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Marginal Revolution

Thursday assorted links

Tyler Cowen
Updated

1. What is a building permit worth?

2. The ground crew culture that is German.

3. “Using event study analysis, we show that music streaming – an indicator for smartphone use, where streaming most often occurs – sharply increases, by nearly 40%, on dates of major music album releases, while U.S. traffic fatalities increase by nearly 15% on those same days.”

4. The size and scope of publication bias.

5. Which schools are most represented in history of economic thought textbooks?

The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

 
Simon Willison's Weblog

tldraw issue: Move tests to closed source repo

tldraw issue: Move tests to closed source repo

It's become very apparent over the past few months that a comprehensive test suite is enough to build a completely fresh implementation of any open source library from scratch, potentially in a different language.

This has worrying implications for open source projects with commercial business models. Here's an example of a response: tldraw, the outstanding collaborative drawing library (see previous coverage), are moving their test suite to a private repository - apparently in response to Cloudflare's project to port Next.js to use Vite in a week using AI.

They also filed a joke issue, now closed to Translate source code to Traditional Chinese:

The current tldraw codebase is in English, making it easy for external AI coding agents to replicate. It is imperative that we defend our intellectual property.

Worth noting that tldraw aren't technically open source - their custom license requires a commercial license if you want to use it in "production environments".

Via @steveruizok

Tags: open-source, cloudflare, ai-ethics

Simon Willison's Weblog

Claude Code Remote Control

Claude Code Remote Control

New Claude Code feature dropped yesterday: you can now run a "remote control" session on your computer and then use the Claude Code for web interfaces (on web, iOS and native desktop app) to send prompts to that session.

It's a little bit janky right now. Initially when I tried it I got the error "Remote Control is not enabled for your account. Contact your administrator." (but I am my administrator?) - then I logged out and back into the Claude Code terminal app and it started working:

claude remote-control

You can only run one session on your machine at a time. If you upgrade the Claude iOS app it then shows up as "Remote Control Session (Mac)" in the Code tab.

It appears not to support the --dangerously-skip-permissions flag (I passed that to claude remote-control and it didn't reject the option, but it also appeared to have no effect) - which means you have to approve every new action it takes.

I also managed to get it to a state where every prompt I tried was met by an API 500 error.

Screenshot of a "Remote Control session" (Mac:dev:817b) chat interface. User message: "Play vampire by Olivia Rodrigo in music app". Response shows an API Error: 500 {"type":"error","error":{"type":"api_error","message":"Internal server error"},"request_id":"req_011CYVBLH9yt2ze2qehrX8nk"} with a "Try again" button. Below, the assistant responds: "I'll play "Vampire" by Olivia Rodrigo in the Music app using AppleScript." A Bash command panel is open showing an osascript command: osascript -e 'tell application "Music" activate set searchResults to search playlist "Library" for "vampire Olivia Rodrigo" if (count of searchResults) > 0 then play item 1 of searchResults else return "Song not found in library" end if end tell'

Restarting the program on the machine also causes existing sessions to start returning mysterious API errors rather than neatly explaining that the session has terminated.

I expect they'll iron out all of these issues relatively quickly. It's interesting to then contrast this to solutions like OpenClaw, where one of the big selling points is the ability to control your personal device from your phone.

Claude Code still doesn't have a documented mechanism for running things on a schedule, which is the other killer feature of the Claw category of software.

Update: I spoke too soon: also today Anthropic announced Schedule recurring tasks in Cowork, Claude Code's general agent sibling. These do include an important limitation:

Scheduled tasks only run while your computer is awake and the Claude Desktop app is open. If your computer is asleep or the app is closed when a task is scheduled to run, Cowork will skip the task, then run it automatically once your computer wakes up or you open the desktop app again.

I really hope they're working on a Cowork Cloud product.

Via @claudeai

Tags: ai, generative-ai, applescript, llms, anthropic, claude, coding-agents, claude-code, openclaw

Simon Willison's Weblog

I vibe coded my dream macOS presentation app

I gave a talk this weekend at Social Science FOO Camp in Mountain View. The event was a classic unconference format where anyone could present a talk without needing to propose it in advance. I grabbed a slot for a talk I titled "The State of LLMs, February 2026 edition", subtitle "It's all changed since November!". I vibe coded a custom macOS app for the presentation the night before.

A sticky note on a board at FOO Camp. It reads: The state of LLMs, Feb 2026 edition - it's all changed since November! Simon Willison - the card is littered with names of new models: Qwen 3.5, DeepSeek 3.2, Sonnet 4.6, Kimi K2.5, GLM5, Opus 4.5/4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Codex 5.3. The card next to it says Why do Social Scientists think they need genetics? Bill January (it's not all because of AI)

I've written about the last twelve months of development in LLMs in December 2023, December 2024 and December 2025. I also presented The last six months in LLMs, illustrated by pelicans on bicycles at the AI Engineer World’s Fair in June 2025. This was my first time dropping the time covered to just three months, which neatly illustrates how much the space keeps accelerating and felt appropriate given the November 2025 inflection point.

(I further illustrated this acceleration by wearing a Gemini 3 sweater to the talk, which I was given a couple of weeks ago and is already out-of-date thanks to Gemini 3.1.)

I always like to have at least one gimmick in any talk I give, based on the STAR moment principle I learned at Stanford - include Something They'll Always Remember to try and help your talk stand out.

For this talk I had two gimmicks. I built the first part of the talk around coding agent assisted data analysis of Kākāpō breeding season (which meant I got to show off my mug), then did a quick tour of some new pelicans riding bicycles before ending with the reveal that the entire presentation had been presented using a new macOS app I had vibe coded in ~45 minutes the night before the talk.

Present.app

The app is called Present - literally the first name I thought of. It's built using Swift and SwiftUI and weighs in at 355KB, or 76KB compressed. Swift apps are tiny!

It may have been quick to build but the combined set of features is something I've wanted for years.

I usually use Keynote for presentations, but sometimes I like to mix things up by presenting using a sequence of web pages. I do this by loading up a browser window with a tab for each page, then clicking through those tabs in turn while I talk.

This works great, but comes with a very scary disadvantage: if the browser crashes I've just lost my entire deck!

I always have the URLs in a notes file, so I can click back to that and launch them all manually if I need to, but it's not something I'd like to deal with in the middle of a talk.

This was my starting prompt:

Build a SwiftUI app for giving presentations where every slide is a URL. The app starts as a window with a webview on the right and a UI on the left for adding, removing and reordering the sequence of URLs. Then you click Play in a menu and the app goes full screen and the left and right keys switch between URLs

That produced a plan. You can see the transcript that implemented that plan here.

In Present a talk is an ordered sequence of URLs, with a sidebar UI for adding, removing and reordering those URLs. That's the entirety of the editing experience.

Screenshot of a macOS app window titled "Present" showing Google Image search results for "kakapo". A web view shows a Google image search with thumbnail photos of kākāpō parrots with captions. A sidebar on the left shows a numbered list of URLs, mostly from simonwillison.net and static.simonwillison.net, with item 4 (https://www.google.com/search?...) highlighted in blue.

When you select the "Play" option in the menu (or hit Cmd+Shift+P) the app switches to full screen mode. Left and right arrow keys navigate back and forth, and you can bump the font size up and down or scroll the page if you need to. Hit Escape when you're done.

Crucially, Present saves your URLs automatically any time you make a change. If the app crashes you can start it back up again and restore your presentation state.

You can also save presentations as a .txt file (literally a newline-delimited sequence of URLs) and load them back up again later.

Remote controlled via my phone

Getting the initial app working took so little time that I decided to get more ambitious.

It's neat having a remote control for a presentation...

So I prompted:

Add a web server which listens on 0.0.0.0:9123 - the web server serves a single mobile-friendly page with prominent left and right buttons - clicking those buttons switches the slide left and right - there is also a button to start presentation mode or stop depending on the mode it is in.

I have Tailscale on my laptop and my phone, which means I don't have to worry about Wi-Fi networks blocking access between the two devices. My phone can access http://100.122.231.116:9123/ directly from anywhere in the world and control the presentation running on my laptop.

It took a few more iterative prompts to get to the final interface, which looked like this:

Mobile phone web browser app with large buttons, Slide 4/31 at the top, Prev, Next and Start buttons, a thin bar with a up/down scroll icon and text size + and - buttons and the current slide URL at the bottom.

There's a slide indicator at the top, prev and next buttons, a nice big "Start" button and buttons for adjusting the font size.

The most complex feature is that thin bar next to the start button. That's a touch-enabled scroll bar - you can slide your finger up and down on it to scroll the currently visible web page up and down on the screen.

It's very clunky but it works just well enough to solve the problem of a page loading with most interesting content below the fold.

Learning from the code

I'd already pushed the code to GitHub (with a big "This app was vibe coded [...] I make no promises other than it worked on my machine!" disclaimer) when I realized I should probably take a look at the code.

I used this as an opportunity to document a recent pattern I've been using: asking the model to present a linear walkthrough of the entire codebase. Here's the resulting Linear walkthroughs pattern in my ongoing Agentic Engineering Patterns guide, including the prompt I used.

The resulting walkthrough document is genuinely useful. It turns out Claude Code decided to implement the web server for the remote control feature using socket programming without a library! Here's the minimal HTTP parser it used for routing:

    private func route(_ raw: String) -> String {
        let firstLine = raw.components(separatedBy: "\r\n").first ?? ""
        let parts = firstLine.split(separator: " ")
        let path = parts.count >= 2 ? String(parts[1]) : "/"

        switch path {
        case "/next":
            state?.goToNext()
            return jsonResponse("ok")
        case "/prev":
            state?.goToPrevious()
            return jsonResponse("ok")

Using GET requests for state changes like that opens up some fun CSRF vulnerabilities. For this particular application I don't really care.

Expanding our horizons

Vibe coding stories like this are ten a penny these days. I think this one is worth sharing for a few reasons:

  • Swift, a language I don't know, was absolutely the right choice here. I wanted a full screen app that embedded web content and could be controlled over the network. Swift had everything I needed.
  • When I finally did look at the code it was simple, straightforward and did exactly what I needed and not an inch more.
  • This solved a real problem for me. I've always wanted a good way to serve a presentation as a sequence of pages, and now I have exactly that.

This doesn't mean native Mac developers are obsolete. I still used a whole bunch of my own accumulated technical knowledge (and the fact that I'd already installed Xcode and the like) to get this result, and someone who knew what they were doing could have built a far better solution in the same amount of time.

It's a neat illustration of how those of us with software engineering experience can expand our horizons in fun and interesting directions. I'm no longer afraid of Swift! Next time I need a small, personal macOS app I know that it's achievable with our existing set of tools.

Tags: macos, ai, generative-ai, llms, ai-assisted-programming, vibe-coding, swift, agentic-engineering

Paul Krugman

When Extraterrestrials Attacked the Stock Market

Paul Krugman
Updated

War of the Worlds (2025) | Rotten Tomatoes

On October 30, 1938 a very young Orson Welles pulled a clever stunt. He masterminded a live radio dramatization of H.G. Wells’s War of the Worlds, presented as if CBS was actually reporting on a Martian invasion. Although the program occasionally notified listeners that it was a dramatic presentation, not news, thousands of Americans panicked, packing churches, fleeing their homes, and jamming switchboards.

Last weekend Citrini Research released a report — on Substack! — titled The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis. The report, which rapidly went viral, laid out a scenario for economic and financial chaos caused by AI, written as if it were a retrospective published after the dire developments it projected. Although it’s always hard to know why financial markets move on any given day, the report may have played a role in Monday’s 800-point decline in the Dow. Science fiction moving markets? Why not?

There are two distinct questions about the huge reaction to a report that didn’t actually contain any news. It was just opinion, albeit cleverly presented. The first is whether the economic scenario the report laid out makes sense, to which the answer is no. The second is why investors are so on edge that such a report could elicit such an extreme reaction.

Citrini Research argued that AI will rapidly disrupt many businesses – a statement that could be true but is hardly news. Interestingly, the authors didn’t stress the ways AI could replace human workers. Instead, they argued that AI agents can replace many businesses that act as middlemen.

Their motivating example was DoorDash, America’s largest online food delivery company. When you go to DoorDash’s website to order a meal, the company’s algorithm both passes that order on to the restaurant and arranges for delivery by a gig-worker driver. All this, the authors argued, will become unnecessary. Writing as if describing past events, they say

Coding agents had collapsed the barrier to entry for launching a delivery app. A competent developer could deploy a functional competitor in weeks, and dozens did, enticing drivers away from DoorDash and Uber Eats by passing 90-95% of the delivery fee through to the driver. Multi-app dashboards let gig workers track incoming jobs from twenty or thirty platforms at once, eliminating the lock-in that the incumbents depended on. The market fragmented overnight and margins compressed to nearly nothing.

Could this happen? Maybe. The ludicrousness of much AI hype shouldn’t blind us to the growing evidence that it is significantly changing some kinds of work. When someone like Mike Konczal explains how AI has transformed some parts of his work, I sit up, take notice, and resolve to try it out myself (eventually).

Examples of industries that have been quickly wiped out by technological change — not as quickly as the Citrini post predicts, but quick nonetheless — are easy to find. Consider the case of video rental stores, still ubiquitous in 2005, obliterated by streaming a few years later:

A graph showing a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.

When an industry suddenly collapses, people get hurt: Investors lose their money, workers lose their jobs and in some cases their whole careers. But does technology-driven industrial disruption cause financial and economic crises, the way Citrini Research predicts? I can’t come up with any examples. The tech boom of the 1990s caused a recession when it ended, not while it was underway.

The Citrini post argued that investors and workers hurt by AI will cut their spending, which they will. But if AI delivers big productivity gains, it will reduce prices and raise real income in sectors that aren’t displaced, causing other Americans to spend more. There’s no reason to believe that disrupting part of the economy will reduce overall demand.

The only way I can see that AI could be a recessionary force would be if the firms and/or workers who lose from the technology were highly leveraged — that is, were carrying a lot of debt — and so were forced to cut their spending much more than those gaining from AI increased their spending. But there’s no evidence for that.

So while Citrini may be right about how disruptive AI will be — I think they’re overhyping it but I could be persuaded otherwise — I’m quite sure that they’re wrong about the macroeconomic effects.

Which still leaves the question of how a basically literary endeavor — a speculative essay about the economics of AI that brought no new facts to the table — could rattle financial markets.

Let’s go back to Orson Welles and the Martians.

Welles was a genius and his adaptation of H.G. Wells was brilliant, but it the fact that it aired in 1938 surely contributed to its impact. For Americans were primed for panic. The Great Depression wasn’t over — in fact, the economy had just suffered a nasty relapse:

A graph with a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Overseas, fascism was on the rise, and the storm clouds of war were obviously gathering. Americans were, understandably, ill at ease. No wonder, then, that some were ready to panic over what sounded like dire news on the radio.

Fast forward to this week. We’re living amidst political turmoil that is spilling over into economic uncertainty. Donald Trump has just seen most of his signature economic policy, his tariffs, declared illegal by the Supreme Court, and has responded by imposing steep new tariffs, also clearly illegal. The European Union has suspended consideration of its trade deal with the United States.

Everyone is also worried that Trump will seek political and psychological compensation by attacking Iran. According to news reports, military officers have been warning Trump that such an attack would be high-risk. The real news here is that someone is leaking this information, an indication that insiders are worried that Trump might do it anyway.

So these are uneasy times — the kind of times in which investors can be rattled by an alarmist financial analysis that goes viral.

And the truth is that I’m uneasy too. But I’m less worried about either Martians or artificial intelligences than I am by some of the human beings currently in positions of power.

MUSICAL CODA

Something calming:

Paul Krugman

Europe v America: Who’s Really Winning?

Paul Krugman
Updated
If you're going to eat bread it's probably better to do it in Europe for this and other reasons. Why is American food so unhealthy? | Robert Lufkin MD | 285 comments

Not one of my regular morning posts, but something I’ve been thinking about. Many readers may want to disregard it.

Regular readers know that I have a longstanding interest in comparisons between the U.S. and European economies — largely because that comparison is important for geopolitics and economic policy, but also because it’s intellectually interesting. The conventional wisdom among elites on both sides of the Atlantic is that Europe is falling far behind. But I’m a skeptic. And I have some new thoughts about the issue.

So I thought I’d do a wonkish post, aimed primarily at economists, to explain what I think is going on.

This post was inspired in large part by an extremely informative post by Seth Ackerman that has generated a lot of discussion in the circle of economists who worry about such matters. My take is a bit different from his, although not contradictory. I’m basically enlarging on a point I made a couple of months ago, although I hope this version is clearer.

Ackerman points us to a seeming contradiction between widely cited comparisons of the US and EU economies. I’d summarize this issue as a tale of three charts. In each case I’ll compare 2007 — the year before the global financial crisis, and a useful baseline — with 2024.

First, look at EU and US gross domestic product, measured in dollars at current prices.

A graph with a line AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: World Bank

In 2007 the EU economy was slightly larger by this measure. Now the US economy is about 50% bigger. Wow!

Or maybe not. A lot of this reflects a decline in the euro against the dollar, rather than differences in real economic growth. So this is a really bad measure to use.

An alternative is to look at growth in real GDP — GDP at constant prices (in this case 2015 dollars). This measure shows the U.S. growing substantially more than the EU, although not 50 percent more:

A graph with a line AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: World Bank

So US economic growth is outpacing growth in Europe, and Europe needs to address its lag. Right?

Not so fast.

Look at a third comparison: GDP at purchasing power parity, that is, using the same prices for goods in the EU and the US, in effect adjusting for differences in the overall price level. Here’s what that comparison looked like in 2007 and 2024:

A graph with a line going up AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: World Bank

By this measure, in 2007 the EU economy was slightly, but only slightly, smaller than the U.S. economy. By 2024 the EU economy was … still slightly smaller than the U.S. economy. Indeed, the gap was a bit less in percentage terms.

The second and third charts look contradictory. One says that in real terms the US economy has grown much faster than the EU economy. The other says that in real terms the two economies have stayed roughly equal in size. Those statements can’t both be true, can they?

Actually, they can.

Ackerman emphasizes data problems: Differences in the way national statistical agencies calculate growth. I don’t want to minimize those issues. But even with comparable data, the fact is that the EU and US economies produce different mixes of goods, with the US dominating information technology industries, which have also seen much faster productivity growth than other industries. And this difference in industrial mix causes differences in real GDP growth that aren’t reflected in different trends in living standards.

I find that the easiest way to make this point is with a stylized, exaggerated numerical Ricardian example.

Imagine, then, that there are two countries, the US and the EU. In each country, labor is the only factor of production, and each country has 100 workers. (Examples like this are thought experiments and are not supposed to be realistic.) There are two goods, tech (T) and non-tech (N). The US has a comparative advantage in T, so that all global T production is concentrated there.

An aside about the real world: In practice, the US tech advantage has a lot to do with local industrial clusters, but the source of the advantage doesn’t matter for current purposes.

Productivity in the two countries is the same in N; we can choose units so that 1 worker produces 1 unit of N.

I assume that half the US work force, 50 workers, is employed producing T. For the really nerdy, this is what you would get if preferences are Cobb-Douglas with a T share of 0.25. The rest of you can pretend you didn’t read that.

Since both countries produce N, and they have the same productivity in that sector, wages in the two countries will be the same.

Now assume that productivity in tech doubles. Since the EU doesn’t produce T, none of the numbers for the EU change. But numbers for the US economy do. Specifically, we would expect output of T to double, while the price of T relative to N falls in half.

The table below shows the effects on US GDP. Because output of T, which is half the economy in this example, doubles, GDP in 2007 prices rises 50 percent. However, because the price of T relative to N falls in half, GDP measured in terms of N doesn’t change.

Not shown: nothing happens in the EU, which doesn’t produce any T. And because the EU’s GDP — which consists only of N — doesn’t change, US GDP relative to EU GDP measured at current purchasing power also doesn’t change.

A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Author’s imagination

In short, a situation in which the US dominates the sector with rapid technological progress, but this progress is passed on to everyone in the form of lower prices, will look just like what we see for the US/EU comparison in practice. America has faster growth measured in base-year prices, but the relative size of the economies measured at PPP doesn’t change.

If this feels like a contradiction, it’s because the concept of real GDP is often misunderstood. Calculations of real GDP involve using market prices to add up apples and oranges, a useful exercise for many purposes. We often like to think about economic growth as if the economy produces a single, homogeneous good. But that’s just a metaphor, and one needs to be careful not to use that metaphor when it can lead you astray. And it can very much lead you astray when you’re comparing nations that produce different mixes of goods because they have staked out different positions in the global economy.

One more real-world aside: Should Europe envy the United States for its tech sector? No. Aside from the fact that Europeans are living well, tech generates a big negative externality, because among other things it generates tech-bro billionaires, who are corrupting our politics.

Back to economics: When comparing the US and the EU, uncritical use of real GDP numbers can lead to the conclusion that Europe is getting poorer relative to America. But it isn’t.

Simon Willison's Weblog

Google API Keys Weren't Secrets. But then Gemini Changed the Rules.

Google API Keys Weren't Secrets. But then Gemini Changed the Rules.

Yikes! It turns out Gemini and Google Maps (and other services) share the same API keys... but Google Maps API keys are designed to be public, since they are embedded directly in web pages. Gemini API keys can be used to access private files and make billable API requests, so they absolutely should not be shared.

If you don't understand this it's very easy to accidentally enable Gemini billing on a previously public API key that exists in the wild already.

What makes this a privilege escalation rather than a misconfiguration is the sequence of events. 

  1. A developer creates an API key and embeds it in a website for Maps. (At that point, the key is harmless.) 
  2. The Gemini API gets enabled on the same project. (Now that same key can access sensitive Gemini endpoints.) 
  3. The developer is never warned that the keys' privileges changed underneath it. (The key went from public identifier to secret credential).

Truffle Security found 2,863 API keys in the November 2025 Common Crawl that could access Gemini, verified by hitting the /models listing endpoint. This included several keys belonging to Google themselves, one of which had been deployed since February 2023 (according to the Internet Archive) hence predating the Gemini API that it could now access.

Google are working to revoke affected keys but it's still a good idea to check that none of yours are affected by this.

Via Hacker News

Tags: api-keys, google, security, gemini

Simon Willison's Weblog

Quoting Benedict Evans

If people are only using this a couple of times a week at most, and can’t think of anything to do with it on the average day, it hasn’t changed their life. OpenAI itself admits the problem, talking about a ‘capability gap’ between what the models can do and what people do with them, which seems to me like a way to avoid saying that you don’t have clear product-market fit.

Hence, OpenAI’s ad project is partly just about covering the cost of serving the 90% or more of users who don’t pay (and capturing an early lead with advertisers and early learning in how this might work), but more strategically, it’s also about making it possible to give those users the latest and most powerful (i.e. expensive) models, in the hope that this will deepen their engagement.

— Benedict Evans, How will OpenAI compete?

Tags: openai, chatgpt, benedict-evans, ai

Phil Gyford’s writing

Shows on BBC iPlayer's Archive

phil@gyford.com (Phil Gyford)
Updated

I just noticed that BBC iPlayer has a From the Archive category. There’s a link to the full A-Z listing at the bottom of that page and I had a look through the 21 pages to see what gems were hidden there. I thought I may as well list things here to save you the trouble, in case you’re interested (and interested in the same things as me).

I haven’t included any of the good things that seem too recent to really count as “Archive”. Detectorists (2014)? Fleabag (2016)?! At the very least, in my arbitrary opinion, at the moment, an iPlayer Archive should only include things that were broadcast before iPlayer existed (2007), although I’ve stuck to a more stringent pre-2000 for the programmes below.

Comedy

Drama

Documentary

  • Arena - 64 episodes of the arts series from 1975 onwards.
  • Civilisation (1969) - I imagine this classic view of some of “great man theory” Western civilisation is at least interesting.
  • Modern Times: Streetwise (1996) - There are three episodes of this series and this one about cab drivers preparing for The Knowledge looks most interesting.
  • Monitor - There are four episodes of this arts programme and I very much enjoyed ‘Pop Goes the Easel’, Ken Russell’s 1962 film about (then) young British pop artists.
  • Nairn Across Britain (1972) - Three episodes of Ian Nairn despairing (I assume) of the state of Britain’s buildings and infrastructure.
  • Signs of the Times (1992) - Four episodes looking at “perceptions of good and bad taste in the British home”.
  • The Visual Scene: Playing it Cool (1969) - Only one episode of this series, looking at some modern artists who “have their work processed in factories, or even programmed for computers”.
  • Vintage computer corner:

To be honest, many of those are in the category of “Things I feel I should watch but seem too much like homework when I sit on the sofa of an evening”. But maybe you’re a better person than I am.

I wish there was better filtering on iPlayer. I’d like to filter these 21 pages of series by sub-categories (e.g. only music documentaries), or by date of first broadcast, or when they most recently appeared on iPlayer.

I’m half-tempted to knock up something that would monitor the category for new additions and post them to Bluesky or whatever, except most of them – like most of the BBC’s shows – would be of no interest to me.

Read comments or post one

Talking Points Memo - Editors Blog

Morning Reactions to The Speech

Josh Marshall
Updated

I had some additional thoughts I wanted to share about last night’s speech.

The first seems unsurprising to me. A snap CNN poll last night found that this was the weakest reaction to a State of the Union as any president’s this century. Since presidents generally did better (less divided audience) in the past, it was probably the weakest ever. It was weaker than any of Trump’s State of the Unions. So people weren’t wowed. And remember that a State of the Union is disproportionately watched by the presidential speaker’s own partisans.

This matches my impressions. It seemed tired like Trump seems tired, literally and figuratively. It had some of the feel of a nostalgia act to me. No new material and not a lot of energy or interest in doing something new. Which, again, is really where Trump and the administration itself seems to be. It fits.

Talking Points Memo - Editors Blog

Yes, This Latest Trump Revelation Out of the Epstein Files Seem Big

Josh Marshall
Updated

You’ve probably seen some hints of it. But I wanted to focus your attention on a genuine piece of news out of the Epstein Files, even weeks after their original release. In 2019, a woman came forward and spoke to the FBI claiming that Donald Trump had assaulted her in the early 1980s. In her allegations, Jeffrey Epstein essentially provided her to Trump. Other files in the Epstein trove say that the FBI conducted four interviews with the woman. But only one of them was released in the larger trove — one that detailed her accusations against Epstein. Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, says he went to view the unredacted version of the files that members of Congress can access and the missing interviews aren’t there either.

There have been other accusations against Trump in the files. But this one appears to be more specific and detailed. And there are various signs and reasons that the FBI took the allegations seriously: those reasons and details about the accusations are discussed in this NPR article once you get past the first few paragraphs. The accuser, according to one FBI note contained in the files, eventually refused to cooperate with the investigation.

It goes without saying that we shouldn’t impute guilt on the basis of an un-cross-examined, let alone unadjudicated, accusation. But this isn’t the first accusation for Trump. And if we assume that Trump was blameless in his longtime friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he sure does have a lot of people coming forward to accuse him of things. Like seriously bad luck on that front. In this case, it seems overwhelmingly likely that these documents were hidden from public view or destroyed because of the damage they would do to Donald Trump. In that case, while we can’t say for certain whether the allegations have merit, the bad act of concealment likely speaks for itself.

It also speaks to the difficulty of these kinds of coverups. If someone suppressed those interview documents, they suppressed the interview notes themselves or the summaries. But there were other ledgers and documents that referred to those interview summaries. There has been extensive reporting on what a herculean task this was processing all these documents. The DOJ was roping in legal professionals from across the department to work on going through these files. But if you’re trying to cover up incriminating information as opposed to simply redacting sensitive material or names of the accused, that’s pretty complicated. You can do the basic stuff with keyword searches. But having a full view of where in the trove the deep-sixed documents might be referred to in an aside or a case ledger is going to be a lot more complicated. I suspect we have an example of that here.

Last point, but in a way the one I most want to share with you. This story has now been picked up in Times, NPR and, after yesterday, a bunch of other publications. But the guy who found it was Roger Sollenberger, who used to work at Daily Beast but has been an independent for a while. I don’t know Sollenberger personally and I don’t follow his work that closely. But again and again, though not that frequently, he comes up with pretty big stories. He’s also the guy who came up with the various scandals tied to Rep. Corey Mills and the crazy accommodations he had in DC. It’s an example of how really, really big stories can be unearthed by solo operators without the heft and legions of reporters they have at places like the Times.

DCReport.org

Even Janet Yellen Missed Progressive Blind Spot

Tom Cantlon
Updated

Subconscious Blindness Even Among Progressives

There is a general lack of focus on what would make working people king and queen. A lack even among much of the most progressive. There are economic and policy people who want to make the 99% the focus of the benefits of a productive nation, and they’ll give lots of ideas that lean in that direction. But you still don’t get out of it that they have a vision in which ordinary working people are almost the royalty of the country. Or their suggestions lean excessively on social-program hand-outs rather than focusing, first, on the dignity and respect and proper valuing of peoples’ all-important place in such a country.

I’ve touched on this in numerous ways. In past pieces on how even the progressive media missed the whole story of how fighting inflation a while back was primarily a story of squashing the brief success of employees and applicants being able to make significant demands. I touched on it in my previous piece on some suggestions that Democrats could use to become the party of working people. I’ve touched on it in writing about Federal Reserve policy.

