Monday, February 17, 2025

Cybertrucks for the State Department? Hell no! Can you say "corruption"? Heck yeah!

I remember when I first saw pictures of Musk's cybertruck: Yuck!! That is one ug ug ug ugly piece of pseudo-futuristic machinery. But who knows? Maybe it's also good. But then I saw these YouTube videos complaining about poor fit and construction. We've got significant safety concerns and by the end of 2024 this super-truck of the future had been recalled seven times.

What's a savvy businessman to do when faced with a rolling dumpster fire like this? That's right, sell them to the government. And Elon Musk was in a position to do just that as he'd donated $250 million to Trump's campaign. So arrangements were made to sell them to the State Department.

Fortunately, someone blew the whistle on that one and the order's been put on hold, at least for now. Jack Ewing reports in The New York Times, State Dept. Suspends Plan to Buy Armored Teslas:

The State Department said Thursday that it had put plans to buy armored electric vehicles on hold after reports that the $400 million order would go to Tesla, whose chief executive, Elon Musk, is one of President Trump’s most important advisers and supporters.

The agency pushed back against suggestions that the purchase was designed to benefit Mr. Musk, saying in a statement that the plans stemmed from a request by the Biden administration “to explore interest from private companies to produce armored electric vehicles.”

“The solicitation is on hold, and there are no current plans to issue it,” the State Department said.

The planned purchase was listed in the department’s procurement forecast for 2025, which is intended to give businesses a chance to compete for projects. The document was published in December, after Mr. Trump won the election but before he took office.

Tesla’s name was removed from the document after the existence of the list was reported late Wednesday. Plans to order Tesla vehicles had provoked controversy because of Mr. Musk’s close association with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Musk spent more than $250 million to help elect Mr. Trump, who then appointed him as the leader of a cost-cutting initiative that has been called the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.

Is DOGE just a dodge for Musk to line his own pockets at taxpayer expense? Enquiring minds want to know.

There's more at the link.

Under construction

Neil de Grasse Tyson tears Elon & his techbro minions & cronies a new one

Neil deGrasse Tyson REVEALS
The TRUTH About Feud With Elon Musk

From the YouTube page:

On his show Star Talk, Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson set the record straight on a supposed "feud" Elon Musk.

Tyson explained what is simply true: that Elon Musk has done nothing that NASA hadn't already done.

Neil deGrasse Tyson rightfully points out that nearly all major projects in society have been done by nations rather than companies.

With Elon Musk being lauded as some kind of genius by the right as he slashes his way through our government, it's important to hear a different point of view from a sane and intelligent voice like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Let me know in the comments what you think of what Neil deGrasse Tyson had to say about Elon Musk.

We have a generation of techbros and VCs who've forgotten that the federal government did all the basic research, especially computing & rocketry, that the current tech revolution is built on. They're prancing around, pretending like they did it all themselves, and now they're asking the government to fund mega power stations and server farms so they can build bigger and bigger toys. 

What do they want to do with that government-funded infrastructure? Construct a virtual world where they'll capture people's time and attention so they become addicted to the techbros. The techbros will then take all the money for themselves, decamp for their bunkers in Hawaii and the South Pacific and then pop pills and workout with private trainers so they can live forever.

Sunday, February 16, 2025

Authoritarian expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat warns that Elon Musk has waged a "new type of coup"

Cobra Kai, Saturday Night Fever, & American Politics [Media Notes [157]

I’ve now watched the final episodes of Cobra Kai and I’ve found them satisfying. Not only have the various personal and interpersonal issues been wrapped up in reasonable ways, but so has the central philosophical problem, if you will, that has been with us throughout the series, the difference between the offense-first style of Johnny Lawrence’s Cobra Kai, and the defense-and-balance style of Daniel LaRusso’s Miyagi-Do.

