Nick Merrill

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on the atlas — 11

highlights — 9

Life and history are made up of short runs
Chinese and American fiscal exceptionalism. How the UK ended coal & Keynes on the "short run", in which we are "still alive”.
Here is a story to break your heart. Are you willing? This winter the loons came to our harbor and died, one by one, of nothing we could see. A friend told me of one on the shore that lifted its head and opened the elegant beak and cried out in the long, sweet savoring of its life which, if you have heard it, you know is a sacred thing., and for which, if you have not heard it, you had better hurry to where they still sing. And, believe me, tell no one just where that is. The next morning this loon, speckled and iridescent and with a plan to fly home to some hidden lake, was dead on the shore.…
Words … for the Time Being – "I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
The storm is over; too bad, I say. At least storms are clear about their dangerous intent. Ordinary days are what I fear, the sneaky speed with which noon arrives, the sun shining while a government darkens a decade, or a man falls out of love. I fear the solace of repetition, a withheld slap in the face. Someone is singing in Portugal. Here the mockingbird is a crow and a grackle, then a cat. So many things happening at once. If I decide to turn over my desk, go privately wild, trash the house, no one across town will know. I must insist how disturbing this is– the necessity of going public, …
Words … for the Time Being – "I am offering this poem to you, since I have nothing else to give." ~Jimmy Santiago Baca
INTERVIEWER Do you have any idea how a project is going to end? DOCTOROW Not at that point, no. It’s not a terribly rational way to work. It’s hard to explain. I have found one explanation that seems to satisfy people. I tell them it’s like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 94, E. L. Doctorow
It is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know. Knowledge, as much as the state, is the product of human actions. Hobbes was right.
A Brief History of the History of Science—Asterisk
As this happens, it can be useful to distinguish “criticisms of AI” from “people who cannot imagine that world rebuilding will go well.” A lot of what parades as the former is actually the latter.
Rebuilding our world, with reference to strong AI - Marginal REVOLUTION
This strikes at a core principle of the American republic, one that has traditionally been especially dear to conservatives: private property. Suppose, for example, that the military approached Google and said “we would like to purchase individualized worldwide Google search data to do with whatever we want, and if you object, we will designate you a supply chain risk.” I don’t think they are going to do that, but there is no difference in principle between this and the message DoW is sending. There is no such thing as private property. If we need to use it for national security, we simply wil…
Clawed - by Dean W. Ball - Hyperdimensional
This strikes at a core principle of the American republic, one that has traditionally been especially dear to conservatives: private property. Suppose, for example, that the military approached Google and said “we would like to purchase individualized worldwide Google search data to do with whatever we want, and if you object, we will designate you a supply chain risk.” I don’t think they are going to do that, but there is no difference in principle between this and the message DoW is sending. There is no such thing as private property. If we need to use it for national security, we simply wil…
Clawed - by Dean W. Ball - Hyperdimensional
... What he’s really done is he’s created this immense vertical filing cabinet in his brain of layers and layers and layers of files of information that he can draw back on now for more than 70 years worth of data.
Curius / Onboarding