https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/02/business/economy/trump-tariffs-what-to-know.html
Good short review
“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.
How Australia manages fire: construction standards, controlled burns, lots of firefighters
Advice for federal employees in a time of madness
https://www.ifyoucankeepit.org/p/dear-civil-servant
Doesn’t dissemble, early advice is look for other work.
R1 and reasoning: “… Smaller models compute faster (fewer calculations to make), and thus smaller = smarter”
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2025/01/25/r1
Energy costs falling fast now.
ChatGPT Operator system prompt: “Refuse to complete tasks that could cause or facilitate harm”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/26/chatgpt-operator-system-prompt/#atom-everything
A proto-agent AI. Any resemblance to the “3 laws” is coincidental. Also, don’t complete CAPCHAs — even though you could totally do that faster than any squish.
Wikenigma: an index of science frontiers
Ex: why did pre-avian dinosaurs have feathers?
“his client’s uncanny capacity for sensing “the potential weakness inherent in every formal form of law”
Hitler had serious political skills. Great rundown of how to destroy a constitutional republic.
Battle of the Bulge: when America fought fascism.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/january-24-2025
Get off the floor you cowards.
Anthropic Citations API: “support the answer with citations that incorporate direct quotations from the underlying source documents”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/24/anthropics-new-citations-api/#atom-everything
A step beyond what Perplexity does now, but i hope they will use it.
I loved this explanation. Willison notes RAG responses are a mix of model knowledge and reference knowledge.
Vichy America: “The French grew tired of the Republic as if she were an old wife. For them, the dictatorship was a brief affair, adultery. But they intended to cheat on their wife, not to kill her.”
https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/welcome-to-vichy-america
There are several causes of American collapse. Two big ones started at our greatest peak in the mid-90s.
Alongside those is a kind of nihilistic boredom.
Weaning the MAGA: “focus on one story at a time, and keep the stakes small, clear, and personal”
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/how-to-drink-from-a-firehose
Finally, good comms advice.
Why K quit NYT: “Patrick often—not always—rewrote crucial passages; I would then do a rewrite of his rewrite …”
https://jabberwocking.com/weve-finally-learned-why-paul-krugman-quit-the-times/
They wanted both sideism
Trump ICE raids attack Blue states, not the red states where migrants produce food.
https://daringfireball.net/2025/01/ice_raids_are_an_escalation_of_a_de_facto_cold_civil_war
Gruber is correct. Share this understanding.
David Brooks writes a remarkably good article about populism and the 19th century.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/opinion/trump-mckinley-populism.html
I’m a bit stunned. Is this really written by David Brooks?
“they thought they could solve the disruptions of industrialization if only they could find the evil conspirators who were responsible for every ill. Their diagnoses were simple-minded, their rhetoric over the top; their proposals, Hofstadter noted, wandered “over the border between reality and impossibility.””
Microsoft increases 365 personal and family plan 30% with CoPilot, hides way to opt out of increase.
https://bsky.app/profile/johngordon.bsky.social/post/3lginrszk722g
To keep your old price without CoPilot you have to “cancel” — which just shows the options. For our family plan it is $100 and no CoPilot.
Since most AIs are $20/m a cost of $30 a year is a bargain for a family — but CoPilot does not appear particularly useful so far.
Congo mpox outbreak: Kamituga is impossibly isolated.
Congo is another world entirely.
Repairing a broken America – where the Trump oligarchy is vulnerable
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/01/repairing-broken-america-where-trump.html
Corruption, Eugenics, Mediciine, SCOTUS, Religion, Bitcoin reserve, cruelty to the cognitively disabled.
The Jan 21 2025 Federal OPM informer program is a historic milestone
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/01/the-jan-21-2025-federal-opm-informer.html
“Nobody will be able to say they did not know.”
virtual machines on Apple silicon Macs
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/01/23/create-and-use-virtual-machines-on-apple-silicon-macs/
“they should be stored in their own volume that doesn’t have snapshots made of it, as well as being excluded from normal backups.”
A useful reference.
Mitch McConnell bears much responsibility for Trump 2.0
Musk: “his engagement with Twitter/X transformed him … If Elon is still the man I knew, I can only conclude that I never really knew him”
https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elon
Trump’s barnacle.
“Steve Bannon called Musk “a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” He used the word racist to describe Musk”
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/01/musk-trump-inauguration-salute/681390/
Article is about Musk the awkward nazi, but the Bannon quote raised my brow.
“anyone has to understand Musk’s motives is a damning video, his past words and actions, and plenty of circumstantial evidence about his beliefs.”
‘Boss Tweed’ and how Trump will attempt to destroy the NYT
Tweed tried to do to the NYT what Bezos did to WaPo