“Monthly Roundup #21: August 2024” by Zvi

Strictly speaking I do not have that much ‘good news’ to report, but it's all mostly fun stuff one way or another. Let's go.

Bad News

Is this you?

Patrick McKenzie: This sounds like a trivial observation and it isn’t:

No organization which makes its people pay for coffee wants to win.

There are many other questions you can ask about an organization but if their people pay for coffee you can immediately discount their realized impact on the world by > 90%.

This is not simply for the cultural impact of stupid decisions, though goodness as a Japanese salaryman I have stories to tell. Management, having priced coffee, seeking expenses to cut, put a price on disposable coffee cups, and made engineers diligently count those paper cups.

Just try to imagine how upside down the world is when you think one [...]

---

Outline:

(00:15) Bad News

(06:35) Grocery Store Blues

(08:47) Good News, Everyone

(09:43) Opportunity Knocks

(11:46) While I Cannot Condone This

(13:28) Antisocial Media

(16:10) Technology Advances

(17:51) Google Enshittification

(20:31) For Science!

(22:49) Government Working

(25:15) America F\*\*\* Yeah

(33:05) Smart People Being Stupid

(36:15) What We Have Here is A Failure to Communicate

(40:38) Video Killed the Radio Star

(43:02) Too Much Information

(47:47) Memory Holes

(49:18) Wet Ground Causes Rain (Dances)

(52:27) Get Them to the Church

(57:49) Patrick McKenzie Monthly

(01:01:13) Your Horoscope For Today

(01:03:14) Good Advice: Travel Edition

(01:05:30) Sports Go Sports

(01:05:34) Our Olympic team is mostly based in San Francisco.

(01:07:35) Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game

(01:07:40) How many elite chess players cheat? Chess.com analysis of its big ‘Titled Tuesday’ events says between 1% and 2% of players, and roughly 1% of event winners. They are responding by making cheating bans on major plays public rather than quietly closing accounts, to fix the incentives.

(01:14:46) The Lighter Side

The original text contained 14 images which were described by AI.

---

First published:
August 20th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/2ne9taAPiGqoTLXJJ/monthly-roundup-21-august-2024

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---