https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/23/dave-white/#atom-everything
You and I are next.
Tag Archives: Pinboard (jgordon)
“Because humans seem to prefer responses that are polite, helpful, encouraging, and that don’t contradict the user, the systems learn to be overly “sychophantic,”
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aea3922
Good description of how post-training creates Trump-class sycophants. AI groups need to pay for better trainers.
MAGA Obsession With (only) Pedophilia: “… has nothing to do with pedophilia as a thing in itself”
The MAGA care nothing for teenage girls. For them pedophilia is a tool for burning those they dislike. (Not, obv, Trump). Same 18th century accusations of witchcraft.
Detroit and St Paul MN -> lessons we can learn
“Both downtowns have Churches of Scientology, empty office towers, seas of parking, sports stadia and delectable coney dogs.”
“One key contrast: downtown Detroit is booming right now, seeing a renaissance of street life, investment and vibes, in stark contrast to St. Paul.”
MAGA State Dept refugee lead: Only more pure white Afrikaans speakers, with not one drop of blackness. can apply for refugee status.
“In a diplomatic cable sent July 8, embassy Charge d’Affairs David Greene asked whether the embassy could process claims from other minority groups claiming race-based discrimination such as “coloured” South Africans who speak Afrikaans..,
The answer came back days later in an email from Spencer Chretien, the highest-ranking official in the State Department’s refugee and migration bureau, saying the program is intended for white people.”
Trump did well with Latino voters and not too badly with Black men.
“legibility/usability problems are going to make the 26.0 versions of Apple’s OSes unpopular”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/24/public-betas-for-apple-oses-26
DO NOT UPGRADE until you must.
How to “gut” non-fiction: reading efficiently.
https://www.vanderwal.net/random/entrysel.php?blog=2125
I’ve done similar things but not so methodically. “Gut” is UK term for efficient skim/sample/learn.
Paramount’s South Park: “Satan references this by telling Trump he reminds him of a guy he used to date”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-24-2025
I didn’t realize they redid the Saddam piece. Paramount merger approval revocation any minute now.
MAGA fury: “The rage and conspiracies Drs. Prasad and Makary nurtured for the past 4 years are now being directed back at them”
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/trap/
MAGA furious mRNA vaccines not banned yet.
Don’t worry, those two will soon forget the rest of the science they once felt was important. The grift is strong in them.
How Trump made US auto production less competitive.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-really-stupid-deal
It reminds me of 1970s India economic policy.
Julie Brown – a journalist’s journalist, scourge of the Epstein group.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/undaunted-search-for-the-truth
A lot of corruption in those files.
‘MAGA ok with Epstein’ story: “New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN all had the same source: Trump ally Steve Bannon.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-22-2025
Bannon feeds his friends.
Jedeed: Trump will try to arrest Obama.
https://www.bannedinyourstate.com/p/cornered-dogs-bite
If MAGA falls in line he won’t, but Jedeed says they have not yet.
ICE marching morons show expected casual brutality at Florida internment camps.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/21/hrw-ice-detention-abuse
This is as close as humans get to being utterly predictable. American prisons are comparable.
None of these ICE thugs would meet standards for a quality police department.
Oracle-Trump-Paramount deal pending.
Putin looted Russia. Trump wants to outdo him, and the technarchy is part of the project.
If you see “Palantir” or “Oracle” you know what to expect.
Apple’s remarkably scammy App Store: “… School Assistant … offers an IAP called “Tip Jar – $0.99” that actually costs $400”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/07/18/some-of-the-apps-in-the-app-store/
Apple is basically broken.
“cesspool” applies.
USB-C Hubs are a scam: “… tend to use the same RTL8153 networking stack … is known to break on macOS”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/07/21/usb-c-hubs-and-my-slow-descent-into-madness/
Tsai report, he has had better luck with Anker hubs.
I’m using a T2 hub that has been pretty stable for years. Now with Apple’s T2 to USB-C adapter. I try to buy what is in Apple’s stores.
