https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/the-political-economy-of-ai-a-syllabus
The reading list is impressive. I want to be in this kind of course.
Synthetic E Coli genome uses 3 fewer codons than any know life form.
Huge feat of genetic engineering. The resulting bacteria is feeble for now. It could evolve.
Work suggests 60 codon rule is more chance than chemistry/physics. A foundation for molecular machines.
HCR: “As Roberts said, the Supreme Court’s decision giving Trump immunity was important because destroying the country’s institutions would require lawbreaking”
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/july-30-2025
Heritage Foundation (2025) Kevin Roberts is an ascendant power — even as Trump fades and Rupert dies. Roberts and Thiel are among the great enemies of secular liberal democracy.
Title IX and the trans-wars: a professor of politics on the history, value, and risks of advancing ideology through university regulation.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/the-rights-revenge
Long, detailed, fact based. Provides context for the MAGA pillaging of science and learning.
Feedbin Browser Extension to support Subscribe & “Read Later”
https://feedbin.com/blog/2025/07/30/browser-extension/
New release. I subscribe to Feedbin. It just works.
“idea is to get Maxwell to exonerate Trump and accuse various globalist/Democrat baddies … but just absolutely still don’t look at the evidence seized from Epstein’s homes”
Marshall thoughtful analysis of whether Trump is reflexively defensive or if he thinks he did very bad things.
We sleep because mitochondria need a rest.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/it-all-comes-down-mitochondria
“aerobic respiration itself comes with the tradeoff of a required sleep state in order to catch up and restore mitochondrial function in the nervous system”
Sleeping seems a good idea.
“every time you use Safari, the browser will introduce a little bit of data noise and deploy a couple of other techniques to confuse the trackers”
Good feature and I’m sure Apple won’t bypass it.
Real ID in Minnesota has 97 day backlog.
SSRIs As Cancer Therapy
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ssris-cancer-therapy
The receptors are everywhere.
Trump Action Tracker: database of MAGA project to end America.
An economist and Vietnam veteran on who fights the American wars.
The foul legacy of the despicable Mr Hogan. (And the MAGA Thiel)
“Mr. Thiel recognized then was that someone with deep pockets can try to drown an outlet in legal fees”
“Even a decade and a half on, journalists were still worried that what happened at Gawker would happen to them.”
A milestone in the breaking of America
Gruber calls the end of Gmail: “Mark my words, they’re going to do with this Gmail accounts eventually.”
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/07/26/google-link-shortener
Google already charges for Gmail storage. So they will simply increase fees.
But if Google can’t replace search revenue from the web they destroyed …
MAGA infects Japan: “Cutting down on overtourism would probably go a long way toward defusing Japan’s rising anti-foreign backlash”
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-anti-immigration-backlash-comes
Japan’s best years are behind it.
“when not instructed to have a certain political leaning, LLMs tend to converge on one very specific type of politics: social liberalism and economic libertarianism”
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-things-c56
Obama/Clinton basically.
“basic logic of enshittification … applies to any business characterized by network effects”
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-general-theory-of-enshittification
“earnings inflection strategy” … is a euphemism to be savored”
It’s all about switching costs.
“Dave White, a mathematician, on the OpenAI IMO gold medal”
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jul/23/dave-white/#atom-everything
You and I are next.
“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 …