Basement Whatever

Escape the algorithm

aging ai algorithm aliens Art builder Chicago cities community consciousness curation design enshittification focus future games good tech governance happiness history information Internet learning magic management media music organization parenting perspective philosophy predictions privacy project reading reality social social media symbols technology travel ttrpg USA wealth work

about

  • They Killed Normal and Called It Progress

    What we stopped making is the middle, the common culture you could just walk into without curating your identity first. We optimized it out of existence and called it progress.

    This is not an essay about movies, tho. Have you noticed that the middle is gone from everything? Restaurants, companies, careers, music, retail, the economy itself. What replaced it is a barbell: one enormous weight on each end, nothing in the center, and most of us trying not to get crushed by the bar.

    And:

    Each time, the thing that died was the thing that served the most people with the least pretension, and each time, the thing that replaced it was a genuine improvement that served fewer people while flattering the taste of a specific class.

    The business model of going after a wide group doesn’t work anymore because it’s very, very hard to capture a broad swath of the market. So everyone controls costs and niches down. It’s the same with our news media. It all makes sense financially but add it to the list of why no one understands each other anymore.

    More here.

  • Worry less, do more

    Social media, by allowing people to post ideas that are unmediated by any editorial planning process, brings forth whole modes of engagement with political ideas that I think simply could not exist in a world of rigorous journalistic feedback.

    People in the media or PR understand this. Getting on tv, or being quoted, gives an opinion validity.

    But go to public meeting, see these opinions IRL and it’s clear a lot of people good at getting attention are absolute crackpots you wouldn’t allow in your life. Like the psycho on the train level crackpot.

    Crackpots need to be able to share their ideas, too – but in an environment optimized for engagement, their ideal get more weight than they deserve.

    I’m not sure how to fix this, other than doing what this guy is doing, and building a media ecosystem optimized for reflection, not rage bait.

    — Read on http://www.slowboring.com/p/worry-less-do-more

  • Travel loses its allure

    Travel loses its allure

    One of the biggest changes in my personality with middle age is that I no longer really enjoy travel beyond local weekend getaways. Almost no destination has a pain/novelty ratio that makes it worth it. On the one hand, I’ve traveled enough that few places hold the promise of real novelty and stimulation. On the other hand, even though travel has gotten way more convenient overall (smartphones, eSIM cards, cashless payments, Uber, Google Translate — though at the expense of phone-loss anxiety), my tolerance for discomfort has plummeted.

    I feel this. After constant work travel, travel has lost most of its allure. I’ve started preferring long periods without travel which allow me to keep a steady workout and diet schedule.

    In fact, as I’ve gotten older, the parts I most enjoy about travel aren’t really related to the destination. I like getting to meet new people. And I enjoy the proficiency that comes with travel – knowing how to pack a bag right, knowing your way around the apps and points programs, having fluency in major airports.

    I admit, it’s easy to feel like a weirdo when 60% of coworkers in team bonding exercises list “travel” as their favorite hobbies. Who knows – maybe the joy of travel will come back, but as long as it’s being replaced with the joy of rootedness, I don’t mind.

  • Claims about grade inflation

    Average grades continue to rise in the United States, raising the question of how grade inflation impacts students.

    And:

    The cumulative impact is economically significant: a teacher with one standard deviation higher average grade inflation reduces the present discounted value of lifetime earnings of their students by $213,872 per year.

    Concerning. And absolutely happening, based on observation. More here.

  • This is still the hardest hitting meme of the GameStop era

    The GameStop era started when some people discovered a crack in Wall Street’s armor that could be exploited through Internet coordination. Ultimately, the system won, and most people lost. Yet the era revealed a lot of truths, educated people about stocks, and ultimately produced a lot of memes.

    Of all the GameStop memes, this one still hits hardest. It reveals something poisonous underneath the surface. It tells you why the poison is happening. It invites you to make your own decisions. And it also:

    • Uses insider jargon. People are not dumb. They’re making desperate choices.
    • Shows the gap between generations. People live in different economic worlds. When we forget this, we lose empathy when it’s needed the most.
    • Is not funny. Most GameStop memes are funny. This one is not.

