Paul, Weiss: “one of three law firms targeted by President Trump as part of his retribution campaign”
In an earthquake you find out what was built on sand.
Author Archives: jgordon
Twin study – “two to three times higher of these cancers than people without tattoos at all”
https://gizmodo.com/tattoos-could-be-a-hidden-cancer-risk-study-of-twins-finds-2000578684
Correlation but a twin study so noteworthy. Skin cancer and lymphoma with larger tattoos. No mention of animal models and no obvious mechanism.
Crazy and moderately mad ideas to salvage outdoor ice skating on Ottawa’s Rideau canal.
Similar to making snow for Nordic skiing. “He’s dead Jim”
How unlocked iPhone are stolen on delivery.
Usual: bribe AT&T staff to get delivery times, get FedEx delivery schedule, etc.
“astronauts aboard the International Space Station receive no overtime, holiday or weekend pay”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/nasa-astronauts-overtime.html
I went to Caltech in part because I wanted to be an astronaut. There I met the competition. I became a physician instead :-).
They get usual gov travel per diem. It wasn’t bad in 1970.
“Cognitive Shuffling” for insomnia: words instead of counting sheep.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/well/mind/sleep-cognitive-shuffling.html
“You start by taking a random word — “Pluto,” for example. Then think of as many words as you can that begin with the same first letter, like so: “Plane, poodle, play, peaches.” When you run out of “P” words, you can move on to the next letter of your original word, which is “L,” and do the same thing: “Love, light, lemur, linger.” Take a second or so to visualize each word.”
Apple’s Passwords app was vulnerable to simple MITM attacks: “defaulted to opening password reset pages using the unencrypted protocol”
Fixed now. Don’t worry, they were careful about everything else.
As America abandons the foundations of governance Germany rises to defend them.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/keeping-the-rule-of-law-alive/
I hope Canada can join what will become the heir to NATO.
Duterte explained: oligarchs in conflict.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/unpunished-crimes/
The Philippines are quite a mess.
“There was no indication that Democrats in the two houses of Congress had unified around a goal they hoped to achieve as a result of the CR fight.”
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/schumer-cr-failure-explained
The Dems have no leader.
Backing Up and Restoring Apple Notes macOS SQLite database
https://appledispatch.substack.com/p/comprehensive-guide-for-backing-up-apple-notes
From 2024. I don’t know if this still works but Notes lack of local backup/restore is an issue. Even Contacts can create a local archive.
“In the span of five years, they grew Terrorgram from a handful of accounts into a community with hundreds of chats and channels focused on recruiting would-be terrorists,”
https://gizmodo.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-terrorgram-inside-a-global-online-hate-network-2000576764
Shirky’s “Cognitive surplus” was supposed to mean people would do good creative things with their brains.
Trump appointed a DOGE loyalist and SSA tech admin to lead SSA. Now Dudek is kind of stuck …
Dudek comes across as a foolish geek who is discovering that his hero and his boss are both batshit crazy.
DOGE: “… obscured the details of some new claims on its website … But The Times was still able to detect another batch of mistakes.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/us/politics/doge-errors-funding-grants-claims.html
I wonder if they really believes their own claims … and are now in panic mode.
Alfred Krupp, arms dealer to Hitler, was the Musk of his day.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/elon-musk-the-accidental-sovereign
Krupp was much more competent though.
“DENND1B, along with four other genes they’d linked to canine obesity, were also implicated in human obesity”
Labradors are famous for overeating. Maybe the fat helps them survive cold water. Their metabolism is not the issue – and strict diet and exercise works.
It is time to toss your Amazon Echo.
Stop your brother printer from providing toner information to your Alexa device (dot, etc).
Brother printers provide ink status to any network device, so your Alexa device just has to ask. Turning this off is a bit convoluted; it’s simpler to get rid of any Amazon device from one’s home.
Update. The directions on this page are obsolete. I think it’s not possible to disabled this for an alexa device now.
Fukuyama on Dems after Trump: “if they could remember the Hamiltonian side of progressivism, there is an agenda waiting for them to take up, which has to do with building things.”
https://www.persuasion.community/p/our-hamiltonian-moment
If American democracy survives Dems will need a vision.
