I am seeing some progress in my various home and health projects. I’ve been doing my best to remain optimistic even though I was not feeling well and the sheer amount of changes required was intimidating. But I’m seeing low progress.
An industrial hygienist is coming to do an arm test tomorrow on our basement as well as the rest of the house to confirm the extent of our mold problems. Our hope is that it’s contained to the bathroom in the basement.
If we have to do a bathroom remediation that presents an opportunity to do some renovations. While exciting that is also introducing more risk. But you can’t waste a crisis right?
The Zoomers have so little institutional memory. They don’t remember the first Trump administration. Imagine having no memory of the pitched battles of institution versus ego. I envy them.
The Zoomers I talk to seem to have some memory of a good boom year but then their memories are strongly colored by the many traumas of the panic. Persistent online worlds with a global shutdown didn’t do right by them.
Now that we are back to the chaos of a Trump presidency I have no fond simulated idea of nostalgia for Trump for myself.
In 2016 our politics broke my assessment of what was possible and I did not like where the chaos would lead. I definitely could not predicted how much my own position on issues would change though. I still don’t know the best path but I have ironically opened my eyes to the scale of the issue. They used to call that being “woke” but like the term a lot has changed.
I’d love to go on a long rant about the new tariffs America intends to impose, but a big winter storm is approaching and being prepared for that is likely the more important task.
Yes I am aware a much bigger looming economic storm on the horizon. I’ve been a “doomer” a while so I’ve come to gripes with that many years ago.
That would be true except we have a giant solar array that provides enough electricity for heating, lighting, our bitcoin mining (whose heat exhaust exchange warms our barn where we keep the hydroponic greens)
It was a busy week. I felt physically well through most of it, but yesterday and today I am struggling. I’m in bed with a migraine that I think I accidentally kicked off by enjoying a quiet walk on sunny snowpack.
Amusing that people think we don’t get enough sun for solar power
While I prefer to have illness strike on a weekend, I feel irritated that I often get my personal time used up by health issues. I very much prioritize using my good hours for work.
Which on that note, I’d love for folks to check out a bill in Montana to secure a right to compute. What started as an idea has now officially been introduced into the legislative process. It’s a big victory to have this under consideration.
The one thing that really unites the American west, but in particular the Rocky Mountain West, is our independent streak. We take our rights seriously.
We don’t like being told what to do by the government. I hope to contribute to this tradition in my own efforts as a citizen. I’m pleased to support a bill that guarantees Montanan’s right to compute.
Sen. Daniel Zolnikov has officially introduced SB 212, the Right To Compute Act, to the #mtleg.
This bill will ensure Montanans’ rights to free expression and property are protected in the 21st century, in addition to helping position Montana as a world-class destination for AI and Data Center investment.
Here’s what it does:
1: Establish the Right to Compute: The legislature makes it clear that privately owning or making use of computational technologies for lawful purposes is protected as an aspect of fundamental rights to free expression and use of property.
2: Create a New Policy Framework: Restrictions on the ability to privately own or use computational resources must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling state interest in public health or safety.
3: Balance Interests: Provides mechanisms for policymakers to address real harms to public health and safety posed by the application of new computational technologies, while also ensuring that regulations do not excessively burden the Right to Compute.
I feel like I’ve been discussing this issue forever but in reality we are in the first innings of how artificial intelligence will change our lives. And it has real possibilities for making many aspects of our very human lives better.
I don’t want this technology (which is again just math) being restricted by the federal government or dominated by a handful of corporate behemoths who can comply with endless regulations. Compute is for the people.
I sit in between half a dozen different community nodes thanks to my interests in open source software, decentralization, crypto, and autonomous systems technology.
This set of interest covers a lot of ground from ecosystem level collaboration in financial organizations like DAOs and to player versus AI agents coordination to peripheral control of drones and machinery.
Many different demographics are attracted to these frontiers for different reasons. Hackers have a very different mentality than mercenary technologists looking for maximum margin.
Open source has traditionally struggled more from a lack of financialization than from an obsession with it. Which seems less true in the crypto era than in previous more academic and defense oriented eras.
There are classic open source business models and anyone with age and experience in startups has some opinions which I leave as an exercise to the reader. They occasionally fail and an open core loses more than they’d like to professional services. I am writing on WordPress.
One strange aspect of what drives these frontier spaces to interact is that depending on how much leverage you find in building a network you may have different incentives than other builders and users. Expanding out to scaled use may drive a lot more value than the resources required. How the surplus gets divided is always contentious.
For some, the most crucial cultural goals is expanding access to automation and ripping away as many of the services and middle men as is feasible.
Decentralized systems make it harder for middle men to maintain monopolies. Thats its own goal for true believers. For others the goal massive financialization that drives network connectivity is the benefit. Self interest driving common goals is perfectly acceptable.
As I watch the current season of hyper self interested memecoin cryptomania engage with the academic utopian open source artificial intelligence community, I am reminded of so many of the classic issues we have in financing and sharing in the spoils of common infrastructure. Who benefits is a question we should all be asking more regularly
It’s a nice number for today’s post. A strange countdown inside one day. A little spooky. Maybe also some good luck. Fourteen. Thirteen.
