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James Cham

@jamescham.bsky.social
1.3K followers 2.2K following 540 posts

Of the San Gabriel Valley; investing for the year 2030; working to improve the second derivative; looking for troublesome ringleaders.

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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
We used to ask whether the models were so capable that they could do better than markets. But now that we’re about to face a world of varied AI agents, the question is whether market design can manage the agents!
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
X is getting so good at its recommendations that I definitely like it puts me into a very specific bubble.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
There’s a terrific @add-hawk.bsky.social paper meditating on how apparently competitive games can actually be exercises in cooperation. And it reminds me that I need to think more about explicitly cooperative games like Spirit Island. philpapers.org/archive/NGUC...
philpapers.org
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C. Thi Nguyen @add-hawk.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
I got to chat with Sam Anderson while I was writing, and he gave me the most important advice I got: which was to trust your reader, because they're smart, they're generous, and they want to be there.
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Charlie Stross @cstross.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Engineer: The cup is twice as large as it needs to be to hold the correct fluid volume.
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timkawakami.bsky.social @timkawakami.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Will @mattbarrows.bsky.social bark at me if I mention that we've got more than enough fodder to do one more 49ers Emergency Podcast (yes, that should've been the name of the show) later today? Answer: Yes, he will.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Still waiting for a reliable way for companies and government agencies to broadcast new information. Perhaps someone could create a Reliably Sourced Syndicator?
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
My favorite comic book quote, even more relevant right now!
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Always worth asking who benefits?
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Very curious what @dsquareddigest.bsky.social thinks about the Atlantic piece on what ailed Britain... www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...
theatlantic.com
How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi
A case study in self-sabotage
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
There is value in being able to bear the stink of AI sheen to uncover actual insights.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Jasmine Sun has an interview with Labatut that seems be begging for at least a blog post by @beenwrekt.bsky.social if not a live conversation with him! youtu.be/C8rLRIhDS-Y?...
youtu.be
How the AI age forgets to ask: "What for?" | Benjamín Labatut + Jasmine Sun
YouTube video by Sana
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
There’s a fascinating essay by @adamwiggins.com about how he created his own custom built algorithmic feed bsky.app/profile/did:...
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Are WhatsApp groups are more powerful than political parties? From David Runciman: > ...the MPs talked about their WhatsApp group as their primary focus of loyalty...what the group could and couldn't bear, would the group move together...one of the things that is structuring loyalty in politics
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 10/05/2026
The terrible moment you realize an episode of a favored podcast is actually an advertorial.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
It is incredibly stupid that as a culture we have decided to make it difficult for businesspeople to keep honest diaries.
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Everyone's somebody's edge case!
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Now this is an amazing story begging for a @dsquareddigest.bsky.social post: www.thelettersfromleo.com/p/would-it-m...
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kottke.org @kottke.org · 04/05/2026
Every Frame a Painting's Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos seem to be regularly releasing their excellent video essays again (in partnership with Criterion). The latest installment is on The Visual Comedy of Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. [kottke.org]
kottke.org
The Visual Comedy of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs
I’m gonna call it: Every Frame a Painting, my all-time favorite YouTube channel, is back. Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos stopped producing their fantastic video essays back in 2017 and while they have popped up here an
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vaughn @vaughn.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
I wrote a strategic map of four types of AI business. One example of type 3: a developer built a bespoke court submission tool in a single afternoon, using no AI at runtime. Hours of manual work done in minutes. This is what AI has done to the economics of custom software. vaughntan.org/ai4ways
vaughntan.org
4 ways to build an AI business - Vaughn Tan
tl;dr: Most people use “AI business” to mean one of two things — building the AI itself, or building products that call AI at runtime. There are
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
joepernice.substack.com/p/reposting-... A song by Joe Pernice (Skud Mountain Boys) that directly contributed to my deciding to try to quit drinking
joepernice.substack.com
Reposting "Lift Me Up" because MJ Lenderman And Waxahatchee Covered it live!!
Holy cow! from the Scud Mountain Boys 1996 LP Massachusetts
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Every system that was regulated, either explicitly or implicitly, by the fact that they were effortful for humans (letters of recommendation, government filings, essays, or, as this paper finds, lawsuits) will break under a wave of AI.
