Thomas

@aviationdoctor.eth

1063 Following

69025 Followers

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@aviationdoctor.eth

As a non-American, I don’t quite get the fascination for filibustering. Yes, some guy (doesn’t matter which side of the aisle he’s from — this cast is apolitical) stood talking for 25 hours and five minutes. Yes, he beat the previous record by 47 minutes. No, he did not go to the bathroom, nor did he eat nor drink. The media are celebrating this as a “physical and mental feat that required stamina and willpower”, as if this was the Olympics. Except that it’s not a sport, it’s just a performative stunt that further trivializes politics and turns them into a farce, at a time when we need adults in the room more than ever. No wonder the electorate feels disconnected and numb.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

One thing I enjoy about Farcaster is the large presence of people who build things. Half of the time, I don’t understand what they’re trying to build, don’t get the vision, and/or don’t think there’s any viable business case. But that hardly matters — partly because I may be wrong in my assessment, and partly because the bigger picture is that these people have skin in the game. It’s easy to partake in an online community of circle-jerkers that engage in abstract philosophistry, drop vacuous platitudes, and vaguepost their way to strategic ambivalence. In fact bots can now do that faster and cheaper than humans, expanding milquetoast content to a singularity. At least builders put their money where their mouth is — that brings a degree of authenticity and grit to the network. Even if they are wrong, they’ll remain true.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Kiddo is a bit of an aviation geek (wonder where he gets that from) and likes to monitor trending flights on FlightRadar24. He just walked in all excited to report that Concorde (G-BOAG) is flying again: https://www.flightradar24.com/BAW9999/39b3ee42 I did a double take (that hull was retired 20 years ago and sits in a museum), and then told him to check today's date

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Just spent the weekend deep-researching and writing about a relatively arcane topic using ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity side by side. Using multiple LLMs and contrasting responses to weed out the occasional hallucination is a massive accelerator of knowledge. The LLMs even helped me spot a misleading error in one of the authoritative textbooks on the same topic, which was until then my source of truth. Game changer in how I’ll be engaging going forward with topics I want to discover more seriously.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

We’re heading toward a Library of Babel scenario where virtually every permutation of text, video, and audio will either pre-exist online (Borges style) or be artificially generated on the fly (as on https://libraryofbabel.info/) to drive engagement for cheap. Which means that every most brilliant piece of insight will be out there; but they will be drowned out by vastly many more orders of magnitude of trite platitudes. Like in the Library of Babel, no index exists to tell them apart. There is no “key” to finding the needles of greatness in the haystack of slop. Brute forcing discovery would take literal eons, as in Borges’ story. In turn, insightful dwellers of the internet like @riotgoools give up, log off, and go touch grass, leaving ever more of the space to be filled by bots that not only author the content, but also pretend to be consuming and engaging with it. It’s the most recent embodiment of the Dead Internet Theory. How do we course correct from here? 1/3

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@aviationdoctor.eth

It's refreshing to tune out the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" jokes that prevail online and listen to a nuanced perspective from an American scholar about the French military doctrine. An hour well spent if you're into this sort of thing https://youtu.be/iIHgkQNzXqA

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@aviationdoctor.eth

So, NYC’s congestion pricing achieved what it set out to do — reduce traffic congestion. However I’d be interested in seeing a socioeconomic breakdown of who gave up roads for public transport, and whether one group is overly impacted. I assume that (by definition) it’s people who are more sensitive to money than time, i.e., willing to leave home earlier and take public transit to avoid the fee. While time-poor but presumably cash-rich folks keep on driving and enjoy emptier roads. Makes me wonder what the second-order impacts (on sleep time, stress level, family life, etc) are on people who have to make different arrangements to get to their place of employment. https://x.com/cremieuxrecueil/status/1902145952053338174

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Dr. Tiffany Vora will be hosting a 1-hour webinar on synthetic biology on March 27th. I saw Dr. Vora on stage at last year’s Singularity University event in Mountain View and she paints a pretty vivid picture of the future of biology. You may register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8017414878891/WN_yBhKMQggTZqxZ8EK0AkhyA

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@aviationdoctor.eth

The irony of the BTC strategic reserve is that BTC is not even part of the end goal. Dumping it back for cash when it moons (or when fiat debases, which is functionally equivalent) is the end goal. BTC is just a temporary hedge (multiple correlations to TardFi and interest rates notwithstanding). There is no proposal, in that strategic reserve initiative, to achieve any of the original vision of powering economic and financial transactions using BTC rails (not that it would make sense either - BTC in its current form would be a poor crypto choice for that). It's unambitious and uninspired.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

I told my wife I know what I’m getting for Xmas I’ve always dreamt of having a Jensen at home

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@aviationdoctor.eth

I feel that Sasquatch is so idiosyncratically North American that it alienates readers of this channel from other locales. So, in the spirit of sharing spooky sightings from the other side of the pond, I present to you the Beast of Gévaudan, which at least left some bona fide victims in its wake: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beast_of_G%C3%A9vaudan

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@aviationdoctor.eth

1986 saw the US ban leaded gasoline, but 2025 is behaving otherwise

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@aviationdoctor.eth

In the same week, I received $0 from producing an empty block, and $10 for casting here. 50 likes and I replace my Ethereum node with a Hubble node

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Is there a way to download all of one FID's root casts with timestamps without running a node? Either via a script, or a Dune-like interface, etc.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Open any popular/trending Twitter post related to geopolitics or international affairs right now, and you’ll see dozens of replies along the lines of “@ grok, is this true?” or “@ grok, what are the implications for someone like me?”. 1/

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Gentle reminder that the future of BTC is wBTC

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@aviationdoctor.eth

In the past few weeks and months, I have been updating my priors about our accelerating future like never before — on governance, politics, foreign affairs, technology incl. AI and crypto, etc. Essentially, across all domains that are undergoing what I would call a “great reset”. I am actively trying to refresh my wetware through relevant readings and podcasts, to adjust all the mental models and norms that I wrongly took for granted. Ironically, losing myself in all these rabbit holes leads me to being less opinionated than ever before — not just because FC and the world don’t need an eight billionth opinion on stuff, but also because I don’t feel entitled to having one if I don’t have a credible understanding of all that’s going on

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Whig history — I used to take for granted this historiographical analog to thermodynamics’ arrow of time. But I have also observed the steady decline in the democracy index since the early 2000s, the rise to prominence of illiberal states such as China, the re-election of dark enlightenment-adjacent leaders such as Donald Trump (influenced by JD Vance and Peter Thiel, themselves influenced by Curtis Yarvin who wrote at length against Whig history), the seeming lack of ability for liberal democracies (such as those in Western Europe) to come together, etc. All these trend indicators that make me question whether history does indeed progress (in every acception of the word) toward a more liberal, open, democratic, and tolerant future; or if the Enlightenment period of the 18th century and the temporarily-settled post-colonial world order after WW2 were really transient anomalies, and we are simply now witnessing a reversal to the mean, which I view as the single most powerful force in the universe.

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@aviationdoctor.eth

Tired: build in public Wired: destroy in public Applies to reputation and trust as well

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@aviationdoctor.eth

My Apple Watch somehow knows when I’m washing my hands, and encourages me to keep going. Now I wonder what else it knows about my habits, but is too polite to say anything about

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