Three, count 'em, THREE series ran this past weekend.
MotoGP in Germany at the Sachsenring where Marc Marquez reclaimed his crown as King of the Ring in a race fraught with crashes.
Qualifying 2 occurred in the rain and any time grip is low is a time when Marc Marquez shines. Zarco was also able to be competitive in these circumstances and made his medium wet tire work for a second place, Bezecchi 3rd, Morbidelli 4th (out with injury after a high velocity wreck in the sprint), Acosta 5th, Alex Marquez finished out the second row riding with a broken pinky finger.
The sprint took place in rainy conditions and Marc Marquez absolutely flew away from the line. In fact, he flew away so well that he blew his braking marker and was fifth place at the end of turn one. He would quickly work his way through most of the pack and end up behind Bez who had taken the lead. Marc demonstrated great patience and shrewdness with consideration to his championship concerns as he waited until a clear shot on the last lap to pass Bez and secure the win. Quartararo was a surprise showing coming up from seventh on the grid to be on the podium in a sprint for the first time in years. Alex Marquez finished down two positions from his start to end in eighth.
Where was Bagnaia in the sprint? P-Nowhere in a poor wet condition showing, down out of the points in 12th!
The grand prix proper occurred in much fairer weather with clouds overhead and a dry track underneath. This time Marc simply took off from the pole, didn't make a mistake, and sailed to victory over thirty laps. A great deal of crashes and shuffling put Alex Marquez in a familiar second place 7 seconds behind big brother. Pecco Bagnaia, in an amazing turn of events, worked his way to third place as Acosta, Digiantonnio, Bezecchi, and all crashed ahead of him. Only 10 riders would even see the checkered flag!
Marc has a firm command in terms of points lead and, while we can't expect such dominating performances at less favored tracks, certainly is on pace to take the title.
Joan Mir, poor soul, experienced another DNF as Ai Ogura lost the front and took out Mir ahead of him. This after Mir was providing one of his strongest performances this year.
I’m not a customer for a $350k anything at the moment, but if I were I’d wish it to be a worthy Cadillac over a Bentley or Rolls, mostly because I want the best car in the world to be American.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the unfortunately named, styled, and executed Celestiq is worthy.
Even if i had the money to throw away, i dont think i could do 300k on a car. I could be tempted by a ferrari but not the hoops id have to jump through for ownership.
You're right, but it's a shame that you're right. There should be a maximum Cadillac coupe/sedan with 500+ horsepower and an almost barbarically opulent options sheet, something that makes the latest offerings from BMW look like the try-hard thin squeezings they are.
i really wanted a set of those sabre wheels for a 49 mercury lead sled project but i cant even find out how much they weigh (theyre a two peice aluminum and steel wheel)
Roadster Shop does some great builds. I like the fins on the 60 better than the 59.
Chip Foose has a nice build like this on a 63 Eldorado. Great fins. It has a modern Cadillac V engine. I’m not sure which one. Great part is, the owner actually drives it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIRVSycu8pc
I'd have the same year's Thunderbird over anything Cadillac has ever built, other than a six-speed CTS-V wagon, but I applaud your good taste nonetheless.
They had a full v12 Caddy ready to go for about half that price maybe 20 years ago. Everyone was on board. I specifically remember friends at GM being sad that they just orphaned it because "there can't be a Caddy that expensive".
0-“Therefore, the “finance bros” are now the male equivalent of supermodels…”
Finally, some recognition! Locations of Streetgreen, Slopt, Cava, etc. in large cities *are* full of pallid men wearing vests and light blue dress shirts at lunchtime, after all.
1-Non Sequitur Alert! 🚨
“I’ve been having some lively conversations with our own Sherman McCoy about the future of “AI”. He points out that there is a trillion-dollar economic engine behind the idea and that therefore it is going to “succeed” whether it has any use or not. If enough investors want something to happen, it doesn’t really matter what the public thinks. The days of America just flat-out refusing something like the videodisc player or Digital Audio Tape are long gone. Nowadays everything is a service and that service can be adjusted to meet the needs of the investors.
The alert reader will point out that we are in the process of seeing just such a broad-scale refusal: to wit, the EV.”
ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product, ever, in history. The likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are moving heaven and earth to catch up with Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. How are consumers “paying” for the product today? For the most part - at present - they are paying with their attention, which is being diverted away from Google Search, social media, etc. In the future, their attention will be monetized with ads and affiliate links.
For a preview, ask yourself why Sam hired Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to be his Sheryl Sandberg; moreover, look at her background, particularly her experience at Meta and her presence on the Shopify Board (look at the entire Shopify Board, in fact).
2-Hannah Elliot clowned on the Celestiq key in a recent Bloomberg piece. Legacy American OEMs CANNOT execute on details. Customers of $300K+ cars care about details.
It was worth $300BN before the Jony Ive acquihire; easy pathway to a medium term $10TN valuation if they successfully take a bite out of MSFT, Apple, Meta, Alphabet, etc. Ultimate meme stock post-IPO: why own Bitcoin or TSLA when you can hedge against job loss?
Separately Anthropic raised at ~$60BN recently and is in talks to raise north of $100BN, as of today. At same multiples, OpenAI is well north of $500BN post-money on next raise.
Recent comment about AI from the street: AI is great for the stock market and bad for jobs. Margins at Amazon, Salesforce, etc will only increase over time.
"ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product, ever, in history."
Don't consumer products involve actual commerce, you know, money changing hands?
Also, most consumer products work at least 80% of the time. I haven't yet used an AI app, including ChatGPT that didn't have to be corrected, every time.
I don't need software to make an assumption based on a question I asked three weeks ago or even three minutes ago.
Do any of the captains of "industry" with which you do business and fraternize actually make tangible goods?
-OpenAI achieved $10BN of ARR recently, and had previously projected $12.7BN for ‘25; they will almost certainly exceed that by a substantial margin. Moreover, inference costs are falling off a cliff. Imagine the degree to which revenue multiples for what is potentially the greatest asset class in history will expand once Trump gets his wish, one way or another, for lower short rates.
-Models are improving essentially constantly, particularly the frontier models. Clearly, however, approx one billion people (and counting!) are happy to use probabilistic models more and more.
-Why would a businessperson with finite time and bandwidth focus their efforts on “tangible” businesses when they could instead target opportunities that benefit from the scale and breadth of technology? Like, oh, banking, payments, adult content, AI, etc. instead of peddling electric harmonicas?
Because none of those things like, oh, banking, payments, and porn for guys in the finance industry who can't deal with actual women in real life, require tangible technologies, like servers and routers, correct?
My grandfather was a literal junkman. He supported a wife, five daughters, and two nephews peddling things that people threw away. I don't look down on peddlers. If I had to sell my embroidery door-to-door to survive, I would.
I have no illusions about getting rich off of the Harmonicaster. My goal is for it to become accepted in the harmonica community. I'm happy with selling one every week or too. It has a decent margin and there's money in my PayPal account. With my time management and organizational skills, I probably couldn't handle much more than that. I got a couple of orders in the past week and I'm waiting on the next batch of pickups. So far, the customers are happy, with some buying additional harps in other keys. Zero complaints. I've gotten a couple of very positive reviews and an Emmy and Grammy nominated musician told me that it sounds great.
I have, however, designed it to be mass produced, with processes friendly to how harmonicas are currently factory-made, so if it's successful enough to attract possible licensing or selling the idea, it can be scaled up. If I want to expand production myself, I can set up a print farm. Because I don't want money tied up in tooling in case I need to make changes, a print farm makes more sense for intermediate quantities than injection molds.
It's not just about money. There are all sorts of personal benefits. It's about creating something that actually works and then improving it.
I get a kick out of how all the parts, which I personally designed (with some help from Jeff Lace at Lace Music, and a suggestion from world class harmonica player and inventor Brendan Power) go together, but also can be disassembled for repairs.
The project has given me access to many of the world's greatest harmonica players, who have been gracious with their opinions, even if some of them have been negative, because genuine criticism is how I've improved things. I gave John Popper, of Blues Traveler, a unit last fall and when the band was in town last week he was excited to get one with the latest upgrades. It was kind of fun to tell security, "I'm with the band."
Last night I heard a 16 year old harmonica prodigy play Voodoo Child on my gizmo. I'm good with words but it's hard for me to articulate just how cool it is to hear a talented musician make music with something I made. It's something I've discussed with some pretty notable people in the music instrument industry. I heard a great story about Jeff Beck almost getting turned away from playing at a private showcase because his name wasn't on a list. Because of the Harmonicaster I'm probably less than two degrees of separation from just about everyone notable for playing rock or blues.
When I tell people that I invented an electric harmonica, they're actually interested in it and most musicians think it's really cool. I've gotten help from respected companies like Seydel, the oldest harmonica company in the world, and Lace, who have made pickups for guys named Clapton, Page, Townshend, and Beck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE9qyyhdD2U
I was telling a lady friend at lunch yesterday that the best part of any job is getting paid, and that turning a profit on something makes you feel good, but money isn't everything.
