https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-17-2025
Trump is failing fast. Vance knife collection at peak sharpness.
30y of JavaScript – a brief history.
SpotTest 1.0 for diagnosing Spotlight problems – The Eclectic Light Company
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/08/18/spottest-1-0-will-help-you-diagnose-spotlight-problems/
“If you have added your own files to the test folder, they will be included”
I have a lot of weird old file types I can test against.
Sematic web, RDF, OWL – and modern AI agents.
https://thenewstack.io/ai-agents-are-finally-delivering-on-the-semantic-webs-promise/
I really liked RDF and even RDFS/OWL. I hope approach of “just enough ontology/formal knowledge representation” works for agentic ai.
Badminton physics: “shuttlecocks can achieve top speeds of more than 300 mph”
‘Parasite’ backstory of Middle-Class Failure in SK: “The massive increase in the number of chicken joints was a direct result of the 1997 Asian financial crisis”
We need new ways to measure economies. Societies cannot handle these rapid cycles.
Vance/Musk pronatalists: “the age of straight-up, populist MAGA is ending … will emerge a tech-adjacent, anti-woke New Right”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-musk-ai-pronatalists-collins-b2777577.html
MAGA, the white tech pronatalists, and the religious fundamentalists have been surprisingly cooperative. All contending for control of a desperate and demented president.
“Simone was once the managing director of Dialog, a secret society co-run by the billionaire PayPal and Palantir founder Peter Thiel.”
The story gets grimmer the more you read.
State of the economy before the data goes MAGA: “Half of all consumer spending is coming from the top 10 percent”
https://prospect.org/economy/2025-08-19-what-us-economy-really-looks-like/
Concise with solid numbers.
Stock buybacks soaring – an indicator of uncertainty. Trump’s crazed lunges having an effect.
Trump’s abuse will damage the US military.
“… a vengeful, partisan deployment to American streets … risks straining the social compact that binds a democracy to its military.”
Trump is using a screwdriver as a hammer.
AI Aug 2025: Apocalypse deferred – but Letta/Void is still going to surprise
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/08/ai-aug-2025-apocalypse-deferred-but.html
The good news is no AGI on the near term horizon. We have a few years still I hope. In the meantime, something like Letta/Void is going to be a part of your life.
Kakistocracy: “our current leadership, with smiles on their faces, will kill many, many more – disproportionately children, mind you – from the comfort of their own offices.”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/kakistocracy
Disgust for the RFK and his soulless braindead pseudo-science bastards Prasad and Bhattacharya.
Derek Lowe writes on science as an endeavor: “it’s important to never lose sight of its fundamental strangeness”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/praise-weirdness
It’s a longer essay that covers my own thoughts fairly closely. Magic and religion, by comparison, are a much better fit to human cognition and psychology.
Science would never happen if religion made useful predictions.
“J.D. Vance appears to have been distancing himself from Trump and the administration by taking repeated vacations”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-11-2025
Trump needs him for the pardons, but Trump’s dementia keeps getting in the way.
Lithium Deficiency and Alzheimer’s Disease: “lithium orotate supplementation in the 3xTg mutant mice almost completely prevented amyloid plaque formation and accumulation of phosphorylated tau in their brains”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/lithium-deficiency-and-alzheimer-s-disease
Derek Lowe is … impressed. So now I am too. It is so weird …
“Trump says the trusted numbers can’t be trusted, so he creates a situation where everyone knows the numbers can’t be trusted”
https://www.twincities.com/2025/08/10/real-world-economics-in-trump-we-trust-at-our-own-peril/
The GOP is good with this.
Vance keeps Epstein story alive: “it’s hard to imagine any other angle Vance could have chosen that would have poured more fuel on that particular dumpster fire.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-10-2025
I’m sure Trump trusts Vance completely.
“DHS appears to have morphed into a brutal, lawless gang of street thugs reminiscent of dictatorial shock troops in other autocratic regimes.”
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/dhs-is-a-menace
As anticipated. If there is an American democracy one day then DHS will be eliminated.
