https://time.com/7213586/media-mccarthyism/
The history here is new to me. It gives the media too much blame however – the real responsibility was with voters and the GOP of the day.
The attack on American democracy is not coordinated genius – it is a de facto alliance of the stupid, the racist, and the cruel.
https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/maga-feeding-frenzy-has-caused-a
“reactionary elites mostly aligned with Heritage and Project 2025; there are the America First nativists; there are the techbro feudal barons. There is also, let’s not forget, Donald Trump as a slightly idiosyncratic factor, driven entirely by a sense of grievance, a desire for revenge, and his personal obsessions”
Our democracy had become weak, it leaked blood in the water.
“investigative reports have been a kind of civic WD-40, slicking the tracks for the sluggish Resistance 2.0 to slide into place”
https://mattdpearce.substack.com/p/investigative-journalism-and-the
Mostly new media. Those who escaped the corruption of oligarch owners.
“In times of uncertainty it’s the fearless who set the tone, and a lot more people will need to get brave”
Be brave.
LLM training: “Torrenting 81 terabytes of pirated books is not in the gray zone”
I suspect others did this. The med answers are too good to be web only.
GOP war on non-MAGA Christians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/02/08/catholic-lutheran-vance-flynn-musk-trump/
Emboldened by defeating science the Magists pivot to attacking the infidel faiths.
“In a brief phone conversation, Flynn said he didn’t want to speak with a Post reporter”
I’m sure he was polite.
Project 2025 Oren Cass on Tariffs
https://www.persuasion.community/p/oren-cass
Cass is, by association, clearly a very bad person. But I, an average person, agree with parts of his thesis:
“Ensuring that someone who doesn’t have a college degree … is actually in a position to raise a family and achieve anything we would consider to be middle-class security… that’s what is missing”
Biden worked towards this of course.
“Fibonacci” transformed medieval European commerce and was largely forgotten.
https://skullsinthestars.com/2025/02/07/the-man-of-numbers-by-keith-devlin/
Leonardo was his actual name.
USAID: “Musk is a big fan of a guy named Mike Benz, a far-right provocateur, white supremacist, and all-around conspiracy crank”
https://jabberwocking.com/heres-how-usaid-ended-up-in-trumps-crosshairs/
A broken nation is led by a broken man.
Passwords app can share WiFi access with QR code
“Tap to open a Wi-Fi network inside the Passwords app, and you’ll see a button that reads, ‘Show Network QR Code.’
This QR code can then be scanned by anyone nearby to instantly connect them to your network”
Sounds like how hidden network QR codes work.
To restore the Republic Dems need to fight corruption.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/its-the-corruption-stupid
GOP is entirely corrupt, but Dems are not great. This is the way.
DOGE minion so racist even Trump couldn’t deal: “fixated on people from India, writing “Normalize Indian hate” and supporting a so-called “eugenic immigration policy”
https://gizmodo.com/doge-engineer-resigns-over-extremely-racist-tweets-report-2000560615
Hitler youth. Exposed by … the WSJ?!
Whale song has statistical structure similar to human languages: “linguistic laws derived from studies of human communication may actually be broader biological principles”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/science/language-humpback-whale-song.html
Chomsky’s “universal grammar” is thought to reflect human brain structure.
Lowe on the LLM problem: “you have to know the material already to realize when your foot has gone through what was earlier solid flooring”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/evaluation-deep-research-performance
I’m happiest when I use them on things I know of. Because of my nature that is a broad range, but I am nervous when it’s a new topic.
“deepest divide in America isn’t between left and right, it’s between “rationalists” who focus on facts and reason, on one side, and “intuitionists,” who rely on their feelings”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/rfk-jr-and-the-maga-death-trip
The GOP became full anti-science over 30 years.
“When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the White Knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen’s off with her head”
Neoantigen vaccine prevent clear cell renal carcinoma recurrence in small safety trial.
Excellent news. Phase II trials begin.
Defeating President Musk – a financial attack
https://bsky.app/profile/johngordon.bsky.social/post/3lhhb2v7b322g
A global mutual fund of 2 years of sequential structured short calls would create investor incentives to crush Tesla sales and to fund anti-Tesla marketing and information sharing.
