“Economists typically define the middle class as the middle 60% of earners.”
Our definition of “middle class” is so dumb it makes me despair.
“For a lot of our history, you could afford basic necessities — at least in terms of food, housing, child care — within that distribution,”
Ok, so getting closer to understanding. Still so slow…
https://patrickwyman.substack.com/p/crixus-the-spartacus-rebellion-and
“gladiators were everywhere in Roman life”
Perhaps the greatest Roman skill was in controlling vast numbers of enslaved people. A culture of brutal cruelty was essential.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2025
Also the Mar-a-Lago to Epstein pipeline emerges.
https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-high-tech-lynching-of-mustapha
“the government of the United States of America is controlled by a mob led by the criminally insane and the pathologically unscrupulous”
Utter scum and all around bastards.
https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/gift-card-accountability-sink/
Of course the unbanked get hit the hardest. Do not use them. Crypto may be less bad. Cash is better.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/sawyer-lee-and-the-quest-to-just-stay-home
Great promo comic.
Individual males roam from the west to the east. “there could be five or six mountain lions in the state at any one time … there is no evidence of any finding a mate and having kittens”
https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/year-in-review-2025/
Aliens with a human heritage. My childhood dream was to meet and study alien minds. Now it’s a retirement hobby.
But this is dumb: “human neural nets are optimized for survival of a tribe in the jungle”. An LLM would not make that mistake.
Readable by laypersons. Combo med approaches. Aldosterone/renin measurement standard.
Ubiquitous surveillance is assumed.
https://rodneybrooks.com/predictions-scorecard-2026-january-01/
“Deployable dexterity will remain pathetic compared to human hands beyond 2036. Without new types of mechanical systems walking humanoids will remain too unsafe to be in close proximity to real humans.”
https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2025/12/webtoons-revisited.html
Of course start with Zach and Randall, but Charles has more suggestions.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/26/ssds-not-safe-long-term-for-archives/
They are not a good archival solution.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-27-2025
My wild guess is the combination of brain rot, Epstein, and realizing he is dying has made him a simple but sincere fundamentalist.
Healthcare makes disability care much more costly. Health economics is weird.
Early dementia in Downs patients is a heartbreaking curse.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-26-2025
Suspicion is Trump was once listed as a co-conspirator and that was squashed.
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/on-monsters-men-and-time-horizons
William Gibson documented this in the early 80s.
There have been much worse years. But definitely below average.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxwllqz1l0o
It’s frustrating. Every time we get close there’s another exception. The centuries add up.
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2025/12/24/strix-dead-ends
Without memory there is no arrow of time. I think similar collapse occurs with humans who have anterograde amnesia
https://www.macworld.com/article/3019152
Apple’s Siri failure is public, but their other software quality failures are a bigger problem.
Extreme Trumpists they also want the money.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/remember-the-unsung-resistance-fighters
Too many to name individually. Keep fighting.
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/12/a-non-technical-attempt-to-explain-2025.html
No math here and nothing about token selection and prediction. It may be nonsense or misleading. It is brief.
https://webkit.org/blog/17628/target-text-an-easy-way-to-style-text-fragments/
This actually sounds useful!
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9425
Likely good for simulation of quantum physics and chemistry and breaking crypto. Things will get quiet as QC starts to break crypto – for national security reasons.
I thought it would might have more effect. Nope.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-21-2025
Christian Nationalism roots.
Sounds like Thiel: “For my part … I am well pleased with the established order of the universe. I see…subordination everywhere. And when I find the subordinate content…and recognizing his place…as that to which he properly belongs, I am content to leave him there.””
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-22-2025
As expected they will play for time. That has been a very successful strategy for Trump. The GOP understand well that American memory is shorter than an LLM’s context window.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/rubios-strategy-the-tail-wags-the-dog/
Rubio believes the road to Cuba, his family home, goes through Venezuela.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/find-lost-iphone-with-text-shortcut/
First interesting Shortcut I have heard of. Text message the triggering is interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/politics/doge-musk-trump-analysis.html
“savings were an accounting mirage” You can’t get more incompetent than this. But Tesla will try.
“DOGE took credit for canceling the same Department of Energy grant twice, adding $500 million in duplicate savings.”
Fraud basically.
https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/kash-patel-fbi-director-brown-university-shooting/
Usually political incompetents are smart enough to defer to the real experts, usually career bureaucrats under the political layer.
But Trump people are another level of stupid.
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/17/compromised-apple-gift-card-leads-to-apple-account-lockout/
Apple is a decaying behemoth.
Effort failed this time. Others likely succeed.
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/18/compromised-apple-gift-card-saga-ends-well-but-risks-remain/
Do not do not do not. Just don’t. Please don’t.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/venezuela-performative-murder/
This is a forked country.
Now I want to watch.
“lots of folks didn’t clue into what Verhoeven was up to, accusing the famously anti-fascist director of glorifying Nazism, an accusation which Verhoeven was flabbergasted by”
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-chicago-standing-up
Tyrant expected to resume assault in spring.
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/16/gemini-thinking-trace/#atom-everything
Wait until they add longterm memory.
It’s a very urban school. This is the way.
If we get out of the American death spiral the technarchy may find they don’t have enough money.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3599gx4qo
One could make a case that he played some role in maybe 4 conflict pauses. Since he usually exaggerates by an order of magnitude this is less untrue than his usual.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/health/seniors-aging-home-care.html
I don’t think the agencies are very profitable though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/science/archaeology-roman-empire-roads.html
This must have been fun to write!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/09/trumps-fact-checker-visa-free-speech
The MAGA feel they won the GOP’s long war on science. They now want to win the war on reality. Resistance is not futile, it is essential.
A loathsome person fully committed to MAGA hate. He wants to be Speaker of the House.
60% of workforce don’t have a “college” degree. If we had a functioning socioeconomic academia we would have a much better understanding of why so many are so desperate. Employment is an available data point but it may obscure as much as it reveals.