I appreciate you finding a way to so eloquently put your thoughts into words. For the longest time, I always felt like a terrible person or somehow socially or emotionally broken for being unable to respond to others grief. It's not that I couldn't imagine it or somewhat feel how they were feeling, but simply the wish that there was sentence or string of words I could put together to make it all okay. I guess anyone who has ever loved someone has felt the same :(
I've been debating on responding here and well you can see my decision has been made. The caveat is that this response is also biased on my personal experience so your milage may vary.
But for anyone reading this who is adjacent to a close friend or relative or even a stranger that is experience traumatic loss the grieving process is a messy thing. No one experiences it the same way. Second-hand grief is similar.
So rather than "try to fix it" by saying anything, say nothing, and just be present. Just sit. That says more than words. And if you can't be there, notes of "You are on my mind" are good too.
I think the absolute best pitch for LLMs is a natural language interface to things like PDFs. The vision of being able to "talk to" a book or paper rather than having to scroll and scroll is compelling. The same obviously also would apply to the Internet. For some reason, they just can't seem to pull that off. Asking ChatGPT to summarize an article is just a disaster.
This is often brought up and I'm fully willing to be shown that I'm out of touch, but where are people buying these supposed "expensive" eggs and groceries? I'll literally share my last grocery receipt (admittedly smaller due to already having most ingredients):
- Chicken thighs $6.24
- Ground beef $5.97
- Feminine items $9.97
- Bell pepper $0.82
- Lettuce $1.77
- Celery $2.98
- Shrimp $7.92
- Tortilla soup $3.82
- Yogurt (single) $0.64
- Diced tomatoes $0.96
- Black beans $0.82
- Yogurt (pack) $2.47
- Andouille sausage $3.94
Total: $51.24
Sampling from other receipts I've got milk at $3.33, lunchmeat $4.46, my last gas bill was $18.65 to fill up. So far in January, shopping at Walmart and with a crockpot, I've been able to feed myself and my girlfriend for around $139. Fair disclaimer I live in a LCOL metro but was it ever really cheaper than this?
I live in a high COL area and groceries are expensive, even at the stores that have had traditionally lower price points. Also, as long as I can afford it, I'm not eating ground beef that costs $5.97 or eggs with yolks that are barely a pale yellow in color. The quality of the your food matters a lot.
Those prices are really good. Admittedly, I don't shop at big box stores or warehouse supermarkets. But I do usually go to the same chain or interweekly I will go to a local grocery store (which have higher markups), never the less, the same basket of goods has gone up approx 25 to 30% over the last couple of years, in my experience. The most affected are baked goods, coffee beans, eggs, milk, juices, meats & seafood but also has showed up in things like flowers and herb plants.
- Biden/Trump election is about as close as 2020. Trying to avoid partisanship, but I predict a narrow Biden victory.
- Biden loses Nevada, but keeps Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and very narrowly Michigan.
- Trump repeats his rage and cries of fraud at his second loss. This is taken even less seriously than the first time. Fox News in particular is more measured.
- Regardless of election outcome, lessons learned from J6 and congressional certification is far more protected by DC Police and National Guard. Protests in other cities get quelled without much fanfare. Maybe at most a high-profile shooting death.
- Settlement in Ukraine reached. Ukraine likely loses the Donbas and Crimea, but keeps Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Kherson. Frozen conflict/ceasefire in the vein of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia.
- China doesn't invade Taiwan.
- Google Gemini isn't as powerful as expected and Google AI efforts continue to flop.
- Hype around LLMs starts to die down a bit. More adoption, but less hype about AGI about to take over.
- No meaningful impacts to employment from artificial intelligence.
- Some kind of innovation in geothermal energy that increases its prominence above wind.
- Inflation drops to 2%.
- Fed gently drops rates - I'd be utterly shocked if it was more than 1 to 1 and a half basis points.
- Marianne Williamson drops before Super Tuesday.
- RFK Jr. campaign implodes by October with some other controversy on par with Jewish comments.
- End to conflict in Red Sea with the Houthis. Lasts until late spring 2024.
- Another mass school shooting happens in the United States.
- Israel ceases assault on Gaza with minimal progress towards any kind of two-state solution. Back to status quo with a weaker coalition behind Netanyahu.
- Apple Vision pushes VR to decent adoption amongst mainstream consumers.
- New iPhone marginally better than the previous generation.
- Bitcoin hits $70k
- Continued dip in Marvel quality, but no cease in ticket sales.
- (stealing from another comment) Dropbox LLM
- Twitter/X still exists. Advertisers probably return. Elon is still dumb.
- Trump is convicted in one of: classified documents case or defrauding American people. Potential acquittal or settlement in hush money case.
A lot of variables and uncertainty. You have to remember we live in a bubble of people ultra-focused and attached to the news. Many others aren't as focused yet. As we get closer and election season is the top story of the news cycle, I expect polling to shake out in a different direction.
To help illustrate: the election is 10 months away. 10 months ago was February 27th. Back then, there was prominent argument and speculation that Ron DeSantis was the future of the Republican Party. Look at his polling now.
VR inevitably getting smaller and cheaper will give us the "hologram of person in the living room" sci-fi fantasy we've always dreamed of. It won't be a replacement, but similar to the way it's viewed in movies and TV shows as a "future phone call".
This just isn't true, especially in areas where housing costs are the worst. I don't have a citation right now, but I'm pretty sure a city in Canada attempted this (Vancouver?) and the returns were paltry, because the underlying fact just wasn't true. There is no glut of empty apartments and condos in markets like California, New York, Washington, Florida, Washington D.C., etc. full stop.
I've been on a Twitter break the past two weeks and it's been pretty glorious all things considered. The only thing I really do miss - and will miss if the platform dies - is that ability to be connected to the thoughts of people I want.
The question of what happens to the blogosphere types if/when Twitter explodes matters a lot to me. Idk if Substack is the right answer.
Godspeed.