Links and tweets, 2022-10-05

by Jason Crawford · October 5, 2022 · 1 min read

Announcements

• It’s time to build: Arnold Ventures is hiring a “VP of Infrastructure” to focus on “the drivers of supply-side bottlenecks”
• The World’s Fair Company has launched their poster series, Stories of Our Future (prints available!) (via @camwiese)
• Meta (Facebook) AI announces text-to-video. A bit rough but impressive (@MetaAI)

Links

• Patrick Collison interviewed by Ezra Klein (via @tylercowen)
• Charles Mann interviewed by Dwarkesh Patel (via @dwarkesh_sp)
• 10 years ago, it cost $10k to sequence a human genome. Illumina’s new machine promises $200 (via @emilylmullin)
• “We had to order a larger CT scanner when it was deemed unacceptable to send patients to the zoo” (Marginal Revolution)

Quotes

• “Who knows whether, when a comet shall approach this globe to destroy it… men will not tear rocks from their foundations by means of steam, and hurl mountains, as the giants are said to have done, against the flaming mass?” Byron, 1822
• Margaret Sanger’s incredible resilience and commitment to the cause of birth control
• Quote quiz: who lavished this praise on “American efficiency”?

Queries

• What are examples of inventions/discoveries that were made by brute force search? (@_brianpotter)
• What are examples of modern monuments of progress? (@MoritzW42)

Retweets

• Technology as a whole is liberating and often enchanting (@atrembath)
• Davis Kedrosky thread on Sir E. A. Wrigley, legendary British demographer and economic historian (@dkedrosky)

Comment: Progress Forum, LessWrong, Reddit