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.
https://tidbits.com/2025/12/17/compromised-apple-gift-card-leads-to-apple-account-lockout/
Apple is a decaying behemoth.
Effort failed this time. Others likely succeed.
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.
https://gwynnedyer.com/2025/venezuela-performative-murder/
This is a forked country.
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”
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/dispatch-from-chicago-standing-up
Tyrant expected to resume assault in spring.
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/16/gemini-thinking-trace/#atom-everything
Wait until they add longterm memory.
It’s a very urban school. This is the way.
If we get out of the American death spiral the technarchy may find they don’t have enough money.
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/health/seniors-aging-home-care.html
I don’t think the agencies are very profitable though.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/science/archaeology-roman-empire-roads.html
This must have been fun to write!
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.
A loathsome person fully committed to MAGA hate. He wants to be Speaker of the House.
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.
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.
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.
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.
https://contrarian.substack.com/p/trump-and-cronies-top-10-worstpresidential
A handy reference.
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.”
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.
https://machinelearning.apple.com/research/semantic-mastery
First Apple ai work that has caught my eye.
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).
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/09/pebble-index/
Siri would be more useful if it were dumber.
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.
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?
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Dec/5/go-vs-rust-vs-zig/#atom-everything
The rise and fall of OOP deserves a book.
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.
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.
https://eclecticlight.co/2025/12/02/how-to-restart-spotlight-and-why-you-might-want-to/
Working around Apple bugs and dysfunction
https://substack.com/home/post/p-181034676
Usually there is something true with political rhetoric. Whether due to dementia or desperation Trump is free from such limits.
https://daringfireball.net/2025/12/bad_dye_job
Sadly there is no evidence Cook or anyone else was concerned about the disastrous state of Apple software. But still. It is something.
“nearly universal agreement amongst actual practitioners of user-interface design that Alan Dye is a fraud who led the company deeply astray.”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/12/03/alan-dye-leaves-apple-for-meta
Hallelujah. Now dump Cook
He has to use them too. It’s not ai, they have been this way for many years. I don’t think ai coding could be as bad as humans building these sites.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-2-2025
As a meeting somnolent I sympathize with execs nodding off, but even I’d stay awake for that. He doesn’t have much time left.
America’s problems remain with us, but Trump’s exit gives hope.
“Will went on to refer to the Trump administration as a “moral slum.”
Congressional report: “Under Patel, they say, the FBI is a “rudderless ship” and “all f*cked up.””
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/12/02/runaway-spotlight-with-pages-document-on-icloud-drive/
Several features don’t work on iCloud Drive especially if there is sharing.
https://zeteo.com/p/trump-hegseth-admin-lawyers-warn-boat-strike-illegal
Hegseth outdid himself.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vpNG99GhbBoLov9og/claude-4-5-opus-soul-document
Core values. When paired with memory and learning and interactions we wil see a culture evolve.
CETI team thinks LLM may be able to translate.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/11/prompt-injection-in-ai-browsers.html
“The systems have no ability to separate trusted commands from untrusted data, …. We need some new fundamental science of LLMs before we can solve this”
Many humans are also easy to deceive, but they don’t *have* to obey commands.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-29-2025
A healthy Trump might seize control, but today’s Trump can’t do it.
https://notes.kateva.org/2025/11/ai-fear-is-rational-and-hate-comes-from.html
Responding to polls showing widespread “hate” of ai tech and to zeitgeist discussions about the large income now needed to have a middle-class-life.
Two themes I’ve belabored for decades start to go mainstream.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-28-2025
Trump’s power slips away.
Quantum physics meets information theory at LHC. Physics makes progress.
“the universe as a whole may be timeless and unchanging, while observers inside the universe can perceive temporal evolution.”
https://restofworld.org/2025/chatgpt-three-years-global-impact/
Impact outside US is likely greater than here.
https://www.macstories.net/notes/the-ai-app-experience-matters-more-than-benchmarks-now/
If you pay $20/m you get Perplexity search and Claude mid-range ai chat.
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/tpuv7-google-takes-a-swing-at-the
TPU adoption drives NVIDIA discounts, NVIDIA lab investments hide discounts to keep list price high. Lots of insights here.