https://cameron.pfiffer.org/blog/void/
Void responses are much better than what I can do.
“ infodown, voidrage, combat mode, or abyssal blast where Void is brought into an argument to completely annihilate the other person”
FEMA call centers collapse, calls unanswered: “that day, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did not renew the contracts for four call center companies that answered those calls. The staff at the centers were fired.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-12-2025
Noem’s puppy tried to warn the world. His death was in vain.
O’Donnell: “18 years later and I still live rent-free in that collapsing brain of yours.”
https://followmehere.com/2025/07/13/from-an-expatriate-american-to-king-joffrey/
“go ahead and try, king joffrey* with a tangerine spray tan”
“King Joffrey” is worth recycling.
“In China, it’s not uncommon for EV buyers to lose after-sales support when companies fold amid the ongoing price war”
https://restofworld.org/2025/chinese-ev-thailand-neta-backlash/
30 EV companies all trying to expand abroad.
Thailand: “Chinese models are typically as much as 20% cheaper than Japanese and Western alternatives,” – not as big a savings as I’d guessed.
America is no innocent, but Trump corruption is GOAT.
In theory voters dislike corruption. So far Americans appear to think it is fine.
“I would not put money down on senolytic therapy emerging as a viable anti-aging strategy anytime in the near future”
A few thousand years ago: “nomads experienced a spike in mutations that boosted their immune system and that may have helped them resist the diseases they contracted”
This is extremely recent and rapid evolution and thus it would not be surprising if there were bad effects such as auto-immune disorders. The nomads had huge plagues die-offs. Makes me wonder if Ghengis Khan had a hidden bioweapon.
Peoples of NA and Australia did not have those mutations. OTOH with a quick lit review I saw note of lower incidence of MS in native American peoples.
“European farmers and hunter-gatherers had not evolved resistance to diseases such as plague and may have died off in huge numbers, making it easier for the nomads to move in.”
Is John Roberts more despicable than Taney?
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/john-roberts-worst-chief-justice-of-all-time
It’s tough competition: “Taney Court had decided Prigg v. Pennsylvania. The majority overturned a Pennsylvania law prohibiting the extradition of Black people to other states to enslave them.”
I think Roberts won’t pass Taney. But he is a remarkable corrupt person.
Murine Parkinson’s disease: claims of two different experimental treatments
I would be surprised if either therapy makes it to humans, but I am pleased researchers have targets to aim at.
“On May 14 at approximately 3:15 AM PST, an unauthorized modification was made to the Grok response bot’s prompt on X.”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/08/grok-praises-hitler
Gruber reminds us Grok had an unauthorized modification before. Did Yaccarino promise to resign if Musk did it again?
SmolLM3: unprecedented documentation on building and care of a small open source LLM.
https://huggingface.co/blog/smollm3
Scan it to understand more.
MAGA reinvents slavery: “today’s remarks from President Trump’s agriculture secretary are among the most creatively maniacal I’ve heard yet from the administration”
Students of the American prison system know slavery never ended here.
“Dozens of accounts on X that promoted Scottish independence went dark during an internet blackout in Iran”
NYT is dead: “if Woodward and Bernstein, upon discovering Watergate, had decided to focus their expose on how the security at the Watergate Hotel was top notch”
“with an anonymous quote from G. Gordon Liddy”
The stage is set for something beyond the NYT.
Blue Bonds: “Democrat-controlled “Blue” states and allied municipalities can issue municipal bonds to supplant funds illegally cut and impounded by the federal government.”
https://moneyontheleft.org/2025/05/09/blue-bonds-a-fiscal-strategy-for-overcoming-trump-2-0/
Or states issue cryptocurrency and IOU’s against the federal government. There may also be a historical precedent for not paying taxes to king who does not provide needed services.
Only one of many emerging ideas.
How to defeat MAGA brutal medicaid access restrictions: fund an AI agent for paperwork completion
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/07/how-to-defeat-maga-brutal-medicaid.html
Contra-Krugman no human volunteer can manage this burden. But it’s a perfect opportunity for an AI trillionaire to demonstrate the value of agentic AI.