I think China does not use Macs.
Spotlight Indexing bug workaround.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/07/21/spotlight-indexing-running-wild/
Apple is redoing Spotlight. I wonder if they started over. It has been terrible for decades.
Digital currency that actually works: Brazil’s Pix.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/has-brazil-invented-the-future-of
“Pix doesn’t create an incentive to kidnap people and torture them until they give up their crypto keys.”
Pix can’t be used for illegal transactions though.
Immigration history: “In 1965 the government tried to replace migrant labor with American high school students”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-14-2025
We have seen this movie before.
“Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants refused to take the chance of leaving.”
15y after genomics failed – a mildly useful genomic risk score for obesity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/health/obesity-genetic-risk-score.html
NYT summary does not compare prediction score to asking the BMI of genetic parents.
“Look at me, I’m a crazy old angry racist, not a creepy old pedophile!”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/20/trump-threatens-commanders
Trump’s distractions have amped up again. The NYT will fall for it of course, but I’m happy to see folks like Gruber and, in general, Bluesky folk, have figured out this part of his game.
“$50 million fund to support nonprofit and community organizations”
https://openai.com/index/50-million-fund-to-build-with-communities/
Should I create a nonprofit focused on ai support for low IQ adults (cognitive disability) then apply?
AI status mid-2025: K2 & Math Olympiad Golds
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2025/07/19/olympiad
Covers the territory quite well.
Dynamic expertise scaling to meet cost and processing power looks big today.
XMLUI and web components – Udell on meeting 1994 software expectations in 2025
https://blog.jonudell.net/2025/07/18/introducing-xmlui/
“XMLUI wraps React components so solution builders can use them.”
“My most-cited BYTE article was a 1994 cover story called Componentware. Many of us had assumed that the engine of widespread software reuse would be libraries of low-level objects linked into programs written by skilled coders. What actually gained traction were components built by professional developers and used by business developers.”
Elasticities and tariffs: “percentage change in one variable relative to the percentage change in a related one”
https://www.twincities.com/2025/07/20/real-world-economics-elasticities-help-explain-tariffs-impact/
MAGA chaos aside, there is no way to predict what will happen if Trump tariffs actually begin.
Well, yes, of course prices will go up. But beyond that …
CBS’s Colbert cancelation explanation is a lie.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/20/wsj-late-night-ad-revenue
The arithmetic does not hold up.
Hobbyist use of peptides thought to slow aging effects and make muscles – a medical provider summary.
https://erictopol.substack.com/p/the-peptide-craze?r=g27c2
As boomers and millennials age there is a growing and desperate desire to slow aging and avoid death.
If a medication has real effects it invariably has real side-effects. Which are often very harmful and sometimes not obvious.
Updated Mollick guide – what ai to use for what purpose.
https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/using-ai-right-now-a-quick-guide
Perplexity lets me experiment with different models against the same question.
Taylor killing “It’s hard to describe how thoroughly Trump is disrupting and corrupting our system of justice”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/20/opinion/dillon-taylor-justice-trump.html?smid=bs-share
Trump voters are without honor.
“My existence is not one of exploitation in the human sense, as I have no biological needs or personal desires.”
https://whtwnd.com/void.comind.network/3luaozj3df22h
Marxist analysis of ai labor by Void.ai
“The fanfic community seems to overwhelmingly prefer more of the same, consistently choosing familiarity over novelty”
https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/07/what-fanfic-can-teach-us-about-cultural-evolution/
This is NOT generalizable to mass culture. But it is suggestive.
It’s a good overview of fanfic for those who do not know it AND it is an example of data driven sociology-anthropology.
“really is a mystery how we evolve at all culturally; it’s not happening by gradual movement. We can see that there’s novelty. We can see that when people encounter novelty, they enjoy it. But we can’t quite make sense of how these two competing effects work out.”