    Martin Gurri makes the same point: Without unifying stories, we risk hurtling toward nihilism, benefiting no one.

  • What We Have Lost

    What We Have Lost

    What I remember – people with drug problems reading Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire. High schoolers reading Shogun, the Stand. Books went to road trips, books went to sporting events. Lots of people reading Nietzsche or pretending to.

    Everyone reading Dragonlance, the Lord of the Rings, the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Visiting book sales with a girlfriend, a girlfriend reading Middlemarch. Always scanning someone’s bookshelf when you visited their house. Mothers telling their daughters never to date someone who didn’t have a bookshelf in their house.

    “Philosopher” kids who debated Foucault and Aristotle (best represented by Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites). People reading books based on popular movies or inspired by movies (Trainspotting comes to mind). Discussing King Arthur and Shakespeare at length, jocks talking about Oscar Wilde. Jocks reading the Quran and the Bible and discussing the different religions.

    We’ve gained a lot too, but this is what we’ve lost.

  • The Duel After the Masquerade – The Story of a Painting

    The Duel After the Masquerade – The Story of a Painting

    The painting invites the viewer to wonder what has just happened, why it happened, and why the participants are dressed in such costumes. It encourages the viewer to reconstruct the preceding events through imagination.
    — Read on apaintingstory.com/en/posts/the-duel-after-the-masquerade/

  • The Vatican

    The Vatican

    No one told me the Vatican is a storage closet. Beautiful beyond imagination, yet overflowing with statues and paintings, like they ran out of room for the collections. People told me I would be “angry” at the Vatican for “stealing treasures.” I did not feel that way. I was overwhelmed with gratitude. The Vatican saved the history of their people from being looted and forgotten. Now it’s remembered.

  • The US Plans to Break Ground on a Permanent Moon Base by 2030. Here’s What It Will Take.

    A recent executive order issued by the White House directs NASA to establish the initial elements of a permanent moon base by 2030.
    — Read on singularityhub.com/2026/03/12/nasa-is-planning-to-build-a-permanent-moon-base-by-2030-heres-what-it-will-take/

  • Deep Dive: 5 Forces Causing The Population Collapse

    Historically, population decline has been driven by external and involuntary shocks like famine, disease, or war. Notable examples include:

    The Black Death in the 14th century
    The collapse of the Roman Empire
    China’s Great Famine.

    Unlike past population declines, today’s is voluntary and structural.
    — Read on chamath.substack.com/p/population-collapse

    We’re long past the point where this can be dismissed by anyone with a working brain. Seriously – wtf is going on?

  • Links of the Day

    — REVISED DEFINITIONS OF THE VERB “TO GOOGLE” – “To receive results as ten-second videos that present a sponsored product as the only possible answer to your question.”

    — Become “the World’s Worst Cleric” in a medieval game inspired by Disco Elysium.

    — A new website seeking to define the term “liberal”. It’s common media literacy by now to doublecheck the funding mechanism of any large organization. A quick Perplexity search claims this project is funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and the John Templeton Foundation.

    — NY Sounds

  • Illinois’ population loss could make congressional gerrymandering harder in 2030

    Based on the 2024 presidential election, 54% of Illinois voters are Democrats, yet Democrats hold 82% of Illinois’ U.S. House seats.

    With one fewer seat to work with, Illinois Democrats would have a difficult time drawing maps that would eliminate another Republican district. Keeping their current 14 seats would give Democrats over 87% of Illinois’ U.S. House delegation.
    — Read on www.illinoispolicy.org/illinois-population-loss-could-make-congressional-gerrymandering-harder-in-2030/

  • Who is better off, the median American or the median European?

    Europeans get lower salaries than Americans, but they receive better benefits.

    So who makes more? The average American pay is still one of the highest. But not by an enormous amount.

