mondrian

I recommend Gibson’s (abridged) reading of the book - but only after reading the book. Whenever I read a quote from the book now I hear it in Gibson’s iconic voice.

Saudis, Abu Dhabi and Qatar put in 24B and own 38.5% of the company.

To be fair to art, commercial movie theaters are increasingly comparable to theme parks.

You’re making solid points but I do think that, at least, programming is changing to be around AI generation. Even if not much has changed in terms of visible output. AI may add some marginal GDP growth, nothing explosive. Switching from file cabinets to computers didn’t result in face melting productivity gains despite totally retooling how information flows through a business.

Europe is a different beast. They build and distribute rails, they don’t compete on frontier capabilities. When the civic benefits of AI become clear, EU is in a position to mandate their distribution. US develops capabilities that remain stuck in heterogeneous corporate silos without interop. Payments is a good point of comparisons between the two approaches.

Switzerland still has parties and a senate but the people can veto any law and the people can amend the constitution. This arguably is a sensible balance as it’s probably not tenable for the people to legislate full-time. Representatives can legislate and the people will override them when they disagree.

Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Picasso were Europeans, and Europe is where art speculation and the "Art Market" was born, and where Art History became equated with Art Market History. Americans showed up with a 20 year lag and kept lagging, with e.g. Pollock imitating Picasso in the 1940s. By then, globally-viral-Picasso was selling paintings for hundreds of thousands of inflation adjusted dollars.

This argument goes too far to the other end. Never name a group, cuz by golly you’re broad stroking. Only specific character assassination is allowed or keep quiet? Like a Cancel Culture Wittgenstein.

Sought

It sounds ‘the singularity is near’ not so much because AI is reaching escape velocity forward, but because we’re systematically pushing humans back beyond the threshold where computers are legible?