Notes

My son preaching his first sermon!

As I reflect on the Fourth of July, I’m reminded that the greatest impacts on our communities and our country often come through sacrifice, devotion, and service to others.

We can become easily distracted by what people say they believe, but we should pay closer attention to how they live.

I’m humbled by the men and women who, even when they may seem different from me in many ways, faithfully care for the people within their sphere of influence.

Stay close to those who do good.

My brother told me up in Ohio to buy fireworks; you had to be checked at the door by a sheriff and sign waivers and could only be 18 or above to touch. You could have a gun, lighter, vape, or anything. Full pat-down.

Meanwhile, in TN there are open-air tents with shirtless dudes smoking and asking you to hold their gun while a 5yo picks up a mortar that weighs more than they do.

Illegal fireworks time, boys!

I built a tool that lets you use email to get smart tasks done. Try it. It's free to try.

Completely agree with this take. I tell people all the time to not use the free versions of AI models.

I love stunts like this.

Fascinating little issue where Fable 5 threw a 短 in there instead of saying short.

Ok, I will say Fable 5 is so very good with technical tasks even at low thinking levels. It's such a good linux sysadmin.

Fable 5 has been back for a couple of days, and I do love having it back, but it's interesting in that, while it's very smart with code and problem-solving, its ideation of less technical tasks seems no more capable than Opus 4.8. I was doing business idea runs with it, and it was surprisingly overreliant on memory and simply wanted to regurgitate old conversation points without expanding them more thoughtfully.

We should be Americamaxxing open source and open weight AI models. If we don't, China will, and they will win. We want AIs trained with American values to win. It's a question of influence and dominance, and the US should not cede ground in this war.

Working with a new trainer at the gym.

Me: Can you send a pic of the workout notes?

Trainer: Sure thing, I was going to type it up in the morning.

Me: That’s alright, I was going to use AI to read it and add it to my records.

Trainer: lol, it can’t read my handwriting

Me: oh, it very much can. Most people underestimate what AI can do.

Trainer: 😮

Trainer:

My son is helping preach his first sermon on Sunday. He’s very excited. I did my first in 3rd grade, too.

The robotics age is upon us! I’m very excited about personal robots.

MacOS does this terribly annoying thing: when I take a call on my iPhone paired to my headset that's also paired to my Mac, when the call ends, my Mac launches Apple Music. Grrrr.

On Higher Education

Right now everyone is talking about the downfall of higher education. It's just doom wherever you look. Falling enrollment, schools closing, budgets slashed, insane school debt with nothing to show for it, major political upheaval; it just goes on and on.

I used to work in this space and have a great affection for it. I think universities are incredible fun to be at and work within.

I'm long higher education. Universities are Lindy. It will go through its winter for a while, but will emerge again transformed. It won't be online any more than it is now. That experiment has run its course.

Universities have gone through their luxury phase of incredible student centers, fitness centers, gyms, dorms, and the like. Those times are going to dry up. It's back to the basics. It will be the very best thing for it, too. They will cut enormously useless programs.

If you're a young family thinking of savings schemes for your children and wondering if it's worth it, I would say don't skip it. The 529 is a much more robust tool for savings now than it used to be, and in 18 years or so it will be a very different space than it is now.

Came across a Dave Ramsey clip this morning. A young married couple making about $90k combined. She's a nanny who went to a D1 school and didn't graduate. Her total school debt was ~$177k.

That's just mind-blowing. I remember back in the early 2000s a friend of mine going to a private school and getting a teaching degree and learning she was graduating with about $40k in student loan debt and thinking that was just enormous.

There's a lot of blame to probably go around in what happens that lets a young adult go $177k into school debt but I'm so curious why no one in that person's life didn't step in to say, "Whoa there! You're done. You can't do this."

That's just an absurd amount of money. Very few career paths justify anywhere close to that kind of debt.

A lot of digital ink has been spilt on Dario’s missteps here. In time it will pass but for now we stutter step our way into the future. A more pragmatic founder would not have made these mistakes. But that’s the cost of advancement sometimes.

😬 I don't think Elon understands the danger in this equivalence.