Links #128

Ted Chiang on why AI isn’t going to make art, with his main argument being that art involves lots of choices. Agreed. (Truth be told, I haven’t been giving AI much thought lately. I know there are new developments — OpenAI’s o1-previews reasoning model, for example — but none of it is terribly interesting to me anymore.)

Christopher Bonanos interviews Robert Caro about The Power Broker. Also, the ebook will at long last be available (for real this time!). It goes on sale tomorrow on the Kindle store. Great book.

Jim Nielsen on sanding UI. I do this too, and clicking around a ton really is key.

Hamilton Nolan on taxing billionaires 100% over $1 billion. I’m not an economist and don’t know what ramifications this might have, but on the face of it I really like the idea.

Matthias Endler on moving slow and fixing things and the harmfulness of the Paul Graham VC mentality. “As it turns out, I’ve always been drawn to the exact opposite: sustainable growth, robust solutions, and a long-term mindset. That’s why I’ve been contributing to open source for 15 years, why I only run small, bootstrapped businesses or non-profits, and why I focus on writing and knowledge sharing.

Matt Webb on not privatizing essential parts of the economy. Yes, this. I wish this were already true.

Adam Mastroianni’s blog extravaganza winners, with several interesting linked blog posts.

Alex Tabarrok quotes Vaclav Smil on how many workers it might have taken to build the Great Pyramid of Giza. Fewer than I expected.

Adrian Roselli’s semiannual reminder to learn and hire for web standards, wherein he quotes Alex Russell: “Never, ever hire for JavaScript framework skills. Instead, interview and hire only for fundamentals like web standards, accessibility, modern CSS, semantic HTML, and Web Components. This is doubly important if your system uses a framework.”

Mark Simonson’s Type Design Like It’s 1987 demo. I’ve only watched little parts of this so far, but it’s fascinating.