffee shop when suddenly LCD Soundsystem's "All My Friends" comes on
Topher retweeted
The reason that is rarely articulated, for obvious reasons, but which is nonetheless true: for many this fills a void of meaning. They get be one of the decisive few at the decisive moment in the history of life. Very similar to the emotions that motivated many revolutionaries of days past. All of the sudden the small things one does—the books one reads, one’s office set up, one’s bedtime routine—take on an awful cosmic significance. The whole history of carbon life is culminating with *me* — and what I do, and the few elect here with me, matters, and matters immensely. We are the agents of history, the only people in the world doing something that truly, deeply matters. And if we all die? Well we were all going to die anyway. But this is the one way we might *not* all die. And I get to be a part of it.
I hear roughly 3 reasons people keep working at AI labs despite believing in ~10% extinction risk:
1) Techno-determinism: Someone will build ASI no matter what, and I can do it better & more safely than China/OpenAI/etc
2) Consequentialism: ASI might kill us, but it also might produce utopia/immortality/superabundance, so it's a +EV bet
3) Self-interest: I am personally having fun & getting rich working on cool tech with friends. I don't think about the macro stuff.
Notably, none of this is "I'm hyping up the risk for marketing reasons." People believe what they say, while being capable of a lot of internal dissonance / compartmentalization / self-justification.
(Personally, I think the public is better served by AI researchers talking about & creating consensus for the specific safety solutions — regulatory or otherwise — they want vs. vagueposting about extinction.)
the funeral shall be conducted according to the last tradition you reinvent yourself within before you die.
watched Toy Story 5 with someone who hadn't seen any of the sequels, so i gave her a crash course on what happened in 2 and 3, and i felt like a crazy person
Topher retweeted
Someone actually tried to sneak into a theater inside the Trojan Horse to watch THE ODYSSEY.
Topher retweeted
A little optimism after the Shame of Seattle, I wrote about the emerging USMNT fan culture and rethought a column I wrote 10 yrs ago about American fans and Europhilia. Was wrong about some stuff back then and how going to r32 w my kid helped me see that.
newyorker.com/sports/world-c…
it's cool that this is happening but hilariously bad how the actual info about how late these trains will go is buried deeeeeeeeeeep in the linked page. (basically, trains will likely depart every 30min from 12:30 to 1:40am, depending on how long ppl take to exit stadium.)
For the 9pm FIFA World Cup match on Tuesday, June 16, BART is offering fans special late-night service after midnight to get riders home.
These special event trains will not stop at all BART stations. People taking BART to the stadium and driving to park at BART must leave their cars at these key Easy Bay stations for the return trip: Bay Fair, Dublin, MacArthur, El Cerrito del Norte and Pleasant Hill. Note, Powell St Station in downtown San Francisco will be served but does not have parking.
"This significant sponsorship with DoorDash is exactly the kind of non-farebox revenue strategy that Governor Sherrill directed us to execute" 😭 njtransit.com/press-releases…
TIL there's a daily dashboard for energy demand, supply, and emissions in California with hour-by-hour numbers 🤯 caiso.com/todays-outlook
