https://tidbits.com/2025/09/30/nick-heer-peers-through-liquid-glass/
Mostly about Liquid Glass but I was a big Eudora fan.
Feedbin Browser Extension update
https://feedbin.com/blog/2025/10/01/newsletter-extension/
One of my best subscriptions
“Collins’s and Murkowski’s refusal to sit down with Antoni meant trouble for the success of his candidacy”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/trump-withdraws-nomination-ej-antoni-bureau-labor-statistics
The GOP Senate has been very quiet.
Google hiding AI summary for Trump dementia searches.
https://www.theverge.com/news/789152/google-ai-searches-blocking-trump-dementia-biden
Lots of people now trying the search. I can confirm all I got was articles about Google blocking the ai summary, no ai summary.
Gemini Pro is circumspect but makes a good case. Claude 4.5 is more direct.
Thiel’s Antichrist wears yoga pants and votes Dem – a Wired guide to beliefs of the technarchy.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter-thiels-antichrist-obsession/
Not all are as weird as Thiel, but the sentiments here are common. Someone should interview Neal Stephenson.
“he would bop down those stairs. I’ve never seen it. Da-da, da-da, da-da, bop, bop, bop. He’d go down the stairs. Wouldn’t hold on. I said, It’s great.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-30-2025
Trump also went back to Canada as 51st state.
Vascular dementia seems possible.
Argentina update – how an autocratic populist can lose power
https://someunpleasant.substack.com/p/homo-economicus-or-homo-argentum?r=rjjdx&triedRedirect=true
Argentina is more of a mess than America, but we are far more dangerous in decline. This story, however, did give me a sense of optimism about how a Trump can lose political support. Note the role of family corruption.
“decline in coal employment between 1950 and the 2000s, from half a million miners to around 80,000” even as coal production remained stable
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/fossil-fuels-and-fossilized-minds
The collapse of rural America has been so extreme, and the implications so grim, that nobody in leadership was willing to talk about it. That was a colossal failure.
Coal decline was automation and technique. Those jobs aren’t coming back. The people and communities are zombie shells.
Trump: ‘Am I watching things on television that are different from what’s happening?’
“raises all sort of questions about his mental functioning and agency that the access-dependent Washington press corps would rather not acknowledge”
The DC press corps needs to leave and do less harm somewhere else.
Oldness: how does learn new productive work-study practices?
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/09/oldness-how-does-learn-new-productive.html
Variants of this have bugged me for decades. Every time I’ve gotten to watch a productive person working I’ve seen things I could learn from. I remember the days of “life hacks” when these were widely shared. (That died.)
I need Clippy 2.0. Maybe my personal ai overlord will help.
Hertling on the meeting of the Generals: “I believe they will maintain that silence and their poker faces; that is what I would do if in the audience.”
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-to-expect-quantico-meeting-generals-admirals-trump-hegseth
This will be a historic test of the American military’s integrity and honor.
Hertling is not flawless at prediction. SCOTUS corruption is deep and Generals are as vulnerable to money as any.
“Comey was worried that if he did not release info about the Weiner emails, anti-Clinton FBI agents in New York might leak them.”
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/comey-indictment-trump-doj-weaponization
Good background on Comey’s mistake. The deeper cause was not Comey though – to produce a Trump candidate the nation had to be ill.
“Everything he hoped to achieve by palliating the GOP — personally, politically, institutionally — has failed. He destroyed himself and everything he cared about.”
15 years of stupidity: the EU cookie consent
https://spyglass.org/europe-cookie-banners/
The cookie debacle has shown that EU regulators are incompetent and it weakened any other user privacy initiatives.
“We have zero agentic AI systems that are secure against these attacks”
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/09/abusing-notions-ai-agent-for-data-theft.html
Many gifted minds have failed to find a solution. LLMs are more credulous than humans and humans cannot be secured.
Agentic AI is not ready for public use.
Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano, speaking about the point in 2033 when the Old Age and Survivors trust fund runs out of money: “Eight years is a long time away.”
America is going to get very keen on euthanasia.
