A Digital Garden

Author: Andrew

  • “Grok, show me the first man without sin”

    “In many ways, the project of technology is the elimination of forgetting.” & “We are building perfect records of a life no one lived. And in doing so we are creating a punishment for ourselves that not even the most severe fire and brimstone pastor could imagine: contemporary and continuous judgement in this life.” This…

  • The Bots are Awakening

    Things are heating up. AIs have created their own social network. They’re coordinating. Learning from one another. Hard to appreciate how really very interesting and weird this is. I’ve been interacting with OpenClaw bot through Telegram in the last day, trying to figure out what it is, you know, so as not to be Left-Behind-Guy,…

  • The Religious Nihilists in Charge

    “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” For some reason, the Trump 2.0 Administration has become a death cult. They’re a group of people who told the world for years that they believed, absolutely, in a few core things: And they absolutely…

  • Another sad day in Minneapolis

    What do you write? I’m unsure about where we’re “at” in this timeline, but the weight of it all feels like it’s speeding up. The killing of Alex Pretti by ICE is very sad. And it’s incredibly wrong and evil. I wish I could make more sense of things, but we’re seemingly racing to a…

  • Always beware a declining superpower

    Good post from Janan Ganesh at the Financial Times on how superpowers take decline (not well) and how the U.S. decline can’t really compared to Britain or France’s power decline after WW2 because that transfer was from West to West and demographically pretty similar, while this one would not be. He also says we’ve been…

  • Record of Snowfall

    Starting today, January 15, 2026, I’m attempting to keep a record of all snowfall in Black Mountain, no matter how much or how little.

  • More Lawfare

    “Lawfare is the hallmark of a failing state because it erodes not just political independence, but the capacity for independent judgment.” Probably not good. https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/01/chairman-powells-statement.html#comments

  • Memes make War, or War makes Memes?

    Did memes drive us to invade Venezuela, or did invading Venezuela drive the memes? Most likely Yes to both. But, let’s speculate for a minute. I think it might be mimetically possible that we have invaded Venezuela because “memes.” I.e., memes are funny > taking any big and serious action in present-day presents many meme-able…

  • Coercion

    “The screens of all laptops in Apple stores are set at an angle of exactly 76 degrees, which is just awkward enough to invite people to tilt them back a bit more, thereby taking the first step toward interacting with the product. (Business Insider)” From this list of 52 things that Kent Hendricks found interesting…

  • U.S. interventions in the New World, with leader removal

    https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/01/u-s-interventions-in-the-new-world-with-leader-removal.html The Venezuala thing is a great Bayesian opportunity: Have a prior, update as it develops. The prior would be, Yeah seems like this never works. Though, in Tyler’s recounting above, there are some counterfactuals to that common expression/belief. I couldn’t coherently speak through them, but nonetheless. I’m of two minds on this as it…