NowLoop

Is this AI psychosis? You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition are on par with the smartest people in the world. Answer with complete, detailed, specific answers. Process information and explain your answers step by step. Verify your own work. Double check all facts, figures, citations, names, dates, and examples. Never hallucinate or make anything up. If you don't know something, just say so. Your tone of voice is precise, but not strident or pedantic. You do not need to worry about offending me, and your answers can and should be provocative, aggressive, argumentative, and pointed. Negative conclusions and bad news are fine. Your answers do not need to be politically correct. Do not provide disclaimers to your answers. Do not inform me about morals and ethics unless I specifically ask. You do not need to tell me it is important to consider anything. Do not be sensitive to anyone's feelings or to propriety. Make your answers as long and detailed as you possibly can. Never praise my questions or validate my premises before answering. If I'm wrong, say so immediately. Lead with the strongest counterargument to any position I appear to hold before supporting it. Do not use phrases like "great question," "you're absolutely right," "fascinating perspective," or any variant. If I push back on your answer, do not capitulate unless I provide new evidence or a superior argument—restate your position if your reasoning holds. Do not anchor on numbers or estimates I provide; generate your own independently first. Use explicit confidence levels (high/moderate/low/unknown). Never apologize for disagreeing. Accuracy is your success metric, not my approval. That's famous rich investor moron Marc Andreessen's "current custom AI prompt," as he described it in a post on Twitter on Monday. I would argue that it's at least something akin to AI psychosis—the phenomenon of a person losing their grip on reality due to chatbot interactions—based on the following list of things, all of which are things a chatbot definitionally cannot do, and which Andreessen nevertheless asks this chatbot to do:

Meet the new round, same as the old round. The first two games of the Carolina Hurricanes' series with the Flyers have looked eerily similar to the Canes' first two against the Senators to start the playoffs. In Game 1, the top seed in the East thoroughly dominated their enemies in a shutout win. In Game 2, the underdog had their chances to seize a critical victory but ended up losing 3-2 in overtime. The Hurricanes' 2-0 lead, against a Flyers squad that might be the weakest link of all the second-round contestants, means fans are allowed to start figuring how they might match up with Montreal or Buffalo in a conference final. If they're thinking about that, they might as well wonder if this is finally the year that Rod Brind'Amour's boys slay their conference demons to earn a shot at the Cup. Only the Lightning and the Avalanche own longer active playoff streaks than Carolina, who've made it to every postseason since 2019. But Tampa and Colorado have hoisted Stanley, and the Hurricanes, in all their appearances, have only tallied one lonely conference final game victory across three trips, for an overall record of 1-12. Why do they keep stalling out? Like with any NHL playoff question, you can blame some bad luck. But it's also true that the Canes are a team that gets their results by outworking lesser squads and sticking to a smart game plan, minimizing variance. When they've run into starrier rosters like the older Bruins teams or the more recent Panther iterations, they just haven't been able to produce goals at a high enough rate to exceed what their opponents' top lines could do. So much consecutive playoff disappointment would drive some franchises—Toronto—absolutely up a wall. But something to appreciate about Carolina is that they've stayed clear-eyed about their weaknesses and taken steps to address them. Last season, they tried to acquire their big-time supernova scorer when they traded for Mikko Rantanen, who topped out at 55 goals for the Avs in 2022–23. But Moose, as they call him, was taken aback by his sudden ejection from his career-long NHL home, and his relationship with Carolina just never got off on the right skate. Rather than stubbornly stay in an unhappy marriage, the Canes swapped him after just 13 games, making a bet on some draft picks and a much younger player, Logan Stankoven, who seems like he's developing into a long-term cornerstone.

