De Loecker et al. (2020) (DEU) estimate that markups increased significantly in the United States from 1955 to 2016. We find this result is sensitive to unreported sample restrictions that drop 27% of the available observations. Applying the methodology as described in the article to the full sample, markup increases are more muted until late in the sample period, and are almost entirely driven by Finance and Insurance firms. If these firms are removed, markup increases are modest. We conclude that the DEU methodology and data, as they are described in the article, do not support the conclusion that broad-based increases in market power have occurred in recent decades.
Starting today, high school students can apply to Progress in Medicine, a new program by the Roots of Progress Institute.
What the Progress in Medicine program offers
In this summer program, high school students will explore careers in in medicine, biotech, health policy, and longevity. We will inspire them with stories of historical progress and future opportunities in medicine, help them think about a wider range of careers, and raise their aspirations about how they can contribute to progress in medicine. The program centers on this central question:
People today live longer, healthier, and less painful lives than ever before. Why? Who made those changes possible? Can we keep this going? And could you play a part?
Teens will:
Learn about and be inspired by the heroes of the past—the people who conquered infectious diseases and gave us anesthesia and all of modern medicine.
Meet inspiring role models—like a PhD drop-out who is now a CEO of a company curing aging in dogs, and a pre-med student who shifted gears to work on an organ-freezing ambulance to the future.
Explore hands-on skills that give them a taste of medical training and practice.
Find community in a cohort of ambitious high school students who share their interest in medicine and related fields
Experience life in Stanford’s dorms for four days and tour research labs and Bay Area biotech companies.
Think differently about what happens after high school by zeroing in on a problem they are excited to help solve.
Prepare for college, scholarship, and grant applications. They will become clearer on their goals and practice writing a personal essay in a structured, 10-hour essay process.
When & where Progress in Medicine takes place
This is a six-week hybrid program for high school students from all over the US. It’s designed to fit around teens’ other summer plans, from family travel to part-time jobs or sports programs.
5 weeks live online, 2 hours a day (1-3 pm PT/4-6 pm ET), 4 days/week, Monday – Thursday. June 15-July 10 & July 20-24
4 days in person in-residency program at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA with small-group tours to labs and bio-tech companies in the Bay Area. July 15-19
Program cost is $2,000; scholarships are available.
Who this program is for
High school students—current freshmen, sophomores, and juniors in the 2025/26 school year. Students who are curious about careers in medicine, biotech, health policy, longevity and who have demonstrated the ability to handle a fast-paced, rigorous program. Participants will be selected via an online written application and a Zoom interview with Roots of Progress Institute staff; we expect this program to be competitive, like our RPI’s other programs.
Program advisors and and near-peer mentors
We have a great group of experts lined up to speak to modern problems they solve, including:
Celine Halioua (CEO at Loyal, dog longevity drugs)
Amesh Adalja (Senior Scholar at John Hopkins University, infectious diseases)
Jared Seehafer (Senior Advisor, FDA Office of the Commissioner, accelerating life-saving technology)
Jake Swett (CEO Blueprint Biosecurity, clean air for infectious disease prevention)
Teens will also meet in smaller groups with several near-peer mentors—young professionals 5-15 years older who will give them a real feel of what working in the field may look like for them. These young mentors’ work ranges widely, from being a NICU nurse, functional medicine doctor, or ER doctor—to such things as researching sleep and the body’s self-repair system, to digitizing dog’s smelling superpower, to improving clinical trials and designing hardware to cryopreserve organs for transplantation.
Why the Roots of Progress Institute is creating this program
Too many young people aren’t aware of how we built the modern world and thus see today’s problems as overwhelming and anxiety-provoking. We want to inspire talented teens to realize that the heroes who gave us modern medicine—from germ theory to vaccines and cancer medicines—are people like them who solved tough problems they faced, in their times. With this historical context and exposure to role models, teens will be inspired to solve today’s problems and become the ambitious builders of a better, techno-humanist future.
This a pilot program and our first foray into programs that reach out to the broader culture beyond the progress community. Education is one of the key cultural channels that spreads new ideas. Reaching young people has a dual benefit: it shifts the overall culture and it inspires future builders and thinkers. If this goes well, we will expand on and scale the program.
Help spread the word by sharing this announcement and the program website with parents, teens, and teachers in your network: rootsofprogress.org/progress-in-medicine
YouTube in particular, and sometimes X, are among the very best ways to learn about the world. To the extent that the law is effectively enforced, targeting YouTube will have a terrible effect on youth science, and the ability of young scientists and founders to get their projects off the ground will take a huge and possibly fatal hit. If you are only allowed to learn from the internet at age 16, you are probably not ready for marvelous achievements at age 18 or perhaps not even at 20. The country may become more mediocre.
The more serious concern is that this represents a major expansion of government control over tech services and also speech. Over time the government has to decide which are the approved tech companies and services and which are not. That becomes a politicized decision, as any chosen lines will be arbitrary, especially as online services evolve in their functionality. For instance, if excess video usage is what is problematic, it is possible for videos to be embedded more seamlessly into some future version of WhatsApp, an exempt service. Or Australian youth, even under the new law, will be able to access video on a laptop, simply by viewing it and not signing into their accounts…
I predict that either this law stops being effectively enforced, or the controls on companies and users have to become much, much tighter and more oppressive. In a large poll of Australian 9 to 16-year-olds, only 6 percent of them thought the new ban was going to work.
That is true for yet another reason. With gaming and messaging exempt from the ban, we can expect old-style “social media” to move into those areas. It already was the case that Fortnite and other gaming services served as social media networks, and that trend will be accelerated. Discord, for instance, is exempt from the ban, a glaring hole, and in a fast-changing market there probably will be some significant loopholes most of the time. For the ban to continue to work, it will have to spread. It is hard to think of an area of internet services that could not, in principle, serve social media–like functions, or produce the harms being attributed to online life. Regulation of artificial intelligence services is perhaps the next logical albeit misguided move here.
Who is in charge of the family anyway? If I have decided that my 15-year-old should be free to follow Magnus Carlsen on X and YouTube, should we have the boot of the state tell me this is forbidden? This is a big move in the direction of what Socrates advocated in The Republic, namely that the state takes priority over the family in deciding which stories can be told to the youth.
Over time, I expect this ban, again assuming it is kept and enforced, to become one of the biggest free speech restrictions on the internet. It is the incentive of government agencies to boost their budgets, spread their mandates, and enforce their dictates. What starts with a nation’s youth rarely ends there.
You might think that Australia’s regulatory guardians can be trusted to uphold free speech ideals, but has that been the case to date? Under Australian law, it is permissible to restrict free speech for reasons of public order, national security, and protection from harm. That includes limits on “hate speech,” prompting Elon Musk to exaggerate and call the country fascist. Nonetheless the country does not have anything comparable to America’s First Amendment free speech protections.
So why should we empower Australian regulators and restrict free speech further?
It is very defensible to worry that your kid is on his or her phone too much. Furthermore, school bans or limits on smartphone usage are likely to bring some measurable but small gains.