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Neuromuncher, that should be. Weekly podcast wherein I describe my favorite snacks and local snackeries.
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Dan Davies @dsquareddigest.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I ask - why don't we have mental capacity measures for managers like we know the physical capacity of manual workers? backofmind.substack.com/p/the-most-i...
backofmind.substack.com
the most important number
and why we won't get it
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qntm @qntm.org · 08/04/2026
Yes it is thematically appropriate to mute the word "antimemetics"
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Tell me again what solutions Stafford Beer would have suggested for the current cybernetic info-flow nightmare we are in the middle of? (Looking at @dsquareddigest.bsky.social ...)
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
A fascinating example of how disastrously wrong the establishment can be: www.nytimes.com/1963/09/28/a...
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
human in the loop (interactive mode) vs human on the loop (manager mode) vs human out of the loop (escaping blame and avoiding responsibility for your LLM's actions mode)
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
Kind of like asking Michael Jordan for advice on succeeding at basketball!
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
AI gives us a chance to run a massive study to figure out which signals: - have quality because they have value vs. - have quality because they just seem scarce!
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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
This is really very good and reminds me yet again of how we need to start pulling together an Actual Political Economy of AI.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
In my day to day work, there is a race between machine-generated vs voice-generated text. I hope voice typing wins!
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
remember that the most important VC is version control!
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RJ Andrews @infowetrust.com · 24/03/2026
What media companies you've unsubscribed from is the real signal.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
I would like a social network in which you had to show what media companies you subscribed to (and for how long).
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
What folks say is almost as interesting as what they don’t say
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Now that Twitter is for the techno-right, Bluesky for progressives, and Threads for wannabe Instagram influencers, what social media platform is for old fashioned media?
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
An evergreen quote.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 14/03/2026
one problem with game theory is that it assumes that your side is actually not stupid
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Deception, metadeception and paradeception.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
tell me the story about pandora’s box again?
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
Here’s the case for reading Tom Griffith’s new book The Laws of Thought: - it’s a great guide on cog sci + AI from someone in the field - and a meditation for ambitious people on how great ideas start, get ignored, merged, and found again - plus you'll see how often visionaries are right and wrong
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
My favorite conspiracy theories are the ones that I live long enough to find out were actually true! Revealed after 50 years, Nixon was being spied on by chairman of the Joint Chiefs. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Seven Pages of a Sealed Watergate File Sat Undiscovered. Until Now.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
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William Gibson @greatdismal.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard... Babbage’s Analytical Engine, the Harvard Mark I, and the atomic bomb
en.wikipedia.org
Harvard Mark I - Wikipedia
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
CS 123 has hit the pareto frontier of coolest and cutest CS class that I have ever seen. I hope that other colleges (and perhaps even high schools?) copy their strategy of teaching students to build and train robot puppies. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OHW...
youtube.com
AI-powered dog robots, built by students
YouTube video by Stanford
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rob pike @robpike.io · 24/01/2026
The author @philipball.bsky.social has always written extremely well about science, but he has reached new heights in sheer beauty of publication with his new book, Alchemy. Also: it has a fascinating story to tell, one you might incorrectly believe you know.
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
My best AI sensemaking trick is to turn things into tables. Ethan’s is better and more fun!
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James Cham @jamescham.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
I suspect we are going to see something like this more often: “To conceal stylistic identifiers of the authors, the above text is a sentence-for-sentence rewrite of an original hand-written composition processed via Claude Opus 4.5.” (From possessedmachines.com)
possessedmachines.com
The Possessed Machines: Dostoevsky's Demons and the Coming AGI Catastrophe
A close reading of prophetic fiction in the age of artificial superintelligence
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
I'm excited to announce I'm doing a new Bloomberg column about the business of fashion. The first column is about how we can re-shore US garment manufacturing. Instead of mass deportations and raising tariffs, I argue the government should move the industry upstream: tinyurl.com/reshoringapparel
bloomberg.com
An Un-MAGA Proposal to Bring Back American Manufacturing
Follow the path of Italy, France and Japan.
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