Zach Weinersmith

A tough thing in explaining to people why having children is enjoyable is that all the bad stuff is very easy to explain (lost sleep, lost time, more sickness, less sex, etc. etc.) whereas most of the really good stuff whispers.

Hey econs: So, Francis Fukuyama dislikes the idea of rational utility maximizers because it doesn't account for thymos. But isn't thymos a statement about where the utility function comes from (and possibly how it is affected by other people), not about whether the actor is a rational maximizer?

What is, a rational utility maximizer who cares a lot about recognition would simply prioritize different things than a maximizer whose goal is, say, to eat the most hamburgers.

So, last year I ran around planting either native tree seeds or rootstock. This year I'm trying to lay my hands on a lot of scionwood, and the big skill upgrade I'm gonna attempt is grafting. Anyone have any hot tips? (or scionwood?)

First surprise problem so far is, having made my target list, no single nursery has more than 15-20% of it. Which is not ideal from the point of view of wishing to avoid a small fortune in shipping costs.

Looks like that book that won a bunch of prizes really was AI after all. www.lemonde.fr/pixels/artic...

a) that award committees aren't so smart b) that award committees don't care about quality c) that ai can write good fiction (honestly not my impression, but I've never tried to convince one to write a book) d) that it's all relative, and a crapshoot, and ai is just more crapshoot entries

Looks like that book that won a bunch of prizes really was AI after all. www.lemonde.fr/pixels/artic...

One problem we've already seen crop up, and which I suspect will become more frequent, is not just that you can have ai write for you, but you can say "write in a way that appeals to the biases of publishers and award committees."

This wasn't my most popular comic, but this panel makes me laugh every time I read it.

I like to imagine she loudly chews gum as she awaits is preference ranking.

How come nobody reads MFK Fisher anymore? She's top notch. Hemingway-level prose skill but without all the shooting.

I guess she's known as a food writer, and she does talk a lot about food, but she reminds me a lot of Joan Didion, in her ability to capture a place, a time, her experience of it, and nothing else.

Suppose in a couple centuries the genre of Fantasy isn't really around any more, and people try to describe it the way we now describe old genres that were popular for a long time, like picaresque. What would be the couple-sentence description?

Like, something fascinating about Fantasy is we're so marinated in it, it feels like a category as wide as e.g. comedy or tragedy. But it's generally *extremely* specific and fairly recent.

Suppose in a couple centuries the genre of Fantasy isn't really around any more, and people try to describe it the way we now describe old genres that were popular for a long time, like picaresque. What would be the couple-sentence description?

I got a guy mad at me for using "superintelligence" because it's Trump-associated and another guy happy with me for using superintelligence in the pre-Trump sense, and by God I didn't even know about the Trump thing?

This is probably not a great time to say this, but one thing growing trees has convinced me of is that food is insanely cheap. Like a really well-managed apple tree can produce a few hundred apples a year. This is a full grown tree that took years to reach matured, which is regularly managed.