“Planners in 1984 worked with 85% of all household earnings being subject to FICA, and assumed this would continue. Soon, however, high proportions of increases in income went to the richest fraction of the population … it was investment income, subject to capital gains, but not funding Social Security.…”
“in September 2025, I’m here to tell you that AI has finally come for what my experience tells me is the most quintessentially human of all human intellectual activities: namely, proving oracle separations between quantum complexity classes.”
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9183
There are still a few voices saying there’s “nothing there”, but they are fainter and fewer every day.
macOS: “In Recovery mode, typing repairHomePermissions into Terminal launches a GUI app … each time I have tried this it locks me out of every folder in my Home folder and wreaks havoc elsewhere”
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/09/28/last-week-on-my-mac-panacea-or-placebo/
These days, when I use macOS, I avoid anything that isn’t used constantly in the default setup. Apple has lost a sense of shame.
Comey: “But we…will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either. Somebody that I love dearly recently said that fear is the tool of a tyrant”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-25-2025
No kings.
Hertling: “sudden, global, emergency recall of America’s top brass is a flashing red light to them: Something must be wrong inside the Pentagon.”
“Cathay Pacific, China Airlines, Emirates, EVA Air, Singapore Airlines … South Korean Airlines, and Thai Airways all forbid the use of power banks onboard”
https://www.wired.com/story/rules-for-power-banks-on-flights/
The end is in sight. Now if Delta would fix their 30-60% broken USB ports…
“Bessent’s degree of immaturity makes John Kelly and John Bolton seem like the oldest, wisest men inside the Beltway.”
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/the-worst-adult-in-the-room
The best of MAGA is the worst of humanity.
ChatGPT Pulse: personal ai for data monitoring and genetic actions.
https://fidjisimo.substack.com/p/a-new-paradigm-of-proactive-steerable
“… Pulse combines information from your chats, your feedback, and connected apps like Gmail and Google Calendar”
Adults with cognitive disabilities very much need something like this. For me it would be mostly noise … except for the “obsolete knowledge” problem.
Automation of the umpire: “banking on umpires missing some pitches is a fundamental part of how pitchers have strategized for over a century”
https://www.splinter.com/i-welcome-baseballs-new-robot-overlords
Umpires hit the limits of human ability through extreme effort and training. But the bots are better …
“US Secret Service disrupted a network of telecommunications devices … as leaders gather for the United Nations”
Cook kneels more – appeasing the MAGA.
https://spyglass.org/the-savant-apple/
“At best, Apple needs to handle their Hollywood talent better. At worst, they need to stop their anticipatory compliance.”
Screen Time is still broken.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/09/24/screen-time-brokenness/
True story: Screen Time / Parental Controls was so broken 5y ago I gave up on a book project.
It has been broken from the start. An early sign that Apple couldn’t do software any more. It was always a pretense, a way to shift blame to parents.
Google’s Data Commons to add MCP server for ai access.
https://thenewstack.io/googles-data-commons-gives-ai-agents-access-to-a-vast-trove-of-stats/
“collects public datasets across a broad set of topics and geographies”
I’m looking forward to seeing this in use.
The calculations of the lackey: “Do the present benefits of submitting to Trump’s will outweigh the future hazards?”
If the lackeys decide that valid elections are possible they will hedge their bets.
Lackeys like Megyn Kelly, who wrote that “we” don’t care about Trump corruption.
Radical therapy seems to slow Huntington’s disease progression by 75%.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cevz13xkxpro
Extremely hard neurosurgery and super expensive meds — but both will get easier and less expensive. And better treatments will emerge.
“one was medically retired and has returned to work. Others in the trial are still walking despite being expected to need a wheelchair.”
Very small numbers but dramatic results.
MAGA purge hx of right wing violence: “Justice Department even scrubbed from its website a study finding that far-right extremists have committed far more homicides than those on the left”
Folinic acid: “widespread myth in the wellness community concerning an extremely common gene mutation called MTHFR”
The hard part is not reactively avoiding topics the quackers are keen on.
“DHS is calling on the media, leftist groups, and sanctuary politicians to end their demonizing DHS law enforcement…”
This seems … weak. I thought Trump didn’t like weak.
macOS 26 Tahoe: “Apple no longer allows you to store your Recovery Key in your iCloud account”
https://tidbits.com/2025/09/17/macos-26-tahoe-pushes-filevault-use/
Otherwise Trump would demand a copy. (If you have your recovery key in iCloud now …)
“‘Resistance is when I put an end to what I don’t like’: The rise and fall of the Baader-Meinhof gang”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2025/sep/18/baader-meinhof
Familiar in many ways.