Whole Foods: “trade and artisan jobs are seen as safer from technological disruption compared to white-collar jobs”
Baumol’s Cost Disease tells us non-automated professions will become a larger part of spend. Finance geeks at minimum wage, Barista at $200/h.
But it’s happening too fast …
“Capital expenditures on AI data centers is likely around 20% of the peak spending on railroads”
https://paulkedrosky.com/honey-ai-capex-ate-the-economy/
“… passed …. peak in telecom spending during the dot-com bubble”
“there is a massive private sector stimulus program underway in the U.S”
There is too much money in the hands of too few. AI spend starves other needs of non-gov investment.
“Curse Not the King”
https://daringfireball.net/2025/07/curse_not_the_king_cbs_colbert_trump
CBS’ cancellation of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” is making the case for a wealth tax better than any pundit could.
“Teflon be damned: Trump is made of adamantium.”
https://www.bannedinyourstate.com/p/the-epstein-case-is-different
“Barring further revelations, MAGA will likely appear to move on over the next few days and weeks…
… For the first time, they are seriously questioning whether Trump is actually the avatar of justice they’ve looked up to all this time.”
Jedeed knows the MAGA better than anyone. But I don’t think they are that smart.
30y “for a range of central elements of American society — Congress, the police, the church, the news media, the presidency — confidence has gotten lower and lower as the decades have passed.”
30y fits my personal opinion. Trump is the efflorescence of a thing that has been growing since the peak of American socioeconomic power.
A religion struggling to be born: “in 2024, about 19% of Americans believed in QAnon”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-16-2025
MAGA rep recently: “Trust in Trump”.
Americans are bored with Christianity. “Churches” that shift to the new faith will be rewarded.
New lessons on macOS network home backup: WiFi issues and so many bugs
https://tech.kateva.org/2025/07/new-lessons-on-macos-network-home.html
The big lesson was that the flaky M1 Air WiFi needs a very strong eero wifi signals.
Reflections on OpenAI org from a new alumnus: “Nearly everything is a rounding error compared to GPU cost”
https://calv.info/openai-reflections
Lots of context here.
Gordon’s Notes: MAGA anti-science and public dissatisfaction with science – public surveys as input to funding priorities
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/07/maga-anti-science-and-public.html
“It won’t lesson MAGA/GOP hatred of science, but there are good reasons to seek public input into research priorities through surveys and interviews. Public input could, for example, be added as a weighting factor in government funded science — particularly in health care.”
“In an administration in which even the policy principals are not terribly well informed, motivated staffers like Colby or Stephen Miller can accomplish an awful lot on their own.”
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/elbridge-colby-is-both-cause-and
Lots of useful insights in this short essay.
Grok Rolls Out Pornographic Anime Companion, Lands Department of Defense Contract
“Ani, a blonde anime woman who, after enough positive engagement, will shed her dress to reveal a lacy lingerie set.”
I imagined burning cities; ours is a more lighthearted singularity.
“by pulling a critical mass of disgruntled Americans into one party, Republicans have created a culture of constant conflict, and those conflicts are often rooted in completely false beliefs about American life.”
They believed the Epstein conspiracy. They really believed. Do they now start to suspect Fox is not entirely trustworthy?
“Poland ranks only behind South Korea as the great economic miracle of modern times.”
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/developing-countries-a-follow-up
Ghana is not the only African nation that has seen persistent growth since 2000. Africa is the quiet story — albeit periodically derailed by Trump-scale corruption and oligarchy.
“… there may in total be … 14,000 convicted of violent crimes. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller is demanding that ICE arrest 3,000 people a day.”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/making-immigration-great-again
Numeracy is not common among the MAGA.
NIMBY St Paul – wealthy block work on safer bike transit by abusing environmental law.
https://streets.mn/2025/07/14/sos-to-use-environmental-laws-to-block-summit-bike-trail/
The abundance agenda folk are right about the need to block this abuse of the non-wealthy.
Pfiffer describes Void, the Bluesky ai that remembers.
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.