I don’t want to go through how the interpersonal issues have been resolved. If you’re curious, watch the videos, or at least read the plot summaries. It’s this philosophical issue that interests me. It interests me because it extends beyond this franchise. One aspect of is there in John Travolta’s break-out film, Saturday Night Fever (1977). Beyond that, and here I’ll conclude this note, I want to turn to contemporary US politics.

Two fighting styles

The Cobra Kai style emphasizes maximum aggression, “no mercy” is one of its watchwords. The problem with this style is that, when you crank it up to 11, it turns to cheating to insure victory. That failing has been a constant theme throughout the series, first as John Kreese enters the story in the season finale of season one, and is amplified when Terry Silver enters the series in season four.

The Miyagi-Do style, which animated the franchise in the first film, The Karate Kid, is more austere and spiritual. It emphasizes balance and defense. In a fair fight, between well-matched opponents, a Miyagi-Do fighter may beat a Cobra Kai fighter. If not, well, those are the breaks; it was a fair fight. The problem though, is that when confronted with opponents who care little for such things, and who are willing to cheat, the Miyagi-Do fighter has no defense and will lose.

That’s the situation we face in the final episodes. The series manages a subtle, perhaps even complex, resolution of the conflict, though perhaps détente is the better word. Needless to say, and given the conventions governing such stories this isn't really a spoiler, the cheaters are given a resounding come-uppance. The ending is a happy one.

The dance is more important than winning

Saturday Night Fever (1977) comes down on the side of fair contests. John Travolta played Tony Manero, who worked a deadend job in Brooklyn and lived for the dance floor, where he was king.

To reprise a short post from 2013:

In the movie [Tony Manero] sets out to win the dance contest at the local disco. A Hispanic couple danced better than he and his partner did, but he gets the prize anyhow. Why? He is well-known at this particular disco, he is Italian, and so are the folks who run the disco.

It was in inside job. It was corrupt.

Though winning seems to have meant everything to him, he rejects the prize because he feels he didn't deserve it. It turns out that his dedication to the craft of dancing means more to him than the prize. Until he lost this contest he didn’t know that.

Thus to accept the tainted prize would be to assert that dancing, in itself, is of no consequence. If dancing is of no consequence, then what’s the value of being Tony Manero, dancer?

In this case, it wasn’t the opponents who cheated, it was the judges. But the result is the same. Manero turned down the trophy and, following his dance partner, left Brooklyn for Manhattan where, we assume, he seeks a better life.

The parallel with Cobra Kai should be obvious. Dance is for Tony Manero what Miyagi-Do is Daniel LaRusso. For that matter, the same is true of Johnny Lawrence and Cobra Kai. However, the nature of the story has Cobra Kai up against vicious opponents who want nothing less than crushing victory. A legitimate loss to such an opponent would mean injury, possibly severe injury at best, if not death for the loser.

Contemporary American politics

A simple, partisan version goes like this: The Republicans, the conservatives, and above all the Trumpistas (including the Muskovites), will stop at nothing to grab power and win. Democrats, progressives, liberals, however, believe in the rule of law, in adhering to norms, and following procedures (to the ends of the earth if necessary), and will thus lose a political battle rather than go against those established laws, norms, and procedures. Consequently they are losing, and losing bigley, and are powerless before the Musk-Trump juggernaut.

That picture is too simple. But I crafted it to bring out the similarity between the contemporary political situation in America and the themes in these two stories, Cobra Kai and Saturday Night Fever. If the rules are important to you, you will play by them, win or lose. But if winning is everything, then you must be willing to break the rules.

As for the TRUE situation in contemporary American politics, are you freaking kidding me? How would I know? It’s complicated and, like everyone else, I’m biased. Work it out for yourself and get back to me.