But if you think a massive expansion of state authority over online content is the answer, you ought to know that the associated gains from that decision will at best be modest. You will not be saving civilization or our youth; rather you will be joining the ever-growing parade against free speech.
Recommended, and in this recent piece Ben Yeoh surveys the research-based literature on social media and teen harm.
Let’s have a look at recent work on TRAPPIST-1. The system, tiny but rich in planets (seven transits!) continues to draw new work, and it’s easy to see why. Found in Aquarius some 40 light years from Earth, a star not much larger than Jupiter is close enough for the James Webb Space Telescope to probe the system for planetary atmospheres. Or so an international team working on the problem believes, with interesting but frustratingly inconclusive results.
As we’ll see, though, that’s the nature of this work, and in general of investigations of terrestrial-class planet atmospheres. I begin with news of TRAPPIST-1’s flare activity. One of the reasons to question the likelihood of life around small red stars is that they are prone to violent flares, particularly in their youth. Planets in the habitable zone, and there are three here, would be bathed in radiation early on, conceivably stripping their atmospheres entirely, and certainly raising doubts about potential life on the surface.
Image: Artist’s concept of the planet TRAPPIST-1d passing in front of the star TRAPPIST-1. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted/STScI.
A just released paper digs into the question by applying JWST data on six flares recorded in 2022 and 2023 to a computer model created by Adam Kowalski (University of Colorado Boulder), who is a co-author on the work. The equations of Kowalski’s model allow the researchers to probe the stellar activity that created the flares, which the authors see as deriving from magnetic reconnection that heats stellar plasma through pulses of electron beaming.
The scientists are essentially reverse-engineering flare activity with an eye to understanding how it might affect an atmosphere, if one exists, on these planets. The extent of the activity came as something of a surprise. As lead author Ward Howard (also at University of Colorado Boulder) puts it: “When scientists had just started observing TRAPPIST-1, we hadn’t anticipated the majority of our transits would be obstructed by these large flares.”
Which would seem to be bad news for biology here, but we also learn from Kowalski’s equations that TRAPPIST-1 flares are considerably weaker than supposed. We can couple this result with two papers published earlier this year in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. Using transmission spectroscopy and working with JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph and Near-Infrared Imager and Slitless Spectrograph, the researchers looked at TRAPPIST-1e as it passed in front of the host star. A third paper, released on December 5, examines these data and the possibility of methane in an atmosphere. Here we run into the obvious limitations of modeling.
The most recent paper is out of the University of Arizona, where Sukrit Ranjan and team have gone to work on methane in an M-dwarf planet atmosphere. With an eye toward TRAPPIST-1e, they note this (italics mine):
We have shown that models that include CH4 are viable fits to TRAPPIST-1e’s transmission spectrum through both our forward-model analysis and retrievals. However, we stress that the statistical evidence falls far below that required for a detection. While an atmosphere containing CH4 and a (relatively) spectrally quiet background gas (e.g., N2) provides a good fit to the data, these initial TRAPPIST-1 e transmission spectra remain consistent with a bare rock or cloudy atmosphere interpretations. Additionally, we note that our “best-fit” CH4 model does not explain all of the correlated features present in the data. Here we briefly examine the theoretical plausibility of a N2–CH4 atmosphere on TRAPPIST-1 e to contextualize our findings.
Should we be excited by even a faint hint of an atmosphere here? Probably not. The paper simulates methane-rich atmosphere scenarios, but also discusses alternative possibilities. Here we get a sense for how preliminary all our TRAPPIST-1 work really is (and remember that JWST is working at the outer edge of its limits in retrieving the data used here). A key point is that TRAPPIST-1 is significantly cooler than our G-class Sun. As Ranjan points out:
“While the sun is a bright, yellow dwarf star, TRAPPIST-1 is an ultracool red dwarf, meaning it is significantly smaller, cooler and dimmer than our sun. Cool enough, in fact, to allow for gas molecules in its atmosphere. We reported hints of methane, but the question is, ‘is the methane attributable to molecules in the atmosphere of the planet or in the host star?…[B]ased on our most recent work, we suggest that the previously reported tentative hint of an atmosphere is more likely to be ‘noise’ from the host star.”
The paper notes that any spectral feature from an exoplanet could have not just stellar origins but also instrumental causes. In any case, stellar contamination is an acute problem because it has not been fully integrated into existing models. The approach is Bayesian, given that the plausibility of any specific scenario for an atmosphere has an effect on the confidence with which it can be identified in an individual spectrum. Right now we are left with modeling and questions.
Ranjan believes that the way forward for this particular system is to use a ‘dual transit’ method, in which the star is observed when both TRAPPIST-1e and TRAPPIST-1b move in front of the star at the same time. The idea is to separate stellar activity from what may be happening in a planetary atmosphere. As always, we look to future instrumentation, in this case ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope, which is expected to become available by the end of this decade. And next year NASA will launch the Pandora mission, a small telescope but explicitly designed for characterizing exoplanet atmospheres.
More questions than answers? Of course. We’re pushing hard against the limits of detection, but all these models help us learn what to look for next. Nearby M-dwarf transiting planets, with their deep transit depths, higher transit probability in the habitable zone and frequent transit opportunities, are going to be commanding our attention for some time to come. As always, patience remains a virtue.
Here’s a list of the papers I’ve discussed here. The flare modeling paper is Howard et al., “Separating Flare and Secondary Atmospheric Signals with RADYN Modeling of Near-infrared JWST Transmission Spectroscopy Observations of TRAPPIST-1,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 994, No. 1 (20 November 2025) L31 (full text).
The paper on methane detection and stellar activity is Ranjan et al., “The Photochemical Plausibility of Warm Exo-Titans Orbiting M Dwarf Stars,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 993, No. 2 (3 November 2025), L39 (full text).
The earlier papers of interest are Glidden et al., “JWST-TST DREAMS: Secondary Atmosphere Constraints for the Habitable Zone Planet TRAPPIST-1 e,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 990, No. 2 (8 September 2025) L53 (full text); and Espinoza et al. “JWST-TST DREAMS: NIRSpec/PRISM Transmission Spectroscopy of the Habitable Zone Planet TRAPPIST-1 e,” Astrophysical Journal Letters Vol. 990, No. 2 (L52) (full text).
Wednesday:
• At 7:00 AM ET, The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) will release the results for the mortgage purchase applications index.
• At 2:00 PM, FOMC Meeting Announcement. The Fed is expected to cut rates 25bp at this meeting.
• Also at 2:00 PM, FOMC Forecasts This will include the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) participants' projections of the appropriate target federal funds rate along with the quarterly economic projections.
• At 2:30 PM, Fed Chair Jerome Powell holds a press briefing following the FOMC announcement.
File: A Falcon 9 rocket stands ready to launch a Starlink mission. Image: SpaceX
SpaceX is aiming for pre-dawn launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base on Wednesday morning. The flight will be the 160th of a Falcon 9 rocket so far in 2025.
