Seven quick links for Sunday afternoon

Chris Patterson on Mastodon:

The advent of LLMs masquerading as artificial intelligence has made the notion of an absurdly powerful computer, constructed at great expense, and given unseemly resources to answer a meaningful question, only to return the answer “42”, feel more and more prophetic.

How cascades of rapid change routinely sweep across families, institutions, and nations. Transformational change comes about when small, loosely connected groups, are driven by a shared purpose. As leaders, we should connect those groups, empower them to succeed, and provide them with that sense of purpose.

The AI Supply Chain Tug of War. Suppliers up the AI chain are offloading their demand risk by taking profits now while Big Tech continue to pour in capital. This is a fragile equilibrium, and Big Tech could find itself in trouble if the music stops playing.

AI Unicorns Are Running Amok. Om with a similar take, comparing GPU investment to investments made in Sun Microsystems and Cisco at the start of the dot-com boom and eventual bust.

Consenting to decisions. There is a difference (albeit a fine line) between wanting people to accept something you already thought of, and wanting to generate and buy-in to something more. That’s one of the things I love about consent-based decision-making, and structured participatory practices in general.

How the First Sports Bra Got Its Stabilizing Start. In the 1970s, sports-bras weren’t a thing (because of course they weren’t). Then three women turned a jock-strap upside down and the first prototype was born.

What Are JPL’s Lucky Peanuts? I thought this was a joke when my kids first told me but nope, since July 1964, NASA launches have gone hand-in-hand with eating good-luck peanuts.