Week 21 of 2025- W212025
Luck is the residue
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End Disclaimer
Luck is the residue of preparation
— anon Navy SEAL Commander
update (5/26)- one of my erudite readers (I mean, you’re all erudite and good-looking) has pointed out what is probably the progenitor of this quote from former Dodgers GM Branch Rickey in 1946:
Luck is the residue of design
This is cool- I love learning about the provenance of quotes.
Thanks to DC for pointing it out.
AIML
Simon Willison: System Card: Claude Opus 4 & Claude Sonnet 4.
FT: Google offers ‘AI mode’ in ‘total reimagining of search’
Claude’s System prompt is 24k tokens long
Time: Pausing AI Developments Isn’t Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down - Eliezer Yudkowsky
Chicago Sun-Times Prints AI-Generated Summer Reading List With Books That Don't Exist
Who Owns the VibeCoding Market:
Getting AI to write good SQL: Text-to-SQL techniques explained
ChatGPT is now the 5th most visited website:
Painting
“Glass”, ca. 1969., Isabel Quintanilla (1938–2017), Pencil on Paper, 34 × 25 cm.
Cyber
Bloomberg: The Elite Microsoft Unit Constantly Working to Thwart Hackers -
“MSTIC derives its power from Microsoft’s sweeping view of cyberspace.”
Chinese ‘kill switches’ found in US solar farms -
“a built-in way to physically destroy the grid”
Markets
NYT: At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work -
“The expectations have sped up rapidly. One engineer said that building a feature for the website used to take a few weeks; now it must frequently be done within a few days. He said this is possible only by using A.I. to help automate the coding and by cutting down on meetings with colleagues to solicit feedback and explore alternative ideas.”
Apple vet Jony Ive joins OpenAI in $6.5 billion deal for his hardware startup -
“ The move will place Ive — the Steve Jobs collaborator who masterminded many of Apple's design breakthroughs — in a key creative role for OpenAI.”
Forbes: This Billionaire Quant Is Turbocharging His Trading Models With ChatGPT-Style AI - “If it makes money, it makes sense”
WSJ: Meta Battles an ‘Epidemic of Scams’ as Criminals Flood Instagram and Facebook
NYT: Is All of This Self-Monitoring Making Us Paranoid? -
“some users say having so much data about their bodies is making them more anxious.”
WSJ: Did You Shoot Somebody in Self-Defense? There’s an Insurance Policy for That -
“Rise in gun ownership and stand-your-ground laws drives a lucrative new market to insulate shooters from criminal and civil liability”
NYT: Your A.I. Radiologist Will Not Be With You Soon - Hinton’s prediction has not come to pass
WSJ: ‘Everybody’s Replaceable’: The New Ways Bosses Talk About Workers -
“Step it up, stop complaining—and make way for AI.”
Misc
The Secrets of the World’s Greatest Privacy Experts -
“It’s extraordinarily hard, when every one of us is ceaselessly flaking off informational DNA, to live privately”
“A decibel is not a unit in any conventional sense: it’s more akin to a prefix such as mega- in megabyte. It describes a change in magnitude.”
NYT: They Invented the Game. Will They Be Allowed to Play It in the Olympics? -
“Lacrosse returns to the Olympics in 2028, on American soil. Why won’t the I.O.C. let Indigenous North American teams compete?”
Games
SKYJO- Had good friends of ours show us this game. Easy to learn and very playable. I found myself shouting out SKYJO!!!! a lot during the games. Feels good saying it. SKYJO!!!!
Crokinole - Buy a set, thank me later. I have this starter one (affiliate link). Super fun.
Podcasts for a Road Trip
The Superhero Complex - superpower-less humans get dressed up in costumes and fight crime in Seattle
Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen
Books
My Favorite Business Mischief Books
4 books I’ve read and 5 books I want to read
AI and ML Reading List: My Favorites