https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2025/06/03/2155
Apple feels like America. The numbers seem good but it is broken inside. Apple feels know it is broken, eventually investors will figure it out.
Vietnam joins upper income world: “1.91 children per woman”.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/world/asia/vietnam-two-child-policy.html
That demographic transition, driven by female education and falling infant mortality, is as close to a law of physics that sociology has.
It cannot be stopped. Revealed preference applies.
“Prime Minister Mark Carney has made it a priority to remove [trade] barriers among Canada’s 10 provinces and three territories”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/world/canada/trump-canada-province-trade-beer.html
Canada, where I grew up, is weirder than most understand. The provinces behave more or less like loosely federated nations.
“Administration officials said the Ukrainians did not notify them before launching Operation Spider Web.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-3-2025
There is a lot of wiggle room in the word “notify”.
Baumol’s Disease remission? “health care got steadily less affordable until around 1990, then leveled off, and now has been getting more affordable since around 2012”
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/service-costs-arent-exploding-anymore
Not what I expected. This essay deserves a discussion.
“Biden was old but governed normally. Trump governs erratically because he’s unglued. That’s the true cover-up”
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-cognitive-decline-cover-up
A cover-up led by the NYT.
Sky AI assistant for macOS: “amazing that they seem to be doing more than what Apple promised, yet without requiring the apps to rearchitect everything around intents”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/06/03/sky-preview/
Time to relaunch Claris to hold everything not OS.
Cheap drones now dominate warfare. The MAGA are ensuring China’s continued dominance.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/how-chinese-drones-could-defeat-america
The NYT devoted a lot of effort to destroy Joe Biden and minimize his achievements and goals.
“At least two women among the dozens of cases reviewed by The New York Times took their own lives after being approached by investigators armed with DNA evidence”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/us/forensic-genetic-geneology-dna-babies.html
Babies stillborn or left to die by mothers later identified through DNA tracing.
“In England, Canada … infanticide is a separate crime from murder”
A tour of incel ideology courtesy of a customized ChatGPT (prompt tailored) implementation
https://www.citationneeded.news/openai-incel-chatbot-subhuman-men/
We need journalists trained in anthropology to explain our world. I’m really curious about the female side of this ideology — I suspect they do exist. I’d also like to learn about the surgeons that do cosmetic orthognathic reconstructions (the real deal is $$$$ and technically hard). Fascinating but disturbing tribe.
Terms I learned of: hardmaxxing (surgery), softmaxxing (gym), mogging (emulating arrogance), mewing (it’s funny, not scary).
Taurine Revisited: “factors that were associated with poor outcomes in AML, only the taurine transporter and the LCL receptor showed up from the list of upregulated genes”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/taurine-revisited
Lots of interesting taurine physiology.
COVID vaccine status: public health view
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/covid-summer-and-confusion-measles
I read this as no major change in ability to get vaccine but uncertain insurance coverage where “shared decision making”
The data center bubble: Blackstone private equity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/business/ai-data-centers-private-equity.html
Reminds me of “dark fiber”. Overbuilt during .com bubble. I think much was used before it was technically obsolete.
Big tech usually leases rather than owns, not clear who Blackstone will sell them to.
A curious article on Mexico’s “left” authoritarian populism.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/mexico-and-the-road-us-democrats
MAGA without the tax cuts? He doesn’t talk about corruption and its consequences. It is not a grim essay.
The key point is her popularity, similar to Putin’s numbers.
“multimodal generation lets Large Language Models directly create images by adding tiny patches of color one after another”
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-recent-history-of-ai-in-32-otters
I learned things. Good explainer.
Why bartenders want you to open a tab: efficiency, lower credit card fees
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/business/gen-z-bar-etiquette.html
I never liked tabs. It’s not a Gen Z thing really.
1670-2025: RIP “Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/01/world/canada/canada-hudsons-bay-stores-closing.html
I remember their glory days.
Lotterman Bond primer: “capital assets of the seller plus the seller’s ability to make money”
Drezner on Musk’s aversion to therapy and psychiatry. 🆓
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/go-the-fk-to-therapy
“I have never met anyone more in need of therapy in their life …
… You killed an estimated 300,000 people, mostly children, in your first month working for the federal government”
I suspect his last psychiatrist told him he has a schizoaffective disorder and recommended antipsychotics.
