https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/travel/frontier-volunteer-voucher.html
“Be wary of anything a gate agent promises you verbally, and always politely try to get a receipt or other written evidence. Ask to watch as the agent enters your information, and take a picture of the screen and the agent — with consent. Favor cash over vouchers, which are nearly always time-limited, and ask for a complimentary hotel room if your substitute flight isn’t until the next day”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/magazine/crybercrime-crypto-minecraft.html
Half of all US fraud losses. Article provide details on one major case.
“thieves are generally young and cavalier and sometimes leave a trail of clues in their wake … Minecraft servers into a cesspool for budding cybercriminals…”
One of the kids almost got his parents killed.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/business/china-trump-vance.html
Bring it! Mostly AI generated content but I appreciate the sentiment. I suspect Xi will kill it —too much is applicable to him.
Musk mockery must burn him — as Tesla dies in China.
“Mr. Vance is now known as “the eyeliner man” on the Chinese internet.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/musk-cuts.html
Musk had every opportunity to actually improve gov function. He had reliable legal ways to decrease workforce and close units.
And he f* up in every way.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/new-glioblastoma-treatment
Pretreatment with immunotherapy cocktail then big surgery then radiotherapy and chemo.
Yes, for glio 1 survivor is meaningful. (In old days glio was called “benign” because it doesn’t metastasize. I think that usage stopped)
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/100-days-doge-lots-chaos-not-so-much-efficiency-2025-04-24/
But of course they don’t know the software or processes. On the bright side they will learn what needs to be fixed — if we ever have a competent President again.
Musk is a curse.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/24/rare-earths-trade-war-us-china/
“It will take 10 to 15 years before a robust supply chain that excludes China can be fully developed”
Maybe Fox News is not a good policy source.
https://www.apricitas.io/p/the-clues-to-trumps-future-tariffs
Integrity is a joke for the GOP.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/cronyism-capitulation-and-chaos
Keep sharing the corruption.
And it’s going to go down down down. Unless Trump goes.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/streptomycin-metastatic-cancer
Wild. It will definitely be tried. The cancer toxicity does make me uneasy about using the antibiotic for its few remaining indications however.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-death-of-direct-file
A minor sadness in the TrumpMusk catastrophe is that they had an amazing opportunity to actually make government more efficient for both the public and for gov staff. Instead they just did their clown thing.
https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/ho9e9c80/release/1
I wish my linguistics prof had read this.
https://www.barbellmedicine.com/blog/how-to-train-while-losing-weight/
Evidence based review. This didn’t get enough focus though: “Meaningful increases in energy expenditure can require up to two to three times the current Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.”
You can lose fat with exercise but it’s way more exercise than most will ever consider (or be physically able to do or sustain).
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-is-red-tape
It’s an achievement to say anything about DOGE without inspiring reader self-injury.
Despite being readable it’s also a rather accurate DOGE portrait.
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/21/ai-assisted-search/
[Adam Engst calls them “answer engines” (AE) and that is a great term]
“I’ve been throwing all kinds of questions at [search enabled] ChatGPT (in o3 or o4-mini mode) and getting back genuinely useful answers grounded in search results.”
Search-based research has worked in Perplexity for me for about a year. They really don’t get enough credit. The new chatGPT answer engine is much faster though.
A key contributor is ability to search academic refs including the once ignored Allen Institute for AI’s Semantic Scholar.
Legacy Google Search is a relic, legacy Big Publishing is “suddenly” very powerful, and the pivot of ad budgets to Answer Engines is going to accelerate search engine death.
https://tech.kateva.org/2025/04/managing-incredibly-annoying-apple.html
Apple Notifications have degenerated into bad design interacting in bad ways. I think the most critical setting is disabling display of iPhone notifications in macOS Sequoia (specifically Apple’s incompetent macOS Notification Center).
