Link. I like the categories but I dislike the framing. This is anyone who isn’t delusional (“AI will fix us”). He may also omit those of us who fear massive disruption.
DOGE is a clownshow – here’s why
Link. I didn’t remember the GRACE commission. Reagan was bad but compared to Trump he’s a shining city on the hill.
K doesn’t mention the Gore National Partnership for Reinventing Government. I think considered a failure too.
If they wanted to do something they could address gov software issues. But Musk is an idiot.
AI enhancement – techniques review
Link. The industry seems to use the word “scaling” to mean enhancement, even when “more data” is not the key.
I can’t judge how correct the assertions are but I appreciated the scope of the analysis and the range of methods in play.
Google Willow QC – the expert speaks.
Link. Great discussion. I thjnk several journalists covered this well
“Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, whose name means Organization for the Liberation of the Levant, is a former affiliate of Al Qaeda”
Link. “ … been involved in trafficking the synthetic stimulant captagon.”
The civil war resumes and Turkey vs Kurds
Quantum computing looms.
Link. Still can’t do anything useful. Breaking traditional encryption may be decades yet. But it is coming.
Academic publishers making the AI play
Link. They are ruthless bastards with lawyers, they understand their interests, and they have a moat. I have wondered if they will win in the end.
America as “Trumpomuskovia”
Link. Not new but a good summary. The great puzzle is Putin’s magnetic power over Musk, Sachs and Trump. The lesser puzzle is Vance’s role.
AI good for: “Work where you are an expert and can assess quickly whether AI is good or bad”
Link. This is what I have personally found as well.
“Using the AI as a companion when reading, because it allows you to ask infinite questions.”
I use it during lectures this way
“Reviews for the apps Bigo Live, Gaze, Superlive and Tango mentioned parents sexually exploiting their children,”
Link. Apple’s app reviews are a sewer, so it is likely nobody there monitors them. But it is likely the vendors do read them. So they knew.
Bigo Live is gone but Boho Live is there and comes up with same search term.
Mpox in Congo: “Soon staff members began to fall ill as well; two nurses each lost the vision in one eye after severe cases of mpox.”
Link. Fortunately RFK jr will lead the ongoing response.
Very brave health care workers.
“The daytime electrical current is barely strong enough to power a single lightbulb”
Cheney responds to Trump jail threat: “ the worst breach of our Constitution by any president in our nation’s history”
Link. A fighter.
Olivia Troye’s response to Patel threat: a Monty Python meme.
Link. There are people with spine.
“The case of the last German Emperor is a sharp warning against the human impulse to over-rationalize events.”
Link. Everyone wants a story but history is often one damned thing after another.
“Gabbard’s support of Assad was so well known…”
Link. Trump is demented.
“paid-for news is becoming an extreme niche for a very small part of the overall population”
Link. It appears to be a trend that started in the 1960s.
Covered by ice for 14million years, Lake Enigma has “ultrasmall bacteria belonging to the superphylum Patescibacteria”
Link. The article doesn’t mention an energy source.
“The number of people who get paid from the U.S. Treasury but work for private businesses and nonprofits is now more than three times as large as the entire on-payroll federal civilian workforce”
Link. The real opportunities are in shifting work away from contractors and back to federal bureaucrats.
(Oh, and fix federal software contracting.)
“Before he has even taken office, Trump has faced down two of the country’s most prominent newspapers, inducing them to back off longstanding, well-reasoned editorial opposition.”
Link. It can take quite a while for dead trees to fall over.
“The decision by the agency’s leaders to keep its own investigators in the dark raises new questions about WADA’s response to repeated incidents of possible doping by Chinese athletes.”
Link. I think all the questions have been answered.
Bezos on Trump love: “You’ve probably grown in the last eight years …He has, too.”
Link. Pick one:
A. Bezos is an idiot.
B. Bezos is scared.
C. Bezos believes Trump is weak and confused and can be manipulated by the oligarchs who will rule now.
Wolf Warriorism: China’s disastrous attempt at aggressive discourse is over
Link. A unique perspective. It’s weird we don’t have more like this.
Mapping the universe’s Gravitational Wave Background
Link. We have come a long way very quickly.
Pandemic revisionism
Link. Things mainstream physicians thought were wrong at the time:
1. Masking when outdoors (I think was effectively ignored).
2. Confusion about what cloth masks were good for (reduce transmission from sick people) and when they were low value (protecting the wearer).
3. Failure to clarify what ages were at risk early on (came a bit later) and the case for school closures prior to vaccination (staff risk and kid spread).
Today we still see young people wearing cloth masks outdoors and few wearing effective masks when boarding airplanes.
Ironically what persists most ow
A non-specialist analyst view of what Perplexity does — including its search engine.
Link. Some of this search work reminds me of Alta Vista.