The switches, routers and other such things are not where the value accrues. This is where the value originates. Any product is valuable only in terms of the utility it provides to those who purchase it. Those people who make their living by playing dice with the fortunes of men who build real things do not belong in the conversations of the latter.
Speaking of switches, routers, etc., the limiting factor of AI may turn out to be the massive data centres needed to support it, with their concomitant demands for water and especially power. Note, there would not be a corresponding increase in jobs.
2. Soon after that article was posted I became aware of a problem with pitch on some of the reeds, which eventually lead to two complete redesigns.
3. I spent a couple of years working on a version with active electronics to control sustain, which turned out to be a dead end. I ended up using small foam dampeners on the reeds. They do the job and don't affect playability or pitch.
4. I didn't start actively selling them until last year, once I was sure that I had the design more or less down. I didn't even have a website up. After the bankruptcy and closing of the Sam Ash chain, the continued financial issues at Guitar Center, and the fact that the two largest online companies in the music instrument space, Sweetwater here in the U.S. and Thomann in Europe, generally don't break out new brands, plus my own organizational shortcomings, I've decided to sell direct to customers and manufacture to order.
>ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product, ever, in history.
How are you defining this? Daily active users..? I hadn't thought about the gulf between free vs paid users until JB quoted that above. If LLMs are as life-changing as their rabid advocates claim, why *aren't* people slamming down the $300 Grok Pro and $200 OpenAI Pro subscriptions? This excellent tome (https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77bwm) demonstrates the contrast with running water, electricity, and the automobile.
tldr: LLMs make experienced devs (🙋♂️) on codebases they know very well _feel_ more productive, but ultimately spend more time than just typing it out themselves. And that's before Grok 4 came out, which the last few times I used needed 40s, 240s, and a brain-melting 291s to generate output. No wonder the LLM personalities on Hacker News talk about vacuuming the kids' rooms while their "agents" are busy "working."
[My CEO is obsessed with LLMs, so I have basic subscriptions to all the main LLMs. Only 1/17 of my developers at my previous company paid for, or asked for, an LLM subscription.]
-Jack and all the other “financial analysts” said “OMG there’s no revenue; this is like, totally a Silicon Valley grift”
-Then I pointed out that there is already $10BN of ARR and conservative projections for $12.7BN for FY ‘25
-The revenue comes from a small percentage of users who are willing to pay, which is actually fine for many reasons:
(1) Inference costs declining
(2) Older models (and chips) will suffice for many “consumer” level asks (cheaper still)
(3) As more and more consumers spend time with the product, they’ll begin to use it more and more and more (usage only goes up, and it will really accelerate when it becomes even cheaper)
(4) All those eyeballs guarantee that OpenAI will sell ads against the attention (WHY is Zuck so pressed? WHY did Fidji Simo give up being the CEO of a public company to go work as a C suite exec at a private startup?
"In a world where 'everything is political', why be surprised when women want to pre-screen your voting preferences before the first date?"
EXACTLY this happened to me earlier this year... long story short, met a pretty cute, somewhat younger girl in public (not online)... we hit it off pretty quickly, so I asked for her number. We texted about fun stuff for a while... she was athletic and outdoorsy... had just bought her first home...
...and then it came: "Can I ask where you lean politically? I know it's not fun to talk about but it's important to me that my partner and I share the same values"
And that was it. I knew it was never going to happen. I responded with something like, "if you're asking, then you probably already know"... to be fair, the ensuing back and forth was civil, no one got mad or threatened to call the police. But there zero chemistry afterwards, and we never talked again.
Hahaha... playing pretend progressive to crush guts has crossed my mind, but the problem is I just can't pull it off... trying to talk enthusiastically about how "awesome Bernie Sanders is" would get me busted
The answer is Libertarian. Hot left wing wacko babes aren’t smart enough to know what Libertarians stand for (or even what the right stands for, but they know they are told to hate the right). I don’t mean this as a slam against hot left wing wacko babes, but I’ve never met anyone on the left who can accurately explain basic conservative theory to me, while I can explain wacko left theory better than almost anyone.
But in this case, she had a great, curvy and athletic figure but an average face. Not ugly at all, just average. She was reasonably intelligent in our political exchange, and actually conceded points gracefully when it was something she knew I was right about... I AM a libertarian, but the hatred of Trump was very real for her. I got the feeling that I could have been a card-carrying member of the RNC, DNC, DSA, Proud Boys or Antifa, and as long as I hated Trump, there would have been a political truce and a chance for a connection...
I’m not saying be a libertarian, but if you are faced with someone shallow enough to question your political bonafides, claim libertarian and see what they do.
Well that is my point. The left wing female true believers are 1s and 2s. The left wing babes, the 8s, 9s, and 10s, are liberals on abortion and hate Trump, but I doubt they are socialists since somewhere in their brains they know they have a great life thanks to some combination of their own efforts and (just guessing here) well to-do parents who could send them to the Ivy Leagues.
I suppose I qualify as a small-L libertarian, but my first-date strategy tends towards extremism in everything and it works damned well. Figure out your position on all the major issues of the day("I don't know enough about it to have a valid opinion" is a workable position if you get stumped) and then stick to your guns. Don't be a douchebag, but argue more like Chuck Heston than Carl Sagan.
“Be yourself” should always be an option, I think the trick is getting through the first date screening so you can actually meet someone and they can really meet you. Ultimately most people are not that political, they may vote every 4 years, but outside of a few key issues most people really don’t follow politics. And you have to allow for growth a maturity. The ol’ saying if you aren’t a liberal by 18 you don’t have a heart, and if you aren’t conservative by 35 you don’t have a brain seems to mirror real life- people do become more conservative as they age because they have assets and kids and property, so big government socialism is a lot less attractive.
I used to live in a rich Chicago suburb where the first question from all the other guys was “what do you do”, which I detest and never ask anyone.
Answers were usually along these lines. Easy to guess the questions I was asked:
-I work downtown.
-In a tall building.
-On LaSalle Street
-For a corporation.
-One of the big ones.
-A bank.
-One of the big banks.
I have used all these responses and really never gave out the information my interrogators wanted, to their visible frustration.
They always ended with something like “but what is your exact job” and I always answered with “paper shuffler” which was actually true. I might also follow up with the generic “I look at screens all day.”
Nobody in my neighborhood knew exactly what I did, even though I could make my job sound really good. But this was way more fun.
I went on a few dates with a Doctor (md) and she kept wanting to talk politics. "I don't talk politics on dates" Which was really "I don't talk politics with women" they take it too personally. I don't even talk politics with my wife and she mostly mirrors mine although she's a bit more neocon than I am.
If you’re looking for long term committment, or an exclusive relationship, you probably did the right thing.
But even if you’re letting a girl down softly you can still agree and amplify on the way out the door. “Oh I filed for residency in New York so I could vote for Mamdami. He’s a good start but we’ll probably need someone more like Stalin to really get our country on a the right track.”
Also, in the olden days, men used to just force their woman to accept their politics.
Perhaps that ship has sailed?
Wondering if it would be worth trying to convert a woman from F/G/R politics to reality politics in 2025. There aren’t that many super cuties out in Obesityworld anymore
hate fucking liberal college students got me through covid. the key is to never back down without letting it devolve into a shouting match. if you're a real right winger and not a RINO you'll find more common ground with an actual leftist than you'd expect, and then she'll let you try the back door.
Personally, I found it easier to A&A rather than risk a shouting match... hard to turn off the part of the brain that is legalistic and wishes to be right, easier to stay in the fertile illogic of female brain by just spouting nonsense. "What are you asking? Im part of the team campaigning to get Mamdami on the next presidential ballot."
I read somewhere recently that men seem to be leaning more to the right, and women seem to be leaning more towards the left. If, for argument's sake, we accept that as a valid proposition, I wonder what that does to the future of our society. Glad I'm married to a conservative lady.
From what ive seen, men are oretty much slightly right like weve always been. Women have taken a sharp left turn. I suspect because there are so many single ladies out there. Married women drift right
There was scene on the Norm MacDonald show where he’s at the bar and Courtney Thorne-Smith starts talking to him and he can’t believe it. In fact, he at first looks around as if she’s talking to someone behind him.
She starts coming on to him and he finally says “I have to ask you something.”
“You married?” She says no.
“Dating anyone?” She says no.
“Divorced?” She says no.
Then, in classic Norm fashion he says “Wow, you must be really annoying!”
"Salad stealing" doesn't seem especially nefarious or really anything new.
I'm guessing most of us have had an interested women ask us to help out with a minor automotive issue or a noisy dishwasher or something like that. This sounds like the urban equivalent.