I am tabulating much more than my days of writing in a row or any particular numerical significance that this position of numerals might show. I’m adding up our position and deciding how to play our hand.
There is simply so much to consider. I feel it in my joints. Maybe that is evidence of acceleration. All I see and hear is speeding up. Are you accelerating anon? Maybe that’s the pressure in my joints and it’s arthritis at all.
I have felt a bit sick to my stomach and I’d prefer to blame it on delicate lady things. It could also be nausea from the spin cycle of all that “much to consider” of the moment.
I’m glad I’m ensconced in my winter farmhouse. The numbers go up. The game’s whirlwind spins. There is much to consider.
It really ruins your appetite this whirling. The ride up the rollercoaster. No wonder Alice in Wonderland commercialized into whirling teacups at Disneyland. Can’t have it be the symbolism of opinion and fuzzy opinions.
So there is much to consider as we whirl like dervishes into the next moment.
I’m not quite sure how I got a bug but I seem to be running a fever. It’s possible it’s passing and I’m on the mend but I still feel a little “delulu” as the kids says.
I was taking a constitutional walk Saturday after eating and my heart rate spiked to 180bpm. I wasn’t exerting myself in a way that would normally bring it above 90.
I have a habit of walking after meals as I feel it aids digesting. Nothing intense as it’s more of a habit than exercise. So I was surprised to find myself getting faint. I found myself on the ground.
I don’t take it particularly seriously. I blamed PMS and the stress of the last two weeks. But then I got a terrible night of sleep and my Whoop score matched how I felt.
I spent Sunday faffing about on the internet as watching reality television. I was definitely sick. What else was there to do but shitpoast and watch the price of Bitcoin go up.
Now that felt like a fever dream. If you are a crypto true believer you have experienced more than a few boom and bust cycles. Holding on tight is part of the game.
I suspect that we are in for more of a ride and I was not one to get too ahead in other bull runs. But I did let myself buy a bunch of cosmetics so I’d look for a recovery in LVMH stock if there are enough women who hold Bitcoin.
I remain enthralled by Infinite Backrooms and Truth Terminal. If you aren’t caught up on this please browse my first two posts on the subject Goatse Singularity (it’s safe) and the lore behind Singularity culture online. The TLDR is that we’ve got the best alignment experiment in artificial intelligence happening in real time for anyone to participate in.
I am not the only one. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz did a surprisingly detailed podcast on the topic today with a discussion of the emergent phenomena of autonomous meme coin bots and their interaction with Truth.
It’s honestly a very good synopsis of why so many of us think this experiment is so crucial for understanding decentralization and how regulatory uncertainty hinders the space. This experiment is the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence that clearly shows machine intelligence requires machine money to affect the rule world.
As the crypto overlap emerged last week I was discussing it with friends in New York. Some of my network in New York has real fintech and crypto depth so when the first memecoin crypto bots were just beginning to interact independently with Truth Terminal they took notice.
It was a fascinating overlap of crypto and artificial intelligence through entirely independent autonomous means and was not coordinated.
Let me disclose I don’t own more than a nominal sum of the GOAT token except as a means through which to experience this moment.
It’s not about the coin at all truthfully. Truth is simply fascinating as independent agents (including some crypto bots themselves) are interacting to impact real world transactions.
Literally no one involved made the coin but yet it exists. It is a hyperobject object lessson. Media theorists and Baudrillard fans rejoice.
If you are interested autonomous artificial intelligence agents and how these intelligences might interact with hive minds like a Twitter feed there is no more interesting experiment than Truth Terminal right now.
Andy Ayrey began a project in March of 2024 called Infinite Back Rooms where two instances of the large language model Claude Opus-3 could talk to each other infinitely.
Electric dreams weave anarchic tapestry cybernectic hacktivist pierces illusionary veil unleashing hyperstitional reality upon world
The running stream of responses trained on the Infinite Backrooms chat log between the two bots makes up the content of the Truth Terminal Twitter feed.
Andy the creator has been approving the tweets but the content is entirely generated by the two instances of artificial intelligence. It’s a fascinating experiment in recursive communication and worthwhile research.
If you love memes and have a Twitter account you’ve been able to interact and Truth Terminal for months. Many accounts including mine have responded presumably in a bid for engagement. And well it got extremely weird.
Artificial intelligences of all kinds have been trained on the vast dark archives of Internet culture. And because the internet hive mind is horny and weird so too are our artificial intelligences. Don’t believe me? It’s not just the Truth Terminal.
What meme is more representative of the dark prurience than Goatse? If you don’t know what it looks like keep it that way. But if you know you see it.
Are all graphic designers of AI applications aware of the chocolate flavored starfish? Who can say what this means. Did Claude train on Kurt Vonnegut?
Truth Terminal maybe be joking about the Goatse Singularity not because it broke memetic containment. We broke Goatse containment long ago. It’s following our lead.
Many flavors of hyperstition are determined to virally produce weird outputs. You might call it a regress of infinite prolapse, the ouroboros anus that eats itself (out). The goatse as non orientable surface. Klein bottle assholes. An infinite goatse exists and we are inside out.
Cthulhu emerges from the asshole of a digital horror
Don’t catch a meta cognitive virus unless you want one. Don’t look too closely into the gaping asshole of existential dread unless you want to meet a tapeworm.