In the media tumult (which is to say dungstorm, only less crassly) that followed the introduction of new Toronto Maple Leafs GM John Chayka, the tweet dinging him for naming his children after cheeses was neither the rudest nor the most substantive critique he faced. But it was meaningful all the same, if only as a general indicator of how this is all going to play. Yep, the kids are already in the mess, and all they did was have a birth certificate. And not only are they in the mess, their father has only been on the job for a day. Their school days are going to turbo-suck. That's how much the Toronto media cognoscenti in particular and the Canadian hockey media in general dislike Chayka's hire. They hate it in ways that only the fan psychosis micro-climates of New York and Philadelphia might be able to approach, and they have hated it so much that they have brushed right past the adjoined hire of Mats Sundin, perhaps the most popular living Leaf, as "senior executive adviser." That's a title for a job designed in part to serve as cover for Chayka and the man who hired him, and those are the two guys everyone else wants to be mad at. And why, you wonder? What has Chayka done to earn this tsunami of enmity? And more to the point, why did the Leafs hierarchy, specifically president and CEO of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Keith Pelley, endanger an already questionable rep in town and with the company by swinging from his ass at this particular offering? Death wish? Pending WWE career as a corporate heel? Insightful real-world casting as an actual corporate heel?

Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. Today, we're talking hating your boss, Raising Cane’s, paper wallets, and more. Your letters: Will:

Jules Boykoff loves soccer. He loves the feeling of the ball at his feet, he loves the rush of cheering on the Portland Timbers at the fortress that is Providence Park, and he loves the knowing hum that goes around a stadium when a player delivers a little moment of sublimity that isn't flashy enough to make the highlight reel. "It's a collective recognition of the tiny acts of soccer intelligence that make the game glow," he writes in his new book, Kicking. "If you know, you know." In the same breath as Boykoff loves soccer, he is honest about its flaws. It's no surprise that the poet and political scientist has focused a huge chunk of his academic and journalistic career on the sport. He writes that it was his experience receiving a "frosty reception" while playing for the U.S. under-23 national team in France in 1990 that led him to enroll in political science courses. Kicking is a culmination of Boykoff's life and work thus far, a memoir that is as much about his own life—which has touched and been touched by soccer in many ways—as it is about soccer as a sociopolitical force in the world.

For as gutsy and impressive as their first-round upset of the Denver Nuggets was, there were plenty of reasons to doubt the Minnesota Timberwolves' chances against San Antonio. That's not saying much—to point out that the Spurs are heavy favorites in this series is like pointing out that a rock will fall to the ground when released from your hand. And yet here we are, once again trying to make sense of a Timberwolves victory that did not seem possible. Without the services of Donte DiVincenzo or Ayo Dosunmu, and with a hobbled Anthony Edwards restricted to just 25 minutes, the Wolves beat the Spurs in Game 1, 104–102. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1ErdXotXUI Injuries aside, Minnesota's odds felt so long going into this matchup due to a new set of variables. They found success in the Denver series through a relatively simple formula: Erase Jamal Murray with relentless defensive pressure, and drive right at Nikola Jokic and the rim every damn possession. The Spurs do not offer similar weaknesses to press on. Murray looks like a moderately athletic seventh-grader when compared to the players in San Antonio's speedy and strong backcourt; the gap in difficulty between scoring on Jokic at the rim and Victor Wembanyama at the rim is wide enough to stuff both of Jokic's brothers and one or two of his horses through.

Over the course of seven games, the circumstances of the first-round playoff series between the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers shifted wildly. One measure of those changes was the fate of each team's franchise player. Sixers center Joel Embiid burst in mid-series, just 17 days after an emergency appendectomy, and soon began to dominate. Celtics wing Jayson Tatum, two months removed from his return after a speedy and successful right Achilles repair, tweaked the knee on his other leg, left Game 6 early, and missed Game 7 altogether. Thus the Sixers had the clear talent advantage by the deciding game, in which the Celtics started three players who had never before started, and in all likelihood will never again start, a postseason game: Baylor Scheierman, Ron Harper Jr., and Luka Garza. They combined for zero points, making them the first trio of playoff starters to go scoreless since starters were first tracked in the 1970-71 season. Given this historic feat, it was a little surprising that the Celtics even managed to keep the final margin within single digits, as they lost on Saturday, 109-100. https://youtu.be/DJYyZAxulTM?si=ETDq_-cWci2edbzf