“American civil servants operate … detailed rules constraining their behavior, and are told to prioritize compliance with these rules rather than achieving concrete results for citizens.”
He is 100% correct about the fed bureaucracy. Congress screwed up the civil service.
“Since the Trump administration does not want to take up Hamilton’s legacy of good, competent, effective, uncorrupt government, the other side should claim it as their own.”
Wild: ‘Tooth-in-Eye’ Surgeries Restore Vision to Blind Patients
https://followmehere.com/2025/03/12/rare-tooth-in-eye-surgeries-restore-vision-to-blind-patients/
A completely bonkers idea that somehow works.
“Trump badly wants the Nobel Peace Prize, and he wants it NOW”
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/maybe-a-short-ceasefire-maybe-not/
Trump is an empty shell now. A shell moved by Musk, Putin, and other lesser known names.
“sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/us/politics/trump-federal-workers-rehire-ruling.html
It is hilarious that the GOP once claimed a connection to honor or integrity. (They don’t now. Too laughable.)
How DOGE lied about savings
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/upshot/musk-doge-changes-deletions.html
No surprises but a handy reference. They lie on Trump scales.
Why Trump and the GOP betrayed the free world – the view of the technarchy
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-america-betrayed-europe
It’s impossible to separate stupidity and madness from strategy in Trump/Musk land.
Here Noah Smith, who represents the relatively sane side of the technarchy, tries to construct a rationale for why the GOP and Trump should betray democracy and freedom across the world. Including one I think is contributing: “The U.S. has deemphasized manufacturing and let its defense-industrial base go to rot, leaving it incapable of matching even Russia’s rate of weapons production, let alone China’s.”
RIP Simplenote — data freedom and the painless plaintext migration to Notes
https://tech.kateva.org/2025/03/rip-simplenote-data-freedom-and.html
The export / import was simple, except for an annoying style bug in the import tool. Simplenote was a great product for me for 15 years, but it’s time had come.
“… MCP standardizes API access for AI agents”
https://thenewstack.io/mcp-the-missing-link-between-ai-agents-and-apis/
A standard API for the proprietary APIs.
Boys need different schooling — young males left behind.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/upshot/teenagers-school-girls-boys.html
This has been true for years and it is part of why we got Trump in the first place. We may need “boy schools”.
Kill Tesla: “… BYD Seagull … about 190 miles of range and a sticker price of around $10,000”
https://www.theverge.com/tesla/627894/tesla-stock-sales-protest-musk-trump-doge
If Trump kills Canada’s auto industry Canada should open the door to Chinese EVs.
Choose Boring Technology – 2015 classic essay on software choices
https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology
I only discovered today.
“Using LLMs to write code is difficult and unintuitive”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Mar/11/using-llms-for-code/#atom-everything
An impressive tutorial on using 2025 tech. LLM capabilities vary by language and library so will change what is used.
“Don’t fall into the trap of anthropomorphizing LLMs and assuming that failures which would discredit a human should discredit the machine in the same way.”
Claim: Neanderthals and Sapiens shared technologies, goods, genes in Levant 40+kya.
Happier than Sapiens eating Neanderthal
“… vulnerability was exploited in what Apple describes as an “extremely sophisticated” attack against specific targeted individuals”
https://tidbits.com/2025/03/11/apple-updates-keep-malicious-web-content-in-the-sandbox/
Adam says it would have been fixed quietly but Chrome required public disclosure.
Musk mind: “John Lilly, a neurophysiologist and psychedelic researcher … famously abused ketamine until he believed that he was contacted by an extraterrestrial entity who removed his penis”
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2025/03/ketamine-effects-elon-musk/681911/
Ketamine’s off-label use is deeply crazy and very Musk.
“With Steal My Tesla, you can anonymously register your car to be acquired, transported, and sold within 5-7 business days.”
Recycle to save American constitutional democracy.