Chrome Gemini: “and the ability to ask questions about the web page you’re on.”
https://thenewstack.io/chrome-switches-on-ai-the-future-of-browsing-begins-now/
Assuming this includes summary I will switch from Safari
“… will need to be truly ready on day one…to implement a domestic Marshall Plan for the U.S. government”
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-social-scientists-could-help
The MAGA burned the government we had. It was not pretty but it limped along.
Might as well think about what happens if there is a resurrection
“After Kimmel’s suspension, Johnson posted on social media: “We did it for you, Charlie. And we’re just getting started.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-17-2025-wednesday
The GOP is coming to the conclusion of its journey.
“James McHenry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, recorded in his diary that a lady had asked delegate Benjamin Franklin whether the convention had established a republic or a monarchy. “A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”
“iPhone 17 Pro handles ProRAW shooting, with the JPEG-XL Lossy format”
JPEG-XL has had limited acceptance. New and pretty nice. So is Apple into it?
Ant species, sperm parasitization, and healthy hybrid slaves
“It’s like a human having chimp babies,” which they use as “a source of sperm for giving birth to human-chimp hybrids that would do all their tasks,”
Why HCR writes and fights
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-15-2025
“I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.”
Kirk wanted to undo the changes in women’s roles that happened in the 70s and 80s.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/women-jobs-and-charlie-kirk
“Kirk … wanted to reverse what Claudia Goldin … has called the “quiet revolution” in women’s role in American society that occurred between the late 1970s and early 1990s.”
I don’t like K’s phrasing of “dislocation and humiliation on the part of men”. It is condescension; it trivializes a vast amount of pain arising from social transformation. He actually admits the pain later in the piece, but a good editor would have helped him.
Tahoe: “many combinations of appearance mode, Accessibility settings and icon and widget style degrade its human interface rather than enhancing it”
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/09/15/appearance-matters-get-tahoe-looking-in-better-shape/
Tim Cook stayed too long.
India: “In the 2023 fiscal year, the top four IT exporters hired a combined 225,000 fresh graduates; by fiscal 2024, that figure had plummeted by over 70% to some 60,000.”
https://indiadispatch.com/p/hollow-at-the-base
Thought to be ai.
Federal government to explicitly attack liberal groups.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/us/politics/jd-vance-charlie-kirk-show.html
Screenshotted for the history books
“currently existing quantum processors can generate and manipulate entangled states of sufficient complexity to access the exponentiality of Hilbert space”
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9138
If paper is accepted it confirms expectations. Of course the implied acceleration in QC technology is not something most wish for quite now.
OpenAI & Microsoft – a detailed review of the extremes of capitalism.
https://spyglass.org/openai-microsoft-agree-to-agree-tentatively/
Expectations for near-term AGI drive trillions of dollars here and there.
Everything from socialism to totalitarianism to anarchy and socioeconomic collapse are on the menu. If we “muddle through” I will credit the supernatural.
“Unintended Side Effects of HPV and Shingles Vaccines”
Clever title. The unexpected side effects are substantial, surprising, and entirely good.
FDA regulation of pharma ads: “The new directive sounds tough, but in practice it doesn’t have much bite”
https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/pharmaceutical-ads-in-the-us-top
A fair review. They are basically problem number 200 on our list of things to fix but nobody loves them so worth a try.
Claude’s Native Integration with Reminders and Calendar on iOS and iPadOS
I didn’t realize Perplexity had some integration— it’s voice only. That is dumb.
Mars: “biogenic mechanisms… would seem to fit the observations quite well, while abiogenic ones are harder to come by.”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/life-maybe-mars-unless-we-change-our-minds
“We definitely need to study these formations more and try to model them here on Earth, but what we need to do for sure is make good on the sample-return part of the Perseverance mission … the proposals for how to go get them are in a state of expensive disarray”
macOS Tahoe 26 RC – Tsai roundup is instructive.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/09/10/macos-tahoe-26-rc/
Do not upgrade.