Brian Saetre

Brian Saetre

@briansaetre.com

I think a lot about human behavior and modeling other minds. I'm also into: ★ Building companies (Huncher.com, TaskOS, ArtworkIQ) ★ Software development (Laravel, Vue) ★ Building better IRL communities ★ Helping the victims of narcissists get justice

1.1K followers1.5K following346 posts

This has been a good side-hustle for me while I pursue to Indie Hacker Dream. I'll also get more Indie Hacker life support if you sign up. Mercor is urgently hiring generalists who own a MacBook. $50-$60/hour, fully remote. Apply here: work.mercor.com/jobs/list_AA...

work.mercor.comGeneralist (Must own MacBook) - Mercor JobsRole Overview: Mercor is looking for detail-oriented individuals with 2-3 years of experience in STEM, non-STEM fields, or currently enrolled postgrad college…

I sure am glad that my dad and I sold off our manufacturing company earlier this year. I do feel bad for the buyer, who is having to pay millions of dollars in tariffs to continue manufacturing in the U.S. using raw materials from the global supply chain.

My 5yo son rated some classic rock singing today: Queen: Thumbs Down Boston: Thumbs sideways Great Van Fleet (Yeah, I know...): Thumbs sideways Led Zeppelin: Thumbs Up. Way up.

Thinking about this more, I wonder if there is a conversion process happening where covert narcissists are being transformed into overt narcissists, as they now get praised for bad behavior. That conversion would be enough to explain much of the shift in the electorate toward Trump.

Brian Saetre@briansaetre.com

To take this a little further, I believe there's a war between the "Communal Narcissists / Covert Narcissists" (mostly Democrats) and the "Malignant Narcissists / Psychopaths" (mostly Republicans) Dishonest virtue signaling is a bad thing, but narcissists of any kind shouldn't be allowed near power

Take notes. Covert narcissists are some of the most destructive individuals in society, and it will be helpful to identify them so they can be dealt with as we pick up the pieces. Sadly I've also seen some non-narcissists drift toward Trump, which is harder to understand.

I didn't think this could possibly be true...but alas.

Brian Tyler Cohen@briantylercohen.bsky.social

Trump just terminated the Chair of the Kennedy Center and has installed himself as the new chair. He says he will now be dictating the institution’s “art and culture” and says it “must reflect” what he chooses.

Brian Saetre reposted

A bit of actual science as a diversion from everything else going on. @snarkarts.bsky.social quotes our LLM tutorial "We can only play Whac-A-Mole in trying to fix their flaws with after-the-fact patches layered atop the existing architecture" and asks: Isn't that how evolution works?

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com

This third question is profound. Yes, this is what happens with biology. And it takes a few billion years to get anywhere while working massively in parallel. What's particularly interesting about the biology case is that there are some things you can do playing whac-a-mole and some you can't.

Brian Saetre reposted

Replying to @briansaetre.com

I live in SoCal and trump is conducting raids within our immigrant communities. With the help of indivisible guidance we are forming organized warning systems to alert them when ICE is in the area

Let's start a thread about specific ways this shit administration has directly hurt people in our communities: 1) Scientist husband of a coworker will be unemployed in a year without grants for his cutting-edge research on proteins. 1/∞

View full thread

3) My long-time employee was supposed to move to Colombia with his wife who works for the state department. They've been planning this for a year or so, and now it's all up in the air.

Let's start a thread about specific ways this shit administration has directly hurt people in our communities: 1) Scientist husband of a coworker will be unemployed in a year without grants for his cutting-edge research on proteins. 1/∞

Brian Saetre reposted

Folks, the ChatGPT models are simple: - o1 is for reasoning. - o2 is for thinking reasonably. - o3-mini is for programming small things. - o3-mini-max is for programming small things that are large. - 4o is for everything, but sometimes nothing. - 5o and o6 do not exist, except on Thursdays.

I like the Italian translation best, and French worst. So many words wasted pretending to respect the reader.

Tom Nichols@radiofreetom.bsky.social

Joining @velshimsnbc.bsky.social this morning at 1015 ET on MSNBC You know the rule

I switched from a smartphone to a non-addictive smartwatch and it changed my life. I didn't realize I was a smartphone zombie. Now I get many more ideas, I'm more a more interesting conversationalist, and for some reason I seem to think faster and keep complex ideas in my head for longer too.

Grant@grantmcconnaughey.com

Honestly kind of want to try a social experiment where I transfer my iPhone SIM to a dumb flip phone and only use that for 1-3 months. No smart phone/social media out in the world; just living in the moment.

I've sometimes go to sleep early so I can wake up early, but all that does is lengthen the amount of time I lie awake in the middle of the night. I still need to get my REM in, and it always seems to start and end at the same time of the morning. Am I alone in this?

I want the brain cycles that I wasted on my smartphone for all those years. People are surprised that AI and automation tech hasn't increased productivity that much, but I suspect they've prevented what would have otherwise been a precipitous decline in productivity due to smartphone and SM addition

Brian Saetre@briansaetre.com

I'm a couple weeks in, and this is one of the best decisions I've ever made. I didn't know of the tech was there, but it definitely is. I'm definitely not going back. If this becomes a trend (and I'd be surprised if it didn't), there will be an advantage to early-movers in the WearOS ecosystem.

I'm up to almost 50% of my Twitter following, and engagement is up a bit from recent Twitter too (although not yet to the level of the pre-Musk golden days). Bluesky has legs.

Brian Saetre@briansaetre.com

My tech following on here may have recently surpassed my tech following on Twitter. It's still only 15% of my Twitter total, but much of that was from my comedy days. This platform is really coming into its own.

I'm a couple weeks in, and this is one of the best decisions I've ever made. I didn't know of the tech was there, but it definitely is. I'm definitely not going back. If this becomes a trend (and I'd be surprised if it didn't), there will be an advantage to early-movers in the WearOS ecosystem.

Brian Saetre@briansaetre.com

Phone addiction was becoming a big problem for me, and was impacting my productivity and the idea generation that occurs during idle thought. So I ditched the phone and replaced it with a smart watch. I'm on day two, and already seeing productivity gains. I'm reading more, and sleeping better.

A show like Dexter, but instead of being about a psychopath killing other psychopaths, a lawyer getting lawyers disbarred for unethical behavior Once the show takes off, we should make psychopath-killer...I mean vampire hunter...I mean lawyer-disbarrer an official position in state governments.

Brian Saetre reposted

Spending a month on Bluesky has created a whole new model of a fight we need to be having right now. Not liberal vs. conservative or whatever, but respect vs manipulation. I am tired of being manipulated everywhere I go. That’s why I like it here, I feel like I’m in charge for once.

Phone addiction was becoming a big problem for me, and was impacting my productivity and the idea generation that occurs during idle thought. So I ditched the phone and replaced it with a smart watch. I'm on day two, and already seeing productivity gains. I'm reading more, and sleeping better.