I once was devastatingly asked by a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma “hey you’re in the computer club, right?” Uh, no, I’m not. I’ll go home and cry myself to sleep now.
“Real” finance bros have a sufficient dinner stipend that they can order two millennial slop bowls for dinner - one for that night’s dinner and another for lunch the next day.
Hard no. Salads, like grilled cheese sandwiches, souffles, slaw, or fish tacos, are to be consumed immediately upon preparation. Anyone who disagrees wtih me is literally Hitler.
Sherman may end up being technically correct in the long term because of the nature of AI being a solution looking for problems that may not exist..
But it's inherently based on fraud when for extracting reasons every phone, every device has to have an AI surcharge built into it by force so that these companies can continue the 'trillion dollar investment' that Sherman seems to be so proud of.
I'm paying more for everything, my phone, my electricity, my car and this is after all my data and communication is being hoovered up with or without my consent and used for 'training'.
Whether it ends up being successful at SOMETHING remains to be seen, and whether that benefits society at all, but it's based on extraction, extortion and theft. The fact that the Mafia has bet big on crime doesn't make it stop being crime.
I’m indifferent as to the amount invested into AI thus far, and committed for the future. What I told him is that there is a multi-trillion dollar wealth creation opportunity (potentially tens of trillions of dollars), which means that the party - being thrown by and for the wealthiest, most influential people in the world - will not be ending any time soon.
What is AI successful at thus far? Taking eyeballs away from the legacy competition. Pretty valuable!
I fully understand your point of view, and its smart. Its also unethical from where I’m sitting.
Its no different to betting on the horse you know is doped up and won’t be subject to the same scrutiny, while gleefully waiting for the others’ failure.
You're aware of where the power centers are, and that is shrewd from a personal standpoint. I’m saying the power was obtained and continues to be wielded in furtherance of strip mining ordinary people.
Maybe you're self centered so you don't get it from the perspective of people whose IP has already been stolen.
Think about anyone that did anything intellectual and wrote a book or a song or shared something on the Internet.
You can line up at the feeding trough to get yours though, pretending the people that were ground up to create the feed could ‘opt out ‘ if they wanted to.
On the contrary, I had an idea a few months ago for a biz that would, essentially, put up a tollbooth around new content / IP, and I socialized it extensively with several IP lawyers I know through another venture.
There are a few businesses that are competing for that space, but the Cloudflare announcement kills my idea (and the competition) dead, in my view. So I’ve only lost time on that front.
Separately, however, the recent rulings in favor of Meta and Anthropic make it clear that the courts are on the side of LLMs, at least for now. And obviously the Trump DOJ will support LLMs, too.
Your last paragraph confirms my point. You only care about which side of the transaction you get to make money on. Even if it's bad side that destroys lives.
in 2016 i tried to ditch my iphone for an LG envy 2 in protest of constant connectivity and instead i wound up being glued to my laptop so i didnt get fired for being unavailable. whether people admit it or not the same is going to happen with AI when you get a workload of three people and you try to get it done without a force multiplier. eventually there will be a development that is "required" that forces me out of financial services, but it won't be (at least this generation) of AI.
I generally agree with many (and am entertained by the other) comments that you make but I’m not sure about this one.
The fraud of vacuuming peoples data and using for training, yes it’s theft—that’s inarguable. But to say AI hasn’t done or been used to do interesting things yet seems overly cynical. It has already helped me with various everyday workflows saving hours per week, various AI apps are actually functional and helpful, and other domains lie real possibilities: probably AI can be a better radiologist, can be a massively helpful tool for forensic accountants, and the real opportunities lie just over the horizon. Use your imagination.
Of course, the best AI use case is scanning of 100% of global communications and flagging dissidents to the police for imprisonment, exile or execution. That’s the real goal here. With enough compute, prison planet seems achievable.
AI absolutely can be used to be a better radiologist, but that's not what is being pursued.
What is being pursued is images girls with 5 tits and 3 dicks.
I did say it will work, but to hoover EVERY resource up in a 'throw everything at the wall and declare victory when something sticks ' approach us trash. Nobody was asked, nobody voted for this shit, it was usurped through back door dealings and corruption.
Re the Bezel site, I must admit I'm surprised that 10 percent of the Omegas they receive for sale are fake. One thing I like about Omega is that you can just buy almost any of their watches on their website and they'll just ship it to you. Try that with a Rolex! Sure you're paying MSRP, but almost all of their watches are available immediately. I've had to wait for a couple to become available on their website (like my recent white-dial Moonwatch), but for only a few months. I guess some watch buyers are cheap bastards and won't pay MSRP or close to it, so they're looking for a deal and might bite on a fake Omega.
I've got a couple of Rolexes, but bought them new in person from authorized dealers, so I definitely agree with your advice here. It is sad that some many people that don't know watches just want a Rolex. Status! I blame Instagram. I know a couple of young people that just had to have Rolexes. One bought an Oyster Perpetual at a Rolex authorized dealer while the other overpaid at a grey market store. After two or three months, they stopped wearing the watches because they couldn't be bothered to wind them or set them. Although occasionally one of them wears the Rolex without winding it or setting it. But he's flashing a Rolex on his wrist!
It definitely varies by model. I would imagine it also varies by location (or more accurately the sales volume at a particular store). Some Rolex models are pretty easy to get. For example, I had no problem getting exactly the Datejust my girlfriend wanted in just a couple of months. As I’m sure you know, forget that steel Daytona though.
I know that the very fact that I’m asking this might get me banished to the outer ACF darkness, where there will be weeping, gnashing of teeth, and prohibition from future First Principles attendance, but does Rolex sell anything with a quartz movement?
Yes, this just shows my horological ineptitude!
(::Dodges rotten fruit and mace of the pummeling variety!::)
When you say "winder," are you referring to one of those devices that spin a watch around slowly to keep an automatic watch movement wound? If so, I'd say you don't need it. It's easy to just wind the watch manually whenever you decide to wear it. I Iike my toys as much as the next guy, but powered watch winders always struck me as kinda silly.
If it is "absolutely necessary" for a Grand Seiko GMT, they better include one with every purchase!
If you're saying that it takes more time to set a GMT watch when it's stopped, compared to a non-GMT watch, I'd agree. Beyond adjusting the date, hours, minutes, and seconds, you've got to set the GMT hand. I've got three GMT watches, and two of them I wind manually each morning. That keeps them running pretty accurately, and I don't have to worry about the date and GMT hand settings getting off. The third one doesn't get worn as often, so I do have to manually set the GMT and date settings when I decide to wear it, but I've done it enough that it's no big deal.
“He’s just a kid. What kid would want to get beaten by some old woman? I couldn’t do it to him. Especially not in front of all his family and friends.”
RE: Gioia's claim that "everyone" wanted a telephone....
"By 1889, the New York Times was reporting a “War on Telephone Poles.” Wherever telephone companies erected poles, homeowners and business owners were sawing them down, or defending their sidewalks with rifles. Property owners in Red Bank, New Jersey, threatened to tar and feather the workers putting up telephone poles. A judge found that a man who had cut down a pole because it was “obnoxious” was not guilty of malicious mischief....The city council in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ordered policemen to cut down all the telephone poles in town. And the mayor of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ordered the police chief and the fire department to chop down the telephone poles there."
(Admittedly, that didn't last long: same article claims that America had more phones than bathtubs by 1900.)
I'm referring to the action taken against telephone poles. I don't know how much of that was generated by people disliking the idea of telephones, and how much of it was property owners who didn't want telephone poles placed on easements.
"In this case it sounds like people were angry about their property being violated, rather than about the social ills of telephony. Maybe?"
Probably a mix--but after a prominent electrocution in NYC, people reportedly destroyed and threw away their telegraphic devices and phones "as if the little wires which connect them went straight to the river of death."
I'm just curious as to how much of people's unwillingness to pay for AI has to do with its lack of utility, versus how much comes from the years of "free" Gmail (and everything else). ChatGPT gets >100 million users a day--but the tech companies got us so used to not paying for their product that they're going to have an uphill battle convincing us that these electrons are more worth paying for than the shit they gave us for free.
I don't read as rapidly or as assiduously as Sherman, so although I have a prescription to the New Yorker I read it haphazardly and it comes in too often to keep up. As luck would have it I just read the otherwise delightful Christmas 2023 edition, which features an article about hypercars by someone named Ed Caesar. Impressively he managed to drive a couple of the cars without putting them into a ditch, but unfortunately it was accompanied by environmental hand-wringing, inEVitability, and appearances by both Hennessy and Rimac.
How much does Hennessy spend on PR? Despite their poor reputation, the last negative article about them was published in Autoweek probably 30 years ago.
Edit - To their credit, Autoweek still has the article on their site. It’s from 2002.
In fairness to the author, he does not appear to be an auto-journalist, so the writing was good, or at least there were no obvious spelling mistakes. And what praise there was for Hennessy was damnedly faint.