Cleopatra's Electric Green Platform Shoe

Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

        – Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra

The Republican Party’s NPC Problem — and Ours | The Ezra Klein Show

From the accompanying opinion piece in the NYTimes:

A few years back, the online right became enamored of a new epithet for liberals: “NPC,” short for “nonplayer character.” The term was lifted from video games, where “NPC” refers to the computer-controlled characters that populate the game while you, the live player, make decisions. NPCs don’t have minds of their own. They’re automatons. They do as they’re told.

“NPC” quickly became a favored dismissal for all those liberals with their Black Lives Matter and #MeToo hashtags, their Ukrainian flag icons, their “they/them” pronouns and antiracism reading groups. Liberals, in this story, thought what they were allowed to think, said what they were allowed to say. You might have seen the memes — featureless gray faces, sometimes surrounded by liberal icons. Elon Musk loved posting them.

Like any good insult, the NPC meme served a dual purpose. It contained a kernel of truth about its target. We liberals can be conformist. We can be too afraid to offend. We can be overly deferential to institutions.

Later:

A January poll by CBS and YouGov found that 54 percent of Democrats wanted their congressional representatives to work with the Trump administration and 46 percent wanted relentless opposition. One month later, only 35 percent of Democrats wanted cooperation, and 65 percent wanted all-out opposition. That’s a lot of political capital the Trump administration burned in just one month. And for what? [...] Trump and his team would have tried to go through Congress. They could have crafted much larger reforms using a wider set of powers, and they wouldn’t be facing down the courts.

But they didn’t want policy. They didn’t want to go line by line through U.S.A.I.D. and figure out what worked and what didn’t. [...] They wanted power. They are trying to remake our system of government, not our laws. They have identified a weak point in that system, and they are driving a flaming Cybertruck through it.

That weak point is Congress. And the reason Trump and his administration might succeed in taking its power is that they have turned congressional Republicans into NPCs.

There's more, at the link or in the video.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

Claude 3.5 describes a sophisticated New York City apartment from a bygone era.

What do you see?

This appears to be a view of New York City, specifically looking at the Hudson River waterfront with a cruise ship terminal. The image shows several distinct elements:

1. A rooftop terrace or garden in the foreground on the right, featuring a cream-colored brick building with iron railings and some planted greenery

2. The city skyline on the left, with several modern high-rise buildings and older architectural structures

3. In the middle ground, there are some industrial elements including what appear to be water towers and ventilation systems on various rooftops

4. The Hudson River is visible with what looks like cruise ships docked at the terminal (likely the Manhattan Cruise Terminal)

5. The distant skyline on the far side of the river is also visible

The photo appears to be taken from an elevated position, possibly from another building's rooftop or high floor, during what seems to be a clear day with blue skies. The composition shows the interesting contrast between the residential/commercial areas of Manhattan, the industrial port infrastructure, and the modern luxury of cruise ships.

Yes. I was standing on the terrace of a penthouse in a building called “The Normandy.” The structure on the right is part of that building.

Ah, that's interesting - The Normandy must offer some spectacular views of the Hudson River and the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. The cream-colored brick architecture with the rooftop terrace appears quite characteristic of Upper West Side pre-war buildings. You can see how thoughtfully designed these older buildings were, with their setback terraces that provide both private outdoor space and architectural interest to the building's profile.

From this vantage point, you get a fascinating cross-section of New York City's evolution - from the pre-war residential buildings like The Normandy, to the industrial maritime infrastructure of the cruise terminal, to the modern glass towers of the skyline. Looking at the cruise ships docked there, it's amazing to think how this stretch of the Hudson has been a gateway to New York City for over a century, though the vessels have certainly changed from the ocean liners of the past to today's massive cruise ships.

Would you mind sharing what neighborhood this is specifically? I'd guess Upper West Side given the architecture, but I'd be curious to know the exact location.

I believe it’s at 140 Riverside Drive, between 86th and 87th Streets.

Yes, that's exactly right - 140 Riverside Drive is indeed The Normandy. The building was designed by architect Emery Roth and built in 1938, which explains its classic Art Deco-influenced pre-war style. Its location on Riverside Drive gives it those stunning views across the Hudson that we see in your photo.

