https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/science/arseniclife-felisa-wolfe-simon-retraction.html
Celebrity can mean grants, but the cost of public attention has increased. Not least because American culture has soured over the past 25y. A new balance will be found.
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/02/11/what-is-system-data-in-storage-settings/
Great discussion of macOS file storage
They force exemptions to make their lives easier.
https://thenewstack.io/how-to-build-web-components-using-chatgpt/
I’ve been a Udell fan since his BYTE days (we lost a lot when BYTE died, it was never truly replaced). WAP, WML, Yahoo! Pipes, VBX, web components … and now building web apps with HTML, CSS and *minimal* JavaScript.
https://openai.com/index/openai-partners-with-schibsted-media-group/
This is the 2nd or 3rd publisher agreement I’ve seen. There will be hundreds to come.
https://ksze.github.io/PeerAuth/
This is a nice technology demonstration, presumably similar approaches will be be built. Tap iPhones to establish authentication.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-democracy-index
We dropped WaPo and used the money for the Contrarian.
“when people or institutions cede power voluntarily, they are acting not so much out of fear but rather on a set of apparently reasonable arguments. These arguments tend to fall into one or more of five categories”
Wonderful essay by one who lived under Putin’s rise. Acquiescence, in the end, did not work.
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.
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.
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.
I suspect others did this. The med answers are too good to be web only.
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.
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.
https://skullsinthestars.com/2025/02/07/the-man-of-numbers-by-keith-devlin/
Leonardo was his actual name.
https://jabberwocking.com/heres-how-usaid-ended-up-in-trumps-crosshairs/
A broken nation is led by a broken man.
“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.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/its-the-corruption-stupid
GOP is entirely corrupt, but Dems are not great. This is the way.
https://gizmodo.com/doge-engineer-resigns-over-extremely-racist-tweets-report-2000560615
Hitler youth. Exposed by … the WSJ?!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/science/language-humpback-whale-song.html
Chomsky’s “universal grammar” is thought to reflect human brain structure.
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.
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”
Excellent news. Phase II trials begin.
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
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,”
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.
“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.
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).
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/health/bird-flu-airborne-covid.html
In experimental settings it can be surprisingly hard to transmit influenza.
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.)
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”
1. Reach voters directly
2. Courts
https://www.bannedinyourstate.com/p/schrodingers-freeze
Trump’s OMB director.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/bacteria-and-their-metabolites-and-depression
Weird but maybe real.
https://one.google.com/changestorageplan and then more plans. They hide it quite well.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/some-good-mash-nash-news-once
Frustrating disease.
Big failure by mayor of St Paul. The left can also be dumb.
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.
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.
https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/120-the-impoundment-crisis-of-2025
Trump tests Roberts obedience.
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.)