#bluesky #salvageAmerica #musk
Putin and Orban hate USAID for its election integrity and democracy programs
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/world/europe/usaid-russia-putin.html
A motive for President Musk.
“Some of Mr. Musk’s comments were indistinguishable from those that Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the lower house of the Russian Parliament,”
“Historically, major new technologies have tended to disrupt the existing market hierarchy; this time, investors are in effect expecting radical new technology to reinforce that hierarchy.”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/have-we-been-partying-like-its-1999
I was inside the .com bubble. I’m outside the AI story. Bubble or not, K has interesting economics here.
“The answer to the question “will ‘the people’ tolerate authoritarian rule?” is yes, absolutely.”
“You know that you are no longer living in a democracy because the elections in which you are participating no longer can yield political change.”
Excellent article. Eventually the corruption gets to people.
COVID wastewater and death rates fall dramatically.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/04/upshot/covid-illnesses-mild-winter.html
“This year’s vaccine was also a good match for the circulating variant, and more people got it this year than last”
If trend continues it will be like influenza (at least acutely).
K has talked to insiders about Treasury systems: “cobbled together, much of it running on old hardware and even older software, kept functioning thanks to old hands and institutional memory”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/what-the-musk-is-happening
If the Musketeers penetrated anything it is the analytics (which are probably SQL Server). Even a god-like AI would find the operational system a hard slog.
Post COVID – assessing risk of airborne influenza transmission.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/health/bird-flu-airborne-covid.html
In experimental settings it can be surprisingly hard to transmit influenza.
Who Pays for Tariffs? “Outcomes theoretically depend on a company’s market power, or how much influence it exerts over other firms”
“Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll on Friday refused a Justice Department order that he assist in the firing of agents involved in Jan. 6 riot cases”
OpenAI’s Operator: “Google and Anthropic, are testing autonomous agents that they claim that companies will eventually be able to “hire” as full-fledged workers.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/technology/openai-operator-agent.html
The version tested here was unimpressive, though some of the limits (CAPTCHA, Credit Card, etc) are presumably temporary.
A narrower-scope agent to replace the human “swivel-chair interface” seems more achievable. (If the Agents actually work reliably that implies a level of functionality that will replace most of us.)
Trump coin: “Chainalysis found that 94 percent of the tokens were purchased by around 40 “whales,” large buyers holding more than $10 million worth of the coins”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-has-trump-gone-soft-on-china
I don’t think this scale of transparent bribery could have worked in the 90s.
Presumably China is one or more of the “whales”
Marshall on what Dems can and can’t do.
1. Reach voters directly
2. Courts
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected…when they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains”
https://www.bannedinyourstate.com/p/schrodingers-freeze
Trump’s OMB director.
Morganella morganii metabolites and depression: a possible inflammation mechanism.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/bacteria-and-their-metabolites-and-depression
Weird but maybe real.
How to revert your Google storage plan after you decide not to do their AI thing
https://one.google.com/changestorageplan and then more plans. They hide it quite well.
GOP: “party leaders have decided to write off the multitrillion-dollar cost of new tax cuts”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/31/house-republicans-tax-bill-math/?location=alert
What a bunch of bozos. So now it’s over to the Fed.
Transformer-based AI limits: “fundamental computational caps on the abilities of these forms of artificial intelligence”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/chatbot-software-begins-to-face-fundamental-limitations-20250131/
A fundamental limit of our current architecture would be good news.
“in December 2024, Peng and colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley posted a proof … showing that multilayer transformers indeed cannot solve certain complicated compositional tasks.”
“Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/31/elon-musk-treasury-department-payment-systems/
The USDS very quietly did great work for years. It would be interesting to speak with some of them, but they may be wise not to talk.
“at the higher levels of the civil service, there’s far more idealism, far more eagerness to, well, serve than most people imagine”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/its-a-scam-its-a-purge-its-a-scam
This is irrational but true. Culture matters. But as corruption grows these people leave.
K on the descent of the NYT (and legacy corporate journalism)
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/departing-the-new-york-times
“all Times opinion writers were banned from engaging in any kind of media criticism”
“avoiding saying anything too directly in a way that might get some people (particularly on the right) riled up”
“FGF21 is indeed a solid mechanism for fatty liver disease therapy, even if it acts more slowly than expected”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/some-good-mash-nash-news-once
Frustrating disease.
