Musings. Building trust just as trust is ebbing away.
Joined June 2011
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1,415 Photos and videos
Don't blame yourself. Learn Feng Shui and blame the furniture instead.
Jun 15
According to Feng Shui, the mess in your home isn't random.
It's a reflection of where energy may be stuck in your life.
Bedroom clutter =
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So true. I had a hand in prompting a lengthy AI generated document (50 pages). A good base. So, went in & made a few edits/comments/suggestions. Then asked the AI to accommodate the small changes. Outcome? A totally new document & worse than the original.
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
With the US though, Trump so thoroughly torched American geopolitical credibility it is difficult to see how even the most well-meaning successor administration can recover lost ground.
EU/UK need to move faster in adapting strategically to a potentially post-American order.
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Jun 14
My goodness. The coping is going hard.
This is the biggest American humiliation since Vietnam, with the potential to be even greater than Vietnam if the leaked deal details are anywhere near correct.
Are you fucking dumb? Or drunk right now?
Iran no nukes, no enrichment. No control of the strait.
Irans leaders are dead. They got nothing. America got everything we wanted.
Holy black pill. 😂
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
RIP Abdullah Ibrahim. Saw him live at Cape Town City Hall in 2024 and I still go back to his interview with @lesterkk from then youtube.com/watch?v=CG0T7M57…
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Jun 15
It would be *much* more socially transformative to ban social media for over-65s
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
This should be an album cover
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When I first came across the concept "social licence" & that business needed it to operate, it made me think beyond the idea of a "brand". It's hard to define when it is conferred/withdrawn but AI is starting to lose "social licence" everywhere.
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
The people in Europe (and there are many of them) who cheered on Trump’s victory cannot be taken seriously
Jun 15
France's Jordan Bardella perfectly proves that you cannot cheer for a wrecking ball and then act surprised when your own house takes damage.
He and many other European far-right populists are desperately trying to distance themselves from Donald Trump, and it is a miserable look.
These politicians spent years treating Trump like a hero, yet they are now throwing their hands up and claiming they do not support him the same way anymore.
Bardella went from being a fan of the populist wave to claiming he is deeply panicked by Trump's erratic actions. Seeing him try to act like he was never really on board is pathetic.
The truth is that Trump’s worldview leaves zero room for a prosperous or secure Europe. His reckless military stances and trade threats are engineered solely for his own base, leaving Europeans to clean up the wreckage.
This sudden shock proves that Europe's populists either have no basic understanding of global power dynamics, or they actively worked against Europe’s interests on purpose.
Sovereignists from different nations can never be true allies because their core interests will always violently collide. European populists thought they were part of a global club, but they were actually just useful idiots
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Hyperscalers are slamming on the brakes, metering “intelligence,” and discovering that someone still has to pay the datacenter bill. Anthropic chases profits, OpenAI fights for its life, Microsoft sells shovels, and everyone tries to figure out what—if anything—could... 1/
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
Jun 11
Competition is the only protection anyone has ever had against concentrated power.
Anthropic's valuation only works if open weights get banned by law. Their safety case and their business case are the same case.
We have four options:
-Anthropic ruling the world as a monopolist (or a duopolist) is catastrophic. We are having the first inklings of that with Fable release.
- The US government controlling the world by controlling the model releases (on the table right now): even worse. They will weaponize it and blackmail the hell out of everyone.
- The world government solution is cute, but not going to happen.
- So competition, with the open weights only a few months behind, is the only thing protecting us in the rest of the world. Models will need some regulation, like cars or planes do.
As a European, the first two options scare me more than the technology does. OpenAI has not been making these ridiculous Effective Altruist noises, they have quietly released models which are on the whole superior to Anthropic's in my view and there have been no risk to the world. I think Anthropic protests too much.
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Jun 15
As South Africa re-starts its AI policy process, a very good essay on what countries outside the USA (or China) should do, and not do. The point here is that the EU (& esp SA) don't have much power in AI policy development. Don't pretend otherwise.
Jun 13
When I struggle to structure my thoughts about what's happening I turn to writing. Today about the recent US Anthropic ban news, what it says about power and dependency, and what it should mean for Europeans and citizens of the world. It's a long one. lucumr.pocoo.org/2026/6/13/a…
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
Jun 13
From this moment, South Africa were destined for failure at this World Cup
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Jun 13
Demonstrates a massive problem in sheepkeeping economy. Btw, their role in devastating biodiversity of large upland areas should be considered more publicly.
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Jun 13
A lot of this stuff on newly minted trillionaires misses the point. The free float in SpaceX is tiny (= manipulated). There is a real problem in capital markets regulation. Those will harm us all.
Jun 12
SpaceX's 11% share price boost has made Elon Musk the world's first trillionaire, controlling two of the world's largest companies. ft.trib.al/wHPQ9gw
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Jun 13
A glorious read on David Hockney and, of course, his art. Its free to read so do so.
Jun 13
Free to read: Simon Schama's 2025 appreciation of David Hockney, who has died at the age of 88 ft.trib.al/12MhFW2
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Jun 13
The more amusing (tragic) thing about the Trump regime's executive order banning the export of Anthropic's frontier LLM models is the US claim that any regulation kills innovation/dynamism. I'd bet Anthropic would have preferred a law properly passed by their legislature.
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
Jun 13
David Hockney❤️🖤❤️
‘I believe my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair … new ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling … I do believe that painting can change the world ..’
David Hockney
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Dirk de Vos retweeted
Jun 12
Read my article in Aftenposten today about the factory food pipeline in Norway.
• 3 giants control 96% of Norway's food supply
• How they're fined $470 million for coordinating prices
• How the stores are different doors into the same system
aftenposten.no/meninger/kron…
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