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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 27/07/2026

Repeatedly called language models “Grandpa Shelby” on my podcast The Last Enclosure. What the hell do I mean? It's a clunky metaphor from my first blog post on LLMs @ Misaligned Markets. Breaks into three parts: 1. Anterograde amnesia (Leonard Shelby from […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Snippet from a blog post “A (less) technical guide for understanding large language models. Compares LLMs to Leonard Shelby but with dementia and as a savant. LLMs are good at following regularities of language to produce plausible sentences but have no memory and cannot always reliably reproduce associations from training.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 08/07/2026

3/4 The railway for AI is pretty mixed. As a field it has a different series of tracks that have converged at times. But There's no telling where future progress might come from. It may involve building on old tracks or creating a new line all together. All this is to say, a winter is possible.

Image is a train map imagining the history of Artificial Intelligence as train stations. Starts from Cybernetics, Information Theory, and Logic and ends at GPTs and Large Language Models.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 30/03/2026

Anyone know anything about #kagi? For some reason my AI bubble post appeared in their "news" tab the day after it was published. I'm wondering how that even happened. Do they prioritize small blogs or is this just random? Don't know how I feel about this. Proud of […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Image of a search result snippet from Kagi's news tab. The Mastadon post's author appears in the Kagi news result.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 27/10/2025

Jen Easterly uses the phrase #misalignedmarkets to describe the current state of cyber. As a former #cybersecurity writer now running a blog called Misaligned Markets, I couldn't agree more! Companies are rewarded for externalizing costs (in every domain). In cyber […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Excerpt from The End of Cybersecurity in Foreign Affairs. Economic incentives lead companies to not continuously patch software, passing on breach risk downstream.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 27/08/2025

(2/3) When I say “growth of capitalism” I specifically mean capitalism as distinct from, but deeply connected to, markets. Capitalism is a set of “protocols” designed to codify ownership of property to facilitate capital accumulation. This results in a system of […] [Original post on zirk.us]

LaTeX defining markets and capitalism. Markets: How people get things. Capitalism: who gets to decide what's made.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 02/08/2025

Yikes. #Abundance co-author Derek Thompson's recent post "The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong" not only failed to engage with critics but misrepresented Thompson's conversations with experts. So much so that at least one of them felt the need to […] [Original post on zirk.us]

A written statement by Lance Lambert (the founder and editor of ResiClub) on his inclusion in Abundance co-author's recent Substack post "The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong." Lambert recharacterizes the converstaion he had with Derek Thompson about housing consentration.

Basel Musharbash anti-trust attorney who was critiqued in Derek Thompson's "The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong" arguing that Derek's post misrepresents his view by focusing on market concentration and not policy changes that advantage bigger builders. Musharbash also suggests that Thompson asked a source for his article leading questions that would have avoided a more nuanced discussion about multiple factors at play in housing market prices besides supply and market concentration.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 07/06/2025

We had to euthanize my childhood cat, almost 20 years old. I know everyone thinks their pets have personality, but Bluey was headstrong, downright opinionated in a good funny way. He’d let you know what he likes, including licking bitter apple spray or riding the […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Brown and white cat siamese mix with bright blue eyes looking at camera.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 01/05/2025

(1/2) Somewhat disappointing article by Derek Thompson at The Atlantic. Thompson is generally a thoughtful writer (as are several others on staff) but this is a good illustration of how to keep AI hype going in ways unwarranted. Titled “Something Alarming Is […] [Original post on zirk.us]

excerpt from The Atlantic article: “Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market” it reads a New York Fed survey of firms released last year found that AI was having a negligible effect on hiring. Karin Kimbrough, the chief economist at LinkedIn, told me she’s not seeing clear evidence of job displacement due to AI just yet.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 01/05/2025

An informative lesson in French by Ars Technica commenter Erbium68. #GPT #openai #ai #french

Ars Technica comment by user Erbium68. “Just remember that read out loud in French, GPT sounds like j’ai pété, I have farted.”

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 11/04/2025

User on subreddit r/enoughtrumpspam alleges their employer (probably Amazon Web Services) has been contacted by the Trump admin to remove books from a book marketplace. OP here doesn't do much to elaborate on any details or share it beyond this sub. However David […] [Original post on zirk.us]

[Bo]ok Removal Request

[redacted] to me

Please be advised:

We were recently contacted by regarding renewal of their contract.

[redacted] maintains that they will not move forward with contract renewal unless the following books are removed [out of frame]
below).

[redacted] informed [redacted] that we have no input on that side. (I don't even know who we would contact about this. I [out of frame]
)

The books requested for removal:

Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth
Stelter
ISBN-10 1982142456
ISBN-13 978-1982142452

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America
Heather Cox Richardson
ISBN-10: 0593652967
ISBN-13: 978-0593652961

Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Mary L. Trump
ISBN-10: 1982141476
ISBN-13: 978-1982141479

Shameless: Republicans Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy
Brian Tyler Cohen
ISBN-10 0063392887
ISBN-13 978-0063392885

Forbidden Loveseat: A JD Vance & Usha Novel
J.D. Boehninger
ASIN: B001CHTX11

How the People Trumped Ronald Plump
Brian Krassenstein, Ed Krassenstein, Benny Rahdiana
ISBN-10 1643070762
ISBN-13 978-1643070766

Melania: Devourer of Men
J.D. Boehninger
ASIN: 807HN9XC1H

The Echo Machine: How Right-wing Extremism Created a Post-Truth America
David Pakman
ISBN-10: 0807016535
ISBN-13: 978-0807016534

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 14/03/2025

@sebastian @molly0xfff These people try so hard to cosplay as professionals and experts, but I don't know who they're fooling. They might as well be children pretending to be adults.

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Mike @ Misaligned Markets @midnitemikewrites.zirk.us.ap.brid.gy · 06/02/2025

(1/2) The key insight that led to Misaligned Markets was recognizing market actors don't just compete on economics. Because they act in the world, the entire world is their operating environment. Market competition incentvizes ways of circumventing traditional […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Image of a Twitter post from Jan 2024 disucssing an insight the author had:

Regulatory arbitrage, information asymmetry, coups, literally anything is fair game. After all, competition is not just limited to markets. Why would it be? Market actors are embedded in the world. The whole world is their operating environment.

Market Capitalism doesn't just select for competition within markets, but basically within the entire operating environment of a market actor. Regulatory capture, political movements, and even entire plots and schemes emerge from this interplay

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