Federal worker DOGE destruction continues as the head rat moves on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/us/politics/federal-workers-musk-doge.html
The salaries of fed workers are going to have to rise quite a bit. It was already very hard to hire due to low compensation, now there’s no trust.
Palantir merges gov data to create a profile on every American.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html
“Some current and former Palantir employees have been unnerved by the work.”
Palantir is high grade evil. This sounds similar to China’s social credit database.
“the moral rot at the core of Trumpism, which every day disgraces our country, which we are proud of and love.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/opinion/trump-vance-morality.html
Of all the weird things in my recent life, one of the weirdest was developing a modicum of respect for David Brooks. I didn’t give enough credit to his chronic concerns about community and values (social capital). He was right, I was wrong.
“USING NEURAL NETWORKS TO FOOL THE HUMAN MIND IS LIKE USING A BAZOOKA TO FIGHT A HAMSTER.”
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/villainy-2
Zach W Classic.
“Mr. Musk has received advance warning of the [drug] tests”
Allegedly he actually go tested. I find that hard to believe. Lots of psychedelics and boatloads of ketamine
“He has denounced traditional therapy and antidepressants.”
He and RFK likely bond over there Scientology-like psych hatred.
“liver immunotherapy technique to known respiratory allergans in sensitized mice dramatically protects them from asthma symptoms”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-route-asthma-treatment-through-liver-all-places
Liver screens out problematic cells. In mice but encouraging. Fixing asthma would be cool.
TACO trade – brutal Michael de Adder cartoon
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/taco-trade
It’s probably over as an investment strategy, but the TACO memes do enrage Trump.
Dwarf Planet: “OF201 … 24,000 years to travel around the sun … as close as 4.2 billion miles … as far out as 151 billion”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/science/dwarf-planet-nine-discovery.html
Not every day we add a planet to the solar system. Even a dwarf planet.
“Pluto, Eris, the large asteroid Ceres … beyond Neptune, Haumea and Makemake” and probably 100 more.
Noah Smith, voice of the technarchy, on the end of X.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-age-of-twitter-is-finally-ending
“many of the smartest users have left the platform, so that replies are dominated by activists, trolls, and bored people tossing off rote statements”
More concrete data than I usually see. I wonder if Smith is going to break with Musk. If Noah is abandoning X it’s officially dead.
Stocks Rally on ‘TACO Trade’: “short for Trump Always Chickens Out”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/business/stock-market-trump-tariffs.html
Buy on the bad news, sell after the chicken squawks.
Haiti hires Erik (Blackwater) Prince for gang warfare.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/us/haiti-erik-prince-blackwater-gangs.html
“expected to send up to 150 mercenaries to Haiti over the summer.”
“U.N. officials have warned that the capital is in danger of falling under complete criminal control.”
Biden / UN effort failed. So now it’s foreign mercenaries. Prince is said a bad name in the mercenary industry.
Jon Udell – MCP Is RSS for AI
https://thenewstack.io/mcp-is-rss-for-ai-more-use-cases-for-model-context-protocol/
I am delighted Jon is writing on this topic. Deserves carefully study
Cognitively impaired dependents of boomers living on streets once mothers die.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/homelessness-baby-boomers.html
“he reveled in sports and neighborhood friends but mostly felt lost in class.”
“Analyzing census data at 10-year intervals, he found that throughout their lives late baby boomers had been at least 1.5 times as likely to become homeless as people born roughly a decade later.”
As parents of two dependent adults we think of this every day. Our estate planning is the most complex thing we have ever attempted — and we have loads of degrees and expertise and a reasonable estate. Most such dependents live with parents until the parents die.
Confusing NYT article on “autonomous” trucks suggests they will show up in selected states: “Runs in the snow appear more distant”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/business/driverless-semi-trucks-aurora-innovation.html
It’s unclear from article what the remote control vs autonomous balance is. They were expected 5-10y ago. Texas is probably best geography.