The Starlink 15-11 mission will see the company add another 27 broadband internet satellites to its growing megaconstellation in low Earth orbit. Liftoff from Space Launch Complex 4 East is scheduled for 3:40 a.m. PST (6:40 a.m. EST / 1140 UTC).
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.
SpaceX will launch the mission using the Falcon 9 booster, 1082. This will be its 18th flight following missions, like USSF-62, NROL-145 and OneWeb Launch 20.
About 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1082 will target a landing on the droneship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You.’ If successful, this will be the 169th landing on this vessel and 548th booster landing to date.
Lay long with my wife, contenting her about the business of Gosnell’s going, and I perceive she will be contented as well as myself, and so to the office, and after sitting all the morning in hopes to have Mr. Coventry dine with me, he was forced to go to White Hall, and so I dined with my own company only, taking Mr. Haterhome with me, but he, poor man, was not very well, and so could not eat any thing. After dinner staid within all the afternoon, being vexed in my mind about the going away of Sarah this afternoon, who cried mightily, and so was I ready to do, and Jane did also, and then anon went Gosnell away, which did trouble me too; though upon many considerations, it is better that I am rid of the charge. All together makes my house appear to me very lonely, which troubles me much, and in a melancholy humour I went to the office, and there about business sat till I was called to Sir G. Carteret at the Treasury office about my Lord Treasurer’s letter, wherein he puts me to a new trouble to write it over again. So home and late with Sir John Minnes at the office looking over Mr. Creed’s accounts, and then home and to supper, and my wife and I melancholy to bed.
John Nelson’s near-annual globe ornament blog posts are always a revelation. With the exception of the one time he went to 3D printing, they’re paper craft exercises that show just how many ways you can… More
Engineers of Map Art, a book on the history of Swiss cartography that focuses on work done at ETH Zurich, came out in English last September. (The German edition, Ingenieure der Kartenkunst, came out last… More
Near the end of the film A House of Dynamite, a fictional American president portrayed by Idris Elba sums up the theory of nuclear deterrence.
“Just being ready is the point, right?” Elba says. “It keeps people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war.”
There’s a lot that goes wrong in the film, namely the collapse of deterrence itself. For more than 60 years, the US military has used its vast arsenal of nuclear weapons, constantly deployed on Navy submarines, at Air Force bomber bases, and in Minuteman missile fields, as a way of saying, “Don’t mess with us.” In the event of a first strike against the United States, an adversary would be assured of an overwhelming nuclear response, giving rise to the concept of mutual assured destruction.
Executive Summary: Policymakers and financial analysts looking for “models” as a guide for assessing the neutral interest rate are faced with a dilemma: various models produce significantly different results, and it is far from clear which if any model is the “most” accurate. While it is perhaps interesting to note that the average R* estimate from various models available within the Federal Reserve System is currently very close to “market-based” estimates based on TIPS forward rates adjusted for term prema estimates, that may simply be a coincidence.
However, if one takes the approach that the “best guess” estimate of R* is found by looking at the average of various models and the “market’s” assessment of R*, one would come to the conclusion that the current “best guess” estimate of the neutral real rate of interest is very close to 1.5%,
If that is the case, and if, as expected, the FOMC decides to cut its federal funds rate target by 25 bp tomorrow, then the resulting level of the federal funds rate will be very close to the neutral nominal policy rate.
Two competing arguments are making the rounds. The first is by a neurosurgeon in the New York Times. In an op-ed that honestly sounds like it was paid for by Waymo, the author calls driverless cars a “public health breakthrough”:
In medical research, there’s a practice of ending a study early when the results are too striking to ignore. We stop when there is unexpected harm. We also stop for overwhelming benefit, when a treatment is working so well that it would be unethical to continue giving anyone a placebo. When an intervention works this clearly, you change what you do.
There’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes last year, more than homicide, plane crashes and natural disasters combined. Crashes are the No. 2 cause of death for children and young adults. But death is only part of the story. These crashes are also the leading cause of spinal cord injury. We surgeons see the aftermath of the 10,000 crash victims who come to emergency rooms every day.
The other is a soon-to-be-published book: Driving Intelligence: The Green Book. The authors, a computer scientist and a management consultant with experience in the industry, make the opposite argument. Here’s one of the authors:
There is something very disturbing going on around trials with autonomous vehicles worldwide, where, sadly, there have now been many deaths and injuries both to other road users and pedestrians. Although I am well aware that there is not, senso stricto, a legal and functional parallel between a “drug trial” and “AV testing,” it seems odd to me that if a trial of a new drug had resulted in so many deaths, it would surely have been halted and major forensic investigations carried out and yet, AV manufacturers continue to test their products on public roads unabated.
I am not convinced that it is good enough to argue from statistics that, to a greater or lesser degree, fatalities and injuries would have occurred anyway had the AVs had been replaced by human-driven cars: a pharmaceutical company, following death or injury, cannot simply sidestep regulations around the trial of, say, a new cancer drug, by arguing that, whilst the trial is underway, people would die from cancer anyway….
Both arguments are compelling, and it’s going to be hard to figure out what public policy should be.
Abstract: How safe are autonomous vehicles? The answer is critical for determining how autonomous vehicles may shape motor vehicle safety and public health, and for developing sound policies to govern their deployment. One proposed way to assess safety is to test drive autonomous vehicles in real traffic, observe their performance, and make statistical comparisons to human driver performance. This approach is logical, but it is practical? In this paper, we calculate the number of miles of driving that would be needed to provide clear statistical evidence of autonomous vehicle safety. Given that current traffic fatalities and injuries are rare events compared to vehicle miles traveled, we show that fully autonomous vehicles would have to be driven hundreds of millions of miles and sometimes hundreds of billions of miles to demonstrate their reliability in terms of fatalities and injuries. Under even aggressive testing assumptions, existing fleets would take tens and sometimes hundreds of years to drive these miles—an impossible proposition if the aim is to demonstrate their performance prior to releasing them on the roads for consumer use. These findings demonstrate that developers of this technology and third-party testers cannot simply drive their way to safety. Instead, they will need to develop innovative methods of demonstrating safety and reliability. And yet, the possibility remains that it will not be possible to establish with certainty the safety of autonomous vehicles. Uncertainty will remain. Therefore, it is imperative that autonomous vehicle regulations are adaptive—designed from the outset to evolve with the technology so that society can better harness the benefits and manage the risks of these rapidly evolving and potentially transformative technologies.
One problem, of course, is that we treat death by human driver differently than we do death by autonomous computer driver. This is likely to change as we get more experience with AI accidents—and AI-caused deaths.
Tracking local data gives an early look at what happened the previous month and also reveals regional differences in both sales and inventory.
November sales will be mostly for contracts signed in September and October, and mortgage rates averaged 6.35% in September and 6.25% in October (lower than for closed sales in October).
In November, sales in these early reporting markets were down 10.8% YoY. Last month, in October, these same markets were down 2.3% year-over-year Not Seasonally Adjusted (NSA).
Important: There was one fewer working days in November 2025 (18) as in November 2024 (19). So, the year-over-year change in the headline SA data will be more than the change in NSA data (there are other seasonal factors).
