2026-10-01

AI Book Recs

AI book recs are making us all read the same thing #books

But, she adds: “AI destroys individual taste.” And in an age of constant online bombardment and soulless algorithms, cultivating your own taste feels more important than ever. If you’re getting the same reading recs as everyone else who types into Gemini that they loved Demon Copperhead, you may get a quick result, but it encourages a boring, conformist culture dominated by a handful of best-selling authors. You're not going to diversify your reading to the same degree as talking to your local bookseller or taking the time to browse the shelves. Something as routine as choosing a book can still be a creative task. As Bret Stephens writes in the New York Times: “We become more creative when we learn how to put a personal stamp even on routine things, making them unmistakably our own.”

Skilled Trades in place of AI

So You Think You Could Be An Electrician?

This is a sobering look at being employed in the skilled trades (plumber, electrician etc) from somebody who has been doing this for a while.

In the first place, college graduates still earn more than those without college degrees, specifically because of their academic credentials. In casual settings, people often fail to disentangle selection effects, but rigorous causal research actually does find substantial income effects of college graduation, often amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of a career, though this can vary across majors. Completion of a four-year degree is critical to the earnings leap.

There’s moderate evidence that people in wealthy countries are increasingly risk-averse to things that might kill or harm them. For many folks, this may translate to an unwillingness to take on a nontrivial risk of death or injury via dangerous jobs. And there may be a subtler version of this in which people are reluctant to tinker with physical objects for fear of destroying them. I’ve found that when I coach people through DIY projects, they’re often extraordinarily fearful. And not just of electrocution or falling, but of doing something incorrectly or pushing a broken thing past the point of being reparable. (And this appears to be something that blue-collar people — perhaps due to hubris or ignorance — don’t seem to worry about as much.)

While the optimal quantity of risk-taking for a given job probably isn’t zero, it’s difficult to broadly argue against placing a high intrinsic value on human life or the avoidance of pain and chronic disability. People abandoning the trades for safe, high-paying jobs is understandable.

Trades jobs are generally among the best blue-collar jobs, and within the trades, specialized union jobs are especially coveted. These jobs are less accessible to people on the lower end of the blue-collar hierarchy. They often require training, social connections, certifications and licensing, and technical competence. I asked several acquaintances in union trades about the selection process for their jobs. Each described an initial process with 100 to 200 candidates, followed by testing and interviews that winnowed the field to one to two dozen. The final selection of between four and eight job entrants was less clear but appeared to include a mix of connections, previous credentials such as military service, and measured ability.

this bit about the usage of AI in the skilled trades was really interesting

With improvements to video interpretation capabilities, AI could remove much of the complexity from the minds of human tradespeople. For instance, a future job site worker equipped with smart glasses and an earpiece might receive continuous direction via an AI interpreting and providing feedback on their actions. In some cases this is similar to the way I occasionally use LLMs, although at a lower level. It’s much faster to ask for torque specifications via an earpiece than to reference a manual. One of the most failure-prone jobs in residential HVAC, for example, is setting airflow. A technician might install or service a dozen manufacturers, each with three varieties of fan type and dozens of models each with unique switch set points. On complex HVAC installations there may be dozens or even hundreds of reference points such as these. Many are nearly impossible to memorize or reasonably guess. An AI with good access to the technician’s field of view and perfect equipment knowledge could readily coach dumb hands through this task.

Managers of Machines

Citadel Hunts for ‘Managers of Machines’ in Quant Hiring Push

Manager of Machines could turn out to be a common title on LinkedIn

“People can now effectively manage two, four, and in some cases even more processes. Humans are now also becoming ‘managers of machines’,” said Arora. “Those humans, unlike machines, are not easily replaced.”

2026-10-03

LinkedIn LARPMaxxing

LinkedIn Larpmaxxing

LinkedIn is a soul-sucking hole of professionalism and a pit of hell that not even my worst enemy should spend the rest of his days in.

It’s this concoction of performative productivity and corpo speak producing cursed artifacts beyond human comprehension.

A place where normal human text goes to die and can only be kept alive by an LLM like a radiation protection suit.

And I wanted to look into the performative projects people keep making that are all over my feed.

That’s the real problem. Nothing on that site rewards you for getting better. It’s a platform built around selling yourself for a job, so what survives isn’t skill; it’s looking interesting. It’s just LARPing productivity. Go to some of these profiles, and it’s the same guy detecting potholes over and over and over with zero signs of improvement.