https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/villainy-2
Zach W Classic.
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“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.
“Leather straps hang from the wire and brush the brakeman to get his attention about a bridge or a tunnel”
https://streets.mn/2025/05/23/minneapolis-twenty-ninth-street-railroad-depression-part-one/
Fun history, especially for bike riders of the now Minneapolis Greenway. Before Boston’s big dig there was the Milwaukee Road trench of WW I, with several SCOTUS rulings.
Straps similar to the height chain at garage entrance.
“here was proof, real proof, that AI-driven science was the way of the future and that the future was now.” Except for the fraud bit.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/whoa-now-cautionary-tales-materials-science
Human fraud, not AI fraud. Apparently was big on X.
“Apple’s desire to limit its engagement with the messiness of the Internet isn’t just a historical curiosity—it may represent an existential threat to the company’s future”
https://tidbits.com/2025/05/22/from-iphone-to-ai-why-jony-ives-openai-deal-signals-a-power-shift/
Safari used to have integrated RSS. Apple removed it.
Charlie Kushner explained: a mobster basically.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/charlie-kushner-trump-ambassador-france/
MAGA is a good home for mobsters and monsters.
Fruit bats: “neurons in the hippocampus also coded for distinct individuals, including their sex, rank, location, and unique identity”
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.adk9385
Same mechanisms that manage the physical environment do the social environment.
Everyone thinks autism but these are fruit bats.
“Mice lacking the enzyme cystathionine γ-lyase — which breaks down other molecules into cysteine — lost 30% of their weight in one week when their diet also lacked food containing cysteine.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01597-9
Creatine supplements used in strength training increase cysteine levels …
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4754151/
Implications for cachexia in malignancy and other disorders?
(Real) Fake Scientific: inside a Chinese Paper Mill
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/inside-scientific-paper-mill
“A literature that’s increasingly polluted with junk is not only no good to anyone, it’s a source of real harm, and it lends itself to all sorts of bad-faith attacks on scientific research in general”
The National Library of Medicine/NIH could fix this. Why don’t they?
“[pro tier] ChatGPT effectively maintains a detailed summary of your previous conversations, updating it frequently with new details. The summary then gets injected into the context every time you start a new chat.”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/May/21/chatgpt-new-memory/
I very much prefer the Perplexity Spaces approach. This needs to be under user control: it would stop me using CGPT. But for most users it is probably an improvement.
“Has there ever been a consumer product that’s this capable of building up a human-readable profile of its users?”
Russian spycraft: “Look, if you show something as a result and describe it nice, then it is one.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/world/europe/text-messages-between-russian-spies-annotated.html
These are funny-sad. Intercepted texts from deep cover Russian spies.
KrebsOnSecurity 6.3 Tbps DDoS: “… Project Shield, a free DDoS defense service that Google provides to websites offering news, human rights, and election-related content”
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/05/krebsonsecurity-hit-with-near-record-6-3-tbps-ddos/
How long will Google do this?
“Aisuru botnet comprises a globally-dispersed collection of hacked IoT devices, including routers, digital video recorders and other systems”
Absurdly cheap: “botnet was rented out in subscription tiers ranging from $150 per day to $600 per week”
Scott Adams, at the end of his life, learns compassion the very hard way
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/scott-adams-dilbert-prostate-cancer-biden.html
Adams became an enthusiastic MAGA extremist. But now he’s dying of metastatic cancer of the prostate. He may be reevaluating his beliefs.
“Part of Mr. Adams’ sympathy for Mr. Biden seemed to come from his own lived experience with the disease, which he called “intolerable” … “I don’t have good days,” he said. “Every day is a nightmare. And evening is even worse.”
Autoimmune Disease: B-cell reset – “B cell plasmablasts that were the constant source of the “autoantibodies” directed against the patients’ own tissues”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/autoimmune-disease-transformed
Suddenly a lot of chronic diseases may be cured. Not AFAIK applicable to Rheumatoid Arthritis but Lupus and many less common disorders. Trial results expected over next 1-2 years.
