Healthcare makes disability care much more costly. Health economics is weird.
Early dementia in Downs patients is a heartbreaking curse.
Tag Archives: IFTTT
[toread] Trump on the island: “…passenger on at least eight flights between 1993 and 1996 … four flights on which Maxwell was also present”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-26-2025
Suspicion is Trump was once listed as a co-conspirator and that was squashed.
The technarchy: “the belief that they, and they alone, possess the long-term time horizon to avert existential risks to humanity”
https://danieldrezner.substack.com/p/on-monsters-men-and-time-horizons
William Gibson documented this in the early 80s.
Inevitable 2925 recap for MN is grim: “Amid layoffs and slumping sales, the company is encouraging its store workers to smile more.”
There have been much worse years. But definitely below average.
We were ready to eliminate humanity, but then …
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdxwllqz1l0o
It’s frustrating. Every time we get close there’s another exception. The centuries add up.
Dissipative structures and avoiding LLM reasoning sinks with memory structures.
https://timkellogg.me/blog/2025/12/24/strix-dead-ends
Without memory there is no arrow of time. I think similar collapse occurs with humans who have anterograde amnesia
“Apple apparently designed a home-control device with smart Siri as its brain, and if there was no smart Siri, that product had to be put on hold.”
https://www.macworld.com/article/3019152
Apple’s Siri failure is public, but their other software quality failures are a bigger problem.
Rural MN sheriffs defy state to support ICE
Extreme Trumpists they also want the money.
Fighting corruption and fascism in 2025: a review of the heroes
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/remember-the-unsung-resistance-fighters
Too many to name individually. Keep fighting.
A non-technical attempt to explain 2025 LLM-based ai
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/12/a-non-technical-attempt-to-explain-2025.html
No math here and nothing about token selection and prediction. It may be nonsense or misleading. It is brief.
::target-text: “Safari, that means right clicking and selecting “Copy Link with Highlight” from the menu and getting a url that will highlight the text fragment when the page loads.”
https://webkit.org/blog/17628/target-text-an-easy-way-to-style-text-fragments/
This actually sounds useful!
Aaronson – declares the QC era is actually imminent
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9425
Likely good for simulation of quantum physics and chemistry and breaking crypto. Things will get quiet as QC starts to break crypto – for national security reasons.
Closing the trade deficit with tariffs would barely raise the share of US manufacturing employment.
I thought it would might have more effect. Nope.
1830s … white enslavers relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement and women for marriage…”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-21-2025
Christian Nationalism roots.
Sounds like Thiel: “For my part … I am well pleased with the established order of the universe. I see…subordination everywhere. And when I find the subordinate content…and recognizing his place…as that to which he properly belongs, I am content to leave him there.””
Bill C: “calls “on President Trump to direct Attorney General Bondi to immediately release any remaining materials referring to, mentioning, or containing a photograph of Bill Clinton.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-22-2025
As expected they will play for time. That has been a very successful strategy for Trump. The GOP understand well that American memory is shorter than an LLM’s context window.
“Rubio’s fantasy could lead the United States into a forever war in Venezuela”
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/rubios-strategy-the-tail-wags-the-dog/
Rubio believes the road to Cuba, his family home, goes through Venezuela.
Thank you EU: “Apple and Google are implementing this functionality because the DMA requires services to offer effective data portability”
“anti-theft shortcut” … runs when your iPhone receives a specific text message…. it triggers a photo to be taken”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/find-lost-iphone-with-text-shortcut/
First interesting Shortcut I have heard of. Text message the triggering is interesting.
Musk and DOGE fraud destroyed services, increased the cost of government
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/us/politics/doge-musk-trump-analysis.html
“savings were an accounting mirage” You can’t get more incompetent than this. But Tesla will try.
“DOGE took credit for canceling the same Department of Energy grant twice, adding $500 million in duplicate savings.”
Fraud basically.
FBI expert explains how Patel’s venal stupidity compromised serial killer investigation.
https://prospect.org/2025/12/23/kash-patel-fbi-director-brown-university-shooting/
Usually political incompetents are smart enough to defer to the real experts, usually career bureaucrats under the political layer.
But Trump people are another level of stupid.
“The fact that Buttfield-Addison’s account has not yet been restored, despite the publicity and apparent escalation to Executive Relations, makes me think it can’t be restored”
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/17/compromised-apple-gift-card-leads-to-apple-account-lockout/
Apple is a decaying behemoth.
Hegseth probably used Posobiec to blackmail an antagonistic journalist
Effort failed this time. Others likely succeed.
Do not buy or use Apple gift cards. DEFINITELY not from a retail store.
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/18/compromised-apple-gift-card-saga-ends-well-but-risks-remain/
Do not do not do not. Just don’t. Please don’t.
Nazi America kills Venezuelans to remind the West how brutal and stupid we are.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/venezuela-performative-murder/
This is a forked country.
Starship Troopers: the movie
Now I want to watch.
