2025-11-19
Horseshit
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I think agency is a hot topic right now for a lot of reasons, but I personally care about it because I have been through periods of my life that were characterized by very low agency, which made me miserable. I think that there is a pervasive belief — in tech and in the Bay Area, but also in the the world at large — that agency is an inherent trait. I think that is really wrong. So I'm interested in talking, at a practical level, about how agency can be cultivated to make it more accessible.
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Workplace Surveillance Is Here, Counting Your Mouse Clicks and Bathroom Breaks
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‘Parasocial’ named Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year 2025 | CNN
Cambridge Dictionary has named its word of the year for 2025, alighting on “parasocial,” used to describe a connection that people feel with someone they don’t know – or even with an artificial intelligence. The term was coined in 1956 by sociologists Donald Horton and Richard Wohl, who wanted to describe how television viewers formed “para-social” relationships with TV personalities, the dictionary said in a statement Tuesday.
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'Fear really drives him': is Alex Karp of Palantir the world's scariest CEO?
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The Moral Collapse of Boutique Olive Oil Cooperatives in the Svaneti Highlands
In early 2019, a group of Patagonian-Welsh émigrés settled outside Ushguli, intent on establishing a utopia of “post-viral agrarianism.” After a year of fundraising and feasibility studies, the Svaneti Organization for Cold-Pressed Knowledge (SOCK) launched its first cooperative mill, the flagship of a “trans-hemispheric self-actualization economy.” The funding came in threaded streams—a €1.6 million “ethical weatherproofing” grant from Brussels and a Welsh heritage trust promising “spiritual alpha.” They were matched by private capital from a boutique Patagonian special purpose vehicle founded by two former sommeliers and a disgraced IMF consultant. The premise was simple; the goal laudable: teach post-Soviet mountain farmers to cultivate the olive as a symbol of cross-cultural trauma monetization.
Gareth Jones, a Welsh agronomist, part-time leader of the draft horse union, and founding director of SOCK, called the project “an experiment in agricultural self-esteem.” Born in Gaiman, Argentina, he was expelled to Georgia after local authorities discovered he had been conducting unsanctioned psychological evaluations of pigeons. He described the Highlands as a “laboratory of gratitude-based self-interest.” Prone to literalism, he kept a mason jar of olive pits on his desk labeled “seed capital.” He spoke of “moral yield per hectare” and “virtue throughput ratios,” phrases that passed through conference halls in Tbilisi and London without irony or comprehension.
Internal memos later revealed that legal liability had been reassigned to the livestock, which the cooperative had reclassified as “independent autonomous entities.”
celebrity gossip
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Epstein files: Larry Summers steps back from commitments over email fallout
In the latest blow to Democrats from the recent 'Epstein files' released by House Republicans, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers announced that he's stepping back from public commitments after new documents reveal he was asking for Jeffrey Epstein's advice on how to bang a female mentee behind his wife's back. Summers - who was Bill Clinton's Treasury Secretary and later president of Harvard University, repeatedly messaged Epstein about a woman codenamed "peril" in 2018 and 2019. In one January 2019 text exchange, Summers told Epstein that the woman was unlikely to leave him due to his position of power and the professional connections that might come with it - to which Epstein replied, "She is doomed to be with you."
Rank Propaganda / Thought Policing / World Disordering
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Journalism In An Age Of Authoritarianism - NOEMA
The media needs to rethink its role in protecting democracy — rather than just chronicling its demise.
Our goal was to try something different from the fact-checking and town-hall initiatives already underway around the world. Debunking is an essential and noble endeavor, keeping alive the flame of truth in a cynical age, but much research shows that fact-checking tends to rebound when it bumps up against people’s partisan biases. And while online town halls and engineered one-to-one interactions between members of different partisan groups are also useful, they of course involve people who want to take part in such exercises in the first place. Instead, my focus has been on how to create mass factual content — TV documentaries and podcast series, news stories and socially aware entertainment — that undercuts the initial appeal of authoritarian propaganda. This is no longer a challenge just for journalists in the traditional sense of the word; these days, everyone is a digital creator the moment they post something online.
