A bunch of things I’ve found on my digital strolls in the past month (which I added to my Tumblr) for your eyes / ears / brain to spend time on (as no longer active on Twitter or on LinkedIn much).
LISTEN
READ
“What’s Viagra? What are Post-it notes? What is Slack? If you answered “a medically induced erection, little slips of paper you can stick onto surfaces, and a team communications platform” (or anything along those lines), sorry bud, you bombed the quiz. Viagra is actually a failed heart medication. Post-it notes are failed industrial adhesives. And Slack is a failed video game.”
An Ode To Giving Up
“To the modern ear, illeism can sound a little silly or pompous – and we may even deride famous people who choose to talk in this way. Yet recent psychological research suggests that illeism can bring some real cognitive benefits. If we are trying to make a difficult decision, speaking about ourselves in the third person can help to neutralise the emotions that could lead our thinking astray, allowing us to find a wiser solution to our problem.”
An ancient trick to think more wisely
“The mechanics are simple. A company packages the debt for chips, servers, and power into a separate legal entity, often a joint venture, so the cost never flows through its own accounts. Take Meta’s Hyperion data centre in Louisiana. Meta and Blue Owl Capital both put equity into a separate structure that took on $27 billion in debt. Meta is the sole tenant, yet argues it does not have to record that debt, because it is not the one who must find replacement tenants. Oracle has $260 billion of future lease commitments that will eventually land on its books. Nvidia carries $119 billion in purchase obligations. Alphabet and Microsoft keep their vehicles off-book too.”
Big Tech is hiding $1.65tn in off-balance-sheet AI debt
“In psychology, cross-pollination disrupts a couple of common cognitive biases. You might notice how often you keep returning to the same assumptions. Psychologists call this familiarity bias. Familiarity bias, as its name implies, points to the fact that most of us choose what has become familiar. We take the same route to work. We solve problems the same way. Needless to say, if we don’t occasionally trip this wiring, we can miss key opportunities and limit our lives’ and works’ psychological richness.”
To Think and Feel Better, We Need People Outside Our Usual Circle | Psychology Today
“From the emails, Brockovich built a map of significant AI datacentres in the US that are either operational or under construction, overlaid with locations where community members have emailed in concerns. This open-source document is chilling: as of 24 June, 33 AI datacenters have been completed and are operational, 68 are under construction and 41 are proposed. And there had been 7,005 reports submitted through the online form, which is to say, all that is known about them is what people have seen. As a post on her Substack blog is headlined: “If data centers are so great, why are they being built in secret?””
‘We’re up against forces that have all the money in the world’: Erin Brockovich on her battle against AI datacentres | Energy | The Guardian
“The story spread around the world. The Irish Land Reform movement found new momentum. And Captain Charles Boycott achieved something few people ever do: his name became a verb.”
History Doesn’t Use Cruise Control
WATCH
EXPLORE
Play and spend some time on this browser based Airport Simulator.
Just use GPS when you’re abroad with CoMaps to explore / adventure with privacy and offline.
Nearly 4,000 castles, fortresses and palaces for you to explore in this interactive map across 131 countries: Castlemap.