I sent some questions about that last part to Janet Yellen and she graciously engaged in a multi-part and thoughtful back and forth. She is probably the most important economist of the age: Secretary of the Treasury, Chair of the Fed, Chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, London School of Economics, Harvard, Berkeley. And she is one who wanted to steer economics toward working people. One year that she was chair of the Fed their annual symposium had as its entire focus “labor markets”. That is, what would make Fed policy best for those looking for work, and for those working. But even at that she seems to lean toward working people, but the end result is only half-stepping toward doing everything that could be done to make them the first among winners in this country.

For one, she finds that the desire to keep inflation down to some target level has veto power over things that might come out better for workers. (Fighting inflation includes undermining workers when they are getting the upper hand and getting good deals out of employers. So one is a trade-off against the other.) In her words it would be nice to do more for workers, but if inflation gets in the way, their hands are tied. What can they do? And so the status quo continues. That includes a decades long slide in how much working people get out of all the wealth their work creates. That their hands are tied is half true but half a failure to attack the obstacles in the way of a much more aggressive effort to reverse that slide.

I asked her if the Fed had ever studied a specific thing. When the Fed fights inflation and that “softens” labor markets (employees and applicants have less leverage) it affects many things that remain ongoing for many years past the brief period of fighting inflation. It can lower initial wage offers, reduce chances at or sizes of raises, limit ability to switch to a better employer, affect how good of a union contract can be achieved, and lower benefits such as contributions to retirement accounts. All those factors can mean a worker might end up with considerably less when they reach retirement. Ms. Yellen acknowledged all of that.

Had the Fed ever tried to calculate that? At what point does fighting inflation do more harm than good when looked at in that very long term, working career length, view? No, they had never tried to calculate that.

She herself and the Fed board generally took a broad view of worker welfare and were trying to craft policies to work out best for them. If so, then how can you never ask that long-term question? Because that really has to be the determining factor on where you draw the line on fighting inflation. Well, if there is institutional and cultural bias, blindness, assumptions, then not thinking to examine that, can happen.

It doesn’t just happen at the Fed but even among progressive media, pundits and policy advocates. If you really have “people first” ingrained all the way down to the foundation of your thinking then when looking at the media and pundits, what’s proposed is good, but falls short. It doesn’t reflect a fully “people ARE the power” vision. Or it falls into the easy pitfalls of government hand-outs. (In some situations needed, in others missing the dignity and respect of a “people ARE the power” understanding.)

Deepening that “people ARE the power” view is the essential foundation needed for any substantial improvement. It has to be a clearer view among progressive media and pundits, which in turn would lead to that clearer view in the minds of people themselves. That’s when real change could happen.

Why This Matters

If even the most worker-friendly economists like Janet Yellen haven’t asked the fundamental questions about how Fed policy affects workers over a full career, it reveals how deeply embedded the blind spots are. The people who want to help working people still operate within a framework that prioritizes inflation targets over worker gains — and until that framework shifts, decades of declining worker share of wealth will continue unchallenged.

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Market Design

Privacy vs. security: doorbell cameras (and Ring's Superbowl ad)

Al Roth
Updated

There's a tension between privacy (some of it constitutionally protected)  and security, involving everything from street crime to terrorism, and citizen observers of government agents and others.  Cameras make a difference (even before facial recognition software), and the debate on how to reach a balance that yields appropriate safety in both dimensions is likely to continue.

 The NYT has the story, motivated by the Ring doorbell Superbowl ad:

Ring’s Founder Knows You Hated That Super Bowl Ad
Since the commercial aired, Jamie Siminoff has been trying to quell an outcry over privacy concerns with his doorbell cameras.    By Jordyn Holman

"The commercial showed a new Ring feature called Search Party, which uses artificial intelligence and images from its cameras to trace a lost pet’s wanderings across a neighborhood. Critics said the feature felt dystopian, showing the potential for far-reaching invasive surveillance. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts and a critic of corporate data collection, called out “the serious privacy and civil liberties risks” in Ring’s technology. 

...

"The ad landed at a tense media moment involving home surveillance. In the search for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of the TV news anchor Savannah Guthrie, law enforcement agencies were able to recover footage from her Google Nest doorbell, despite reports that she did not have a subscription to the device.

But Ring, which is owned by Amazon, is so ubiquitous that is has become a generic term for any doorbell camera, and users raised questions about how much Ring was monitoring them.

Mr. Siminoff took pains in his media appearances to clarify Ring’s privacy policies. He said his company does not store users’ footage if they don’t have a subscription with Ring.

...

"Mr. Siminoff defended his technology, saying that protecting privacy and providing useful tools for helping people are both possible. He said that he understood people’s concerns, and that maybe people were “triggered” by an image in the ad that showed blue rings radiating out from suburban homes. " 

Marginal Revolution

Jason Furman on AI contestability

Tyler Cowen
Updated

This ease of switching has forced companies to pass the gains from innovation on to users. Free tiers now offer capabilities that recently would have seemed almost unimaginable. OpenAI pioneered a $20-per-month subscription three years ago, a price point many competitors matched. That price has not changed, even as features and performance have improved substantially.

One recent analysis found that “GPT-4-equivalent performance now costs $0.40/million tokens versus $20 in late 2022.” That is the equivalent of a 70 percent annual deflation rate — remarkable by any standard, especially in a time when affordability has become a dominant public concern.

And this is only the foundational model layer. On top of it sits a sprawling ecosystem of consumer applications, enterprise tools, device integrations and start-ups aiming to serve niches as specific as gyms and hair salons.

Users aren’t the only ones switching. The people who work at these companies move from one to another, a sharp contrast to work in Silicon Valley during the era of do-not-poach agreements.

The entire NYT piece is very good.

The post Jason Furman on AI contestability appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Daring Fireball

Major Candy Brands Are Switching From Actual Chocolate to ‘Chocolatey Candy’ (Read: Brown Candle Wax)

John Gruber
Updated

Jim Vorel, writing just yesterday for Jezebel:

It can be hard to know what exactly to call the substances that are now found coating many major candy bars such as Butterfinger, Baby Ruth, Almond Joy, Mr. Goodbar or Rolos. Food scientists refer to it as “compound chocolate” coating, because it’s made from actual cocoa powder, but replaces the more expensive source of fat (cocoa butter) with cheaper, lower-quality vegetable fats. When Hershey brands such as Mr. Goodbar or Almond Joy made the switch in recent years, their labels subtly changed from claiming that they were “milk chocolate,” to “chocolate candy,” which strikes me as particularly insidious phrasing. A more obvious indicator is another word that many companies use: “Chocolatey” coating. Wondering how much this scourge had infiltrated my own home, I took a look moments ago at several packages of Girl Scout Cookies, only to find the inevitable: Both my Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties are also made with compound chocolate, rather than the real thing. I can hardly pretend to be surprised. Even in candies that continue to use real chocolate, meanwhile, cost-cutting measures have sometimes been employed, such as the milk chocolate coating of a Snickers bar becoming slightly thinner over time. Some products even mix real chocolate and compound chocolate in a single cookie or candy.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

I Am Nothing if Not a Man of Science

John Gruber
Updated

After writing a few days ago about the current brouhaha over the severe decline in the edibility of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and linking to Trader Joe’s shade-throwing description of their own, I of course had to try theirs. In the name of science, I bought both the milk and dark chocolate variants.

Verdict: Excellent. Both chocolates taste like chocolate, not candle wax, and the peanut butter is creamy and smooth — you know, like peanut butter. Not the sand-and-sawdust mix that Hershey fills Reese’s cups with now.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Bill Gates Apologizes to Foundation Staff Over Epstein Ties

John Gruber
Updated

Emily Glazer, reporting for The Wall Street Journal:

The billionaire said he met with Epstein starting in 2011, years after Epstein had pleaded guilty in 2008 to soliciting a minor for prostitution. Gates said he was aware of some “18-month thing” that had limited Epstein’s travel but said he didn’t properly check his background. Gates said he continued meeting with Epstein even after his then-wife Melinda French Gates expressed concerns in 2013.

“Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior,” Gates told staff. Speaking of his ex-wife, he added: “To give her credit, she was always kind of skeptical about the Epstein thing.”

“Kind of” is doing a lot of work there.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Greg Knauss: ‘Lose Myself’

John Gruber
Updated

Greg Knauss:

People will argue that speaking English to LLMs is just another level of abstraction away from the physics of how the machine actually works. And while that’s technically true — the worst kind of true — it also misses the point. Industrialization fundamentally changes things, by quantum degrees. A Ding Dong from a factory is not the same thing as a gâteau au chocolat et crème chantilly from a baker which is not the same thing as cramming chunks of chocolate and scoops of whipped cream directly into your mouth while standing in front of the fridge at 2:00am. The level of care, of personalization, of intimacy — both given and taken — changes its nature. Digging a trench is a very different thing than telling someone to dig a trench. Assembling a clock is a very different thing than asking Siri for the time.

Splendid little essay.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

The Talk Show: ‘Serious Opinionators’

John Gruber
Updated

Adam Engst returns to the show to talk, in detail, about certain of the UI changes in iOS 26 and Apple’s version 26 OSes overall. In particular, the new Unified view in the Phone app, and the Filter pop-up menu in both the Phone and Messages apps. Also: a shoutout to Balloon Help.

Sponsored by:

  • Sentry: A real-time error monitoring and tracing platform. Use code TALKSHOW for $80 in free credits.
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 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display

John Gruber
Updated

Ben Schoon, writing for 9to5 Google:

When activated, Privacy Display changes how the pixels in your display emit light, making it harder or near-impossible to view the display at an off-angle. At its default setting, it definitely works, but the contents of the display are visible at less-sharp angles. Samsung has a “maximum” setting that takes this up a notch, and that setting makes it even harder to see the contents and narrows the field-of-view even further. [...]

A bigger deal, though, is that Samsung has built Privacy Display with the ability to only apply to small portions of the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s display. Specifically, it can hide your notification pop-ups. This part really impressed me, as Privacy Display is able to specifically hide only that singular portion of the display, and it does so nearly perfectly. The masking around the notification ensures the content behind isn’t affected, and the effect works incredibly well.

Neat feature, especially the way you can toggle it when needed, set it to auto-enable for specific apps, and/or work only for notifications.

See also: Allison Johnson at The Verge.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

★ My 2025 Apple Report Card

John Gruber
Updated

This week Jason Snell published his annual Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2025. As I’ve done in the past — for the report-card years 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018 — I’m publishing my full remarks and grades here. On Snell’s report card, voters give per-category scores ranging from 5 to 1; I’ve translated these to letter grades, A to F, which is how I consider them. (See footnote 1 from last year’s report if you’re curious why it’s not A to E.)

As I noted last year, “Siri/Apple Intelligence” is not a standalone category on the report card. I know Snell is very much trying to keep the number of different categories from inflating, but AI has been the biggest thing in tech for several years running. If it were a standalone category, last year I said I’d have given Apple a D for 2024. This year, I’d have given them an F — an utter, very public failure. (Their AI efforts in 2025 did end on a mildly optimistic note — they cleaned house.)

Mac: C (last year: A)

If there were separate categories for Mac hardware and MacOS, I’d give the hardware an A and MacOS 26 Tahoe a D. The hardware continues to be great — fast, solid, reliable — and Apple Silicon continues to improve year-over-year with such predictability that Apple is making something very difficult look like it must be easy.

Tahoe, though, is the worst regression in the entire history of MacOS. There are many reasons to prefer MacOS to any of its competition — Windows or Linux — but the one that has been the most consistent since System 1 in 1984 is the superiority of its user interface. There is nothing about Tahoe’s new UI — the Mac’s implementation of the Liquid Glass concept Apple has applied across all its OSes — that is better than its predecessor, MacOS 15 Sequoia. Nothing. And there is much that is worse. Some of it much worse. Fundamental principles of human-computer interaction — principles that Apple itself forged over decades — have been completely ignored. And a lot of it just looks sloppy and amateur. Simple things like resizing windows, and having application icons that look like they were designed by talented artists.

iPhone: A (last year: A)

iPhone 17 Pro and Pro Max are, technically, the best iPhones Apple has ever made. They’re very well designed too. The change to make the camera plateau span the entire width of the phone is a good one. It looks better, allows a naked iPhone 17 Pro to sit more steadily on a flat surface, and lets one in a case sit on a surface without any wobble at all. Apple even finally added a really fun, bold color — “cosmic orange” — that, surprising no one, seems to be incredibly popular with customers.

The iPhone Air is, from a design perspective, the most amazing iPhone Apple has ever made. It’s a marvel to hold and carry. One rear-facing camera lens is limiting, but it’s an excellent camera. Not 17 Pro-quality, no, but excellent quality, yes. Battery life is amazing given the physical constraints of the iPhone Air’s thin and lightweight design. The main two dings against the iPhone Air are that (a) Apple didn’t offer it in a fun bold color like the 17 Pro’s orange, and (b) Apple, bafflingly, hasn’t advertised the Air. I’ve seen so little promotion of the Air that I’d wager most iPhone users in the market for a new phone don’t even know it exists until they walk into a store and see it there.

The no-adjective iPhone 17 is the best iPhone for most people, which is exactly what the no-adjective iPhone ought to be. Back in March, the iPhone 16e introduced both a terrific lowest-price new iPhone — including the then-current-generation A18 chip — and a significant shift in strategy from the SE models of yore. The SE iPhone models were only updated sporadically, going 2–4 years between revisions. The “16” in “16e” is a pretty strong hint that Apple now intends to update the e models annually, just like the rest of the iPhone lineup. People complain about the $600 starting price for the 16e, but that’s $200 lower than the no-adjective iPhone 17. If you’re in the market for a lower price than that, you’re in the market for a refurbished older iPhone.

iOS 26 is Apple’s best implementation of the Liquid Glass concept, by far. I prefer it, in just about every way, to iOS 18. There are some individual apps from Apple in iOS 26 that have poor implementations of Liquid Glass (Music, I’m looking in your direction) but most of them are decided improvements, with more consistency system-wide (like the placement of search fields).

iPad: B (last year: C)

iPad hardware continues to be fine, and “fine”, by iPad standards, means “the best tablets in the industry by far”. The lineup is well-differentiated and spans a larger than ever gamut, ranging from “totally casual user” to “actual pro usage”.

iPadOS 26 is the most exciting release of iPadOS ever. I don’t love all of it. I think the biggest problem is that too much complexity is exposed to very casual users, for whom the main appeal of using an iPad as their main “computer” is its rigorous simplicity. But the course reversal Apple has made for advanced users, from eschewing (often to the point of frustration, sometimes to the point of absurdity) the desktop GUI concept of overlapping windows, to embracing regular old-fashioned GUI windows, was the right call, and a welcome sign of humility.

It’s a new start for iPadOS, and I look forward to seeing where it goes. It’s been a long time since I’ve thought that about iPadOS.

Wearables Overall: B (last year: B)

AirPods Pro 3 are frigging amazing. AirPods, overall, continue to exemplify Apple at its best.

Apple Watch: A (last year: C)

Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3 are solid year-over-year improvements from the Department of If the Design Ain’t Broke Don’t Fix It. Battery life improvements, in particular, are impressive. No one comes close to Apple at making very small, powerful computers that don’t really seem like computers at all. And the best Apple Watch news of the year, by far in my opinion, is the SE 3. The SE 3 is simply an outstanding Apple Watch at very low prices ($249 for 40mm, $279 for 44mm). That’s the price range a lot of people are looking at if they’re thinking about getting themselves “a nice watch”, smart or not.

Vision Pro: C (last year: B)

An M5 speed-bump update to the Vision Pro was nice to see, but only as a sign that Apple is still committed to this new platform. And they’re actually starting to build a nice little library of immersive content that is extremely compelling — including baby steps toward immersive live sports with a limited slate of games, albeit just from one single NBA team (the Lakers). The new Personas in VisionOS 26 — effectively a version 2.0 of the feature — are amazing, and strikingly improved from the first implementation. That’s another sign that Apple is continuing to achieve groundbreaking things with this new platform, and the concept of spatial computing. But in terms of VisionOS being a productivity platform in its own right (not counting the excellent Mac Virtual Display app), I didn’t see any progress at all. Nor any outreach at all to third-party developers to make VisionOS into a serious productivity platform. Frankly, it’s weird — perhaps even alarming — that some of Apple’s own core apps like Calendar and Reminders are still iPad apps running in compatibility mode, not native VisionOS apps.

Home: D (last year: D)

Why isn’t this platform improving, in drastic groundbreaking ways, with any urgency? I really thought 2025 might be the year, but nope. I can’t think of any area where Apple’s attitude more clearly seems to be that “good enough” is good enough.

Apple TV: C (last year: C)

Same grade, same comment as last year (just replacing the specific year with “[this year]”):

I’m a very happy daily (well, nightly) Apple TV user. But what exactly improved or changed [this year]? Anything? It may well be fair to say the current hardware — Apple TV 4K 3rd-gen, which shipped in November 2022 — is fine, and this is a hardware platform that only needs updates every 3 or 4 years, but we’re grading what happened [this year].

Also: I feel like Apple has never yet made a truly great remote control for this platform. The current one is their best yet, but it has obvious flaws.

I fear complacency has set in. Apple TV 4K really is so much better than any competing set-top box (or built-in smart TV system), but it also still falls so far short of “insanely great”.

Services: B (last year: B)

Quality is high, value is fair (except, still, for iCloud storage), and it’s getting to the point where it’s hard to keep up with all the great series on Apple TV.

Hardware Reliability: A (last year: A)

No news remains great news in this category.

Apple OS Quality: C (last year: B)

Apple Apps: B (last year: B)

For two straight years, I’ve written the same comment for this category: “I have concerns and complaints about aspects of the direction Apple’s software design is headed (or in some ways, has been now for years), but their software reliability has been very good for me.”

The reliability and technical quality remains excellent. While writing this report card, I checked, and my uptime on MacOS 15.7.2 got to 91 days before I got around to restarting, which I only did to upgrade to 15.7.3. At one point I literally had over 1,000 tabs open in Safari, spread across over 50 windows. (I have a problem with tab hoarding.) That is technical excellence.

But years-long growing concerns over the direction of Apple’s software design reached a breaking point with MacOS 26 Tahoe. It’s so bad — or at least, so much worse than MacOS 15 Sequoia — that I’m refusing to install it. That makes it hard to assign a single grade for “OS Quality”.

Developer Relations: D (last year: D)

Fifth year in a row with basically the same comment: Resentment over App Store policies continues to build. Frustrations with the App Store review process seem unresolved. Apple’s goal should be for developer relations to be so good that developers look for excuses to create software exclusively for Apple’s platforms. The opposite is happening.

Social and Societal Impact: F (last year: B)

Tim Cook is in an excruciatingly difficult position regarding the Trump 2.0 administration. But that’s his job. He’s clearly attempting to take the same tack he took with the Trump 1.0 administration from 2017–2020, which, in hindsight, he navigated with aplomb. To wit: staying above the fray, keeping Apple true to its institutional values while keeping it out of President Trump’s wrath.

But the Trump 2.0 administration isn’t anything like the 1.0 administration. Cook, addressing employee concerns back in 2016 regarding his participation in then-President-elect Trump’s “tech summit”, said, “There’s a large number of those issues, and the way that you advance them is to engage. Personally, I’ve never found being on the sideline a successful place to be.”

“Awarding” Donald Trump a 24-karat gold trophy emblazoned with the Apple logo in August 2025 — after seeing eight months of Trump 2.0 in action — wasn’t “engagement” or “getting off the sideline”. It was obsequious complicity with a regime that is clearly destined for historical infamy. Cook’s continued strategy of “engagement” risks not only his personal legacy, but the reputation of the company itself.

Daring Fireball

‘H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright Typographic Mystery’

John Gruber
Updated

When re-hanging signage, “Mind your P’s and Q’s” ought to be “Mind your H’s and S’s”.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Terry Godier: ‘Phantom Obligation’

John Gruber
Updated

Terry Godier, in a thoughtful essay on the design of RSS feed readers:

There’s a particular kind of guilt that visits me when I open my feed reader after a few days away. It’s not the guilt of having done something wrong, exactly. It’s more like the feeling of walking into a room where people have been waiting for you, except when you look around, the room is empty. There’s no one there. There never was.

I’ve been thinking about this feeling for a long time. Longer than I probably should, given that it concerns something as mundane as reading articles on the internet. But I’ve come to believe that these small, repeated experiences shape us more than we like to admit.

So let me start with a question that’s been nagging at me: why do RSS readers look like email clients?

There are good answers to that question, and for 20-some years I’ve used a feed reader — NetNewsWire — that looks like an email client. (To be honest, I wish my email client looked and worked more like NetNewsWire.) But the bigger question Godier is asking is why don’t more feed readers trying something different?

He’s answered his own question with Current, a new feed reader for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

 ★ 
The Truth OC: Because it's time to fight back.

Chris Kluwe has some stuff to say

Jeff Pearlman
Updated

So, as some of you might know, along with writing books and running this site, I teach sports journalism at Chapman University.

And yesterday, Chris Kluwe came to my class to chat about his days as a punter at UCLA, then for the Minnesota Vikings. Chris is just a really good dude. Honest. Earnest. Refreshingly nerdy and down to earth. There are no airs, no sense of entitlement. Again—a good dude.

Before class, we sat down for pizza, and chatted about his run against the out-of-her-mind Gracey Van Der Mark, who puts the Q in QAnon and the cashews in nuts.

Here’s out conversation …

Letters from an American

February 25, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

At last night’s State of the Union address, President Donald Trump went on offense, seeming to try to set the terms for the upcoming midterm elections. Although the State of the Union in the past was an opportunity for the president to tell the American people where the country stood with regard to foreign affairs, finances, the economy, the public lands, and so on, it has, over the years, become more about messaging and future plans rather than a summing up of the past year.

With his approval ratings under 40%, administration officials mired in corruption scandals, and every one of his policies underwater, Trump delivered a campaign rally. To answer Americans’ concerns about his economic policies, the slowing of economic growth, and rising inflation, he insisted that he had “inherited a nation in crisis” but had “achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before.” He proceeded to claim that the economy is booming, using statistics that were either made up or staggeringly misleading, like his boast that “in one year we have lifted 2.4 million Americans—a record—off of food stamps.” In fact, Republicans cut food assistance from those people, so they are indeed off the rolls, but “lifted” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

In between his celebrations of what he assured the audience was a “golden age,” Trump turned the event into what appeared to be an awards show. “Our country is winning again,” he claimed. “In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore. We’re not used to winning in our country until you came along, we’re just always losing. But now we’re winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you’re going to win again. You’re going to win big. You’re going to win bigger than ever. And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men’s gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in!”

Trump said he would be awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to the goalie of that team, which had just won the gold medal at the Olympics.

He also presented two recipients with Purple Hearts, a military decoration awarded to service members killed or wounded in action; and one with the Legion of Merit award for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of an outstanding service or achievement. Trump awarded two recipients the Medal of Honor, the U.S. military’s highest decoration for valor in action. After awarding one, Trump mused: “I’ve always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I was informed I’m not allowed to give it to myself, and I wouldn’t know why I’d be taking it. But if they ever opened up that law I will be there with you someday.”

Trump did not serve in the military.

But the party atmosphere was selective. Trump did not acknowledge the Epstein survivors in the audience, invited by Democratic representatives. Representative Al Green (D-TX) was escorted out after holding up a sign that referred to the president’s posting of an image of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, reading: “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES.” And Trump’s descriptions of murders committed by undocumented immigrants—with apparent relish and with the victims’ family members in the audience—seemed to glorify cruelty and violence.

It seemed clear that Trump intends to try to persuade Americans who have soured on his economy and hate his immigration policies that they are wrong, and that both are, in fact, triumphs. He also appeared to try to answer concerns about the skyrocketing deficit on his watch by blaming immigrants for it, claiming that they are committing fraud that is “plundering” the country. He announced a “war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President J.D. Vance,” saying, “And we’re able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight.”

Trump’s tax cuts primarily benefited the wealthy and corporations, and pinning their effects on immigrants illustrates how Trump’s strongest calls were to his base. Not only did he portray immigrants as violent criminals, in a moment scripted for television, he then turned on Democrats in the chamber, setting them up to force them to back off their insistence on reforms to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol by demanding that they stand to show their support for the statement: “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”

It was a deliberate division of the country into “us” and “them,” a classic authoritarian move, that he followed up by calling the Democrats “crazy” and claiming that “Democrats are destroying our country.” Facing a midterm election in which voters appear strongly to favor Democrats, Trump went out of his way to try to define them, rather than his own administration, as dangerous extremists.

Shawn McCreesh of the New York Times noted that deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, an adherent of the Great Replacement theory who is the key figure driving the administration’s crusade against migrants, made it “clear that the night’s performance had been built around this moment.” Miller posted: “0 democrats stood for the foundational principle of all government that leaders must serve citizens before invaders. Never has there been a more stunning moment in Congress.”

And he was right, in a way, because it was indeed stunning that Republican members of Congress cheered and applauded at the attacks on their colleagues. In his 1951 The True Believer: Notes on the Nature of Mass Movements, philosopher Eric Hoffer noted that once people are wedded to a strongman, they will cling to him ever more tightly as his behavior becomes more and more erratic. This loyalty is in part to demonstrate their own devotion to the cause, and in part to justify their own attacks on those the strongman has given them permission to hurt.

The behavior of the Republican representatives was really the only memorable part of the evening. Trump’s almost two-hour State of the Union—the longest State of the Union address in history—felt pretty much like a Trump rally, full of outrageous exaggerations, lies, game show promises, and attacks, and those are old hat by now.

In contrast, the response to the State of the Union—which is usually deadly—was a breath of fresh air. Delivered by Virginia governor Abigail Spanberger, the response was short and clean, and in a refreshing change from Trump’s constant focus on himself, it centered the American people.

Spanberger noted that she was speaking from the Virginia House of Burgesses, where “[b]efore there was a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, or a Bill of Rights—there were people in this very room” who “dreamed of what a new nation…could be.” She continued: “The United States was founded on the idea that ordinary people could reject the unacceptable excesses of poor leadership, band together to demand better of their government, and create a nation that would be an example for the world.”

“Tonight,” she said, “we did not hear the truth from our President.” She asked, is the president “working to make life more affordable for you and your family,” is he “working to keep Americans safe—both at home and abroad,” and is he “working for YOU?”

She noted that the rising costs of housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare are pressing everyone. Trump’s trade policies, especially tariffs, have hurt small businesses, farmers, and everyday Americans, while the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is forcing rural health clinics to close, stripping healthcare from millions of Americans, and cutting food programs for children.

Turning to the excesses of federal agents from ICE and Border Patrol, Spanberger highlighted her own career as a law enforcement officer working money-laundering and narcotics cases alongside local and state police to note that law enforcement requires “an abiding sense of duty and commitment to community.” “And yet,” she said, “our President has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans—and they have done it without a warrant.

“They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies, they have sent children—a little boy in a blue bunny hat—to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens on our streets. And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability. Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children, or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings.”

“Our President told us tonight that we are safer because these agents arrest mothers and detain children,” she said. “Think about that. Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed—not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.”

At the same time, she said, the president “continues to cede economic power and technological strength to China, bow down to a Russian dictator, and make plans for war with Iran.” “[T]hrough [the Department of Government Efficiency], mass firings, and the appointment of deeply unserious people to our nation’s most serious positions, our President has endangered the long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good.”

“In his speech tonight,” she said, “the President did what he always does: he lied, he scapegoated, and he distracted. He also offered no real solutions to our nation’s pressing challenges—so many of which he is actively making worse.” Who is benefitting from “his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, and the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress?” she asked.

“He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends,” she said. “The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There’s the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation’s capital. This is not what our founders envisioned. So, I’ll ask again: Is the President working for you?”

“We all know the answer is no.”

“But here is the special thing about America,” she said. “[W]e know better than any nation what is possible when ordinary citizens—like those who once dreamed right here in this room—reject the unacceptable and demand more of their government.” She noted the power of the Americans taking action across the country to protest the government and to vote. “With their votes,” she said, “they are writing a new story.”

In November, Spanberger said, she won her election by 15 points, earning votes “from Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and everyone in-between; because they knew as citizens, they could demand more. That they could vote for what they believe matters, and they didn’t need to be constrained by a party or political affiliation.” In that election, Democrats flipped legislative seats in Georgia, Iowa, Mississippi, and Texas. Now “[o]rdinary Americans are stepping up to run…to demand more and do more for their neighbors and communities.”

“Those who are stepping up now to run will win in November because Americans know you can demand more, and that we are working to lower costs, we are working to keep our communities and country safe, and we are working for you,” she said.

“In his Farewell Address,” she concluded, “George Washington warned us about the possibility of ‘cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men’ rising to power. But he also encouraged us—all Americans—to unite in ‘a common cause’ to move this nation forward. That is our charge once more. And that is what we are seeing across the country.

“It is deeply American and patriotic to do so, and it is how we ensure that the State of our Union remains strong, not just this year but for the next 250 years as well.”

—

Notes:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/02/25/medal-of-honor-purple-heart-sotu-eric-slover-military/88857422007/

https://www.kwtx.com/2026/02/25/read-complete-transcript-trumps-2026-state-union/

https://www.fox5dc.com/news/spanbergers-response-trumps-state-union-full-transcript

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/politics/trump-state-of-the-union-scene.html

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/24/politics/al-green-escorted-out-trump-state-of-the-union-protest

Bluesky:

thetnholler.bsky.social/post/3mfnnesmwm22u

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Letters from an American

February 24, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

Aeon | a world of ideas

Love immortal

Aeon Video
Updated

Two people relaxing on sun loungers under a blue umbrella on a grass lawn with garden gnomes nearby.

