Rob Modzelewski

UI/UX. Building a portfolio of small businesses. Always curious.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

These videos are a blast!

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

i'm addicted to these AI time travel vlogs right now haha

it's one of the best AI video generation use cases I've seen, and this girl Chloe is especially great at creating them.

some of my favorite examples:

NYC, 2056

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

@Salmaaboukarr What are you using for animation + voice?

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

@thevivafrei @Timcast That's a great lookout! Enjoy the show Viva!

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

Someday you will walk through your L-field detector before you shower and know if you have a disease like cancer in its very early stages.

This is not science fiction, it can be done today.

I made an L-field detector in my garage a few years ago.

This isn’t fiction, This is the future.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

@aopaderf @GadSaad It’s just a thing people say, a mantra, a vibe, often envy or hatred. There is no true substance behind it. None I’ve ever seen.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

Many people don't believe taxation is an evil, but instead some kind of unmitigated good. I think this belief is widespread largely b/c of language games people play, often without knowing it. It's easy to miss the basic nature of a thing when we cloak it in fine words.

At its base, taxation (as exists in USA, Canada, most places) is generally this: "Hey you. Yeah you. You got X (money or goods) by providing Y to another person? Now give us (the government) a % of X. Oh? You don't want to? Okay, we will come to your door with men with guns. If you resist we will kill you. If you don't, we will throw you in a cage."

This is the base reality of taxation — violence by those who have the means of force upon those who don't have sufficient means to contest it.

We can cloak it in fine words and intentions, but its still violence. It's still pillage. Aims and goals do not change that. Whether done by mafioso or government — it makes no difference. This is what makes it an EVIL.

Now, the NECESSARY part is that the world is messy and imperfect and you sometimes don't get a choice between various good things, but one bad thing versus another. In a society of peoples there are true "communal" needs that are difficult (perhaps impossible) to handle adequately without getting people to pool their resources. Thins that just absolutely NEED to get done or the whole thing collapses utterly. There aren't many of these, but there are some. One of the truest and longstanding is communal defense and warfare. If the choice is between "Let your neighboring tribe/country/empire steal and rape and kill our people" VS "Force our people to give up just enough to prevent that from happening—they can't organize themselves to carry this out" then we see why we might want to commit an evil to prevent a greater one.

So why is the rule "commit the evil to the least extent possible?" Well, because beyond a certain point your "necessary evil" becomes more of an evil than the thing it's supposedly in place to prevent/contest/deal with. So you try and hard as you can to do the MINIMUM amount of the necessary evil. Because well, you're still being EVIL. And being evil is a bad thing. It's morally corrupting. It's a blight upon the human condition. It's an affront to humanity. And you don't do more of that than you absolutely have to to prevent greater affronts.

And so when people cry out for more taxation at higher and higher rates, they are crying out for more coercion, more violence, more evil. Literally. Not figuratively. Not in theory. As the basic levels of reality, that is the demand: "Give me X or you will suffer."

Might it be warranted? Perhaps. At times. If the situation is dire enough, if the communal need truly great enough and without any realistic voluntary means or path to addressing it. Then yeah. But it's still evil. It's still to be done with dread and regret and great moral qualms. It's not something to take delight it or reveal in. No more than aiming a gun at someones head and taking their wallet is a thing an upstanding person should ever enjoy.

Taxation is a gun aimed at someone's head, with a demand for the wallet. There better be a damn good reason to justify it. Because otherwise you're not picking between necessary evils. You're just being evil.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

Taxation is—at best—a necessary evil (evils that can't be avoided without worse evils emerging). Like all necessary evils the answer is "to the least extent possible in order to achieve reasonable and moral aims."

So there's no hard number, but in most places at most times the number is probably very small indeed.

[GREG ISENBERG @gregisenberg]

Many years I left Montréal to the USA in search of the American dream.

I had stock in some private companies, had no idea I had to pay an exit tax on that. Almost didn’t move.

Ended up taking a loan to pay for it. The private companies went to zero but best trade I ever made

🇺🇸

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

@gregisenberg @GadSaad I was having a long conversation with Chat about this and holy heck, it's truly terrible. For a simple employee...not necessarily too bad. For anyone owning non-liquid assets like a business? Can be crippling.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

This is wonderful (if it works well). This part of the future can’t come soon enough.