Trump’s economist: “even among dishonest right-wing hacks Moore stands out for his pathological inability to get numbers and facts right”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-political-economy-of-incompetence
Drain the swamp and fill the sewer.
“you never know when a competent economist, especially one with a good professional reputation, might balk at being asked to say ridiculous things.”
RFK has similar problem with staff.
Geriatric CrossFit Tips – 2025 Update
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/08/geriatric-crossfit-tips-2025-update.html
The delayed muscle response is remarkable. Seven tips.
AI as the great filter – Zach/Bea comic
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/fermi
For 25y I’ve assumed the great filter was AGI
“AOL routinely evaluates its products and services and has decided to discontinue Dial-up Internet”
https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discontinued
Press release should have been grander.
We age slowly until 50s then we age quickly.
https://www.aol.com/study-finds-turning-point-body-111100342.html
Back in the 90s I asked about aging being bursty. Back then it was a novel idea. I wasn’t the only one to wonder.
A defense of Tim Cook’s groveling – with copious details.
https://daringfireball.net/2025/08/gold_frankincense_and_silicon
America was getting more corrupt, but GOP-SCOTUS and GOP-MAGA took it to warp speed. In the absence of law there is only greed and a mad king.
Microglial purging and replacement by bone marrow cells for lethal microglial disorder.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/microglia-rescue
This is extreme medicine for a horrible hopeless disease. Analogous in its ambition to early heart transplant (which took years to be valuable)
Sequoia Disk Utility Bug: “Erase Process Has Failed”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/08/06/disk-utility-erase-process-has-failed/
Tsai: “workaround is to quit and relaunch Disk Utility”
(In comments – grant Disk Utility Full Disk Access.
Even red state fertility falls: “states that had above average fertility rates in 2014 are responsible for more than 80% of the collapse in American birth rates over the past decade.”
“by making 15 percent tariffs the new normal … Trump has used up much of whatever trade ammunition he had”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-emperors-new-trade-deal
K has a mixed record on economic impacts of gov policy, but for EU at least this seems plausible.
“America now looks less like a traditional federal republic and much more like whatever political label you might apply to a writhing pile of lobsters on the ocean’s floor,”
I think more like Crab Bucket politics myself. (viz, Pratchett)
“Starting today, students (ages 18+) in the U.S. as well as in Japan, Indonesia, Korea and Brazil can sign-up for a 12 month Google AI Pro plan for free”
https://blog.google/products/gemini/google-ai-pro-students-learning/
Most universities get it with their Google Workspace plan, not sure if extra fee for them.
MAGA mRNA kill: “Kennedy’s own statement about the decision is a steaming pile of bullshit”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/mrna-crime
“the American people elected these lying, incompetent fools and we elected the craven opportunists who confirmed nominees like RFJ”
Craven pond scum like Senator Bill Cassidy, MD.
“Two continent-size masses occupy as much as 30% of the core-mantle boundary, one of them thousands of kilometers below Africa, the other under the Pacific.”
Fun terrestrial geology review. The crystalline structure of the blobs may play a role in transferring material from the core to mantle.
Regularity, a judicial presumption of federal prosecutor integrity, is dying.
Trump’s prosecutors lie and bully. Judges are beginning to act on that basis, and to set aside a presumption of integrity.
“if judges continued to lose faith in the Justice Department, its lawyers would have to spend enormous time and energy backing up what are now considered to be routine courtroom assertions”
“number of fake journal articles being churned out by “paper mills” is doubling every year and a half”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/science/04hs-science-papers-fraud-research-paper-mills.html
And the indexing services share them and nutcases use them to advance personal theories.
“disappointed that [DOJ] has not released the full report so the victims and the public can have a fuller accounting of the depth of interference that led to the patently unjust outcome in the Epstein case.”
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-epstein-files-what-we-should
A lot of people had novel information to share at the right time.
Vibrio pectenicida has wiped out 90% of some sea star species.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/science/sea-stars-disease-vibrio-pectenicida.html
Big ecological impact. Now cause discovered there is optimism for recovery.