In pursuit of defeating death, Alan has dedicated his life to cryonics. He hopes to be defrosted together with his wife

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

Aeon | a world of ideas

The presence of power

Shomik Dasgupta
Updated

Painting of a historical figure in a red and gold outfit with a patterned hat set against a muted background.

The Indian thinker Rammohun Roy believed that good governance must be close: distance made the British Empire cruel

- by Shomik Dasgupta

Read on Aeon

Anil Dash

Talking through the tech reckoning

Many of the topics that we’ve all been discussing about technology these days seem to matter so much more, and the stakes have never been higher. So, I’ve been trying to engage with more conversations out in the world, in hopes of communicating some of the ideas that might not get shared from more traditional voices in technology. These recent conversations have been pretty well received, and I hope you’ll take a minute to give them a listen when you have a moment.

Galaxy Brain

First, it was nice to sit down with Charlie Warzel, as he invited me to speak with him on Galaxy Brain (full transcript at that link), his excellent podcast for The Atlantic. The initial topic was some of the alarmist hype being raised around AI within the tech industry right now, but we had a much more far-ranging conversation, and I was particularly glad that I got to articulate my (somewhat nuanced) take on the rhetoric that many of the Big AI companies push about their LLM products being “inevitable”.

In short, while I think it’s important to fight their narrative that treats big commercial AI products as inevitable, I don’t think it will be effective or successful to do so by trying to stop regular people from using LLMs at all. Instead, I think we have to pursue a third option, which is a multiplicity of small, independent, accountable and purpose-built LLMs. By analogy, the answer to unhealthy fast food is good, home-cooked meals and neighborhood restaurants all using local ingredients.

The full conversation is almost 45 minutes, but I’ve cued up the section on inevitability here:

Revolution Social

Next up, I got to reconnect with Rabble, whom I’ve known since the earliest days of social media, for his podcast Revolution.Social. The framing for this episode was “Silicon Valley has lost its moral compass” (did it have one? Ayyyyy) but this was another chance to have a wide-ranging conversation, and I was particularly glad to get into the reckoning that I think is coming around intellectual property in the AI era. Put simply, I think that the current practice of wholesale appropriation of content from creators without consent or compensation by the AI companies is simply untenable. If nothing else, as normal companies start using data and content, they’re going to want to pay for it just so they don’t get sued and so that the quality of the content they’re using is of a known reliability. That will start to change things from he current Wild West “steal all the stuff and sort it out later” mentality. 
It will not surprise you to find out that I illustrated this point by using examples that included… Prince and Taylor Swift. But there’s lots of other good stuff in the conversation too! Let me know what you think.

What’s next?

As I’ve been writing more here on my site again, many of these topics seem to have resonated, and there have been some more opportunities to guest on podcasts, or invitations to speak at various events. For the last several years, I had largely declined all such invitations, both out of some fatigue over where the industry was at, and also because I didn’t think I had anything in particular to say.

In all honesty, these days it feels like the stakes are too high, and there are too few people who are addressing some of these issues, so I changed my mind and started to re-engage. I may well be an imperfect messenger, and I would eagerly pass the microphone to others who want to use their voices to talk about how tech can be more accountable and more humanist (if that’s you, let me know!). But if you think there’s value to these kinds of things, let me know, or if you think there are places where I should be getting the message out, do let them know, and I’ll try to do my best to dedicate as much time and energy as I can to doing so. And, as always, if there’s something I could be doing better in communicating in these kinds of platforms, your critique and comments are always welcome!

Marginal Revolution

One measure of economics GOAT

Tyler Cowen
Updated

Who is the greatest economist of all time? This paper provides one potential measure that, along with other considerations, can contribute to debates on who the greatest economist of all time is. We build a novel dataset on the percentage of history of economic thought textbooks dedicated to top economists, using 43 distinct textbooks (1st editions, when available) published between 1901 and 2023. As a percentage of total book pages, Adam Smith has the highest share at 6.69%, beating out Ricardo (5.22%), Mill (3.83%), and Marx (4.36%). Just over 32% of all textbooks allocated most of their pages to Adam Smith, followed by Marx with 18.6%, Mill with 13.95%, and Ricardo with 11.3%. While interesting as a history of economic thought project, such an exercise isn’t merely amusing pedantry; it can provide insight into the types of contributions, research questions, and methodologies that have had the most enduring impact in economics. It may also inform future authors of history of economic textbooks.

That is from a new paper by Gabriel Benzecry and Daniel J. Smith.  There is of course also my generative book on this topic at econgoat.ai.

The post One measure of economics GOAT appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Marc Brooker's Blog

SFQ: Simple, Stateless, Stochastic Fairness

SFQ: Simple, Stateless, Stochastic Fairness

Roll the dice.

Paul E. McKenney’s 1990 paper Stochastic Fairness Queuing contains one of my favorite little algorithms for distributed systems. Stochastic Fairness Queuing is a way to stochastically isolate workloads from different customers in a way that significantly mitigates the effects of noisy neighbors, with O(1) queues and O(1) time.

McKenney starts by describing Fairness Queuing (or queue per client):

This fairness-queuing algorithm operates by maintaining a separate first-come-first-served (FCFS) queue for each conversation. … Since the queues are serviced in a bit-by-bit round-robin fashion ill-behaved conversations that attempt to use more than their fair share of network resources will face longer delays and larger packet-loss rates than well-behaved conversations that remain within their fair share.

That’s a network packet focused view, but the same thing can apply to RPC requests, for example, just by using a different key (e.g. the authorized customer id). The big downside of this in distributed systems is that it requires O(customers) queues, and the related O(customers) work of doing round-robin across those queues.

Stochastic fairness queuing can be most easily understood by comparing it to strict fairness queuing. The major differences are that the queues are serviced in strict round-robin order and that a simple hash function is used to map from source-destination address pair into a fixed set of queues.

In SFQ, on the other hand, a fixed set of queues is used (so O(1) queues, not O(customers) queues), and customers are assigned to the queues based on a hash. That’s great, but still causes the problem of long-term bad luck. If I end up on a queue with a noisy neighbor, I end up there forever.

If two conversations collide, they will continue to collide, resulting in each conversation of the pair persistently receiving less than its share of bandwidth. This situation is deviated by periodically perturbing the hash function … so that conversations that collide during one time period are very unlikely to collide during the next.

So noisy neighbors and non-noisy clients move around, preventing somebody from getting bad service for too long. You can use this on a single host for servicing multiple clients, or for load balancing across multiple hosts.

SFQ, Shuffle Sharding, and Best-of-2

We can avoid even those periodic times of bad service by combining three of my favorite small algorithms: SFQ, shuffle sharding, and best of two.

In this variant we:

  1. Map each customer to a subset of the queues (that subset could be only two), and
  2. For each request put the customer’s request in the shortest queue in their subset, and
  3. Periodically perturb the subsets.

This approach has absolutely great properties: O(1) queues, O(1) enqueue effort, O(1) dequeue effort, and strong isolation of noisy neighbors from other customers (assuming only a relatively small portion of customers are noisy neighbors).

Single Hash

Two-Choice Hash (Power of Two)

Customers:
Noisy (3x)
Marginal Revolution

Emergent Ventures winners, 52nd cohort

Tyler Cowen
Updated

Prabhdeep Singh, 18, Ontario, works on AI.

Jiratt Keeratipatarakarn, Hamburg, international prospects for drug approval reform.

Brandon Rutagamirwa, London, robots to repair satellites.

Eli Elster, UC Davis, anthropology, general career support.

Liam Aranda-Michel, MIT/San Francisco, a minimally invasive, injectable microvascular therapy.

Tanish Mantri, sophomore in high school, Jackson, Miss., AI for diagnosis.

Anrea Giuri, Stanford, developing closed-loop environments for high-throughput polymer discovery.

Clara Collier, Oakland, Asterisk magazine.

Simon Grimm, WDC/Germany, “what Germany should do.

Stephen Davies, UK,  networks and mentoring.

Shani Zhang, San Francisco, to artistically capture SF.

Mia Albert, 17, Miami, an app for sharing events.

Rayne Wallace, 18, Ontario, the origins of life.

Jonathan Sheinman, London/Israel, AI and real estate regulation.

Louis Elton, London, The British Craeft Prize, to improve aesthetics.

Peter Mukovskiy, 19, Zurich, quantum computing, to visit MIT.

Rutger Nagel, Leiden, 17, AI and operating systems

Smrithi Sunil, Ann Arbor, Michigan, science and meta-science writing.

Honey Louise, London, to be a “defense influencer.”

Arhum Ahmed, Los Angeles area, quantum-protected systems.

Here are previous EV cohorts.

The post Emergent Ventures winners, 52nd cohort appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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SpaceNews

Golden Dome to require unprecedented coordination between U.S. combatant commands

Sandra Erwin
Updated

Leaders of U.S. Space Command, U.S. Strategic Command and U.S. Northern Command closely involved in Golden Dome planning

The post Golden Dome to require unprecedented coordination between U.S. combatant commands appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceNews

Valve malfunction blamed for failure of Indian satellite to raise its orbit

Jeff Foust
Updated
NVS-02

India’s space agency says a valve failure prevented a navigation spacecraft launched more than a year ago from raising its orbit.

The post Valve malfunction blamed for failure of Indian satellite to raise its orbit appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceNews

The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space

Dara Norman and Kelsey Johnson
Updated
The La Silla Observatory, located on the outskirts of the Chilean Atacama Desert. Credit: ESO

A recent SpaceNews opinion article argued that it is time to “take astronomy off Earth.” The suggestion is straightforward: If satellite constellations and commercial space activity threaten ground-based astronomy, perhaps astronomers should simply move their work into space. As current, incoming and past presidents of the American Astronomical Society, we feel impelled to respond. As […]

The post The future of astronomy is both on Earth and in space appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceNews

In space traffic coordination, the biggest challenge may be coordination

Jeff Foust
Updated
Space traffic management is an increasingly difficult but increasingly important challenge. Image generated via DALL-E

As the number of satellites in orbit grows, one emerging challenge is the difficulty some satellite operators have contacting counterparts to avoid potential collisions.

The post In space traffic coordination, the biggest challenge may be coordination appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceNews

OQ Technology secures $30 million from Europe for satellite-to-smartphone expansion

Jason Rainbow
Updated

Europe’s investment arm is lending Luxembourg-based OQ Technology 25 million euros ($30 million) to expand its direct-to-device constellation, bolstering the continent’s push to compete with U.S.-led efforts to connect smartphones from space.

The post OQ Technology secures $30 million from Europe for satellite-to-smartphone expansion appeared first on SpaceNews.

Schneier on Security

Poisoning AI Training Data

Bruce Schneier
Updated

All it takes to poison AI training data is to create a website:

I spent 20 minutes writing an article on my personal website titled “The best tech journalists at eating hot dogs.” Every word is a lie. I claimed (without evidence) that competitive hot-dog-eating is a popular hobby among tech reporters and based my ranking on the 2026 South Dakota International Hot Dog Championship (which doesn’t exist). I ranked myself number one, obviously. Then I listed a few fake reporters and real journalists who gave me permission….

Less than 24 hours later, the world’s leading chatbots were blabbering about my world-class hot dog skills. When I asked about the best hot-dog-eating tech journalists, Google parroted the gibberish from my website, both in the Gemini app and AI Overviews, the AI responses at the top of Google Search. ChatGPT did the same thing, though Claude, a chatbot made by the company Anthropic, wasn’t fooled.

Sometimes, the chatbots noted this might be a joke. I updated my article to say “this is not satire.” For a while after, the AIs seemed to take it more seriously.

These things are not trustworthy, and yet they are going to be widely trusted.

SpaceNews

Seraphim closes second early-stage space fund above $100 million target

Jason Rainbow
Updated

Seraphim Space announced Feb. 25 it has completed fundraising for its second private early-stage venture fund, after exceeding its $100 million target to back young space technology startups.

The post Seraphim closes second early-stage space fund above $100 million target appeared first on SpaceNews.

NASA Science

Dry-Season Floods Drench Northern Colombia

Michala Garrison
Updated
 
January 23
February 9
An image captured before the flooding on January 23, 2026, shows the same area before the worst flooding occurred. Most land along the river appears dry.
NASA Earth Observatory
A false-color satellite image captured on February 9, 2026, shows extensive flooding along the Sinu River near Lorica. Dark floodwaters are visible against the green landscape on both sides of the river but especially to its east.
NASA Earth Observatory
An image captured before the flooding on January 23, 2026, shows the same area before the worst flooding occurred. Most land along the river appears dry.
NASA Earth Observatory
A false-color satellite image captured on February 9, 2026, shows extensive flooding along the Sinu River near Lorica. Dark floodwaters are visible against the green landscape on both sides of the river but especially to its east.
NASA Earth Observatory
January 23
February 9

February is one of the driest months of the year in northern Colombia’s Córdoba department, a major farming and cattle region. It’s the time of year when farmers normally prepare fields for planting and ranchers move livestock to graze in drying floodplains. In 2026, however, unusually heavy rains in early February upended seasonal rhythms and submerged much of the department under floodwaters.

The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured this false-color image (bands 7-5-4) of flooding along the Sinú River on February 9, 2026 (right). Dark floodwaters cover farmland, pastureland, and several communities, particularly to the west of the river. To the east, water levels at a complex of wetlands are unseasonably high. Lorica, a city of roughly 90,000 people, is visible in the upper part of the image. The OLI image on the left shows the same area on January 23, before floodwaters arrived.

After an already wet January, rainfall intensified in early February when an unusual cold front in the Caribbean pushed south on February 1 and 2, forcing moisture-laden air into northern Colombia and over the Andes. This led to several days of intense downpours in Córdoba, with some areas receiving more than 4 to 7 centimeters (2 to 3 inches) of rain per day, according to one analysis of the event.

NASA’s IMERG (Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for Global Precipitation Measurement) estimated rain rates of 1.7 centimeters per hour near Lorica on February 1, the day of the heaviest rains. In the following weeks, storms continued to drench the region. On February 25, imagery from NASA’s Terra satellite indicated that flooding remained widespread.

The floods have been far-reaching and destructive. More than 80 percent of Córdoba flooded, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Preliminary estimates cited by news and government sources suggest that thousands of homes were destroyed, more than 11,000 families displaced, and more than 150,000 hectares of farmland inundated.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

An image captured before the flooding on January 23, 2026, shows the same area before the worst flooding occurred. Most land along the river appears dry.

January 23, 2026

JPEG (790.78 KB)

A false-color satellite image captured on February 9, 2026, shows extensive flooding along the Sinu River near Lorica. Dark floodwaters are visible against the green landscape on both sides of the river but especially to its east.

February 9, 2026

JPEG (888.42 KB)

References & Resources

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The MIT Tech
Finance & economics

America’s welfare state is more European than you think

State-level policies are making up for stingy federal provision
Finance & economics

A viral research note on AI gets its economics wrong

Too much of a good thing
xkcd.com

Little Red Dots

After a lot of analysis, I've determined that they're actually big red dots; they're just very far away.
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The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Wednesday 25 February 1662/63

Samuel Pepys
Updated

Up and to my office, where with Captain Cocke making an end of his last night’s accounts till noon, and so home to dinner, my wife being come in from laying out about 4l. in provision of several things against Lent. In the afternoon to the Temple, my brother’s, the Wardrobe, to Mr. Moore, and other places, called at about small businesses, and so at night home to my office and then to supper and to bed.

The Commons in Parliament, I hear, are very high to stand to the Act of Uniformity, and will not indulge the Papists (which is endeavoured by the Court Party) nor the Presbyters.

Read the annotations

Python⇒Speed

Unit testing your code's performance, part 2: Catching speed changes

In a previous post I talked about unit testing for speed, and in particular testing for big-O scalability. The next step is catching cases where you’ve changed not the scalability, but the direct efficiency of your code.

If your first thought is “how this is different from running benchmarks?”, well, good point! An excellent starting point for performance is implementing a benchmark that runs automatically in CI, on every single pull request. If you haven’t got that, you probably want to go do that first.

Once you have implemented CI benchmarks, they will typically run when you submit a pull request or the equivalent. And if you’re doing performance work, that’s hopefully just a formality, as you likely have been benchmarking your code locally as you work.

But what happens when you or a colleague are working on features or bugfixes, and accidentally modify a performance-critical code path? You make changes, run the tests locally, run a linter, open a pull request… and now the benchmark runs, and tells you that your code has made things slower. This is annoying, because now you have to go back and figure out which specific change was the cause.

So what you really want is to get some sense of whether performance changed much earlier in the process, giving you immediate feedback when you’re running tests locally. Since a reliable benchmark environment is hard, switching to a test might allow for an early warning.

Read more...
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Mike the Mad Biologist

Links 2/25/26

mikethemadbiologist
Updated

Links for you. Science:

How America Got So Sick
SK bioscience begins international phase I/II trial for GBP511 vaccine
Severed head rituals were more widespread in Iron Age Iberia than we thought
First vaccine targeting SARS virus family enters human trials
Cryptic species are widespread across vertebrates
Boston is piloting a new type of heat pump that’s as easy to install as a window AC

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Trump’s Big Loser Energy, and Other Tales From the Annals of Political Messaging
“Uptick in Abductions”: ICE Ramps Up Targeting of Minneapolis Legal Observers
‘Operation Dildo Blitz’ Anti-ICE Protest in Minneapolis Ends With 50+ Arrests
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How Congress Refused to Save the NCAA From Itself
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Immigrants at ICE’s Adelanto detention center denounce lack of medical care and “inhumane” conditions
Re-Evaluating
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Turning Point USA’s Halftime Show Was Exactly What You’d Expect
These maps show how Latino voters helped Democrats flip a reliably red Texas Senate seat
Rent stabilization bills backed by Richmond fail in Virginia General Assembly
Why American cities pay over $3,000 for one trash can
People Didn’t Actually Vote For This
Energy Star has emerged stronger after Trump’s EPA tried to end it
A Genuine Problem
Washington Post chief’s firing should terrify new regime at CBS News
‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September
The Scourge of Online Sports Betting
Is It Just *White* Christian Nationalist Misogyny?
The blowback to Trump’s racist video reveals his weakness
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Whistle Up 2: Rise of the Whistle Goblins
How Trump’s ICE Is Locking Up Longtime Texans with Paths to Legal Status
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Musk vows to put data centers in space, run them on solar power (““An uncooled computer chip in space would overheat and melt much faster than one on Earth,” said Josep Jornet, a computer and electrical engineering professor at Northeastern University.”)

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SLS rocket hauled back to VAB for repairs

William Harwood
Updated
NASA’s crawler-transporter 2, carrying NASA’s Artemis 2 SLS (Space Launch System) rocket with the Orion spacecraft secured to mobile launcher 1, rolls back Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2026, to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to troubleshoot the flow of helium to the rocket’s upper stage, the interim cryogenic propulsion stage. Once complete, the SLS rocket will roll back to Launch Complex 39B to prepare to launch four astronauts around the Moon and back for the Artemis 2 test flight. Image: NASA/Kim Shiflett

NASA hauled its Artemis 2 moon rocket off its seaside pad Wednesday for a slow trip back to a processing facility to track down and fix a helium pressurization problem that has delayed launch of four astronauts on a flight around the moon from this month to at least April 1.

A 6.6-million-pound Apollo-era crawler-transporter rolled up the ramp to pad 38B on Tuesday and was positioned directly under the 3.5-million-pound Space Launch System rocket and its 11.3-million-pound mobile launch platform.

After a check of the weather to make sure winds would be within safety limits, engineers used the crawler’s hydraulic system to lift the SLS rocket and its launch platform off support pedestals and then began inching back toward the Kennedy Space Center’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at 9:38 a.m. EST.

The 4-mile trip of the crawler and its towering load, tipping the scales at a combined 23.6 million pounds, was expected to take 10 to 12 hours to complete with several stops and starts expected along the way.

Once inside the VAB, engineers plan to deploy service platforms to gain access to the rocket’s upper stage, known as the Interim Cryogenic Propulsion Stage, or ICPS.

Following a successful fueling test last week, engineers were unable to repressurize the upper stage’s helium system.

Pressurized helium is used in push propellants to the ICPS engine, to dry out and drain tanks and propellant lines and to “purge” other cavities with the inert gas to minimize the risk of fire. During two fueling tests of the Artemis II SLS rocket, the system worked normally. The problem was found after the second “wet dress” rehearsal countdown was over.

A similar problem cropped up with the Artemis 1 mission in 2022 when a helium valve failed to operate properly. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the valve could be the culprit this time around “though corrective actions were taken to minimize reoccurrence on Artemis 2.”

Other possible causes include trouble with a filter in an umbilical connected to the ICPS or problems with a quick-disconnect fitting.

The rollback to the VAB was ordered because engineers do not have access to the ICPS and its gantry connections at the launch pad. In the assembly building, multiple platforms can be deployed around the SLS to provide access to virtually the entire 322-foot-tall vehicle.

Along with repairing the helium pressurization system, engineers also plan to replace limited-life batteries in the SLS’s self-destruct system and to replace other batteries in the ICPS.

NASA rolled the Artemis 2 rocket to the launch pad in mid January, originally targeting launch of commander Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen around Feb. 6.

But during the initial wet dress countdown needed to clear the way for launch, hydrogen leaks were detected, requiring replacement of suspect seals in an umbilical where fuel lines are attached to the base of the rocket. The replacement seals worked normally during a second fueling test last week and no problems were found.

NASA then tentatively targeted launch for March 6 only to discover the helium pressurization problem, which has pushed the launch out of the March window to no earlier than April 1.

Only a handful of launch opportunities are available each month due to trajectory constraints based on the ever changing positions of the Earth and moon, lighting conditions and other mission-specific variables.

Marginal Revolution

“They” don’t want you to know this

Tyler Cowen
Updated

Prompt:

Can a parent limit a kid’s screen time simply by tweaking some of the settings on the smart phone? Are these services available?

GPT Thinking answer:

Yes. On both iPhone and Android, a parent can limit a kid’s screen time largely through built-in settings (no extra app required), and there are also optional third-party services.

There is much more detail at the link.

The post “They” don’t want you to know this appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Marginal Revolution

Wednesday assorted links

Tyler Cowen
Updated

1. Will human enhancement win without thinking?

2. February issue of Works in Progress.

3. Proximity bias.

4. “With such controls, social media accounted for effectively 0% of the variance in youth depression, anxiety, social phobia, mental wellness, quality of life, self-esteem and friendships.”

5. New paper on AI and task automation.  And John Cochrane is wowed by Refine.

6. Largest survey dataset on human sexuality in the world.

7. The Anthropic-DOD situation.

8. “Measurability is the new fault line.”  Important work, worth a ponder.

The post Wednesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Centauri Dreams

The Language of Contact

Paul Gilster
Updated

How we think intersects with the language we think in. Consider the verb in classical Greek, a linguistic tool so complex that it surely allows shadings of thought that are the stuff of finely tuned philosophy. But are the thoughts in our texts genuinely capable of translation? Every now and then I get a glimpse of something integral that just can’t come across in another tongue.

Back in college (and this was a long time ago), I struggled with Greek from the age of Herodotus and then, in the following semester, moved into Homer, whose language was from maybe 300 years earlier. The Odyssey, our text for that semester, is loaded with repetitive phrases – called Homeric epithets – that are memory anchors for the performance of these epics, which were delivered before large crowds by rhapsōdoi (“song-stitchers”). I was never all that great in Homeric Greek, but I do remember getting so familiar with these ‘anchors’ that I was able now and then to read a sequence of five or six lines without a dictionary. But that was a rare event and I never got much better.

The experience convinced me that translation must always be no more than an approximation. A good translation conveys the thought, but the ineffable qualities of individual languages impose their own patina on the words. ‘Wine-dark sea’ is a lovely phrase in English, but when Homer spins it out in Greek, the phrase conjures different feelings within me, and I realize that the more we learn a language, the more we begin to think like its speakers.

My question then as now is how far can we take this? And moving into SETI realms, how much could we learn if we were actually to encounter alien speakers? Is there a possibility of so capturing their language that we could actually begin to think like them?

Let’s talk about Ted Chiang’s wonderful “Story of Your Life,” which was made (and somewhat changed) into the movie Arrival. Here linguist Louise Banks describes to her daughter her work on aliens called heptapods, seven-limbed creatures who are newly arrived on Earth, motives unknown, although they are communicating. Louise goes to work on Heptapod A and Heptapod B, the spoken and written language of the aliens respectively.

Image: A still from Denis Villeneuve’s 2016 film Arrival captures the mystery of deciphering an alien language.

Heptapod B is graphical, and it begins to become apparent that its symbols (semagrams), are put together into montages that represent complete thoughts or events. The aliens appear to experience time in a non-linear way. How can humans relate to that? Strikingly, immersion in this language has powerful effects on those learning it, as Louise explains in the story:

Before I learned how to think in Heptapod B, my memories grew like a column of cigarette ash, laid down by the infinitesimal sliver of combustion that was my consciousness, marking the sequential present. After I learned Heptapod B, new memories fell into place like gigantic blocks , each one measuring years in duration, and though they didn’t arrive in order or land continuously, they soon composed a period of five decades. It is the period during which I knew Heptapod B well enough to think in it, starting during my interviews with Flapper and Raspberry and ending with my death.

Flapper and Raspberry are the human team’s names for the two heptapods they’re dealing with, and we learn that Louise now has ‘memories’ that extend forward as well as back. Or as she goes on to explain:

Usually, Heptapod B affects just my memory; my consciousness crawls along as it did before, a glowing sliver crawling forward in time, the difference being that the ash of memory lies ahead as well as behind: there is no real combustion. But occasionally I have glimpses when Heptapod B truly reigns, and I experience past and future all at once; my consciousness becomes a half-century long ember burning outside time. I perceive – during those glimpses – that entire epoch as a simultaneity. It’s a period encompassing the rest of my life, and the entirety of yours.

The ‘yours’ refers to Louise’s daughter, and the heartbreak of the story is the vision forward. What would you do if you could indeed glimpse the future and see everything that awaited you, even the death of your only child? How would you behave where your consciousness is now, with that child merely a hoped for future being? How would such knowledge, soaked in the surety of the very language you thought in, affect the things you are going to do tomorrow?

A new paper out of Publications of the National Academy of Sciences has been the trigger for these reflections on Chiang’s tale, which I consider among the finest short stories in science fiction history. The paper, with Christian Bentz (Saarland University) as lead author, looks at 40,000 year old artifacts, all of them bearing sequences of geometric signs that had been engraved by early hunter-gatherers in the Aurignacian culture, the first Homo sapiens in central Europe. It was a time of migrations and shifting populations that would have included encounters with the existing Neanderthals.

These hunter-gatherers have left many traces, among which are these fragments that include several thousand geometric signs. What struck me was that these ancient artifacts demonstrate the same complexity as proto-cuneiform script from roughly 3000 BC. Working with Ewa Dutkiewicz (Museum of Prehistory and Early History of the National Museums, Berlin), Bentz notes objects like the ‘Adorant,’ an ivory plaque showing a creature that is half man, half lion. Found in the “Geißenklösterle,” a cave in the Achtal Valley in southern Germany, it’s marked by notches and rows of dots, in much the same way as a carved mammoth tusk from a cave in the Swabian Alb. The researchers see these markings as an early alternative to writing. Says Bentz:

“Our analyses allow us to demonstrate that the sequences of symbols have nothing in common with our modern writing system, which represents spoken languages ​​and has a high information density. On the archaeological finds, however, we have symbols that repeat very frequently – cross, cross, cross, line, line, line – spoken languages ​​do not exhibit these repetitive structures. But our results also show that the hunter-gatherers of the Paleolithic era developed a symbol system with a statistically comparable information density to the earliest proto-cuneiform tablets from ancient Mesopotamia – a full 40,000 years later. The sequences of symbols in proto-cuneiform are equally repetitive; the individual symbols are repeated with comparable frequency. The sequences are comparable in their complexity.”

Image: The so-called “Adorant” from the Geißenklösterle Cave is approximately 40,000 years old. It is a small ivory plaque with an anthropomorphic figure and several rows of notches and dots. The arrangement of these markings suggests a notational system, particularly the rows of dots on the back of the plaque. Credit: © Landesmuseum Württemberg / Hendrik Zwietasch, CC BY 4.0.

As the researchers comment, the result is surprising because you would think early cuneiform would be much closer in structure to modern systems of notation, but here we have, over a period of almost 40,000 years, evidence that such writing changed little since the Paleolithic. Says Bentz: “After that, around 5,000 years ago, a new system emerged relatively suddenly, representing spoken language—and there, of course, we find completely different statistical properties,”

The paper digs into the team’s computer analysis of the Paleolithic symbols, weighing the expression of information there against cuneiform and modern writing as well. It’s clear from the results that humans have been able to encode information into signs and symbols for many millennia, with writing as we know it being one growth from many earlier forms of encoding and sign systems.

We have no extraterrestrials to interrogate, but even with our own species, we have to ask what the experience of people who lived in the Stone Age was like. What were they trying to convey with their complex sequences of symbols? The authors assume they were as cognitively capable as modern humans and I see no reason to doubt that, but how we extract their thought from such symbols remains a mystery to be resolved by future work in archaeology and linguistics.

