Vaughn

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Vaughn

· April 1, 2026 · 1 minute to read

Someone installed a mini skate park on the flood barrier next to the LA River and it’s my new favorite thing.

#losangeles #lariver #skateboard #skateboardingisnotacrime

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City River

Vaughn

· March 22, 2026 · 1 minute to read

A photo of the Hyperion bridge over the Los Angeles River at sunset. A slim waxing crescent moon hangs in the sky.

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#lariver #losangeles #sunset #moon

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Vaughn

· March 3, 2026 · 0 minutes to read

Empire of AI

When AI expert and investigative journalist Karen Hao first began covering OpenAI in 2019, she thought they were the good guys. Founded as a nonprofit with safety enshrined as its core mission, the organization was meant, its leader Sam Altman told us, to act as a check against more purely mercantile, and potentially dangerous, forces. What could go wrong? Over time, Hao began to wrestle ever more deeply with that question. Increasingly, she realized that the core truth of this massively disruptive sector is that its vision of success requires an almost unprecedented amount of resources: the “compute” power of high-end chips and the processing capacity to create massive large language models, the sheer volume of data that needs to be amassed at scale, the humans “cleaning up” that data for sweatshop wages throughout the Global South, and a truly alarming spike in the usage of energy and water underlying it all. The truth is that we have entered a new and ominous age of empire: only a small handful of globally scaled companies can even enter the field of play. At the head of the pack with its ChatGPT breakthrough, how would OpenAI resist such temptations? Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Armed with Microsoft’s billions, OpenAI is setting a breakneck pace, chased by a small group of the most valuable companies in human history—toward what end, not even they can define. All this time, Hao has maintained her deep sourcing within the company and the industry, and so she was in intimate contact with the story that shocked the entire tech industry—Altman’s sudden firing and triumphant return. The behind-the-scenes story of what happened, told here in full for the first time, is revelatory of who the people controlling this technology really are. But this isn’t just the story of a single company, however fascinating it is. The g forces pressing down on the people of OpenAI are deforming the judgment of everyone else too—as such forces do. Naked power finds the ideology to cloak itself; no one thinks they’re the bad guy. But in the meantime, as Hao shows through intrepid reporting on the ground around the world, the enormous wheels of extraction grind on. By drawing on the viewpoints of Silicon Valley engineers, Kenyan data laborers, and Chilean water activists, Hao presents the fullest picture of AI and its impact we’ve seen to date, alongside a trenchant analysis of where things are headed. An astonishing eyewitness view from both up in the command capsule of the new economy and down where the real suffering happens, Empire of AI pierces the veil of the industry defining our era.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

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Vaughn

· January 4, 2026 · 2 minutes to read

Over the holiday break I had hoped to go on a decent hike somewhere in the Angeles National Forest. Then the rains came and when the rains come the roads are a mess up in the mountains. So I looked for something a little more local and happened upon the Griffith Park Traverse as posted on California Through My Lens. Thanks to their thorough description I was able to plot the hike on GaiaGPS and off I went to hike across the largest urban park in the country.

The initial climb up to Burbank Peak was steep (the graph in the above screenshot doesn’t lie) but that first view of the Los Angeles basin was pretty spectacular.

Burbank Peak

My hope was to take a panorama from every peak but the weather caught up with me about half way through. I did grab a few though.

Cahuenga Peak

After Cahuenga Peak it was on to Mt. Lee which is the most famous peak because, well, they put a big ol’ sign on it. After 25 years in LA I finally got up there.

Mt. Chapel

The views of Griffith Observatory were excellent though it was easy to lose it in the sprawling city below.

I stopped for lunch on Taco Peak to eat…a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. I’m glad I stopped there because the rain started shortly after I continued on.

A Scrub Jay hung out with me while I ate. It may have been waiting for me to drop something.

Sometimes the next turn is elusive. Almost walked right by the trail.

Mt. Hollywood

The rain was here to stay…

Caught a glimpse of a deer munching some grass.

From Bunker Hill the 5 and the LA River look almost the same. A little more water in the river but only a little.

Despite the rainy second half of the hike it was a great trek and right in the middle of the city. It was about 6 miles start to finish and took a little over 3 hours. Much of the hike is exposed so this is definitely a late fall, winter, and early spring hike. Over the course of the 6 miles I hit:

Burbank Peak
Cahuenga Peak
Mt. Lee
Mt. Chapel
Baby Bell
Mt. Bell
Taco Peak
Mt. Hollywood
Hogback Peak
Glendale Peak
Bunker Hill

#socal #losangeles #hiking #griffithpark

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Vaughn

· December 30, 2025 · 1 minute to read

I’m sure I’ve mentioned Zombies Run! to you before. It tells the story of a surviving colony after the Zombie apocalypse with you as the main character? You remember.

Anyway. Earlier this year I was disheartened to hear that the company that had purchased Six to Start (creator of said app) had laid off the entire staff but for two individuals. While I’m still making my way through the existing content this seemed like a bad sign for the future.

Back in 2021 OliveX acquired Six to Start and everything seemed to be fine. Episodes were produced and seasons added. Then the bad news landed early 2025. It turns out OliveX had all sorts of NFT plans for Zombies Run! but the creators weren’t having it.

Now the good news! One of the founding partners has purchased the app from Olive X and, I can only hope, it will live a glorious undead life from here on out.

Seems like me and the other Runners 5 will live to be chased another day.

#zombiesrun #sixtostart #zrx

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