[Midjourney @midjourney]

Announcing a new division of Midjourney called "Midjourney Medical"

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

@itsolelehmann Humanoid robots are here to stay I imagine. Our built world was designed for the human form. Humanoid robots are the only form factor guaranteed to have full functional compatibility.

For non-general niche robots though I think we will have tons of variety.

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

https://t.co/puLXpatHvd

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

David Kipping of Cool Worlds does a good job pointing out why the idea we are basically alone as a tech civilization is not ridiculous, but all too frighteningly plausible.

https://t.co/thOVUIxsWT

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

The more I learn about the cosmos and life, and the more skilled I get at embracing statistical thinking, the more firmly I think several conjectures are highly likely:

1) Biological life is quite common, but overwhelmingly simple
2) Technological civilizations are so rare as to basically not exist. I don't expect another extant technological civilization exists in our local group of galaxies, and perhaps not even in the observable universe.

With a caveat to #2 above: Either that's almost certainly true, or there is something very wrong about our understanding of the cosmos and reality. Like way out there sci-fi level stuff that just totally negates our "normal" conceptual modeling. Think "simulation theory of reality" or "we're living in an alien reserve" or some other wild out-there idea. Not saying I think this is be any means the most plausible, but it is the big caveat.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

@bryan_johnson Any help for those of us in Canada?

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

So the "Are Mormons Christian?" question as bantered about on X lately almost always lacks the requisite specificity needed. As a consequence it just goes "Yes we are! No you're not" endlessly.

[Rob Modzelewski @rob_mod]

The last few days I’ve seen a bunch of “Mormons are/are not Christian” back-and-forth on my X feed. It got me thinking, and you know what? It’s a damn interesting question.

From first principles, religions aren’t defined by shared prophets or loose similarities but by core axioms: identity of the divine, authoritative revelation, role of the central figure, path to salvation, etc. Applied to Abrahamic faiths: Mormonism keeps the decisive Jesus-as-divine-Savior axiom (unlike Islam, which rejects it outright).

Scholarly taxonomy (outside view) therefore generally places Mormonism inside the Christianity clade as a restorationist branch. Islam stands as its own separate sibling.

But from inside mainstream Christianity (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant): Mormonism fails the non-negotiable core—Trinity, closed canon, nature of God (Mormons believe the “Father” was once a man; humans can become gods). It’s not a fellow denomination but a sincere “cousin” religion, like Judaism or Islam.

Mormons, of course, see themselves as the restored original Christianity, not apart at all.

The entire taxonomy flips depending on whether you’re looking from outside the faiths or from inside them.

To me that seems core here: whether a Mormon “is or is not” a Christian depends entirely on WHO is asking the question. The mainstream Christian, the Mormon, and the scholar are NOT asking the same question, even though the words are the same. Both sides are correct — and it’s not contradictory in the least.

[Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_]

I've done the reading.

Not just like, just now, or last Tuesday. I mean throughout my life.

And I have a bit of an advantage over believers, here. You see, I don't have prior position that I am married to for identitarian reasons.

That enables me to say to myself

"Here's the information I know. What conclusions does it support?"

where believers have to say

"Here's what I am doctrinally committed to. What evidence can I find to support it?"

These are fundamentally different questions.

So, here's what I think, as a neutral party.

This is a semantic argument... an argument over the definition of the word "Christian". Now, most people think that semantic arguments are unimportant, but I'm an author, and professional experience has convinced me that words mean things.

For example, a biologist and a chef can argue about whether lobsters are fish, but regardless of whether you define fish by taxonomy or function, regardless of who you agree with, the Rock of Gibraltar is not a fish.

In other words, humans have to agree to some extent on the meanings of words, or we cannot communicate.

So, the question of the "Christianity" of "Mormons" is not merely semantic, it is taxonomic.

Do they belong with the Jews and Muslims, being split off from the rest further up the doctrinal tree than the defining point of "Christianity"?

Or do they split off lower down, downstream from the defining point, and thus belong with the Catholics, who are apostates from the Orthodox church (1054), and the Protestants, who are apostates from the Catholic Church (1517)?