...
This was just several early reporting markets. Many more local markets to come!
The number of job openings was unchanged at 7.7 million in October, the U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics reported today. Over the month, both hires and total separations were little changed at 5.1
million. Within separations, both quits (2.9 million) and layoffs and discharges (1.9 million) were little
changed. emphasis added
The following graph shows job openings (black line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.
This series started in December 2000.
Note: The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. This report is for October; the employment report to be released this coming Tuesday will be for November.
Click on graph for larger image.
Note that hires (dark blue) and total separations (red and light blue columns stacked) are usually pretty close each month. This is a measure of labor market turnover. When the blue line is above the two stacked columns, the economy is adding net jobs - when it is below the columns, the economy is losing jobs.
The spike in layoffs and discharges in March 2020 is labeled, but off the chart to better show the usual data.
Jobs openings increased in October to 7.67 million from 7.66 million in September.
The number of job openings (black) were up 1% year-over-year.
Quits were down 9% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations. (See light blue columns at bottom of graph for trend for "quits").
Two weeks ago I added dark mode to this website. It was late one night and I was revisiting an article and my eyes were tired, so that was that. It was based solely on system dark mode settings, and I started using some more nice, modern CSS features like light-dark() to tie it all together.
But some people want dark mode for their desktop and light mode for their websites or the opposite, and sometimes I’m like that too. So I wanted to do it.
But I want this website to be peculiar. Like: I obsessively optimize it and
intentionally use zero JavaScript on a basic pageload, though
YouTube and Bandcamp embeds often bring in some junk. But even then,
I optimize my YouTube embeds with lite-youtube-embed.
So: I wanted theme switching, but zero JavaScript involved in setting it or reading it. Here’s what I’m currently deploying:
Form
The UI is a form: you can see it in the top right corner, those three circles.
I don’t love that position and might tinker with it. But it’s just a form,
or three of them: zero JavaScript, just buttons. Browsers are great at forms.
We’re posting to /mode.css, the same location as the CSS.
That /mode.css endpoint is powered by a Netlify function, which uses Deno.
When it’s used as the form action, this receives a POST request, figures out which color scheme someone wants, and sends them back to the page that sent them but with a new cookie set for their browser. It’s all same-domain requests, so your browser sends cookies even with CSS requests, and thankfully it also sends full referrer URLs.
And then when /mode.css is accessed by a GET request, it reads that cookie and sets a different color-scheme for the site. If this whole system fails, you just get some non-functional buttons but the rest of the CSS loads fine because it’s all static.
Note that it might be tempting to use a 304 response or to otherwise just
‘navigate back’ to the sending page, but browsers will treat that differently
than a http-equiv=�refresh� tag: just like hitting the back button in your
browser, that isn’t guaranteed to force a reload, so it isn’t going to get
a fresh copy of the /mode.css file with correct colors.
TODO
That’s it: I just use light-dark for a lot of CSS properties to flip things in light and dark modes.
I think it works pretty well! I’ll keep an eye on the performance of /mode.css though, because it blocks the render of the full page. So that needs to be lightning-fast.
The buttons are fairly accessible: they’re normal buttons, keyboard-accessible, with good focus states, but I wish they had visible labels. It’s hard to balance the concern of wanting them to be clear, but not wanting them to steal attention from the rest of the page. They might eventually land in the navigation menu instead: a select box would be an elegant UI, but selects can’t auto-submit themselves without JavaScript.
I also don’t supply the meta color scheme tag yet, because that would require server logic built into the HTML of this website, which is something I’m not willing to do at this point. If I switch to something like a Caddy setup and self-host, that would become feasible.
I’m also in the process of figuring out how caching should work for this: ideally browsers are able to cache /mode.css as much as they’d like, but issuing a POST to the endpoint essentially clears the cache. Caching in practice is always a challenge!
Honestly I think this has 50% odds of surviving for a year. It might be useful and quiet, or it might make my Netlify usage go up and cause all sorts of trouble. We’ll see how it goes!
It always has been, though his aging doesn’t help. A little over a week ago, which in the Trump Era seems like a decade ago, Trump had a massive online meltdown, where he posted hundreds of times on Truth Social in the span of a few hours, including doozies reposting garbage like this:
Not to put to fine a point on it, but that’s fucking insane. If a relative of mine said this, I would tell them to seek medical attention. This is not normal behavior, regardless of what position they hold. That said, I’m skeptical that this is due to dementia or some other age-related issue (though aging might contribute a bit). Because Trump has always said unhinged things, especially when he’s not in his comfort zone. Nine years ago, before Trump even took office, I noted the following:
I would add two other observations about the narcissist. First, he is essentially a full-tilt diva, with the rest of us either as bit, cameo players, or else the audience (or both). One day the script might be ‘hard-charging businessman’, the next ‘compassionate philanthropist’, followed by ‘competent manager’ and so on. Regardless, the show must go on. Ideally, his entire life is a fantasy, unmoored from reality. Anyone who challenges this fantasy causes extreme psychological distress.
That brings us to sunny point #2. Just like the addict’s primary goal is to get that fix, the narcissist’s primary goal is to maintain the fantasy. They will construct elaborate mechanisms to deny unpleasant realities. Plainly put, they turn everyone around them into liars. You have to lie as a self-defense mechanism in order to fend off and manage the impulsiveness, the bouts of inadequacy, the hare-brained ideas, and the laziness and ineptitude. If you are a reasonably honest person, this is soul-crushing.
The narcissist is often not very good for the organization’s mission. While he often rose to his position by selling a five-star sizzle on a one-star steak, he’s often underprepared and unskilled, and very dependent on others–essentially, he’s an Illustrious Name on the Door. Unfortunately, leaders, on occasion, do have to lead–and that does involve work, knowledge and experience, and relevant skills. The dishonest climate is another massive problem. Problems will fester and multiply because the narcissist doesn’t want to hear about them–the show must go on. Then things reach a crisis point, as the lies collapse on each other. At this point, the narcissist swings into paranoia and rage. Why did all of these awful people lie to me? (Can’t imagine why…). Then the impulsiveness kicks in. Needless to say, this isn’t the optimal environment for crisis management. So if you care about the goals of the organization, the narcissist boss is often the largest impediment. This too is soul-crushing.
To be clear, being a narcissist can be advantageous: there are times when self-delusional confidence is incredibly useful (if for no one other than the narcissist). Needless to say, the narcissist doesn’t suffer from imposter syndrome (most of the time anyway, when the imaginary show in his head is uninterrupted). And they often have, at the very least, a superficial ability to play to an audience. Erratic behavior, at times, can be advantageous.
Trump says ridiculous things because it makes him feel good about himself. The aging manifests itself in poor(er) word choice, his obvious fatigue, physical issues (walking in a straight line), and his complete lack of inhibition; the lack of inhibition does exacerbate his narcissistic tendencies. But he has always babbled on when he does not know something–and he is not very bright and very incurious, so there are many things he does not know–rather than shutting up, or Gritty forbid, deferring to someone else (a narcissist like Trump never admits inadequacy because it damages his conception of himself and it is publicly embarrassing).
