PoIiMath (@politicalmath)

Michael Crichton is such a fascinating figure and it is a goddamn shame he died so young This guy got into Harvard Medical School and said "actually, I want to write stories" so he wrote one of the most harrowing long short stories, the Andromeda Strain. This guy was addicted to research. He read scientific journals for fun and researched everything that captured his interest. He was curious and skeptical. He thought hard about the implications of technology all the time. And, instead of being a dork and writing a blog, he wrote entire novels warning about the dangers of emerging technologies. And they were great! He wrote a `Prey` about the dangers of combining AI with nanobots 24 years ago. It's tremendous. You could publish it today and it would be relevant. I miss him. I miss technically competent authors who can spin a good yarn while informing the reader about how technology is changing the world. Crichton was a generational talent and we are poorer for his absence.

One of the reasons that I don't accept the "nuking USAID killed millions of people" framing is because most of the people saying this never took the stance that the US was a tremendously good and heroic force for saving millions of people

This is one of those moments where I feel most disconnected from my normie friends I'm like "do you realize what this means?" And they say "no" and I realize I will need to explain decades of nerd lore and in the end they don't care