Wait, is it 2025 already?

I can’t believe that it is 2025, and it is already two weeks old. And yes, like you, I too feel it has already been a lot. Never in my wildest imagination had I contemplated a nightmare scenario that many Angelenos, including so many of my friends and former colleagues, are currently dealing with on a minute-by-minute basis. Apart from staying in touch with them, I can’t do much to alleviate their situation. But when it is time to rebuild, like all Californians, I will do my best and more.

I have tried my best to stay off social platforms. They are now anti-social amplifiers of negative energy, feeding off an unquenchable thirst for attention. It was quite evident in some of the things that were being said on various platforms as the fires raged.

I won’t lie — I have a special kind of disdain for those who gloat, joke, and take pleasure in others’ misery. There is nothing worse than those using tragedy to self-promote. The LA fires are a good reminder for all of us to see the naked truth about people and simply cut them from our attention space. I will address this as part of a longer piece later this month.

First, I want to address what you, the reader, should expect from me in 2025. Let’s start with the big one. As you may already know, I teamed up with Fred Vogelstein to launch CrazyStupidTech, a newsletter that looks at tech through the lens of tech. We used Q4 2024 as a way to beta-test our newsletter. We ironed out some kinks and received good feedback.

We are clear in our mission to find stories and technologies that need attention. We plan to publish every weekend, apart from taking breaks for the holidays. We take turns writing — one weekend Fred writes, and next weekend it is my turn. Our goal is to publish 24 times each.

Fred is kicking off the year with an interview with Jakob Uszkoreit, one of modern AI’s founding fathers, as he teams up with Rhiju Das and aims to revolutionize drug development through RNA design. Uszkoreit’s Inceptive marries AI and biology to create “biological software.” This is precisely the kind of story we want to tell, weekend after weekend.

In addition to CST, I aim to write more often about technology and its impact. I will use my writing as a way to sum up the zeitgeist, with an eye on the future. I have also simplified the website design. All my articles about technology (and occasional letters such as this) are emailed to all subscribers. Of course, I will continue to share my photography and write about my other obsessions, such as vintage fountain pens, but you will have to visit the website to enjoy these articles.

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How did I spend my long holiday break?

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Over the past few weeks, I have taken the time to get back to reading books. It was the result of the realization that, for two years running, I barely read a book a month. For most of my life, I have read four to six books a month. Books have been my teachers, my travel machines, and my muses. The long holiday break was a good way to get back into the habit of reading. I read for about an hour in the morning, then an hour during lunch break, and an hour at night.

I enjoyed “Status and Culture” by W. David Marx. He is clearly one of my favorite writers. I would love to conduct a long Pi.co interview with Marx in 2025. For fun, I read “Red Queen” by Juan Gómez-Jurado. There is a TV show based on the book on Amazon Prime, but the book is far superior. I am currently reading “The Genesis Machine” by Amy Webb and Andrew Hessel.

I capitulated and also started listening to audiobooks. I listened to “Co-Intelligence” by Ethan Mollick, mostly because I like his work. I also finished Parmy Olson’s “Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World.”

I have just started listening to “What An Owl Knows” by Jennifer Ackerman and can’t wait to go on a walk to continue listening to what seems to be a fascinating book.

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Worth reading:

• Netflix has always been good at exploiting its customers. This story goes back to the time when Netflix was in the DVD business. If customers held onto their DVDs for longer, it meant fewer shipping costs for Netflix and fewer DVDs for the company to manage and store. Netflix called these customers “pigs” and secretly throttled their deliveries. This is a throwback story about a company that exists to exploit our attention. Read on NPlusMag.
• Data centers are hot, figuratively and literally. Castrol (yes, that Castrol) has an idea of how to cool them down. I’ll be honest, I didn’t see this coming. Read on StorageReview.
• Too many of my friends and friends of friends are dealing with growing types of cancers. When I read the headline “Why Are More Young People Being Diagnosed with Cancer?” I knew I had to read this story. Read it on The Walrus.

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My Recommendations:

• Watch Ray Kurzweil and Nobel Prize winner Geoffrey Hinton debate the future of AI on YouTube.
• Watch: “Why Are Your Clothes Worse Now?” on YouTube.

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My Favorite Photos from 2024

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January 14, 2025. San Francisco