I generally prefer books with pictures, as long as the authors are not from former Axis countries like Japan or France, so when I was young I just read the New Yorker at the doctor's office for the comics. However, freshman year a professor of a composition class assigned as the sole textbook a $5 student subscription since as you know the writing runs the gamut from criticism to borderline novellas and is almost uniformly top-notch.
The legend of that man ripping (well off!) dudes off and then lying about it on Internet forums is hard for me to understand. Many of the dirt bags I used to know simply leaned into it !
1)Definitely buy your Rolex at an AD. Get on the list, while you wait for your stainless steel model get on the list for something for your wife/girlfriend and buy that when it is available. Probably sooner than you think.
If you are a baller then you can walk in and buy some of the gold models right now. No wait!
2) there are not adequate words to express how thankful I am that I am happily married and never plan to date again. For those flummoxed by this current environment I would recommend finding a church (one not displaying a rainbow or trans flag), attending regularly, and meeting a nice young lady there.
Many people in right-leaning fora such as this suggest that single men should find a woman to marry at church, but I’ve never seen a girl go there to meet men, nor did any of the church-attenders I know meet there.
The biggest key to success with women—make it easy on yourself!—is to work in a target rich environment. I can’t think of a church that is a good example except for certain mega churches, and in those cases I can’t speak to the quality of the women.
Also, from experience, not all church girls have morals so it may be a “ready to settle down” signal, but is not a reliable “I am somewhat chaste” indicator. This can make for regrets down the road
Most of them are. It might be a good strategy if you're 18 though. I see plenty of large families at church with teenaged girls. I just hope our culture gets less degenerate in the next 10-20 years so I can marry the girls off. It probably won't.
"I’m writing about the increasing irrelevance of odometer readings."
relevant for me as my father needs a replacement colorado but is only considering ones with low mileage (including an utterly haggard work truck listed for an insane number but hey it only has 90k on it) and is utterly apoplectic at the suggestion that condition is more important than the number on the dash
"most women don’t want to waste time on a man who earns less than they do, unless they’re deep into desperate girlboss single-motherhood" and "48% of men aged 18-25 have never approached a woman anywhere but online, if that"
the situation is bleak and if youre not into single moms or onlyfans thots theres not a lot to look for (or at least feels that way). heaven help you if youre not at least an 8/10 or tall too
"her Dynotronics-built short-stroke 2.35 Duratec behave. (I’ll be writing about this in full shortly"
PLEASE DO
"these detail shots of a CelerystiQ"
i hate this so much. they do this becuase the people that buy it deserve it for not bothering to care enough about what they purchase and making it general motors problem to fix
"Rolls-Royce tried to deliver a “perfect” product in the Seventies"
i wanted one before but i want one more now. they seem like the most proper rolls
Thought Companion sounds so much more pleasant than Thought Police, like being bound and whipped by a genderqueer furry rather than one of Max Mosley's dominatrix Nazis.
Three, count 'em, THREE series ran this past weekend.
MotoGP in Germany at the Sachsenring where Marc Marquez reclaimed his crown as King of the Ring in a race fraught with crashes.
Qualifying 2 occurred in the rain and any time grip is low is a time when Marc Marquez shines. Zarco was also able to be competitive in these circumstances and made his medium wet tire work for a second place, Bezecchi 3rd, Morbidelli 4th (out with injury after a high velocity wreck in the sprint), Acosta 5th, Alex Marquez finished out the second row riding with a broken pinky finger.
The sprint took place in rainy conditions and Marc Marquez absolutely flew away from the line. In fact, he flew away so well that he blew his braking marker and was fifth place at the end of turn one. He would quickly work his way through most of the pack and end up behind Bez who had taken the lead. Marc demonstrated great patience and shrewdness with consideration to his championship concerns as he waited until a clear shot on the last lap to pass Bez and secure the win. Quartararo was a surprise showing coming up from seventh on the grid to be on the podium in a sprint for the first time in years. Alex Marquez finished down two positions from his start to end in eighth.
Where was Bagnaia in the sprint? P-Nowhere in a poor wet condition showing, down out of the points in 12th!
The grand prix proper occurred in much fairer weather with clouds overhead and a dry track underneath. This time Marc simply took off from the pole, didn't make a mistake, and sailed to victory over thirty laps. A great deal of crashes and shuffling put Alex Marquez in a familiar second place 7 seconds behind big brother. Pecco Bagnaia, in an amazing turn of events, worked his way to third place as Acosta, Digiantonnio, Bezecchi, and all crashed ahead of him. Only 10 riders would even see the checkered flag!
Marc has a firm command in terms of points lead and, while we can't expect such dominating performances at less favored tracks, certainly is on pace to take the title.
Joan Mir, poor soul, experienced another DNF as Ai Ogura lost the front and took out Mir ahead of him. This after Mir was providing one of his strongest performances this year.
MotoGP will be at Brno this weekend!
Maybe I'm tad jaded but I struggle to imagine any customers for a 350k Cadillac even exist.
Apparently almost zero customers exist for a $350k Cadillac EV
Floorplan Intrest salesmen are the main buyer...
From what I understand the car will need to be custom ordered. Not sure if Floor plan interest will or should be a thing on this.
What about Clarence Boddicker?
I’m not a customer for a $350k anything at the moment, but if I were I’d wish it to be a worthy Cadillac over a Bentley or Rolls, mostly because I want the best car in the world to be American.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem like the unfortunately named, styled, and executed Celestiq is worthy.
Even if i had the money to throw away, i dont think i could do 300k on a car. I could be tempted by a ferrari but not the hoops id have to jump through for ownership.
Frankly, the Escalade-V is a better flagship, and (even with markups) costs substantially less.
You're right, but it's a shame that you're right. There should be a maximum Cadillac coupe/sedan with 500+ horsepower and an almost barbarically opulent options sheet, something that makes the latest offerings from BMW look like the try-hard thin squeezings they are.
I think there's fake Rolexes that are closer to the real thing than this Caddy will be to any Rolls or Bentley
Celerystick
I could see spending $350k for a 1931 V16 Sport Phaeton Cadillac.
I could settle for a 1957 Eldorado convertible.
For “only” $140k. https://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/cadillac/eldorado-biarritz/2704904.html
They’re beautiful. I thought this one was stunning. That sale price is merely the cost of a restoration. https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1957-cadillac-eldorado-biarritz-2/
I’m really not a fan of 1950s cars except for the Eldorado.
i really wanted a set of those sabre wheels for a 49 mercury lead sled project but i cant even find out how much they weigh (theyre a two peice aluminum and steel wheel)
Everything I see online says these are Kelsey-Hayes forged aluminum wheels. They’re stunning.
i dont think youd lose money on that at 140k
Make mine this contraption
https://engineswapdepot.com/?p=72538
Roadster Shop does some great builds. I like the fins on the 60 better than the 59.
Chip Foose has a nice build like this on a 63 Eldorado. Great fins. It has a modern Cadillac V engine. I’m not sure which one. Great part is, the owner actually drives it. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIRVSycu8pc
I'd have the same year's Thunderbird over anything Cadillac has ever built, other than a six-speed CTS-V wagon, but I applaud your good taste nonetheless.
Wow, it’s as if doing something right transcends time. that thing is gorgeous
Great line! It really does transcend time.
I bet there are for a 1000 hp paint to sample Escalade with 26 in wheels.
They had a full v12 Caddy ready to go for about half that price maybe 20 years ago. Everyone was on board. I specifically remember friends at GM being sad that they just orphaned it because "there can't be a Caddy that expensive".
Management can convince themselves of anything.
0-“Therefore, the “finance bros” are now the male equivalent of supermodels…”
Finally, some recognition! Locations of Streetgreen, Slopt, Cava, etc. in large cities *are* full of pallid men wearing vests and light blue dress shirts at lunchtime, after all.
1-Non Sequitur Alert! 🚨
“I’ve been having some lively conversations with our own Sherman McCoy about the future of “AI”. He points out that there is a trillion-dollar economic engine behind the idea and that therefore it is going to “succeed” whether it has any use or not. If enough investors want something to happen, it doesn’t really matter what the public thinks. The days of America just flat-out refusing something like the videodisc player or Digital Audio Tape are long gone. Nowadays everything is a service and that service can be adjusted to meet the needs of the investors.
The alert reader will point out that we are in the process of seeing just such a broad-scale refusal: to wit, the EV.”
ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product, ever, in history. The likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are moving heaven and earth to catch up with Sam Altman and Dario Amodei. How are consumers “paying” for the product today? For the most part - at present - they are paying with their attention, which is being diverted away from Google Search, social media, etc. In the future, their attention will be monetized with ads and affiliate links.
For a preview, ask yourself why Sam hired Instacart CEO Fidji Simo to be his Sheryl Sandberg; moreover, look at her background, particularly her experience at Meta and her presence on the Shopify Board (look at the entire Shopify Board, in fact).
