cesarandreu's recent activity
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Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk
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Comment on What did you do this week (and weekend)? in ~talk
cesarandreu Link ParentThanks for the video suggestion, that was pretty interesting. I've been following MrBeast's story for a few years now and this whole venture feels like something that should be studied. I don't...Thanks for the video suggestion, that was pretty interesting. I've been following MrBeast's story for a few years now and this whole venture feels like something that should be studied. I don't particularly care for the primary content, but all the videos around production and behind the scenes are actually quite interesting and telling of his mindset.
Watching this video I kept thinking about how during this new age of AI psychosis many people have started bragging once more about how they're able to pump out thousands of lines of vibe coded slop every day. It feels like there's something in the water supply that encourages this kind of mindset where you keep turning up a knob to 11 and bragging about it, without any core substance. Jimmy has bragged extensively about how he's constantly overworked and how he doesn't have any free time because he's always working on some new video. I cannot help but think that he would benefit from slowing down and enjoying life a bit; maybe if he sits down long enough the juices will start flowing and he'll find some creative inspiration. The real tragedy is that he has locked himself into a endless marathon which can only end in failure or death.
A broader issue with MrBeast that came to mind is that it doesn't feel like he's doing long-term investments in quality. Most of his content gets hyped up briefly and then it's forgotten as the endless conveyor-belt of media continues turning. How many people will look back on classic MrBeast videos and decide to rewatch them for nostalgia?
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Comment on Kim Bowes on the economic lives of Rome's ninety percent in ~humanities.history
cesarandreu LinkThe following excerpt from the description includes a list of the questions and topics which are discussed in this interview: I'm sharing it here because I genuinely hadn't considered the...The following excerpt from the description includes a list of the questions and topics which are discussed in this interview:
Tyler and Kim discuss what would surprise a modern visitor to a Roman elite home, what early Roman Christianity actually looked like on the ground, why Romans never developed formal economic reasoning, what decentralized money-lending reveals about the Roman state, whether there were anything like forward markets, why Romans continued to use coins even as the empire debased them, the economics of Roman slavery, whether Roman recipes taste any good, the Romans as hyper-scalers rather than inventors, what Rome made of China and Egypt, why Kim’s not a fan of the Vesuvius challenge, the practicalities of landscape archaeology, how a vast belt of factories along the Tiber Valley went undiscovered until twenty years ago, where to go on a three-week tour of the Roman Empire, what she thinks is ultimately behind Rome’s unraveling, and much more.
I'm sharing it here because I genuinely hadn't considered the intersection of economics and Rome, e.g. the fact that there aren't any great economic thinkers from that era. It was also so compelling that I've added the guest's book to my reading list.
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Kim Bowes on the economic lives of Rome's ninety percent
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
cesarandreu LinkI'm completely obsessed with this Spanish song inspired by One Piece: Somos Mugiwaras, by Miki Martz. I've played it multiple times every day during the past week.I'm completely obsessed with this Spanish song inspired by One Piece: Somos Mugiwaras, by Miki Martz. I've played it multiple times every day during the past week.
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Comment on X Japan - Art Of Life (1993) in ~music
cesarandreu LinkOh man, this is my favorite song too. I sometimes sit down just to listen to it through to the end and bask in the experience. It makes me wish I had a bit more artistic skills because I think you...Oh man, this is my favorite song too. I sometimes sit down just to listen to it through to the end and bask in the experience. It makes me wish I had a bit more artistic skills because I think you could elevate the work a bit further with a well paired video experience.
The only other musical experience that I feel comes close is the album The Human Equation, by Ayreon. It's about a man who enters a coma while being forced to confront his emotions and memories over the course of 20 days. Each song is a different day. Art of Life is my favorite song but The Human Equation is my favorite album.
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
cesarandreu Link ParentOne of the key works that helped start the modern rationalist movement was literally a Harry Pottern fanfiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Thanks for the fan fiction...One of the key works that helped start the modern rationalist movement was literally a Harry Pottern fanfiction called Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. Thanks for the fan fiction suggestion, the premise seems really interesting. Are you familiar with these old tumblr posts exploring whether Ranma is trans part1 part2 part3 part4?