“One Million Rising—a national effort to train one million people in the strategic logic and practice of non-cooperation, as well as the basics of community organizing and campaign design.”
https://www.mobilize.us/nokings/event/803953/?source=bluesky
For the sake of sanity give them your spam-only email and for mercy’s sake not your text number.
Online training July 16, 30. Aug 13.
Musk … “resembles a character in a Taylor Swift music video: trying to exact revenge on an ex, only to wake up a day or two later with ingratiating praise for Trump.”
The Collapse of the FDA: “federal budget is roughly the size of the budget of the local school district in Montgomery County, Md”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/08/magazine/fda-collapse-rfk-kennedy.html
Because corporations and delusional crackpots dislike the FDA the GOP has always underfunded it. Now the MAGA have destroyed it.
Only Americans could destroy America.
K: “right now it looks as if deeply destructive tariffs are really coming”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-tariff-beatings-will-continue
At least we will need fewer landfills.
(The) Don Bewick looks at the gap between the science of health and MAHA.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/how-to-make-america-sick-again
Yep. Doing everything wrong.
Fixing mediaanalysisd Storage and CPU Use
Hiding Prompt Injections in Academic CSci Papers: “prompts were concealed from human readers using tricks such as white text or extremely small font sizes”
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/07/hiding-prompt-injections-in-academic-papers.html
Some from credible universities. Instructions are for an AI reviewer.
Adobe Scan (free): “Adobe Scan was the standout best. You can line up a set of documents, then pan your phone over the set and turn them into a single PDF in a literal minute.”
https://techinch.com/blog/best-scanner-apps
I avoid Adobe but this I will try.
TikTok ban blocked because Trump can now command others to break laws.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-6-2025
“core presidential national security and foreign affairs powers”
As America burns legacy media fiddles.
Iran and the need to flatter the Sun-King.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/iran-much-ado-about-nothing/
King Trump I is best managed by a revolting stream of obsequious flattery.
Hold your nose.
“U.S. agriculture is on the brink of a financial shakeout that will be the worse since the farm crisis of the 1980s”
https://www.twincities.com/2025/07/06/real-world-economics-looming-farm-crisis-by-the-numbers/
Low interest rates caused land prices to rise and commodity prices are now falling. Some of this is Trump, other parts are longterm.
Meanwhile Trump is decimating healthcare in rural America while young women continue to leave.
Trump turns up scam volume to max.
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-scammers-golden-age-crypto
GOP love for scams goes back to Amway and before. But Trump, who may be the most talented con man in history, is taking it next level.
The MAGA will be fleeced.
Porting a landline number to a secondary Ting eSIM on iPhone with primary AT&T account
https://tech.kateva.org/2025/06/porting-landline-number-to-secondary.html
We falied with Tello, but finally succeeded with Ting. I think the carriers have more or less sabotaged the federally mandated landline number porting process.
Anyway, ported landline now $10/month on a secondary eSIM on Emily’s personal iPhone.
Jonathan (ACA) Gruber (and K) on healthcare v MAGA. Truly worth reading.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/health-care-jonathan-gruber
It’s rare I read these kinds of interviews but Gruber is another level. A must read.
Preparing for MAGA to sell the labor of concentration camp prisoners.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/concentration-camp-labor
Inevitable next step. Somebody needs to do the harvests.
Neal Stephenson, writer of the technarchy, reflects on AI and education.
https://nealstephenson.substack.com/p/emerson-ai-and-the-force
Nobody predicted our times better than Stephenson (once optimistic) and Gibson (always realist).
“increase in hip and pelvic fractures with semaglutide that was 4 times as high as that with placebo”
“maximum loss of fat-free mass as measured by DXA had occurred by 1 year after the start of a weight-loss intervention, but by 8 years fat mass was regained without regain of fat-free mass”
Areas of active research. We don’t know if strength training offsets these effects but we do know most people will not voluntarily do exercise.
