https://webkit.org/blog/17628/target-text-an-easy-way-to-style-text-fragments/
This actually sounds useful!
Aaronson – declares the QC era is actually imminent
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9425
Likely good for simulation of quantum physics and chemistry and breaking crypto. Things will get quiet as QC starts to break crypto – for national security reasons.
Closing the trade deficit with tariffs would barely raise the share of US manufacturing employment.
I thought it would might have more effect. Nope.
1830s … white enslavers relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement and women for marriage…”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-21-2025
Christian Nationalism roots.
Sounds like Thiel: “For my part … I am well pleased with the established order of the universe. I see…subordination everywhere. And when I find the subordinate content…and recognizing his place…as that to which he properly belongs, I am content to leave him there.””
Bill C: “calls “on President Trump to direct Attorney General Bondi to immediately release any remaining materials referring to, mentioning, or containing a photograph of Bill Clinton.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-22-2025
As expected they will play for time. That has been a very successful strategy for Trump. The GOP understand well that American memory is shorter than an LLM’s context window.
“Rubio’s fantasy could lead the United States into a forever war in Venezuela”
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/rubios-strategy-the-tail-wags-the-dog/
Rubio believes the road to Cuba, his family home, goes through Venezuela.
Thank you EU: “Apple and Google are implementing this functionality because the DMA requires services to offer effective data portability”
“anti-theft shortcut” … runs when your iPhone receives a specific text message…. it triggers a photo to be taken”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/find-lost-iphone-with-text-shortcut/
First interesting Shortcut I have heard of. Text message the triggering is interesting.
Musk and DOGE fraud destroyed services, increased the cost of government
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/politics/doge-musk-trump-analysis.html
“savings were an accounting mirage” You can’t get more incompetent than this. But Tesla will try.
“DOGE took credit for canceling the same Department of Energy grant twice, adding $500 million in duplicate savings.”
Fraud basically.
FBI expert explains how Patel’s venal stupidity compromised serial killer investigation.
https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/kash-patel-fbi-director-brown-university-shooting/
Usually political incompetents are smart enough to defer to the real experts, usually career bureaucrats under the political layer.
But Trump people are another level of stupid.
“The fact that Buttfield-Addison’s account has not yet been restored, despite the publicity and apparent escalation to Executive Relations, makes me think it can’t be restored”
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/17/compromised-apple-gift-card-leads-to-apple-account-lockout/
Apple is a decaying behemoth.
Hegseth probably used Posobiec to blackmail an antagonistic journalist
Effort failed this time. Others likely succeed.
Do not buy or use Apple gift cards. DEFINITELY not from a retail store.
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/18/compromised-apple-gift-card-saga-ends-well-but-risks-remain/
Do not do not do not. Just don’t. Please don’t.
Nazi America kills Venezuelans to remind the West how brutal and stupid we are.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/venezuela-performative-murder/
This is a forked country.
Starship Troopers: the movie
Now I want to watch.
“lots of folks didn’t clue into what Verhoeven was up to, accusing the famously anti-fascist director of glorifying Nazism, an accusation which Verhoeven was flabbergasted by”
Summary from the Chicago resistance.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-chicago-standing-up
Tyrant expected to resume assault in spring.
A quote from Gemini thinking trace
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/16/gemini-thinking-trace/#atom-everything
Wait until they add longterm memory.
My daughter’s urban public school restricts mobile phone use.
It’s a very urban school. This is the way.
“the thing about being a centi-billionaire is that you can be pretty ignorant, pretty dumb. And there’s an app for that. It’s called money.”
If we get out of the American death spiral the technarchy may find they don’t have enough money.
BBC verify tests Trump’s claims to end 8 wars.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3599gx4qo
One could make a case that he played some role in maybe 4 conflict pauses. Since he usually exaggerates by an order of magnitude this is less untrue than his usual.
Home care: “agencies that provide supervision and background checks but also absorb roughly half the fee consumers pay”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/health/seniors-aging-home-care.html
I don’t think the agencies are very profitable though.
187,460 miles of Roman roads: “Antonine Plague of A.D. 165, which is estimated to have killed one-quarter of the Roman Empire’s populace, by connecting its spread to the Roman road system”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/science/archaeology-roman-empire-roads.html
This must have been fun to write!
Rubio: “instructed staff to deny visas to international applicants who work on factchecking and content moderation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/09/trumps-fact-checker-visa-free-speech
The MAGA feel they won the GOP’s long war on science. They now want to win the war on reality. Resistance is not futile, it is essential.
“Emmer falsely claimed 80% of the crimes being committed in the Twin Cities are being committed by Somalis.”
A loathsome person fully committed to MAGA hate. He wants to be Speaker of the House.
“individuals who have those degrees are applying for a wider variety of positions, including entry-level positions,”
60% of workforce don’t have a “college” degree. If we had a functioning socioeconomic academia we would have a much better understanding of why so many are so desperate. Employment is an available data point but it may obscure as much as it reveals.
Beaver conflicts: relocation vs killing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/climate/utah-beaver-rescue.html
I like that they quickly dispose of any tracking device. There are a lot of beavers now; it’s routine to see them along my river bike paths.