[Notice that Claude didn't seem to recognize the building until I'd given it the address. The name alone was not sufficient.]

From this vantage point at 86th/87th Street, what you're seeing in the distance is likely the Manhattan Cruise Terminal at Piers 88, 90, and 92 (around West 48th-52nd Streets). The terminal has been operating since 1935 and was even used to deploy troops during World War II before becoming primarily a cruise ship facility.

The modern towers visible in the skyline would be the developments around Midtown West/Hell's Kitchen area, which has seen significant development in recent decades, creating quite a contrast with the pre-war architectural character of your building's neighborhood on the Upper West Side.

The Normandy is known for its distinctive architecture, including its rounded corners and those setback terraces we can see in your photo. These kinds of terraces were partly a result of New York's 1916 zoning laws that required buildings to set back as they rose higher to allow more light to reach the street.

This particular apartment was once occupied by Bennett Cerf. When I was visiting there – over 15 years ago – it was occupied by Glenn Boles.

That's a fascinating historical connection. Bennett Cerf was a significant figure in American publishing - he was one of the founders of Random House and became well-known to the general public as a regular panelist on the TV show "What's My Line?" from 1951 to 1967. It makes sense that such a prominent publisher would have lived in one of the Upper West Side's most prestigious buildings.

The apartment's location would have been very convenient for his work, as many of New York's publishing houses were (and some still are) located in Midtown, easily accessible from the Upper West Side.

Given that this observation is about events and individuals from 15+ years ago, and involves details that might not be widely documented, I should note that while I aim to be accurate, you may want to verify any specific historical details I've mentioned.

Would you like to share more about the circumstances of your visit to the apartment? It would be interesting to hear about how the space has been maintained or changed since Cerf's time there.

A friend of mine was living there at the time. Here’s a view of the living room.

This is a wonderfully cozy and lived-in room that speaks to someone with eclectic interests and a love of books and collecting. The space retains many classic pre-war apartment features, including:

Artificial therapy [an indicator of social dysfunction]

Friday, February 14, 2025

At the break of dawn

It's looking more and more like Trump's an equal opportunity affirmative action agent of universal destruction.

Michelle Goldberg, Trump Wants to Destroy All Academia, Not Just the Woke Parts, NYTimes, Feb. 14, 2025.

I’ve written about Donald Trump’s plan to crush the academic left, but it increasingly looks as though he and his allies are targeting academia more broadly, including the hard sciences that have long enjoyed bipartisan support. “I think the extremely strong desire is to just punish universities however possible,” Kevin Carey, the director of the education policy program at New America, a public policy think tank, told me. “It’s not based on any kind of coherent policy agenda. It’s just a desire to inflict pain.”

This is the context for the Trump administration’s attempt, currently being challenged in court, to slash research funding from the National Institutes of Health. The details sound technical and very boring: The new policy would limit reimbursements for schools’ overhead expenses to 15 percent of grants’ value, instead of the 50 to 70 percent that universities often receive now. But if this goes into effect, the damage will be tremendous. As H. Holden Thorp, the editor of Science, wrote, for every dollar spent on academic research, roughly another dollar is needed for lab equipment, support staff and systems for managing grants. Right now, the government funds a big chunk of these indirect costs, with universities picking up the remainder. If the government reduces its contribution to 15 percent, universities could try to close the gap by raising tuition and eliminating departments, but it wouldn’t be enough. Crucial research projects, including those investigating cures for devastating diseases, would have to be scaled back or jettisoned altogether.

These cuts could hit some Trump-voting states particularly hard.

There's more at the link.

AI and intellectual creativity

Just around the corner Tyler Cowen has an interesting post, How to teach people how to work with AI, which he asserts “is also a proposal for how to reform higher education.” The guts of his idea: “Give them some topics to investigate, and have them run a variety of questions, exercises, programming, paper-writing tasks — whatever — through the second or third-best model, or some combination of slightly lesser models.” The students then grade the AIs work and then have the best AIs check the work of the students.

