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Welcome to Somethings, your weekly dose of highlights, quotes and notes from my notebook. If you would like to receive this in your inbox, subscribe now. If you want to support, do checkout the links in the Friends of Somethings Section.
📕Something to read
- Leaving Numbers To Leave Numbers, Dave Gofman: A short read on how mathematical knowledge surpasses numbers.
🔊 Something to Listen
Dark Matters
The majority of the universe’s mass is what physicists call Dark Matter. So called because it is ‘dark’ to human observation. There is no what the substance of this matter is. It might be many different types of matter. A great podcast on the nature of reality and the human place in the universe. For example, what if their are sentient beings made up of dark matter. Wouldn’t that make us the ghosts of this ever-expanding video.
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🗣Some Quotes and Notes
Commercial Ruin
Ben Thompson was writing about the metaverse fad, but this applies to the current LLM/AI craze as well.
The entire reason the Internet is as open and interoperable as it is is because it was built in a world without commercial imperative or political oversight; all future efforts will be led by companies seeking profits and regulated by governments seeking control, both of which result in centralization and lock-in.
— Ben Thompson, Microsoft and the Metaverse
Happiness, Work, & Play
In this essay for The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks compares and contrasts two different philosophies of leading a happy life. These are posed as opposites of each other, but are complimentary. This quote illustrates that beautiful
That’s easier said than done, of course. Whether Epicurean or Stoic, we always want to double down on what comes naturally to us. But that is the road to excess, which ultimately leads us away from well-being. “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” goes the old proverb. In 1825, the novelist Maria Edgeworth added a second line: “All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.” Just so.
— Arthur C. Brooks, There Are Two Kinds of Happy People
Legal Shenanigans.
Intellectual Property is the most successful Regulatory Capture gambit ever. A lot of our info infrastructure is counter-intuitive for the sake of protecting IP. The US is the worst offender. And through trade deals, it exports these egregious laws.
Cory Doctorow explains.
While it remains technically possible to reconfigure the technologies that you rely on, doing so is now a legal minefield. “IP” has come to mean “any law that lets a company control the conduct of its competitors, critics or customers,” and that’s why “IP” is always at the heart of maneuvers to block platform users’ attempts to wrestle value away from the platforms.
— Cory Doctorow, Twiddler
Thank you for joining me this week. If you know some who might enjoy this, please forward this email to them. See you next week.
Mudassir Chapra