If we stick a silhouette of a cat on the wall, and a real cat comes in the room and hisses at it, we think, “Silly cat. Its brain is too primitive to discern between reality and simulation.” But when we build an AI that makes us feel like we’re…

Rudyard Kipling would be proud — Note: This is a thing I wrote in January of 2010, just after the first Avatar movie came out. Originally I posted it on my personal web site, which was a blog site back when people had individual web sites with blogs. …

Black Panther, My Rambling Review — One of the the things I liked best about Black Panther is that it had a very compelling villain. Part of me was kind of rooting for Killmonger, because he made a decent case for his side of things. …

Why Adam Smith is thought to be the original “greed is good” guy In an episode of the podcast Planet Money , titled Adam Smith and the Not So Invisible Hand, host Adam Davidson had his “mind blown” to learn that Adam Smith was not the poster child for free market capitalism that he had been led to believe. It should be shocking…

Wakanda Forever, My Rambling Review — The most successful thing this movie did, by far, was deal with the real life death of Chadwick Boseman. The silence while images of Boseman were integrated with the opening Marvel logo, was a classy move. Unfortunately, after that, this movie wasn’t fun enough to overlook the staggering hypocrisy and…

Jordan Peterson is Marie Kondo for Men — Over the last two years or so, I’ve had exactly five friends of mine, all of whom are unconnected to each other, cite Jordan Peterson in conversation. This presents a bit of an issue for me, because I like these friends, but I think Peterson is a laughable pseudo-intellectual pretender…

It would be nice if this discussion had words with more nuance — In a slightly drunken conversation at a Christmas party, a woman I was talking to offhand mentioned how the song Baby It’s Cold Outside is “kind of rapey.” It’s not a song I particularly care about or enjoy, but I always thought that claim was a little over the top…

My Rambling Review of Andor — (No spoilers of any major plot points, but some general descriptions might let you know more than you want if you’re being strict.) Andor is a good show. Well acted, good dialog, nice effects, fresh storylines… if you were on the fence about watching more Star Wars content after the…

Turns out, the central bankers had a point — Whenever I speak to someone who is new to the world of cryptocurrency and they’re asking me how it all works, I always begin with the same introduction. “It’s a great technology that would be super useful for the world, were it not completely buried under an incredibly stupid market.” …