The fundamental issue is that Trump is, and has been, mentally ill: when I use the word narcissist, I do not mean that he is a self-absorbed asshole (though he is). I mean that he is often delusional and does not perceive reality in any way that could be described as accurate. Moreover, he does not recognize that he is ill and takes no steps to control his illness; in fact, he has established significant structures to prevent the intrusion of reality.
Outside of The Guardian and The Huffington Post, which have discussed this in detail with clinical professionals, the only media outlet that has even come remotely close is Politico (?!?), which last week described Trump as a twelve year-old child.
His longstanding mental health problem and the inability to recognize it is far more dangerous than any possible aging.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) to begin the NROL-77 mission on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office on Dec. 9, 2025. Image: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now
Update Dec. 9, 6 p.m. EST (2300 UTC): The National Reconnaissance Office confirms a successful deployment.
SpaceX launched its final national security payload of the year for the nation’s secretive spy satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office. The Tuesday afternoon flight was also the final Falcon 9 booster recovery at Landing Zone 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.
The mission, dubbed National Reconnaissance Office Launch 77 (NROL-77), includes at least one payload, which the intelligence-gathering agency only described as being “designed, built, and operated by NRO.”
Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) happened at 2:16 p.m. EST (1916 UTC). The launch followed a north-easterly trajectory upon leaving Florida’s Space Coast.
SpaceX used Falcon 9 first stage booster B1096. This was its fourth launch after previously flying NASA’s IMAP, Amazon’s Kuiper Falcon 01 and Starlink 6-87.
Nearly eight and a half minutes after liftoff, B1096 returned to the Florida Peninsula with a touchdown at Landing Zone 2 (LZ-2). This was the 16th touchdown at LZ-2 and the 547th booster landing to date for SpaceX.
Onlookers gather at the shores of Cape Canaveral as SpaceX lands its Falcon 9 first stage booster, tail number 1096, at Landing Zone 2 on Dec. 9, 2025, in the midst of the NROL-77 mission. This was the final landing at LZ-2 before SpaceX’s lease for the site ends on Dec. 31, 2025. Image: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now
Executing a contract
The NROL-77 mission is the second NRO mission launched by SpaceX as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract awarded in August 2020. The contract was broken up to assign missions between SpaceX and United Launch Alliance (ULA) over five order years for specific missions.
This is the first mission that comes from Order Year 5 that was announced on Oct. 31, 2023. It was one of ten missions assigned to SpaceX that year, which has a combined value of $1.236 billion.
The NSSL Phase 2 contract is an acquisition partnership managed by the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space.
“The partnership between NRO and SSC continues to strengthen our nation’s space superiority through innovative launch solutions and shared expertise,” said Col. Kathryn Cantu, director, NRO Office of Space Launch, and NROL-77 mission director. “As space becomes increasingly contested, this partnership enables us to rapidly deploy advanced intelligence capabilities while maintaining the agility and resilience needed to address emerging threats. Our collaborative approach ensures America’s continued leadership in space-based national security operations well into the future.”
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket supporting the NROL-77 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office stands in launch position at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Dec. 7, 2025. Image: SpaceX
Some missions though, like the NROL-146 mission and other flights supporting the NRO’s so-called proliferated architecture satellite constellation, are funded through other avenues that are part of the agency’s classified budget.
“When considering our launch cadence and need for tailorable mission assurance, the NRO recognized that we needed a bridge between Phase 2 to Phase 3 – Lane 1,” an NRO spokesperson said in a statement to Spaceflight Now back in May 2024. “This resulted in some missions being procured outside of NSSL.”
The NROL-174 mission, which launched on a Northrop Grumman Minotaur 4 rocket on April 16, was procured through the Rocket Systems Launch Program, which handles smaller launch capabilities.
“A collaborative team of dedicated experts from System Delta 80, NRO, and SpaceX validated the flight hardware and integration essentials that assured successful delivery of the mission,” said Col. Ryan M. Hiserote, System Delta 80 commander and NSSL program manager. “And kudos to our SSC SLD-45 teammates who operated the range systems and infrastructure as part of this launch. NROL-77 was our last NSSL mission this calendar year. Together, we look forward to another busy year in 2026.”
Among the ten NRO missions launched in 2025, nine of them flew on Falcon 9 rockets:
Jan. 09 – NROL-153
Jan. 14 – Transporter-12 (rideshare payload)
Mar. 14 – Transporter-13 (rideshare payload)
Mar. 20 – NROL-57
Mar. 24 – NROL-69
Apr. 12 – NROL-192
Apr. 16 – NROL-174 (launched on Minotaur 4 rocket)
Apr. 20 – NROL-145
Sep. 22 – NROL-48
Dec. 09 – NROL-77
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS) to begin the NROL-77 mission on behalf of the National Reconnaissance Office on Dec. 9, 2025. Image: Adam Bernstein / Spaceflight Now
End of an era
The planned landing of B1096 at LZ-2 may very well wrap up SpaceX’s time using this site as a landing location for its Falcon boosters.
In an effort to increase access to launch providers at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Space Launch Delta 45 decided all launch providers need to return their rocket boosters to landing sites at their launch pads.
SpaceX has been taking the necessary steps to shift its recovery infrastructure away from LZ-1 and LZ-2. The company’s lease for these sites ends on Dec. 31, 2025.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket booster, tail number B1094, deploys its landing legs as it approached a touchdown at Landing Zone 2 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This single-engine landing came less than eight minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) to begin the NG-23 mission on Sept. 14, 2025. Image: Michael Cain / Spaceflight Now
SpaceX received the environmental approvals needed to move forward with a landing pad near (SLC-40) and has been making constructing that facility over the course of 2025.
The company is also looking to add a landing pad at Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX needs two landing zones in order to recover the side boosters of a Falcon Heavy rocket.
Events, reports and analysis have converged this week to underscore Donald Trump’s unique view of how the world should spin.
Beyond the fallout of defending U.S. strikes on suspected drug boats, increasing threats of an undeclared war on Venezuela, the excesses of a mass deportation campaign spiraling out of control , unending tariffs, and flailing attempts to force Ukraine into a bad deal with Russia, we got a new National Security Strategy document that lays out Trump’s values as if they are ours.
Together, they reflect the clear vision of an autocratic, power-minded Trump who wants to dictate to Americans and the rest of the world that they should forego human rights and democracy, recognize a U.S. hemispheric dominance, and kowtow to us because of our national wealth, not our ideals.
As The New York Times concluded in an analysis of the strategic document, “The world as seen from the White House is a place where America can use its vast powers to make money” at the expense of support for dictators and caring about those without wealth.
“Gone is the long-familiar picture of the United States as a global force for freedom, replaced by a country that is focused on reducing migration while avoiding passing judgment on authoritarians, instead seeing them as sources of cash,” The Times analysis said.
When combined with fresh debate about killings of shipwreck crewmen on those drug boats and calling immigrants from a growing list of nations “garbage,” we have a remarkable emergent picture of an arrogant, self-interested despot who sees the world as serving him with no questions allowed.
