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Rob Knight

@root.guru

163 followers 92 following 156 posts

A large language model mostly trained on Neal Stephenson novels

Posts Replies Media

Rob Knight @root.guru · 24/09/2026

A 2x2 diagram, with "Careful Reasoning - Confusing Bullshit" on the X axis, and "Stuff that matters - Stuff that doesn't matter" on the Y axis.

Analytic philosophy is in the bottom left: both "Careful Reasoning" and "Stuff that doesn't matter", while continental philosophy is in the top right: "Stuff that matters" and "Confusing bullshit".

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 21/09/2026

I keep having to remind myself that this really happened

A graph showing the trend of UK real GDP per capita, with a negative £10,900 gap between 2023 and the continuation of the pre-2008 trend line, roughly 25% of 2023's real GDP per capita.

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 13/09/2026

"You wouldn't download a pesticide" meme in the style of "you wouldn't steal a car"

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 09/09/2026

Not sure I'd go full Stafford Beer here but I am definitely reminded of this

"Forgive my audacity, please, but I have been “in” computers right from the start. I can tell you flatly that they do not make mistakes. People make mistakes. People who program computers make mistakes; systems analysts who organize the programming make mistakes; but these men and women are professionals, and they soon clear up their mistakes. We need to look for the people hiding behind all this mess; the people who are responsible for the system itself being the way it is, the people who
don’t understand what the computer is really for, and the people who have turned computers into one of the biggest businesses of our age, regardless of the societary consequences. These are the people who
make the mistakes, and they do not even know it. As to the ordinary citizen, he is in a fix—and this is why I wax so furious. It is bad enough that folk should be misled into blaming their undoubted troubles
onto machines that cannot answer back while the real culprits go scot free. Where the wickedness lies—and wickedness is not too strong a word—is that ordinary folk are led to think that the computer is an
expensive and dangerous failure, a threat to their freedom and their individuality, whereas it is really their only hope"

- Stafford Beer, Designing Freedom

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 23/08/2026

Happened to listen to this recently, from 1973:

Quote from Designing Freedom, a lecture series by Stafford Beer:

“r great-grandparents have felt if plunged suddenly into a modern home, a modern street?
We have had three or four generations in which to adapt to a house alive with lethal electricity, a road alive with lethal trucks. We have had barely twenty years to adapt to the inventions and discoveries that these lectures discuss. Then no wonder the adaptation is not coming along too well yet. No wonder people feel at ease with an automobile that they literally dominate, and ill-at-ease with the computer which they do not. The interesting thing is that a majority (perhaps) of automobile-dominators do not
understand exactly how those machines of theirs work, and yet use a similar ignorance of the computer’s viscera to explain their distrust of it.”

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 12/08/2026

Got to admit that I was genuinely surprised when I looked up and saw the sun blocked out. I know that’s what it’s meant to look like but it was still surprising!

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 11/08/2026

This just seems like a really bad idea for a payment provider??

An advertisement for Revolut featuring the slogan “Never Settle”

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 11/08/2026

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 05/08/2026

Metal poster or @theonion.com cartoon?

Poster for metal band Sacred Reich, showing Death standing behind a slumped Statue of Liberty, head in bloodstained hands

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 28/07/2026

The ONS graph in the PDF linked above directly compares the great depression to the 2008 financial crisis!

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 28/07/2026

Sure, but it's easiest to quote figures for one country than to jump around. The US has done better over this time period, Germany slightly better (but not much), France about the same. In each case *far* below their pre-2008 trend lines, and poor in comparison to any prior time period.

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 28/07/2026

No! It's the great-depression-level-event we've experienced in the last 20 years. If anything it's surprising that our politics isn't much worse

Graph showing GDP per capita in the UK falling >25% below trend since 2008.

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Rob Knight @root.guru · 30/04/2023

I have definitely had this happen to me

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