2-Hannah Elliot clowned on the Celestiq key in a recent Bloomberg piece. Legacy American OEMs CANNOT execute on details. Customers of $300K+ cars care about details.
Et voilà: https://www.ft.com/content/449102a2-d270-4d68-8616-70bfbaf212de
(I wrote the above comment before I had seen the FT article)
Sheryl sandberg. So it will be worth billions to shelter anyone from anything possibly resembling the truth
It was worth $300BN before the Jony Ive acquihire; easy pathway to a medium term $10TN valuation if they successfully take a bite out of MSFT, Apple, Meta, Alphabet, etc. Ultimate meme stock post-IPO: why own Bitcoin or TSLA when you can hedge against job loss?
Separately Anthropic raised at ~$60BN recently and is in talks to raise north of $100BN, as of today. At same multiples, OpenAI is well north of $500BN post-money on next raise.
I look forward to our dystopian future.
Recent comment about AI from the street: AI is great for the stock market and bad for jobs. Margins at Amazon, Salesforce, etc will only increase over time.
Jack argued to me that MSFT laying people off was a negative signal for AI.
I disagree!
Corporate layoffs at profitable companies are a sign of strength.
Well, they are when the it’s from companies who are “dogfooding” their own labor-saving products.
When MSFT lets CoPilot do its license pricing, I will believe AI’s time has come.
Well, you see, Satya thinks that AGI is a long time away. Sam disagrees, due to “The Clause.”
I have a feeling that OpenAI will achieve AGI at the most advantageous time.
AI's gonna drop one HELL of a second shoe on mankind.
"ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product, ever, in history."
Don't consumer products involve actual commerce, you know, money changing hands?
Also, most consumer products work at least 80% of the time. I haven't yet used an AI app, including ChatGPT that didn't have to be corrected, every time.
I don't need software to make an assumption based on a question I asked three weeks ago or even three minutes ago.
Do any of the captains of "industry" with which you do business and fraternize actually make tangible goods?
-OpenAI achieved $10BN of ARR recently, and had previously projected $12.7BN for ‘25; they will almost certainly exceed that by a substantial margin. Moreover, inference costs are falling off a cliff. Imagine the degree to which revenue multiples for what is potentially the greatest asset class in history will expand once Trump gets his wish, one way or another, for lower short rates.
-Models are improving essentially constantly, particularly the frontier models. Clearly, however, approx one billion people (and counting!) are happy to use probabilistic models more and more.
-Why would a businessperson with finite time and bandwidth focus their efforts on “tangible” businesses when they could instead target opportunities that benefit from the scale and breadth of technology? Like, oh, banking, payments, adult content, AI, etc. instead of peddling electric harmonicas?
Because none of those things like, oh, banking, payments, and porn for guys in the finance industry who can't deal with actual women in real life, require tangible technologies, like servers and routers, correct?
My grandfather was a literal junkman. He supported a wife, five daughters, and two nephews peddling things that people threw away. I don't look down on peddlers. If I had to sell my embroidery door-to-door to survive, I would.
I have no illusions about getting rich off of the Harmonicaster. My goal is for it to become accepted in the harmonica community. I'm happy with selling one every week or too. It has a decent margin and there's money in my PayPal account. With my time management and organizational skills, I probably couldn't handle much more than that. I got a couple of orders in the past week and I'm waiting on the next batch of pickups. So far, the customers are happy, with some buying additional harps in other keys. Zero complaints. I've gotten a couple of very positive reviews and an Emmy and Grammy nominated musician told me that it sounds great.
I have, however, designed it to be mass produced, with processes friendly to how harmonicas are currently factory-made, so if it's successful enough to attract possible licensing or selling the idea, it can be scaled up. If I want to expand production myself, I can set up a print farm. Because I don't want money tied up in tooling in case I need to make changes, a print farm makes more sense for intermediate quantities than injection molds.
It's not just about money. There are all sorts of personal benefits. It's about creating something that actually works and then improving it.
I get a kick out of how all the parts, which I personally designed (with some help from Jeff Lace at Lace Music, and a suggestion from world class harmonica player and inventor Brendan Power) go together, but also can be disassembled for repairs.
The project has given me access to many of the world's greatest harmonica players, who have been gracious with their opinions, even if some of them have been negative, because genuine criticism is how I've improved things. I gave John Popper, of Blues Traveler, a unit last fall and when the band was in town last week he was excited to get one with the latest upgrades. It was kind of fun to tell security, "I'm with the band."
Last night I heard a 16 year old harmonica prodigy play Voodoo Child on my gizmo. I'm good with words but it's hard for me to articulate just how cool it is to hear a talented musician make music with something I made. It's something I've discussed with some pretty notable people in the music instrument industry. I heard a great story about Jeff Beck almost getting turned away from playing at a private showcase because his name wasn't on a list. Because of the Harmonicaster I'm probably less than two degrees of separation from just about everyone notable for playing rock or blues.
When I tell people that I invented an electric harmonica, they're actually interested in it and most musicians think it's really cool. I've gotten help from respected companies like Seydel, the oldest harmonica company in the world, and Lace, who have made pickups for guys named Clapton, Page, Townshend, and Beck. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE9qyyhdD2U
I was telling a lady friend at lunch yesterday that the best part of any job is getting paid, and that turning a profit on something makes you feel good, but money isn't everything.
Where does the value accrue? Not switches and routers.
I was once an advice peddler.
Without the switches and routers, all that making money from money wouldn't be possible.
But it’s not *valuable;* hence, uninteresting.
You're right.
The switches, routers and other such things are not where the value accrues. This is where the value originates. Any product is valuable only in terms of the utility it provides to those who purchase it. Those people who make their living by playing dice with the fortunes of men who build real things do not belong in the conversations of the latter.
I could make a trite arbitrage joke, but that’s obvious.
It’s good to create value, but if you don’t capture much (or any?) of it, that’s your fault.
Clearly consumers are preferring digital and ephemeral things to “real” things every day.
Speaking of switches, routers, etc., the limiting factor of AI may turn out to be the massive data centres needed to support it, with their concomitant demands for water and especially power. Note, there would not be a corresponding increase in jobs.
How did this one age
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/11/ask-jack-fleet-perfect-harmony/
1. The guy I had a handshake deal with died.
2. Soon after that article was posted I became aware of a problem with pitch on some of the reeds, which eventually lead to two complete redesigns.
3. I spent a couple of years working on a version with active electronics to control sustain, which turned out to be a dead end. I ended up using small foam dampeners on the reeds. They do the job and don't affect playability or pitch.
4. I didn't start actively selling them until last year, once I was sure that I had the design more or less down. I didn't even have a website up. After the bankruptcy and closing of the Sam Ash chain, the continued financial issues at Guitar Center, and the fact that the two largest online companies in the music instrument space, Sweetwater here in the U.S. and Thomann in Europe, generally don't break out new brands, plus my own organizational shortcomings, I've decided to sell direct to customers and manufacture to order.
5. A man's got to know his limitations.
I can't believe I just read all that.
>ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer product, ever, in history.
How are you defining this? Daily active users..? I hadn't thought about the gulf between free vs paid users until JB quoted that above. If LLMs are as life-changing as their rabid advocates claim, why *aren't* people slamming down the $300 Grok Pro and $200 OpenAI Pro subscriptions? This excellent tome (https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvc77bwm) demonstrates the contrast with running water, electricity, and the automobile.
This was a great read on Hacker News last week: https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/
tldr: LLMs make experienced devs (🙋♂️) on codebases they know very well _feel_ more productive, but ultimately spend more time than just typing it out themselves. And that's before Grok 4 came out, which the last few times I used needed 40s, 240s, and a brain-melting 291s to generate output. No wonder the LLM personalities on Hacker News talk about vacuuming the kids' rooms while their "agents" are busy "working."
[My CEO is obsessed with LLMs, so I have basic subscriptions to all the main LLMs. Only 1/17 of my developers at my previous company paid for, or asked for, an LLM subscription.]
Come on Eric. You know this already.
-Weekly actives
-Jack and all the other “financial analysts” said “OMG there’s no revenue; this is like, totally a Silicon Valley grift”
-Then I pointed out that there is already $10BN of ARR and conservative projections for $12.7BN for FY ‘25
-The revenue comes from a small percentage of users who are willing to pay, which is actually fine for many reasons:
(1) Inference costs declining
(2) Older models (and chips) will suffice for many “consumer” level asks (cheaper still)
(3) As more and more consumers spend time with the product, they’ll begin to use it more and more and more (usage only goes up, and it will really accelerate when it becomes even cheaper)
(4) All those eyeballs guarantee that OpenAI will sell ads against the attention (WHY is Zuck so pressed? WHY did Fidji Simo give up being the CEO of a public company to go work as a C suite exec at a private startup?