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Comment on I before she — on the shift in narrative perspective in romance novels in ~books
cesarandreu LinkI was recently listening to an interview with Tyler Cowen and Henry Oliver where he had this quote which resonates strongly with how I think about literature: "I like reading everything. I like...I was recently listening to an interview with Tyler Cowen and Henry Oliver where he had this quote which resonates strongly with how I think about literature: "I like reading everything. I like middlebrow, I like lowbrow, I like trash, I like Shakespeare. I think that's the true literary life."
You really should read a bit of everything. I think once people get their fill of their preferred genres, they eventually do start branching out to other more challenging works. For me it's about striking a good balance. Sometimes I just want an easy to read trashy Royal Road number-go-up story that explore an interesting ideas or concept. Other times I'm interested in something a bit more challenging or deeper, like classic philosophical works.
I've seen these women on social media who are posting alongside dozens or hundreds of romantasy books, and it's fine. Even the trashiest of novels will engage the imagination and require that the person maintain focus for long periods of time.
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Comment on What radicalized you? in ~talk
cesarandreu LinkMost recently I feel very radicalized against gambling. If you had asked me a few years back, I was probably a bit negative towards gambling but would've argued that it should be allowed with some...Most recently I feel very radicalized against gambling. If you had asked me a few years back, I was probably a bit negative towards gambling but would've argued that it should be allowed with some restrictions. Now that the unlimited gamba apps have been deployed everywhere on mobile I recognize gambling as a societal cancer that must be eradicated. The worst part of gambling is how it spreads like a cancer, infecting everything that it touches.
There has to be a reckoning with all these major gambling app providers who are getting insanely rich off exploiting fundamental weaknesses of human psychology.
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Comment on English language music is losing its stranglehold on the charts – sixteen different languages appeared in Spotify's Global Top 50 last year, more than double the figure from 2020 in ~music
cesarandreu LinkThat's great, historically there has been too much focus on Western / English singers without recognizing other cultures. I remember an interview with Bad Bunny where he points out that he was...That's great, historically there has been too much focus on Western / English singers without recognizing other cultures. I remember an interview with Bad Bunny where he points out that he was really disappointed when looking through older lists of the "top 100 singers of all time" and how they didn't even mention a single Latino singer. He clarifies that he doesn't even think he should be in that in list, but some of the historical legends of Salsa like Hector Lavoe should at least be considered.
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Comment on What are you no longer a fan of? in ~talk
cesarandreu LinkElon Musk. My respect for him had been eroding, but the thing that convinced me that he's genuinely evil were his actions with DOGE in cutting USAID funding for life-saving medicine going towards...Elon Musk. My respect for him had been eroding, but the thing that convinced me that he's genuinely evil were his actions with DOGE in cutting USAID funding for life-saving medicine going towards the poorest people in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have and will die as a direct result of his actions. And the worst part is that it was all for nothing since it didn't even move the needle in slowing down the US debt or government spending, which was his claimed excuse.
The final nail in the coffin is that he doesn't even show the slightest bit of remorse! He could help fund a project to save millions of lives and his net worth wouldn't even budge. The richest man in the world is directly responsible for the deaths of a deciHitler's worth of people and it was all done for no good reason.
It's not just that I'm no longer a fan: I won't let a conversation where his name is mentioned go by without bringing this up.
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Comment on The legal rights of extraterrestrials in ~society
cesarandreu LinkAfter some recent comments from major political figures about aliens, I was wondering what legal frameworks had explored the topic and I came across this concept of Metalaw. For all the...After some recent comments from major political figures about aliens, I was wondering what legal frameworks had explored the topic and I came across this concept of Metalaw. For all the first-contact stories that have been written, I was a bit surprised to find that the hypothetical explorations of law seem fairly limited. I haven't developed a strong moral intuition for how to think about this topic. One of the reasons I think that it could be valuable to discuss this topic is that it can help inform how we think about existing legal structures, since it forces us to reframe how we look at them while exploring different perspectives.
