August 2, 2025

Notes from Valencia

Spain may be closer to Florida in GDP, but it is a near-perfect match to California in landscape and climate — without the earthquakes and with much more affordable real estate. I am not surprised they have a problem with foreigners buying up properties, but I was surprised not to see even more tourists in Valencia and towns south like Dénia.
American service industry know-how never quite recovered after covid lockdowns, so it was a pleasant surprise to see it alive and well in Valencia province and the city proper. Even the worst establishment we’ve visited — a newly-opened, somewhat touristy restaurant with an unexperienced server — was better than the median East Coast sit-down place.
An excellent example of effortless hospitality was the Westin hotel in Mestalla that made us, three sloppy Serbian-Americans (not all of the children came, and I should write more about this strategy of bringing kids over to trips), not feel out-of-place even though most other visitors dressed as and behaved as royalty. We are very familiar with the “you shouldn’t be here” look, and it just wasn’t there.
This may be too specific, but that Westin also had the best indoor swimming pool out of the many we have used.
There is no bad place to put a few small tables and chairs and serve cold beer, nuts, olives and a plate of cheese and ham for a few euros each. Or, if you live close to the beach, put up your own folding table and chairs and have a friend & family gathering.
The above are so widespread because even the “big” apartments are generally small by American standards — yes, I have been looking at real estate listings — so most people want to hang out in “third places”. Every other article from Chris Arnade mentions this so it isn’t a groundbreaking thought, but it’s nice to see it confirmed.
Speaking of real estate: price per square foot in Valencia is cheaper than in Belgrade which tells me that either Valencia is massively underrated, Belgrade is overrated, or most likely both.
Bad people sometimes do good things, and Franco did a good one for Valencia by moving the Turia river out of and around the town which 1) saved the city itself from being flooded including just last year and 2) gave it acres and acres of priceless green spaces that are within walking distance to most of the population.
This was my second time in the area and I plan on coming back at least a few more so yes, I liked it.

From the FT Editorial Board: The risk of letting AI do your thinking (the only nit I have to pick here is that by “AI” the esteemed Board means “LLMs” or, if you want to be kind and stretch the definition of intelligence, “generative AI”)
From Dave Winer: AI should behave like a computer (see previous note)
From a person on the Internet: Cognitive Hygiene: Why You Need to Make Thinking Hard Again (file under YouTube videos that should have been blog posts)
From Michael Lopp: Every Single Human. Like. Always. (subtitle: The robots… They did the thing.)

And with these four links I hereby declare a moratorium on LLM-related matters on this blog, until further notice.

July 31, 2025

An important note from Dave Winer:

I say ChatGPT instead of “AI” because I’m not comfortable characterizing it as intelligence. Deeper you get into it you learn that these beings whatever they are have serious character flaws that are counter-intelligent.

Exactly. LLMs are closer in intelligence to a screwdriver than to a human.

∞

For a contrarian take on LLMs as intelligent machines, here is Alexey Guzey saying that:

ChatGPT understands what it reads
LLMs are creative
Compression is intelligence and ChatGPT compresses really well
The idea of AGI is stupid
It doesn’t matter if AGI is real or not

I remain dubious.

Mid-week links

Vinay Prasad Is a Bernie Sanders Acolyte in MAHA Drag (Apologies for linking to the WSJ. Please file it under “textbook hit piece”, that worked.)
Zero-sum Thinking and the Labor Market (From Kyla Scanlon, whose substack blog is a jewel.)
Design Your Own Rug! (We just came back from Istanbul, where rugs are no longer made by hand and the ones who are sold as such were made 40+ years ago and “refreshed. These are from Afghanistan and are “only” around $1K.)
Belgrad Forest on Wikipedia (Speaking of Istanbul, the forest closest to it was named after the village next to it, “settled by thousands of Serbs who were deported to the capital Constantinople from the city of Belgrade in 1521” — to maintain a millennium-old Byzantine aqueduct. Please file it under “isn’t history fascinating”.)

Tuesday links (actual hyperlinks included)