Water, at exactly zero degrees, doesn’t know what it wants to be. Add the tiniest nudge of energy and it stays liquid; subtract the same and it snaps into ice, molecules locking into a perfect repeating lattice. The tipping point itself, that knife-edge moment of indecision, is its own strange kind of object. For decades, physicists suspected something similar could happen to spacetime. Not water molecules, but the very fabric of the universe, organising itself into a crystal-like structure right on the threshold of becoming a black hole. Now, for the first time, a team from Vienna and Frankfurt has written down an exact mathematical description of what that object looks like, using nothing more than paper and pencil.
The clearest evidence that state governments exist mostly to control people rather than to provide increasingly better life conditions.
When there is a national defense day, with organized mandatory procedures for introducing young citizens to the army… and this day gets extended to a week.
Yet the women’s rights day, the workers’ rights day, the families’ day, and so on, are but markings on a calendar. Associations around these themes do care, and organize gatherings and discussions — neat little events that don’t turn the world around. The days themselves become a simplified caricature of themselves.
State governments? They don’t care about you as a person. You’re only an obedient member of their society, if not a criminal. Did you sign up for it?
Marbles
Soon enough it’s G & A, not OAI
OpenAI / ChatGPT will dwindle, leaving only Google and Anthropic on the battlefield.
Running the risk of not being the only one thinking this, and still be wrong, but I’ve been right enough times to call it.
Google steadily reclaims average/daily use cases and G-Workspace startups.
Anthropic already rules the Enterprise and will be powering most of Microsoft workspace based enterprises.
If nothing else, simply because they’re all US companies, and the US dislikes having more than two choices; us vs them, right vs wrong, zero-sum game mentality.
See Intel v AMD, Mac vs Windows, Bing v Google… dare I go political 😉
Europe’s Productivity Gap
I didn’t study economics; I was too nerdy back then. It turned out interesting first when I learned about complex systems, and now with the impact of AI on society.
This week a piece caught my eye saying “Europe’s productivity gap with the US is a mirage”. Paul Krugman argues that standard productivity comparisons between Europe and the US are misleading, driven almost entirely by America’s tech sector. While for the rest, productivity adjusted to purchasing power has been equivalent.
Still, being in tech gives me the feeling that we can’t ignore its importance in how world’s economies and societies will play out. I can’t help but feel that Europe isn’t doing enough innovation, at least not fast enough. But I’m optimistic about entrepreneurs driving change where politicians fail.