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The legal rights of extraterrestrials
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
cesarandreu (edited )LinkI had posted about this recently, but didn't get around to doing it until today. I'll note that this was vibe coded using Claude Code: a script that splits FLAC/WV/APE+CUE files into separate...I had posted about this recently, but didn't get around to doing it until today. I'll note that this was vibe coded using Claude Code: a script that splits FLAC/WV/APE+CUE files into separate tracks.
I have it running right now and it's working perfectly, specially tailored for my needs. One of the key features is that you can run the split command first to verify everything is correct before you take destructive action by running the clean command to actually delete the unsplit files. Since this can potentially require a lot of storage there's also a command to estimate how much storage a split run will take, and it checks if your device has enough free space to run this safely.
My music collection has 999 albums to split, and as of posting this I've processed 15% of the collection successfully. Hopefully everything works out perfectly, I won't be certain until a few more hours.
Edit: 450 albums into the process I found the first error: some track names are too long. Gotta do some research on different truncation strategies; figure out what existing tools have done to solve this problem.
Edit: It worked! Mostly... There was one album that failed because super long file names were an issue. After having the script updated to try truncating names, I just opted to name each track $NUMBER.flac to sidestep any file name issues.
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Comment on What are you reading these days? in ~books
cesarandreu LinkA few days ago I read Thinking in Systems, by Donella H. Meadows. It's nothing revolutionary, and a lot of the concepts in this book have "entered the drinking water" so-to-speak, but it's still...A few days ago I read Thinking in Systems, by Donella H. Meadows. It's nothing revolutionary, and a lot of the concepts in this book have "entered the drinking water" so-to-speak, but it's still good to get a refresher that puts you into the mindset of systems thinking for a couple hours. It's an excellent short read that I strongly recommend.
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Comment on Amazon’s promotion of ‘Melania’ has critics questioning its motives (Amazon has spent 35M on marketing on top of its 40M budget) in ~movies
cesarandreu Link ParentI think that past a certain point it stops being about money and it's more about receiving tributes and having some of the most powerful people in the world genuflect in order to please you. It's...I think that past a certain point it stops being about money and it's more about receiving tributes and having some of the most powerful people in the world genuflect in order to please you. It's disgusting undemocratic king-tier shit.
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Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp
cesarandreu LinkI've been using nixOS for a few months now and I want to clean up my configs a bit, switch out some packages with flakes for more reliable version control, and start using Home Manager. I haven't...I've been using nixOS for a few months now and I want to clean up my configs a bit, switch out some packages with flakes for more reliable version control, and start using Home Manager. I haven't seen any guides that show how an all-inclusive setup looks like, and how people are handling stuff like secrets and backing up other derivative configs, which is part of what has held me back from making this jump. Ideally I would also keep my configs in actual version control as well. If anyone knows of any really good guides to accomplish this, please share it with me. Right now I have a single large config that keeps growing steadily as I add in new functionality to my system.
My latest project is cleaning up my music collection a little bit. I have a lot of albums that are stored as a single audio file along with a cue file, but most players don't support this format, so I'm finally biting the bullet and slicing those up. The primary tools for this are cuetools and shntool, but I also found out there's a GUI called Flacon. It feels like a good opportunity to try vibe coding in order to get help with writing the scripts to hopefully help me accomplish this task in a single sitting.
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Comment on What have you been listening to this week? in ~music
cesarandreu LinkThere's this steampunk musical called The Dolls of New Albion, and I found out there's various renditions of it on YouTube, so I perused those a bit. The proper studio recording is the best...There's this steampunk musical called The Dolls of New Albion, and I found out there's various renditions of it on YouTube, so I perused those a bit. The proper studio recording is the best version sound-wise, but some of those renditions on YouTube have surprisingly great prop design and attention to detail. I've mostly just kept coming back to the opening track, New Albion 1.
