It’s not really “trying” to solve anything.

Essentially this is a project designed to get money out of VC rich guys - that kind of rich person can only think of transit in terms of individualised vehicles because that’s all they know.

Bus? No, private car. Airliner? No, private jet. Ferry? Yacht etc. The only way they interact with transport is in a single vehicle that takes specifically them from where they are to where they want to go, the idea of economy of scale just doesn’t enter their worldview.

So this company goes “wouldn’t it be great if your specific container that your company ordered could get to your warehouse directly and not need to worry about all those distribution yards and other people’s stuff in the way” (Spectacularly ignoring the fact that it just spent weeks on a ship from China, saving a day at the end of that makes no difference) And they go damn yes that sounds great here’s $100m

Yay it’s pod time again!

Adam Something video about why this was a dumb idea 3 years ago, looks like it still is, just use trains!

Managed to screengrab before the popup appeared

There are two issues really - one is a perception that they’re not vetting any of this output, just dumping it out on the internet and expecting real mathematicians to actually check it all, so yes if a human was doing the same thing it’d probably still be suspect.

The other is the widely held suspicion that much of the “breakthrough” mathematics here has been stolen from real researchers who’ve been using chatgpt to develop their theories by talking to it

When you’ve got an enormous cello case on your back you just become a target for drunk people to yell stuff (that’s the only blowjob offer I’ve had off it though)

One time I was walking along in the evening with my cello on my back, group of drunk girls pass me by on the other side of the road

One yells “I’ll give you a blowy if I can play your guitar”

I shout back “it’s a cello and I’m gay, sorry!”, they all lose it laughing, felt good

I’ve heard the argument before that it’s tied up in misogyny, homophobic men are, consciously or otherwise, thinking basically “I’m afraid gay men will treat me the way I treat women”

Hence all the anti-gay jokes like “backs against the wall lads” (note how the straight men are often imagining themselves as the bottom) - implication being, “I don’t respect consent therefore what if the gay man who’s more of a threat to me physically doesn’t either”

No idea how accurate this is but it certainly rings true for some behaviours

I was 10 when 9-11 happened so not much, but Mark Knopfler’s Sailing to Philadelphia always takes me back, released in 2000 and I remember being in the car with my dad listening to it