NYT does not terrible job of explaining why experts don’t like early PSA screening.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/health/joe-biden-prostate-cancer-diagnosis-screening.html
Basically it’s a lousy test. High false positive, high false negative, and in 80+ the goal isn’t 20y survival.
“… about half of men have some cancer in their prostate by their 70s or 80s, although most have no symptoms.”
If you find a PSA you have to pay attention to it – even if you don’t want to.
Fascinating story of all the odd places Denisovan fossils have been found it
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01549-3
“… a man bought a lower jawbone from an antique shop in Tainan City in Taiwan. It had been dredged from the Penghu Channel, 20 kilometres offshore. The man donated it to a museum after researchers realized, on the basis of photographs, that it was a hominin bone. When they finally described it in 2015, the researchers noted that its second molar looked distinctly Denisovan”
Paywalled but the free part is still good.
“In 1993, IBM fired 60,000 people, setting the all-time record for largest layoff. Since Trump took office, the government has pushed at least 130,000 people out of jobs”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2025/05/20/federal-workers-trump-mental-health/
“In 2011, economists examined a decade of data and found that mass layoffs resulted in an additional suicide for every 4,200 men and for every 7,100 women losing their jobs. Mass layoffs can devastate entire communities, they noted, fracturing social networks and creating pools of applicants fighting over limited jobs.”
1/3 are veterans, often more vulnerable than non-veteran cohorts.
“highest density Mr. Bolin tallied in the whale’s eye was about 180 retinal ganglia per square millimeter. Humans can have about 35 to 40,000 per square millimeter, while keen-eyed birds of prey can have up to 70,000 in the same area.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/science/humpback-whale-vision-collisions.html
Humpback whales hardly see anything.
Communications Backdoor in Chinese Power Inverters
Seems interesting … if true …
“A series of studies published in Science in February 2025 provides the best evidence yet that birds and mammals did not inherit the neural pathways that generate intelligence from a common ancestor, but rather evolved them independently.”
https://www.wired.com/story/intelligence-evolved-at-least-twice-in-vertebrate-animals/
Stephen Baxter’s SF novel “Evolution” does a very good job of portraying a velociraptor like dinosaur with hunter-gather tech and intelligence — doomed by inability to domesticate animals or cooperate. It was a small part of the novel but a fascinating bit of prescience.
“Rather than neat layers, birds have “unspecified balls of neurons without landmarks or distinctions” but the neural networks resemble ours. And resemble LLMs.
Garmin chooses the road more traveled – “Garmin’s new “premium” Garmin+ tier takes several features users already enjoyed for free, put them behind a $7 per month paywall, and called it innovation.”
“By training AIs to fight and defeat other AIs we can perhaps preserve a healthy balance in the new ecosystem … building AIs whose sole purpose was to predate upon existing AI models”
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/remarks-on-ai-from-nz
The mammals scurry about while T-Rex fights Triceratops. I like that Stephenson remembers McLuhan. His “optimistic take” is, inevitably, pretty dark. If AGI works there are no good futures left …
“preserving and advancing our own intelligence by holding at arms length seductive augmentations in order to avoid suffering the amputations that are their price”
Uh-no. Not happening.
Apple’s AI fail: A non-paywalled summary.
https://spyglass.org/theres-no-free-lunch-at-apple/
Bloomberg’s juicy summary is paywalled but this is a decent free version of same content.
“Shipping polished jewels.” tells me, however, that Siegler does not actually use any Apple software.
WaPo confusing reporting on FDA vs CDC “approval” of COVID vaccine for low risk
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/05/20/covid-vaccine-elderly-high-risk-fda/
The reporting is confusing because it doesn’t describe what is meant by “approval”. I suspect it’s about whether “insurance companies are required to cover the cost of the shots with no out-of-pocket charges to consumers.”
There is limited benefit to current COVID vaccines for lower-risk people so this would be a cost consideration even if the CDC/FDA were not being run by lunatics.