“years of experience in the automotive industry, with a special focus on luxury vehicles, premium wheels and rims, catalytic converters, and driver assistance systems”
X went down because they didn’t configured their Cloudflare protection properly.
https://www.wired.com/story/x-ddos-attack-march-2025/
“botnet of cameras and DVRs”
When the MAGA say “woke” they mean “secular humanist”
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/03/when-maga-say-woke-they-mean-secular.html
For the MAGA “woke” is the enemy of “morality, community, rootedness, faith, and civilizational pride”. Which, if you understand “woke” as “secular humanist”, is true. When they say “woke” they mean “secular humanist”.
“Where AI Coding Assistants Fail”
https://thenewstack.io/ai-coding-assistants-are-reshaping-engineering-not-replacing-engineers/
Midway through the article.
“Systems Design: This is the core job of a mid-to-senior-level developer, and AI is terrible at it.”
Trump Says Recession Unfortunate But Necessary Step To Get To Depression.
https://theonion.com/trump-says-recession-unfortunate-but-necessary-step-to-get-to-depression/
We might get 2022 prices again.
Tsai documents the end of mythic Apple.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/02/27/our-changing-relationship-with-apple/
Jobs could run Apple more or less as he wished, but Apple since Jobs operates like a normal publicly traded corporation. A PTC with monopolistic power over its locked-in customers.
(Tsai says peak Apple was 2010. Seems right)
Project 2025: 20 or so key points in bullet form
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/03/project-2025-perplexity-summary.html
“The weirdest parts are the trans and porn obsessions. The funniest part is the TikTok ban. The fossil fuel thing wins “most insane”. The cruelest part of 2025 may be removing support persons with cognitive disabilities.”
Produced by reading a Perplexity Deep Research summary and extracting key points from that. Usual LLM caveats apply.I’ll correct if I see anything better. I’m not going to read the originals.
The Bitter Lesson: Classic essay about why the black box won.
http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
Computation got better faster than humans could figure out rules.
American Liberal Democracy never developed in the south.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/liberal-democracy-american-south-vance-bourbons
Similar to eastern Germany?
SCOTUS corruption drove US fall in international governance quality back in 2024. Now is much worse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/03/06/trump-corruption-united-states/
It took the Great Depression to drive reform in prior episodes of massive corruption. The corruption needs to be covered relentlessly.
“ Elon isn’t just the President. In the realm of administering the fundamental structures of the state he’s something quite a bit more than the President.”
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/new-wapo-piece-on-post-constitutional-america
Only Putin is over Musk.
Derek Lowe summarizes the Musk/Trump hatred of knowledge and science: “… So forget science, forget knowledge. No, what matters is money and power”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/continuing-crisis-part-vii-overview
Excellent summary, well written.
There is nothing in the GOP now save love of power and scorn for those who love discovery, knowledge, grounded truth.
Beyond that is hatred for compassion. Hatred of the weak that cling to life. Endless ignorance and hatred. That is what we oppose.
Mobile radio chips are a nightmare: “every variation of every generation in every country”
https://9to5mac.com/2025/03/06/heres-why-the-c1-chip-doesnt-have-mmwave-5g-says-kuo/
Cables had to more or less conform to a standard. Wireless connections are free to be anything.
K on Trump’s crypto scam
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-planning-the-biggest-heist
American voters are going to give Andreesen dollars for his bitcoins. Because we are so stupid there are no words.
Strong analysis of SCOTUS Foreign Aid Ruling
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/129-untangling-the-foreign-aid-ruling
‘Alito’s dissent … it combines a remarkable amount of hypocrisy with statements that are either materially incorrect or, at the very least, misleading.”
It’s amazing how little competence is needed to join SCOTUS.
Dark humor laugh of the day – the true SOTU
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-state-of-the-union-is-less-than
“Forty-two days, nine hours, three minutes, and two million years into my second term, we can all agree I’ve done lots of stuff”
Tsai on Apple quality: “I recently set up a brand new iPad for my father, and we ran into a dozen or so bugs just between plugging it in and getting the built-in apps working”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/03/04/linus-sebastian-switches-to-iphone-for-30-days/
This is my experience. Bugs everywhere. It isn’t going to get better unless Apple gets new leadership.