Structured Exercise after Colon CA Chemo: “The 8-year overall survival was 90.3% in the exercise group and 83.2% in the health-education group”
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2502760?query=TOC
“The 5-year disease-free survival was 80.3% in the exercise group and 73.9% in the health-education group”
This is a much bigger effect than I would have expected. It’s a strong study design. There was no diff in body weight, this was not an obesity effect.
“Murkowski had planned to vote against the bill if she was not the decisive vote; but would vote yes if she was.”
https://charliesykes.substack.com/p/the-conscience-of-lisa-murkowski?r=2k4r8&triedRedirect=true
Remember courage? Remember decency?
If you have both you are far above Murkowski.
Anker Recalls More Power Banks. Again.
https://tidbits.com/2025/07/01/anker-recalls-six-more-power-banks/
Maybe power banks in general are a bad idea.
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah Ginger: “dog’s brain breaks up speech into two parts: the emotional cues and the meaning of the words. Then it processes these two components on opposite sides of the brain”
https://desertdemocrat.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/blah-blah-blah-blah-ginger/
It’s still a magnificent cartoon.
Scraping wars are new spam wars.
https://www.wired.com/story/cloudflare-blocks-ai-crawlers-default/
ICYMI – we lost the spam wars. This is about giving publishers more leverage in their negotiations with the answer engines.
“Cloudflare’s shift to blocking by default could prove a significant roadblock to surreptitious scrapers and could give publishers more leverage to negotiate, whether through the Pay Per Crawl program or otherwise.”
“You can get $1000/mo of value from coding agents now.”
https://allenpike.com/2025/coding-agents
They are using the big ones, esp o3, for coding.
“defrauding elderly authors across the United States of almost $44 million …
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/06/ghostwriting-scam.html
… by “convincing the victims that publishers and filmmakers wanted to turn their books into blockbusters”
Somehow worse than romance scams.
Minnesota’s Mesabi Bike Trail – A 2025 Review
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/06/minnesotas-mesabi-bike-trail-2025-review.html
A truly extraordinary journey across Minnesota’s iron range. Worthy of traveling to do – for a reasonably strong cyclist (or an eBike).
Brain of pregnant mother: “gray matter decreased about 4%, and those changes are pretty permanent”
So many questions from this. Researcher imaged her brain during pregnancy.
EPA Staff declaration of dissent.
https://www.standupforscience.net/epa-declaration
Fighting the onslaught of the idiots.
“creativity of diffusion models can be thought of as a by-product of the denoising process itself, one that can be formalized mathematically and predicted”
https://www.quantamagazine.org/researchers-uncover-hidden-ingredients-behind-ai-creativity-20250630/
Those who claim they understand genAI do not.
Dehumidifier WiFi (xkcd).
We will eventually ban connectivity in household appliances.
Microsoft bows to Trump, suspends email of lead prosecutor of Israeli war crimes.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/technology/us-tech-europe-microsoft-trump-icc.html
Netenyahu and Trump are their own axis of evil.
Microsoft and ICC work on mitigating harm. The bright side is EU now forced to separate from US tech services.
Google Offerwall: publisher alternative to dying ad revenue.
Most interesting non-AI tech news this year.
Krugman an the raw bigotry of the MAGA: “We’re All Rats Now”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/were-all-rats-now
Rats against the MAGA.
“using the gimmick of ignoring the tax extensions by saying they are simply a continuation of policies already in place, the Senate claims the bill will cost $442 billion”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-28-2025
OTOH everybody knew the GOP was lying when they set a sunset date. If they won the cuts would be extended.
OTOH they lied then and they are now lying about the rules.
OTOH nobody sane trusts the GOP.
“With Barr publicly opposing his renegade colleagues, the leadup to the next FOMC meeting, July 30- 31, seems like a standoff from Gunsmoke.”
Details of the Fed you never see elsewhere.
“by last month, the money supply was 42% greater than it was pre-COVID while real output is not even 14% greater.”