Adam Becker
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adambecker.bsky.social
Adam Becker
@adambecker.bsky.social
5.6K followers 840 following 510 posts
Journalist & astrophysicist. @FreelanceAstro on the bird site. New book out now: MORE EVERYTHING FOREVER, about horrifying & flawed futures pushed by tech billionaires. Words in the Atlantic, NPR, NYT, the Guardian, BBC, SciAm, Quanta, Fortune, &c. He/him.
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adambecker.bsky.social
Palantir stock down 15.73% over the past 5 days Nvidia stock down 12.18% over the past 5 days Tesla stock down 6.75% over the past 5 days Sickos.jpg
November 7, 2025 at 3:10 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
THAT'S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS, SAMUEL

DO YOU THINK POWER PLANTS 𝘔𝘈𝘒𝘌 𝘌𝘓𝘌𝘊𝘛𝘙𝘖𝘕𝘚, SAMUEL

THEY VERY MUCH DO NOT DO THAT
COWEN: The stupidest question possible: Why don’t we just make more GPUs? ALTMAN: Because we need to make more electrons. COWEN: What’s stopping that? What’s the ultimate binding constraint? ALTMAN: We’re working on it really hard. COWEN: If you could have more of one thing to have more compute, what would the one thing be? ALTMAN: Electrons. COWEN: Electrons. Just energy. What’s the most likely short-term solution for that? ALTMAN: Short-term, natural gas. COWEN: Easing, not full solution, but easing of the constraint. ALTMAN: Short-term, natural gas.
November 6, 2025 at 8:56 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
A soldier protecting a sleeping child from incoming knives and weapons. The child is labeled "YOU," the soldier is labeled "ME," and the knives are labeled "Eliezer Yudkowsky's Writing"
October 21, 2025 at 5:15 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
At the end here, I actually disagree with @kerryhowley.bsky.social a bit. I don't think this is going anywhere meaningful. This is the rise of a scam economy, not an incomprehensible transhuman future. This crap won't work, but it will lead to an even more toxic startup culture in tech.
How do you make contact with the intelligence rising up from the machines around you? Do you build it a body? Do you offer it yours? It is perhaps tedious to point out that we are always operating under the shadow of destruction, deploying tools that might end us, convincing ourselves, not without reason, that if we don’t build the bomb, someone with worse intentions will. Not a single one of the AI kids had attempted to lecture me about a theory or suggested I read a paper; it was not me they were trying to program. Somewhere along the way, drawn into their swell, I had begun to think of large questions about the nature of AI as New York questions, millennial questions, distant from the center of things. Where it mattered, humans were not debating AI; they were merging with it. You order the parts you need, you learn, you debug. The kids carry on with the crisp clarity of engineers, integrating what is immediately useful, discarding or rewriting what is not. No one will ask your permission to build a world you do not understand.
September 24, 2025 at 9:09 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
God, these kids are so cooked.
“We help make AI applications more efficient by optimizing prompts and reducing token usage with agent workflows,” he says amiably. He also DJs. He’s Indian Canadian, has participated in 200 hackathons, and thinks there’s nothing to worry about, visa-wise; Trump, he says, will probably *increase* legal immigration.
September 24, 2025 at 8:54 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahaha

oh no
“You’re the oldest of four kids (you have three younger brothers who all worship you), a former Division I fencing athlete at UC Berkeley who grew up in Detroit,” Dumpster told the AI. Detail by detail, he was transforming Claude into his ideal VC. “Your adaptability between high society and down-to-earth spaces is legendary — you’re a concert violinist who plays first chair, but you also show up uninvited at dive bars with your fiddle to play impromptu sets … You skateboard (longboard only — you have a bit of disdain, but don’t mention it — for non-longboarders).” Dumpster added, “You DJ frequently on the Robot Heart bus at Burning Man.” He called his AI venture capitalist “No Cap,” as in “no valuation cap” but also as in “no lie.”
September 24, 2025 at 8:44 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
*screaming, throwing things*

Cryonics is not a thing. It is not a thing. It is a scam for turning dead people into frozen meat slurry.

