Some rapid fire Oscars takes and observations: •Kieran Culkin got an award for doing a great job playing himself. •Adrian Brody gave an acceptance speech almost as long as The Brutalist. •Sue won best actress in a leading role. •A dialogue-free Latvian animated film made in Blender (an open source software) with a budget under 4 million beat out Dreamworks for best animated feature. •In general the films with the lowest budgets (most under 10 million) got the lion’s share of the awards. •A film condemning Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Palestine won Best Documentary Feature, giving a platform to the film’s message in the broadcast, even while US distributors and streamers refuse to pick it up. Despite this it was still the highest grossing documentary feature of the year. •Cronenbergian body horror won best makeup for the first time since The Fly (1986). •Sean Baker personally did most of the things Anora won individual Oscars for. ….And that’s just about all I got at the moment.

It really is starting to seem that, with the amount of ground OpenAI keeps ceding regarding model quality, feature differentiation, competitive pricing, etc, that their main defensibility at this point is brand saturation. I think people underestimate how long that could hold on its own, but as long as that is the case, erosion of their lead will likely continue.

Interesting data point on OpenAI's Deep Research: I have been getting a steady stream of messages from very senior people in a variety of fields who have been, unsolicited, sharing their chats and how much it is going to change their jobs. Never happened with other AI products.

Introducing the Consensus Meter 2.0 📊 See how science agrees on any research question - now with metrics showing the research quality, methodology, and influence of supporting papers in each position 🔬

I love how out of all the Republicans who have come out as supporting Harris she had to tout Dick Cheney’s endorsement as a badge of honor. I think her team greatly underestimate how unpopular he is. W rehabbed his image with his Bob Ross era, but Cheney is still Dr. Strangelove

This is going up on my wall. End of story.

I have the presidential debate playing in the background, and I’m worried that even half-listening to it is giving me brain damage. 🇺🇸✨

Hope everyone has a great ordinary Monday!

I started watching Seinfeld for the first time and I’m worried it’s rubbing off on me. I was listening to a podcast, they misused the word promulgation and I debated (with peak neuroticism) whether or not to stop listening to the show.

I’m honestly surprised people I know keep asking me what I’m doing for the 4th of July, like I intend to celebrate it after these Supreme Court rulings.

Though they may be counter to our Psychology, ambiguity and nuance are good things, because they are almost always closer to the truth. Communities or societies that try to function without them always move towards dysfunction or harmful groupthink.

Well, if anything I'm grateful for Stranger Things 4 because now I can just randomly hear Kate Bush playing while I'm out and about.

I wanted to write an article on the framing of Existentialism vs Nihilism in Everything Everywhere All at Once but Wisecrack beat me to it. youtu.be/JBAhnxmU7o4

Remembering the wonderful, creative and experimental filmmaker Agnès Varda, who would have been 94 today.