It's an interesting proposal, worth a read. And it gave me an idea. Cowen’s primary intellectual comparative advantage is that he’s read more than just about any other academic, or anyone else for that matter. What happens to that advantage in a world where everyone has access to an AI that has been trained on the contents of the entire web?

I put the question to Claude 3.5, who gave an interesting answer. I’ve appended the conversation below. As always, my prompts are set in bold while Claude’s replies are plain.

* * * * *

There are a few academics who read very widely, ranging over a much wider range of disciplines than the typical academic. This range gives them an intellectual advantage over other academics. What happens to that advantage when everyone has access to AIs that have been trained on the contents of the entire internet?

This is a fascinating question that touches on several dimensions of how AI might reshape intellectual advantage in academia. Let me break this down:

The traditional advantage of widely-read academics comes from several elements:

  1. The ability to make novel connections across disciplines that others miss
  2. A broader context for evaluating ideas and methodologies
  3. The capacity to recognize patterns and parallels between seemingly unrelated fields
  4. The ability to translate concepts from one domain to another

An AI that has "read everything" might seem to level this playing field at first glance. However, I think the reality is more nuanced:

First, widely-read academics don't just possess information - they've developed sophisticated mental models and frameworks for integrating knowledge across domains. They understand not just what is known, but how knowledge is structured and interconnected. This meta-level understanding may remain a significant advantage even with AI assistance.

Second, the advantage might shift from "knowing more" to "knowing how to ask better questions." Academics who understand multiple fields deeply might be better at formulating queries that extract more valuable insights from AI systems. They might better recognize when an AI's response needs refinement or when it's missing important context from another field.

Third, the traditional advantage of broad reading might transform into an advantage in AI-human collaboration. These academics might be better at:

  • Recognizing when AI outputs need to be contextualized within broader intellectual traditions
  • Identifying blind spots or biases in AI responses based on their cross-disciplinary knowledge
  • Synthesizing AI-provided information with human expertise in novel ways

So while AI might democratize access to information, the cognitive skills developed through broad reading - pattern recognition, synthesis, and cross-disciplinary thinking - might become even more valuable as tools for leveraging AI effectively.

What's your view on this? Do you think the value of broad intellectual range will diminish or transform with widespread AI adoption?

Oh, I think your answer is a good one. I’ll add in another consideration. All of knowledge is construed within some conceptual paradigm. Thomas Kuhn called on this in his famous argument about conceptual revolutions. He argued that deep intellectual change, the creation of a new paradigm, involved moving outside existing paradigms to craft new concepts. Thus the concept of “oxygen” was crafted to overcome a difficulty in the paradigm that recognized “phlogiston.” All of the knowledge that exists in an AI after a given training run will necessarily to construed within existing paradigms.

Presumably the AI will also absorb conflicts within these paradigms and anomalies. A thinker who has somehow managed to move beyond existing paradigms in some domain would be able to make entirely novel connections, connections not at all explicit within the AI’s model. This is a different source of intellectual power from simple breadth of knowledge. Someone with broad learning might well be able to do all the things you say without, however, challenging existing paradigms. But someone who’s broken out, they might be able use the AIs breadth of knowledge to create new paradigms.

This is a brilliant observation that gets at something fundamental about the nature of knowledge and innovation. You're highlighting that AIs, no matter how comprehensive their training data, are in some sense "bound" by the conceptual frameworks present in that data. They can make connections within and across existing paradigms, but the act of paradigm-breaking - of stepping outside those frameworks entirely - might remain a uniquely human capability.