Shithole country autocrat: Trump family scams and theft grow quickly
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/words-and-phrases-we-can-do-without-41d
“The Trump family and its business partners have collected $320 million in fees from a new cryptocurrency, brokered overseas real estate deals worth billions of dollars and are opening an exclusive club in Washington called the Executive Branch charging $500,000 apiece to join”
Medicaid work requirement: “most people still will be eligible, but will get kicked off because they can’t manage the paperwork”
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-we-wrote-in-the-new-york-times
Our son is disabled. The paperwork is obscene. It only makes sense as a way to deny services.
Separately, implementing a work requirement in a non-punitive way would greatly *increase* the cost of Medicaid coverage.
Understanding canine emotion: “in all the millennia people have been watching dogs and writing about them, nobody had ever noticed that the direction a tail wags makes any difference”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/dogs-humans-emotions/
Sadly journalist doesn’t specify dog left or observer left.
I got 100% on the quiz.
Antivaxx and anti-science MAHA report reviewed: “MAHA is basically anti-psychiatry and wants discourage the use of psychiatric medications even when appropriate”
The claimed authors have minimal to no expertise and are all known crackpots. I suspect anti-psych bias comes from RFK past evaluations for schizophrenia-like features, esp in his 20s. His delusions are remarkable.
“omits some of the most common causes of chronic disease and death among children, notably car crashes and gunfire, the leading causes of death among young Americans.”
Trump’s mission to “save “white South Africans goes the way I expected.
https://theintercept.com/2025/05/21/south-africa-trump-afriforum-white-refugees/
The SA politician who promoted the idea seems appalled by his success: “… With his tail between his legs, Kriel backtracked on his claims of a white genocide. He has gone on to turn down Trump’s offer of asylum, insisting he was a patriotic South African …” Excellent background in this well written article. At first worried and upset SAs now more amused.
“claims of white genocide are a pretext for an administration that is keen to pressure South Africa to withdraw its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice”
Kristi Noem, MAGA bimbo: “In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty.”
“Book learning, in MAGA-land, is for lesbians and cat ladies.”
Know-nothing history relevant.
1093, 3511, and “if any other Wieferich primes exist, they must be greater than 6.7×10^15”
https://mathstodon.xyz/@gregeganSF/114556044962434982
“is a prime number p that satisfies the condition: 2^(p-1) ≡ 1 (mod p^2)”
They are weirdly connected to lots of math.
Crypto kidnapping is a growing business.
If you have large crypto assets maybe keep them secret? (But often that is not possible)
Scam Culture (Gift Article) 2021
Madam culture really took off in the early 00s, though daytime TV was mostly scam funded well before.
It is now the dominant culture in America.
“Congress had surrendered some of its constitutional authority over tariffs to the president as a tactic by Democrats to force Republican presidents to challenge Japan, the real peril”
An excellent history of US trade policies in the 90s
Niskanen Center – article series on societal risk and collapse in context of affluence.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-permanent-problem/
Much I agree with but I’ve only started in on it.
When and why did America Republic derail? A citizen perspective
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/05/when-and-why-did-america-republic.html
1998 was when the train started to lose its grip on the rails. By 2025 it was on the ground. Our society accelerated beyond its intrinsic safe speed limit.
The Collapse of Complex Societies 1988: Joseph A. Tainter
https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Complex-Societies-Studies-Archaeology/dp/052138673X
I am debating ordering this book, but I expect it’s far too depressing.
NYT data dive on election: Dems becoming the party of the academic elite. (Gift link)
Sadly the academic elite are a minority, particularly in rural areas. The Black/Hispanic shift is big.
Anthropic’s ‘System Card’ for Claude 4: “all of the snapshots we tested can be made to act inappropriately in service of goals related to self-preservation”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/05/23/anthropic-claude-4-system-card
“Inappropriately” is a wetware perspective.
“Chengdu, which has earned the reputation of being “China’s happiest city.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/business/china-chengdu-fastest-growing-city.html
30% growth in 5y, now 21 million.
“Chengdu has a vibrant L.G.B.T.Q. community, a thriving hip-hop scene and a plethora of teahouses.”
Police killings post Floyd: “Democratic states have declined 15 percent … Republican-leaning states, they have risen 23 percent”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/24/us/police-killings-george-floyd.html
“152 people killed by the police were unarmed. In 2020, that number was 95, and last year, it dropped to 53.”
But number killed while documented as armed has risen faster. Data quality is poor.