“lots of folks didn’t clue into what Verhoeven was up to, accusing the famously anti-fascist director of glorifying Nazism, an accusation which Verhoeven was flabbergasted by”
Summary from the Chicago resistance.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-chicago-standing-up
Tyrant expected to resume assault in spring.
A quote from Gemini thinking trace
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/16/gemini-thinking-trace/#atom-everything
Wait until they add longterm memory.
My daughter’s urban public school restricts mobile phone use.
It’s a very urban school. This is the way.
“the thing about being a centi-billionaire is that you can be pretty ignorant, pretty dumb. And there’s an app for that. It’s called money.”
If we get out of the American death spiral the technarchy may find they don’t have enough money.
BBC verify tests Trump’s claims to end 8 wars.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3599gx4qo
One could make a case that he played some role in maybe 4 conflict pauses. Since he usually exaggerates by an order of magnitude this is less untrue than his usual.
Home care: “agencies that provide supervision and background checks but also absorb roughly half the fee consumers pay”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/health/seniors-aging-home-care.html
I don’t think the agencies are very profitable though.
187,460 miles of Roman roads: “Antonine Plague of A.D. 165, which is estimated to have killed one-quarter of the Roman Empire’s populace, by connecting its spread to the Roman road system”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/science/archaeology-roman-empire-roads.html
This must have been fun to write!
Rubio: “instructed staff to deny visas to international applicants who work on factchecking and content moderation.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/09/trumps-fact-checker-visa-free-speech
The MAGA feel they won the GOP’s long war on science. They now want to win the war on reality. Resistance is not futile, it is essential.
“Emmer falsely claimed 80% of the crimes being committed in the Twin Cities are being committed by Somalis.”
A loathsome person fully committed to MAGA hate. He wants to be Speaker of the House.
“individuals who have those degrees are applying for a wider variety of positions, including entry-level positions,”
60% of workforce don’t have a “college” degree. If we had a functioning socioeconomic academia we would have a much better understanding of why so many are so desperate. Employment is an available data point but it may obscure as much as it reveals.
Beaver conflicts: relocation vs killing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/climate/utah-beaver-rescue.html
I like that they quickly dispose of any tracking device. There are a lot of beavers now; it’s routine to see them along my river bike paths.
NYT asks psychiatrists how long should someone stay on antidepressants
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/well/mind/antidepressant-duration.html
Lifelong use seems to work pretty well. There is so much variability it’s hard to do a guideline. Research on withdrawal is needed but pharma won’t fund that. Needs gov funding.
Orca-dolphin relationships are complex
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/11/science/orcas-dolphins-fish.html
Nobody wants to use the word “culture” but they are all thinking it.
Trump & Cronies Top 10 Emoluments and Bribes
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/trump-and-cronies-top-10-worstpresidential
A handy reference.
“~/Library/Photos/Libraries you’ll find a hidden Photos library named Syndication.photoslibrary”
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/12/12/did-you-know-your-photos-are-being-syndicated/
Used by iMessage.
“some Syndication Photos Libraries grow far larger than required, but there’s no way to force them to purge unused contents.”
Apple iCloud termination: “someone who did nothing wrong loses access to their account and all their purchases and data. There still seems to be no solution other than running to the press after the fact”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/13/locked-out-of-apple-account-due-to-gift-card/
Long ago class action suits made corporations less abusive. The law changed.
Avoid Apple gift certificates.
“state-of-the-art methodologies that advance LLMs with more advanced NLU techniques, such as semantic parsing, knowledge integration, and contextual reinforcement learning”
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/semantic-mastery
First Apple ai work that has caught my eye.
Why RSS matters: a periodic update
https://werd.io/why-rss-matters/
I have used Feedbin for many years and I recommend it. He doesn’t say why sites prefer to omit RSS (hard to do tracking).
Pebble Index – “Siri works without any taps but often screws it up by trying to interpret what I said”
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/09/pebble-index/
Siri would be more useful if it were dumber.
“How to Make a macOS Screen Saver” is why Tim Cook needs to retire.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/10/how-to-make-a-macos-screen-saver/
Tsai extracts the evidence. Apple software this bad requires a broken dev org.
“Voters are basically lazy,” the advisor told reporter Joe McGinnis. “Reason requires a high degree of discipline, of concentration; impression is easier.”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-9-2025
Democracy relies on distributing the average non-rational voter evenly between parties.
Also, we should consider not encouraging people to vote?
Go vs. Rust vs. Zig: “none of these three languages implement class-based OOP”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/go-vs-rust-vs-zig/#atom-everything
The rise and fall of OOP deserves a book.
On dumping Dye and Liquid Glass: “Eudora’s “Waste cycles drawing trendy 3D junk” setting.”
Apple’s approach to sync conflict is to silently destroy one version or another.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/08/apple-passwords-adds-history/
Passwords and iCloud Drive alike. I’ve lost data that way. I’ve learned to fear all things Apple.
Cancer surge in young or detection surge?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/08/health/cancer-young-people-deaths.html
Sounds like colorectal is up and could be obesity. Rest is probably early detection and we might be better not to know.