Link. A Chinese establishment economist unwittingly exposes the unsavory and often dumb beliefs of China’s elite.

Link. Food inflation has less effect on wealthy. Even allowing for differential inflation wages win so far.

Link. Looked for this based on John Oliver show. The country is not identified in report but Oliver said Cambodia. Their GDP is (only) 30 billion. More 1/3 than 1/2 but still stunning.

Link. Specifically intensely Confucianist and patriarchal. It’s a plausible theory.

In the Seoul I saw the baby carriages mostly held lovely and happy doggies. I also saw signs of rebellion against the competitive conformity.

Link. “Emanuel’s partner does not agree with his plan, and “she would like me to consider preventative measures like a flu vaccine . . . We are in discussions,”

via Mark on Mastodon. I was looking for an update! I’m with Ezekiel on this but probably age 78 or 80 rather than 75.

Link. A good critique of a Krugman hypothesis. The claim that wage suppression is limited to immigrant jobs feels absurd. The management claim is interesting.

Link. Given the state of the GOP unwinding the monopoly is best done in the shadows — with periodic public moves.

Link. Feds believe Chinese EVs will crush US auto industry unless stopped. Keeps cost of new cars high.

Link. Protest boycott.

It is interesting that they don’t fake the vote numbers.

Link. I believe he is not entirely sincere — a due date of 75 is too early and not being brilliant seems insufficient cause. OTOH for me 85 is the target and stopping preventive care is a part of hitting that number.

Link. One line in an essay on Japan in recession but I kind of got stuck on it.

Link. I approve.

“People with respiratory illnesses may resume daily activities if they have been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the aid of medications and if their symptoms are improving …. guidelines apply to Covid, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, among other respiratory ailments …”

5 days mask etc for ALL respiratory viruses. No testing.

Link. I need to start storing my 76 Raleigh International in the bedroom. I fear it will become fashionable.

Link. Ten failures and need to go to recovery mode.

Link. Maybe he meant agricultural research?

Link. We have Senators like him.

Link. Thesis is social networks and smartphones enable the techno-authoritarian state, especially China.

Link. I could only get the PDF OCR to work on Google Drive. The overall result was mostly interesting as a baseline to compare to 2025.

Link. GOP blocks immigration reform to hurt Biden but a vigorous economy helps Biden.

Link. A good review of the adpocalypse. WTF clicks on these things?! It can’t be all bots.

Meanwhile the geek elite use AI to bypass search ads ….

Link. I’ve lived in small towns as they went Red. For a time the hope was remote work but there are too many better locations. The jobs won’t come back.

Link. Writing an obscure paper that nobody reads and then winning part of a physics Nobel must give some retrospective satisfaction.

Link. Gemini 1.4 can hold about 750,000 words in memory at once.

“Researchers gave the five hundred or so available pages of reference material on a language with 200 speakers (and so with no real online presence) to Gemini and to a human translator. They found that the AI was able to learn the language about as well as the human could, from the same documentation”

Link. That one flopped but there will be more. Both Trump and Putin are desperate and have huge resources. Of course they couldn’t do it without GOP voters.

Link. “At the end, I was like … wow, she is not going to have an ounce of footage to work with.”

Raichik did the video! Was hoping to trap Lorenz. Alas, Lorenz is a pro and Raichik is not bright.

“In the end, it was a masterful interview by a skilled and prepared journalist.”

Link. It’s the power user client. (I can’t compare to Ivory – Mona works for me so I have limited motivation to try a relatively costly alternative.

“First up is the ability to remove posts from your home timeline if they are part of another list you created. ” – this is a new Mastodon feature but may vary depending on server version.

Link. I think maybe we can cheat and bike or run on rest days? Rest days are a problem for people who enjoy CrossFit.

Link. If you run a good scam a hundred thousand times you can hit the right coincidences to deceive even the most alert.

Link. I suspect Minnesotans are secretly in favor of global warming.

Link. I think Bluesky has no equivalent to defederation and the Mastodon model of server-centric moderation.

Link. Some of these seem worth exploring.

Link. “RAG pairs generative AI with a “retriever” that can find and then reference specific data from a vector database, which is passed to the “generator” to produce a response.”

A lot of AI tech is open source.

Link. Gibson has said Neuromancer takes place in 2035.

Link. I think the word “terrorist” is appropriate. Raichik resembles Klan publicists of a century ago. She wants to terrorize the vulnerable.

Link. A reason why sync can stop working. Turning on/off doesn’t help.

Link. “Ernst Renan, in his essay “What is a Nation?”, argues that intentional forgetting is an essential part of nationhood.”

Link. It’s a popular med for kids with asthma .

Link. Humanity is done. Let the AIs take over now.

Link. Only Tsai lives in my world. All the other Mac names live in a much better universe.

Link. Defacto alliance. Also they are so dead.

Link. Mothers illegally featuring their daughters under their account. Inevitable once Instagram decides d this.

Link. Parasites are supposed to take just enough so that the host can recover.

“Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good”

Link. Needs more work but I like this theory. I suspect it’s not COVID specific.

“Campbell added that it was possible people with a tighter blood-brain barrier might be better protected from brain fog should they develop long Covid, explaining why the symptom did not arise in all patients.”

In other words a less tight BBB may be a preexisting condition (genetic?) that makes post-viral neurological dysfunction more likely. So not due to COVID but a variation that makes brain more susceptible to COVID (or other viral) injury.

Link. “A U.S. nuclear forensic laboratory later analyzed the samples and confirmed that the samples contain uranium and weapons-grade plutonium.” Burma?!

For Iran.

Link. Students all do computer science.

Link. Excellent review. The available antigen tests are probably not very helpful any more.

Get vaccinated. If vulnerable wear a good mask, if sick with a respiratory disease wear a good mask.

Link. I haven’t seen this in WaPo yet but it’s the obvious point of entry.

Link. In general Interpol has responded well to abuses including oversight for bad actors. India and Russia are problematic.

Link. Perhaps an effective discontinuous emergence but built on many small improvements. Like human vs simian cognition.

Link. “by this stage we know we’re looking for NVMe with PCIe 3.0 x4 as a minimum, over Thunderbolt 3”

Best discussion I have read. Good test of young brains but I give up.