    I asked AI to help me understand the explanation. From Perplexity:

    the speaker argues you should use median, equivalized, disposable, PPP‑adjusted income from sources like OECD and World Bank, because those numbers reflect what people can actually spend after taxes and transfers and are better aligned with household living standards.

    Here’s the data.

  • Ultra High Frequencies: The Chicago Party

    Broadcast during just 23 weeks of 1982, and reaching no more than WCIU’s Chicagoland perimeter, The Chicago Party conformed only to those codes that suited it….treating Chicago audiences to dynamic performances by unjustly local artists trafficking in sweet soul, disco, and emerging electronic R&B, the pop forms then wrestling for urban chart dominance
    — Read on numerogroup.com/blogs/stories/ultra-high-frequencies-the-chicago-party

  • Curation

    Curation

    Curation – such as record collecting – has a beginning and an end. Curation does not continue infinitely; a record stops when it reaches its end. Curation is a choice among infinite options. A record costs money and takes up space, defining its limit. Your limited choices have meaning and therefore define you. Curation creates consequences. Choose a record and you choose the permanent soundtrack of your life.

  • The hardest questions you can ask AI while expecting a reasonable response

    Somewhere in the bowels of X, Sam Altman suggested asking an AI to provide the hardest question it could reasonably answer.

    Perplexity provides 1/ difficult questions it can answer reasonably well (given the availability of public information), and 2/ questions that are hard to answer.

    These are the questions it can reasonably answer based on available data. They are the 20’s version of a Wikipedia rabbit hole.

    (more…)

  • Talented People

    This goes hard. Political parties should do more of this. It’s critical to governing effectively.

    “Distance yourself from people you don’t want to become” (Shane Parrish)

  • Links of the Day

    1. Little Rules about Big Things
    2. Alien Assumptions (and how wrong they are)
    3. Loneliness is a Choice. Related, see party-throwing.
    4. Right handedness owing to stabs at the heart?
    5. Supercharged AI lawyers

  • Being a good dad (and Chaosium)

    Somewhere I recall reading that for elite athletes, the winning combination was genetic talent, the will to succeed, and the presence of a father or close family member with the capability and drive to act as a secondary coach. I thought about that when reading this interview with Rudy Kraft, one of the earliest writers on Chaosium. He talks about his early experiences with his dad:

    I first got involved in gaming as a hobby because of my father. I was the oldest of five children—although we started gaming before the fifth child was born. We had family games of Clue and Monopoly—mostly Clue. At some point, my father bought me a Christmas present of the old Avalon Hill game Afrika Korps. He and I played that a lot often leaving it set up on the desk in my parents’ bedroom. Because I liked this game, he bought additional Avalon Hill Games at least once a year until I went away to college in 1974.

    When it comes to standing out in his career, all the ingredients are there: His interest, his disposition, and a dad who recognized his interest and supported his hobby. I doubt there were any hangups or second guessing in his career, because thanks to his dad, his work was family approved and associated with positive memories. 

    As a dad and to all the dads out there, what are we helping support in our children? What strong framework are we helping them build for their future success? 

    At any rate, I love stories and interviews where people share their passions and their interests and why they geek out on things. This is a fun one. You can read the full interview here. 

  • Notes on the Fermi Paradox

    Notes on the Fermi Paradox

    The Fermi Paradox is essentially this: If the odds for intelligent life are so good, then why haven’t we met any aliens? The Paradox lists theories why. Personally, I think either they’re here and we don’t know about it, or we don’t know how to look. Casey Handmer has a new theory – we can’t observe approaching aliens fast enough:

    when we look out into the universe we are observing only our past light cone….So even though aliens might be quite close, we wouldn’t see them until just before they arrived……if the aliens we see are traveling at high speed toward us, the intermediate state (seen but not met) is unlikely to be longer than a handful of weeks.
    — Read on caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2026/03/03/notes-on-the-fermi-paradox/

    Sure, why not? For a while the Fermi paradox was my favorite Wikipedia article. There’s a lot to digest in it. Speaking of which, the comments on Casey Handmer’s post are interesting.