“Over the last two decades, an average of 28 percent of workers had large [earnings] increases and 28 percent had large [earnings] declines each year” 🆓
Link. This is different. I like the “musical chairs” analogy.
“Thunderbolt 5 is still at an experimental stage, and may take some time before it realises its potential.”
Link. We are not missing out. Yet.
“in an extended war of production, there is no guarantee that the entire world united could defeat China alone” 🆓
Link. I’ve not seen a rebuttal of this theme that Simpson has been pushing for a few years.
University of “Michigan had spent roughly a quarter-billion dollars on D.E.I. since 2016 … Fifty-six percent of that amount went to salaries”
Link. Significant though it’s a big place. The DEI staff don’t come across well in the article.
“In 2022, men made up only 42 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds at four-year schools, and their graduation rates were lower than women’s”
Link. Women are better suited to the post-industrial world. A meditation on the broken SecSef nominee.
“U.S. officials have recommended that Americans use encrypted messaging apps to ensure their communications stay hidden from foreign hackers”
Link. Telecom security is broken and cannot be fixed.
Finland approach to propaganda and deception is to teach recognition to children.
Link. The GOP relies on lies, so this could only happen at the state level in the US.
“clean up old kernel extensions on your Mac”
Link. macOS should have had an uninstaller long ago. This is something I need to do.
Link resolution in the broken web – embed a fallback search string in the URL
Link. “If that characteristic string were a part of the HTML for the URL then when that URL fails a client could automatically search with that string. Often the target would be found.”
No rights reserved!
Where Drugs Come from – government funded science and industry (Derek Lowe)
Link. A key reference for discussions about the cost of development and the evils of big pharma.
“concrete evidence that brain microbiomes do exist in vertebrates”
Link. It’s likely that there are bacteria and viruses that live in our brains. Which makes an infections component of brain disorders and brain aging more interesting.
“Bluesky is now the home of the posting “middle class,” the really interesting people in specialized fields who talk about their work to others in their field, and to a general audience”
Link. The intellectual class.
“Biden learned the right lesson: no one gives a fuck about norms. It’s unquestionably true that Hunter Biden wouldn’t be in this position if not for his dad”
Link. Our plane has no fuel and we are going to crash.
Team Biden freed Uyghurs as part of hostage deal 🆓
Link. Amidst the coming chaos, a reminder of what we had and perhaps will have again one day.
Denmark’s Economy now runs on GLP-1 sales to America.
Link. The new oil.
“west coast union plus Canada plus the New England, New York and Minnesota would have an economy about 2/3 the size of what was left of the United States, with a far higher GDP per capita, a better standard of living and longer life spans”
Link. Leaving the triumphant slavery states behind.
“Over the next few years, if substantially more of them are hospitalized or die, we’ll once again have fresh data proving vaccines really do work”
Link. Parents are going to learn unbearably horrible lessons.
“Your unvaccinated brat killed my baby, you selfish bitch”
“single-letter mutation in a gene known as ADRB1 that, like the mutation in DEC2, was associated with natural short sleep”
Link. In my life I met one person who does 4h a night. He did degrees and professions while his family slept.
I’m amazed it’s a point mutation. It was probably maladaptive for most of human evolution.
“different kinds of human relatives, with distinct anatomies and gaits, inhabited the same place at the same time”
Link. “It’s only been this tiny, recent blip where we have had only one human species on the planet.”
There can only be One. But it took a while.
An OG blogger reflects on 25y: “this is a ‘hobby’. Not only not a moneymaking venture, but with few associated costs, except a modicum of my time”
Link. The best blogs are hobby blogs.
“I have been so pained to see the decreasing dominance of dedicating oneself to service and the alleviation of suffering in my field.”
He’s a psychiatrist. This cultural trend is hugely important and completely unremarked.
India’s has far more talent than jobs: “there are not enough jobs for the youth of the world’s most populous nation”
Link. China is similar. It is worldwide. We have a vast cognitive surplus and far too few “good” jobs that don’t require cognitive and executive function gifts.
“number of HIV infections across the world declined by a fifth during the 2010s”
Link. Sub-Saharan Africa changing.
On performative block culture in social media
Link. “I’d like to see an option for time-limited blocks. I’d also like profiles to show block counts by default, with an option to hide that count.”
Josh Marshall: “I spend an obscene amount of time on Twitter”
Link. “my current use is about 10 to 1 in Bluesky’s favor, about the inverse of what it was a month ago.”
For many people leaving X is like quitting smoking — and it’s a part of their income stream. He is right about Mastodon as the Linux of social networks. To me that is a feature.
“In MindNode Next, documents are managed directly by the app and no longer in the Finder or Files app”
Link. I do not like this trend. I’m leery of where MindNode is going — especially because they no longer sell MindNode classic via the app store (probably due to Apple being Apple).
I used MindNode heavily now but I don’t think I’ll go to MindNote Next. I’ll be looking for alternatives.