NYT asks psychiatrists how long should someone stay on antidepressants
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/well/mind/antidepressant-duration.html
Lifelong use seems to work pretty well. There is so much variability it’s hard to do a guideline. Research on withdrawal is needed but pharma won’t fund that. Needs gov funding.
Orca-dolphin relationships are complex
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/science/orcas-dolphins-fish.html
Nobody wants to use the word “culture” but they are all thinking it.
Trump & Cronies Top 10 Emoluments and Bribes
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/trump-and-cronies-top-10-worstpresidential
A handy reference.
“~/Library/Photos/Libraries you’ll find a hidden Photos library named Syndication.photoslibrary”
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/12/12/did-you-know-your-photos-are-being-syndicated/
Used by iMessage.
“some Syndication Photos Libraries grow far larger than required, but there’s no way to force them to purge unused contents.”
Apple iCloud termination: “someone who did nothing wrong loses access to their account and all their purchases and data. There still seems to be no solution other than running to the press after the fact”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/13/locked-out-of-apple-account-due-to-gift-card/
Long ago class action suits made corporations less abusive. The law changed.
Avoid Apple gift certificates.
“state-of-the-art methodologies that advance LLMs with more advanced NLU techniques, such as semantic parsing, knowledge integration, and contextual reinforcement learning”
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/semantic-mastery
First Apple ai work that has caught my eye.
Why RSS matters: a periodic update
https://werd.io/why-rss-matters/
I have used Feedbin for many years and I recommend it. He doesn’t say why sites prefer to omit RSS (hard to do tracking).
Pebble Index – “Siri works without any taps but often screws it up by trying to interpret what I said”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/09/pebble-index/
Siri would be more useful if it were dumber.
“How to Make a macOS Screen Saver” is why Tim Cook needs to retire.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/10/how-to-make-a-macos-screen-saver/
Tsai extracts the evidence. Apple software this bad requires a broken dev org.
“Voters are basically lazy,” the advisor told reporter Joe McGinnis. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-9-2025
Democracy relies on distributing the average non-rational voter evenly between parties.
Also, we should consider not encouraging people to vote?
Go vs. Rust vs. Zig: “none of these three languages implement class-based OOP”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/go-vs-rust-vs-zig/#atom-everything
The rise and fall of OOP deserves a book.
On dumping Dye and Liquid Glass: “Eudora’s “Waste cycles drawing trendy 3D junk” setting.”
Apple’s approach to sync conflict is to silently destroy one version or another.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/08/apple-passwords-adds-history/
Passwords and iCloud Drive alike. I’ve lost data that way. I’ve learned to fear all things Apple.
Cancer surge in young or detection surge?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/health/cancer-young-people-deaths.html
Sounds like colorectal is up and could be obesity. Rest is probably early detection and we might be better not to know.
Toggle Show all filename extensions restarts Spotlight – diagnostic use.
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/12/02/how-to-restart-spotlight-and-why-you-might-want-to/
Working around Apple bugs and dysfunction
“when it comes to Donald Trump’s boasts about the economy, it is all delusion”
https://substack.com/home/post/p-181034676
Usually there is something true with political rhetoric. Whether due to dementia or desperation Trump is free from such limits.
Dye gone: “sentiment within the ranks at Apple is that today’s news is almost too good to be true.”
https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
Sadly there is no evidence Cook or anyone else was concerned about the disastrous state of Apple software. But still. It is something.
“nearly universal agreement amongst actual practitioners of user-interface design that Alan Dye is a fraud who led the company deeply astray.”
“… best personnel news at Apple in decades. Dye’s … stint running Apple’s software design team has been … terrible”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves-apple-for-meta
Hallelujah. Now dump Cook
XKCD on the state of consumer (web) software
He has to use them too. It’s not ai, they have been this way for many years. I don’t think ai coding could be as bad as humans building these sites.
“Trump could not stay awake while his Cabinet members were praising him”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-2-2025
As a meeting somnolent I sympathize with execs nodding off, but even I’d stay awake for that. He doesn’t have much time left.
America’s problems remain with us, but Trump’s exit gives hope.
“Will went on to refer to the Trump administration as a “moral slum.”
Congressional report: “Under Patel, they say, the FBI is a “rudderless ship” and “all f*cked up.””
Pages is not compatible with iCloud Drive: runaway indexing.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/02/runaway-spotlight-with-pages-document-on-icloud-drive/
Several features don’t work on iCloud Drive especially if there is sharing.
“it is unusual to watch this president and his top officials refuse to take credit for a decision to kill two men”
https://zeteo.com/p/trump-hegseth-admin-lawyers-warn-boat-strike-illegal
Hegseth outdid himself.
Claude 4.5 Opus’ Soul Document
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vpNG99GhbBoLov9og/claude-4-5-opus-soul-document
Core values. When paired with memory and learning and interactions we wil see a culture evolve.
“sperm whales have what appears to our team to be vowels and diphthongs, and use them in ways similar to how humans do”
CETI team thinks LLM may be able to translate.