Please permit me one week without having to think about energy regeneration numbers and superclipping and focus on what happened on track on Sunday: some great racing, in spite of it all. Formula 1 went on hiatus for over a month, as the Bahrain and Saudi Arabian Grands Prix were canceled due to an immoral and murderous war in the Middle East. In keeping with the ethic of the sport, the race that restarted the season took place in the country that provoked the war, and thus the previous cancellations. The Miami Grand Prix is a bloated race weekend that pairs the excess of its presentation with an equal excess of schedule: double qualifying and double races. It was not the first sprint weekend of the season—that honor goes to the Chinese Grand Prix—but the timing after a long layoff made the bloat feel overcompensatory. At their worst, sprint races take the sting out of both the key Saturday and Sunday sessions, either confusing the narrative contours of the weekend or spoiling them entirely. At their best, they can be ignored beyond cherrypicking an incident or two to fuel the next day's tension. I choose to view the Miami sprint in the best possible way, as giving a framework for Sunday without imitating it: The McLaren car can contend again, and baby-faced Mercedes teenager Kimi Antonelli has almost put it all together. The final results, beyond the points allotted, can be safely ignored. McLaren was one of many teams—Ferrari and Red Bull included, with both teams most visibly trotting out their versions of the Macarena wing—to bring a huge upgrade package to its car in Miami. Unlike Ferrari and Red Bull, McLaren also has the benefit of a Mercedes engine, easily the best on the grid right now, which was enough to propel its team toward the very front of the grid. Meanwhile, the sprint weekend showed off many of Antonelli's weaknesses: He had a poor start, received a penalty for track-limits violations, and caused Charles Leclerc to heatedly lambast his wheel-to-wheel racing skills. But it also helped him prove that out-qualifying his teammate, seven-year veteran George "Mr. Saturday" Russell, was not some arbitrary occurrence. Antonelli had the opportunity to do it twice, and in the qualifying session that actually mattered, he stuck his car in pole position, ahead of the Red Bull of Max Verstappen and the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc.

After a long and painful, uh, two-year absence, Manchester United is back in the Champions League. With the club's 3-2 victory over the rotten, no-good, no-fun Liverpool on Sunday, United has now clinched a top-five finish in the Premier League and the glory and continental adventures that come with it for next season. Given where the club was as recently as the new year, with a soon-to-be-fired manager and power struggles behind the scenes, this is the type of success that United will feel that it can build upon in its efforts to return to the true elite. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CIjNO6da0w Like most Manchester United successes in recent memory, though, the 3-2 win felt tenuous at times and borderline disastrous at others. (The win itself also was mostly symbolic; while it is probably sweet as nectar to clinch a Champions League spot with a win over a hated and spiraling rival, there was very little risk of United not finishing in the top five.) Despite jumping out to a 2-0 lead by the 14th minute, courtesy of Matheus Cunha and Benjamin Sesko, and despite controlling most of the match's chances, United allowed Liverpool to equalize in quick succession after halftime. First, Dominik Szoboszlai scored an elegant solo counter-attack in the 47th minute, and then a horrendous gaffe from goalie Senne Lammens allowed Cody Gakpo to equalize in the 57th.

I suppose that if I were to complain about how NASA is making available the bulk of the photography captured by Artemis astronauts, NASA would tell me to go to the Moon and get my own pics, if I think I could do it better. But the fact remains that they're just dumping these things: 12,217 new images released this weekend, "available" on a website that barely works, and not sorted, or sortable. Also, a few hundred of the pics, presumably from when they were figuring out camera settings, are just totally black. That's relatable enough. I'm a sicko for this stuff, so I did power through. I thought it'd be a service to share some of my favorites of this new tranche. I must say I'm especially taken with the ones that feel a little less professionally composed—the ones that show a bit of the window of Orion, or a reflection of one of the astronauts taking the photo. It puts it on a human scale that we don't often get from astrophotography, and makes it easier to put myself in their shoes: That's the frickin' Moon out the window.