Quotes from Valery Legasov’s character in HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl (2019). An apt reminder for our current times, lies have a price.
Episode 1
What is the cost of lies? It’s not that we’ll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: “Who is to blame?” In this story, it was Anatoly Dyatlov. He was the best choice. An arrogant, unpleasant man, he ran the room that night, he gave the orders… and no friends. Or at least, not important ones. And now Dyatlov will spend the next ten years in a prison labor camp. Of course, that sentence is doubly unfair. There were far greater criminals than him at work. And as for what Dyatlov did do, the man doesn’t deserve prison. He deserves death.
Episode 5
I’ve already trod on dangerous ground. We’re on dangerous ground right now, because of our secrets and our lies. They’re practically what define us. When the truth offends, we – we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is… still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how…an RBMK reactor core explodes: Lies.
2025-08-17 ·
Quotes
Chris Jones in Storytelling is magic :
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” Teller spends years on a trick. Shadows he has done since he was 18. He spent years perfecting these tricks, and that’s how you get the payoff: To get great at these things takes time. You see someone do something amazing, and you think it’s magic. But really it’s the product of hard work and study and all these important things.
This rings true for so many things touched by deep attention.
My partner’s family, for example, thinks a lot about food. One of their favorite podcasts is Off Menu, where guests are invited to share their dream menu. A lot of the conversation is around meals: favorite food memories, what to eat throughout the week, how to pair different flavors. I often feel out of my depth to fully engage but I admire the time and thought they put into it.
It shows in the meals we share: whether it’s a perfectly curated takeout order that lets us try everything, a quiet Tuesday night dinner, or their disappointment when something doesn’t quite hit the mark (even if I think it’s fine). The magic is unmistakably there. You can always feel the labor of love.
This magic is everywhere. All of these are often the result of “someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” John Collison put it eloquently:
As you become an adult, you realize that things around you weren’t just always there; people made them happen. But only recently have I started to internalize how much tenacity everything requires. That hotel, that park, that railway. The world is a museum of passion projects.
It’s an important reminder when I’m feeling insecure or inadequate. To properly assign the weight of my time and effort. And when I’m somewhere things go smoothly, it’s worth remembering that someone likely put in quiet, intentional effort to make that happen. The success of a party, a good road trip, a clean section of the block, a dog park that functions or even a friendship often rests on someone behind the scenes putting in the time and care.
More importantly, it’s a question worth reflecting on regularly: What is worth “spending more time on than anyone might reasonably expect”?
The answers can help me prioritize what I truly care about. Whatever I choose, I should try to make sure my attention and time reflect alignment with those priorities.
2025-05-18 ·
Teller, Chris Jones, John Collison, Magic
In Remarks on AI from NZ, Neal Stephenson captures something I’ve been grappling with as my use for various LLMs increase: a sense that leveraging AI for certain tasks can rob us of the opportunity to learn.
Speaking of the effects of technology on individuals and society as a whole, Marshall McLuhan wrote that every augmentation is also an amputation. […] Today, quite suddenly, billions of people have access to AI systems that provide augmentations, and inflict amputations, far more substantial than anything McLuhan could have imagined. This is the main thing I worry about currently as far as AI is concerned. I follow conversations among professional educators who all report the same phenomenon, which is that their students use ChatGPT for everything, and in consequence learn nothing.
The post also reflects on other forms of intelligence from a perspective that was new to me.
via Simon Willison
Related: Calculators & Writing
2025-05-18 ·
Neal Stephenson, AI Assisted Learning
In Calculators & Writing, Chris Coyer points to something that’s been lingering in the back of my mind when using AI for certain tasks. My partner actually brought this up to me a while ago, and at the time I thought they were wrong – but I’ve now changed my mind. The quote below gets to the heart of it:
… with writing, humans are thinking, feeling, and communicating. Computers do not do these things.
Using AI to write means you’re robbed of the thinking and feeling it takes to write, which is (most?) of the value. Communicating, I suppose, you’re doing either way, you’re just communicating something you didn’t think about or feel if your writing is generated, which is fucked.
Despite remarkable progress in AI, some tasks still demand our effortful engagement. Learning, for example, requires one “to make eye contact with the idea” because the value lies in the effort, not just the outcome.
2025-05-12 ·
AI Assisted Learning, Chris Coyer