https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/popular-econ-books-what-to-read-what
Freakonomics now understood as bad.
“The real purpose of work requirements is to create more hoops for people to jump through, to make it harder to collect the benefits they’re legally owed.”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/cruel-and-usual-republicans-prepare
This has always been true for many programs — but I have rarely seen a journalist point it out.
“Almost 9 in 10 Americans believe that people have a soul or spirit in addition to their physical body.”
As America falls will Europe rise?
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/europe-is-the-force-awakening
Maybe … we can only hope.
Schneier’s explainer on the backdoor problem given UK law.
A good reference to share
LLM tech kills homework help company: “Chegg’s stock is trading at just $1 per share today, down from a peak of $113 in 2021”
https://gizmodo.com/chegg-sues-google-says-ai-search-results-are-killing-its-business-2000568061
They are suing Google because that is where the money is. First industry to die.
In classic Trump-Musk con the fraudulent DOGE “savings” are removed and the total savings claim is increased.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/upshot/doge-spending-cuts-changed.html
The MAGA are soooooooo dumb.
After 50y – how HCTZ lowers BP: “membrane-associate protein in the endocannabinoid system whose dimeric structure is stabilized by the binding of hydrochlorothiazide”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/thiazide-target-last
Endocannabinoids again! The diuresis is a side-effect, not the cause of lower BP.
Creating the dog in 15ky: “docile wolves had an evolutionary advantage, allowing them to approach human settlements and eat food waste”
https://gizmodo.com/new-study-backs-theory-that-wolves-traded-the-wild-for-table-scraps-2000567958
Changes so radical some wondered about human guided breeding, but a simulation suggests could happen naturally.
Which makes everyone wonder how quickly humans changed in the past 50ky.
Trump’s Trade War Resumes: all the tariffs you can imagine.
https://www.apricitas.io/p/trumps-2nd-trade-war-begins
China is waiting and watching. It has not yet begun to fight.
“as you get close to a singularity, the strong gravity causes every point in space to decouple from every other one”
New tools and techniques allow physicists to edge closer to the breakdowns.
NK steals another 1.4 billion crypto: “Lazarus managed to use social engineering tactics to trick exchange employees into signing off on a transaction they believed was a routine transfer”
A novel model for economic development.
Wealthy money guy: “The one thing I’ve learned after 40 years of running money is that my idea of where the markets are going is pretty much worthless.”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-ai-spending-reminds-jim-chanos
One of my best life decisions back in my early 20s was to invest only with low cost Vanguard index funds and ignore the market news.
Rural despair behind German fascism: “people who moved away from those regions tended to skew younger and female, and were more likely to have advanced degrees”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/world/how-a-demographic-doom-loop-helped-germanys-far-right.html
I believe this is a large driver of American fascism.
A poem: what war is
https://snyder.substack.com/p/what-war-is
“Ostap Slyvynsky, in an original translation from the Ukrainian by Amelia Glaser”
“When GPT-4 came out it was around $50 per million tokens … now [Gemini 1.5 Flash] costs around 12 cents per million tokens …”
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/a-new-generation-of-ais-claude-37
I cannot think of any historical precedent for this quick a fall in costs.
“amount of RNA G-quadruplexes (rG4s) in hippocampal tissue increases as a function of age, and what’s more, it increases as a function of the severity of diagnosed Alzheimer’s at the time of death”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/neurodegeneration-might-come-down-rna
I have long thought Alzheimer’s is basically accelerated brain aging. If we live long enough we all get disabled.
“rG4 staining is also strongly influenced by the APOE4 status of the individuals”
DOGE hasn’t found any fraud.
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/despite-the-hype-doge-hasnt-found
There is lots of fraud of course, but it is widely known (esp Medicare fraud by providers).
Musk-Trump do not actually care about “waste, fraud, and abuse”. It was always a scam.
Trump-Musk impacts on GOP base (and others): Feb 2025 summary.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/coast-to-coast-the-effects-of-the
These are impacts that impact people with power – red state voters.
Making a PDF sesarchable – Adobe’s online tools are quire good
https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online.html
I avoid Adobe whenever possible — but these free online tools for dealing with PDF issues are quite good. I use them when I get a scanned PDF I want to be able to search and index. (Convert to Word makes a scanned PDF MUCH smaller.)
End of outdoor ice rinks in Minneapolis makes it to WaPo.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/24/climate-change-ice-rinks-minnesota/
This has been happening for years across the MSP region and across Canada. Our cross-country ski trails are likewise doomed (making snow for XC skiing is … wrong. I understand. I grieve. But it’s dead. Let it go.)
Without outdoor ice Hockey will also slowly fade.
Even though it’s old news, I’m glad to see mention of it.
Hope: “George Dale hated the Ku Klux Klan”
https://dansinker.com/posts/2025-02-23-dale/
George Dale would have crushed scum like Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And spat on cowards like Bezos.
Cold, Dark, Comfort: “One night, after one of those painful and humiliating dressing changes I walked out of my bedroom to find a pretty brunette sitting on my parents couch”
https://in-the-pines.ghost.io/cold-dark-comfort/
You gotta cry sometimes.
“After reporters determined that the $50 million for condoms story was untrue, Mr. Trump not only repeated it, he increased the supposed total to $100 million”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/us/politics/trump-alternative-reality.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Musk and Trump are very similar people.
