Elezea // The B-Sides

Sun, 28 Jan 2024 17:27:55 -0800

We already know that actions > words but this is still really interesting research:

Daughters of dads who talked a good talk about gender equality—but who nevertheless didn’t do as much as their partners in terms of domestic labor— had lower career aspirations than daughters of dads who pulled their weight around the house.

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 15:44:58 -0800

This is a fascinating look at how the financials of airline mileage programs work.

Points schemes are a business inside a business, sitting at the intersection of airlines and banks.

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 17:20:14 -0800

Yes the AI content creation stuff is complicated, but I hope we can at least all agree that creating fake authors and content for them is bananas.

The AI authors' writing often sounds like it was written by an alien; one Ortiz article, for instance, warns that volleyball “can be a little tricky to get into, especially without an actual ball to practice with.”

Sat, 25 Nov 2023 16:32:00 -0800

Well TIL the word “kenopsia” and I love it.

A concoction from the Greek “kenosis” (emptiness) and “opsia” (seeing), kenopsia refers to the “eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that was once bustling with activity but is now abandoned and empty”—a deserted movie set, a club the morning after a party, locked down cities, Chernobyl.

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 18:04:59 -0800

This isn’t surprising, but it’s still jarring to see that “X and Misinformation Super-spreaders Share Ad Money from False Claims About the Israel-Hamas War”:

NewsGuard identified ads for 86 major advertisers — including top brands, educational institutions, governments, and nonprofits — on viral posts seen by a cumulative 92 million X users advancing false or egregiously misleading claims about the Israel-Hamas war.

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 18:02:45 -0800

My experience with Diablo IV videos confirms this take:

Is YouTube feeling boring recently? Well, maybe it’s, as The Game Theorists’ MatPat recently argued, because everyone figured out how to be the MrBeast of their own niche. YouTube has historically been good at de-emphasizing trends like this when they get annoying. The question is will they algorithmically intervene in this case, which would also affect MrBeast’s traffic.

Thu, 23 Nov 2023 15:30:36 -0800

Good timeline of the OpenAI thing. Here’s a bit about the structure I didn’t know:

This so-called “capped profit” is unlikely to be a “cap” for practical purposes. It could be tempting to think that OpenAI’s approach of capping profit at 100x of the investment amount is noble or selfless. However, in practice, there’s little meaningful difference between capping profits at this level and having no cap.

Tue, 21 Nov 2023 16:49:09 -0800

This is a 😍 variant of the new Black Pumas album (which is also a very good album).

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 16:32:11 -0800

This is a bleak take, but I have to admit that I am also concerned.

I believe we have some personal agency. I also believe that a 12-year-old’s mind is no match for a giant corporation using the most advanced AI to manipulate her behavior. Gen Z were the first generation to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us before we had any sense of who we were.

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 15:42:20 -0800

“I change by not changing at all…”

Holy smokes, the new 45rpm vinyl reissue of Vs. completely blew me away. Bass and soundstage for dayyyys. Get it, vinyl nerds.

A friend recently mentioned how he is feeding fantasy descriptions to DALL•E and showed me some incredible examples. I’m currently re-reading Lord of the Rings so I decided to give it a try and now I’m hooked and going to do it as often as possible.

Sun, 19 Nov 2023 15:19:59 -0800

Here is the prompt I’m using and a text-accurate image of Tom Bombadil…

Please generate images of the description below from a fantasy novel.

Create one image in each of the following styles:

Surrealistic Photorealism: Combining hyper-realistic details with surreal elements to create a dreamlike yet sharply detailed image.
Gothic or Dark Romanticism: Emphasizing darker, more mysterious elements of the prose, with a focus on emotion, nature, and the macabre.
Magical Realism: Blending realistic and fantastical elements in a way that treats the extraordinary as everyday, enhancing the mystical aspects of the prose.

Thu, 16 Nov 2023 16:22:13 -0800

Here’s something I really don’t understand but it’s real and it happens all the time so let’s open the can of worms why don’t we.

I love The National dearly, but thought their new surprise album “Laugh Track” was just ok. And then the vinyl showed up today and I am completely smitten with the whole thing, every single song.

