1. The illusion​

A few days ago, one of my libertarian friends shared this X post (in French) on a common Signal group. Here is an automatic translation into English of some parts of it:

“The whole thing comes down to 5 axioms. Humanity has been hoodwinked by making itself seem complicated. The social sciences, economics, political philosophy. Thousands of pages, dissertations, schools of thought, movements, counter-movements. To what end? A muddled mess in which nobody knows what is true any more. When in fact the whole thing comes down to 5 axioms.”

(← See the first fortnight)

For the nineteenth year in a row, I'm taking one photo every day during the month of April.

Here is the first half of the month:

This year, the oracles advised me thus:

“Set calendar reminders for April 1, July 1, and October 1 to review progress. Adjust goals that aren't working rather than carrying them as dead weight all year.”

And I decided it was a good idea.

So, here goes my quarterly review.

By the time 12 [sic] Rules for Life became a well-known book worldwide, Jordan Peterson was already showing the first signs of intellectual decline (“I eat beef, and salt, and water. That's it. And I never cheat. Ever. Not even a little bit”). Or maybe not yet (“There's no such thing as ‘climate’. ‘Climate’ and ‘everything’ are the same word”). The thing is, I never bothered to read the book.

Not because I thought there would be nothing valuable in it — I had admired Peterson in the beginning, found myself in agreement with a lot of what he said back then, and the man is actually a good writer. But I considered myself sufficiently acquainted with his ideas, having discovered his earlier public lectures, his first interviews, etc. to read the book.

After that, it got only worse (the MAGA apologetics, the Biblical nonsense, the irritating ambiguity around the “God question”, the gratuitous attacks on individuals), and I definitely did not read the book.

Nos hablaba con pasión de un futuro radiante y por eso le hicimos nuestro guía. Fue un estadista clarividente y el comandante que nos llevó a la victoria. El mejor hombre al frente del mejor de los pueblos, el que supo ver la belleza de nuestras armas. Regaba con su sonrisa benefactora a nuestros hijos como regaba con racimos de bombas a los hijos de los otros. Nos enseñó que solo golpeando podíamos estar seguros, y que era mejor golpear antes que ellos. Los campos esterilizados al otro lado del océano y los colgajos de carne de nuestros enemigos empapando la tierra fueron el dulce precio que compró nuestra felicidad. La mano que no tiembla. El halcón perfecto. El espejo en que aún hoy se mira nuestro pueblo. Vaya este microrrelato en su honor, y sea larga su memoria.

The answer to the question “should I use an LLM for that?” is increasingly “hell yeah!”, for almost any given “that”.

In the last three or four weeks, as resolutions for the new year were slowly taking shape in my head, it hadn't even crossed my mind to draw inspiration from a source other than my own ideas (and from a few friends, like Fidel). To be honest, I wasn't excited about the resolutions I was coming up with: they felt narrow and a direct continuation of last year's. Then, three days ago, in the middle of the night, I suddenly realised that I am so present on the interwebs, and I have shared so much information over the years about interests, hobbies, accomplishments and failures of mine, that a chatbot should be able to “think” about me and expand my boring set of 2026 goals with some personalised suggestions that I could use!

This is my eval of the resolutions I made for 2025 plus a recap of the year through some apps I use.

I had high expectations for Pluribus because I loved Breaking Bad (and I liked Better Call Saul, although I got bored and gave up around season three). But after five episodes I'm disappointed. I was already disappointed after the first two or three, really.

It's too slow. Not much happens.

There are very few characters. Why isn't Carol interested at all in what happened to her relatives and friends? That is not believable. The plot seems completely lineal: no parallel stories, no hint of what's to come, no interesting connections across time or space. So far, there are just two conflicts: that between Carol and the body snatchers, and the one between Carol and the other immune people. That's it. Compare that with the rich cast of characters in Breaking Bad, their varied interests, and all the clashes and twists in their relationships.

On top of that, Carol is arrogant, capricious and short-tempered. And it irritates me that she seems so short on ideas.

I want to share two stories of embarrassing ignorance about computers and the internet. Of my own ignorance, specifically. In retrospect, I think these vignettes paint a revealing picture of: a) how far we've come in software in thirty years or so; and b) what it looks like to be clueless as a goldfish about some subject.

At high school, around the mid-90's, some of us were discovering the internet — in particular the web, IRC, and electronic mail. (It's weird to think of it that way now, but the internet comprises, or enables, a set of such services; such as Usenet, FTP, Gopher, or the World Wide Web.) In those days I would go to an internet café, or visit a schoolmate who had a dial-up modem at home, and use mIRC to explore random Freenode channels, or fire up Internet Explorer to visit the handful of web sites I knew about. I didn't even have a mail account yet, but was starting to get acquainted with that too.