Zach Weinersmith

Part 1/2 of a 7-panel SMBC comic update where a couple on a beach discuss why men have weird fetishes. The male character explains that men often fixate on unsexy things to last longer, and this formed a bridge between the worlds of sexy and unsexy.

Part 2/2 of a 7-panel SMBC comic update where a couple on a beach discuss why men have weird fetishes. The male character explains that men often fixate on unsexy things to last longer, and this formed a bridge between the worlds of sexy and unsexy.

May I recommend the Look And Say Sequence, but don't complain to me if it starts getting weird.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gaze
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

For the record, I don't use facebook other than for business, because they are powerful rent-seekers who have total network domination. If every user left facebook tomorrow, nobody would be happier than me.

Yeah, I used to think Thiel was just a very smart asshole but he seems to have either gone somewhere deeply strange or he's playing some kind of bizarre game.

Like as a weird example: there's this regular complaint that companies never think beyond the next quarter. I'm not sure that was ever completely true, but now you regularly have powerful people making financial bets that, in order to square, mean the world will be insanely different in 5-10 years.

Yeah, but I think you'd have to say of the crypto geeks that at their most messianic, the main claims were stuff like a better banking system, better run corporations, libertarian stuff. Ideological, but not (in my impression anyway) messianic.

Like if you read about the early computer/PC movement there is a *Promethean* quality to it, but ultimately the idea is freedom, better society, more knowledge. It's ultimately a social movement, not a mystical one.

Put another way: AI has the kind of standard tech hype of... it'll make everyone productive and we'll all get rich. But there's also this spiritual end of days quality to it. Some of that is hype, but I know people who work in these areas who have a sincere belief around it.

But I'm not sure I've read of anything like the last few years. My sense is railroad and Internet at least had similar spending levels, depending on how you measure it, but this Apocalypse (perhaps in the older sense of a Great Revealing) feels very different.

Has there been another tech boom as... messianic as the current AI buildout? Like I know there were religious movements that interfaced with company towns, and the Internet had a kind of social/prosperity gospel. Space tech has quasi-religious qualities, and REALLY did in the 70s.

AI Endangering Tourists by Sending Them to Nonexistent Landmarks in Hazardous Locations Hallucinating AI platforms are spitting out nonexistent landmarks and it's putting tourists in dangerous situations.

I wonder if you could start a village by telling a thousand influencers to go to an uninhabited Orkney island? futurism.com/artificial-i...

ironically this wasted even more time, but by GOD it felt nice

Or for that matter a political reporter who is at least trying to tell the truth versus a pundit motivated entirely by fame.

You can define it that way, but then you require some other term to delineate between e.g. a textbook on number theory and a political ad on youtube.

Like in what sense is a typical sonnet propaganda? For that matter, when my daughter draws a pokemon drawing, what is it propagandizing? All artists have biases, but nobody would dispute that.

I like Sinclair, but I think this is one of those statements that's either true in some extremely specific sense (e.g. any statement has some propaganda effect) or not true.

If Sinclair is right then I have no idea what he understands propaganda to mean, unless it encompasses all human action.

One thing worth adding is that I can imagine being much more swayed toward B if my microphone were as big as Klein's. In some sense, my D-list author status is a kind of green light to just say stuff.

But if my book in any way set back the ability of some individual person to get access to free movement, I'd hate to know it.

I suspect movements, or even just hopes for some end, likely require both A & B, which is why the two men struggled to precisely disagree on their positions.

B) A writer of non-fiction who has policy goals surely wants those policies enacted. Pro-immigration policies are very visceral for me.

I tend to lean toward A, I suspect, mostly because I have no political instincts of any kind. I often miss the point of a conversation.

I think the real complexity, which I don't have an answer for is that there are two good values set in tension:

A) A writer of non-fiction should tell the truth, full stop. If non-fiction writers stop doing that for political reasons, we are lighting a fuse that will eventually reach dynamite.

Btw, for the record, they had a discussion that was almost precisely the same as one that took place during a polite debate on the Open Borders comic book we did, which is about what is the role of a writer of non-fiction. I.e. some critique was "won't this turn off the median voter?"

Anyway, I'm glad I bothered to listen. I have come to think that debate is generally not a good format* but this was a real conversation.

*Angry discussion stresses me out, but more importantly there is a near-universal failure in the format to even try to agree on premises and definitions.

Like the most heated part is when Coates briefly, imploringly refers to Klein's recent essay as "very upsetting."

Funny, from reviews and comments I got the impression that Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates' recent conversation was a shouting match, but it's basically each of them politely monologuing for almost 1.5 hours. I wonder if there's an app that's like... Internet minus headlines and comments?

3-panel SMBC comic update where a bespectacled woman states that "A" is the most versatile prefix as it can mean "towards" in Latin, "not" in Greek, and be an intensifier in Old English. Another woman replies that "it's aaaamazing," prompting the first woman to demand to know the quantities of A's used to determine if the comment was mean.

Etymology humor will continue until morale improves.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/aaa
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/c/ZachWeiner...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

4-panel SMBC comic update where a parent expresses concern that another member of the parent-teacher organization has a strange booth at the fundraiser. Other parents say he is jealous because that booth is outselling his brownie booth 10-to-1. The concerning booth is selling "clean piss".

Technically, there's no reason you can't set up this booth at your next farmer's market.

COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sale-2
PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm...
STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Can we explore the galaxy with self-replicating probes?

Daniel and Kelly talk to Phil Metzger about the engineering challenges of building self-replicating space probes.

www.iheart.com/podcast/105-...

But most people are really just avoiding cognitive dissonance. And now, if your favorite politician dropkicks a toddler, you can race to the Internet and someone has already built a long explanation for why it was not only necessary, but the right action.

Like, the Good Discourse theory only works if everyone coming to the table wants to be right. You've perhaps very occasionally experienced this when you were e.g. working on a research project or building something with other people. Collective need for rightness helps bridle everyone'e ego.

Another weird modern media thing I've been thinking about is, like, why DIDN'T the web open up better discourse? Why didn't a vast forum, with ready access to information produce more truth? Lots of reasons, I suppose, but I think part of what's going on is actually fairly pre-Internet.

I keep wishing there'd be some kind of dropout movement, but that's hard because the problem is inside the communication medium itself. Like in 1970 if you decided to skip TV and radio, you didn't lose your friends.