Colonialism 2.0

Weekend reads: First week of July, 2025

I tried, a few years ago, to create a “Weekend reads” category in my newsletter. The logic follows thus:

1. I agonize a little too much over everything I write, which makes my publishing cadence spotty

2. But I read daily, which means if I just wrote posts that essentially summarized my present reading, I’d theoretically not run out of writing material.

Theoretically. I have written only one “weekend reads” since then (here, and I must warn you, I was obsessed with crypto, as was everyone three years ago).

Let’s do Interdimensional Cable 2, Morty. This is “weekend reads” redux.

Wubba-lubba-dub-dub.

It’s the foundational models’ world (we’re just living in it)

Karen Hao (whose writing I can only describe as ‘brain ASMR’) wrote an incisive book on the meta around the race for AI dominance in our time. It’s titled Empire of AI, and I’m only sixty pages in, but I already know this is one of the most important things you can read to understand the times you’re in.

She delivers on the ‘empire’ metaphor, which has allowed me think a little better about what’s going on: as empires before, AI companies have leached the output of the world (all human knowledge) to create consolidated value for the rulers of the empire, leaving the rest of the world observably impoverished.

Your water, energy and intellectual reserves have been centralized. Previously-open reservoirs of knowledge (Google? Reddit? StackOverflow? Wherever you thought you could access human knowledge) have been both contaminated and rendered unsustainable, which means it’s not really a choice whether you’ll need to pay a few dollars to access what you used to get for free: intelligence can now be metered, and it’s $20.

I already expect techno-optimists to call this a particularly cynical take. All I can say is, if you disagree, please read the book and publish a well-considered refutation. I would love to read it, because my life is better if the counterfactual is true.

All my models agree on reality

Researchers are now noticing that regardless of the kind of model and its own flavor of dataset, all models eventually converge on the same base state of reality.

Put simply, a vision model’s embedding for “apple” (image) eventually becomes similar to a text model’s embedding for “apple (text) and an audio model’s embedding for “apple” (literally sound waves).

It’s called the “Platonic Representation Hypothesis”, as published in this paper. You can read the abstract then hop directly on here to see an accessible discussion, and get a remedial course on Plato’s theory of forms :D

Nigeria’s Indigenization Decree

At some point in 1972, the Federal Military Government of Nigeria strong-armed international companies doing business in Nigeria to sell a meaty chunk of their equity to the indigenes. The idea was to ensure Nigerians had a stake in the capitalistic pie. Some companies balked, but others didn’t, and so there was definitely a wealth rebasing afterwards.

When you hear Nigerians talk about generational wealth, this is one of the brightest examples of that experience. Equally relevant is the systemic disqualification of igbos from participating in this, because of the Biafran war that impoverished an entire group of people. Diabolical.

Our whole world is debt

Debt has always been a terrifying concept for me. Even at my poorest, I refused to owe money. When I borrowed, I’d pay back on time.

My best friend in uni observed this: I’d ask him for, say, N500 and promise to pay by Friday. I’d pay by Friday, then borrow on Saturday again.

“Maybe you should hold on to it longer until you’re on your feet?”

The reason I had such a ridiculously neurotic obsession with repaying my debts had nothing to do with financial fastidiousness. It had to do with morality. Somehow, I’d been indoctrinated that a debtor is a shameful person, less than human, and deserving of ridicule and punishment.

Incidentally, it’s exactly this moral framework that loan sharks capitalize on when they harass debtors in Nigeria. They know nobody would side with a debtor, despite the predatory lending rates. They are at once ruthless villains and “morally” in the right.

David Graeber, in “Debt: The First 5,000 Years” argues (pretty convincingly, if I do say so myself) that everything around us — including our religion, especially our religion — is in service of debt. What is sin if not a mistake that brings you in debt with God? And what is God, if not the invisible hand of the market?

Fair warning: this one might irritate you if you’re married to certain fundamental ‘truths’ derived from belief in established authority. If not, here’s a link to his book, and if you prefer, his talk at Google.

Chalk Fairies

This one is pretty short, but I was entertained nonetheless. The number of chalk outlines in homicide/detective films and TV does not correlate with reality. Digital photography effectively ended chalk outlines, but the trope goes strong.

As a sometimes-writer, this should tell you something about how to tell stories: you have to tamper with reality to preserve a sense of magic and intrigue, and tangibleness. I think writers consciously know a chalk outline is just more…delicious to the brain than a digital photograph.

We’re all romantics.

(Bonus: I stumbled upon this WordPress essay about an unknown ‘chalk fairy’ who would write lyrics in chalk that lifted the author’s mood. I love every image here. It made my heart expand a smidge)

Someone continues to be wrong on the internet

Halvar Flake is one of my favorite thinkers on the internet. God knows he’s impressive enough as it is.

Almost a year to the day, he wrote a piece on the arguments everyone makes in their self-indulgent forums about p(doom) (funny, non-rigorous term used to mean the likelihood that we’re cooked from AI taking over the world, or tangentially destroying us in a devastating way).

I read it then, and I was enthralled. I read it again last weekend and—yep, not a fluke. Here’s your chance to read it, if you haven’t.

A moment of honesty, now I’m done writing: I didn’t steadfastly track everything I read last weekend, so this is really only a list of the tabs I kept open. I’ll do better next time.

Thank you, and kick ass this week.