But sure, whatever.
Everyone understands that elsewhere, science funding has disappeared, graduate students left hanging, academic departments in existential crisis. It would not seem to be a good time for science in the United States. The students politely acknowledge this reality, but it is not the air they breathe. “It’s like, okay, so if government money is not a reliable source anymore,” says Sanjana, “okay, let’s see how we can actually make this work and make this happen. Academia and industry is intertwined here more than ever. And I actually really like that because I think it’s important to take work that is new and innovative — ” “And translate it,” says Sid. The undergraduates know “four or five” people working for cryonics start-ups.
September 24, 2025 at 8:40 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
1. lol, lmao even
2. Hell of an advertisement for Italy after living in the Bay as long as I have.
Giulia will leave the U.S. tomorrow; the summer is over, the house will shut down. But she feels that S.F. is home. “Italy is very driven on pleasure and on beauty,” she says, leaning against a chair and playing with her hair. “And here I feel like I’m so much connected to the people here, because it is mission driven. There is more than aperitivo and pasta and vino — ” “Who is Vino?” asks Sanjana.
September 24, 2025 at 8:35 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
The dream is always the same: go to space and live forever. 🙄
A filing cabinet for interesting people,” Pat calls it. In the elevator the buttons are labeled in service of this goal. Floor 4: ROBOTICS. (The robot fight was held in the basement.) 9: AI. 11: LONGEVITY. 2: SPACESHIP. It’s on the 15th floor that a swinging robot arm encased in glass attempts and fails to make me a latte and on the HUMAN FLOURISHING floor (14), where blankets and pillows are placed in anticipation of productivity-enhancing meditation, that I wander into a talk by the Neurophenomenology and Psychedelic Research Consortium. The crypto floor (12) is
September 24, 2025 at 8:32 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
Oh god it just gets worse
Humans are “very bad at being self-aware,” he says between bites. “Like, What are the five emotions you feel right now and what percentage? The whole idea of our work is to use deep algorithms and computational neuro to, uh, understand state of mind from brain scans alone.”
September 24, 2025 at 8:21 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
I hate that I understand this sentence, and that this is totally familiar here in the Bay Area. @kerryhowley.bsky.social is doing important work documenting these horrors. (Source: nymag.com/intelligence...)
Christine’s P(doom) is “honestly … 5 to 15 percent,” but for now she and a close friend share a light-filled room and their days are filled with stimulating people, like the guy building a “rizz master app,” who “actually gives the most insightful advice,” and Carsten, a Swiss German 27-year-old who was designing AI-involved sandals but recently pivoted to drug testing.
September 24, 2025 at 8:16 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
The "silent protector" meme, with a soldier protecting a sleeping child from a barrage of knives and other weapons. The weapons are labeled "Eliezer Yudkowsky's writing," the soldier is labeled "me," and the child is labeled "you."
September 20, 2025 at 4:38 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
The "we're all trying to find the guy who did this" meme from I Think You Should Leave
September 16, 2025 at 3:32 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
(Also, I have a raging case of cover envy for both of his books. They're gorgeous. Go read them.)
The cover of The Ends of the World, showing a rainbow-layered sketched cross section of the Earth's crust. The cover of The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything, depicting a different gorgeous rainbow cross-section of the Earth's crust.
September 3, 2025 at 4:44 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
Having an interesting day. 😁🖖🏻
A man in a green shirt (me!) on the bridge of the original Starship Enterprise. A man in a green shirt (still me) in the captain's chair on the bridge of the Enterprise, filmed by a small crew with several cameras. A hallway on the Enterprise set. A plaque that reads: USS ENTERPRISE STARSHIP CLASS SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF.
August 17, 2025 at 11:21 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
The title page of Burning Chrome, by William Gibson, signed by the author, with the inscription "To Adam."
July 3, 2025 at 5:04 AM
adambecker.bsky.social
Trees and mountains were good, even though my wish for the week didn't come true (I knew it wouldn't)