"In a world where 'everything is political', why be surprised when women want to pre-screen your voting preferences before the first date?"
EXACTLY this happened to me earlier this year... long story short, met a pretty cute, somewhat younger girl in public (not online)... we hit it off pretty quickly, so I asked for her number. We texted about fun stuff for a while... she was athletic and outdoorsy... had just bought her first home...
...and then it came: "Can I ask where you lean politically? I know it's not fun to talk about but it's important to me that my partner and I share the same values"
And that was it. I knew it was never going to happen. I responded with something like, "if you're asking, then you probably already know"... to be fair, the ensuing back and forth was civil, no one got mad or threatened to call the police. But there zero chemistry afterwards, and we never talked again.
Classic shit test. The correct answer was “I make Pinochet look like Luxemburg.”
The Game is both outdated and still relevant. It would be a good pick for the ACF Book Club.
Hahaha... playing pretend progressive to crush guts has crossed my mind, but the problem is I just can't pull it off... trying to talk enthusiastically about how "awesome Bernie Sanders is" would get me busted
...and not busted in the way I want
Legitimate LOL
Agreeand amplify!
Someone had to say it
The answer is Libertarian. Hot left wing wacko babes aren’t smart enough to know what Libertarians stand for (or even what the right stands for, but they know they are told to hate the right). I don’t mean this as a slam against hot left wing wacko babes, but I’ve never met anyone on the left who can accurately explain basic conservative theory to me, while I can explain wacko left theory better than almost anyone.
Agree completely.
But in this case, she had a great, curvy and athletic figure but an average face. Not ugly at all, just average. She was reasonably intelligent in our political exchange, and actually conceded points gracefully when it was something she knew I was right about... I AM a libertarian, but the hatred of Trump was very real for her. I got the feeling that I could have been a card-carrying member of the RNC, DNC, DSA, Proud Boys or Antifa, and as long as I hated Trump, there would have been a political truce and a chance for a connection...
Intriguing observation. In situations like these I always wonder what the potential level *truly* was.
Did we both miss out on a soul mate because someone fell for mass market propaganda?
probably
a lot of people can be steered into retardation
You could pretend you're a principled Republican who hates Trump because of "norms" but you'd also have to pretend to be a pedo.
libertarian feels like the worst of both worlds
theoretically, you can get shot at from both sides ... then again, both sides know there aren't enough Libertarians to matter ...
I’m not saying be a libertarian, but if you are faced with someone shallow enough to question your political bonafides, claim libertarian and see what they do.
The dating world has caught on to the fact that Libertarian in this context means crypto conservative without the balls so stand behind your beliefs.
People who stand in the middle of the road tend to get run over.
today's libertarians aren't. checkliterature from, say, 1975.
Hoppean then
Left-wing wacko women I typically would not describe as “hot” or “babes”. Most look like Reddit incarnate.
Hot women cosplay as left-wing because it’s the “in” thing. If given the freedom to speak freely, most would make the Mustsche man blush.
Well that is my point. The left wing female true believers are 1s and 2s. The left wing babes, the 8s, 9s, and 10s, are liberals on abortion and hate Trump, but I doubt they are socialists since somewhere in their brains they know they have a great life thanks to some combination of their own efforts and (just guessing here) well to-do parents who could send them to the Ivy Leagues.
Tribal
I suppose I qualify as a small-L libertarian, but my first-date strategy tends towards extremism in everything and it works damned well. Figure out your position on all the major issues of the day("I don't know enough about it to have a valid opinion" is a workable position if you get stumped) and then stick to your guns. Don't be a douchebag, but argue more like Chuck Heston than Carl Sagan.
“Be yourself” should always be an option, I think the trick is getting through the first date screening so you can actually meet someone and they can really meet you. Ultimately most people are not that political, they may vote every 4 years, but outside of a few key issues most people really don’t follow politics. And you have to allow for growth a maturity. The ol’ saying if you aren’t a liberal by 18 you don’t have a heart, and if you aren’t conservative by 35 you don’t have a brain seems to mirror real life- people do become more conservative as they age because they have assets and kids and property, so big government socialism is a lot less attractive.
"Be Yourself" is the best option.
'Every woman adores a Fascist.'
Did not expect to see my favorite Plath in this thread. Awesome!
Henry for lifelong dictator of this substack. i'd vote (?) for that!
LOLed at the (?) , very droll
"I'm a drug store truck drivin' man."
"where do you lean politically?"
the only way youre finding that out is if can conclusively prove you arent a fed or willing to squeal to them
"where do you lean politically?"
> ah, I don’t lean, I think.
Haha
I just pictured the slow motion bullet dodging scene from The Matrix.
It’s either like that or like a Leslie Nielsen “naked gun” movie
I would have fun with inane date questions if the date is obviously going nowhere.
“I don’t vote”
“I don’t follow the news”
“I’m a feminist”
“I may look white, but my mom is Muslim”
“I don’t believe in stereotyping people”
If the conversation takes a particular turn, women become so easy to troll it's hardly even sporting.
Love all of these btw. The stereotyping one would be absolutely killer if delivered deadpan.
I used to live in a rich Chicago suburb where the first question from all the other guys was “what do you do”, which I detest and never ask anyone.
Answers were usually along these lines. Easy to guess the questions I was asked:
-I work downtown.
-In a tall building.
-On LaSalle Street
-For a corporation.
-One of the big ones.
-A bank.
-One of the big banks.
I have used all these responses and really never gave out the information my interrogators wanted, to their visible frustration.
They always ended with something like “but what is your exact job” and I always answered with “paper shuffler” which was actually true. I might also follow up with the generic “I look at screens all day.”
Nobody in my neighborhood knew exactly what I did, even though I could make my job sound really good. But this was way more fun.
Game status: RECOGNIZED.
Of the canned responses to that question, my favorite is:
"well, [hesitating] I like to gamble."
I do the same thing. I usually say, "I work by the airport." That's enough for some people to figure it out.
Seriously, my job isn't interesting, I don't want to talk about it unless you want to hire me.
I talk about it now more than I ever have because "networking" but I still keep it to a minimum
I went on a few dates with a Doctor (md) and she kept wanting to talk politics. "I don't talk politics on dates" Which was really "I don't talk politics with women" they take it too personally. I don't even talk politics with my wife and she mostly mirrors mine although she's a bit more neocon than I am.
Politics is boring and not a great subject for conversation.
I always think of the great line about Washington DC:
“Hollywood for ugly people”
"I work in metals. I'm a salesman."
If you’re looking for long term committment, or an exclusive relationship, you probably did the right thing.
But even if you’re letting a girl down softly you can still agree and amplify on the way out the door. “Oh I filed for residency in New York so I could vote for Mamdami. He’s a good start but we’ll probably need someone more like Stalin to really get our country on a the right track.”
Also, in the olden days, men used to just force their woman to accept their politics.
Perhaps that ship has sailed?
Wondering if it would be worth trying to convert a woman from F/G/R politics to reality politics in 2025. There aren’t that many super cuties out in Obesityworld anymore
hate fucking liberal college students got me through covid. the key is to never back down without letting it devolve into a shouting match. if you're a real right winger and not a RINO you'll find more common ground with an actual leftist than you'd expect, and then she'll let you try the back door.
Yet another pin worthy comment LMAO.
Personally, I found it easier to A&A rather than risk a shouting match... hard to turn off the part of the brain that is legalistic and wishes to be right, easier to stay in the fertile illogic of female brain by just spouting nonsense. "What are you asking? Im part of the team campaigning to get Mamdami on the next presidential ballot."
I read somewhere recently that men seem to be leaning more to the right, and women seem to be leaning more towards the left. If, for argument's sake, we accept that as a valid proposition, I wonder what that does to the future of our society. Glad I'm married to a conservative lady.
From what ive seen, men are oretty much slightly right like weve always been. Women have taken a sharp left turn. I suspect because there are so many single ladies out there. Married women drift right
This is good.
The single ladies with no prospects or hope then go tribal.
Just buy a cat and get it over with.
My single middle aged sister is going crazy. It's sad. She's pretty too and thin she is just a little kooky.
There was scene on the Norm MacDonald show where he’s at the bar and Courtney Thorne-Smith starts talking to him and he can’t believe it. In fact, he at first looks around as if she’s talking to someone behind him.
She starts coming on to him and he finally says “I have to ask you something.”
“You married?” She says no.
“Dating anyone?” She says no.
“Divorced?” She says no.
Then, in classic Norm fashion he says “Wow, you must be really annoying!”
Therefore, the “finance bros” are now the male equivalent of supermodels, and can be similarly choosy.
We can finally get sherman a girlfriend?
Let's not overextend the metaphor.
Sir, I’m no longer a “finance bro.”
I have transcended to Renaissance Man.
