Ten quick links for Saturday morning

Edgar Schein’s Humble Enquiry. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I love this so much. I have come to really appreciate how important relationship building is, and how much more effective we can be when we prioritise genuine curiosity and humility over efficient knowledge transfer and decision-making.

Crash Course Pods: The Universe. I can’t get enough of this podcast series. The most awesome Dr. Katie Mack (aka AstroKatie on Mastodon) chats with author John Green about the history and mysteries of the universe, and explores some of John’s existential crises along the way.

We unleashed Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms on blank accounts. They served up sexism and misogyny. The algorithms of Facebook and Instagram serve up sexist and misogynistic content even without any user interaction or input. The platforms’ algorithms make assumptions about young men’s interests and serve them content related to “Manosphere” influencers and misogynistic memes. The findings align with similar research on YouTube and TikTok.

When ChatGPT summarises, it actually does nothing of the kind. ChatGPT produces something more akin to an extreme abridgment (my words, not the author’s) than an actual summary. In doing so, it can omit important context and facts, and make stuff up. This matches my experience, and why I only use automated summaries to get a rough idea of the content before diving in deeper.

How Does OpenAI Survive? OpenAI’s costs are estimated to be ~US$5 billion annually, and revenue is not keeping pace. Given the current lack of clear mass-market utility for the technology, OpenAI’s business model seems unsustainable over the long-term.

Deep frying coffee beans: yay or nay? The result, according to James Hoffmann, was “surprisingly good,” and the flavour “really interesting.” I would happily pay a hipster Melbourne barista to make this for me, once (via Benji and Warren).

How Physicists FINALLY Solved the Feynman Sprinkler Problem. Dr. Ben Miles explains the solution to a problem I never knew I needed to know. Associated with physicist Richard Feynman, it actually dates back to Ernst Mach’s textbook The Science of Mechanics, first published in 1883.

Marsh Family parody adaptation of “Dancing Queen” by ABBA, on JD Vance. 10/10 use of “Tangerine.”

List of eponymous laws. I’m up to “Newton’s flaming laser sword, also known as Alder’s razor: What cannot be settled by experiment is not worth debating” (via David Lee).

Iceberger. Draw an iceberg and see how it will float.