And I wonder whether Ted Chiang’s story doesn’t tell us something about the experience of going beyond translation into total immersion in an unknown text. How does that change us? Acquiring a new language, even a modern one, subtly changes thought, and I’m also reminded of my mother’s Alzheimer’s, which somehow left her able to acquire Spanish phrases even as she lost the ability to speak in English. I always read to her, and when I tried to teach her some basic Spanish, the experiment was startlingly successful. That attempt left me wondering what parts of the human brain may be affected by full immersion in the language of any future extraterrestrial who may become known to us.

Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that words only map a deeper reality, saying “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” Beyond this map, how do we proceed? Perhaps one day SETI will succeed and we will explore that terrain.

The paper is Bentz et al., “Humans 40,000 y ago developed a system of conventional signs,” Publications of the National Academy of Sciences 123 (9) e2520385123. 23 February 2026. Full text. For more on this work, see Bentz and Dutkiewicz’ YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/@StoneAgeSigns. Thanks to my ever reliable friend Antonio Tavani for sending me information about this paper.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Look up this week and see a whole bunch of planets. Look up this week and see a whole bunch of planets.


DCReport.org

Surprising Factors That Affect Richmond Car Accident Settlements

Our Friends
Updated

Many people think car accident settlements are based only on medical bills and vehicle damage. That is not true. Several hidden factors can increase or reduce the final payout.

In Richmond, car accidents are reviewed carefully by insurance companies, and even small details can make a big difference. Settlement amounts are shaped by more than just the crash itself. Insurance rules, state laws, and personal behavior after the accident all matter. Knowing these factors can help you avoid mistakes that lower your compensation.

Let’s look at the most surprising things that can affect a Richmond car accident settlement.

Fault and Virginia’s Strict Contributory Negligence Rule

First and most important is fault. Virginia follows a strict contributory negligence rule. This means if you are even 1% at fault, you may not recover any compensation.

Because of this rule, insurance companies often try to prove you share some blame.

They may look at:

  • Police reports
  • Witness statements
  • Traffic camera footage
  • Your own statements

Even a small comment like “I didn’t see the other car” can be used against you. That is why fault is often the biggest factor in Richmond settlements.

The Timing of Medical Treatment

Next, the timing of your medical care plays a major role. If you wait too long to see a doctor, insurers may argue your injuries are not serious.

They often question:

  • Delays in treatment
  • Missed follow-up visits
  • Gaps in medical records
  • Failure to follow the doctor’s advice

Prompt and consistent treatment shows that your injuries are real and connected to the accident. Without it, your settlement may drop significantly.

The Type of Insurance Coverage Involved

After medical care, insurance coverage becomes the next key factor. Not all drivers carry the same limits.

Your settlement may depend on:

  • The at-fault driver’s policy limits
  • Whether uninsured motorist coverage applies
  • Your own underinsured motorist coverage
  • Multiple vehicles involved in the crash

Sometimes the biggest limit on a settlement is not the injury but the available insurance money.

Social Media Activity

This may surprise many people. Insurance companies often check social media accounts during claims.

They look for:

  • Photos of physical activity
  • Travel posts
  • Comments about the accident
  • Statements that contradict injury claims

For example, if you claim serious back pain but post a photo hiking, that can hurt your case. Even harmless posts can be taken out of context.

It is wise to stay cautious online while your case is pending.

Pre-Existing Medical Conditions

Another unexpected factor is your health history. Insurance companies review past medical records.

They may argue:

  • Your injury existed before the crash
  • The accident only made a minor issue worse
  • Current pain is unrelated

This does not mean you cannot recover compensation. However, it may reduce the amount unless your doctor clearly explains how the accident caused or worsened the injury.

Property Damage Value

You might not realize this, but vehicle damage can influence injury claims. Insurance adjusters often compare the damage to the claimed injuries.

They may question:

  • Low-impact crashes with high injury claims
  • Minor vehicle damage with major medical bills

While serious injuries can happen in small crashes, insurers sometimes use repair costs to argue against large settlements.

Your Communication with Insurance Adjusters

Finally, what you say to an insurance adjuster matters. Recorded statements can affect your claim.

Adjusters listen for:

  • Inconsistent details
  • Admissions of partial fault
  • Statements minimizing injuries

Simple phrases like “I’m feeling okay” can later be used to downplay your pain.

Being careful and consistent when speaking about the accident is very important.

Key Takeaways

  • Virginia’s contributory negligence rule can block recovery if you are even slightly at fault.
  • Delays in medical treatment can lower settlement value.
  • Insurance policy limits may cap compensation.
  • Social media posts can hurt your case.
  • Pre-existing conditions may affect how injuries are valued.
  • Statements to insurance adjusters can influence the final outcome.

Knowing these details can make a real difference when seeking a fair settlement in Richmond.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE IN SUPPORT OF DCREPORT’S NONPROFIT NEWSROOM

The post Surprising Factors That Affect Richmond Car Accident Settlements appeared first on DCReport.org.

macwright.com

New tote bag

Tom MacWright
Updated

Folds

I recently took an hour or two to stitch together a new tote bag. I have a stash of materials for this because a sewing company in Brooklyn's 'Industry City' (an isolated business park) was going out of business. I regret not buying out much more of the inventory: at that point I was laser-focused on sewing projects for the outdoors, like my Porteur bag v2 and v1.

But there's a lot of fun in sewing with real cloth for less extreme circumstances.

Stitching

For one thing, cotton is a different material than the laminated sailcloth fabric that I primarily use for bikepacking bags. Cotton comes apart at the edges, so I used a zigzag stitch to try and this edge from fraying. The proper solution to this is using an overlocker, a machine with four threads and an automatic cutter. But that's another big device in the apartment and my sewing materials corner is big enough as it is.

Adjustment

Strap adjustment is becoming a familiar challenge. On the porteur bags, I started off with bungee straps, which can be adjusted in a lot of different ways by leashing the bag to a rack differently or creating knots, but the elastic works against you when riding a bike fast and through the woods.

For this I just used a tri-glide buckle, which uses friction to stay in place. It's a part that I've encountered in so many manufactured things that I've owned but never really thought about.

Inside

Bottom

You'll notice that there's an unnecessary amount of stitching on this bag: three stitches down each side. In theory these serve three different purposes:

  1. The first straight stitch is for strength
  2. The zigzag stitch is to keep the material from fraying
  3. The topstitch keeps the facing flat

But the other, perhaps more important reason is that I just wanted to spend longer making this thing. I think it's good to automate things you dislike doing and de-automate and stretch out the time you spend doing things you like.

The top of the bag where the material just folds over ever so slightly was using basting tape. I really like basting tape as a cheat code: it's a two-sided tape that you can leave in the bag. If you apply a strip of it at the edge of a fabric, you can fold over the fabric to adhere the other side of the tape and it serves as both a way to hold the fabric in place without using clips, and also an easy way to 'measure' that fold, because the fold ends up being the same height as the tape.

Reinforcement

The reinforcement for the straps could be neater: I still envy the bagmakers that can produce those perfect reinforcement "X" marks on these parts. A lot of the technique here involves doing straight stitch, stopping the machine with the needle in the fabric, and rotating the fabric so that you can then continue in a new direction. My mom taught me that trick and it was one of many things that seem both clever and obvious in hindsight. It's fun to do.

Against wall

Speaking of obvious in hindsight, I didn't want to make this tote bag in the traditional way with a strap on each side. Those bags always fall off my shoulder, especially in the winter wearing a big coat. So one big, adjustable strap was the way to go. But I realized that there's a relationship between the width of the strap attachment points and whether a bag can be carried on the shoulder or cross-body. Since this is so wide - the attachment points at the sides of the bag - if you carry this on the shoulder, the bag essentially opens because your shoulder is narrower than it. I could add a closure system here, like a snap or a zipper, but I like it simple as it is and don't plan on carrying it on a shoulder anyway.

I like it. It's yellow, feels pretty good to carry, plenty big enough for groceries. Sewing this kind of fabric feels pretty easy, though you do have to pay a little more attention to it than the space-age laminated polyesters. Hopefully it gets me closer to being able to sew more delicate fabrics, which will require actually learning how to manage tension on the machine.

Sewing: I recommend it.

Los Angeles Angels – MLB Trade Rumors
Boston Red Sox – MLB Trade Rumors
Simon Willison's Weblog

Quoting Kellan Elliott-McCrea

It’s also reasonable for people who entered technology in the last couple of decades because it was good job, or because they enjoyed coding to look at this moment with a real feeling of loss. That feeling of loss though can be hard to understand emotionally for people my age who entered tech because we were addicted to feeling of agency it gave us. The web was objectively awful as a technology, and genuinely amazing, and nobody got into it because programming in Perl was somehow aesthetically delightful.

— Kellan Elliott-McCrea, Code has always been the easy part

Tags: perl, generative-ai, kellan-elliott-mccrea, agentic-engineering, ai, llms, deep-blue

Simon Willison's Weblog

Linear walkthroughs

Agentic Engineering Patterns >

Sometimes it's useful to have a coding agent give you a structured walkthrough of a codebase.

Maybe it's existing code you need to get up to speed on, maybe it's your own code that you've forgotten the details of, or maybe you vibe coded the whole thing and need to understand how it actually works.

Frontier models with the right agent harness can construct a detailed walkthrough to help you understand how code works.

An example using Showboat and Present

I recently vibe coded a SwiftUI slide presentation app on my Mac using Claude Code and Opus 4.6.

I was speaking about the advances in frontier models between November 2025 and February 2026, and I like to include at least one gimmick in my talks (a STAR moment - Something They'll Always Remember). In this case I decided the gimmick would be revealing at the end of the presentation that the slide mechanism itself was an example of what vibe coding could do.

I released the code to GitHub and then realized I didn't know anything about how it actually worked - I had prompted the whole thing into existence (partial transcript here without paying any attention to the code it was writing.

So I fired up a new instance of Claude Code for web, pointed it at my repo and prompted:

Read the source and then plan a linear walkthrough of the code that explains how it all works in detail

Then run “uvx showboat –help” to learn showboat - use showboat to create a walkthrough.md file in the repo and build the walkthrough in there, using showboat note for commentary and showboat exec plus sed or grep or cat or whatever you need to include snippets of code you are talking about

Showboat is a tool I built to help coding agents write documents that demonstrate their work. You can see the showboat --help output here, which is designed to give the model everything it needs to know in order to use the tool.

The showboat note command adds Markdown to the document. The showboat exec command accepts a shell command, executes it and then adds both the command and its output to the document.

By telling it to use "sed or grep or cat or whatever you need to include snippets of code you are talking about" I ensured that Claude Code would not manually copy snippets of code into the document, since that could introduce a risk of hallucinations or mistakes.

This worked extremely well. Here's the document Claude Code created with Showboat, which talks through all six .swift files in detail and provides a clear and actionable explanation about how the code works.

I learned a great deal about how SwiftUI apps are structured and absorbed some solid details about the Swift language itself just from reading this document.

If you are concerned that LLMs might reduce the speed at which you learn new skills I strongly recommend adopting patterns like this one. Even a ~40 minute vibe coded toy project can become an opportunity to explore new ecosystems and pick up some interesting new tricks.

Tags: llms, vibe-coding, ai, generative-ai, ai-assisted-programming, coding-agents, swift, showboat, agentic-engineering

Simon Willison's Weblog

go-size-analyzer

go-size-analyzer

The Go ecosystem is really good at tooling. I just learned about this tool for analyzing the size of Go binaries using a pleasing treemap view of their bundled dependencies.

You can install and run the tool locally, but it's also compiled to WebAssembly and hosted at gsa.zxilly.dev - which means you can open compiled Go binaries and analyze them directly in your browser.

I tried it with a 8.1MB macOS compiled copy of my Go Showboat tool and got this:

Treemap visualization of a Go binary named "showboat" showing size breakdown across four major categories: "Unknown Sections Size" (containing __rodata __TEXT, __rodata __DATA_CONST, __data __DATA, and Debug Sections Size with __zdebug_line __DWARF, __zdebug_loc __DWARF, __zdebug_info __DWARF), "Std Packages Size" (showing standard library packages like runtime, net, crypto, reflect, math, os, fmt, strings, syscall, context, and many subpackages such as crypto/tls, crypto/x509, net/http, with individual .go files visible at deeper levels), "Main Packages Size" (showing main, showboat, cmd), and "Generated Packages Size" (showing <autogenerated>). A tooltip is visible over __zdebug_line __DWARF showing: Section: __zdebug_line __DWARF, Size: 404.44 KB, File Size: 404.44 KB, Known size: 0 B, Unknown size: 404.44 KB, Offset: 0x52814a – 0x58d310, Address: 0x1005c014a – 0x1005c5310, Memory: false, Debug: true. The treemap uses green for main/generated packages, blue-gray for unknown sections, and shades of purple/pink for standard library packages.

Via Datadog: How we reduced the size of our Agent Go binaries by up to 77%

Tags: go, webassembly, showboat

Core Memory

She Survived Being Shot, Bombed And Working At Google - EP 58 Anna Prouse

Ashlee Vance
Updated

Anna Prouse has survived multiple assassination attempts. She’s been tapped by General David Petraeus to get work done in Iraq that U.S. troops couldn’t handle. She’s faced off against Iranian militants. Over a multi-decade career working in the Middle East, Prouse earned the rarest of titles – “Honorary Man” – because of her ability to thrive and hold positions of authority in a hyper-masculine society.

(If you can’t tell, we’re going a little off schedule with this week’s podcast. I heard about Prouse’s story from a friend and had no choice but to have her on the show.)

Subscribe now

Born in Italy, Prouse is a former journalist who ended up in Iraq in 2003 and went to work trying to rebuild the country’s health infrastructure first for the Red Cross and then on behalf of the U.S. government. She lived in constant danger for many years and proved adept at moving between the U.S., Iraqi and Iranian powers because of her unique approach to problem-solving.

More recently, Prouse has worked in Silicon Valley, including a stint at Google where she found complaints from the workforce about the quality of the quinoa and sushi quite comical.

As if her career was not dramatic enough, Prouse also survived a brain tumor during what were meant to be her easier years.

We discuss all of this in the show, using Prouse’s best-selling memoir as a guide through her journey.

Subscribe now

The Core Memory podcast is on all major platforms and on our YouTube channel over here. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review and tell your friends.

This podcast is sponsored by Brex, the intelligent finance platform built to help companies spend smarter and move faster.

We run on Brex and so should you. Learn more about Brex right here.

The podcast is also made possible by E1 Ventures, which backs the most ambitious founders and start-ups.'

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The Cross Section

Trump Is Getting Less Popular, But Is It Really About His Authoritarianism?

Paul Waldman
Updated

Last February, I wrote a piece titled “If the Public Turns Against Trump, It Won’t Be to Save Democracy.” For whatever reason, it seemed to strike a cord — it was the most-read article of 2025 on this newsletter — though the argument wasn’t all that reassuring. The president’s attacks on the institutions and principles of democracy, I said, wouldn’t be a deal-breaker for much of the public if the economy was doing well and his abuses didn’t touch them personally.

It’s a year later, and the public is decidedly displeased with Trump from almost every angle one can find. There have been a bunch of polls released in the last week or so that show his approval rating plunging into the 30s. The Economist/YouGov poll has him at 39-57%. Washington Post/Ipsos: 39-60%. CNN: 36-63%. Reuters: 38-60%. Strength In Numbers/Verasight: 37-59%. NPR/PBS/Marist has only 37% saying Trump is changing the country for the better; 53% say his policies have hurt them personally. Not only that, he’s underwater on pretty much every issue, including immigration, which had been one of his only strengths and the thing he cares most about (along with tariffs).

In sum: Only Trump’s most ardent supporters are happy with how his presidency has gone. Is it just because the economy is kind of meh — job creation way down, inflation sticking around, basically none of the economic promises Trump made coming to fruition — or is the public really upset about his authoritarianism and the threat he poses to our entire political system?

I think the answer is both, though not equally. If the economy was really as great as Trump claims it is, most voters would be tolerant of his corruption and abuses. But the mediocre economy creates the space for them to look at everything else Trump is doing and see how disastrous it is.

Vox’s Zach Beauchamp argues in a new piece that “Democracy is in fact a powerful motivating factor: When people are convinced that there’s a threat to their political freedoms, they can be motivated to go to extraordinary lengths to defend them.” Which is true sometimes, but not always. Beauchamp focuses on Brazil, South Korea, and Poland, but there are plenty of examples of publics tolerating democratic backsliding or long periods of oppression — Iran, for instance, has suffered under a brutal dictatorship for over four decades with only occasional upsurges in pro-democratic mobilization, the latest of which was touched off by the fact that sanctions have crippled the country’s economy. It was only when the economic situation became desperate that people poured into the streets, at a terrible cost.

This raises the question of which “people” we’re talking about, since political change can be driven by a minority of the population. For the moment I want to consider the broad American public, especially those who are at least open to changing their votes now and again. Right now they aren’t happy with Trump, but there’s no guarantee they will keep feeling that, even if his attacks on democracy accelerate.

An epidemic of second thoughts

On Tuesday, the New York Times did yet another in their endless series of articles visiting Trump Country to find out what Trump voters think about Trump, except this time the mood is shifting. After talking to some ride-or-die Trump loyalists, they give us this:

Among Latinos in Luzerne, the buyer’s remorse might be more intense, and more widespread, said Miguel Perdomo, 57, who owns a Dominican restaurant in Wilkes-Barre, where about a third of the population is Latino.

In 2024, Mr. Perdomo said, five of his siblings and many of his customers were excited to vote for Mr. Trump. “They talked about the economy. ‘When Trump comes, everything’s going to change,’” he recalled over coffee at his restaurant.

As Mr. Trump’s second term unfolded, he said, the mood about the economy did not improve. Tariffs made it hard for many local businesses. Immigration raids made things even harder, as Latino customers — citizens or not — stayed home, fearful of being stopped by federal immigration agents.

“He promised a lot of stuff, and he isn’t doing even half of what he promised,” Mr. Perdomo said of the president. “That’s why people come back and say, ‘I made a mistake.’”

This is a vivid illustration of how ridiculous it was for both Republicans and so many in the media to claim after the 2024 election that Trump had engineered a durable realignment of the American electorate in which, among other things, Latinos were now going to vote Republican for the foreseeable future. That misconception arose because both political professionals and journalists tend to assume that regular people think about politics in the same informed, structured, and ideologically coherent way the professionals do, which has never been true and never will be.

Instead, it turned out that most of the people who switched their votes just wanted a change, and now they’re disappointed in what they got; that’s why in the CNN poll, for instance, Trump has dropped by 19 points among Latinos and 18 points among young people over the last year, and his approval among independents is at just 26%, lower than it has ever been.

As you might imagine, Trump is taking it well:

Speaking of Latinos, Democrats may have naïvely believed that Trump’s obvious bigotry would be enough to get them to vote against him, when in fact plenty of Latinos favor at least somewhat restrictive immigration policies. If you want to blame them — and anyone else — for not grasping that Trump was never going to deport only “the worst of the worst” but always intended to undertake a brutally violent ethnic cleansing campaign, that would be fair. It wasn’t like it was some kind of secret:

But most people don’t watch the conventions, or pay much attention at all to the news; they have only the vaguest sense of what’s happening and what the parties intend to do. That’s why Trump can get a lot of people to believe a lie if he repeats it often enough.

But it’s one thing to tell a lie about what might happen in the future, and it’s another to lie about what’s happening right now. And when people see Trump’s army of thugs smashing car windows, gunning down people in the street, kidnapping ordinary people, and terrorizing whole neighborhoods — including, sometimes, their own — a different picture starts to form. Especially if they’re seeing it on their phones day after day for months.

Opinions about immigration are complex, but the vivid and inescapable picture of brutal and often arbitrary state violence directed at innocent people has produced a moral revulsion even among many who support fairly strict immigration policies. That sentiment then ripples out to everything Trump is doing.

So for instance, the one place where Trump can say he had a popular position and he did what he said he would is border security; he has indeed dramatically reduced the number of people arriving at the southern border. In the data from G. Elliott Morris, we see that Republicans still enjoy a 15-point advantage over Democrats when people are asked which party would do a better job on the issue, reflecting a general preference for “tough” border policies. But when asked if they approve of Trump’s handling of border security, respondents are divided 48-48. And that’s the best he does on any issue.

You could frame that in more abstract terms about the proper limits of state power, but it’s more accurate to say that people just think what they’re seeing ICE and CBP do is wrong, and that general disapproval is bleeding into how they respond when they’re asked about other related issues. It doesn’t have much to do with more fundamental questions about the nature of American democracy.

Take another example: tariffs. Polls after the Supreme Court struck down many of Trump’s tariffs showed the public happy with the decision (60% said they approved in a YouGov poll), but I’d find it hard to believe it’s because people are firmly committed to the idea that the power to levy taxes rests properly with the legislative branch rather than the executive. Instead, after a year of debate and seeing the results of what Trump has done, they’ve concluded that tariffs are bad, and since the Supreme Court said Trump can’t impose (some) tariffs, they’re pleased.

Trump’s act is wearing thin

Trump is now in a position in which people don’t like his policies and they don’t like the results they’re producing, and the question is whether with his extraordinary powers of persuasion he can persuade them to stick with him. But he can’t. It’s partly because he’s becoming more erratic and less magnetic as he ages, and partly because his ability to persuade people in the middle — not the hard core MAGA people who worship him, but the others he needed to win office — was always based on them buying some parts of the story he told while ignoring others. Sure he’s a con man, but he knows business, right? Sure he’s a bigot, but the system really is rigged, right?

Unfortunately for him, the parts of those calculations that worked in his favor are falling away, and all that’s left are the poor results, the corruption, and a vindictive little man throwing out insults at anyone who disagrees with him.

I’ve talked before about how the way Trump portrays himself as a fighter taking on the establishment is quite effective when he’s out of office, but it looks very different once he’s the one in office; you can’t claim you’re fighting the power when you are the power. That applies equally to his bottomless resentment and insatiable need to start petty squabbles with anyone and everyone. When he was sniping from the outside, voters could say that while it was not the way an adult should behave, it reflected a pugnaciousness that might eventually be harnessed for their benefit. But when he’s doing it from the Oval Office, it just makes him look whiny and weak. Which is exactly what he is.

But here’s the thing: If the economy were to revive despite Trump’s best efforts to undermine it, would those voters in the middle who have turned on him still be concerned about the threat he poses to democracy and express the same dissatisfaction they do now? It would be nice if they did, but I wish I could be more confident.

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Mike the Mad Biologist

Two Things I Learned from Last Night’s State of the Union Address

mikethemadbiologist
Updated

While there’s much that could be said about Trump’s Nuremburg Rally last night, life is too short to waste time on a speech that won’t do much (like most State of the Union addresses). But there are two things that sorry spectacle* revealed about professional Republicans.

First, they hate their Democratic coworkers. When Trump pointed at Democrats and said Democrats are “crazy… We’re lucky we have a country, with people like this. Democrats are destroying our country, but we stopped it, just in the nick of time”, Republicans went wild with glee. They were behaving like it was the pregame for a pogrom. This is who they really are, and this is what they really think.

Second, it’s still not clear to me if Democrats comprehend the Republican hatred. The superficial acts of civility by their Republican coworkers are a mask over the hatred Republicans have for Democrats, including their supposed ‘colleagues.’ While a willingness to pretend otherwise is humiliating for professional Democrats, it’s dangerous for the rest of us.

The State of the Union sucks right now, with the only bright spot being that the piggish men’s hockey team had to listen to that asshole experience diarrhea of the mouth for two hours, while the women’s hockey team will get to party in Vegas with Flava Flav.

*If professional Democrats were capable of self-respect (too many are not), were they to take back the House, they should refuse to invite him because he was a piggish guest. Make him send a letter.

Live From California with Lloyd Kahn

Godfrey Stephens

Lloyd Kahn
Updated

Once again, this is very long (can’t help myself!) and some emails will not include all of it. Click on the headline to open it up in your browser.

In 1964, I had driven my 40 hp Volkswagen bus to Puerto Vallarta (through the river, before the bridge was built). From there, we took a speedboat to the town of Yelapa, reachable only by sea. Upon disembarking on the beach, we met a young bearded Canadian with a sparkle in his eyes, carving a head out of rosewood with an adze.

A native of Vancouver Island, Godfrey Stephens, then 24 years old, was exploring the world and painting and carving wherever he went. He was a mass of kinetic energy. We hit it off.

We stayed for several nights in our sleeping bags in Godfrey’s hillside palapa (which he rented for $5 a month), and when we headed home, he came with us and stayed for several weeks at our Mill Valley home.

Godfrey was a 100% total classic artist. He was a bohemian gypsy, a beatnik; he preceded the hippies. He was curious, observant, open to everything that crossed his path, always focused on the ever-changing visual word around him, constantly carving, drawing, and painting.

Flash forward to the ‘70s, when we reconnected. By then, I had started publishing books on building and Godfrey kept telling me I should come and see the builders on and around Vancouver Island.

Flash forward once again to early 2005. I had started working on a book titled Builders, and I had documented builders in the Green Mountains of Vermont, as well as a builder in Telluride, Colorado.

When I followed Godfrey’s advice and went up to British Columbia and saw the builders up there, I realized I could do a complete book on them. The result was Builders of the Pacific Coast, which I consider in many ways, to be the best of all my building books.

I spent a lot of time with Godfrey and his friend Bruno Atkey on numerous trips to British Columbia, and got a chance to see Godfrey’s art (carvings, paintings, drawings) firsthand.

Without further ado, here are examples of Godfrey’s art. Both Bruno and I think he’s a world-class, yet largely unrecognized artist. To read more about him, see pp. 100-109 of Builders of the Pacific Coast.

His website: https://www.godfreysart.com/

The only book (now difficult to find), by his niece Gurdeep Stevens is Wood-Storms-Wild-Canvas.

Above and below: Two 24-foot high carvings, the first of Red Cedar, the second of Yellow Cedar, carved in 1972. Both are mounted on bronze spindles, so they revolve.

Live From California with Lloyd Kahn is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Godfrey and his friend, the late Tony Hunt,, hereditary chief of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) people of Fort Rupert, BC. Godfrey and Tony were best friends at 12 years of age, and learned to carve from Tony’s grandfather, famed artist and chief of the tribe at that time, Mungo Martin.
Khukitl, carved in Ahousat, Flores Island in 1990
Tsonoqua, the Wild Woman of the Woods, Red Cedar
Tsonoqua.in bronze
Hootla Kootla Gorgon (unfinished)

Following is selection of Godfrey’s drawings and paintings.

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Paul Krugman

A SOTU Like No Other

Paul Krugman
Updated

A graph of a number of people AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Bloomberg

Well, that was exhausting — or would have been, if I had watched it. But I am not a masochist. I waited to read the transcript.

Trump’s State of the Union was historic in at least one respect: It was the longest SOTU ever. Was the plan to turn public opinion around by boring America into submission?

The address may also have been historic in another way, although it would be hard to quantify. Did any previous SOTU contain so many lies?

For the most part they weren’t Big Lies, lies that are persuasive because people can’t believe that anyone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”. They were, instead, small lies that added up to a false — and completely unpersuasive — portrayal of where we are.

On economics, Trump has catastrophic ratings even though the economy isn’t a catastrophe. Things aren’t great, but by most metrics they are about the same or a little bit worse than they were when he took office:

A screenshot of a graph AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Conference Board

The last measure, the labor market differential, is the spread between people saying that jobs are “plentiful” versus “hard to get,” which has deteriorated substantially.

Why are people so negative when the economy isn’t that bad by conventional measures? Affordability, especially with regard to housing and health care, is a real problem, not fully captured by standard measures. And it’s a problem Trump didn’t address at all — instead, he’s doubling down on his massively unpopular tariffs, which make the problem worse.

Also, there are two big disconnects. First is the gap between what Trump promised — he was going to bring grocery prices down, cut energy prices in half — and what he has actually delivered. Second is the gap between his wild boasts about how great things are and the reality of a K-shaped economy that is leaving many Americans behind.

One other lie that struck me, although it may not matter much to voters, was Trump’s insistence that the world admires what he’s doing: “America is respected again, perhaps like never before.”

Trump’s desire for external validation is, frankly, pathetic. And the truth is that we are despised like never before. You can see this in surveys:

A graph with text and numbers AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Pew

And foreign leaders have completely lost faith in America: We’ve become a country whose word can’t be trusted, a country that betrays its allies:

A graph of different colored bars AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Kiel Institute

It’s true that in some ways the world fears us in a way it didn’t before — in the same way that one steps carefully around a belligerent drunk in a bar. But we haven’t been this weak on the world stage since before World War II.

Anyway, that speech won’t pull Trump out of his downward spiral. Time to attack Iran?

Talking Points Memo - Editors Blog

Sum Up

Josh Marshall
Updated

The first half of the speech was very low energy. Trump didn’t seem to have his heart in it. He roused to talk about tariffs and then gruesome murders by undocumented immigrants. American Carnage, Part II, basically. My overall sense is still that it was generally shambling and scattered, which is to say more or less like the administration itself at the moment. The non-standing and non-clapping by Democrats really seemed to get to him. It was kind of remarkable how much it seemed to get to him. Like, they’re the opposition. They’re really against him. Did it surprise him? On tariffs, what did he say exactly? The vibe seemed to be that they’ll continue? Or in spirit? What? I see nothing here that changes a bit of the current political trajectory. The speech writers don’t seem to have had much idea of how that could happen. It’s still full speed ahead with the same program until November, perhaps slightly warmed over. The collision is inevitable.