I don’t want to be That Guy about vinyl, but really. There’s something here.

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:30:37 -0800

Dang, this is good stuff. “Hacking is forever.”

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 16:03:42 -0800

This has been out of print for many many years and going for $700+ on eBay and Discogs. So happy to finally have a good (and cheap) repress of my favorite DMB album. They get a lot of flack, but this really is a wonderful set of songs.

Tue, 14 Nov 2023 15:34:12 -0800

When should you hire a Product Manager? Probably earlier than you think:

No founder told me they regretted bringing on a PM, but some companies, including Notion, shared that they regretted waiting so long.

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 16:36:37 -0800

It’s a bit one-sided, but “Spotify Is Eating the Entire Music Business” really resonated with me.

In lieu of royalties, working artists are left with touring and merch sales, and they have to treat streaming — the primary way people are actually consuming their work — as a sort of promotional tool for off-platform ticket and T-shirt sales.

Also I ❤️ Bandcamp and I’m sad about its demise.

Sat, 11 Nov 2023 16:52:26 -0800

I forgot about the PayPal attack ad that didn’t age that well…

Until PayPal’s fatal FY-21 earnings report, no one was truly paying attention to Apple Pay’s meteoric rise. But as the active user base at PayPal started flatlining, Apple Pay continued to see explosive growth in its user base. Since 2016, Apple Pay has grown its active users at a 48% rate. In comparison, PayPal has seen users grow at only 14% since 2016.

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 16:41:32 -0800

Everything about the new U2 show sounds amazing. So sad I don’t have tickets.

Zoo TV had predated reality TV, fake news, social media—all these things. Bono had heard about this new venue in Vegas with nearly 20,000 seats, custom sound and an incredible screen that was akin to the whole audience having a VR experience. In the post-Covid era, it was appealing not to have to travel every night

Tue, 07 Nov 2023 15:52:11 -0800

Very good summary of The OpenAI Keynote by Ben Thompson. This bit stood out to me:

The fact of the matter is that a lot of people use ChatGPT for information despite the fact it has a well-documented flaw when it comes to the truth; that flaw is acceptable, because to the customer ease-of-use is worth the loss of accuracy.

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 17:01:22 -0800

I’ve been following Craig’s work for over a decade and know what to expect, yet his reflections on “Aloneness” took my breath away.

The real shitter is that if you’ve inured yourself to living in this state of aloneness, it can be difficult to break the habits that have led to it. Aloneness as default becomes comforting, and habits built around aloneness feel palliative because they’re known, and we tend to repeat familiar actions, even if they hurt us.

Sun, 05 Nov 2023 15:46:32 -0800

Great essay by AHP on how friendship changes over time—including a period she calls “The Friendship Dip”:

Right now, the way our society is organized, we have a prolonged stretch of adulthood that is not conducive to forging or sustaining friendship or community. In many cases, I’d say it’s actually hostile to it.

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 15:26:27 -0800

Every new house in Portland uses this font for the house number, and now I can’t get this article out of my head. “The gentrification font: how a sleek typeface became a neighborhood omen”:

As Neutraface house numbers have become too commonplace to ignore, some now associate them (along with gray paint jobs) with neighborhoods overtaken by construction and renovations.

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 15:12:30 -0800

Feels like spam is about to get a lot harder to detect… “Inside the Underground World of Black Market AI Chatbots”:

We’ve got folks who are building LLMs that are designed to write more convincing phishing email scams or allowing them to code new types of malware because they’re trained off the code from previously available malware.

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 15:44:14 -0800

For my fellow Northerners… “How to light the dark months” has some excellent advice—not just the normal stuff we’ve all read a thousand times.

Lighting winter is an art and a daily practice, an act of survival and a gesture of love. Here are 10 ideas for fighting the gloom in the dark half of the year.

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 15:32:28 -0800

Well Christmas came early for me. New 45rpm reissue. Glossy tip-on jacket. Sounds absolutely bonkers good. I’ve heard many many versions of this album and this one is noticeably better than anything before it.