Week 30
The Lever: "The SNAP Subsidy.. At America’s biggest corporations, low wages mean thousands of workers rely on federal food stamps to get by."
Coding changed for UKR frontline mapping.. Before / after is not available for this one, differencing is reset with this new version. Next update will have the before / after comparison.
#Ukraine 07/23
Win some lose some.. country still divided. Sad
#Sudan 2025/10/30 - 2026/07/24
JC learned the trade in the Navy, and was part of the team sent to fix Canada's Chalk River reactor meltdown. He had legit cred.. But, as an engineer you are trained on what is known at the time, for implementation purposes. Is such knowledge enough to make strategic energy choices? A garbageman knows garbage, but can he implement sound garbage collection policy?
Carter played a critical role in continuing US's "nuclear mistake". He could've changed focus from inefficient light-water reactors to thorium which was proven at Oak Ridge labs. The fact that he was a trained nuclear engineer (yes) might have made things worse, his decision would carry more weight than it rightfully deserved.
Dem centrism, ie cosying up to economic right, might have started with JFK.. things got worse with Carter, and reached a zenith with Bill Clinton who could be labeled as Southern Ronald Reagan. Next in line was Black Bill Clinton who famously said that in the 80s "he would be considered a moderate Republican".
"[JFK] argued correctly [?] that the lower tax rates would 'raise revenues in the long run.' [standard economic right-winger talking point today]... When Reagan entered office he picked up where Kennedy left off"
The Lever: "The AI Boom Runs On Toxic Air.. Big Tech is building AI infrastructure in the world’s most polluting oil field, where Americans face mounting exposure to toxic emissions and regulators struggle to keep watch."
IC: "Why Trump’s Allies in Israel & AIPAC’s on the Hill are in Trouble.. The Trump-Netanyahu partnership has been disastrous for both nations and the world.. On July 15th, 103 Democrats voted to cut $3.3B in aid to Israel in the State Department spending bill. This is a profound expression of rejection of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s leadership by a majority of House Democrats. While this vote is only symbolic for now, it represents a tectonic shift within the Democratic Party and a dramatic reckoning."
It is normal Kuwait remains an "unfinished business" for Iraq. The people who created these countries made this happen. Look how Iraq's map is structured - officially on the Persian Gulf but given only a little shit corridor to get out, with Kuwait blocking most of its access.
Wouldn't it be ironic Iraq, after Saddam, invades Kuwait, again, and this time US cannot do anything about it?
Maybe Iran is looking for some "side benefits" from this war. If Kuwait is unliveable, it will be easy to invade, by Iran or (easier) by Shite ruled Iraq.
F24: "Iranian strikes targeted Kuwait’s desalination and power plants for the fourth consecutive day on Monday."
NYT: "Attacks in Red Sea Send Oil Prices Over $100 a Barrel"
BBC: "Houthis claim attack on oil tankers as US launches more strikes on Iran.. Yemen's Houthis say they have attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea as the US launched its 12th consecutive night of strikes on Iran."
Politico: "New poll shows Trump voters losing patience with Iran war"
"Severe Heatwave Hits Japan, Dozens Hospitalized Due to Extreme Temperatures.. Record summer temperatures put health services on high alert as authorities urge precautions against heat stroke"
"@GeofCox@climatejustice.social
France has an almost universal provision of state apartment blocks for young people - my son lives in one now. They are like university halls of residence, but instead of just students at one uni, they are open to anybody under 25 that has a 'personal project' - any education or training course, starting work, setting up a business, etc. Generally, people can stay up to 2 years, and most have a social worker attached to help young people into independent life - everything from tax forms to counselling.
It's brilliant - but then over half of the French economy is in the public sector - which is what the UK should be aiming for."
"@GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
circular funding and circular press releases continue!"
@Techmeme@techhub.social
AMD and Anthropic sign an AI server deal worth tens of billions; Anthropic will buy 2GW of Instinct MI450 chips in H1 2027, and AMD will invest $5B in Anthropic (Wall Street Journal)
The BEV approach is the brainchild of Dem centrist dickwads in America. They bungled this one up like they do for everything else. Then the rest of the world copied bcz "it's what America does". This needs to change.
Battery elecric tech is an inferior approach to green energy. The most efficient method of storage is based on molecules.
"Electric vehicles are pulling their weight – and then some. Picture a shiny new electric SUV merging onto a motorway: it glides near-silently, but under the floor lies a battery pack that makes it hundreds of kilos heavier than a similar petrol car... Multiply that extra weight across millions of EVs worldwide and you start to see the strain on our infrastructure."
WaPo: "Modeling agent who introduced women to Jeffrey Epstein found dead ..."
LLM says "easy to buy local SIM once you arrive in country A", then seperate convo it says "very difficult to get local SIM in that country". Which one is it?
The tech is not maintaining a consistent, singular "worldview". Its knowledge, such as it is, is relational, can change according to the conversation. No wonder, LLMs are trained in a relational manner / relation of words within sentences and sentences within paragraphs.
There is a lot of hallucination even at the "frontier model" level
"AA-Omniscience Hallucination Rate (lower is better) measures how often the model answers incorrectly when it should have refused or admitted to not knowing the answer"
IIR: "Netherlands Funds Hydrogen Storage Plan.. The Dutch government has announced that it will provide 450 million euro.. in funding to help construct the nation's first hydrogen storage caverns as part of its ambitious green hydrogen strategy."
