Z-Cat

Sunset enthusiast | low maintenance | high quality

[Z-Cat @matt_coan]

#NewProfilePic

[Lex Fridman @lexfridman]

Beautiful 60-day timelapse of a bird building a nest and raising her kids until they fly away from home. This is the magic of life.

[Z-Cat @matt_coan]

Few things top a summer nap under oak trees in Austin, TX

[Z-Cat @matt_coan]

Not quite

[isabelle 🪐 @isabelleboemeke]

asking “what about chernobyl?”

is like asking “what about the titanic?” when someone tells you about cruise ships.

[The Millennial Snowflake 🇵🇸 @Teh_Snowflake]

You are allowed to discuss pay with coworkers.

Any employer who tells you otherwise is breaking the law.

Period.

[Andrew D. Huberman, Ph.D. @hubermanlab]

@lexfridman You are the one to do it Lex. I think they should each get a pop quiz, a psychological assessment, and a cognitive assessment. Include a personality test while you’re at it. The voters deserve data. USADA can test too.

[Z-Cat @matt_coan]

The system is rigged.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Why AI Won't Cause Unemployment

"In retrospect, I wish I had known more about the hazards and difficulties of [running] a business." -- George McGovern

Fears about new technology replacing human labor and causing overall unemployment have raged across industrialized societies for hundreds of years, despite a nearly continual rise in both jobs and wages in capitalist economies. The job apocalypse is always right around the corner; just ask the Luddites.

We had two such anti-technology jobs moral panics in the last 20 years — “outsourcing” enabled by the Internet in the 2000’s, and “robots” in the 2010’s. The result was the best national and global economy in human history in pre-COVID 2019, with the most jobs at the highest wages ever.

Now we’re heading into the third such panic of the new century with AI, coupled with a continuous drumbeat of demand for Communist-inspired Universal Basic Income. “This time is different; AI is different,” they say, but is it?

Normally I would make the standard arguments against technologically-driven unemployment. And I will come back and make those arguments soon. But I don’t even think the standand arguments are needed, since another problem will block the progress of AI across most of the economy first.

Which is: AI is already illegal for most of the economy, and will be for virtually all of the economy.

How do I know that? Because technology is already illegal in most of the economy, and that is becoming steadily more true over time.

How do I know that? Because, see the chart.

This chart shows price changes, adjusted for inflation, across a dozen major sectors of the economy.

As you can see, we actually live in two different economies.

The lines in blue are the sectors where technological innovation is allowed to push down prices while increasing quality. The lines in red are the sectors where technological innovation is not permitted to push down prices; in fact, the prices of education, health care, and housing as well as anything provided or controlled by the government are going to the moon, even as those sectors are technologically stagnant.

We are heading into a world where a flat screen TV that covers your entire wall costs $100, and a four year college degree costs $1 million, and nobody has anything even resembling a proposal on how to fix this.

Why? The sectors in red are heavily regulated and controlled and bottlenecked by the government and by those industries themselves. Those industries are monopolies, oligopolies, and cartels, with extensive formal government regulation as well as regulatory capture, price fixing, Soviet style price setting, occupational licensing, and every other barrier to improvement and change you can possibly imagine. Technological innovation in those sectors is virtually forbidden now.

Whereas the sectors in blue are less regulated, technology whips through them, pushing down prices and raising quality every year.

Note the emotional loading of the interplay of production and consumption here. What do we get mad about? With our consumer hat on, we get mad about price increases — the red sectors. With our producer hat on, we get mad about technological disruption — the blue sectors. Well, pick one; as this chart shows, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Now think about what happens over time. The prices of regulated, non-technological products rise; the prices of less regulated, technologically-powered products fall. Which eats the economy? The regulated sectors continuously grow as a percentage of GDP; the less regulated sectors shrink. At the limit, 99% of the economy will be the regulated, non-technological sectors, which is precisely where we are headed.

Therefore AI cannot cause overall unemployment to rise, even if the Luddite arguments are right this time. AI is simply already illegal across most of the economy, soon to be virtually all of the economy.

[Nick Huber @sweatystartup]

A few weeks ago, I asked my audience what one product under $250 had impacted their life the most.

I got over 2,000 replies.

Here were the 10 most popular responses:

[Z-Cat @matt_coan]

Is this a surprise to anyone?

[Faytuks News @Faytuks]

BREAKING: The US and Canada may not be able to recover the debris of the three objects recently shot down, a senior administration official says - CNN

https://t.co/hi8UhmW21c

[Z-Cat @matt_coan]

@Tony_Pesta @tylerrandall2 Coincidentally, the operator of the train also spent billions on stock buybacks last year, too 🤔

There will be devastating long-term consequences from this “accident”

Grateful that @krystalball + @esaagar cover REAL stories.

[National Park Service @NatlParkService]

Take a hike.

[Tansu Yegen @TansuYegen]

Turkish photographer Ugur Gallenkus portrays two different worlds within a single image. Brilliant work

[USCGNorthwest @USCGNorthwest]

(1/4) #BreakingNews - Talk about arriving in the nick of time! While conducting a training mission at the mouth of the Columbia River, 2 Coast Guard air crews received a #MAYDAY broadcast from the master of the P/C Sandpiper. After notifying watchstanders at Sector Columbia River

[James O'Keefe @JamesOKeefeIII]

VIDEO NOW BLOWING UP THE INTERNET; Pfizer director on camera saying they are “mutating" COVID-19 Virus to increase infectiousness. UNREAL!

"That is Not What We Say to the Public" …

"People Won’t Like That’ … ‘Don’t Tell Anyone"

[Edward Snowden @Snowden]

Man, I should have thought of that one.

[Secular Talk ([email protected]) @KyleKulinski]

This rant from @Gbush91 on the NFL and Damar Hamlin is a must watch

[makenzi @mknz_t]

Ohhh… it’s… it’s almost a Delux grilled chicken sandwich.. it’d say it tried but honestly I’m not sure it did. @ChickfilA @ChickfilaAtl

[Xavi Ruiz @xruiztru]

This is a superb visualization of European history (1500-2022).
https://t.co/e87t1bKxYC

[CBS News @CBSNews]

The giant dome of the Jakarta Islamic Centre Grand Mosque in Indonesia has collapsed after a major fire broke out.

Officials say there were no victims.

[Kevin Finnerty @timeimmemorial_]

My houseplants watching me put water in the espresso machine