Of course everyone wants to know “why now”
K: The MAGA are running out of time — and they will take bigger risks and more desperate moves.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-getting-desperate-and-dangerous
The MAGA redistricting in Texas is both a useful Epstein distraction and a sign of desperation. I am not convinced their desperation is justified, but they do seem to be afraid. And so, more likely to make drastic (general strike inducing) moves.
Apple’s ai opportunity is context
https://tech.kateva.org/2025/08/apples-ai-opportunity-is-context.html
For Aug 2025 AI context is key to getting the best results. Apple’s (only) ai advantage is they have access to a lot of user context.
“Mothership Strategy” – the parasitic consulting firm that generates rivers of Dem spam to fund itself (and a few campaigns)
https://data4democracy.substack.com/p/the-mothership-vortex-an-investigation
“extracted $282 million from a network of spam PACs while delivering just $11 million to actual campaigns”
GOP is worse of course, but only in degree.
“fundraising model that now dominates Democratic inboxes—a high-volume strategy that relies on emotionally charged, often hyperbolic appeals to compel immediate donations. This model, sometimes called “churn and burn,” prioritizes short-term revenue over long-term donor relationships.”
Immune modulation in RA by vagal nerve stimulation.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/31/health/arthritis-implant-vagus-setpoint.html
I did not expect this to work.
ai is not crypto-blockchain dumbness: “When the folks who’ve been through every tech cycle since gopher start acting like excited newbies again, that tells you something.”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/31/christina-wodtke/#atom-everything
Describes the old super-smart devs I know.
Cultural landscapes: Urban geography, parks and living places: Twin Cities
https://www.tclf.org/places/city-and-regional-guides/twin-cities
An old school quality academic site. Navigation is a bit odd, it’s not clear in mobile that you can browse cities and places; the TC link surfaces the browsing options.
Google Zero and the ad-funded net crash
https://www.manton.org/2025/07/31/we-will-survive-google-zero.html
“I’m sorry if your recipe website littered with ads and filler content about the history of the avocado is no longer monetizing as well as it used to.”
Google’s fall will take down a lot of things. But they were all dying anyway.
Meta is so toxic devs are declining billion dollar job offers.
https://spyglass.org/metas-anti-godfather-offers/
I’m sure Zuck will get lots of talent but it’s astounding how resistant lead devs and researchers are to working at META. It sounds like an Oracle-class hellhole.
How technological transformation and human cognitive limitations created the 16 century demonology industry.
“Nicolas Malebranche, a 17th-century French philosopher, believed that our imaginations have enormous power to convince us of things that are not true – especially fear of invisible, malevolent forces”
“Trump’s mental decline is undeniable—so what now?”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-1-2025
Vance sharpens the knife.
“The presidential campaigns don’t need your $5”
https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/the-presidential-campaigns-dont-need
“… the more they devote themselves to fundraising and advertising, the more broke our democracy gets”
The marginal benefits of additional cash at this level are small to negative. The interests of the political consultancy industry do not align with the candidate’s interests.
Social science cannot model a society of oligarchs
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-rich-are-not-like-you-and-me
“have this relatively small number of people who have absolutely outsized power
…. As the rich become more isolated from mortal concerns, their weirdness effloresces.”
They had to be weird to pay the price of accumulating vast wealth.
The Political Economy of AI: A Syllabus
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus
The reading list is impressive. I want to be in this kind of course.
Synthetic E Coli genome uses 3 fewer codons than any know life form.
Huge feat of genetic engineering. The resulting bacteria is feeble for now. It could evolve.
Work suggests 60 codon rule is more chance than chemistry/physics. A foundation for molecular machines.
HCR: “As Roberts said, the Supreme Court’s decision giving Trump immunity was important because destroying the country’s institutions would require lawbreaking”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-30-2025
Heritage Foundation (2025) Kevin Roberts is an ascendant power — even as Trump fades and Rupert dies. Roberts and Thiel are among the great enemies of secular liberal democracy.