For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished innovation could happen faster. With AI, my feelings are more complicated. I wish the world could get the benefits rapidly and delay the problems it will cause as long as possible, but the benefits and problems are arriving at the same time. I believe we need time to prepare for the period of social, political, and economic upheaval we are about to enter.
~ Bill Gates via Gates Notes
:::
Top 20 One Hit Wonders of the ’70s – Rick Beato
:::
Civic powerlessness can be overridden by good gossip.
~ Doreen St. Félix via The New Yorker
:::
Loneliness has reached such a point that a town in France has built a bench dedicated solely to social interaction; a sign specifies that it is a place designed for people to meet, implying that the rest of the public space is no longer such a place. 62 percent of young French people today say they feel lonely on a regular or chronic basis: such a rate can only be that of a sick society.
~ Baptiste Detombe via American Affairs
:::
A world war is not inevitable, but the threat of a catastrophic conflict between big and well-armed powers is closer than it has been for decades.
~ Margaret MacMillan via The New York Times
:::
#PouredOver – Andrew Ross Sorkin on 1929
:::
:::
By 1985, the threat of highly restrictive legislation became acute. In July, Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski, future Senate Finance Chairman and vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, and future House Majority Leader and presidential candidate Richard Gephardt introduced legislation imposing a 25 percent surcharge on imports from any country that maintained both a large bilateral trade surplus with the United States and unfair barriers to imports, with mandated reductions in the bilateral deficit.
~ Michael Starr via American Affairs
:::