Jack covered the “no”
have you started painting portraits or designing dirigibles
AI will handle all of that
hmmph ... everyone knows that *real* dirigibles can only be designed by humans
That let the air out of that argument! 😂😂
Lol. LMAO, even.
did you just assume the gender identity of sherman's preferred sounding partners? very problematic...
"Salad stealing" doesn't seem especially nefarious or really anything new.
I'm guessing most of us have had an interested women ask us to help out with a minor automotive issue or a noisy dishwasher or something like that. This sounds like the urban equivalent.
If she asks you for help with IT, she is not interested
Uh, I closed more than once off that.
It was your impeccable <s>good looks </s> sartorial sense!
Funnily, many use <s> to mean sarcasm but pretty sure it is actually the strikethrough tag. In this case works both ways ! Wish it would render …
Definitely the strikethrough tag. Sarcasm isn't funny if you tell people you're doing it. The fun part of sarcasm is all the people who don't get it.
Hey guys, I'm totaling joking here but here's a modest proposal to eat babies but it's sarcasm. LIke get it?
"It's a Jonathan Swifty," he said sarcastically.
Perhaps the Saville Row stuff is more than just a way to spend a lot of money on the same thing you can get by Haggar off the rack!
Carnal knowledge. Of a lady this time
https://youtu.be/WrJZUdw4Iog?si=FJ_2gCmQ9b6bhLRX
I once was devastatingly asked by a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma “hey you’re in the computer club, right?” Uh, no, I’m not. I’ll go home and cry myself to sleep now.
“Whats the worst that can happen”
This. It’s this
Absolutely vicious but plausibly deniable neg here
First BJ from my future wife was because I fixed her computer. Techs for sex is a real thing.
Wanted something to do with your PowerPoint!
Maybe I missed it but how do the bros get over the fact that someone literally stole their paid for lunch?
“Real” finance bros have a sufficient dinner stipend that they can order two millennial slop bowls for dinner - one for that night’s dinner and another for lunch the next day.
If their time is valuable, then they're probably not pleased that they didn't get to eat when they planned to eat.
Their time isn’t valuable. They sell all of it upfront.
Am I hearing that educated people eat salads the next day? Egad. I'm not rich but at least I know better than that.
sauce on the side, my guy
Hard no. Salads, like grilled cheese sandwiches, souffles, slaw, or fish tacos, are to be consumed immediately upon preparation. Anyone who disagrees wtih me is literally Hitler.
We’ll give you that! 😂😂
Sherman may end up being technically correct in the long term because of the nature of AI being a solution looking for problems that may not exist..
But it's inherently based on fraud when for extracting reasons every phone, every device has to have an AI surcharge built into it by force so that these companies can continue the 'trillion dollar investment' that Sherman seems to be so proud of.
I'm paying more for everything, my phone, my electricity, my car and this is after all my data and communication is being hoovered up with or without my consent and used for 'training'.
Whether it ends up being successful at SOMETHING remains to be seen, and whether that benefits society at all, but it's based on extraction, extortion and theft. The fact that the Mafia has bet big on crime doesn't make it stop being crime.
Well yeah. Most of those other “cant fail” brands are because we are compelled to buy them
Jack (willfully?) misconstrued my arguments:
I’m indifferent as to the amount invested into AI thus far, and committed for the future. What I told him is that there is a multi-trillion dollar wealth creation opportunity (potentially tens of trillions of dollars), which means that the party - being thrown by and for the wealthiest, most influential people in the world - will not be ending any time soon.
What is AI successful at thus far? Taking eyeballs away from the legacy competition. Pretty valuable!
I fully understand your point of view, and its smart. Its also unethical from where I’m sitting.
Its no different to betting on the horse you know is doped up and won’t be subject to the same scrutiny, while gleefully waiting for the others’ failure.
You're aware of where the power centers are, and that is shrewd from a personal standpoint. I’m saying the power was obtained and continues to be wielded in furtherance of strip mining ordinary people.
You, and I, and everyone else can choose to opt out of AI, at least today.
The same with smartphones, email, and fractional reserve banking.
Most people happily use all of those things, and the price for not doing so can be steep.
Maybe you're self centered so you don't get it from the perspective of people whose IP has already been stolen.
Think about anyone that did anything intellectual and wrote a book or a song or shared something on the Internet.
You can line up at the feeding trough to get yours though, pretending the people that were ground up to create the feed could ‘opt out ‘ if they wanted to.
On the contrary, I had an idea a few months ago for a biz that would, essentially, put up a tollbooth around new content / IP, and I socialized it extensively with several IP lawyers I know through another venture.
There are a few businesses that are competing for that space, but the Cloudflare announcement kills my idea (and the competition) dead, in my view. So I’ve only lost time on that front.
Separately, however, the recent rulings in favor of Meta and Anthropic make it clear that the courts are on the side of LLMs, at least for now. And obviously the Trump DOJ will support LLMs, too.
Your last paragraph confirms my point. You only care about which side of the transaction you get to make money on. Even if it's bad side that destroys lives.
add cars to that list of things you can "opt out" of
you cant really involve yourself in society without them and you cant really get by without society
Sir we have Waymo now!
isnt that just gentrified uber or something
Riptide effect.
in 2016 i tried to ditch my iphone for an LG envy 2 in protest of constant connectivity and instead i wound up being glued to my laptop so i didnt get fired for being unavailable. whether people admit it or not the same is going to happen with AI when you get a workload of three people and you try to get it done without a force multiplier. eventually there will be a development that is "required" that forces me out of financial services, but it won't be (at least this generation) of AI.
Emphasis on “at least today!” 🙄
If it FINALLY gets some more nuclear plants built..
Not at the price we'll have to pay.
The smartest Americans are the Amish. If they rang doorbells they’d get lots of converts.
Ready for it
I generally agree with many (and am entertained by the other) comments that you make but I’m not sure about this one.
The fraud of vacuuming peoples data and using for training, yes it’s theft—that’s inarguable. But to say AI hasn’t done or been used to do interesting things yet seems overly cynical. It has already helped me with various everyday workflows saving hours per week, various AI apps are actually functional and helpful, and other domains lie real possibilities: probably AI can be a better radiologist, can be a massively helpful tool for forensic accountants, and the real opportunities lie just over the horizon. Use your imagination.
Of course, the best AI use case is scanning of 100% of global communications and flagging dissidents to the police for imprisonment, exile or execution. That’s the real goal here. With enough compute, prison planet seems achievable.
AI absolutely can be used to be a better radiologist, but that's not what is being pursued.
What is being pursued is images girls with 5 tits and 3 dicks.
I did say it will work, but to hoover EVERY resource up in a 'throw everything at the wall and declare victory when something sticks ' approach us trash. Nobody was asked, nobody voted for this shit, it was usurped through back door dealings and corruption.
I don't give a shit about the politics but Little Rebel is distinctly mid.
Both people in that conversation were almost certainly mid at best.
Re the Bezel site, I must admit I'm surprised that 10 percent of the Omegas they receive for sale are fake. One thing I like about Omega is that you can just buy almost any of their watches on their website and they'll just ship it to you. Try that with a Rolex! Sure you're paying MSRP, but almost all of their watches are available immediately. I've had to wait for a couple to become available on their website (like my recent white-dial Moonwatch), but for only a few months. I guess some watch buyers are cheap bastards and won't pay MSRP or close to it, so they're looking for a deal and might bite on a fake Omega.
I've got a couple of Rolexes, but bought them new in person from authorized dealers, so I definitely agree with your advice here. It is sad that some many people that don't know watches just want a Rolex. Status! I blame Instagram. I know a couple of young people that just had to have Rolexes. One bought an Oyster Perpetual at a Rolex authorized dealer while the other overpaid at a grey market store. After two or three months, they stopped wearing the watches because they couldn't be bothered to wind them or set them. Although occasionally one of them wears the Rolex without winding it or setting it. But he's flashing a Rolex on his wrist!
What a shocker on the Celestiq! GM as usual.
Out of curiosity, how bad is the wait to buy a Rolex from an AD? Does it vary by model and/or location?
It definitely varies by model. I would imagine it also varies by location (or more accurately the sales volume at a particular store). Some Rolex models are pretty easy to get. For example, I had no problem getting exactly the Datejust my girlfriend wanted in just a couple of months. As I’m sure you know, forget that steel Daytona though.
I have a dealer a block from my house. I should check it out just because. What should i look for i can immediately resell 😂
Almost every AD has two tone, white gold, or platinum datejust and explorers in stock as we speak. They are unflippable, so nobody wants them.
I know that the very fact that I’m asking this might get me banished to the outer ACF darkness, where there will be weeping, gnashing of teeth, and prohibition from future First Principles attendance, but does Rolex sell anything with a quartz movement?
Yes, this just shows my horological ineptitude!
(::Dodges rotten fruit and mace of the pummeling variety!::)
Nope.
