You're not gonna believe the size of the wave this dude just surfed.

This is an apt comparison. Think about where we’d be without fire and/or electricity, but then also consider all the destruction those two elements have wrought through the centuries. I suspect Pinchai is right about AI - it might be the best (and/or last, *gulp*) thing mankind ever creates, but the destruction it’ll leave in its wake in even the rosiest scenarios is something we need to start preparing for now.

I kinda chuckled when I first read this, thinking she was just a clever thrill seeker who exploited a gap in the system. Then I read how many times she’s done it before, and that it’s closer to a mental illness than anything malicious. Now it seems like a credit card company is missing a golden opportunity to fund her unlimited travel (satisfying her compulsion, hopefully) and have a great campaign spokesman for frequent flyer miles.

I heard something this week that provided some much needed context for me on the fentanyl issue. I don’t remember who said it, but they compared fentanyl to salt and said, “Imagine five grains of salt gives you the best high you’ve ever had in your life, but seven grains kills you.” 

Now try to imagine how difficult it would be to stop small packages of salt in the mail, procured online anonymously with a simple Google search.

The law of unintended consequences is a cruel mistress. You’ve probably never thought twice about the ships on the ocean transporting everything around the world, but to the extent you have thought about it you probably thought the ships were modern technological wonders owned and run by big shipping conglomerates. 

Nope.

The best book I’ve read on the subject is The Outlaw Sea by William Langewiesche, and it turns out that the ships which ply the world’s oceans are a pretty low rent operation. The unintended consequence of this is that they’re old and crappy and belch a lot of sulphur which, it turns out, tempers atmospheric CO2 and helps reduce global warming. Unfortunately, that’s all about to change…

This really put a smile on my face this week. 50 Cent dropped an album back in 2014, and just for a goof told people they could pay for it with Bitcoin - which a lot of people did. It was just a publicity stunt so he forgot about the whole thing until this week - when he learned those Bitcoins are now worth $8 million.

Musk threw down the gauntlet among his fellow tech CEOs this week, though I doubt any will rise to the challenge he set for himself. In a true “second place is the first loser” move, Musk said he was going to grow Tesla to a $650 BILLION valuation and that he expected to be paid $55 billion personally for the effort, but that if he missed the target by even a dollar he wouldn’t be paid a penny. Say what you will about him, the dude puts his money where his mouth is.

I’ve always had a really simple metric for whether or not I’ve “made it”: Do you still have to do shit you hate? Sadly, that answer is yes for me, but to a lesser degree with each passing year, so I guess that’s progress. This is an interesting survey about what “making it” looks like to the average American. See if you agree.

When you read a headline like that, you probably expect that it’s something nefarious designed to keep people on the site and suck more of your precious time from you, but this is actually a really practical and necessary innovation that the entire Internet will benefit from.

Duuuuuuuuuuuuude….