I discovered Fief, and more specifically the album II with the song Dawnlight Warms the Castle Stone. It's cozy dungeon synth ambiance music.
Another great one I discovered was artist: Gryphon, album: Red Queen to Gryphon Three, song: Second Spasm. It's a conceptual album about an encounter between two chess players, told purely through music.
Honorable mention to Bean Fields by Penguin Cafe Orchestra. In particular, I'll shout out the version from the album Signs of Life because it has one of the greatest album covers I've ever seen. It has a penguin-headed monkey riding a bicycle with a gun out. Bean Fields is one of those songs that you should be able to listen for like 10 seconds and tell immediately if you love or hate it.
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Comment on What creative projects have you been working on? in ~creative
cesarandreu LinkWell, let's see... I wanted to give Antigravity (the Google vibe-coding tool) with Gemini 3 Pro a fair shake, so I spent 6 hours trying to write a tool that would help me clean up my Audiobook...Well, let's see...
I wanted to give Antigravity (the Google vibe-coding tool) with Gemini 3 Pro a fair shake, so I spent 6 hours trying to write a tool that would help me clean up my Audiobook collection. Using a mix of file and folder names, file metadata, and transcribing the first minute of audio to identify the correct author and title. I managed to get something that worked with some of the simpler use-cases, but it felt pretty brittle. During the 5th or so hour, I found out that I could switch models to Claude Opus 4.5 and that was a huge boost in quality, Opus was able to identify a huge number of bugs and design issues that Gemini 3 Pro was ignoring. Unfortunately, when I was finally starting to make significant progress I ran out of free tokens and it doesn't reset until one week later. Now I'm considering giving Claude Code a try, because I've heard that it's much better than all of the alternatives, and I actually felt really impressed by Opus 4.5's capabilities from my brief interaction. In particular, one thing that stood out to me was that Opus was much more capable at narrowing down key issues and asking me direct questions about how I wanted those problems to be solved. My conclusion is that Gemini 3 Pro is quite useful from AI Studio but it's terrible when used to actually write code with Antigravity. I think that I would've made more progress if I had been more organized and disciplined about writing a detailed spec, but I wasn't thinking that hard about getting everything perfect and was more interested in playing around to understand what kind of capabilities these tools can provide.
For more pure creative work, I sketched this out on a canvas and I've been thinking about how to paint it:
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Comment on What are some good stories told from non-human perspectives? in ~books
cesarandreu LinkSince nobody has mentioned it yet: The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (2019). The primary narrator is an an ancient sentient rock with magical powers.Since nobody has mentioned it yet: The Raven Tower, by Ann Leckie (2019). The primary narrator is an an ancient sentient rock with magical powers.
I don't think I can comment on the quality of his older videos since I was pretty late in discovering him and I've never looked through the back catalogue. But from what I can tell, they've never been particularly high quality. I think what will make him stand out as a memorable figure is the fact that he was the first to try so many things and he's been one of the key figures in defining the "meta" for the past 5+ years. There's always this fixation on breaking records or being the biggest at whatever they're doing.
The secret of his success probably comes down to obsessively studying and understanding the YouTube algorithm. When he says that his goal is to make the greatest YouTube video he's serious about using that as his north star.
I think the meta with tons of fast cuts, zero downtime, and lots of yelling was popularized by MrBeast, although he eventually moved away from that content style as he tried to create more room for breathing. It's hard to say if he's the one to create a trend or if he just popularized it, but whenever he does something it tends to get adopted by everyone else. One technique that I think he popularized was showing a preview of things that would come later in the video, so very often he'll tease the climax right at the start before cutting to something else.
Oh, one tool that often goes unremarked is that he's quite dedicated about chasing a global audience. I think he was the first major creator that had his content dubbed in every major language. He used to have dozens of channels where he would upload dubbed versions of his videos until YouTube finally rolled out multiple audio channels specifically for him.