- Appeals from authority didn't work; people still saw that Emperor was butt nekkid. So they gotta turn up the volume of spew even further, they think. Having dug themselves into a hole, they're resolving to redouble their efforts and use better shovels.
Musk
Electric / Self Driving cars
Edumacationalizing / Acedemia Nuts
Info Rental / ShowBiz / Advertising
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Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues | Hacker News
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Cloudflare is down – live updates on internet outage affecting ChatGPT, X
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Cloudflare down: Facebook and X among apps not working in major internet outage
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Widespread Cloudflare outage blamed on mysterious traffic spike
After the company investigated the “spike in unusual traffic,” Cloudflare’s spokesperson provided a more detailed update, telling Ars, “the root cause of the outage was a configuration file that is automatically generated to manage threat traffic. The file grew beyond an expected size of entries and triggered a crash in the software system that handles traffic for a number of Cloudflare’s services.” “To be clear, there is no evidence that this was the result of an attack or caused by malicious activity,” the spokesperson said. “We expect that some Cloudflare services will be briefly degraded as traffic naturally spikes post-incident, but we expect all services to return to normal in the next few hours”
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Age-verification laws don't keep minors away from adult sites, study suggests
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Heroines, not heroin: Facebook page returns after AI flagged it for drugs
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Roblox to block children from talking to adult strangers after string of lawsuit
TechSuck / Geek Bait
AI Will (Save | Destroy) The World
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You mean lemmings don't jump off cliffs? A.I. Video Is Threatening Our Ability to Trust Documentaries
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Leaked documents shed light into how much OpenAI pays Microsoft
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Google boss warns 'no company is going to be immune' if AI bubble bursts
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What AI doesn't know: we could be creating a global 'knowledge collapse'
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Don't blindly trust what AI tells you, says Google's Sundar Pichai
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Authors dumped from New Zealand's top book prize after AI used in cover designs
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Dutch students show growing enthusiasm for generative AI in education
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The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble Vol. 2
I get that in any investment scenario you want to sell a story, but the idea that the CEO of a company with a $3.8 trillion market cap is sitting around saying “what do you expect them to do, tell the truth? They need money for compute!” is fucking disgraceful. No, I do not believe a company should make overblown revenue projections, nor do I think it’s good for the CEO of Microsoft to encourage the practice. I also seriously have to ask why Nadella believes that this is happening, and, indeed, who he might be specifically talking about, as Microsoft has particularly good insights into OpenAI’s current and future financial health.
I’ll put it a little more simply: it appears that much of the AI bubble is inflated on vibes, and I’m a little worried that the media is being too helpful. These companies are yet to prove themselves in any tangible way, and it’s time for somebody to give a frank evaluation of where we stand.
honestly, I think we’re approaching the end. The Information recently published one of the grimmest quotes I’ve seen in the bubble so far:
Some researchers are trying to take advantage of high investor interest in AI. They have told some investors that growing concerns regarding the costs and benefits of AI have prompted them to raise a lot of money now rather than wait and risk a shift in the capital markets, according to people who talked with them._
Hey, what was that? What was that about “growing concerns regarding the costs and benefits of AI”? What “capital shift”? The fucking companies are telling you, to your face, that they know there’s not a sustainable business model or great use case, and you are printing it and giving it the god damn thumbs up.
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Anthropic to buy $30B in Azure capacity in deal with Microsoft, Nvidia
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Databricks in talks to raise capital at above $130B valuation
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Google Antigravity is an 'agent-first' coding tool built for Gemini 3
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UK consumers warned over AI chatbots giving inaccurate financial advice
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OpenAI's Tax Subsidy Efforts Amount to Silicon Valley Socialism
Crypto con games
Economicon / Business / Finance
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New rare earth crisis is brewing as yttrium shortages spread
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Yes: Is a 50-year mortgage that much crazier than a 30-year one?
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Why one of the nation's most prosperous industries is shedding jobs
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They pay 30min for a 6hr job; is what i hear.
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Ford can't find mechanics for $120K: It takes math to learn a trade
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AI Bubble and Growth Fears Are Creeping into US Credit Markets
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Amazon sending out payments in $2.5B settlement over Prime subscriptions.