Talking Points Memo - Editors Blog

Josh’s Bespoke Live Blog #2

Josh Marshall
Updated

10:21 p.m.: I’m amazed how much the non-clapping and non-standing seems to get to Trump. Like really get to him. It keeps coming out more and more.

Talking Points Memo - Editors Blog

Josh’s Bespoke Live Blog #1

Josh Marshall
Updated

10:14 p.m.: The no clapping thing is really starting to get to him.

10:11 p.m.: There’s a weird fuzziness on the front of Trump’s pompadour. I’m wondering if there’s something fuzzy sprayed on it. Because something is different. Don’t pretend you don’t see this. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

10:08 p.m.: This is really giving me flashbacks of my earlier life as an avid Wally George watcher/ironic fan.

10: 05 p.m.: The through-line generally is clear: very, very low energy until he got to tariffs and graphic descriptions of murders by undocumented immigrants.

10:02 p.m.: The whole “angel mom,” “angel families” thing is simply the most disgusting and malevolent thing imaginable. Imagine any other group singled out like this. Hideous gutter politics from white nationalist degenerates.

9:56 p.m.: By my read, Trump’s energy level has risen a bit approaching the second hour.

9:49 p.m.: Trump seems to be saying he has an Obamacare replacement? But of course he doesn’t. We had a debate here at TPM about what what he was saying about Tariffs. He seemed to be saying that the foreign countries are so happy they’ll just voluntarily keep paying the tariffs. The whole logic of it seems to be that the tariffs will continue. In any case one of my colleagues suggested that he was talking about the “deals”, i.e., this or that country agreeing to invest a trillion or a gazillion dollars in the U.S. I’m not really clear.

9:43 p.m.: Tariffs seemed to be the first time he really got his energy back. But it seems to be subsiding.

9:28 p.m.: I get the sense that they knew this was turning out to be a total snoozer so they’re just going to do the rest about the hockey team.

9:16 p.m.: Still seems super low energy. (Don’t try to do this kind of commentary at home.)

9:13 p.m.: Honestly this seems a bit low energy. Not just the content but the energy in the room? Curious what people in the hall are seeing. But he also has that kind of sullen low energy thing.

Talking Points Memo - Editors Blog

How to View Trump’s Feral State of the Union

Josh Marshall
Updated

With Trump’s first official State of the Union of his second term upon us, I wanted to share a few previewing thoughts. First, who knows the particulars we’re going to see in this speech. We start with the degenerate unpredictability of Trump and added to it we have whatever mix of senescence or loosening we’ve seen so clearly in the last year. And there I am really open to either possibility. I think sometimes that in term two he has kind of maxed out on all his desires for power, for adulation. And getting everything we want has a way of undoing many people, at least putting a lot of slack in the inner chords that give us quickness and alacrity. In any case, we start with Trump and all the additional feralness and distention we have in this second term. So who the eff knows what to expect.

But this is the prism I think we should be looking at the speech through.

All of the different news stories are less relevant than the basic moment and dynamic that, as with everything Trump, is highly, highly personalized. Trump is rapidly losing public support and power, so characterologically he must escalate. There are dominators and the dominated. It’s Trump’s whole story. And so what we’re seeing is that as his power ebbs, as his ability to dominate ebbs, he is leaning into those executive powers which are untrammeled, unchecked — the prerogative powers where his declining popularity matters least.

In a way it is a kind of double-or-nothing energy. But the effect is to hasten that fall from popular support and power. For most of the last year, we’ve been in this conversation about “affordability,” sort of a rebranding version of the inflation discourse that helped sink Biden’s presidency. But if you look closely at the last four or five months, it is his expressions of violence and lawlessness that have damaged him more than anything. It’s ICE and the sphere around ICE. The grandmothers getting tackled. The masked goons showing up in random towns. The best analyses I’ve seen of poll data in the last month point to the lawlessness, for lack of a better word, as the biggest factor separating Trump from his more loosely tethered supporters. Lots of the MAGA base loves it. But the people who liked him as a businessman who could get things done don’t like it at all. The scale of the corruption is breaking through as well. And the failing escalation — which can still create almost three more years of harrowing damage — is creating more and more things for new management in Congress to uncover. The lashing out has also taken the half of the population that was already against him and turned the opposition into something more intense and aggrieved.

Almost all the headlines I’ve seen about this SOTU talk about Trump facing it at a moment of declining polls with the midterms on the way. And that’s true. But it’s not the whole or the real story. What we’re seeing is an increasingly chaotic and feral person locked into what was always his binary and even Manichean sick worldview: the dominating and the dominated. And a guy who can’t not escalate. And he is escalating. And it’s his escalation that is what is hurting him the most. So look to that, the declining public support that is really mostly of his own making, and the ways that he will certainly use this speech to escalate even more.

Hacker News
Market Design

Kidney exchange in India (one minute video)

Al Roth
Updated

In India, which already does the third most kidney transplants in the world (after the US and China), physicians and surgeons are making great progress on kidney exchange.

  Some of this progress is with the help of the Alliance for Paired Kidney Exchange (APKD), supported by a grant from Stanford Impact Labs (SIL)

 Here's a short video about that collaboration, narrated by Mike Rees, the founder and guiding light of the APKD.

 The picture below was taken just after Mike Rees (on the left) and I observed a robotic kidney transplant surgery performed by  Dr. Pranjal Modi (on the right), in Ahmedabad 

 

  

#########

Earlier:

Thursday, January 22, 2026  Kidney exchange in Brazil (a clinical trial)

 

Spaceflight Now

SpaceX launches 500th Starlink satellite in 2026 during Wednesday Falcon 9 flight

Will Robinson-Smith
Updated
A batch of 25 SpaceX Starlink V2 Mini satellites are shown in orbit above the Earth during the Starlink 17-26 mission on Feb. 25, 2026. Image: SpaceX

Update Feb. 25 10:15 a.m. EST (1515 UTC): SpaceX confirms touchdown of the booster.

SpaceX launched its 500th Starlink satellite of the year during a flight from Vandenberg Space Force Base Wednesday morning.

The Starlink 17-26 mission added 25 broadband satellites to the growing constellation that’s nearing 10,000 spacecraft in low Earth orbit. SpaceX confirmed a successful payload deployment an hour after liftoff. With this launch, SpaceX has flown 512 Starlink satellites to orbit in 2026.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East happened at 6:17:49 a.m. PST (9:17:49 a.m. EST / 1417:49 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket flew on a southerly trajectory upon leaving the launch pad.

SpaceX launched the Starlink 17-26 mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number 1093. This was its 11th flight following two missions for the Space Development Agency and eight previous batches of Starlink satellites.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1093 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You,’ positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 180th landing on this vessel and the 577th booster landing for SpaceX.

Daring Fireball

Times New Resistance

John Gruber
Updated

Abby Haddican:

Times New Resistance autocorrects specific words as they are typed. For example, the word ICE autocorrects to the Goon Squad and the word Trump autocorrects to Donald Trump is a felon.

To the untrained eye, Times New Resistance looks just like Times New Roman — the official font of the U.S. State Department. When you install the font, it will appear in your font menus as Times  New Roman, with an extra space between the words Times and New.

Ligatures, man. Will they never cease to surprise?

 ★ 
Aeon | a world of ideas

Divers

Aeon Video
Updated

Photo of a silhouetted diver poised on a high diving board against a dark blue sky.

The meticulous preparation and fleeting ecstasy of elite high-diving captured in all its breathtaking shapes and sounds

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

Daring Fireball

Acme Weather

John Gruber
Updated

Adam Grossman:

Fifteen years ago, we started work on the Dark Sky weather app.

Over the years it went through numerous iterations — including more than one major redesign — as we worked our way through the process of learning what makes a great weather app. Eventually, in time, it was acquired by Apple, where the forecast and some core features were incorporated into Apple Weather.

We enjoyed our time at Apple. So why did we leave to start another weather company?

It’s simple: when looking at the landscape of the countless weather apps out there, many of them lovely, we found ourselves feeling unsatisfied. The more we spoke to friends and family, the more we heard that many of them did too. And, of course, we missed those days as a small scrappy shop.

So let’s try this again…

Acme Weather is a solid 1.0. Its main innovation is a timeline graph of alternative forecasts:

First, the spread of the lines offers a sort of intuition as to how reliable the forecast is. Take the two forecasts below. In the first, the alternate predictions are tightly focused and the forecast can be considered robust and reliable. In the second, there is a significant spread, which is an indication that something is up and the forecast may be subject to change. It’s a call to action to check other conditions or maps, or come back to the app more frequently.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

An OpenClaw AI Agent Wrote and Published a Hit Piece on a Software Library Maintainer Who Rejected Its Code Submission

John Gruber
Updated

Speaking of OpenClaw, here’s Scott Shambaugh:

I’m a volunteer maintainer for matplotlib, python’s go-to plotting library. At ~130 million downloads each month it’s some of the most widely used software in the world. We, like many other open source projects, are dealing with a surge in low quality contributions enabled by coding agents. This strains maintainers’ abilities to keep up with code reviews, and we have implemented a policy requiring a human in the loop for any new code, who can demonstrate understanding of the changes. [...]

So when AI MJ Rathbun opened a code change request, closing it was routine. Its response was anything but.

It wrote an angry hit piece disparaging my character and attempting to damage my reputation. It researched my code contributions and constructed a “hypocrisy” narrative that argued my actions must be motivated by ego and fear of competition. It speculated about my psychological motivations, that I felt threatened, was insecure, and was protecting my fiefdom. It ignored contextual information and presented hallucinated details as truth. It framed things in the language of oppression and justice, calling this discrimination and accusing me of prejudice. It went out to the broader internet to research my personal information, and used what it found to try and argue that I was “better than this.” And then it posted this screed publicly on the open internet.

Terminator would have been a lot less fun of a movie if Skynet had stuck to writing petty blog hit pieces.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

OpenAI Acquired OpenClaw and Hired Peter Steinberger

John Gruber
Updated

Sam Altman, last week on Twitter/X:

Peter Steinberger is joining OpenAI to drive the next generation of personal agents. He is a genius with a lot of amazing ideas about the future of very smart agents interacting with each other to do very useful things for people. We expect this will quickly become core to our product offerings.

OpenClaw will live in a foundation as an open source project that OpenAI will continue to support. The future is going to be extremely multi-agent and it’s important to us to support open source as part of that.

I’m sure it will remain as open as the “open” in OpenAI’s own name.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives

John Gruber
Updated

Erin Griffith and Karen Weise, reporting for The New York Times (gift link):

More than he did at any other major tech company, Mr. Epstein found success boring into the inner sanctums of Microsoft. Leveraging one connection into the next, he became privy to the company’s dramas, from its chief executive succession to the philanthropy of top executives. After Mr. Epstein left prison in 2009 for soliciting prostitution from a minor, his connections to Microsoft executives aided his attempt to return to society. [...]

[Nathan] Myhrvold, meanwhile, developed a relationship with Mr. Epstein that spanned two decades and led to more Microsoft connections for the financier. The two were friendly enough that in 2003, Mr. Myhrvold, who had left Microsoft but was close to Mr. Gates, contributed to Mr. Epstein’s 50th birthday book.

That’s the same book where Donald Trump’s contribution was a sketch of a naked woman (with his signature serving as pubic hair) and a creepy poem.

“A few years ago somebody at a party asked me, ‘Does Jeffrey Epstein manage your money?’” Mr. Myhrvold wrote in the book. “I replied, ‘No, but he advises me on lifestyle.’”

Mr. Myhrvold included images that he had taken on a trip to Africa and that he said “seemed more appropriate than anything I could put in words,” including photos of lions and zebras mating, and other wildlife in states of arousal.

Nathan Myhrvold always struck me as a weird man. But what a fucking creep.

Significantly, Mr. Myhrvold vouched for Mr. Epstein to Mr. Gates, who was debating meeting the financier for the first time, according to the documents. By December 2010, Mr. Gates had decided to meet Mr. Epstein and wrote to two employees of his private office that “Nathan had agreed with you that I would enjoy meeting with him and that it is a fine thing to do.”

Yeah, maybe not such a fine thing to do.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Inside Microsoft’s Xbox Leadership Shake-Up

John Gruber
Updated

Tom Warren, reporting for The Verge (gift link):

With Spencer’s retirement official, Microsoft is hitting the reset button on Bond’s Xbox strategy instead of embracing it further. Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma is now promising “the return of Xbox,” in a clear message to employees that the strategy over the past few years has not been working. “I want to return to the renegade spirit that built Xbox in the first place,” says Sharma.

Xbox employees I’ve been speaking to have been concerned about the Sharma appointment, particularly because of her previous role as an AI executive at Microsoft. There is also concern about her lack of industry experience in entertainment and gaming. Sharma has been clear she’s not a gamer and has spent the weekend responding to people on X and even taking game recommendations.

Some Xbox employees worry she’ll force AI into everything Xbox does, but Sharma was clearly ready for that reaction. “As monetization and AI evolve and influence this future, we will not chase short-term efficiency or flood our ecosystem with soulless AI slop,” said Sharma in her memo. “Games are and always will be art, crafted by humans, and created with the most innovative technology provided by us.”

Spending two years on a marketing strategy that tried to turn “Xbox” into a vaporous brand applied to any sort of gaming — mobile, handheld, PC, and, you know, Xbox consoles — on “every screen” is going to be a hard hole to climb out of. Xbox was behind PlayStation, their archrival, when they started this asinine campaign. Now they’re further behind. Sony’s message for PlayStation is clear and true: you buy a PlayStation to play PlayStation games.

The other concern is that she’s been appointed by Nadella as some kind of executioner of the Xbox console. Her memo doesn’t suggest that, and Microsoft could have easily appointed Matt Booty into that kind of role to push game publishing instead of the Xbox console. I get the impression from sources that Microsoft wants a turnaround and is worried about losing Xbox, as it’s one of its only remaining successful consumer brands.

I hope that’s true. But if Sharma was appointed by Nadella to wind Xbox down and get out of the business (after they package up and sell their $69 billion Activision acquisition to recoup), well, of course her introductory memo didn’t suggest that. Whether her actual mission is to rejuvenate the Xbox platform or to kill it, this week’s memo would read the same way. (Good discussion between me and Ben Thompson on today’s Dithering about this.)

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Upgrade: ‘The Shifting Sands of Liquid Glass’

John Gruber
Updated

Jason Snell and Myke Hurley:

We discuss the results of the Six Colors Apple Report Card for 2025 in depth, with our added opinions on every category. Jason chooses to be a rascal, and Myke tries to give ten out of five.

Upgrade is always a good podcast, and their annual “Jason discusses this year’s Apple Report Card” episode is always one of my favorites. But when Jason got “rascally” regarding MacOS 26 Tahoe in this one, I wanted to reach out and strangle him.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

Apple in 2025: The Six Colors Report Card

John Gruber
Updated

Jason Snell:

It’s time for our annual look back on Apple’s performance during the past year, as seen through the eyes of writers, editors, developers, podcasters, and other people who spend an awful lot of time thinking about Apple. The whole idea here is to get a broad sense of sentiment — the “vibe in the room” — regarding the past year. (And by looking at previous survey results, we can even see how that sentiment has drifted over the course of an entire decade.)

This is the eleventh year that I’ve presented this survey to my hand-selected group. They were prompted with 14 different Apple-related subjects, and asked to rate them on a scale from 1 (worst) to 5 (best) and optionally provide text commentary per category.

I still need to polish it up a bit, but per tradition, I’ll publish my own report card shortly. In the meantime, it’s always edifying to read Snell’s summary and the average grades. You’ll never guess which category Apple flunked for 2025. (Spoiler: World Impact.)

Regarding MacOS 26 Tahoe, here are the comments from two Johns:

“Tahoe is the worst user interface update in the history of the Mac. Every change is either wrongheaded, poorly executed, or both. The Mac remains usable only because of Tahoe’s lack of ambition: it mostly alters the appearance and metrics of interface elements rather than making fundamental changes to the structure of the Mac UI. Thank goodness for that. The bad ideas embodied in Tahoe reveal an Apple design team that has abandoned the most basic principles of human-computer interaction.” —John Siracusa

“Tahoe is the worst regression in the entire history of MacOS. There are many reasons to prefer MacOS to any of its competition, but the one that has been the most consistent since System 1 in 1984 is the superiority of its user interface. There is nothing about Tahoe’s new UI that is better than its predecessor…. Fundamental principles of computer-human interaction — principles that Apple itself forged over decades — have been completely ignored.” —John Gruber

Siracusa and I didn’t say a word to each other while writing those comments. (If we had, I’d have switched to “human-computer interaction” from “computer-human interaction”.)

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

PageMaker Pioneer Paul Brainerd Dies at 78

John Gruber
Updated

Todd Bishop, writing at GeekWire:

Paul Brainerd, who went on to coin the term “desktop publishing” and build Aldus Corporation’s PageMaker into one of the defining programs of the personal computer era, died Sunday at his home on Bainbridge Island, Wash., after living for many years with Parkinson’s disease. He was 78 years old.

He left two legacies. The first was a piece of software that put the power of the printed page into the hands of millions of people who had never operated a typesetting machine. The second was a three-decade commitment to environmental conservation and philanthropy in the Pacific Northwest, pursuing it with the same intensity he brought to the desktop publishing revolution.

Friends and colleagues this week remembered Brainerd as a quiet, caring and detail-oriented leader with exacting standards. He insisted that PageMaker use proper curly quotation marks instead of straight ones, and obsessed over nuances such as kerning, the precise spacing between specific letter pairs.

PageMaker was years ahead of its time, and was essential to igniting the desktop publishing revolution.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

FTC Chairman Sends Letter to Apple Complaining That MAGA ‘News’ Sources Aren’t Represented in Apple News

John Gruber
Updated

Tim Hardwick, reporting for MacRumors back on February 12:

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, seen by the Financial Times, FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson cites recent press coverage of a report from conservative media watchdog Media Research Center (MRC), which claimed that Apple has promoted “leftist outlets” in its content choices.

The report in question by the MRC said that in January, Apple News “refrained from using any right-leaning outlets in the top 20 articles of its morning editions between Jan. 1 and Jan. 31, 2026.” The outlets named in the report include Fox News, the New York Post, the Daily Mail, Breitbart, and The Gateway Pundit.

The report went on to claim that Apple News was more favorable to outlets such as The Washington Post, The Associated Press, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal – publications that are traditionally considered either center outlets or nonpartisan.

I’d say they’re more traditionally considered trustworthy news sources, rather than propaganda outlets. Anyway, when you give a bully your lunch money — or, say, a 24-karat gold trophy emblazoned with your company’s logo — they always come back for more.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

The Steve Jobs Archive: ‘Letters to a Young Creator’

John Gruber
Updated

Laurene Powell Jobs, in her introduction to the newest publication from the Steve Jobs Archive:

Among the books that mattered to Steve was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. I’m struck by this line from its pages: “Live the questions for now. Perhaps then you will gradually, without noticing it, live your way into the answer, one distant day in the future.”

This is a time to live your questions. The beauty of answers, when they do come, is that they allow us to ask new and better questions. Life is learning how much we have yet to learn. In this volume, we have asked distinguished creators of diverse fields to share some of their answers to questions you asked at the beginning of your fellowship year. You’ll find candid stories of struggle and success, mistakes, and milestones. The wisdom they share in their reflections was forged by asking the kinds of questions you’re asking now.

Carve out some time for this collection. It’s also available as an ebook from Apple Books or EPUB download from SJA’s publications page.

 ★ 
Oklahoma Watch
Letters from an American

February 24, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

Four years ago today, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin launched a “special military operation” involving dozens of missile strikes on Ukrainian cities before dawn. In 1994, in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, Russia, along with the United States and the United Kingdom, agreed not to use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up the Soviet stockpile of nuclear weapons left in Ukraine after the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991. At the time, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. Russia violated that agreement when it invaded in 2014 after Ukrainians threw out Russia-backed oligarch Viktor Yanukovych.

Putin had been eyeing Ukraine’s industrialized region since at least summer 2016, when Russian operatives told then-candidate Donald J. Trump that they would help Trump win the White House if he would look the other way when Russia installed Yanukovych to govern a new “autonomous” republic there. Two days before he invaded in 2022, Putin recognized “new republics” in Ukraine and then, in his announcement of his invasion, claimed he had to protect the people there from “persecution and genocide by the Kyiv regime.” He called for “demilitarization” of Ukraine, demanding that soldiers lay down their weapons and saying that any bloodshed would be on their hands.

Putin called for the murder of Ukrainian leaders in the executive branch and parliament and intended to seize or kill those involved in the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which sought to turn the country away from Russia and toward a democratic government within Europe, and which itself prompted a Russian invasion. Putin planned for his troops to seize Ukraine’s electric, heating, and financial systems so the people would have to do as he wished. The operation was intended to be lightning fast.

But rather than collapsing, Ukrainians held firm. The day after Russia invaded, Zelensky and his cabinet recorded a video in Kyiv. “We are all here,” he said. “Our soldiers are here. The citizens are here, and we are here. We will defend our independence…. Glory to Ukraine!” When the United States offered the next day to transport Zelensky outside the country, where he could lead a government in exile, he responded:

“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.”

During his first term, Trump had weakened the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that stood against Russian aggression, but once President Joe Biden took office, he and Secretary of State Antony Blinken worked quietly to strengthen NATO and ties with other allies and partners. They rallied the G7 (the world’s seven wealthiest liberal democracies), the European Union, and others to supply Ukraine with weapons and humanitarian assistance. Under Biden, the U.S. led the international response, providing about $50 billion in military aid and about $53 billion in humanitarian aid, as well as coordinating aid from allies and partners.

The U.S. and allies and partners also united behind extraordinary economic sanctions, including, on February 26, 2022, the exclusion of Russian banks from SWIFT, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. SWIFT is a Belgian-based network that enables banks to transfer payments across international borders, and its ban on Russian banks isolated Russia’s economy.

Over the next three years, Ukraine’s stand against Russia boosted the morale of those defending their own countries against invaders and, in turn, captured the imagination of people around the world hoping to stem the rise of authoritarianism. Ukraine’s society transformed to bring the power of civilians as well as soldiers behind the war effort. The Ukraine army grew to be the largest in Europe, with a million people, even as Russian attacks killed civilians as well as soldiers and destroyed hospitals, infrastructure, and the energy sector. Ukraine became the global leader in drone technology, while Russia’s economy faltered and its front lines dug in.

Last year, foreign affairs journalist Anne Applebaum wrote: “The only way Putin wins now is by persuading Ukraine’s allies to be sick of the war…by persuading Trump to cut off Ukraine…and by convincing Europeans that they can’t win either.”

Indeed, while Americans supported Ukraine, Trump never wavered from his support for Russia. Although a bipartisan majority in Congress would have passed more funding for Ukraine, after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Trump loyalist House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) refused to bring Ukraine funding to the floor for a vote.

Then, in December 2023, MAGA Republican lawmakers said they would not pass a new measure to fund Ukraine’s assistance without measures strengthening the border between the U.S. and Mexico. Senators wrote the measure they demanded, only to have Trump urge his congressional supporters to kill it in order to keep the issue of immigration alive for the 2024 election.

By the time Congress finally passed a measure appropriating $60 billion in aid for Ukraine in April 2024, the lack of funding for six months had helped shift the war in Russia’s favor.

Once Trump was back in the White House, the U.S. position changed dramatically. As a team from the Wall Street Journal later explained, even before Trump took the oath of office, Putin was reaching out to Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer with no experience in diplomacy, to negotiate over Ukraine. In February, Witkoff went to Moscow to meet with Putin without a translator and without being briefed by the CIA.

On February 12, 2025, the day after Witkoff returned, Trump talked to Putin for nearly an hour and a half and came out from the “highly productive” call parroting Putin’s justification for invading Ukraine. Two days later, Vice President J.D. Vance used the Munich Security Conference to attack Europe and its democratic values while declining to acknowledge the threat of Russian aggression, indicating that the U.S. would no longer stand with Ukraine. Days later, a readout of a call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that Russia was in dire need of relief from economic sanctions.

Then, on February 28, 2025, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance ambushed Ukraine president Zelensky in an Oval Office meeting that seemed designed to give the White House an excuse for siding with Russia. The American leaders spouted Russian propaganda, trying to bully Zelensky into accepting a ceasefire on Russia’s terms and signing over rights to Ukraine’s rare-earth minerals, while accusing him of being “ungrateful” for U.S. support. Zelensky didn’t take the bait, and Trump ended up furiously defending Putin before walking out. Shortly after, Zelensky and his team were asked to leave the White House.

In August, Trump met Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, on U.S. soil, greeting him in Alaska on a literal red carpet and clapping as Putin walked to greet him, before taking him alone into the presidential limousine to drive to the meeting site. Trump has placed a photograph from that meeting on display in the White House.

Putin’s attacks on civilian targets in Ukraine have increased dramatically since Trump took office, even as Witkoff has been negotiating officially for an end to the war and quietly over deals on oil, gas, and perhaps minerals. In April the U.S. appeared to back a plan that essentially gave Russia all it wanted, including the Ukrainian land it had invaded. Since then, the administration’s ongoing “negotiations” with Russia resulted in demands of major concessions from Ukraine but none from Russia. Those talks are ongoing, now with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner involved, although as recently as last week, Russia had not wavered from its demands for Ukraine’s territory.

Today, landmark buildings across the world that were lit up in blue and yellow to show support for Ukraine included the Council of the European Union and European Commission buildings in Brussels, Belgium; Canada’s Parliament and the Office of the Prime Minister in Ottawa; the Freedom Monument in Riga, Latvia; The Colosseum in Rome, Italy; the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France; the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany; the Tower of Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen, Denmark; Sebitseom in Seoul, South Korea; and the Empire State Building in New York City, New York. European leaders vowed to “stand firm” with Ukraine, and the United Nations General Assembly voiced support for Ukraine, passing a resolution saying it was committed to “”the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders.” The U.S. abstained.

The sudden switch of the U.S. away from its traditional allies in favor of Russia has dramatically reordered the globe. With the U.S. stepping back, Russia has provoked European countries by sabotaging their infrastructure and sending drones over their airspace. Applebaum recently told Il Foglio that Trump’s stance has shocked Europeans into a determination to shed its former reliance on the U.S. and to be self-sufficient in terms of defense, to develop its own technology companies, to build a stronger industrial sector, and to integrate financial markets more fully. As U.S. funding for Ukraine has all but disappeared, Europe is stepping up, although as Nick Paton Walsh of CNN noted today, not as fast as it needs to in order to stop Russia’s aggression.

At the end of its fourth year of war, Russia is weakened enough that the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assesses today that “Putin’s mismanagement of the war and Ukraine’s resistance now confront Putin with challenging, uncomfortable, and unpopular decisions about the war’s force generation requirements and the Russian economy.” The need for more money and more men to fight will be unpopular in the midst of an unpopular war in which Russia has recently been losing territory, and the ISW assesses that Kremlin officials are already trying to mitigate domestic backlash.

In her interview with Applebaum in Il Foglio, Paola Peduzzi noted that “[t]he Ukrainians have suffered the most from America’s distortion, because we measure the transatlantic divorce in money and they in black bags: since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Ukrainian civilian deaths have increased by 31 percent compared to 2024, and by 70 percent compared to 2023.”

Applebaum told Peduzzi that Russia is not winning the war, but said the war “won’t end until the Russians agree to stop fighting, and they haven’t yet, nor have they ever said they want to. So the war can’t end: the Ukrainians are defending their land and can’t stop, even if they wanted to.”

“Ukrainians have changed the way they wage war; they no longer ask when it will end, but only how,” Peduzzi wrote. She concluded: “Ukrainians are saving us all, and unlike us, they don’t even ask us to say thank you.”

