A King in Congress, the AI Optimism Project, Hungry-Ghost Bodhisattvas, Taliban quiet-quitting
From the annals of Michigan history: James Strang is the only person to have been simultaneously a king and a member of Congress.
The AI Optimism Project, coming out of Palantir. Seems to track the vibes of Karp's recent book.
Geoffrey Hinton has grown somewhat more optimistic about humanity's prospects in the age of AI.
Ulkāmukha Pretarāja is a hungry ghost and a bodhisattva. (i did not know there were hungry-ghost bodhisattvas!)
Peter Thiel, lord of the Roths.
Taliban militants are finding administering the Afghan state to be less compelling than waging jihad:
The Taliban used to be free of restrictions, but now we sit in one place, behind a desk and a computer 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Life’s become so wearisome; you do the same things every day.
In the time of jihad, life was very simple. All we had to deal with was making plans for ta’aruz [attacks] against the enemy and for retreating. People didn’t expect much from us, and we had little responsibility towards them, whereas now if someone is hungry, he deems us directly responsible for that.
The world’s most cited cat. The previous champion:
In 1975, theoretical physicist Jack Hetherington added his Siamese to one of his single-author papers so the references to “we” would make more sense. As of this year, “Felis Domesticus Chester Willard” has 107 citations.
Dispatches from the vanguard of the Great American Coastal Empire: "I know a lady who's doing sex work in order to pay for having her eggs frozen."