Twin cities self-own: “rent stabilization (and even the threat of it) have led to an alarming drop-off in housing production”
Big failure by mayor of St Paul. The left can also be dumb.
Francis Fukuyama on federal bureaucracy
https://www.persuasion.community/p/francis-fukuyama-on-trump-20
“The problem with the bureaucracy is that they are over-controlled, over-regulated and they do not have enough discretion to use their own judgment to do their jobs.”
“Bureaucrats live under this incredible burden of accumulated rules.”
This. The pile of garbage and contradictory rules is impossible to communicate. Bureaucrats spend a lot of their time shoveling crap.
“At the very same time that we see Chinese innovation arising from the investments they’ve made in their education system, the Trump Administration is waging outright war on the American system of research and development”
https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/deepirony
Dear future historian – yeah, we could all see it happening. Nobody had blinkers on. We just had to watch America immolate itself.
“If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason, then there’s not much point to having a legislature”
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/120-the-impoundment-crisis-of-2025
Trump tests Roberts obedience.
FixMyDocuments: “From PDFs and Office documents to audio recordings and scanned files, our AI handles it all. Upload your content and get perfectly formatted documents, transcriptions, and study materials in minutes”
It looks like it has morphed into something primarily aimed at educators and students.
Usage based pricing that lasts one year. I signed up for the free trial. I look forward to the day an AI can resurrect all of my ancient file formats. (I found this via the vendor’s excellent essay on AI / Nvidia.)
“The problem isn’t that they support Trump’s authoritarianism or tech bro fascism. The problem is, they don’t see it.”
https://www.bannedinyourstate.com/p/how-not-to-see
This is where Jedeed excels. She’s a natural anthropologist working in journalism. The key to resurrecting American constitutional democracy is finding a way to infiltrate reality past the moats and firewalls Murdoch and others have erected.
“after you’ve finished training the model, what are you supposed to do with all that compute infrastructure?”
https://youtubetranscriptoptimizer.com/blog/05_the_short_case_for_nvda
This essay from a guy who (I believe) shorted nvidia post R1 is among the best I’ve read on the state of play.
Nvidia under threat: “last quarter of the article talks about the seismic waves rocking the industry right now caused by DeepSeek v3 and R1”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/27/deepseek-nvidia/#atom-everything
“Jeffrey Emanuel capturing the current state of the AI/LLM industry”
Deconstructing Thiel’s thinking — it’s all about the singularity
https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/reading-thiels-op-ed
I think Ganz is going to the root of what is happening with the oligarchs: “a technological singularity is coming and the elect must work to accelerate it. The state must organize itself like an enterprise for this work to be completed. Progress, which is hampered by democracy, must have an authoritarian state to continue unabated.”
Fascism for the cause of immortality.
“Who do you think you are? God?”
Thiel would think, “not yet, but ask again in 3 years”
Mobs of the GOP: “inceldom, 4chan and 8chan message board culture, porn addicts, crypto bugs, Andrew Tate fans, internet Neo-Nazis, and Groypers”
https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/mob-rule
The Party of Trump.
Colombian president Gustavo Petro tweets Trump: “But I will die in my law, I resisted torture and I resist you”
https://jabberwocking.com/colombia-tells-trump-to-fuck-off/
An excellent example for Americans. Trump may bring Columbia and Mexico closer together.
Workaround – create a shortcut in Finder to an Apple Note
It’s an under-appreciated answer on this page.
Get share link, open in browser, save to desktop as .webloc file. Opens note in Safari. Now you can integrate your Notes note with other documents in a finder folder. (PS. Got answer from AI then tracked down on web.)
DOGE is actually about fixing gov software.
https://jabberwocking.com/elons-big-task-is-interoperability/
Kevin is wrong. There is big potential here. A small Obama era SV cohort did well with login.gov even during Trump 1.
The huge problem is removing a truckload of well intended but wrong regulation. That requires Congress.
America invasion of Greenland is no longer unthinkable.
https://musgrave.substack.com/p/the-green-dawn-scenario
“Trump believes Greenland is important to U.S. national security.
He’s pursued this policy for years.
Republicans are not pushing back on this.”
The EU needs to be ready. Maybe China will offer Denmark military protection.