I was talking to a younger American friend last night and realized that he had no idea how extremely poor China was made under Mao's socialism/communism. My father was a teacher/professor in a community college and my mother was a clerk in a national bank. Those were good jobs in 1970s. I grew up middle-class in the capital city of a big province, where my family had a one bedroom apartment to ourselves. Most other families had to share (it was extremely commonplace back then for two families to share one room, they'd put up a barrier in between them) an apartment allocated by the government because housing was entirely government-managed. But when I say "apartment", I meant a tiny two-room place with nothing but cement floor, walls and ceiling. "Kitchen" was a tiny space with a gas stove (we were lucky to have that because we lived in the center of the city, where the government started "testing" installation of gas stoves in late 1970s. Most other families that I grew up with had to burn coal) and a water faucet. "Bathroom" was literally a stinky hole on the ground outside, shared by all four families living on the same floor. We had never even heard of carpets, hard-wood floors, or indoor plumbing. The only electronics we had was a radio and a cassette tape recorder. I had never seen a thick spring mattress until I was an adult. Our "mattress" was hand-sewed stuffed with cotton. I had never heard of shampoo or conditioner until I was in middle-school in late 1980s. Nor dish soap, or body wash, or body lotion, or ANY of the modern conveniences that we take for granted today. But we were already better-off than most of our neighbors and I thought we were the richer people on this earth. I thought the houses and apartments that I've lived in the US now, only existed in fairytales and storybooks. Only when China further restored capitalism in early 1990s - after Deng Xiaoping's famous "cat" speech in his southern tour to Canton in 1992 that determined an economic policy that allowed more private entrepreneurship and welcomed massive Western investments - did China's economy really take off, and private citizens' lives improved rapidly. Young people born in the 1990s in major cities never had to suffer squatting over a stinky hole to do business. Which is also why the younger generation is easier to manipulate by CCP's indoctrination, as they did not see the poverty brought about by a government planned economy. Just wanted to share this today so we know what kind of life that socialism - by its classical definition, government planned economy - brings about. We're not talking about just a public library or national parks. Socialism means no private business at all, and the result is ALWAYS extreme poverty - the kind that Americans can't even begin to imagine. Be careful what you wish for.

Adam Brody talks to GQ about the genocide in Palestine: “Put me down as thinking it’s a genocide. Put me down as wanting a free Palestine. It’s awful that it’s taken so much death and misery, but it does feel like it’s reaching a breaking point that it should have a while ago.” (gq.com/story/knock-knock-its…)

I have two firm beliefs about an AI future where robots are better, faster, and cheaper at nearly every form of work: 1. When robots do all the real jobs, humans will revert to human-only status games. Money may become abundant, but status will remain scarce and zero-sum. We’ll keep competing for it, and we’ll keep stack-ranking society by who has more. 2. If you’re already living above Maslow’s second tier, you’ve probably been doing this for most of your career. Almost everything you’re aggressively running toward isn’t a need. It’s a want, usually a memetic desire inherited from someone else playing a status game.

I understand how, looking at today’s LLMs, people might think the only way we'd achieve NS is by using Levent’s/Tristan’s prompts. But I hope this plot conveys the model used is a huge step up from today’s LLMs. Nobody looked at Levent’s/Tristan’s prompts. That’d be insane.

From a local Facebook group: "I visited the Santa Monica Central Library after a while avoiding the place, and I was shocked by the state of it. It smells — literally — and it's functioning as a shelter. Tables that used to sit near the windows are gone; now there's just a cluster of tables pushed together where people sleep. I saw someone sleeping on the floor, others under their coats, everyone surrounded by suitcases and belongings. Librarias and security do nothing about it. Upstairs, there's now a small "workspace" where you have to sign up and get assigned a table - meaning the people who actually want to read, study, or work are being funneled into a tiny room..." It was a beautiful facility when it opened. Whole post here: facebook.com/groups/18885836…

FIRE won a huge First Amendment victory today. And before anyone mischaracterizes it: This ruling does NOT say the government must admit anyone, issue anyone a visa, or grant anyone citizenship. It says that once a person is lawfully here, the government cannot deport them because they engaged in protected speech. The government cannot tell a legal immigrant: An American is free to say this, but if you say it, you’re out. That’s the principle we sued to defend. And today we won.

Make a band bigger. I’ll go first: Maroon 8.