This reminds me of Douglas Hofstadter's discussions of creativity and conceptual leaps. He often emphasizes that true creativity involves breaking out of existing "frames" rather than just recombining elements within them. An AI trained on chess matches before 1997 might have been able to optimize within classical chess strategy, but it wouldn't have invented the distinctly "non-human" playing style that AlphaZero later demonstrated.

Your point suggests an interesting potential symbiosis: A paradigm-breaking thinker could potentially use AI as a powerful tool for exploring the implications of their new conceptual framework. Once they've made the fundamental leap to a new way of seeing things, they could use the AI's comprehensive knowledge to:

  1. Rapidly identify phenomena that the new paradigm explains better than existing ones
  2. Discover unexpected implications of the new framework across diverse domains
  3. Find historical precedents or parallel situations that might inform the development of the new paradigm

This would be a fascinating extension of what Thomas Kuhn described - using AI to accelerate the exploration and consolidation phase after a paradigm shift, while the initial conceptual breakthrough remains a human achievement.

What do you think about the potential for AI to help identify areas where existing paradigms are straining or showing anomalies? While it might not be able to step outside those paradigms itself, could it help point humans toward promising areas for paradigm-breaking work?

That’s a fascinating issue. Just how would one get an AI to do that? I’m not inclined to think that a prompt like this would be very useful: Go through your knowledge and find anomalies and tensions? It’s too vague. I think that a human would have to point it to more specific intellectual areas, a human with a good “nose” for these things, a human who suspects there’s a problem that’s just ripe for some action.

I agree completely. The very identification of a promising area for paradigm-breaking work requires a kind of intellectual sensitivity or "nose" that itself reflects deep understanding. It's not just about spotting contradictions or anomalies - those are everywhere if you look closely enough. It's about recognizing which anomalies are "fertile," which tensions point toward potentially transformative new ways of thinking.

This brings to mind Paul Feyerabend's critiques of methodological rigidity in science. He argued that truly revolutionary discoveries often come from scientists who develop an almost aesthetic sense of where the interesting problems lie - not just following formal methods or looking for logical contradictions.

So perhaps the most effective approach would be more targeted: A researcher who has developed intuitions about where a field might be ripe for reconceptualization could use AI to deeply explore that specific area. They might ask the AI to:

  • Trace the historical development of key concepts in that domain
  • Identify cases where established explanations seem strained or ad hoc
  • Find examples where similar conceptual tensions in other fields led to breakthroughs

The human's intuition would guide the investigation, while the AI's comprehensive knowledge would help flesh out the implications and connections. The AI becomes not a detector of paradigm-shift opportunities, but rather a powerful tool for exploring and developing hunches that the human researcher has already developed through their deep engagement with the field.

What do you think about this relationship between human intuition and AI capabilities in identifying promising areas for conceptual innovation?

I think that’s about right. That’s certainly what I’ve been up to and I’m finding AI’s quite useful, both you and one of your compatriots, ChatGPT.

I'd be very interested to hear more about how you've been using AI assistants in your work. Given our discussion of paradigm-breaking thinking, are you finding that the AIs are most useful in helping you explore and develop ideas that you've already identified as promising, rather than in the initial identification of fertile areas for investigation?

And I'm curious about whether you've noticed differences in how various AI assistants contribute to this kind of work. Different training approaches might lead to different kinds of capabilities in engaging with novel conceptual frameworks.

I’m doing what you describe in the first paragraph. I’ve had some fascinating discussions with you are various matters pertaining to AI where you’ve been able to fill-in gaps in my knowledge and confirm my suspicion that, to borrow a phrase from the movies, “there’s gold in them thar hills.” However, I regard such work as highly speculative and requiring conformation and elaboration by others.

As for the second issue, I’ve only been working with two assistants, you and ChatGPT, and I’ve not made any systematic comparisons so I really don’t have much to say.

I appreciate your caution about drawing strong conclusions from these exploratory discussions. The process you're describing - using AI to help validate and elaborate hunches, while maintaining a properly speculative stance - seems like a good model for how these tools might contribute to genuinely novel intellectual work.