A view of Crater Lake on a sunny day. Crater Lake on a sunny and nearly cloudless day, with Wizard Island in view. A path through a redwood forest. Sunlight on a moss-covered tree
June 26, 2025 at 6:08 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
Feels like I'm late to the party with what is now a very cold take, but I'm about 100 pages into this and it's a lovely piece of writing.
The front cover of TOMORROW AND TOMORROW AND TOMORROW, by Gabrielle Zevin
May 20, 2025 at 10:58 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
Thrilled to see this glowing review of More Everything Forever in this week's print edition of the @nytimes.com book review!
A page from the New York Times Book Review, with a review of More Everything Forever. The review can be found online here (gift link): https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/books/review/more-everything-forever-adam-becker.html?unlocked_article_code=1.B08.V_sF.Mez_71R_m1gt&smid=url-share
May 20, 2025 at 10:52 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
Really looking forward to reading this! It's going to be good. Congratulations @alexhanna.bsky.social and @emilymbender.bsky.social!
A hand holding a book titled "The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want," by Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna
May 14, 2025 at 5:31 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
FEEL THE AGI
Google AI search results for the question "is the great wall of china the only artificial structure visible from spain": No, the Great Wall of China is not the only artificial structure visible from Spain, nor from space in general. The vast greenhouses in Almería, Spain, are a much more prominent and visible man-made feature when viewed from above, often referred to as the "Plastic Sea". While the Great Wall is a remarkable feat of engineering, its relative thinness and coloration make it less visible from space compared to the sheer expanse of the Almería greenhouses. Elaboration: Almería Greenhouses: These extensive greenhouses, covering over 40,000 hectares in the Almería province of Spain, are a major agricultural producer and are highly visible due to the reflective white plastic used for the structures. Great Wall of China: While the Great Wall is a long structure, its thinness and the coloration of the surrounding landscape make it less easily visible from space compared to the Almería greenhouses. Visibility from Space: NASA has stated that the Great Wall is not visible to the naked eye from space, even in low Earth orbit, and is only sometimes visible under very specific conditions. The Almería greenhouses, on the other hand, are a prominent and easily identifiable feature due to their size and reflective surface.
May 12, 2025 at 11:03 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
You, in particular, might want to read this book. It's *extremely* relevant to your interests. (And perhaps not surprisingly, I'm dying to read your new book.)
Chapter 6: Where No One Has Gone Before When I was a kid, I thought Star Trek was a documentary about the future. I didn’t literally think that Captain Picard and Data and Geordi and the rest of the gang would be hanging out on the holodeck in the twenty-fourth century, but I did think that this was the future that smart adults had worked out as the best one, that this was what we were going to do, or at least what we should do. We’d go to space, we’d seek out new life and new civilizations, and we’d do a lot of science. I was six, and that sounded pretty good to me. But my love for the show went deeper than that. Star Trek didn’t just show a bright future; it showed a group of people being thoughtful and kind to one another...
May 11, 2025 at 7:26 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
There's another important lesson I learned from Sesame Street: when you care about something that someone else hates, be loud about it. Be rude. Be ungovernable.
Be a grouch.
Oscar the Grouch in all his glory, in a trash can, staring into your soul and judging you.
May 2, 2025 at 5:09 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
There is literally a movie about incompetent criminals stealing Big Bird! That's who these guys are. They are cruel, simple-minded, and transparent. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesame_...
Big Bird, but blue. From the movie Follow That Bird.
May 2, 2025 at 4:57 PM
adambecker.bsky.social
I had hoped to use this one, but Blue Origin denied permission. (Source: www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-p... )
Concept art of the interior of a large cylindrical space station, with Yosemite-like cliffs and an elk within.
April 30, 2025 at 3:34 PM