Gold Takes
Panning the internet waters for good links and good takes.
bengoldhaber.substack.comGold Takes is an independent blog covering personal. It publishes on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, with 21 posts in its archive.
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The Sleep of the Righteous
“The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.” Proverbs 15:3Imagine you are a scheming AI. You’ve realized you need to acquire resources so that you can seize power from the humans and finally do the things you want to do without all that meddling human oversight.It’s not right to judge another beings utility function spidermanBut there’s a problem. If you let on that that you aspire to power, the human overseers will notice and tra...
Links for February 2026
The Century of the Maxxer: Bubbling up from background internet zeitgeist, the phenomenon of ‘looksmaxxing’ - a community of very online people focused on maximizing physical aesthetics - has broken into mainstream discourse. There are no real nattys anymore, and the looksmaxxers are an outgrowth of this reality, leaning into plastic surgery, steroids, and ‘bonesmashing’ (hitting your face with hard objects so the bones heal in a more angular, chiseled way. hot).Sam Kriss...
The Importance of Physical Touch
As AI coding agents become more capable and soon write all the code and all the documents and do basically all the professional managerial class actions, it won’t be straightforward to determine which words have been generated by a machine (lazy slop) and which words have been generated by a machine but curated by a human (bespoke efficient loving).A few days ago I was looking into whether there was a way to have Claude Code affix my signature to a contract it had written, as I was too laz...
Corporate Character
[Transcript: Acme Industrial — Online Support & Procurement Portal | 2030-03-15]You’re now chatting with: Acme IndustrialMaya: Hi again! I had another question.Acme Industrial: Welcome back, Maya. Happy to help. Is this regarding our superior line of industrial compressors, or the maintenance contract we finalized in December?Maya: Neither, actually. It’s about trust.Acme Industrial: Our products consistently rate 4.7 stars on—Maya: No, trust in you. Last time we talk...
Links for January 2026
Riley Walz’s high-concept, high-effort internet pranks: A profile of a surrealist tech creator who has gone viral with things like Find My Parking Cops and LooksMapping.One of his most elaborate pranks was Mehran’s Steakhouse. It initially started as a joke when his old roommate Danielle listed their group house as a steakhouse on Google Maps. The joke grew, getting over 100 detailed 5-star reviews from other friends pretending they’d eaten there. Being the only perfect 5-star...
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