My Thoughts As Civilization Slowly Unravels

I’m excited to announce GuessTheUS.com, a challenging quiz on important topics regarding current American government, law, and economics. In my previous post, I explained how I used AI to build a website using a language with which I had little familiarity, Python. In this post, I’ll simply focus on what I built and why anyone might care. I created GuessTheUS because too many Americans aren’t paying attention to politics/government, aren’t bothering to vote, and are voting against their selfish economic interests and our broad collective interests....

The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time. — Tom Cargill, Bell Labs In a follow-up post, I’m announcing the official launch of GuessTheUS.com. This post explains how I used AI to build GuessTheUS.com to become more familiar with AI and what I learned about AI’s current abilities and shortcomings....

After watching videos to see how veteran programmers – and even non-programmers!!! – are using AI to code, I decided to grab the wheel and take AI for a spin. I heard great things this weekend about Google’s brand new Gemini 2.5 Pro, which was initially free because Google still considered it experimental. It was reportedly close to the coding performance of Anthropic’s Claude 3.7 Sonnet, which many consider the best coding LLM, but with several advantages: the paid version would be significantly cheaper than Claude – “Sonnet is 2....

For many years, I’ve been a programming machine, obsessively churning out code that powers my employers. I love coding and pour my heart into it, but I’m pretty wiped by the end of the day/week. I’ve seldom taken as much vacation as I’m entitled to. And even when I’ve changed jobs, I’ve seldom given myself any break… generally finishing on a Friday and starting my new job the following Monday....

A lifetime ago, I discovered my life’s calling… Well, it would have, could have, should have been my life’s calling… Unfortunately, the US government literally blew up my plan! (And I mean “literally” literally, not as an intensifier for figuratively, as so many do these days.) How the US literally blew up my life’s dream, causing me to stop studying Mandarin for 25 years I studied government in college and was studying economics in grad school when I met my wife, a physics PhD student from China....

With a son in college and a daughter applying this fall, it’s time to share my advice on how NOT to pursue a PhD because I’m an expert. Before jumping into self-criticism, I did two things well in grad school: I spent eight years in grad school and earned three degrees without paying one penny because I held a fellowship every year. I studied hard – inside and outside the classroom – and learned a ton....

In my September 2023 post “Xi Jinping has ruined China”, I wrote: Since Xi expelled foreign journalists for doing their jobs, I’ve been struggling to find quality, unbiased coverage of China, since much English-language coverage of China comes directly from the Chinese government, its paid Western shills (“white monkeys”) who are some of the few foreigners remaining in China, or Falun Gong-owned media. I recently discovered a pair of westerners (one American; one South African) who each lived in China for over a decade, motorcycled all across the country, and married Chinese women....

Reading (your?) holiday letters inspired me to speed-write this. Given how late this is and the cat-herding-esque nature of getting other family members to write and/or approve an official family letter, this is a solo effort / personal letter. Here are my (very unofficial) 2024 Lavin family awards… Most stressful process 2024 began in the middle of college application season. The stress and exhaustion is real. While taking a full slate of high school classes and extracurriculars, Daryl was simultaneously writing and editing a bazillion school-specific essays asking him to explain why University XYZ should admit him (and traveling to audition for trombone studios)....

In 2024, I “read” – mostly listened to – far fewer books than in 2023. (Here’s last year’s list) Reasons include: Youtube addiction Listened to more podcasts Watched more TV (It’s Apple TV+’s fault for producing too many great shows… “Silo,” “Slow Horses,” “Lessons in Chemistry,” “Mythic Quest,” “Shrinking,” “Severance,” “The Morning Show,” “Masters of the Air,” “Dark Matter,” For All Mankind," “Ted Lasso,” “Prehistoric Planet,” “Foundation,” etc.!) Fewer long, solo outdoor walks Listened to even more jazz I took fewer long, solo walks outdoors because:...

After watching a flood of reports about “drones” flying over New Jersey and – increasingly – other neighboring states, I stepped into the cold night air Friday, December 13th – yes, Friday the 13th! – not expecting to see anything flying around my house but curious whether I might. I almost immediately started filming quite a few things in the air around my home. It felt bizarre in light of countless media reports of unidentified “drones” across much of the US East Coast and beyond....