Mario Nawfal: "The richest 0.00001% of Americans now hold wealth equal to 12% of U.S. national income, the widest gap on record.
That's a tiny sliver of people, a few dozen households, sitting on a share that tops even the Robber Baron peak of the early 1900s.
The line barely moved for most of the 20th century, then took off in the 2000s as stocks, real estate and private companies pulled far ahead of wages.
The tech boom and the AI surge stretched it further, with only a brief dip during COVID."
The Lever: "Repeat Food Contaminator [Taylor Farms] Gave $2.2 Million to GOP. Now Thousands Are Sick"
"@digyoursoul@universeodon.com
Spain has started quietly banning companies from signing contracts with Palantir"
"@jonny@neuromatch.social
[T]he sex doll parent company bought by the roving husk of a cryptocurrency / metaverse capital demon pivots to selling hyper-realistic silicoid AI teaching robots to public schools on the Seneca Nation reservation, causing the state to spend $60k per doll they don't have to perform generational damage to already marginalized kids. That's a real consequence of the kind of world all the AI ghouls with a kind face are running cover for."
Julie Carpenter: "As a robotics researcher, learning scientist, and author who has followed Realbotix for years, I'm compelled to do a Bluesky thread on this whole pivot that Realbotix is now trying, turning from humanoid sex robots to classroom "education" robots. Buckle up."
Not a surprise China caught up so fast, LLM tech has stalled. It is easy to catch up with a non-moving target than a moving one. "AI" is in its commodatization phase. Frontier models are only making incremental changes.
"@ben@werd.social
China's open-weights AI strategy is winning: its companies are taking the lead. America's closed-first, locked-down strategy is doomed to failure - and it could take the US economy down with it"
😂
"@todayilearned@noc.social
TIL about the 'Batman effect': In an experiment, a woman appearing pregnant boarded a train. In some trials, another experimenter dressed as Batman also entered. Passengers were far more likely to offer the woman their seat when Batman was present—67.2% compared with 37.7%."
Another reason LLMs (will) need so much compute is that they are wasting it, esp. through "agents", torturing the LLM until it gives the right result, doing this over and over, basically using inefficient methods / roundabout ways to perform a task.
"@jonny@neuromatch.social
So the reason that Claude code is capable of outputting valid json is because if the prompt text suggests it should be JSON then it enters a special loop in the main query engine that just validates it against JSON schema.. and then feeds the data with the error message back into itself until it is valid JSON or a retry limit is reached.
This code is so eye wateringly spaghetti...
There appears to be an unconditional hook where if the JSON output tool is present in the session config at all, then all tool calls must be followed by the "force into JSON" loop.
If that's true, that's just mind blowingly expensive"
Al-Monitor: "US attacks deepen hardship, not dissent, in Iran's restive south"
NYT: "Houthis in Yemen Declare Red Sea Blockade on Saudi Arabia"
WaPo: "Andy Burnham takes charge as U.K. prime minister"
NYT: "Burnham Set to Become Britain’s First Openly Roman Catholic Prime Minister"
Politico: "Troy Jackson has effectively secured the Maine Senate Democratic nomination"
The Hill: "Sanders-founded organization [Our Revolution] backs Troy Jackson for Maine Senate"
Reshare
"@bert_hubert@eupolicy.social
Reading (too much) AI-news is quite upsetting if you try to square it with observed realities of what people are actually achieving (not much). Here @ludicity assures us that we are not wrong. The world of business is no longer able to meaningfully evaluate AI or even talk about it coherently"
Reshare
The Hormuz Report: "Iran to completely shut the Strait of Hormuz, Sea of Oman and Red sea — Iran's IRGC Navy commander warns if U.S. resumes its naval blockade, Iran will shut down all exports and imports across the Persian Gulf, Sea of Oman, and Red Sea."
Jews are fleeing Israel as if it is 1933 Germany. Tragic.
It turns out Messi is a Zionist cunt. I'm glad he and his team lost.
"Spain and Palestine Won. Argentina and Corruption Lost. Netanyahu chose Argentina. Gaza chose Spain. The World Cup final became a contest between political alliances—and this time, the flag raised for Palestine prevailed...
Strip it down and the real matchup was Milei, Messi, and Netanyahu against Sánchez, Yamal, and Palestine. On one side stood Milei and Netanyahu, publicly attaching themselves to Messi and Argentina through friendship calls, diplomatic loyalty, and a tournament in which Argentina repeatedly benefited from a generous whistle. On the other stood Sánchez, Yamal, and the Palestinian cause, which was represented not through private messages between leaders, but through a flag raised openly, despite the backlash."
IC: "How Belgian Campaigners forced a de facto Arms Embargo on Israel"
IC: "On Palestine, the Media’s Job is Accuracy, not 'Balance'.. 'If someone tells you it’s raining and another tells you it’s dry, It’s your job to look out the f—ing window and find out which is true'"
CNBC: "U.S. hits Iran for ninth consecutive night as American casualties rise"
NYT: "Russia Batters Kyiv in One of the Largest Missile Assaults of the War"