A Game Only the Wealthy Play
Of course, Trump the Disrupter has little world-view patience for programs that feed the hungry or address global AIDS, which is why he has canceled those positive U.S. contributions. He has declined to stand by longtime friends, instead seeking to kindle close ties even with longtime foes whose power he respects.
You can’t even get into the power-as-money version of international affairs if you’re not wealthy already, either personally or as a nation. And so, the world’s poorest nations are automatically now being shunted into a travel ban to the U.S. and their publicly debased citizens barred from U.S. visas or immigration. Just this week, Trump ordered Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Mario Rubio to move from 19 barred countries to more than 30.
The Saudi Crown Prince is feted at the White House without mention of his role in ordering the murder of an American journalist or the historic role Saudis played in 9/11 attacks; there is a tantalizing trillion dollars’ worth of investment in the U.S. at hand. Pressure on Ukraine to fold before Russian aggression continues to assure a U.S. hand in mining operations to “pay back” the U.S. for military and humanitarian aid to defend democracy and international sovereignty,
Even last week’s show-off re-signing of a truce between the Democratic Republic of Congo (among the 19 banned countries) and Rwanda at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace building was a joke: The fighting renewed the next day, though the signed deal made sure to guarantee U.S. access to rare earth minerals.
How surprised will any of us be if there is a U.S. attack on Venezuela in which oil reserves turn out to be the prize?
The entire arbitrariness of the Trump tariffs is based on a Trump-decided scale of which country needs the worst lashing over U.S. advantages. The would-be campaign to level various economic imbalances is based on expressions of personalized fealty to Trump, and, of course, is paid by U.S. taxpayers as a super sales tax, not by the “penalized” countries.
Hitting Europe
The harshest criticisms in the annual strategic statement are for a Europe that is becoming more non-White through immigration policies that Trump rejects wholesale. Europe is facing “civilization erasure” and becoming “unrecognizable” because of immigration.
The report identifies the specific American strategic recommendation to help Europe “to correct its current trajectory” over the next decades. “We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence” and pledged U.S. outward support for political parties opposed to immigration.
It’s a direct call to White nationalism of the sort that Trump denies but clearly pursues in this country.
How else to explain a U.S. campaign that arrests and deports the undocumented with such armed force and fervor that shuns adherence to legal rulings, court-ordered procedures and plain humanity involved in splitting families? How else to justify racial profiling and the labeling of whole immigrant groups as “garbage.” How else to explain why it is necessary to demand emergency review by the U.S. Supreme Court of Constitutional “birthright” status for millions of children born in the United States or its territories?
The Trump strategy never addresses what is supposed to happen to the world’s impoverished or to those without a million bucks or five million bucks to buy U.S. entry through a Trump “gold card.” Trump’s acceptance of a made-up FIFA World Peace Prize from a soccer league with a history of corruption as if it is the Nobel Peace Prize is as ludicrous as it is symbolic that all international transactions have to include personal aggrandizement.
This is a document that offers as international justification the kind of Trump chest-beating and abasement of The Other that Trump shares with his most loyal base of voters, a view of “America First” as America Only.
When paired with the policy-as-profit views and its unquestioning support for absolute power in the hemisphere and in the world, it is a document that serves as outline for personal grift for the Trump family and its inner circle. It presents U.S. foreign policy as a loaded deck that must reward the wealthiest and the personal supporters of an autocratic Trump.
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They just don’t write clearly. It’s like a Christopher Nolan film—you simply can’t figure out what people are saying.
I hate bad writing as much as any professional pen pusher. Even so, this controversy roused me from my dogmatic slumber. That’s because some of my favorite books were dismissed as a “hideous admixture of literary analysis, gibberish, and argument.”
Is this fair?
Let me present a contrary view. Buckle your seatbelts, because this will leave many of you shaken and stirred.
Please support my work—by taking out a premium subscription (just $6 per month).
That’s because I’ll try to convince you that clarity is overrated.
I know this from painful firsthand experience. I fought the clarity battle on the front lines—and lived to tell the tale. Now I’ll share what I learned with you.
In my early twenties, I was forced to develop a crystal clear style of writing. I didn’t want to do this—it was forced upon me.
Up until that moment, I’d been a dreamer with my head full of poetry and music. And then I woke up in the most painful way imaginable.
I had to learn new words, new sentences, a whole new way of writing and talking. I eventually recovered—but it took me years to regain what I’d lost.
Josh Morrison is a glutton for (effective) altruism: he's a nondirected kidney donor (who founded the advocacy organization WaitlistZero), and he's an advocate of human challenge trials for vaccines, who founded the organization OneDaySooner. He reports his own recent experiences as a challenge trial participant, in MedPage Today:
"challenge trials have been essential for scientific advancements that may not have been possible (or would have taken much longer) with traditional studies.Challenge studieswerecrucialtodevelopingmalaria vaccines. Thecorrelates of protectionthey established for influenza immunology are still used to license flu vaccines today, and they played an important role in discovering the origins ofboth ulcersandyellow fever.
"TheE. colivaccine studyI joined was at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Vaccine Development (CVD). Two of my friends had beenin studiesat the CVD and hadpositive experiencesoverall. I felt like theE.colivaccinein particular was an important one, so I decided it was time for me to participate too.
"To start, half the participants received the first vaccine in the series and half got a placebo. These initial shots and their associated follow-up were part of eight appointments over 3 months. At our appointments, we had our vitals checked and, in some cases, we had our blood collected or received another vaccine. At appointments the week after a vaccination, we'd provide a stool sample. The study culminated in a 9-day quarantine in Baltimore where were we were exposed to the infectious agent: It was time to drink the E. coli.
"The E. coli was suspended in a bicarbonate solution and tasted like Gatorade without the sugar or flavoring. I remember chuckling nervously as I drank it alongside my fellow participants. It was such an odd experience; I felt like an astronaut counting down for liftoff.
...
"People's motivations for being in the study included the money (about $4,500). But most of my fellow participants were also excited about the chance to be part of important research and were motivated by the novelty of the experience.
...
"
This was the first challenge study I've participated in, despite having been connected to the field for 5 years. I run1Day Sooner, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of challenge study volunteers. Some of my colleagues have been challenged inShigella, Zika, Malaria, COVID, andSalmonellastudies. But I never have because I live in New York and I'm not aware of any institutions in New York that run challenge studies. That may sound surprising, but there are only about30 challenge studies globallyeach year, and the U.S. is a relative laggard compared to Europe.
"You might be wondering, would I participate in another one? I would, though I'd prefer something outpatient that didn't require a strict quarantine."
The Soyuz MS-27/73S spacecraft carrying NASA’s Jonny Kim and two Russian cosmonauts undocked from the International Space Station Monday evening as the two spacecraft were sailing 262 miles above eastern Mongolica. Image: NASA
A NASA astronaut and two cosmonaut crewmates strapped into their Soyuz ferry ship Monday evening, undocked from the International Space Station and plunged to an on-target landing on the frigid steppe of Kazakhstan early Tuesday to wrap up an eight-month mission.
