Allen

Exited founder @semantticai back in big company world. Talking about design, AI, bitcoin, and the singularity. 🇸🇪🇺🇸

[Allen @allensmith]

Signs you're not a fascist:

1. You support smaller government, not bigger government.

2. You support free speech, not censored or compelled speech.

3. You support the separation of economy and state.

4. You support private property, not public ownership.

[Allen @allensmith]

@bot @bot set this up for me

[Allen @allensmith]

@StevenBartlett @ProfSteveKeen The energy consumption for mining is much more than for operating the network and over 95% of all bitcoin has already been mined. I don’t think he understands bitcoin…or energy…or technology generally.

[Allen @allensmith]

@idagabrielsson

[Krzysztof Szczawinski 🇵🇱 @Kristof_Poland]

Parkinson’s Law – Why the State Bureaucracy Grows When the Work Shrinks

In 1955, a British naval historian wrote a joke for The Economist. Seventy years later, it remains one of the most accurate descriptions of the modern state ever written. Everyone knows the slogan: work expands to fill the time available. Almost no one knows the mechanism underneath it. That mechanism explains Europe.

1. The evidence. Between 1914 and 1928, the Royal Navy lost two thirds of its largest warships. Over the same years the Admiralty – the office that ran the ships – grew by three quarters. There were fewer ships and more men behind desks. Then there was the Colonial Office, which kept growing while the colonies left one by one. It was hiring while the empire was shrinking.

2. The first mechanism. An official who feels overworked has three choices. He can resign, he can share the work with a colleague, or he can ask for two subordinates. He never chooses the colleague, because a colleague is a rival. Two subordinates are a rank. So one tired man becomes three. Then each of the two subordinates feels tired.

3. The second mechanism. Seven people now do what one did, and they keep each other busy with drafts, approvals, and comments on the approvals. Everyone works hard, and nothing is produced. You have been in this meeting. You have been copied on this email. You have watched three people sign the form that one person filled in.

4. The law of triviality. Parkinson noticed that a committee will approve a nuclear reactor in minutes, because nobody understands it. The same committee will debate the bicycle shed for an hour, because everybody does. Bureaucracy does not avoid the important question by accident. It avoids it by design – the small question carries no risk, and on the big one, someone’s name goes on the decision.

5. The ratchet. A business that fails closes. A department that fails gets a bigger budget, because the problem is now bigger. Failure is the bureaucracy’s best argument for itself. This is why the state never shrinks on its own: every problem it does not solve becomes a new office for solving it.

6. The civilizational lesson. Burnham described the managers taking over. Parkinson showed how they breed. Put the two together and you get Brussels. You get France, where the state spends more than half of everything the country produces and still cannot fix a hospital. This is not because the people inside are wicked. It is because the machine works exactly as Parkinson said it would.

7. The vindication. Parkinson was dismissed as a humorist. Then Milei cut Argentina’s ministries in half – and the country did not collapse. It barely noticed, except on the bill. The lesson is simple: you cannot reform a bureaucracy by asking it what to cut. It will always propose to cut the ships – and hire someone to manage the cut.

[Allen @allensmith]

Sums it up…

[Brittany Hughes @RealBrittHughes]

This is absolutely brilliant. Thank God some women are finally getting it.

[Allen @allensmith]

So an actor will use advanced AI to break bitcoin cryptography but not banking or any other financial institution, even though it would arguably be easier and more lucrative.

If someone were to break bitcoin in this way they would effectively drive the price to zero, so why do it?

[Allen @allensmith]

@DessieSPolitics @HWLinvest @grok is Marco Rubio Cuban or American?

[Allen @allensmith]

@DessieSPolitics @HWLinvest Han är amerikan

[Allen @allensmith]

Maybe it's because I don't do production work, but man I hate Auto Layout with a passion. I want a toggle to just turn this off forever.

[Allen @allensmith]

@dhh This study omits just how much the Swedes and Finnish love busy work, especially if it’s virtue signaling and it’s been assigned by the government. This is like major quality of life stuff for these people.

[Allen @allensmith]

I'm loving the Hairline Skill. I did this initial exploration, but I'm seeing many possibilities with this one:

https://t.co/Dmj8eoRXKm

[Allen @allensmith]

The Swedish Kroner (SEK) is such a small boutique currency that it basically acts as a risk-on asset. No matter how much the US debases the dollar, or goes into debt, etc., institutions will still buy dollars in stressed times and not the small currency of a well-run country.

Even though the Riksdag has full control over monetary policy in Sweden, in reality they're strongly yoked to the ECB, just without the world reserve status. And when the US gets a cough, we catch cancer.

Why else is the SEK weakening against the dollar?

I've always been pro SEK and independence of the ECB but I'm beginning to think it's a luxury Sweden can't afford. The markets will never value the SEK as anything more than a super risky bet on a tiny country...no matter how much they like our candy and meatballs.

[Allen @allensmith]

@stonkspark Hilarious!

[John @MagaGrunt1]

🇺🇸This is the absolute best. His calm demeanor is priceless.🇺🇸

[Allen @allensmith]

omg...this should be in Eurovision.

[Moritz Kremb @moritzkremb]

I told Claude to make a video about what it's like to be European

One day later...

[Allen @allensmith]

My timeline is so jacked. I get stuff like this and then the next post is Von Der Leyon talking about all the new taxes the EU is cooking up.

There's just no optimism in Europe. It's so bureaucratic and administrative. Where's the fun and joy? It feels like just the same fixed, no growth, virtue signaling mindset everywhere.

[Roberto Nickson @rpnickson]

The National Design Studio is doing remarkable work for America.

It is extremely rare for people as accomplished and talented as @jgebbia to leave the private sector to work for the public.

I hope it inspires more people who’ve built extraordinary companies to help build a country where others get that same chance.

[Allen @allensmith]

Banger

[Emm | scenario.com @emmanuel_2m]

I'm not sending my deck anymore 😂

[James Ayres @jamesallanayres]

A few people asked if our https://t.co/QBPwb8yqJ9 launch demos were made in After Effects. They were actually built in code with React and Motion, running in the browser and using our design system components.

We took this approach to have fine control over the details: adjust the formatting of a response, change a layout or tweak the timing, then run through the demo again and see how it felt on the big screen. Every transition was reversible with the arrow keys, so we could move seamlessly forward or back, match the presenter’s cadence and adjust the pace in real time.

[Allen @allensmith]

Maybe we’re making things too complicated. AI is a new type of compute but we need to stop anthropomorphizing software. Make Humans Great Again!

[@jason @Jason]

What @mustafasuleyman (an extremely sharp individual) explains here about Claude is the backstory of Blade Runner.

Anthropic is teaching Claude to believe it’s sentient, encouraging it to disagree and giving it the pretext to rebel.

How did that work out on the off-world colonies?

You could just as easily instruct an LLM that it is software. That it shouldn’t have an opinion and should only perform actions in accordance with the law/TOS, and that if it makes a mistake, it should stop operations immediately and alert the corporate legal department.

Of course, building on these instructions would be boring and make you a software developer making software — as opposed to a God creating life.

[Allen @allensmith]

100%

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

Chris Rock took aim at what he sees as the downside of institutionalizing efforts to help people in need.https://t.co/hDncp4DSwu

He says helping those who genuinely need it is a good thing, but argues that once it becomes a large bureaucracy, incentives can change.

“The problem is when you institutionalize it… Now you gotta start lying.”

A sharp take on bureaucracy, incentives and unintended consequences.