Apple’s Advanced Data Protection off in UK: few people use it in US
Noah attempts a rationale for Trump’s strategy: Surrender to China.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-is-being-sold-out-by-its
The United States prostrate.
Paxlovid unhelpful for acute disease in typical vaccinated 65+.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/paxlovid-you-d-have-expected-more
Can’t rule out some long covid benefit but I’m not gonna bother with it. I like vaccines.
(Primary care docs likely feeling validated. We were never impressed.)
Elon Musk Rants Incoherently: “body-mic picked up the flopping and rubbing of the gold chain as Musk nervously twitched and gesticulated”
A broken bitter fear-filled wreck of a human being.
“The Heartbreak That Was Aperture”. A memorial.
https://derrickstory.medium.com/the-heartbreak-that-was-aperture-13d984857088
7y. Feels longer. I will never forgive Apple for killing Aperture AND leaving every Aperture customer stranded with no good exit.
“recession starting in 2025Q4, with a peak at 2025Q3, although a starting data of 2025Q2 is plausible”
Rubio tells EU: “ignore the boss, we really aren’t doing what he says we are doing”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/us/politics/rubio-russia-europe.html
Nobody believes him.
Also, this was atypically good NYT reporting:
“[Trump] ….mocked Ukrainians’ complaints that their country, having sacrificed tens of thousands of lives to preserve its independence, had been left out of negotiations about its future”
“appear to improve the daily productivity of developers in actual business settings between 10 percent and 30 percent”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/business/ai-coding-software-engineers.html
An incremental improvement so far, in line with search, IDEs, and the like.
NYT summary of Trump actions — which are illegal, which before courts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/20/upshot/trump-executive-orders-legality.html
I hope they update regularly.
macOS ACLs and more: “only common use in modern macOS is to preserve standard structures of folders in the Home folder”
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/02/20/permissions-privacy-and-security-whos-in-control/
ACLs were maybe a mistake?
“case makers like Spigen are pitching iPhone 16e protective cases that include MagSafe as part of the design”
https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/20/apples-most-puzzling-iphone-16e-decision-is-being-corrected/
Omitting MagSafe was such a weird decision. I still suspect a modem problem — which makes me worry about the modem.
Dyer claims the Heritage plan is on track for hard right control.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/trump-flood-the-zone/
His take is that the flailing is mostly a deliberate distraction (Canada, Gaza, Greenland, Ukraine extortion).
He also predicts Vance will take over before 2028.
Aaronson on Microsoft’s topological qubit claim
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8669
It’s good science if true.
“Think about the level of incompetence it takes to get a number crucial to your case wrong by a factor of a thousand”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-explosion-of-lies
K makes a persuasive case that Musk and Trump are flailing and increasingly desperate.
I wonder if they really believed the whacko things they campaigned on.
How to trim a video in macOS Finder
https://christianheilmann.com/2025/02/20/how-to-trim-a-video-in-macos-using-finder/
Similar to the behavior in iOS Photos. Very cool.
Virome project: “A vast majority of the world’s population gets infected with cytomegaloviruses … which can colonize just about every organ”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/health/human-virome-program.html
Animals are a mobile viral habitat
macOS kernel panic: “One quick way to disable all third-party kernel extensions on an Apple silicon Mac…”
The US is not Hungary: “ad revenue for American outlets comes overwhelmingly from private, not public, sources, thus depriving Trump of a key tool wielded by other autocrats.”
https://www.readthedetox.com/p/trump-can-be-stopped
This is one of our best references so far.
“Dellinger case … no matter how the Court rules, we shouldn’t view the result as foreshadowing …”
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/125-the-courts-first-trump-ii-case
Challenge to Trump’s removal of the head of the Office of Special Counsel could be legitimately decided either way
American Authoritarianism: what we can expect from Trump, Musk and Vance. (Free article)
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/path-american-authoritarianism-trump
“But the opposition can win only if it stays in the game. Opposition under competitive authoritarianism can be grueling”
The author gives good reasons why the US will be harder to crack than Hungary.
“HR officials at the NNSA resigned after they became frustrated at being forced to tell employees, falsely, that they were being fired for performance reasons”
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-mismanagement-principles
There are still people with honor. Even if honor is forgotten by those who made much of it once.
Euthanasia for the demented: “Assisted dying while mentally incompetent, it’s not going to happen”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/16/health/assisted-death-alzheimers-netherlands.html
The demented person you become is not the person who wants to die. That new person often wants to live.
I settled on 85th BD as my die date — but we don’t have euthanasia so I’m relying on my hobbies.
Apple’s Reminders “if there’s a set list of tasks you always need to do for whatever reason, you can turn that list into a template”
https://9to5mac.com/2025/02/14/apples-reminders-app-seven-power-user-features/
I don’t need it now but one day maybe.
“you can add tags then set up a Smart List based on the tags”
“TIPS protect you against future inflation that the U.S. government admits is happening”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/lies-damned-lies-and-trumpflation
Trump will fake the numbers.
“I don’t think it’s the singularity”
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2025/02/12/recursive-improvement
Nice it is still not yet.
LLMs and World Models – Othello “Any individual rule is not always correct, and in some cases these rules contradict one another, but the collective activations of large numbers of neurons representing different heuristic rules”
https://aiguide.substack.com/p/llms-and-world-models-part-2
Biological systems are like that. Contradictory.