Corporate bonds won't take you to Disneyland.

A new Leica M6 goes for about $7K at B&H. When you could still buy them, Rolleiflexes were about that much. A mechanical camera hand-made in short runs in Germany? Not gonna be cheap. If you can afford and think you'll use it enough to make it worthwhile, there are worse things you could spend your money on.

don't even have to get esoteric, a Nikon Z9 body only is $5000 at Target right now

completely different camera but it's a straight up camera and not strange format. for people who are serious/professional about photography multiple thousands is stiff but that's what they cost.

My first thought is, that looks cool. [looks in wallet. Looks at cabinet with other cameras. Looks at wallet again.] Oh well.

Are you going to give your cc number to every website in the world? Also, is that really an ID?

It's not necessary to give it to every website. Verification to the website can be a true/false from the OS. In fact that's how it already works now.

I would say it's not really an ID no, which is the point. The post is claiming that a digital ID is necessary for age verification, but clearly it isn't.

Use every means necessary. If that can be organized, do it.

I use a Melitta pour over cone, a Baratza grinder, a kettle with a temp control, and a spoon. Once in a while, I'll get out the French press. Good coffee doesn't really need to be complicated. You just need decent fresh beans and a little care.

Having been on the other side of that, there is a point. When an editor writes a rejection letter, aside from the fact that it already means what you wrote was better than 97% of what the editor saw that week, telling you why they turned it down isn't really quite the same level of feedback you get from an editor who has accepted a story and wants to get it over the proverbial finish line. A rejection letter is very broad strokes and first-impression. It's not actually editing. Editing needs a closer read, often a bit of back-and-forth with the author (I should say I learned a lot about editing in my younger days from both David Hartwell and Beth Meacham).

I was the editor who published Super Cannes in the US. It still makes my day to see it mentioned.

Many new trade hardcover books will not last that long. I work at a university press, and we still use acid-free paper, quarter-cloth bindings, sturdy boards, and other niceties that the big trade houses are increasingly giving up on. Guess what? Most of our books cost more than $30, or even $40.

Does your university press still sew signatures?

A lot of print-on-demand "hardcovers" are just perfect-bound text blocks glued into a hard cover. So disappointing.

I dislike the “brainwashed” comment from sibling, I believe it makes some assumptions. There aren’t any doubts that:

- AI is extremely resource intensive, consuming electricity, water, silicon, etc at levels possibly never seen before in humanity’s history; whether that’s a waste or not is subjective - Massive datacenters are popping up like anthills, and coupled with R-flavored regulation rollback there is a definite risk for environmental impact - just like during our last industrialization push where we poisoned much of the country, leading to a massive rollout of environmental protections in the 1970s and 1980s - Students are taking advantage of LLMs to shirk school responsibilities. Whether this is damaging or not is subjective until proven, and AI may not be causal here (students may not have been getting the expected value from their education without LLMs, again remains to be proven) - Many companies have used AI as a justification for layoffs, who knows what’s actually true though. There is a very real fear across society that it will continue to impact jobs, and senior AI company leaders are fueling this with public predictions of massive labor shifts. Again, maybe they are lying, but can you blame anyone for worrying?

There are counterarguments to all of these, but dismissing the fear as uneducated or brainwashed reveals your own priors and ignores all of these facts. It’s healthy to ingest OP’s criticisms - especially on a form populated most by Smart People (tm).

I think you’re right. In a very narrow, short term scope. That’s the issue.

The problem with this argument is that assumes the world is static. When trains were invented, they polluted a LOT. Technology evolved. Looking backwards, the amount of value unlocked by them outweighed by order of magnitude the short term pollution they generated. Inefficient in the short term. Generation changing over the longer horizon. Extend the timeframe of your argument. Do you think it holds 20 years from now when we have more efficient algorithms and energy generation technologies? I don’t think so.

Totally agree, but I would say that strategic thinking is easier for the wearer of the boot than the owner of the neck.

Said less calamitously (word?): while it’s important to be objective, objectivity is difficult when there are real existential risks.

Thank you for the frank discussion!

Be skeptic of those telling you that technological advances are bad. They usually want something from you. And it’s usually your vote.

What political office do you believe Finnucane is running for?

Idk, but I think he left us with a pretty straightforward worldview

I think you got brainwashed dude