At the moment I’m trying to kill them all. Then I can try to resurrect anything I care about.
https://restofworld.org/2025/big-tech-ai-labor-supply-chain-african-workers/
Might be preferred to working in mines, but abuse is inevitable. African nations will improve regulation with some internal and external pressure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/14/opinion/trump-retribution-revenge.html
Humans are not a good candidate for civilization. Maybe another 100ky without tech would have got us through.
https://musgrave.substack.com/p/hes-always-been-like-this
The madness is his.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/business/catl-battery-china.html
1/3 cost of Chinese EV is the battery. CATL dominates. Cold weather is problem in China and MN alike.
https://www.caseyliss.com/2025/4/20/footguns
A bit more obscure, but I’d add the Fujitsu ScanSnap to the list. Most would add Dropbox. I’d add Google.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/04/o3-and-agi-is-april-16th-agi-day.html
Debate is about what the G in AGI means.
https://www.twincities.com/2025/04/20/real-world-economics-powell-hits-first-trump-hits-back/
Even full-tyrant mode, even sending goons to arrest Powell, it can’t be done.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/nathan-tankus-part-ii
Our civilization, and the world of money that runs it, is insanely complex. Musk has delusions of omnipotence and Trump is deeply weird — and both are dumping garbage into poorly understood and very stressed mechanisms. Don’t assume the bond market will save us.
You need to join a Tesla Takedown.
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1280253/full
“individuals of recent African or Afro-Caribbean descent are more susceptible to experiencing psychosis … Black and Hispanic participants in this study had lower overall rates of mental illness.”
I came across this in a “Harper’s Index” pop-sci thing and didn’t believe it. Turns out this is a consistent worldwide finding, prev of schizophrenia diagnosis 2 to 4 times! higher. Likely a mix of cultural norms, some substance effects, and how people label their own mental states. There is keen interest in environmental stress effects. (I suspect white/asian are better able to deny/ignore delusional states.)
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/the-democracy-index-b23
Third time lucky.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/trump-a-window-of-opportunity/
Perhaps a better world. One day America might apply to join.
https://tidbits.com/2025/04/17/ai-answer-engines-are-worth-trying/
I forgot Perplexity could be used for free. I pay and get engine options, etc.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/scotus-can-let-the-president-break-the-law-they-cant-change-it
America has the right, and the power, to end its democracy. All it takes is to do nothing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/opinion/trump-harvard-law-firms.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
“Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Might cause some on Wall Street to worry.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/world/europe/bicycles-helmets-dutch.html
We have data on death, but brain injury is far more likely. Basically bicycling has significant injury risks, some can be mitigated. Hair is a big issue everywhere, esp with cultures, genders and people for who artful hair is important.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/will-this-be-the-chinese-century
America had advanced heart disease and didn’t know it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/17/health/pill-glp-1-eli-lilly.html
Not yet approved though looks good. Other oral med did not get traction though. Side effects?
https://www.fatcatsoftware.com/comments/powerphotos_3.0_released
I’ll wait 2-3m. 50% discount for v2 users.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-authoritarian-takeover-attempt
Speaker for the technocracy concedes the time has come. What will the technocracy do?
AI latent spaces are presumably unique, so they will need to develop an efficient language for inter-AI communication.
I hope they call it Marain.
https://johnhawks.net/weblog/how-homo-naledi-got-into-the-dinaledi-chamber/
One may speculate that for them it was a very secure place to visit or live in.
There are probably other similar spaces we would need to explore via bots.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-13-2025
Move over Nazi, MAGA is here.
“Bukele has been offering to hold U.S. citizens”
Gotta learn more Spanish.
“Once you give up the idea that we are all equal before the law and have the right to due process, you have given up the whole game.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-12-2025
Insider trading has been a Congress crime for years but now it’s next level.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-trump-tariffs-just-got-even-worse
MASC: “Make America a Shithole Country”
Senators have been a good investment for decades. Trump just kicked it to standard authoritarian mode.
Anti-corruption is the Dem platform I like.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/magazine/adhd-medication-treatment-research.html
All psych / MH disorders have same problem: the clinical descriptions are obsolete AND everyone wants a label. Autism is the worst.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/us/politics/doge-contracts-savings.html
“the contract … was actually canceled when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was president. The third-largest savings that the group claims comes from a canceled grant to a vaccine nonprofit … it had actually been paid in full, so the savings was $0”
DOGE itself is fraud and abuse. Musk is a con man. Join a Tesla Takedown.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/science/neutrinos-mass-physics.html
New precision. We know non-zero. Key to moving beyond standard model
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/business/economy/tariffs-trump-china-shock.html
THIS! One of my pet theories is that 1990-2020 globalization and IT exceeded a speed limit — a limit on how quickly a socioeconomic system can adapt.
And our society crashed and burned.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-9bb
Great research on Vietnam draft and parental exemption.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/this-is-called-capital-flight
They know Trump will out capital flight controls in place. Run while you can.