Year: 2023

"The Future is a Dead Mall – Decentraland and the Metaverse"



I've found Folding Ideas annoyingly inconsistent. Line Goes Up remains perhaps the definitive overview of the NFT mania, but most of his other videos had left me definitely underwhelmed.

"The Future is a Dead Mall" doesn't reset the high score but it is certainly the second best thing I've seen on the site. The story of Decentraland is wonderfully absurd and rich with telling details about the culture that produced it. The length is a bit daunting (though still shorter than "Line Goes Up"), but there's more than enough content to fill the time. 

To get the full comic effect (and further lower your opinion of the ever credulous NYT), check out this article on virtual real estate from the height of the bubble. (You can find it here. It does not deserve another direct link.)

The Metaverse Group has a real estate investment trust, and it plans to build a portfolio of properties in Decentraland as well as other realms including Somnium Space, Sandbox and Upland. The internet may be infinite, but virtual real estate is not — Decentraland, for example, is 90,000 parcels of land, each roughly 50 feet by 50 feet. Among investors, there’s a sense that there’s gold in those pixelated hills, Mr. Gord said.

“Imagine if you came to New York when it was farmland, and you had the option to get a block of SoHo,” he said. “If someone wants to buy a block of real estate in SoHo today, it’s (Read more...)

The 500 ways


This post is by Seth Godin from Seth's Blog


There are thousands of ways to express encouragement and enthusiasm and support. Few of them require a blood oath or even much inconvenience.

“I’m thrilled that you’re contributing.”

“Can’t wait to see how this turns out.”

“I know someone who really needs to hear about this.”

“Go make a ruckus, it matters.”

If we want things to get better, it helps to encourage people who are eager to make things better.

De-Dollarization: Countries Seeking Alternatives to the U.S. Dollar


This post is by Bruno Venditti from Visual Capitalist


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De-Dollarization: More Countries Seek Alternatives to the U.S. Dollar

De-Dollarization: Countries Seeking Alternatives to U.S. Dollar

This was originally posted on Elements. Sign up to the free mailing list to get beautiful visualizations on natural resource megatrends in your email every week.

The U.S. dollar has dominated global trade and capital flows over many decades.

However, many nations are looking for alternatives to the greenback to reduce their dependence on the United States.

This graphic catalogs the rise of the U.S. dollar as the dominant international reserve currency, and the recent efforts by various nations to de-dollarize and reduce their dependence on the U.S. financial system.

The Dollar Dominance

The United States became, almost overnight, the leading financial power after World War I. The country entered the war only in 1917 and emerged far stronger than its European counterparts.

As a result, the dollar began to displace the pound sterling as the international reserve currency and the U.S. also became a significant recipient of wartime gold inflows.

The dollar then gained a greater role in 1944, when 44 countries signed the Bretton Woods Agreement, creating a collective international currency exchange regime pegged to the U.S. dollar which was, in turn, pegged to the price of gold.

By the late 1960s, European and Japanese exports became more competitive with U.S. exports. There was a large supply of dollars around the world, making it difficult to back dollars with gold. President Nixon ceased the direct convertibility of U.S. (Read more...)

Embrace AI Experimentation


This post is by Keith Teare from That Was The Week


A reminder for new readers. That Was The Week collects the best writing on critical issues in tech, startups, and venture capital. I select the articles because they are of interest. The selections often include things I disagree with. The articles are only snippets. Click on the headline to go to the original. I express my point of view in my editorial and the weekly video.

Content this week from @sama, @stratechery, @annasofialesiv, @albertwenger, @vkhosla, @reedalbergotti, @chloexiang, @goodeggs, @amir, @mingchikuo, @nfl, @hunterwalk, @nmasc_

Contents


Editorial: An Open Letter

Essays of the Week

Video of the Week

  • Coldfusion - AI is Evolving Faster Than You Think [GPT-4 and beyond]

News of the Week

Startup of the Week

Tweet of the Week

  • Sam Altman

Editorial: An Open Letter


AI’s Transformative Power


This post is by Greylock Partners from Greymatter


Greylock general partners Saam Motamedi and Reid Hoffman talk with Umi Mehta, who is the global head of tech private equity and venture capital investing at Morgan Stanley. In this conversation, they discuss the current investing environment in the context of artificial intelligence technology – specifically, its impact on pretty much every industry across enterprise and consumer sectors. AI has evolved rapidly in recent years, and that pace of advancement is only getting faster. Saam and Reid explain how AI is becoming an enabling platform technology, much the same as previous waves of tech transitions like mobile and cloud did in earlier eras. This conversation was recorded at Morgan Stanley’s annual TMT Conference, which draws an audience of more than 3,000 investors and members of tech companies. On that note, the audio quality isn’t the highest, but each speaker is clear. And if you have any difficulty hearing some of the parts, rest assured that you can find all of the conversation in the transcript here: https://greylock.com/greymatter/ais-transformative-power/

Visualizing the Flow of Energy-Related CO2 Emissions in the U.S.


This post is by Selin Oğuz from Visual Capitalist


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Visualizing the Flow of Energy-Related CO2 Emissions in the U.S.

Visualizing the Flow of Energy-Related CO2 Emissions in the U.S.

This was originally posted on the Decarbonization Channel. Subscribe to the free mailing list to be the first to see graphics related to decarbonization with a focus on the U.S. energy sector.

In 2021, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from the generation and consumption of energy reached 4.9 billion tonnes.

To better understand how various energy sources and their end-uses contribute to carbon emissions, this graphic visualizes the flow of energy-related CO2 emissions in the U.S. using carbon flow charts by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

What are Energy-Related CO2 Emissions?

Energy-related CO2 emissions refer to the release of carbon dioxide as a result of the combustion of fuels to produce energy. They arise through the direct use of fossil fuels for transport, heating, or industrial needs, as well as the use of fossil fuels for electricity generation.

To provide some context, non-energy-related CO2 emissions are those that result from industrial chemical reactions, deforestation, and agricultural activities.

As the largest contributor to carbon emissions, however, energy-related CO2 emissions account for approximately 85% of all emissions in the U.S. which we will now explore in more detail.

U.S. Energy-Related CO2 Emissions in 2021

Followed by a pandemic-driven decline in 2020, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. increased by 325 million tonnes in 2021, marking the largest-ever annual increase.

Energy SourceCO (Read more...)