Author Archives: jgordon

“putting historical knowledge back into the bottle after decades of reckoning with the nation’s racist history will be more difficult than the administration believes”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/06/us/politics/trump-censorship-black-history.html

The people who teach these topics are unlikely to obey.

“the Smithsonian issued a statement saying it would do no such thing.”

There is Streisand Effect potential here.

Kickbacks to promote Medicare Advantage scams: “Aetna; Elevance Health, formerly known as Anthem; and Humana”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/health/medicare-kickbacks-private-plans-trump.html

“steer older people and those with disabilities toward coverage that might not offer the best medical care….

… efforts to drive beneficiaries away specifically because their disabilities might make them less profitable”

Anthropology: “People start to tell the tourists – and I found that most Shipibo people did not distinguish tourists from researchers – the stories they think are interesting for them and not what they really live with.”

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https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/may/01/the-ancient-psychedelics-myth-people-tell-tourists-the-stories-they-think-are-interesting-for-them

This is a universal human trait. It is why we had to develop science and falsifiability.

Also, if MAGA somehow revives anthro that will be a silver lining.

NYT review’s consciousness experiments — finds theorists can be a bit whacky.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/science/two-theories-of-consciousness-faced-off-the-ref-took-a-beating.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Dk8.wESo.fpM7BPFp_zui

Reminds me of string theory. Non-falsifiable science is tricky terrain.

I think we will get to AI citizens before we understand consciousness (or whether it exists at all …)

Immunotherapy alone for a small percent of GI solid tumors.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/health/cancer-immunotherapy-solid-tumors.html

“In 49 of the patients, who had rectal cancer, the tumors disappeared and, after five years, have not recurred … 35 of 54 patients who had other cancers, including in the stomach, esophagus, liver, endometrium, urinary tract and prostate. Out of all 103 patients, cancers recurred in only five.”

Only works for mismatch repair mutations that produce weird proteins.

By one ‘quality of life’ metric NYC ranks 17 in world and Minneapolis 30

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https://happy-city-index.com/

It’s NOT a “happiness” study despite the clickbait title. AND there’s no way 25% of MPLS residents have a master’s degree. BUT, for the moment, MPLS is about as good as it gets in the US. Other interesting top 30 cities: Seoul (6), Munich (9), Vancouver (11), Milan (25), London (31).

Also, where is Denver?!

Black Hawk crash – NYT investigation: “her assignment was to navigate the conditions of a scenario in which members of Congress or other senior government officials might need to be carried out of the nation’s capital in the event of an attack”

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https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/us/politics/takeaways-investigation-airport-collision.html

The real answer is probably a year away. Normal safety tech was disabled to better simulate evacuation protocols. Pilot error part of the picture but NYT doesn’t address the big question about how much risk the military should put on civilian air traffic as part of military training. That failure in logic will is far up the chain of command.

If you give up an airplane seat – so many nasty games airlines play

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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”

“Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 69,000 claims in 2023 regarding financial fraud involving crypto, resulting in more than $5.6 billion in reported losses”

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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.

“more liberal-minded Chinese, having overcome the initial shock at actions that reminded them of their own authoritarian government, are applying their creativity to Washington”

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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.”

Glioblastoma 1 person trial: “the 17-month mark there is no evidence by brain imaging of any recurrence of the tumor”

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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)

DOGE: “lawyers, statisticians and other high-ranking agency officials are being sent from the Baltimore headquarters to regional offices to replace veteran claims processors who have been fired”

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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.

A decent review of fat reduction strategies for athletic persons.

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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).

Answer Engines work well now – without reasoning delays (AI assisted search-based research).

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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.

Managing the incredibly annoying Apple Wallet notifications on Sequoia.

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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.