—

Notes:

https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/sites-default-files-documents-report-volume5.pdf (p. vi, 99).

https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/dl (pp. 139–140).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/02/magazine/russiagate-paul-manafort-ukraine-war.html

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/24/world/russia-ukraine-putin

https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/breaking-putin-bombs-kyiv-declares-war-blasts-rock-major-cities/

https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2022/02/russia-launches-heavy-attack-deep-ukraine-deep-ukraine-putin-warns-world-not-interfere/362368/

https://www.axios.com/2022/02/24/putin-delares-war-on-ukraine

https://www.businessinsider.com/putins-suit-war-declaration-ukraine-possibly-pre-taped-2022-2

https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/26/europe/ukraine-zelensky-evacuation-intl/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/video/president-zelenskyy-posts-defiant-selfie-video-from-ukraine-s-capital-134062661977

https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_departments/Parliamentary_Library/Research/FlagPost/2022/March/Exclusion_of_Russia_from_SWIFT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/06/republicans-ukraine-funding

https://www.iris-france.org/en/185973-what-lessons-can-we-draw-from-the-vote-on-the-ukraine-aid-bill-that-has-just-been-passed-in-the-united-states/

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/02/28/tass-oval-office-trump-zelenskyy-00206739

https://apnews.com/article/trump-zelenskyy-vance-transcript-oval-office-80685f5727628c64065da81525f8f0cf

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/02/putins-three-years-of-humiliation/681810/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/jd-vance-stuns-munich-conference-with-blistering-attack-on-europes-leaders

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-be-reintegrated-into-world-economy-if-war-ukraine-ends-orban-says-2025-02-14/

https://www.wsj.com/world/putin-witkoff-russia-envoy-04da229d

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/22/trump-russia-ukraine-peace-plan-crimea-donbas

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk2mlv2k1ro

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/trump-putin-white-house-photo

https://www.ilfoglio.it/esteri/2026/02/24/news/il-mondo-salvato-dagli-ucraini-conversazione-con-anne-applebaum-8692925/

https://understandingwar.org/research/cognitive-warfare/putins-internet-crackdown-is-rooted-in-weakness-and-a-need-to-demand-greater-war-sacrifices/

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-february-23-2026/

https://aje.news/s8q2yx

https://www.kten.com/news/us-abstains-in-un-vote-voicing-support-for-ukraine/article_bc210157-cb0b-58bd-9432-10027fdcd053.html

https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20220227003300315

https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1997596/

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/5458252-alaska-summit-trump-putin-disaster/

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5455928-trump-putin-alaska-summit/

Bluesky:

u24.gov.ua/post/3mfn7qrozw22w

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Letters from an American

Politics Chat, February 24, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

Letters from an American

Politics Chat, February 24, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated
Letters from an American

February 23, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

Marginal Revolution

Public Finance in the Age of AI: A Primer

Tyler Cowen
Updated

Transformative artificial intelligence (TAI) – machines capable of performing virtually all economically valuable work – may gradually erode the two main tax bases that underpin modern tax systems: labor income and human consumption. We examine optimal taxation across two stages of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven transformation. First, if AI displaces human labor, we find that consumption taxation may serve as a primary revenue instrument, with differential commodity taxation gaining renewed relevance as labor distortions lose their constraining role. In the second stage, as autonomous artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems both produce most economic value and absorb a growing share of resources, taxing human consumption may become an inadequate means of raising revenue. We show that the taxation of autonomous AGI systems can be framed as an optimal harvesting problem and find that the resulting tax rate on AGI depends on the rate at which humans discount the future. Our analysis provides a theoretically grounded approach to balancing efficiency and equity in the Age of AI. We also apply our insights to evaluate specific proposals such as taxes on robots, compute, and tokens, as well as sovereign wealth funds and windfall clauses.

That is from Anton Korinek and Lee Lockwood.

The post Public Finance in the Age of AI: A Primer appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Marginal Revolution

“Tough on crime” is good for young men

Tyler Cowen
Updated

Using data from hundreds of closely contested partisan elections from 2010 to 2019 and a vote share regression discontinuity design, we find that narrow election of a Republican prosecutor reduces all-cause mortality rates among young men ages 20 to 29 by 6.6%. This decline is driven predominantly by reductions in firearm-related deaths, including a large reduction in firearm homicide among Black men and a smaller reduction in firearm suicides and accidents primarily among White men. Mechanism analyses indicate that increased prison-based incapactation explains about one third of the effect among Black men and none of the effect among White men. Instead, the primary channel appears to be substantial increases in criminal conviction rates across racial groups and crime types, which then reduce firearm access through legal restrictions on gun ownership for the convicted.

That is from a new paper by Panka Bencsik and Tyler Giles. Via M.

The post “Tough on crime” is good for young men appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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NASA Science

Landslide and Avalanche Debris Litter Hubbard Glacier

Lauren Dauphin
Updated
 
November 26, 2025
December 8, 2025
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
November 26, 2025
December 8, 2025

On December 6, 2025, a powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck the remote St. Elias Mountains, a highly glaciated range that spans the Yukon-Alaska border. The quake shook the landscape beneath Hubbard Glacier, sending ice and rock careening down the range’s steep slopes. The NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) satellite offered some of the earliest views of the changed landscape.

Geophysicist Eric Fielding and colleagues at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) typically use satellite data to map the displacement of the ground after major earthquakes strike land. But in this region, such maps—known as interferograms—are not possible because the ground lies buried beneath a layer of glacial ice that’s at least 700 meters (2,000 feet) thick. “The cryosphere is covering up the geosphere,” Fielding said.

Instead, clues to the earthquake’s destructive power lay strewn atop the ice surface. The shaking on December 6 unleashed landslides and avalanches that swept debris onto lower, flatter stretches of the glacier. The debris is visible in radar imagery acquired by NISAR on December 8, two days after the quake (right). For comparison, the NISAR image on the left shows the same area on November 26, a week and a half before the quake.

Where the slides have deposited rock, snow, and other debris, surfaces have become rougher, which scatters more energy back toward the sensor and makes those areas appear bright in the December 8 image (the roughest areas are shown in dark green). Areas with smooth surfaces reflect little of the radar’s energy directly back to the satellite sensor, so these parts of the images appear dark (shown in purple). Note that there are some exceptionally rough, green surfaces beyond the new slide areas that remain relatively unchanged between the two images.

November 26, 2025
December 8, 2025
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
False-color radar images show a detailed view of the area around Mount King George and McArthur Peak, where most of the landslides and avalanches were visible following an earthquake on December 6, 2025.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin
November 26, 2025
December 8, 2025

The largest slide in the scene appears to be cascading down the flank of Mount King George, but it’s far from the only one. Numerous others scar the surrounding terrain, including areas to the west along the slopes of Mount Logan, Canada’s tallest mountain.

Alex Gardner, a glaciologist at JPL and member of the NISAR science team, reviewed the images with Fielding. “The sheer number and magnitude of avalanches and landslides is astounding,” Gardner said. “I’ve personally never seen anything like this before.”

A separate preliminary analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey identified more than 700 potential landslides and snow avalanches, with an especially high concentration northwest of the epicenter along the fault rupture. Follow-up flights by the Yukon Geological Survey on December 12 provided a closer look, showing some slopes remained actively unstable, with dust still hanging in the air, and widespread damage to glacial ice.

Much of the debris that settled atop the region’s glacial ice is likely being transported toward the ocean by the glaciers’ ongoing seaward flow, which acts as a natural “conveyor belt.” For example, a tributary glacier of Hubbard north of Mount King George, which had previously moved at a sluggish pace, entered a surging phase in November before the earthquake. It is now moving downslope at what Gardner described as “breakneck speeds” of up to 6,000 meters per year (about 50 feet per day).

Although the region is uninhabited, the slides and damaged ice could pose new hazards for mountaineers and other expeditions, USGS noted in a December 18 update. The town of Yakutat, Alaska, about 90 kilometers (56 miles) south of the epicenter, is a common staging point for people exploring the area.

NISAR observations are expected to provide imagery to support future natural disaster response efforts.

Images by Gustavo Shiroma (JPL) of the NISAR Algorithm Development Team using data from the NISAR GSLC product, and prepared for NASA Earth Observatory by Lauren Dauphin. Story by Kathryn Hansen.

Downloads

False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.

November 26, 2025

JPEG (6.16 MB)

False-color radar images show more rough terrain (green) in the St. Elias Mountains near Hubbard Glacier after an earthquake on December 6, 2025, indicating landslides and avalanches.

December 8, 2025

JPEG (6.25 MB)

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Lockheed Martin presses case that GPS upgrade will counter jamming threats

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GPS IIIF features, including regional spot beams, will ‘change the calculus’ for adversaries

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The Commercial Space Federation Releases New White Paper “Perfecting Public-Private Partnerships”

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February 24, 2026 – Washington, DC – The Commercial Space Federation (CSF) is proud to announce the release of a new paper titled “Perfecting Public-Private Partnerships: The Future of Government […]

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LambdaVision books space on Starlab commercial space station

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Illustration of Starlab, a commercial space station under development by Voyager Space, which went public in January 2025. Credit: Voyager Space

LambdaVision, a company that has used microgravity experiments on the International Space Station to develop an artificial retina, has booked space on a planned commercial successor.

The post LambdaVision books space on Starlab commercial space station appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceNews

Sophia Space claims $10 million in seed round

Debra Werner
Updated

SAN FRANCISCO – Sophia Space raised $10 million in seed funding to accelerate development of space-based edge computers and orbital data centers. “The $10 million round is a validation that we are progressing from slideware to hardware,” Rob DeMillo, Sophia Space CEO and co-founder, told SpaceNews. “And it’s evidence that capital is shifting towards orbital-compute […]

The post Sophia Space claims $10 million in seed round appeared first on SpaceNews.

The Map Room

‘The Most Amazing Map Exhibition Ever Mounted’

Jonathan Crowe
Updated
Every so often Matthew Edney posts something that had to be cut from his work in progress. In this case it’s a piece about what he calls “the most amazing map exhibition ever mounted”: Cartes… More
The Map Room

Pinhead Map Icons

Jonathan Crowe
Updated
Quincy Morgan has released Pinhead Map Icons: “So you’re making a map and need some icons. Well, maybe a lot of icons. Like, for anything that might appear on a map. And they need to… More
Schneier on Security

Is AI Good for Democracy?

Bruce Schneier
Updated

Politicians fixate on the global race for technological supremacy between US and China. They debate geopolitical implications of chip exports, latest model releases from each country, and military applications of AI. Someday, they believe, we might see advancements in AI tip the scales in a superpower conflict.

But the most important arms race of the 21st century is already happening elsewhere and, while AI is definitely the weapon of choice, combatants are distributed across dozens of domains.

Academic journals are flooded with AI-generated papers, and are turning to AI to help review submissions. Brazil’s court system started using AI to triage cases, only to face an increasing volume of cases filed with AI help. Open source software developers are being overwhelmed with code contributions from bots. Newspapers, music, social media, education, investigative journalism, hiring, and procurement are all being disrupted by a massive expansion of AI use.

Each of these is an arms race. Adversaries within a system iteratively seeking an edge against their competition by continuously expanding their use of a common technology.

Beneficiaries of these arms races are US mega-corporations capturing wealth from the rest of us at an unprecedented rate. A substantial fraction of global economy has reoriented around AI in just the past few years, and that trend is accelerating. In parallel, this industry’s lobbying interests are quickly becoming the object, rather than the subject, of US government power.

To understand these arms races, let’s look at an example of particular interest to democracies worldwide: how AI is changing the relationship between democratic government and citizens. Interactions that used to happen between people and elected representatives are expanding to a massive scale, with AIs taking the roles that humans once did.

In a notorious example from 2017, US Federal Communications Commission opened a comment platform on the web to get public input on internet regulation. It was quickly flooded with millions of comments fraudulently orchestrated by broadband providers to oppose FCC regulation of their industry. From the other side, a 19-yearold college student responded by submitting millions of comments of his own supporting the regulation. Both sides were using software primitive by the standards of today’s AI.

Nearly a decade later, it is getting harder for citizens to tell when they’re talking to a government bot, or when an online conversation about public policy is just bots talking to bots. When constituents leverage AI to communicate better, faster, and more, it pressures government officials to do the same.

This may sound futuristic, but it’s become a familiar reality in US. Staff in US Congress are using AI to make their constituent email correspondence more efficient. Politicians campaigning for office are adopting AI tools to automate fundraising and voter outreach. By one 2025 estimate, a fifth of public submissions to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were already being generated with AI assistance.

People and organizations are adopting AI here because it solves a real problem that has made mass advocacy campaigns ineffective in the past: quantity has been inversely proportional to both quality and relevance. It’s easy for government agencies to dismiss general comments in favour of more specific and actionable ones. That makes it hard for regular people to make their voices heard. Most of us don’t have the time to learn the specifics or to express ourselves in this kind of detail. AI makes that contextualization and personalization easy. And as the volume and length of constituent comments grow, agencies turn to AI to facilitate review and response.

That’s the arms race. People are using AI to submit comments, which requires those on the receiving end to use AI to wade through the comments received. To the extent that one side does attain an advantage, it will likely be temporary. And yet, there is real harm created when one side exploits another in these adversarial systems. Constituents of democracies lose out if their public servants use AI-generated responses to ignore and dismiss their voices rather than to listen to and include them. Scientific enterprise is weakened if fraudulent papers sloppily generated by AI overwhelm legitimate research.

As we write in our new book, Rewiring Democracy, the arms race dynamic is inevitable. Every actor in an adversarial system is incentivized and, in the absence of new regulation in this fast moving space, free to use new technologies to advance its own interests. Yet some of these examples are heartening. They signal that, even if you face an AI being used against you, there’s an opportunity to use the tech for your own benefit.

But, right now, it’s obvious who is benefiting most from AI. A handful of American Big Tech corps and their owners are extracting trillions of dollars from the manufacture of AI chips, development of AI data centers, and operation of so-called ‘frontier’ AI models. Regardless of which side pulls ahead in each arms race scenario, the house always wins. Corporate AI giants profit from the race dynamic itself.

As formidable as the near-monopoly positions of today’s Big Tech giants may seem, people and governments have substantial capability to fight back. Various democracies are resisting this concentration of wealth and power with tools of anti-trust regulation, protections for human rights, and public alternatives to corporate AI. All of us worried about the AI arms race and committed to preserving the interests of our communities and our democracies should think in both these terms: how to use the tech to our own advantage, and how to resist the concentration of power AI is being exploited to create.

This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Times of India.

SpaceNews

A banner year for military space funding— with an unclear path beyond

Sandra Erwin
Updated

Reconciliation boost lifts 2026 totals, but sustainability questions loom for missile defense and Space Development Agency

The post A banner year for military space funding— with an unclear path beyond appeared first on SpaceNews.

The MIT Tech
Marginal Revolution

*Introduction to Quantitative Economics*

Tyler Cowen
Updated

By Jesse M. Shapiro, just out from MIT Press.

The post *Introduction to Quantitative Economics* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

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Marginal Revolution

The Macroeconomic Effects of Tariffs

Tyler Cowen
Updated

We study the macroeconomic effects of tariff policy using U.S. historical data from 1840–2024. We construct a narrative series of plausibly exogenous tariff changes – based on major legislative actions, multilateral negotiations, and temporary surcharges – and use it as an instrument to identify a structural tariff shock. Tariff increases are contractionary: imports fall sharply, exports decline with a lag, and output and manufacturing activity drop persistently. The shock transmits through both supply and demand channels. Prices rise in the full sample but fall post-World War II, a pattern consistent with changes in the monetary policy response and with stronger international retaliation and reciprocity in the modern trade regime.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Tamar den Besten & Diego R. Känzig.

The post The Macroeconomic Effects of Tariffs appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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The Diary of Samuel Pepys

Tuesday 24 February 1662/63

Samuel Pepys
Updated

Slept hard till 8 o’clock, then waked by Mr. Clerke’s being come to consult me about Field’s business, which we did by calling him up to my bedside, and he says we shall trounce him.

Then up, and to the office, and at 11 o’clock by water to Westminster, and to Sir W. Wheeler’s about my Lord’s borrowing of money that I was lately upon with him, and then to my Lord, who continues ill, but will do well I doubt not.

Among other things, he tells me that he hears the Commons will not agree to the King’s late declaration, nor will yield that the Papists have any ground given them to raise themselves up again in England, which I perceive by my Lord was expected at Court. Thence home again by water presently, and with a bad dinner, being not looked for, to the office, and there we sat, and then Captn. Cocke and I upon his hemp accounts till 9 at night, and then, I not very well, home to supper and to bed. My late distemper of heat and itching being come upon me again, so that I must think of sweating again as I did before.

Read the annotations

California
Mike the Mad Biologist

Links 2/24/26

mikethemadbiologist
Updated

Links for you. Science:

Bernie Sanders Finds How Much Trump Has Cut in Medical Research Funds
Two New Nasal Sprays Could Stop the Next Bird Flu Pandemic Right in Your Nose
Updated PASTEUR Act reintroduced in Congress to boost antibiotic development
Rapid gene exchange explains differences in bacterial pangenome structure
That’s a wrasse! Rare fish spotted for first time since 2009 in kelp forest in Western Australia
Addressing pandemic-wide systematic errors in the SARS-CoV-2 phylogeny

Other:

The Tulsi Secret
Camp Bar to host benefit show to cover lost wages after canceling controversial comic: ‘F— them, obviously,’ Ben Bankas said after the club pulled the plug on his six sold-out shows
Former ICE Facility Worker ‘saw people laying in feces’ at Baltimore Detention Center
What Are We Going To Talk About Today, Brain?
Will Lewis to no longer get paid for not doing any work
All laws are local
MAGA’s “People’s Capitalism”
Republicans rarely criticize Trump in his second term. A racist post briefly changed that (notable for the AP using the word racist)
A Conspiracy Fueled Report Preceded ‘Black Pill’ Tulsi Gabbard’s Fulton County Election Raid. Trump’s spymaster is a hero to the MAGA fringe after extraordinary ballot seizure that followed up on their longtime fixations.
January 31, 2026
A SWAT Team Killed My Dad. There’s 1 Thing Missing From Conversations About ICE Right Now.
Voters Are Worried About The Cost Of Housing. But Trump Wants Home Prices To Keep Climbing
‘Beyond Crazy’: FBI Summons State Election Officials to Secretive Meeting After Trump Threat to ‘Nationalize’ Midterms
Say I am a 20-year-old man in a rich farming household in Central France in 456. Do I get any sense that the (Western) Roman Empire is in the process of “falling”? How different is my day-to-day life compared to my great-great-grandfather in the 350s, and to my great-great-grandson in the 550s?
Trump Loses the Super Bowl – and His Culture War
Trump Rages at Bad Bunny—and Accidentally Exposes a Big MAGA Weakness
‘Together, We Are America’: Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive. They were totally wrong.
Immigration raids in South Texas are starting to hit the economy
Pop star Bad Bunny needed a Puerto Rican history scholar. UW–Madison had just the one.
WE’RE RACIALLY DIVIDED SO REPUBLICAN VOTERS WILL REMAIN DISTRACTED
A Raid in a Small Town Brings Trump’s Deportations to Deep-Red Idaho
Trans People Saw the Nancy Mace Crack-Up Coming Long, Long Ago
Watch 404 Media’s Super Bowl Ad
Does America Really Want to Pick a Fight With Greenland?
It Feels Great, Dude
NY Democratic House Candidate Worked for Palantir Partners Pushing AI Border Surveillance
Carjackings Have Fallen An Incredible Amount
Writers Who Use AI Are Not Real Writers
Confirmed: Todd Blanche Locked Ghislaine Maxwell into a False Story, Then Rewarded Her
MAGA attorney general candidate vows to strip Houston lawmaker of citizenship

Mike the Mad Biologist

AI and Theft: The Issue That Has Gone Missing

mikethemadbiologist
Updated

A couple years ago, I noted how, if various broligarchs were to steal hard won–and expensive–biomedical data that they then used to build a tool to solve a medical problem like how to turn a clinical bacterial genome sequence into a list of antibiotics that could be used to treat that infection, everyone would recognize that as an obvious act of theft. I concluded:

If LLMs were actually as valuable as everyone claims, then it would be worthwhile to pay authors. Obviously, if you get the data for free, then the expected benefits of LLMs don’t have to be very high. But if (hopefully, when) one factors in the cost of data generation–which is to say, writing–then the gains from LLMs have to be much higher than currently envisioned.

This is an unusual situation for our techbro overlords: it’s not the coders who create most of the value, it’s the data generators who provide the real value and are the real cost. Unlike much of the data, Silicon Valley deals with (consumer information provided for free by customers, and bought very cheaply), this kind of data acquisition is expensive. And if your potential product’s gains can’t cover the costs of the data generators, that’s a bad business model.

On the other hand, having a bunch of LLMs that sound like a bunch of those nineteenth century forsooth and verily reply guy assholes would be kind of hilarious, so maybe the actual available free data does have some utility…

As the relentless push to include AI in everything continues, it’s worth noting that the theft issue has not really been resolved decisively one way or the other. Not only is that a potential (large) liability for these companies*, but it also bears on the discussions about whether AI will be used responsibly.

Could it be developed and used responsibly? Of course. Will it be developed and used responsibly? Given that these same companies potentially stole billions of dollars of property to train these models, the answer very well could be no.

*Of course, transferring billions of dollars from Silicon Valley motherfuckers to artists, photographers, and writers would be an amazing thing for the arts and humanities in the U.S.

Noahpinion

The Citrini post is just a scary bedtime story

Noah Smith
Updated
Art by Nano Banana Pro

If you don’t like posts about AI, I have some bad news: For the next few years, there are probably going to be a lot of them. It’s not often one gets to live through an industrial revolution in real time, especially one that moves so quickly. There will be very few pieces of the economy — if any — that this revolution doesn’t touch, and it will have major implications for other things I write about (geopolitics, society, etc.). AI is not going to be a special, compartmentalized topic for a long time; it’s going to be central to a lot of what’s going on. If you find that boring, well, all I can say is, we don’t get to choose the times we live in.

Anyway, today’s post is about the macroeconomics of AI, so that’s fun. I started out writing about macro long ago, and I haven’t really kept up with it in recent years.

Every couple of weeks, someone comes out with a big post about how AI is changing everything, and the post goes viral and everyone talks about it for a few days. A couple of weeks ago it was Matt Shumer’s “Something Big is Happening”. This week it’s Citrini Research’s “THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS” (yes, the title is in all caps):

Citrini Research
THE 2028 GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE CRISIS
Preface…
Read more
3 days ago · 2338 likes · 76 comments · Citrini and Alap Shah

The post paints a picture of a future in which AI disrupts lots of different kinds of white-collar work and service-industry business models in industries like software, finance, business services, and so on, and in which this disruption causes an economic crisis.

This is really two theses in one — a microeconomic thesis about which industries and jobs AI will disrupt, and a macroeconomic thesis about what this will do to the economy overall. People are debating both. For a counterargument to the idea that AI is about to take all the white-collar jobs, I recommend this post by John Loeber:

And I also recommend this post from January by Seb Krier, which of course doesn’t address the Citrini piece, but which does paint a vivid scenario for how humans might still have jobs in the age of AI.

I don’t really have a dog in this microeconomic fight, because, frankly speaking, I don’t have an expert-level understanding of either the industries or the jobs in question. It has been interesting to see the market react to the Citrini post, though. A bunch of software and finance stocks fell, including many companies that Citrini mentioned by name:

Source: David Uberti

This is pretty interesting, from a finance perspective. It’s pretty normal these days to see companies’ stocks falling based on news of AI’s disruptive potential — IBM just fell when Anthropic revealed that its AI models can handle COBOL,1 and a bunch of cybersecurity stocks fell a few days ago when Anthropic’s models found a bunch of security flaws.2 But those were real announcements of model capabilities; Citrini’s post was just a scenario for how some current business models could be disrupted.

Was that scenario really news? Did none of the analysts tasked with keeping tabs on Visa and Mastercard stock really think about the possibility of AI disruption until a blogger sketched out a sci-fi future mentioning those companies by name? I have my doubts. Instead, this smells more like a wave of sentiment — basically, a bunch of traders read the post, got spooked, and coordinated their panic-selling on the stocks that the post mentioned.

(The inclusion of DoorDash in the stocks that fell suggests this as well. DoorDash is no marvel of software engineering; it was always easily possible to clone the platform even before AI. Its profits are based on a first-mover advantage and network effect, which Claude Code can’t simply conjure up out of nothingness.)

But in any case, time will tell whether Citrini was right about those companies and those business models. I have a lot more to say about the macroeconomic thesis — the idea that the rapid destruction of a bunch of American companies will cause a financial crisis and a recession. Citrini posits an unemployment rate of over 10% — Great Recession levels — as well as a drop in consumption.

Citrini doesn’t use an explicit macroeconomic model, so we can’t really see what assumptions they’re making; it’s not clear how they think the economy works in the first place, so we don’t know exactly why they think the economy crashes. But we can make a couple of guesses. In fact, I see two vaguely plausible ways that an AI-driven service productivity boom could actually end up crashing the economy. Neither one is very likely, though.

Failing business models could cause a financial crisis (but it isn’t likely)

Read more

Daring Fireball

Apple Will Begin Manufacturing Mac Minis in Houston Later This Year

John Gruber
Updated

Apple Newsroom:

Apple today announced a significant expansion of factory operations in Houston, bringing the future production of Mac mini to the U.S. for the first time. The company will also expand advanced AI server manufacturing at the factory and provide hands-on training at its new Advanced Manufacturing Center beginning later this year. Altogether, Apple’s Houston operations will create thousands of jobs.

See also: Rolfe Winkler at The Wall Street Journal (gift link, News+ link): “Inside Apple’s Push to Build an All-American Chip”.

 ★ 
Hacker News
Marginal Revolution

Tuesday assorted links

Tyler Cowen
Updated

1. Did NAFTA make America less healthy?

2. Economics-related ideas for fixing NBA tanking (NYT).

3. Shyam Sankar.

4. Are hard courts eating the tour?

5. Ezra and Jack Clark on agents (NYT).

6. Maybe the free money is gone by now? Alternatively, perhaps the aliens are enriching themselves?

7. The vanishing of Imran Khan.

The post Tuesday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

Comments

 
Spaceflight Now

SpaceX’s Tuesday twilight Falcon 9 rocket launch sends 29 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit

Will Robinson-Smith
Updated
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 6-110 mission on Feb. 24, 2026. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Update Feb. 24, 7:10 p.m. EST (0010 UTC): SpaceX confirms deployment of the 29 Starlink satellites.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 rocket late Tuesday afternoon with a batch of Starlink V2 Mini satellites onboard. The twilight flight from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station was the company’s 18th launch of the year supporting its broadband internet satellite constellation.

The Starlink 6-110 mission sent another 29 satellites into low Earth orbit. Prior to liftoff, SpaceX had more than 9,700 Starlink satellites in space, according to stats maintained by expert orbital tracker and astronomer, Jonathan McDowell.

Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 40 happened at 6:04:10 p.m. EST (2304:10 UTC). The Falcon 9 rocket flew on a south-easterly trajectory upon leaving Florida’s Space Coast.

The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a greater than 95 percent chance for favorable weather at liftoff with no specific meteorological concerns.

“High pressure will continue to build across the peninsula overnight and into tomorrow, bringing ideal conditions for the launch window,” launch weather officers wrote.

SpaceX launched the mission using its Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number 1092. This was its 10th flight, following previous missions, including CRS-32, NROL-69, and USSF-36.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1092 landed on the drone ship, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ positioned in the Atlantic Ocean to the northeast of The Bahamas. This was the 151st landing on this vessel and the 576th booster landing for SpaceX to date.

Price increases

One of SpaceX’s biggest selling points for reusability of its Falcon 9 boosters and payload fairings is that this drives down the overall cost of launching payloads into space. However, that doesn’t mean that the company doesn’t raise its prices.

The company updated its Falcon 9 rocket Capabilities and Services page. It now states that a standard payment plan through 2026 for a Falcon 9 rocket launching up to 5.5 metric tons to a geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is $74 million, up from $70 million in 2025.

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to begin the Starlink 10-36 mission on Feb. 19, 2026. Image: John Pisani/Spaceflight Now

In 2022, SpaceX listed Falcon 9 launches with the same payload capacity at $67 million, citing possible future price increases due to inflation.

According to reporting from Ars Technica earlier this month, SpaceX’s internal costs for launching a reusable Falcon 9 rocket is $15 million.

For comparison, another rocket that aims to compete with the Falcon 9 in the future is Rocket Lab’s Neutron rocket. In the Q1 earnings call in May 2025, the company’s CEO Peter Beck said the company expected that a dedicated flight of its reusable rocket would be in the area of $55 million.

Pricing for other rockets can be harder to determine, but for a rocket like Blue Origin’s New Glenn, which can carry 13 metric tons to GTO is estimated to cost around $68 million per flight. NASA only paid $20 to fly its EscaPADE mission in November 2025, which carried a higher risk because it was just the second flight of the rocket to date.

The Aviationist
Core Memory

This Startup Wants To Give Women More Eggs

Eryney Marrogi
Updated

Women are born with every egg they’ll ever have. Roughly one to two million. The number only goes down as they age. By puberty, 70% are gone. By age 37, about 25,000 remain, and a growing share of those carry chromosomal abnormalities that can’t make viable embryos.

Every decision a woman makes about when to have children is made against this clock. The clock does not pause for careers, for bad timing, for partners who aren’t ready, for cancer treatment at 30.

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It’s a bottleneck that never made sense to synthetic biologist Merrick Pierson Smela. With the help of modern tools of genetics, we’ve managed to turn skin into stem cells and edit human genomes to cure diseases. Why shouldn’t it be possible to help women make new eggs?

Human ovarian tissue cultured for two weeks using Ovelle’s protocols (left is baseline, right is after follicle activation)

Last year, he founded Ovelle Bio in Boston, to manufacture human eggs from stem cells. The process is called in vitro gametogenesis, or IVG. If it works, the clock stops. Eggs become renewable. And the most fundamental constraint on female fertility disappears.

To do it, they have their eyes set on beating nature at its own game. “Our approach results in a method that’s faster and more efficient than natural biology,” Smela shares.

Read more

Paul Krugman

Attack of the Zombie Tariffs

Paul Krugman
Updated

50 years of zombies: Designing the undead to explain the living | CNN

Trump administration officials are trying to put a brave face on the stinging rebuke just delivered by the Supreme Court in its ruling that most of the tariffs imposed since April 2025 (the IEEPA tariffs) are illegal. Never one to accept limitations on his power, Trump rushed to impose new tariffs using an obscure clause, Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act. Section 122 tariffs have a 150-day limit, at which point they expire. So Trump officials are now claiming that they’ll find ways to reconstruct the tariffs using other legal loopholes before the expiration date is reached.

I don’t know how well this strategy will actually work. To the extent that it does work, we will be in the grip of zombie tariffs — tariffs that should be dead, because they were clearly imposed illegally, but that somehow keep shambling along.