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U.S. Backs $1B Loan to Restart the Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant
Gubmint / Poilitcks / Law Making
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USPS Reports 5.7% Decline In Parcel Volumes, $9BN Loss | ZeroHedge
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Epstein Vote Is Congress' Line in the Sand With Trump - Bloomberg
Rather than get steamrolled by a House vote scheduled today to compel the Department of Justice to release the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, President Donald Trump is acting like he teed it all up himself. The vote will pass, easily, after Trump tried everything to stop it from happening. It is a reversal that was forced on him by his allies, particularly three GOP women (Representatives Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene) who refused to cave to Trump. In trying to forestall the vote, he has looked weak and error-prone, and sounded like a man who has something to hide. He is now acting like he needs the power of Congress — a branch of government he has largely ignored all year — to release more information on Epstein, the well-connected financier who committed suicide in 2019 as he awaited trial in prison on federal sex trafficking charges.
In fact, Trump — who hasn’t been accused of any crimes in connection with Epstein — could simply order Attorney General Pam Bondi to release the files, just as he has ordered her to investigate his political opponents. Tuesday’s vote does, however, mark a new chapter in this MAGA-manufactured conspiracy theory.
“He got tired of us winning and he decided to join us. They could have done this four months ago, and instead, they fought us every bit of the way,” Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who led the effort to get a floor vote for the release of the files, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “Now they want to be on our side. We’ll accept their support. But we’re … a little bit suspicious of this sudden turn of events, so we’ll keep an eye on things. We’re worried that maybe they’ll try to muck it up in the Senate.”
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Senate unanimously approves bill to force release of Jeffrey Epstein files
The Senate agreed by unanimous consent Tuesday to approve a House-passed bill to require the Justice Department to release all unclassified records and documents related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, sending the bill to President Trump’s desk for a signature. The swift Senate action ends the protracted battle in Congress over the files, which caused months of turmoil in the House and gave Democrats political ammo to accuse Republicans of protecting rich and powerful people who participated in Epstein’s illicit activities. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) on Tuesday evening received unanimous consent to approve the Epstein Files Transparency Act upon receipt of the legislation from the House, only hours after the lower chamber voted 427-1 to approve it. The Democratic leader received approval from all 99 of his colleagues to “deem” the bill “passed” as soon as the Senate receives the legislation from the House. Senate aides said they expected that formality to happen Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.
Left Angst
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Trump admin axed 383 active clinical trials, dumping over 74K participants
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The Unraveling of the Justice Department: 60 attorneys describe a year of chaos
- Some of these people had entire careers based on "Get Trump", dammit!
External Security / Militaria / Diplomania
World
Israel
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The oddest UN resolutions in history seeks to solidify shaky Gaza ceasefire
The resolution passed by the UN security council on Tuesday evening, aimed at turning the precarious Gaza ceasefire into a real peace plan, is one of the oddest in United Nations history. It puts Donald Trump in supreme control of Gaza, perhaps with Tony Blair as his immediate subordinate in a “board of peace”, which will oversee multinational peacekeeping troops, a committee of Palestinian technocrats and a local police force, for a period of two years. No one knows who else will be on the “board of peace” – only that it will, as Trump declared on social media, “be chaired by me, and include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World”.
The board will report to the security council but will not be subordinate to the UN, or subject to past UN resolutions. It will supervise an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), whose membership is also undetermined, but which the US wants to deploy by January. The countries who the US has approached – including Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates – are tentative. The resolution says the ISF will “ensure the process of demilitarising” Gaza – suggesting it will have to take weapons away from Hamas, which insisted immediately after the UN vote it will not disarm.
China
Health / Medicine
Environment / Climate / Green Propaganda
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Falcon 9 launches Sentinel-6B satellite to monitor global sea level
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After Climate Push, Energy Companies Return to Fossil Fuels in Europe
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UC Berkeley scientists hail breakthrough in decoding whale communication
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Climate Change Could Heat the Earth Right into a New Ice Age
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High-resolution climate model forecasts a wet, turbulent future