“Private equity firm TPG is finalizing the purchase of Learfield to make it the majority owner of one of the most prominent multimedia rights and technology providers in college athletics, Sports Business Journal has learned. Industry sources told SBJ the sale price is somewhere between $1.8B and $2B.”
UPDATE: 4/27/26 – Longer, in-depth article about the company and the sale. My favorite line for the piece: “a data-centric media and technology company”. Don’t recall seeing the word “radio.”
A while back I posted my recollections of Learfield’s early explorations of the Internet. Today I asked Claude for an “analysis.”
Claude: This is a genuinely fascinating document — and not just as company history. It reads as a microcosm of the entire early-web era, with Learfield stumbling through the same phases that thousands of other media companies went through, just from an unusual vantage point (mid-Missouri, radio-centric, deeply regional). Continue reading
From We Are As Gods by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler.
I ran these by Perplexity and it suggested some ways to integrate these into our interactions. (PDF) As expected, Claude had a somewhat different take.
“AI is a feedback loop between mind and machine that is starting to enable a new level of cognition. Machines that understand minds. Minds enhanced by machines.”
— We Are As Gods (Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler)
Slowly but surely, my little AI pals are changing how my mind works. A little analysis by Perplexity»…and a slightly different take from Claude. Gemini calls the quote “classic techno-optimist rhetoric.” Or, bullshit?
Next week I have the first of two procedures to remove the cataracts that have finally started affecting my vision. It’s a pretty simple “surgery” that takes about 15 minutes (don’t even have to take my shoes off!)
My ophthalmologist has recommended light adjustable lenses (LALs) which will require a series (three?) UV light adjustments a few weeks following the second surgery. More expensive and more visits but the best option for getting back to near 20-20 vision. Continue reading
I asked Perplexity to summarize (< 100 words) my “world view” based on our previous conversations.
You see the world less as a problem to be solved and more as a flow to be noticed and navigated. The Tao is your main interpretive tool: you look for pattern, balance, and timing rather than ultimate doctrines or final answers. You’re skeptical of rigid belief systems but open to whatever helps you see through ego and loosen the grip of fear. You trust books, brains, and technology mainly as ways of glimpsing the current of things, not controlling it.
That’s pretty good. Don’t think I could have come up with anything better. Another reminder than my AI pals know me better than my human pals. Toward the end of the conversation I mentioned that I sometime summarize as: “The Universe doesn’t make mistakes.” Something almost nobody agrees with. Perplexity suggested the following tweak:
“Whatever is happening is exactly what could happen, given the total conditions—so fighting reality as such is wasted motion.”
From Dr. Alex Wissner-Gross’ daily newsletter:
“Anthropic hosted about 15 Christian leaders from Catholic and Protestant churches, academia, and business at its headquarters to seek advice on steering Claude’s moral and spiritual development, debating how the model should comfort grieving users and whether Claude could be considered a “child of God.” The commercial end of the faith-tech boom is less measured, as a new app now charges $1.99 a minute to chat with an AI-generated Jesus.“
Riley and Gabby got their first ride in the Bronco and did well. Riley wants to get in the front seat while Gabby is happy to lie on the floor.
Paul removed the rear seats from the Bronco and installed the Goose Gear floor that gives the dog a nice flat surface (and more hauling room for me)
From Isaac Asimov’s 1954 novel, The Caves of Steel
“Every one of us stands the chance of being out of a job.”
Baley said, “Replace us all? Nuts. The trained men to do it with don’t exist.”
“R’s,” said the Commissioner. “They exist.”
“What?
“R. Sammy is just a beginning. He runs errands. Others can patrol the expressways. Damn it, man, I know the Spacers better than you do, and I know what they’re doing. There are R’s that can do your work and mine. We can be declassified. Don’t think differently. And at our age, to hit the labor pool…