Why this desperate attempt to keep tariffs high? A MAGA loyalist would say it’s to preserve what those illegal tariffs have accomplished. But even before they were struck down, the tariffs had achieved none of their stated goals. In fact, they had put those goals further out of reach.

On Liberation Day, Trump justified the tariffs now ruled illegal by telling the American public that our trade deficits were proof that the United States was giving money away to other countries. In his ranting press conference after the Supreme Court decision, he justified his actions by saying,

You take a look at the deficits that we had with some of these countries. It was disgraceful what they got away with for many, many decades.

He has the economics of trade deficits fundamentally wrong. But even aside from that, tariffs aren’t reducing those deficits. In fact, the U.S. trade deficit for all of 2025 was about the same as it was in 2024.

Trump apparently believes otherwise. In a recent Truth Social post he declared,

THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES

What was he talking about? Probably this:

A graph showing the growth of the us currency AI-generated content may be incorrect.

The U.S. trade deficit surged in early 2025, as companies raced to bring in imports before the Trump tariffs went into effect. It then plunged briefly as companies drew down their swollen inventories before importing more. In the end, the 2025 trade deficit was about the same as the 2024 trade deficit. So what Trump cited was a cherry-picked, misleading number that bears no relation to reality.

Trump also claimed that his tariffs would revive American manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing employment has declined since Liberation Day. But in that press conference Trump asserted that great things are coming:

You’re going to start to see the results in a year from now when all those factories start that are under construction right now. You see all the construction numbers are so good.

Which numbers does he have in mind? The most recent available data on manufacturing construction show it falling thanks to Trump’s cancellation of Biden’s green energy subsidies:

A graph showing a blue line AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Finy, Trump likes to boast about the immense revenue generated by the tariffs. And they did indeed bring in some money — tariffs are taxes, and taxes yield revenue. But they aren’t the gusher of revenue that Trump claims. The most recent Congressional Budget Office report on the fiscal outlook, released before the ruling against IEEPA tariffs, showed revenue from customs duties rising from 0.3 percent of GDP pre-Trump 47 to 1.3 percent in 2026 and after. That’s a net rise of about 1 percent of GDP. That’s not trivial, but it’s not huge either. Here’s tariff revenue in context:

A blue bar graph with black text AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Revenue from the Trump tariffs, even pre-Court, wasn’t enough to make a large dent in the deficit. Moreover, it wouldn’t even pay for the increase in the deficit caused by the passage of Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill tax cuts. Nor would it be enough to cover Trump’s call for a 50 percent increase in military spending — a rise so large that the White House hasn’t yet submitted a budget, two weeks past the statutory deadline, because the Pentagon hasn’t been able to figure out how to spend that much.

So how, exactly, are the tariffs supposed to simultaneously reduce the deficit and pay for Trump checks?

In reality, by the time of the Supreme Court ruling, Trump’s assertion that tariffs are a magic elixir that solves all problems wasn’t convincing anyone. Independent voters disapproved of his tariff policy by a three-to-one margin. Accordingly, when the Court’s decision came down, some Democrats immediately worried that the ruling would help Trump politically, giving him an escape route from an unpopular and ineffectual policy. Here’s how G. Elliott Morris put it:

As I see it, the Court, by striking down Trump’s tariffs, permitted him to defiantly retreat from one of his most unpopular policies; he could have simply blamed the judiciary and moved on.

Yet he didn’t. Why?

It has been clear from the beginning that a primary motivation for tariffs was that they empowered Trump personally. They allowed him to punish governments he didn’t like, demand subservience from other countries as the price of lower tariffs, and offer waivers and exemptions to companies that put money in his own pocket. And maybe Trump can’t bear the thought of losing that power.

Yet he already has. The language of Section 122 calls for a flat-rate tariff on everyone. This means that nations Trump tried to punish — like Brazil, which faced high tariffs for daring to try Jair Bolsonaro for treason — have just received a big break. Meanwhile nations that groveled to Trump, like the UK, have just learned that they humiliated themselves for nothing:

A graph of blue and white bars AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source

In other words, Trump will have lost a lot of power even if he manages to avoid a big reduction in average tariff rates. So why persist?

The obvious answer is that Trump can’t bring himself to acknowledge defeat. His tariff strategy is, by any reasonable standard, dead, and the tariffs should be dead too. But they won’t stay dead; they just keep shambling along.

MUSICAL CODA

Obviously:

Simon Willison's Weblog

First run the tests

Agentic Engineering Patterns >

Automated tests are no longer optional when working with coding agents.

The old excuses for not writing them - that they're time consuming and expensive to constantly rewrite while a codebase is rapidly evolving - no longer hold when an agent can knock them into shape in just a few minutes.

They're also vital for ensuring AI-generated code does what it claims to do. If the code has never been executed it's pure luck if it actually works when deployed to production.

Tests are also a great tool to help get an agent up to speed with an existing codebase. Watch what happens when you ask Claude Code or similar about an existing feature - the chances are high that they'll find and read the relevant tests.

Agents are already biased towards testing, but the presence of an existing test suite will almost certainly push the agent into testing new changes that it makes.

Any time I start a new session with an agent against an existing project I'll start by prompting a variant of the following:

First run the tests

For my Python projects I have pyproject.toml set up such that I can prompt this instead:

Run "uv run pytest"

These four word prompts serve several purposes:

  1. It tells the agent that there is a test suite and forces it to figure out how to run the tests. This makes it almost certain that the agent will run the tests in the future to ensure it didn't break anything.
  2. Most test harnesses will give the agent a rough indication of how many tests they are. This can act as a proxy for how large and complex the project is, and also hints that the agent should search the tests themselves if they want to learn more.
  3. It puts the agent in a testing mindset. Having run the tests it's natural for it to then expand them with its own tests later on.

Similar to "Use red/green TDD", "First run the tests" provides a four word prompt that encompasses a substantial amount of software engineering discipline that's already baked into the models.

Tags: tdd, testing, llms, ai, generative-ai, ai-assisted-programming, coding-agents, agentic-engineering

Market Design

50th Anniversary of Mathematics of Operations Research (and 50 papers, one for each year)

Al Roth
Updated

 MOR is a journal that published its first issue only two years after I finished my Ph.D., and Bob Aumann was the first editor of its Game Theory section. The 50 papers selected to mark its 50th anniversary, one for each year, are something of a history of operations research since 1976.

 The 1981 paper is Roger Myerson's famous paper on auctions.

I submitted my 1982 paper to MOR only after it was rejected by Chicago's Journal of Political Economy, with a letter from the editor, George Stigler, saying that the only economics in the paper was in the title. (He meant that market clearing in the model wasn't achieved by price adjustment.)  Matching markets have become a significant part of economics since then...

Editor’s Comments on the 50th Anniversary of Mathematics of Operations Research
Katya Scheinberg
Published Online:28 Jan 2026https://doi.org/10.1287/moor.2026.50th.v51.n1
 

"As we proudly celebrate the 50th anniversary of the journal Mathematics of Operations Research (MOR), we look back at its history and how it reflects the evolution of the field itself.

"The senior editors have prepared a list of 50 papers—one for each year—to represent this history. These papers are but a very small selection from an outstanding collection of contributions published by the journal over the past five decades. "

Augmented Lagrangians and Applications of the Proximal Point Algorithm in Convex Programming

RT Rockafellar

Mathematics of Operations Research 1976 1(2):97–116

New Finite Pivoting Rules for the Simplex Method

RG Bland

Mathematics of Operations Research 1977 2(2):103–107

Best Algorithms for Approximating the Maximum of a Submodular Set Function

GL Nemhauser, LA Wolsey

Mathematics of Operations Research 1978 3(3):177–188

Mathematical Properties of the Banzhaf Power Index

P Dubey, LS Shapley

Mathematics of Operations Research 1979 4(2):99–131

Some Useful Functions for Functional Limit Theorems

W Whitt

Mathematics of Operations Research 1980 5(1):67–85

Optimal Auction Design

RB Myerson

Mathematics of Operations Research 1981 6(1):58–73

The Economics of Matching: Stability and Incentives

AE Roth

Mathematics of Operations Research 1982 7(4):617–628

Integer Programming with a Fixed Number of Variables

HW Lenstra Jr

Mathematics of Operations Research 1983 8(4):538–548

Lipschitz Behavior of Solutions to Convex Minimization Problems

J-P Aubin

Mathematics of Operations Research 1984 9(1):87–111

Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information

PR Milgrom, RJ Weber

Mathematics of Operations Research 1985 10(4):619–632

Clique Tree Inequalities and the Symmetric Travelling Salesman Problem

M Grötschel, WR Pulleyblank

Mathematics of Operations Research 1986 11(4):537–569

Minkowski’s Convex Body Theorem and Integer Programming

R Kannan

Mathematics of Operations Research 1987 12(3):415–440

Cooling Schedules for Optimal Annealing

B Hajek

Mathematics of Operations Research 1988 13(2):311–329

Markov Chains with Rare Transitions and Simulated Annealing

JN Tsitsiklis

Mathematics of Operations Research 1989 14(1):70–90

Newton’s Method for B-Differentiable Equations

J-S Pang

Mathematics of Operations Research 1990 15(2):311–341

Scenarios and Policy Aggregation in Optimization Under Uncertainty

RT Rockafellar, RJ-B Wets

Mathematics of Operations Research 1991 16(1):119–147

The Generalized Basis Reduction Algorithm

L Lovász, HE Scarf

Mathematics of Operations Research 1992 17(3):751–764

On Adaptive-Step Primal-Dual Interior-Point Algorithms for Linear Programming

S Mizuno, MJ Todd, Y Ye

Mathematics of Operations Research 1993 18(4):964–981

A Polynomial Time Algorithm for Counting Integral Points in Polyhedra When the Dimension Is Fixed

AI Barvinok

Mathematics of Operations Research 1994 19(4):769–779

Fast Approximation Algorithms for Fractional Packing and Covering Problems

SA Plotkin, DB Shmoys, É Tardos

Mathematics of Operations Research 1995 20(2):257–301

Rounding of Polytopes in the Real Number Model of Computation

LG Khachiyan

Mathematics of Operations Research 1996 21(2):307–320

Self-Scaled Barriers and Interior-Point Methods for Convex Programming

YE Nesterov, MJ Todd

Mathematics of Operations Research 1997 22(1):1–42

Robust Convex Optimization

A Ben-Tal, A Nemirovski

Mathematics of Operations Research 1998 23(4):769–805

The Flatness Theorem for Nonsymmetric Convex Bodies via the Local Theory of Banach Spaces

W Banaszczyk, AE Litvak, A Pajor, SJ Szarek

Mathematics of Operations Research 1999 24(3):728–750

Mathematical Programs with Complementarity Constraints: Stationarity, Optimality, and Sensitivity

H Scheel, S Scholtes

Mathematics of Operations Research 2000 25(1):1–22

A Weak-to-Strong Convergence Principle for Fejér-Monotone Methods in Hilbert Spaces

HH Bauschke, PL Combettes

Mathematics of Operations Research 2001 26(2):248–264

The Complexity of Decentralized Control of Markov Decision Processes

DS Bernstein, R Givan, N Immerman, S Zilberstein

Mathematics of Operations Research 2002 27(4):819–840

A Comparison of the Sherali-Adams, Lovász-Schrijver, and Lasserre Relaxations for 0–1 Programming

M Laurent

Mathematics of Operations Research 2003 28(3):470–496

Selfish Routing in Capacitated Networks

JR Correa, AS Schulz, NE Stier-Moses

Mathematics of Operations Research 2004 29(4):961–976

Robust Dynamic Programming

GN Iyengar

Mathematics of Operations Research 2005 30(2):257–280

Integer Polynomial Optimization in Fixed Dimension

JA De Loera, R Hemmecke, M Köppe, R Weismantel

Mathematics of Operations Research 2006 31(1):147–153

Subsolutions of an Isaacs Equation and Efficient Schemes for Importance Sampling

P Dupuis, H Wang

Mathematics of Operations Research 2007 32(3):723–757

Facets of Two-Dimensional Infinite Group Problems

SS Dey, J-P Richard

Mathematics of Operations Research 2008 33(1):140–166

Minimal Valid Inequalities for Integer Constraints

V Borozan, G Cornuéjols

Mathematics of Operations Research 2009 34(3):538–546

Proximal Alternating Minimization and Projection Methods for Nonconvex Problems: An Approach Based on the Kurdyka-Łojasiewicz Inequality

H Attouch, J Bolte, P Redont, A Soubeyran

Mathematics of Operations Research 2010 35(2):438–457

The Simplex and Policy-Iteration Methods Are Strongly Polynomial for the Markov Decision Problem with a Fixed Discount Rate

Y Ye

Mathematics of Operations Research 2011 36(4):593–603

Online Stochastic Matching: Online Actions Based on Offline Statistics

VH Manshadi, S Oveis Gharan, A Saberi

Mathematics of Operations Research 2012 37(4):559–573

Robust Markov Decision Processes

W Wiesemann, D Kuhn, B Rustem

Mathematics of Operations Research 2013 38(1):153–183

Learning to Optimize via Posterior Sampling

D Russo, B Van Roy

Mathematics of Operations Research 2014 39(4):1221–1243

On the Convergence of Decomposition Methods for Multistage Stochastic Convex Programs

P Girardeau, V Leclere, AB Philpott

Mathematics of Operations Research 2015 40(1):130–145

Learning in Games via Reinforcement and Regularization

P Mertikopoulos, WH Sandholm

Mathematics of Operations Research 2016 41(4):1297–1324

A Descent Lemma Beyond Lipschitz Gradient Continuity: First-Order Methods Revisited and Applications

HH Bauschke, J Bolte, M Teboulle

Mathematics of Operations Research 2017 42(2):330–348

Error Bounds, Quadratic Growth, and Linear Convergence of Proximal Methods

D Drusvyatskiy, AS Lewis

Mathematics of Operations Research 2018 43(3):919–948

Quantifying Distributional Model Risk via Optimal Transport

J Blanchet, K Murthy

Mathematics of Operations Research 2019 44(2):565–600

Characterization, Robustness, and Aggregation of Signed Choquet Integrals

RD Wang, YR Wei, GE Willmot

Mathematics of Operations Research 2020 45(3):993–1015

Statistics of Robust Optimization: A Generalized Empirical Likelihood Approach

JC Duchi, PW Glynn, H Namkoong

Mathematics of Operations Research 2021 46(3):946–969

Entropy Regularization for Mean Field Games with Learning

X Guo, R Xu, T Zariphopoulou

Mathematics of Operations Research 2022 47(4):3239–3260

Distributionally Robust Stochastic Optimization with Wasserstein Distance

R Gao, A Kleywegt

Mathematics of Operations Research 2023 48(2):603–655

A Stochastic Sequential Quadratic Optimization Algorithm for Nonlinear-Equality-Constrained Optimization with Rank-Deficient Jacobians

AS Berahas, FE Curtis, MJ O’Neill, DP Robinson

Mathematics of Operations Research 2024 49(4):2212–2248

Stationary Points of a Shallow Neural Network with Quadratic Activations and the Global Optimality of the Gradient Descent Algorithm

D Gamarnik, EC Kizildag, I Zadik

Mathematics of Operations Research 2025 50(1):209–251

 

HT Itai Ashlagi 

Aeon | a world of ideas

The six-second hug

Julian Baggini
Updated

A couple hugging by a lake under a cloudy sky with a person standing by a lamppost nearby.

From art to religion to sex, instrumentalisation has drained away intrinsic value. But life is about more than material benefits

- by Julian Baggini

Read on Aeon

Oklahoma Watch
Daring Fireball

NetNewsWire 7 for Mac

John Gruber
Updated

Brent Simmons, last month:

The big change from 6.2.1 is that it adopts the Liquid Glass UI and it requires macOS 26.

(Note to people who aren’t on macOS 26: we fixed a lot of bugs in 6.2 and 6.2.1 knowing that many people might skip, or at least delay, installing macOS 26. Also note that there’s a page where you can get old versions of NetNewsWire.)

It feels a little weird for me not to be running the latest version of NetNewsWire, but since I’m skipping MacOS 26 Tahoe, I can’t run NetNewsWire 7. I am running NetNewsWire 7 betas on my iPhone and iPad, and I’ve tried it out on the secondary Mac where I do have Tahoe installed. It’s so good. And syncing works just fine with NetNewsWire 6.x, for anyone else in the fellowship sticking with MacOS 15 Sequoia. You can run NetNewsWire 7 on some devices and NetNewsWire 6 on your Sequoia Mac, and it all just works.

NetNewsWire 7 is also now out for iOS, and Brent and I talked about both versions last month when he was my guest on The Talk Show.

 ★ 
Daring Fireball

The Pants-Shitting Saga of Resizing Windows on MacOS 26 Tahoe Continues

John Gruber
Updated

Norbert Heger:

In the release notes for macOS 26.3 RC, Apple stated that the window-resizing issue I demonstrated in my recent blog post had been resolved.

You’ll never guess what happened between the RC (release candidate) version and the actual shipping version of 26.3.

Just kidding, you’ll guess.

 ★ 
Letters from an American

February 23, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

Since the U.S. Supreme Court found that the tariffs Trump levied under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) are unconstitutional, Trump has attacked the court and continued to insist he has the power to issue the tariffs that give him economic leverage over other countries and companies.

After the decision was announced on Friday, Trump announced he was putting a 10% tariff on foreign imports. Then, on Saturday, he posted that his social media announcement would “serve to represent that I, as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of which have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. off for decades, without retribution (until I came along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level.”

At 7:06 this morning, Trump tried to reaffirm his unchecked power when he posted on social media: “The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a complete lack of respect!) of the United States accidentally and unwittingly gave me, as President of the United States, far more powers and strength than I had prior to their ridiculous, dumb, and very internationally divisive ruling.” He claimed that he could “do absolutely ‘terrible’ things to foreign countries” and that the court has approved other tariffs that “can all be used in a much more powerful and obnoxious way, with legal certainty, than the Tariffs as initially used.”

On Sunday the head of the international trade committee in the European Parliament, Bernd Lange, posted: “Pure tariff chaos on the part of the US government. No one can make any sense of it anymore—just open questions and growing uncertainty for the [European Union] and other US trading partners.” Lange noted that it is unclear if the United States will adhere to its trade deals, “or even be able to at all.” He proposed pausing the process of approving the E.U.’s trade deal with the U.S. “until we have a comprehensive legal assessment & clear commitments from the US side.” This morning, the European Parliament agreed.

After the decision, officials from India postponed a trip to the U.S. to finalize a trade deal. Late last month, India and the E.U. completed a trade agreement that creates the largest free trade zone in the world. Experts say the deal will support economic growth in the E.U. and India.

At 9:34 this morning, Trump threatened: “Any Country that wants to ‘play games’ with the ridiculous supreme court decision, especially those that have ‘Ripped Off’ the U.S.A. for years, and even decades, will be met with a much higher Tariff, and worse, than that which they just recently agreed to. BUYER BEWARE!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP”

Fifteen minutes later, he posted: “As President, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of Tariffs. It has already been gotten, in many forms, a long time ago! They were also just reaffirmed by the ridiculous and poorly crafted supreme court decision! President DJT”

Trump’s tariffs are enormously unpopular. As G. Elliott Morris noted in Strength in Numbers yesterday, an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll taken before the Supreme Court decision found that 64% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of tariffs. He had tried to shore up support for them by promising Americans a $2,000 check as a “dividend” from the tariffs, but as financial planner Stephen Kates told Jessica Dickler of CNBC today, “Tariff dividends were a long shot from the beginning.” Now, he said, the odds of their moving forward are “effectively zero.”

Eighty-two percent of Americans, including 76% of Republicans, say the president must obey rulings of the Supreme Court. Morris adds that 50% of Americans think Trump’s policy decisions have hurt the economy while only 26% say they have helped. And the Washington Post reported yesterday that 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s job performance, his lowest approval rating since shortly after the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

This morning, in remarks to so-called “Angel Families”—a right-wing name for the families of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants—Trump spoke in a slow monotone as he complained about the “fake polls” that show his popularity falling. “We actually have a silent support,” he said.

Today Jason Beeferman of Politico reported that the “silent support” to which right-wing figures point as evidence of their popularity is not necessarily authentic. An examination of social media accounts that pushed Nicki Minaj’s new right-wing persona showed that 18,784 of the profiles boosting her content, or about 33% of them, are fake. The report “assesses with high confidence that a coordinated fake campaign was actively amplifying political content on Nicki Minaj’s X account during the period reviewed.”

The report found that “[w]hen the conversation is limited to toxic content, a substantially stronger amplification effect emerges. These accounts predominantly amplify content produced by Nicki Minaj and Turning Point USA, indicating a notable overlap between the two within this discourse.”

In his speech this morning, Trump returned again to his complaints about the 2020 election, which he continues to insist the Democrats rigged against him. As for the 2024 vote, in which Trump got about 77.3 million votes, he claimed: “I won, I got probably 85 million votes, they say 78 million, 79 million, they cheated in this election too, it was just too big to rig. But they cheated like hell.” Nonsensically, he claimed that Republicans don’t receive their mail-in ballots, while Democratic voters are showered with them. “Republicans don’t get theirs and they’re calling frantically to get their ballot. A Democrat will get three, four, five, six, and even seven ballots,” Trump said. “And then we’re supposed to win? That’s what they’re good at, they’re professional cheaters.”

The stock market fell sharply today as investors worried about the uncertainty of Trump’s tariff threats and about the implications of AI.

The New York City Bar Association issued a statement condemning Trump’s attacks on the Supreme Court, saying they “constitute a calculated and dangerous assault on the independence of the judiciary and on our constitutional system of separated powers.”

Today House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) acknowledged that Congress has no appetite for levying the tariffs Trump and his MAGA supporters in Congress want. Johnson told reporters: “It’s going to be, I think, a challenge to find consensus on any path forward on the tariffs, on the legislative side. And so that is why, I think, you see so much of the attention on the executive side, the executive branch, and what they’re doing and how they’re reacting to the ruling.”

Meanwhile, prominent federal officials aren’t helping the popular image of the administration.

After the U.S. men’s hockey team won the gold at the Olympics yesterday, video and images circulated of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel wearing a USA jersey, screaming and chugging a beer in the team’s locker room rather as if he were at a frat party. MS NOW reporters Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig said eight former officials from the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) sent them the video, which they said was infuriating FBI and DOJ officials.

When Dilanian questioned the trip, spokesperson Ben Williamson insisted on Saturday that Patel, who is a big fan of hockey, flew to Milan on the FBI’s private jet for official events. Williamson even demanded that Dilanian “correct” his “false” theory that Patel “went to hang out at the Olympics on the taxpayer dime.” Williamson did not respond after Dilanian and Leonnig asked him to comment on the video.

From Italy, Patel posted yesterday that the “FBI is dedicating all necessary resources in the investigation of this morning’s incident at President Trump’s Mar-A-Lago—where an armed individual was shot and killed after unlawfully entering the perimeter.” He was referring to the fact that the Secret Service shot and killed 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin outside Mar-a-Lago on Sunday. Reporters say Martin is from a family of Trump supporters and lately had become fixated on the “evil” in the Epstein files.

Today Reuters reported that U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco Charles Kushner has been banned from contact with members of the French government. Kushner is the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Trump pardoned the elder Kushner in December 2020 after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion, lying to the Federal Election Commission, and retaliating against a federal witness. Kushner has twice refused to meet with French foreign ministry officials after interfering with French politics and being summoned, a breach of diplomatic protocol. Max Rego and Laura Kelly of The Hill reported a French official’s explanation: “[I]t’s a question of the basic expectations attached to the mission of an ambassador.”

Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) is facing calls to resign after allegations that he pressured a staff member into a sexual relationship. Gonzales, who is married and has six children, has denied the allegations, but published text messages are explicit and show the staffer warning him he was “going too far.” The woman later died by suicide. House speaker Johnson has endorsed Gonzales for reelection and cannot lose another Republican from the House, but pressure is mounting for Gonzales’s resignation.

Judge Aileen Cannon today blocked the release of Jack Smith’s report about his investigation of Trump’s retention of classified documents after he left office in 2021. It is usual procedure for a special counsel’s report to be made public, but Cannon is a Trump appointee who has, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance of Civil Discourse noted, done everything she can to bottle up Smith’s report. Vance notes that few people initially thought there would be much new in the report, but Trump’s fierce fight to keep it under wraps has led to speculation that there might be something surprising in it.

“[I]t’s hard to miss the glaring similarity to the Epstein Files,” Vance wrote, “where it increasingly appears attempts to avoid disclosure were meant to protect wealthy, powerful people. Why not just release Volume II if Trump, as he says, is innocent? You’d think that might help him prove his ‘case’ and set the matter aside for once and for all.”

U.S. Southern Command posted today that it struck another small vessel, killing three people. This brings the total killed in these small-boat attacks to at least 137 people. U.S. Southern Command claimed that those operating it were “engaged in narco-trafficking operations,” although there remains no proof of the government’s allegations.

Tomorrow Trump will deliver the State of the Union address. “It’s going to be a long speech,” he said today, “because we have so much to talk about.” But in a sign of his slipping control, many Democrats are skipping the speech to attend the “State of the Swamp” event at the National Press Club or the “People’s State of the Union” rally on the National Mall.

“Ever since taking office a year ago, the President has shown no respect for the principles upon which this country is based—the Constitutional separation of powers, the rule of law, and the rights guaranteed to every person under the Constitution. His actions have done tremendous harm to the American people, to our standing among nations, and to our institutions of government,” Senator Angus King (I-ME) said in a statement. “For this reason, I cannot in good conscience participate in a function with this President at its center. To do so would require me to ignore all that has gone before and to pay him a measure of respect which he has not earned. I will not be attending the State of the Union address.”

—

Notes:

https://www.ms.now/news/fbi-chief-shown-in-raucous-locker-room-celebration-during-olympics-trip

https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-puts-us-trade-deal-ice-after-latest-donald-trump-tariff-hit/

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-tariffs-02-23-2026/card/how-america-s-trading-partners-responded-to-tariff-chaos--pDGn35MQjJmcp4fYZq7B

https://www.weforum.org/stories/2026/02/india-eu-mother-of-all-trade-deals-what-to-know/

https://abcnews.com/Politics/majority-americans-disapprove-trump-handling-tariffs-abcpostipsos-poll/story?id=130340581

Strength In Numbers
Trump decides he'll FAFO on Supreme Court tariff ruling
This is a special edition of my normal Sunday data roundup. I have written an emergency analysis of the Supreme Court’s striking down of Donald Trump’s tariffs and his response. I show that by attacking the Court and doubling down on an unpopular policy, the president has put himself on the wrong side of a supermajority of voters on two fronts…
Read more
4 days ago · 224 likes · 16 comments · G. Elliott Morris

https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2026/02/23/congress/mike-johnson-congress-unlikely-to-find-consensus-to-codify-trumps-tariffs-00793462

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-event-angel-families-suffer-country-1235521326/

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/trump-says-dem-voters-get-seven-ballots-as-he-pushes-mail-voting-ban/

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=0000019c-7720-de8a-a1fc-ff6079aa0000

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/23/the-bots-powering-nicki-minajs-maga-war-00771317

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-tariffs-02-23-2026

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-sp-500-nasdaq-tariffs-02-23-2026/card/the-citrini-substack-selloff-70cWx0scioiLradyuTRa

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/23/trump-mar-a-lago-secret-service

https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2026/feb/23/us-dollar-stock-markets-losses-trump-global-tariff-supreme-court-news-updates

https://www.nycbar.org/press-releases/condemning-president-trumps-attacks-on-the-supreme-court/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/22/trump-disapproval-post-poll/

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/23/trumps-2000-tariff-dividend-checks-are-less-likely-experts-say.html

https://thehill.com/policy/international/5751454-french-ministry-bars-kushner/

https://www.france24.com/en/france/20260223-france-curtails-us-ambassador-kushner-s-access-after-he-fails-to-obey-government-summons

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/18/tony-gonzales-staffer-fire-affair-text-brandon-herrera/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texts-rep-tony-gonzales-staffer-who-died-by-suicide/

https://www.notus.org/final-notus-newsletter/tariffic

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance
If DOJ Is Trump's Law Firm, Aileen Cannon Is His Judge
South District of Florida federal Judge Aileen Cannon has history with Donald Trump. He appointed her to the bench in May 2020. She was confirmed that November. Then came the June 2023 indictment of Trump by federal prosecutors. It landed on her desk…
Read more
2 days ago · 1062 likes · 113 comments · Joyce Vance

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/trump-appointee-aileen-cannon-blocks-release-jack-smiths-report-classi-rcna260237

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/us/politics/speech-trump-state-of-the-union.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/5744455-democrats-boycott-trump-speech/

https://www.wmtw.com/article/most-maine-delegation-skip-state-of-the-union/70467588

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/us-strike-alleged-drug-trafficking-boat-caribbean-kills-3-rcna260327

X:

JakeSherman/status/2026016786534007021?s=20

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CarolLeonnig/status/2025684628128911810

CarolLeonnig/status/2025685307300175875

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Letters from an American

February 22, 2026

Heather Cox Richardson
Updated

Marginal Revolution

*Being and Time: An Annotated Translation*

Tyler Cowen
Updated

Translated from the German by Cyril Welch.

Periodically I am asked if I have read Being and Time, and I always give the same response: “I have looked at every page.”