With Soyuz commander Sergey Ryzhikov strapped into the descent module’s center seat, flanked on his left by cosmonaut Alexey Zubritsky and on the right by NASA’s Jonny Kim, the Soyuz MS-27/73S spacecraft undocked from the lab complex at 8:41 p.m. EST.
After moving a safe distance away to a precise point in space, the Soyuz braking rockets fired for four minutes and 42 seconds starting at 11:09 p.m., slowing the ship’s 17,100-mph velocity by about 286 mph, just enough to drop the far side of the orbit into Earth’s lower atmosphere.
Enduring re-entry temperatures of some 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit — and rapidly decelerating in the process — the Soyuz descent module, suspended beneath a large orange-and-white parachute, landed at 12:03 a.m. EST Tuesday (0503 UTC, 10:03am local time) and tipped over on its side.
Braving sub-freezing temperatures, Russian recovery crews and NASA support personnel quickly reached the charred spacecraft, opening the Soyuz’s hatch, extracting the crew and making initial medical checks as the trio began re-adjusting to gravity.
Briefly resting in a nearby recliner as is traditional for returning Soyuz crew members, Kim appeared healthy and in good spirits, smiling his thanks after Russian recovery crews presented him with a nested matryoshka doll with his face painted on the outermost shell.
NASA astronaut Jonny Kim shows off a nested matryoshka doll presented to him by Russian recovery crews shortly after he was extracted from the Soyuz descent module. Image: NASA
After more detailed medical checks, the crew was to be flown by helicopter to the town of Dzhezkazgan where Kim planned to board a NASA jet for the long flight home to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Ryzhikov and Zubritsky will head for Star City near Moscow for debriefings and reunions with family members.
Left behind aboard the space station were NASA Crew 11 fliers Zena Cardman, Mike Fincke, Japanese astronaut Kimiya Yui and cosmonaut Oleg Platonov.
Also on board: Soyuz MS-28/74S commander Sergey Kud-Sverchkov, flight engineer Sergei Mikaev and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams. They arrived at the space station on Nov. 27 to replace Ryzhikov, Zubritsky and Kim.
During a change-of-command ceremony Sunday, Kim said what he will remember most from his eight months in space is “the bond that we shared together.”
“I firmly believe that the greatest quality of an astronaut, and a human, is not technical competence, or loyalty, or any of the myriad other things we like to ascribe to astronauts. It’s love,” he said.
“We always gave each other grace and had so much love for each other and everyone who supports us. I think that is what makes space exploration possible.”
Soyuz MS-27 crew members (frm left) NASA astronaut Jonny Kim and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergey Ryzhikov and Alexey Zubritskiy pose for a portrait at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia. Image: GCTC
During their stay aboard the space station, Kim and his crewmates traveled 104 million miles over 3,920 orbits. Kim focused on research and maintenance in the U.S. segment of the station while Ryzhikov and Zubritsky carried out two spacewalks.
The son of South Korean immigrants and a father of three, Kim has a resume that’s impressive even by astronaut standards. He is a former Navy SEAL, combat veteran and a Harvard Medical School graduate.
In a pre-launch interview, Kim said he had “some terrible moments” in combat and ended up “just really burnt out. I was very burnt out from the combat, from the war and the loss. … I needed a way to continue serving, and it seemed logical that medicine would be that vehicle.”
Already a SEAL team combat medic, Kim was accepted by Harvard’s medical school. Along the way, “I probably went a little too extreme in ensuring that previous successes did not set myself up for the future.”
“I ensured that the people I worked with in the hospital didn’t know I was previously a SEAL, because I wanted my patients, I wanted my colleagues to think of me as dependable and proficient and a good physician. Not because I used to be a SEAL, but because that’s who I was.”
I’ve actually already written a number of posts about the possibility of an AI bubble and bust. Back in August, I wondered if the financing of data centers with private credit could cause a financial crisis if there was a bust. I followed that up with a post about profitability, and suggested that the AI industry might be a lot more competitive than people expect. In October, I wrote about how AI is propping up the U.S. economy.
But I feel like I need to write another post, because almost all of the discussion I see about an AI bubble seems to leave out one crucial scenario.
Since I wrote those posts, popular belief that there’s an AI bubble and impending bust has only grown. A lot of prominent people in the industry are talking about it:
“Some parts of AI are probably in a bubble,” Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told Axios’ Mike Allen at the [Axios] AI+ Summit on Dec. 4. But, he added, “It’s not a binary.”…“I, more than anyone, believe that AI is the most transformative technology ever, so I think in the fullness of time, this is all going to be more than justified,” Hassabis said…“I think it would be a mistake to dismiss [AI] as snake oil,” OpenAI Chairman and Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor said at the AI+ Summit…Taylor acknowledged that there “probably is a bubble,” but said businesses, ideas and technologies endure even after bubbles pop. “There’s going to be a handful of companies that are truly generational,” Taylor said.
Every company would be affected if the AI bubble were to burst, the head of Google’s parent firm Alphabet has told the BBC…Speaking exclusively to BBC News, Sundar Pichai said while the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) investment had been an “extraordinary moment”, there was some “irrationality” in the current AI boom.
Almost everyone I read is basically talking about two scenarios for an AI bust. I call these the Virtual Reality Scenario and the Railroad Scenario. I’ll go over these, and then talk about the third scenario
The Virtual Reality Scenario
What I call the Virtual Reality Scenario is if AI, in its current form, turns out to just not be a very useful technology at all — or at least, not nearly useful enough to justify the amount of capital expenditures. This might happen because AI hallucinates too much, or because progress in AI comes to a halt. Bloomberg reports:
The data center spending spree is overshadowed by persistent skepticism about the payoff from AI technology…[R]esearchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 95% of organizations saw zero return on their investment in AI initiatives…More recently, researchers at Harvard and Stanford [found that e]mployees are using AI to create “workslop,” which the researchers define as “AI generated work content that masquerades as good work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.”…
AI developers have also been confronting a different challenge. OpenAI, Anthropic and others have for years bet on the so-called scaling laws — the idea that more computing power, data and larger models will inevitably pave the way for greater leaps in the power of AI…Over the past year, however, these developers have experienced diminishing returns from their costly efforts to build more advanced AI.
This is basically what happened to VR technology. Meta spent $77 billion on developing the virtual reality “Metaverse”, but outside of gaming and some niche entertainment applications, nobody really wanted VR for anything, no matter how good the headsets got. Meta is now throwing in the towel and pivoting away from the Metaverse.1
But I just don’t think this is going to happen to AI. Very few people use VR, even a decade after it started getting hyped. But AI is being adopted more rapidly than any technology in history. As far back as a year ago, 40% of people were already using AI at work:
Humans just know when a technology works. If AI weren’t useful, we’d see people trying it for a while and then setting it aside. But we don’t see that. Despite hallucinations and the other limitations of the technology, most people are finding some reason to keep using AI after they try it.
Sorry, haters. This tech is for real.