So, the question is... what defines a Christian?

If it is belief in the teachings and the divinity of Christ, then Mormons are Christians.

If it is belief in the Nicean Creed (325), then Mormons are not Christians.

But this is not completely an arbitrary matter of opinion. The Rock of Gibraltar is not a fish. Words mean things.

And the word in question is "Christian". The root of which is "Christ".

If the council of Nicea were truly the definition of Christianity, then we would be forced to the bizarre conclusion that there were no Christians until almost 300 years after Christ.

We would have to assume that the twelve apostles were not Christians. Or that they all came up with the entire Nicean creed and never wrote about it.

We would also have to ignore the fact that the word we are talking about is "Christian".

Now, about this time, you'll probably guess what my answer is, and it will occur to you to object that my opinion is irrelevant, because I am not a Christian.

Resist this temptation. It is intellectually dishonest. I do not need to be a fish in order to know that the Rock of Gibraltar is not one. Nor do I need to be the Rock of Gibraltar.

Words mean things regardless of who I am.

I do not need to believe the teachings of Christian churches to understand their meaning or their history. If I did, no person could ever compare, say, the Baptist and Lutheran churches, because you can't be part of both at the same time.

The objection "you are not a Christian" is a fair charge to level at the Reddit Atheist crowd, because, directed at them, the statement does not merely mean "you do not believe", it means "you are actively hostile, and are looking for ways to aggressively misinterpret".

I have no such intent.

I think that it is fairly obvious, from the word "Christian", that the definition of a Christian is contained in the teachings of Christ. It seems to me that this should not be a controversial statement.

If you wish to define a group that Mormons are excluded from, you may by all means do so.

In fact, you may define yourselves that way if you wish. You may cease calling yourselves Christians, and start calling yourselves "Niceans" instead. You could even take down your images of Christ on the cross, and replace them with images of the bishops in council.

Yes, I am aware that you would find this suggestion distasteful. I am not seriously suggesting it. I am creating that image in your mind to help you understand how distasteful your argument is to other Christians.

I do this because I am professional storyteller, perhaps not the most famous or experienced one, but a storyteller and an author nonetheless.

And our job is to make the viewpoints of people, who are not us, understandable to other people, who are also not us. By first understanding them ourselves, and then making them understandable to others.

The mental image of you taking down Christ on the cross, and replacing him with a painting of a human committee meeting, is not meant to be a serious accusation. It meant to create in you an echo of the reaction that Mormons have, when you define "Christian" by the teachings of someone other than Christ.

Now, hopefully, you know why they are angry. Not just because you disrespected them. But because they think you are disrespecting Jesus.

[Ole Lehmann @itsolelehmann]

this is just the most ridiculous AI application i've ever seen lol

a Peter Thiel-backed startup that makes AI collars for cows is now worth $2 billion

and the more I read about it the cooler it gets. here's how it works:

every cow wears a solar-powered collar that talks to a network of radio towers and an app on the farmer's phone

instead of building physical fences, the farmer draws the fence on a map in the app, and the collar keeps each cow inside that invisible line using GPS

when a cow drifts toward the edge, the collar plays a sound to steer her, and a gentle vibration tells her which way to go.

it's like how a car beeps as you back up toward a wall

the cows learn the cues in a few days

so now a rancher can move an entire herd to fresh grass by sliding the fence on a map, without driving out to open a single gate

and that same collar is reading each cow's body the whole time.

it takes five readings per second on every animal, so the AI can catch a cow that's sick, injured, ready to breed, or about to give birth before a person would ever notice walking the field

so it's basically like WHOOP for cows too lol

and they gave the AI behind it the perfect name: the Cowgorithm

it's been trained on more than 7 billion hours of real cow behavior, which is why Halter calls the data its real asset and moat.

they know what a normal cow looks like better than anyone, so they can flag the odd one out instantly

it's already on more than 1M cattle across New Zealand, Australia, and a bunch of US states.

California even used it on public land to graze cattle in patterns that clear dry brush and slow down wildfires

costs about $5 to $8 per cow per month

a job that used to mean barbed wire, gates, and driving the fields all day is now mostly 1 person on their phone