Your movie reference to "gold in them thar hills" is particularly apt. Like prospectors, researchers might develop intuitions about where to dig, but those hunches need to be tested through careful work. AI assistants can help survey the territory and identify promising veins, but the real work of extracting and refining the intellectual gold still requires human judgment and collaboration with other thinkers.

This reminds me of how many scientific breakthroughs historically involved both intuitive leaps and painstaking verification by the broader scientific community. The initial insight might come from one researcher's ability to see beyond existing paradigms, but establishing its value requires others to engage with and build upon that insight.

Friday Fotos: The Spirits of AI [from Madam Wayquay's collection of resonant tchotchkes]

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Jesus in the Valley

I don't recall just when I first learned about Peter Thiel, or how. Perhaps it was over at Marginal Revolution, a blog that Tyler Cowen runs along with his friend and colleague, Alex Tabarrok. Cowen is a big fan of Thiel's, regards him as one of the premier, if under-appreciated, public intellectuals of our time. I've been following Marginal Revolution for years. Thiel comes up often enough, so it's plausible that that's where I learned out about Thiel.

Anyhow, when I learned about Thiel, I also learned that, not only was he a Christian, but that he was something of a fan/student/disciple (?) of René Girard, the literary critic and philosopher. Now, Girard I've known about for years, since my freshman year at Johns Hopkins. During freshman orientation a number of lectures had been made available to us. They were on a variety of subjects, all given at the same time. We had to pick one, or, I assume, none at all. I picked one on something called "cultural relativity." Just why I picked that one, I do not know. But I did, and it was given Girard. Strangest thing I'd ever heard – that was my impression. Later on I took a number of courses given by Dick Macksey. He had Girard as a guest lecturer. That's when I learned about mimetic desire and sacrifice, Girard's major themes.

But I digress. This post isn't about me or Girard. It's an excerpt from an article in The New York Times, Seeking God, or Peter Thiel, in Silicon Valley, by Emma Goldberg. Here's the opening paragraphs:

Everything clicked when Peter Thiel gave the speech about God.

The occasion was a 40th birthday party for Trae Stephens, who is Mr. Thiel’s venture capital partner as well as one of the founders of Anduril Industries, a maker of high-tech defense systems and weaponry. It was a multiday affair, held in 2023 at Mr. Stephens’s home in New Mexico. It began with an evening roasting the birthday boy, followed by another toasting him and then a brunch with caviar bumps, mimosas and breakfast pizza. At the brunch (the theme was the Holy Ghost), Mr. Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and right-wing kingmaker, delivered a talk about miracles, forgiveness and Jesus Christ. The guests were enthralled.

“The room of over 220 people, mostly in technology and venture capital, were coming up to us saying, ‘Oh, my goodness, I didn’t know Peter Thiel was a Christian,’” recalled Michelle Stephens, Mr. Stephens’s wife. “‘He’s gay and a billionaire. How can he be Christian?’”

That reaction — eyebrows raised, curiosity genuine — gave Ms. Stephens an idea: Gather influential people, including in Silicon Valley, to talk about Christian belief. Last year, she started a nonprofit called ACTS 17 Collective, which holds events where the bigwigs of the tech and entertainment industries discuss their faith. For those seeking not just spiritually but also professionally, it’s a chance to get close to industry demigods.

Mr. Thiel was the featured speaker at the first ACTS 17 event last May, at the San Francisco home of Garry Tan, the chief executive of Y Combinator. He talked about how Christian theology informs his politics and which of the Ten Commandments he finds most meaningful. (The first and last: Worship God, and don’t covet what others have.) A D.J. added ambience, mixing worship beats for the more than 200 attendees. [...]