Kinda figured.
It’s just easier for me to have a battery, rather than a winder.
I’d either like a Breitling or Omega at some point, but I don’t wear the TAG, Tissot, or Victronox (sp?) I have now!
Grand Seiko Quartz is the correct answer.
When you say "winder," are you referring to one of those devices that spin a watch around slowly to keep an automatic watch movement wound? If so, I'd say you don't need it. It's easy to just wind the watch manually whenever you decide to wear it. I Iike my toys as much as the next guy, but powered watch winders always struck me as kinda silly.
Absolutely necessary for Grand Seiko GMT.
If it is "absolutely necessary" for a Grand Seiko GMT, they better include one with every purchase!
If you're saying that it takes more time to set a GMT watch when it's stopped, compared to a non-GMT watch, I'd agree. Beyond adjusting the date, hours, minutes, and seconds, you've got to set the GMT hand. I've got three GMT watches, and two of them I wind manually each morning. That keeps them running pretty accurately, and I don't have to worry about the date and GMT hand settings getting off. The third one doesn't get worn as often, so I do have to manually set the GMT and date settings when I decide to wear it, but I've done it enough that it's no big deal.
“He’s just a kid. What kid would want to get beaten by some old woman? I couldn’t do it to him. Especially not in front of all his family and friends.”
DG is, as they say in the vernacular, a Real One.
I wont even let my kids beat me
Dad?
wouldn't Little Rebel be an orange Dodge Colt with a Confederate flag on the roof?
That restaurant could get my business.
RE: Gioia's claim that "everyone" wanted a telephone....
"By 1889, the New York Times was reporting a “War on Telephone Poles.” Wherever telephone companies erected poles, homeowners and business owners were sawing them down, or defending their sidewalks with rifles. Property owners in Red Bank, New Jersey, threatened to tar and feather the workers putting up telephone poles. A judge found that a man who had cut down a pole because it was “obnoxious” was not guilty of malicious mischief....The city council in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, ordered policemen to cut down all the telephone poles in town. And the mayor of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, ordered the police chief and the fire department to chop down the telephone poles there."
(Admittedly, that didn't last long: same article claims that America had more phones than bathtubs by 1900.)
https://dangerousintersection.org/2009/02/04/the-american-war-against-telephone-poles/
In this case it sounds like people were angry about their property being violated, rather than about the social ills of telephony. Maybe?
Only Jesus gets to tell me, "Don't worry about it. Just trust me."
Is there anything tackier than wires strung on poles? Bury them, for the love of God.
Are you saying AI is different about violating property? Or that Joe Sixpack has gone soft where it matters?
To be fair, I know a lot more people who own physical property, which AI doesn't violate, than who own intellectual property, which AI does violate.
Well the key happens to be 'I know'.
AI is also destroying water tables in areas where the data centers are taking up every natural resource.
True and horrific to contemplate
Screw jobs what are future generations going to DRINK
I'm referring to the action taken against telephone poles. I don't know how much of that was generated by people disliking the idea of telephones, and how much of it was property owners who didn't want telephone poles placed on easements.
"In this case it sounds like people were angry about their property being violated, rather than about the social ills of telephony. Maybe?"
Probably a mix--but after a prominent electrocution in NYC, people reportedly destroyed and threw away their telegraphic devices and phones "as if the little wires which connect them went straight to the river of death."
I'm just curious as to how much of people's unwillingness to pay for AI has to do with its lack of utility, versus how much comes from the years of "free" Gmail (and everything else). ChatGPT gets >100 million users a day--but the tech companies got us so used to not paying for their product that they're going to have an uphill battle convincing us that these electrons are more worth paying for than the shit they gave us for free.
I don't read as rapidly or as assiduously as Sherman, so although I have a prescription to the New Yorker I read it haphazardly and it comes in too often to keep up. As luck would have it I just read the otherwise delightful Christmas 2023 edition, which features an article about hypercars by someone named Ed Caesar. Impressively he managed to drive a couple of the cars without putting them into a ditch, but unfortunately it was accompanied by environmental hand-wringing, inEVitability, and appearances by both Hennessy and Rimac.
How much does Hennessy spend on PR? Despite their poor reputation, the last negative article about them was published in Autoweek probably 30 years ago.
Edit - To their credit, Autoweek still has the article on their site. It’s from 2002.
https://archive.is/upJvH
Read that article when it was published and enjoyed it.
I could be a trillionaire and have no motivation to spend money (or time) with John Hennessey.
In fairness to the author, he does not appear to be an auto-journalist, so the writing was good, or at least there were no obvious spelling mistakes. And what praise there was for Hennessy was damnedly faint.
No criticism of the author at all (from me, at least).
I generally prefer books with pictures, as long as the authors are not from former Axis countries like Japan or France, so when I was young I just read the New Yorker at the doctor's office for the comics. However, freshman year a professor of a composition class assigned as the sole textbook a $5 student subscription since as you know the writing runs the gamut from criticism to borderline novellas and is almost uniformly top-notch.
No one does a ~45 minute read like The New Yorker.
Vanity Fair (and Talk, to an extent) once did, but The New Yorker remains the Newhouse family’s most treasured property.
The legend of that man ripping (well off!) dudes off and then lying about it on Internet forums is hard for me to understand. Many of the dirt bags I used to know simply leaned into it !
1)Definitely buy your Rolex at an AD. Get on the list, while you wait for your stainless steel model get on the list for something for your wife/girlfriend and buy that when it is available. Probably sooner than you think.
If you are a baller then you can walk in and buy some of the gold models right now. No wait!
2) there are not adequate words to express how thankful I am that I am happily married and never plan to date again. For those flummoxed by this current environment I would recommend finding a church (one not displaying a rainbow or trans flag), attending regularly, and meeting a nice young lady there.
I have seen one single lady at church! Thankfully i am also off the market
Any recommendations for us secular dudes?
I wasn’t only looking out for those church-inclined. Church is for everyone. Go check it out.
Pascal’s Dating Wager
go to church
Long story short: I tried, and it's not for me.
So much singing.
Precisely.
And they sing like goats.
I thought that was the Methodists!
Try harder?? Amazing advice I know. Go LDS and bask in the glory of the genetic stock
We watch the secret lives of mormon lives. They got the same problems we all have amd they dont even drink!
Go to where women are, eg, university, public parks, cooking classes, (classes in general), coworking spaces, etc
Think “what would a woman do” and find that space.
You want me to get fat and complain about average men?
Took me a second and then LMAO'd
dont forget to make yourself ugly on purpose while youre at it
Many people in right-leaning fora such as this suggest that single men should find a woman to marry at church, but I’ve never seen a girl go there to meet men, nor did any of the church-attenders I know meet there.
The biggest key to success with women—make it easy on yourself!—is to work in a target rich environment. I can’t think of a church that is a good example except for certain mega churches, and in those cases I can’t speak to the quality of the women.
Also, from experience, not all church girls have morals so it may be a “ready to settle down” signal, but is not a reliable “I am somewhat chaste” indicator. This can make for regrets down the road
there are absolutely women at church
they are all married
Most of them are. It might be a good strategy if you're 18 though. I see plenty of large families at church with teenaged girls. I just hope our culture gets less degenerate in the next 10-20 years so I can marry the girls off. It probably won't.
good thing im not 18 then
granted the church i go to is very small so that changes things
"I just hope our culture gets less degenerate in the next 10-20 years"
that probably relies on a few key people dropping dead
"I’m writing about the increasing irrelevance of odometer readings."
relevant for me as my father needs a replacement colorado but is only considering ones with low mileage (including an utterly haggard work truck listed for an insane number but hey it only has 90k on it) and is utterly apoplectic at the suggestion that condition is more important than the number on the dash
"most women don’t want to waste time on a man who earns less than they do, unless they’re deep into desperate girlboss single-motherhood" and "48% of men aged 18-25 have never approached a woman anywhere but online, if that"
the situation is bleak and if youre not into single moms or onlyfans thots theres not a lot to look for (or at least feels that way). heaven help you if youre not at least an 8/10 or tall too
"her Dynotronics-built short-stroke 2.35 Duratec behave. (I’ll be writing about this in full shortly"
PLEASE DO
"these detail shots of a CelerystiQ"
i hate this so much. they do this becuase the people that buy it deserve it for not bothering to care enough about what they purchase and making it general motors problem to fix
"Rolls-Royce tried to deliver a “perfect” product in the Seventies"
i wanted one before but i want one more now. they seem like the most proper rolls
If the suspension or something else assisted with the mineral oil goes out, there’s not enough money in the world to fix it right!
Thought Companion sounds so much more pleasant than Thought Police, like being bound and whipped by a genderqueer furry rather than one of Max Mosley's dominatrix Nazis.
which one is the preferred option
Pain's the same regardless of the packaging and we've all signed up for safewordless consensual non-consent.