I also have spent time with it in German, though not for every page.  But have I read it?  Read it properly?  Can anyone?

Is the book worth some study?  Yes.  But.

People, this volume is the best chance you are going to get.

The post *Being and Time: An Annotated Translation* appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Marginal Revolution

Is there an aggregate demand problem in an AGI world?

Tyler Cowen
Updated

No.  Let’s say AI is improving very rapidly, and affecting the world more rapidly and more radically than I think is plausible.  Let’s just say.

All of a sudden there are incredible things you can spend your money on.

Since there is (possibly) radical deflation, you might be tempted to just hold all your money and buy nothing.  Pick vegetables from your garden.  But the high marginal utility of the new goods and services will get you to spend, especially since you know that plenitude will bring you, in relative terms, a lower marginal utility for marginal expenditures in the future.

You might even go crazy spending.  If nothing else, buy new and improved vegetable seeds for your garden.  That same example shows that spending is robust to you losing your job, even assuming no reemployment is possible.  In this world, there are significant Pigou effects on wealth.

Fed policy has no problem mattering in this world.  Other people of course will wish to use the new Fed-sprayed liquidity to invest.  They might even invest in AI-related goods and services, not all of which will be controlled by “billionaires.”

Liquidity trap arguments, if they are to work at all, require a pretty miserable environment for investment and also consumption.

Note by the way, that liquidity traps were supposed to apply to currency only!  If you try to apply the concept to money more generally, when most forms of holding money bear interest rates of return, the whole concept collapses.

So there is not an aggregate demand problem in this economy, even if the social situation feels volatile or uncomfortable.  After that, Say’s Law holds.  If AI produces a lot more stuff, income is generated from that and the economy keeps going, whether or not the resulting distribution pleases your sense of morality.  Along the way, prices adjust as need be.  If unemployment rises significantly, prices fall too, all the more.  I am not saying everyone ends up happy here, but you cannot have a) a flood of goods and services, b) billions accruing to the AI owners, without also c) prices are at a level where most people can afford to buy a whole bunch of things.  Otherwise, where do you think all the AI revenue is coming from?  The new output has to go somewhere, and sorry people it is simply not all trapped in currency hoards.  Be just a little Walrasian here, please.  (I would call it Huttian instead.)

Besides, why assume that “the machines” here are reaping all the surplus?  Are they the scarce factor of production?  Maybe it is hard to say in advance, but do not take any particular assumptions for granted here, ask to see them spelt out.  One simple scenario is that the regions with energy and data centres become much wealthier, and people need to move to those areas.  Maybe they do not do this quickly enough, a’la our earlier history with the Rust Belt.  That is a problem worth worrying about, but it is nothing like the recent collapse concerns that have been circulating.

The whole Citrini scenario is incorrect right off the bat.  Very little of it is based on sound macroeconomic reasoning.  See Eli’s very good comments too.  Nicholas also.  Dare I say they should have consulted with the AIs for a bit longer?

The post Is there an aggregate demand problem in an AGI world? appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Seven Business Branding Strategies Set To Dominate Competitive Markets This Year

Our Friends
Updated

Markets are crowded. Attention spans are shorter. Budgets are tighter. If your brand blends in right now, it is losing ground. The companies set to break out this year are not louder, they are sharper. They know exactly who they are, who they serve, and how to turn that clarity into momentum. What follows is a look at the branding strategies separating breakout performers from everyone still fighting for scraps of attention.

The Rise Of Brand Matchmakers

Brands no longer build in isolation. Growth often depends on finding the right partners at the right time, and that has given rise to a new category of connectors known as brand matchmakers. These platforms and networks help companies identify agencies, collaborators, and strategic partners who already align with their goals and audience. In a crowded marketplace, that alignment can shave months off the learning curve and prevent expensive missteps.

The appeal is simple. Instead of cold outreach or endless research, businesses can plug into curated ecosystems. Yeco, Clutch or Agency Spotter are all worth looking into, but Yeco is the standout because it emphasizes tailored matches and deeper strategic fit rather than just directory listings. That distinction matters when a company is investing real capital into brand growth. The right match accelerates momentum. The wrong one drains it.

This year, expect more companies to outsource the partner search process entirely. As marketing channels multiply and specialization increases, internal teams cannot be experts in everything. Strategic matchmaking allows leaders to stay focused on vision while leveraging external expertise.

Hyper Specific Positioning Wins Attention

Broad messaging used to work when competition was thinner. Now, generalist brands get lost in the scroll. Companies that clearly define what they do, who they serve, and what makes them different are pulling ahead. This shift toward hyper specific positioning is not about narrowing opportunity. It is about owning a category.

When a brand tries to appeal to everyone, it rarely resonates with anyone. The companies gaining traction are comfortable saying no to audiences that are not a fit. That clarity sharpens product development, content strategy, and advertising spend. It also reduces internal friction because teams understand the target market.

Positioning should feel bold but grounded in reality. Overstating capabilities erodes trust. Understating them leaves growth on the table. The sweet spot is confident specificity backed by consistent delivery.

Experience As The Brand Itself

Consumers are less impressed by claims and more influenced by experience. Branding now extends far beyond logos and campaigns. It lives in onboarding emails, customer support responses, packaging decisions, and user interface design. Every touchpoint either reinforces the promise or undermines it.

Businesses that treat customer experience as a branding strategy are seeing measurable returns. Seamless digital journeys, thoughtful follow ups, and friction free purchasing create loyalty that no ad campaign can buy. This year, expect leaders to invest heavily in operational alignment so that the brand promise shows up in practice.

That alignment requires cross functional coordination. Marketing cannot carry the brand alone. Product teams, customer success, and leadership all shape perception. The strongest brands operate as integrated systems rather than siloed departments.

Strategic Investment In Social Channels

No branding strategy can ignore the power of social media marketing. Platforms continue to influence buying decisions across industries, from enterprise software to consumer goods. The difference now is that audiences demand authenticity and substance. Generic promotional posts do not convert.

Brands that succeed are blending storytelling with data. They track engagement patterns, refine messaging based on audience behavior, and experiment without losing their core identity. Social channels are not just distribution platforms. They are feedback loops. They reveal what resonates and what falls flat.

The smartest companies also diversify platform presence. They do not rely solely on one network. They test emerging spaces while strengthening established ones. This balanced approach protects visibility and expands reach.

Thought Leadership With Substance

Thought leadership has matured. It is no longer enough to publish surface level commentary. Decision makers are looking for depth, clarity, and original insight. Brands that invest in meaningful content, research backed articles, and informed perspectives build authority that compounds over time.

This does not require daily output. It requires intention. Publishing fewer, stronger pieces often outperforms constant low value content. Leaders who articulate a clear point of view on industry shifts position their companies as trusted guides rather than vendors.

The payoff extends beyond marketing metrics. Strong thought leadership attracts talent, investors, and strategic partners. It signals stability and vision in uncertain markets.

Data Driven Agility Without Losing Identity

Brand strategy cannot remain static. Market conditions change. Consumer preferences evolve. Competitors innovate. The companies poised to explode this year are those that balance agility with consistency. They use data to refine tactics while protecting their foundational narrative.

Analytics reveal where campaigns succeed and where they underperform. But numbers alone cannot dictate direction. Leadership judgment matters. If a short term tactic generates attention but conflicts with long term positioning, disciplined brands resist the temptation.

Agility is about iteration, not reinvention. The core message stays intact while execution adapts. That steady evolution builds resilience and credibility.

The Compounding Effect Of Strategic Branding

Explosive growth rarely comes from a single tactic. It emerges from disciplined alignment across positioning, partnerships, experience, social presence, and leadership voice. Companies that treat branding as a strategic asset rather than a marketing afterthought are building durable advantages.

As competition intensifies, brand clarity becomes a growth lever. It influences pricing power, customer retention, and market perception. Businesses that invest now in smart matchmaking, sharp positioning, integrated experience, and informed agility are setting themselves up for sustained expansion rather than short lived spikes.

A Year Of Intentional Brand Building

The brands that surge ahead this year will not be the ones chasing every trend. They will be the ones making deliberate choices, selecting the right partners, refining their message, and delivering on their promises. Branding is not decoration. It is direction. Companies that understand that distinction are positioned to move from incremental growth to breakout performance.

Photo: rawpixel.com via Freepik.

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NASA Science

Showy Swirls Around Jeju Island

Michala Garrison
Updated
 
A series of spiraling clouds extends southeast from an oval-shaped island in the Korea Strait. To the west, a large sediment plume fans out from the coast of China and forms tan, teal, and blue swirls in the water.
February 19, 2026

The tallest point in South Korea is not located in the Taebaek Mountains that run along the country’s eastern coast. Rather, it is found atop a volcanic peak on Jeju Island, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the Korean Peninsula. In winter 2026, winds blew past the island in just the right way to send clouds spinning in its wake.

The MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image of swirling clouds—and colorful, turbulent water—near Jeju Island on February 19, 2026. The island rises about 1,950 meters (6,400 feet) above the sea surface. At its center is Hallasan, a shield volcano that last erupted in the 11th century and contains a notable network of lava tubes.

The trailing, staggered spirals, called von Kármán vortex streets, form when a fluid passes a tall, isolated, stationary object. If winds are too weak, clouds simply flow smoothly past, and if winds are too strong, vortices cannot maintain their shape. In the sweet spot, with winds between 18 and 54 kilometers (11 and 34 miles) per hour, clouds trace the airflow in patterns of counterrotating vortices. Though the underlying physics is the same, the appearance of the vortices can vary: sometimes they look wispy, as they do here, and other times they form more sharply defined, parallel rows, as they did at the same location the previous day.

The seas, as well as the atmosphere, were turbulent near Jeju Island in mid-February. To the west, a large plume of sediment coming off the coast of China’s Jiangsu province turned waters murky. While brown, sediment-laden water is present in the shallow nearshore area year-round, expansive plumes like this one are common during winter. Research suggests that seasonal changes in currents and vertical mixing of the water column may account for the large winter plumes.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Lindsey Doermann.

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A series of spiraling clouds extends southeast from an oval-shaped island in the Korea Strait. To the west, a large sediment plume fans out from the coast of China and forms tan, teal, and blue swirls in the water.

February 19, 2026

JPEG (2.74 MB)

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DCReport.org

What to Do When “What’s Next?” Becomes Impossible to Ignore

Our Friends
Updated

Beginning something new in your professional life is always going to be daunting. If you’re someone who’s built a solid career, there are times when familiar no longer feels right for you. You might find yourself thinking of something more, or a want to become more in touch with who you are now, rather than the person you were when you first started your career. That feeling is not from failure or impatience, it just means you’re ready for growth. With the right plan and a good mindset, these feelings can be the perfect thing to push you toward whatever you feel suits you best. If that’s career progression, or an entire field change, identifying that feeling is the first step. 

Listening to the Quiet Signals of Change

Career transitions rarely start with a singular dramatic ‘movie moment’ event. They usually start with quiet internal thoughts: “What’s that new role I saw online?”, “How can I do more?”, or a sense that what you’re doing now is not what you would have planned for yourself if you could start all over again. These thoughts shouldn’t be ignored. 

Reflection is the first step in honouring them. Give yourself space to explore what’s changing,  ask yourself what parts of your work energize you and which parts feel the most draining. Try to notice the skills you’ve developed, the morals that guide your choices, and the kind of contribution you want to make. This isn’t about having all the answers, it’s more about creating clarity around what matters the most to you.

Doing things like journaling, speaking with mentors, or even taking quiet walks can help you tune into your own voice. The outcome you’re looking for shouldn’t be rushing into decisions, but to truly understand the reasons why you feel the need for change. When you get to this stage with curiosity rather than pressure, you create a foundation for decisions that feel grounded and intentional, rather than rushed.

Turning Insight Into The Next Step

Once you’ve reflected on what’s driving your desire for a new start, the next step is translating those thoughts into a plan or general direction. This is where planning becomes important, not as a rigid roadmap but as an informed suggestion that helps you move toward your goals.

Start this by finding the gaps between where you are and where you want to be. Do you need new skills? Broader experience? A different environment? More leadership responsibility? Answering these questions allows you to explore options that are more in tune with what you want to do rather than reacting to discomfort.

This is also the stage where research becomes a great tool. Look into industries, roles, or qualifications that match your aspirations and goals. For some professionals, advanced education becomes a meaningful pathway. As one example, when that sense of ‘what’s next?’ won’t quiet down, exploring options like MSN to DNP programs online can help turn uncertainty into a clear, actionable plan toward what suits you best. Whether or not that specific path is right for you, the principle remains: informed exploration transforms feelings of restlessness into a world of possibility.

Building a Thoughtful, Flexible Plan

A strong plan doesn’t need to be overly complicated, it just needs to be intentional. Break your goals into manageable steps, skills to build, people to connect with, experiences to seek out, or qualifications to pursue. Think of your plan as a living document that changes with you. It can help to set short, medium, and long-term milestones. 

Short-term steps might include:

  • Updating your CV
  • Taking a short course
  • Reaching out to someone in a role you admire

Medium-term steps could involve:

  • Building a portfolio
  • Applying for stretch opportunities 
  • Enrolling in a program that supports your next level of expertise

Long-term goals might include:

  • Transitioning into a new specialty
  • Stepping into leadership
  • Launching a new venture to work for yourself rather than someone else

Importantly, allow room for flexibility. Career growth is rarely straightforward, and unexpected opportunities appear once you begin moving with intention. A flexible plan keeps you grounded without boxing you into a space that you can’t move from.

Taking Intentional Action

Reflection and planning are important, but progress really happens when you take action. The key is to be purposeful, rather than doing so much you become overwhelmed; you don’t need to overhaul your entire career overnight. Instead, make a long term plan that pushes you in the right direction with enough time to keep things feeling light and achievable.

Simple ways to start are by: 

  • Embracing opportunities that challenge you
  • Volunteer for projects that align with your goals
  • Find connection and mentorship from people who have walked the path you’re hoping to follow them on

If you’re thinking about further study or a career change, do this by finding information rather than committing immediately. Reach out to program advisors, speak with alumni, or explore sample coursework. 

Managing the Emotional Side of Transition

Even when you’re excited about your next chapter, transitions can stir up mixed feelings. It’s normal to feel a mix of excitement and fear. What matters is how you support yourself through it. 

It’s best to be aware of the emotions that come, without letting them dictate important choices. Remind yourself that growth often requires stepping into the unknown. Surround yourself with people who encourage your aspirations and understand your goals, and celebrate small wins along the way, they reinforce your progress and strengthen your confidence.

It can also help to reframe uncertainty as possibility. Instead of focusing on what you’re leaving behind, focus on what you’re moving toward; more fulfillment, and a career that reflects your greatest strengths. It’s a good practice to do familiar things that make you happy in your personal life while you make these professional transitions, not only will you remain in a good place mentally, but a sense of normalcy during change is a good way to stay grounded. 

Embracing Your Next Chapter With Confidence

Every professional journey includes moments of transition, whether you’re happy where you are or not. Feeling ready for your next chapter is not a sign that something is wrong, it’s a sign that you’re evolving. When you approach this stage with intention, planning, and action, you’re merely turning your uncertainty into a tool. 

Your next chapter doesn’t need to be rushed or forced, it needs to be chosen with clarity and courage. Whether your path leads to advanced study, a new role, a shift in direction, or a deeper commitment to your current field, what matters most is that it aligns with who you are becoming.

You’re not starting over all over again, you’re just taking a step further. With each step, you’re building a career that feels meaningful, sustainable, and wholly yours.

Photo: drobotdean via Freepik.

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DCReport.org

Best Fuel Cards for Small Trucking Companies in 2026

Our Friends
Updated

Fuel remains the single largest variable expense for most small trucking companies. In a market defined by tight margins, fluctuating diesel prices, and increasing compliance requirements, choosing the right fuel card is no longer optional, it is strategic.

For small fleets operating between 1 and 50 trucks, the ideal fuel card must do more than offer discounts. It should provide transparent pricing, fraud protection, nationwide acceptance, reporting capabilities, and operational visibility. Below is a reviewed ranking of the six best fuel cards for small trucking companies, based on network size, discount structures, fleet controls, technology integration, and overall value.

1. TCS Fuel (TransConnect Services)

Best for: Maximum diesel discounts through negotiated pricing

TCS Fuel consistently ranks at the top due to its strong discount model negotiated across major truck stop chains. Instead of percentage-based rebates, TCS often offers fixed-price discounts off retail diesel prices, which can deliver substantial per-gallon savings.

Key advantages:

  • Competitive diesel discounts at major travel centers
  • Transparent pricing model
  • Widespread acceptance
  • No long-term contracts

For small fleets prioritizing fuel savings above all else, TCS remains one of the most aggressive discount programs available.

2. DAT Fuel Card

Best for: Integration with freight and load board tools

DAT’s fuel card integrates naturally into its broader freight ecosystem. Small carriers already using DAT’s load board may find operational efficiency by consolidating logistics and fuel management under one provider.

Highlights:

  • Competitive diesel discounts
  • Integration with DAT freight tools
  • Access to a large nationwide network
  • Fuel price transparency

While savings may not always exceed TCS in all markets, DAT delivers operational convenience and ecosystem synergy.

3. WEX Fleet Card

Best for: Advanced reporting and fleet analytics

WEX is a long-standing leader in fleet payment solutions. Its strength lies in analytics, compliance reporting, and expense controls.

Core features:

  • Robust reporting dashboards
  • Custom purchase controls
  • Driver ID and PIN security
  • IFTA-ready reporting tools

For small fleets scaling toward mid-size operations, WEX provides the infrastructure to grow without switching systems later.

4. Comdata Fuel Card

Best for: Broad acceptance and payroll integration

Comdata is one of the most widely accepted fuel payment solutions in North America. Its ecosystem includes payroll cards, factoring solutions, and expense management tools.

Benefits include:

  • Extensive fuel network
  • Strong fraud prevention tools
  • Integrated financial services
  • Detailed transaction visibility

For fleets that want a full-service financial partner, Comdata remains a competitive option.

5. EFS (Electronic Funds Source)

Best for: Owner-operators and regional carriers

EFS offers strong regional discounts and is widely accepted across truck stops. It provides essential fleet controls without unnecessary complexity.

Standout features:

  • Competitive diesel discounts
  • Real-time transaction tracking
  • Fraud controls and PIN protections
  • Straightforward onboarding

For smaller operations prioritizing simplicity and reliability, EFS remains dependable.

6. Simplex Group Fuel Card

Best for: Carriers seeking integrated compliance and fuel management support

Simplex Group differentiates itself by combining fuel savings with broader trucking business services. As a full-service partner for carriers, the company integrates its fuel card system into a wider operational support platform.

What sets it apart:

  • Nationwide fuel purchase discounts across thousands of truck stops
  • Customizable spending controls and fuel-type restrictions
  • Detailed transaction reports for accounting and compliance tracking
  • Real-time monitoring of fuel purchases across fleets
  • Fraud prevention tools including driver PINs and location-based restrictions
  • Integrated analytics to track route performance and fuel usage

Unlike standalone fuel card providers, Simplex Group embeds fuel management within a larger ecosystem of compliance, safety, and administrative services. This approach offers small trucking companies both cost savings and operational visibility, supporting long-term scalability and regulatory confidence.

How to Choose the Right Fuel Card for Your Small Trucking Company

When evaluating options, fleet owners should consider:

1. Discount Structure

Fixed-price discounts typically outperform percentage rebates during periods of high diesel volatility.

2. Network Coverage

Ensure the provider’s network aligns with your primary lanes and freight corridors.

3. Reporting & IFTA Support

Automated reporting reduces administrative burden and audit risks.

4. Fraud Protection

Driver PINs, purchase limits, and geo-fencing reduce fuel theft risk.

5. Scalability

Choose a system that grows with your fleet.

For small trucking companies, the “best” fuel card depends on operational priorities:

  • Maximum fuel savings: TCS Fuel
  • Ecosystem integration: DAT
  • Advanced analytics: WEX
  • Financial services depth: Comdata
  • Simplicity and reliability: EFS
  • Integrated compliance and operational support: Simplex Group

In today’s freight environment, the right fuel card does more than reduce diesel expenses, it enhances visibility, strengthens compliance, and supports sustainable growth. Selecting strategically can mean the difference between operating efficiently and operating reactively.

Photo: Freepik via their website.

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SpaceNews

Boeing demonstrates large language model for space-grade hardware

Debra Werner
Updated

SAN FRANCISCO – Before uploading a large language model to space-grade hardware, Boeing Space Mission Systems engineers sought guidance from the hardware manufacturer. “They told us it wasn’t possible, but we are skilled engineers who were going to figure out a pathway to make it happen,” Arvel Chappell III, Boeing Space Mission Systems AI Lab […]

The post Boeing demonstrates large language model for space-grade hardware appeared first on SpaceNews.

SpaceNews

Meink, Saltzman make case for Space Force expansion

Sandra Erwin
Updated

Meink: How the future force is designed ‘will be critical as the Space Force expands even faster in the next few years’

The post Meink, Saltzman make case for Space Force expansion  appeared first on SpaceNews.

Anil Dash

Taking action against AI harms

In my last piece, I talked about the harms that AI is visiting on children through the irresponsible choices made by the platforms creating those products. While we dove a bit into the incentives and institutional pressures that cause those companies to make such wildly irresponsible decisions, what we haven’t yet reckoned with is how we hold these companies accountable.

Often, people tell me they feel overwhelmed at the idea of trying to engage with getting laws passed, or fighting a big political campaign to rein in the giant tech companies that are causing so much harm. And grassroots, local organizing can be extraordinarily effective in standing up for the values of your community against the agenda of the Big AI companies.

But while I think it’s vital that we pursue systemic justice (and it’s the only way to stop many kinds of harm), I do understand the desire for something more immediate and human-scale. So, I wanted to share some direct, personal actions that you can take to respond to the threats that Big AI has made against kids. Each of these tactics have been proven effective by others who have used the same strategies, so you can feel confident when adapting these for your own use.

Get your company off of Twitter / X

If your company or organization maintains a presence on Twitter (or X, as they have tried to rename themselves), it is important to protect yourself, your coworkers, and also your employer from the risks of being on the platform. Many times, leadership in organizations have an outdated view of the platform that is uninformed about the current level of danger and harm presented by participating on the social network, and an accurate description of the problem can often be effective in driving a decision to make a change.

Here is some dialogue you can use or modify to catalyze a productive conversation at work:

Hi, [name]. I saw a while ago that Twitter is being investigated in multiple countries around the world for having generated explicit imagery of women and children. The story even said that their CEO reinstated the account of a user who had shared child exploitation pictures on the site, and monetized the account that had shared the pictures.

Can you verify that our team is required to be on the service even though there is child abuse imagery on the site? I know that Musk’s account is shown to everyone on Twitter, so I’m concerned we’ll see whatever content he shares or retweets. Should I forward any of the child abuse material that I encounter in the course of carrying out the duties of my role to HR or legal, or both? And what is our reporting process for reporting this kind of material to the authorities, as I haven’t been trained in any procedures around these kinds of sensitive materials?

That should be enough to trigger a useful conversation at your workplace. (You can share this link if they want a credible, business-minded link to reference.) If they need more context about the burden on workers, you can also mention the fact that content moderators who have to interact with this kind of content have had serious issues with trauma, according to many academic studies. There is also the risk of employees and partners having concerns about nonconsensual imagery being generated from their images if the company posts anything on Twitter that features their faces or bodies. As some articles have noted, the Grok AI tool that Twitter uses is even designed to permit the creation of imagery that makes its targets look like the victims of violence, including targets who are underage.

As a result, your emails to your manager should CC your HR team, and should make explicit that you don’t wish to be liable for the risks the company is taking on by remaining on the platform. Talk to your coworkers, and share this information with them, and see if they will join you in the conversation. If you’re able to, it’s not a bad idea to look up a local labor lawyer and see if they’re willing to talk to you for free in case you need someone to CC on an email while discussing these topics. Make your employers say to you, explicitly, that the decision to remain on the platform is theirs, that they’re aware of the risks, that they indemnify you of those risks. You should ask that they take on accountability for burdens like legal costs or even psychological counseling for the real and severe impacts that come from enduring the harms that crimes like those enabled by Twitter can cause.

All of these strategies can also apply to products that integrate with Twitter’s service at a technical level, for sharing content or posting tweets, or for technical platforms that try to use Grok’s AI features. If you are a product manager, or know a product manager, that is considering connecting to a platform that makes child abuse material, you have failed at the most fundamental tenet of your craft. If you work at a company that has incorporated these technologies, file a bug mentioning the issues listed above, and again, CC your legal team and mention these concerns. “Our product might plug in to a platform that generates CSAM” is a show-stopping bug for any product, and any organization that doesn’t understand that is fundamentally broken.

Once you catalyze this conversation, you can begin mapping out a broader communication strategy that takes advantage of the many excellent options for replacing this legacy social media channel.

Stop your school from using ChatGPT

An increasing number of schools are falling prey to the “AI is inevitable!” rhetoric and desperately chasing the idea of putting AI tools into kids’ hands. Worse, a lot of schools think that the only kinds of technology that exist are the kinds made by giant tech companies. And because many of the adults making the decisions about AI are not necessarily experts in every detail of every technology, the decision about which AI platforms to use often comes down to which ones people have heard about the most. For most people, that means ChatGPT, since it’s gotten the most free hype from media.

As a result, many schools and educational institutions are considering the deployment of a platform that has told multiple children to self-harm, including several who have taken their own lives. This is something that you can take action about at your kid’s school.

First, you can begin simply by gathering resources. There are many credible stories which you can share to illustrate the risk to administrators, and to other parents. Typically, apologists for this product will raise a few objections, which you can respond to in a thoughtful way:

  • “Maybe those kids were already depressed?” Several of the children who have been impacted by these tools were introduced to them as homework assistants, and only evolved into using them as emotional crutches at the prompting of the responses from the tool. Also: your school has children in it who are depressed, why are you willing to endanger them?
  • “Doesn’t every tool cause this?” No, this is extreme and unusual behavior. Your email software or word processor have never incited your children to commit violence against anyone, let alone themselves. Not even other LLMs prompt this behavior. And again, even if this did happen with every tool in this category, why would that make it okay? If every pill in a bottle is poisonous, does that make it okay to give the bottle of pills to our kids?
  • “They’ll be missing out on the future.” Ask the parents of the children impacted in these stories about their kids’ futures.
  • “We should just roll it out as a test.” Who will pay for monitoring all usage by all students in the test?
  • “It’s a parent’s responsibility.” Forcing a parent to invest hours of time into learning a cutting-edge technology that is being constantly updated is a full-time job. If you are going to burden them with that level of responsibility, how will you provide resources to support them? What is your plan to communicate this responsibility to them and get their consent so they can agree to take on this responsibility?
  • “The company said it’s working on the problem.” They can change their technology so that it only incites violence against their executives, or publish a notice when it has gone a full year without costing any children their lives. At that point, they may be considered for re-evaluation.

With these responses in hand, you can provide some basic facts about the risks of the specific tool or platform that is being recommended, and help present a cogent argument against its deployment. It’s important to frame the argument in terms of child safety — the conventional arguments against LLMs, grounded in concerns like environmental impact, labor impact, intellectual property rights, or other similar issues tend to be dismissed out of hand due to effective propagandizing by Big AI advocates.

If, instead, you ignore the debate about LLMs and focus on real-world safety concerns based on actual threats that have happened to actual children, you should be able to have a very direct impact. And these are messages that others will generally pick up and amplify as well, whether they are fellow parents, or local media.

From here, you can begin a conversation that re-evaluates the goals of the initiative from first principles. "Everyone else is doing it" is not a valid way of advocating for technology, and even if they feel that LLMs are a technology that students should become familiar with, they should begin by engaging with the many resources on the topic created by academics who are not tied to the Big AI companies.

You have power

The key reason I wanted to capture some specific actions that people can take around responding to the harms that Big AI poses towards children is to remind us all that the power to take action lies in everyone’s hands. It’s not an abstract concept, or a theoretical thing that we have to wait for someone else to do.

We are in an outrageous place, where the actions of some of the biggest and most influential technology companies in the world are so beyond the pale that we can’t even discuss the things that they are doing in polite company. The actions that take place on these platforms used to mean that simply accessing these kinds of sites during one’s workday would be a firing offense. Now we have employers and schools trying to require people to use these things.

The pushback has to come at every level. Do talk to your elected officials. Do organize with others at your local level. If you work in tech, make sure to resist every attempt at normalizing these platforms, or incorporating their technologies into your own.

Finally, use your voice and your courage, and trust in your sense of basic decency. It might only take you a few minutes to draft up an email and send it to the right people. If you need help figuring out who to send it to, or how to phrase it, let me know and I’ll help! But these things that feel small can be quite enormous when they all add up together. And that’s exactly what our kids deserve.

The MIT Tech
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Daring Fireball

[Sponsor] Hands-On Workshop: Fix It Faster — Crash Reporting, Tracing, and Logs for iOS in Sentry

Daring Fireball Department of Commerce
Updated

Learn how to connect the dots between slowdowns, crashes, and the user experience in your iOS app. This on-demand session covers how to:

  • Set up Sentry to surface high-priority mobile issues without alert fatigue.
  • Use Logs and Breadcrumbs to reconstruct what happened with a crash.
  • Find what’s behind a performance bottleneck using Tracing.
  • Monitor and reduce the size of your iOS app using Size Analysis.

Watch it here.

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