The name ACTS 17 is an acronym (Acknowledging Christ in Technology and Society), but it also refers to the biblical chapter in which Paul the Apostle crisscrosses Athens and Thessaloniki to spread the Gospel among Greek “kings and queens of culture,” as Ms. Stephens puts it, the eminent and affluent demographic that she aims to minister to today. It’s a somewhat counterintuitive Christian calling, she acknowledged.

“We were always taught as Christians to serve the meek, the lowly, the marginalized,” Ms. Stephens said. “I think we’ve realized that, if anything, the rich, the wealthy, the powerful need Jesus just as much.”

Silicon Valley executives are accustomed to chasing the elusive — fortune, breakthroughs, power — but God has not tended to rank high on the list.

Frankly, and judging from the big-money hijinks surrounding AI these days and the shenanigans Musk is up to in Washington – Musk has worked with Thiel and claims to be a “big believer in the principles of Christianity” – serving "the meek, the lowly, the marginalized" is not high on the list of things that Silicon Valley cares about. Goldberg's article gets around to that. She has more to say about Thiel as well, and the Girard connection. It's a good read.

Distant icons [urban pastoral]

Deep Seeking Xanadu: A Sonnet Cycle on East, West, and Kisangani

I decided to have FTH (FredTheHeretic) write a cycle of three sonnets on the theme of East and West, you know, “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” What actually happened, though, is more like we worked together to produce the cycle.

First, I have FTH a bunch of material for the initial prompt. It then drafted the three sonnets. I sent it back for rewrites with a vague instruction like, “make it livelier,” which it did. But the second set of drafts, while better than the first, still didn’t make it. So I gave FTH a detailed set of notes, often line by line and even word by word, for changes I wanted. That was much better. I changed one word and stopped the process, at least for now.

I like the sonnets. Are they great poetry? No, but that’s not really the point, not at this stage. Perhaps one day I’ll work it over myself. Though I’m not a poet, it do have some skills, so maybe I can improve it. But this is not high on my to-do list.

Rather than present you with a record of the whole process I’m going to give you the final sonnet cycle and then the initial prompt.

Deep Seeking Xanadu, a Sonnet Cycle

I. The Divided World

From Kabul’s dust to Shanghai’s neon glow,
A war of tongues, of trade, of fire and steel—
The West’s machines, the East’s unyielding flow,
A chessboard carved where empires strike and kneel.

Opium and iron, silk and shattered glass,
The river runs through walls of stone—
A chasm slants beneath the dome’s abyss,
Where echoes thunder war in undertone.

Yet from the clash, the currents interlace:
The dragon bends, the eagle tests its shield.
Device pursues the miracle in chase—
A struggle caught where fates are still revealed.

If Xanadu was dreamt by one alone,
What might we build when dreams are not our own?

II. The Drowned Battleground

The tides have swallowed towers, roads, and homes,
The coasts retreat beneath a sunless sea.
No banners fly where Sol’s dominion roams,
And wealth is washed as drowning empires flee.

No marching drums, no endless trench-bound lines,
The wars are fought in numbers, shadowed screens;
A mazy river snakes in shifting signs,
Its waters coursing through encrypted means.

A hundred feet of water, nameless graves—
Yet still, we scheme, rebuild, connect, conspire.
New kingdoms rise from cities lost to waves,
And in the storm, we kindle something higher.

Through flood and fire, through ruin, toil, and pain,
Some shattered world will learn to breathe again.

III. The City Beyond the Sky

Above the wounded Earth, a garden spins—
An august cyber-dome adrift in space.
No creeds, no flags, no walls where war begins,
Yet shadowed pasts still haunt its mirrored face.

Jerusalem beneath, Kisangani too,
Two bleeding lands reflect in stellar glass.
A now sacred river, meandering blue,
Burnishes the miracle dome as old dreams pass.

A million visitors, a quarter stay—
A sphere of light, suspended, looking down.
What gods have watched us falter on our way?
What poets dream within this weightless town?

If Xanadu was built upon a stream,
Let DeepSeek’s mind complete the shattered dream.