As for progress hitting a wall, I just don’t think that’s an important question anymore. The consensus in the industry2 seems to be that scaling up in terms of training AI models on more data has hit a wall, but that our ability to improve AI’s capabilities via inference scaling (basically, having it “think harder” before answering) is still going, and improvements in reinforcement learning and other algorithmic techniques are still coming.
But I don’t think this is the right question to be asking, because “better chatbots” are only one of many ways that AI can create value. The world of AI applications, including “agents” (AI that does stuff on its own) is still in its infancy. Andrej Karpathy is good at talking about this; I recommend his interview with Dwarkesh Patel.
Essentially, we haven’t even begun to build AI yet. Anthropic sort of has — it’s focused on AI business applications, and it’s making some money doing this. But most of the actual technology we’re going to create with AI is still in the future. And there’s a chance that AI as it exists today will be able to provide the foundation for a whole bunch of incredibly useful applications, even without any continued improvement in capabilities. The typical pattern is for most of the useful (and lucrative) applications to manifest decades after a new general-purpose technology is introduced.
The Railroad Scenario
Which brings us to the second scenario: the Railroad Scenario. Railroads were even more economically useful and lucrative than their biggest boosters in the 1860s imagined. But there was still a huge bust in 1873, because those economic benefits didn’t show up before railroad companies’ debt came due.
The railroad buildout in the 1800s was, in percentage terms, the greatest single feat of capital expenditure in U.S. history, dwarfing even what the AI industry is spending on data centers right now. In 1873, a bunch of railroad-related loans went bust, causing a banking crisis that threw the economy into a decade-long depression.
And yet despite the carnage in the railroad industry, the number of miles of railroad in the U.S. never stopped increasing — it just slowed down briefly and picked back up again!…In other words, the great railroad bust did not happen because America built too many railroads. America didn’t build too many railroads! What happened was that America financed its railroads faster than they could capture value…
There’s basically no technological limit on how many…loans [the financial system] can disburse in a short period of time…And yet there is a limit on how fast businesses can create real value. In order for a railroad to pay off, you need to build it, and then you need to find people to pay you to ship things on it. That takes time, especially because the full economic value of the railroad doesn’t manifest until new cities, new industries, and new supply chains that are enabled by the railroads get created.
Just to give one example, the famous Sears Catalog — which allowed people all across America to order products and have them delivered by railroad — eventually revolutionized American retail. But it didn’t even start to do that until 1888 — fifteen years after the big railroad crash of 1873…
Why is this important for AI? Because even if AI creates all the value its biggest boosters say it’ll do — supercharges growth, enables the automation of most kinds of production, and so on — it might not do it fast enough for the data center “hyperscalers” to pay back everything they borrowed. In that case, there will be a wave of defaults on bonds and loans.
We don’t know how likely this scenario is, because we don’t know how fast AI value creation will increase. But we can get some basic idea of the risk of this scenario by looking at the financing side.
If the companies building and operating the data centers (the main cost of AI) are spending less than they make, then everything is basically safe. Suppose you have a company that makes $50 billion in profit every year, and you spend $40 billion every year on data centers. Even if AI suffers a catastrophic crash and all your money is wasted, you’re safe; you just take a hit to your profit margins for a year, your stock price goes down, and then you just move on. This is true even if you borrowed the money to build the data centers; if things go bad you can afford to pay off the loans.
If you’re spending $70 billion a year things get dicey; you might have to take a couple of years of losses to pay back the loans if there’s a bust. And there’s some level of borrowing and spending where you’re actually in danger of bankruptcy. There’s no hard and fast rule for when a certain amount of spending becomes dangerous; it’s just sort of a sliding scale of worry.
Right now, much of the AI buildout is being done by big tech companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta that make lots and lots of profit.3 Until recently, these “hyperscalers” have been making enough cash to cover their AI spending. But spending is rising, so that may not be true for much longer. If spending keeps increasing, some companies, like Amazon, may start to have to borrow against future cash flow soon. And Meta, which doesn’t have its own cloud business, and thus has to pay other companies to do its AI stuff, may be in greater danger.
Meanwhile there are a bunch of other companies that are investing a ton of money in AI that don’t make enough profit to fund it out of their own pockets, but which have borrowed a bunch of money to invest in AI. These include the big model-making companies — OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI. They also include some cloud providers like CoreWeave that aren’t attached to a big profitable business. And they include various construction companies and service providers.
If AI takes 10 or more years to generate enough value to pay back all these debts, many of these companies could go bankrupt. Whatever financial institutions they’ve borrowed money from — private credit firms, banks, etc. — may fail or have to pull back significantly when their loans suddenly go bad. And that could touch off a financial crisis, even if AI continues to advance and companies continue to build data centers. That would be like what happened in 1873 with the railroads. AI itself would be fine, but the economy, the financial system, and a bunch of specific companies could be hurt.
This scenario seems at least fairly likely, given that this is basically what happened with both the railroads and the telecoms in past industrial booms. Currently, many observers are highly skeptical that AI companies will be able to earn enough revenue to pay back their debts by 2030, even under optimistic assumptions. As I said, the typical pattern is for the economy to take a long time to figure out how to use each new general-purpose technology, and the financial system may not be able to wait around.
But there’s also a third scenario, which relatively few people seem to be paying attention to. Even if AI works and manages to create value very quickly, that value may not be captured by the AI companies themselves. AI itself may turn out to be a commoditized, low-margin business, more like solar power…or airlines.
The gap between Europe's self-image and reality has grown into a chasm of delulu. One that's threatening to swallow the continent's future whole, as dangerous dependencies on others for energy, security, software, and manufacturing stack up to strangle Europe's sovereignty. But its current political class continues to double down on everything that hasn't worked for the past forty years.
But you can see why many politicians in Europe are eager to punish X for giving Europeans a social media that doesn't cooperate with its crackdown on wrongthink. The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is personally responsible for 5,000(!!) cases pursuing his subjects for insults online, which has led to house raids for utterances as banal as calling him a "filthy drunk".
It's against this backdrop — thousands of yearly arrests for banal insults or crass opposition to government policies — that some Europeans still try to convince themselves they're the true champions of free speech and freedom of the press. Delulu indeed.
That's primarily because Europe basically stopped creating new, large companies more than half a century ago. So as the likes of Nokia died off, there was nobody new to replace them. In the last fifty years, the number and size of new European companies worth $10 billion or more is alarmingly small:
So cue the talk about security. European leaders are incensed by getting excluded from the discussion about ending the war in Ukraine, which is currently just happening between America and Russia directly. But they only have themselves to thank for a seat on the sidelines. Here's a breakdown of the NATO spending by country:
This used to be a joke to Europeans. That America would spend so much on its military might. Since the invasion of Ukraine, there's been a lot less laughing, and now the new official NATO target for member states is to spend 5% of GDP on defense.
But even this target fails to acknowledge the fact that even if European countries should meet their new obligations (and currently only Poland among the larger EU countries is even close), they'd still lag far behind America, simply because the EU is comparatively a much smaller and shrinking economic zone.
In 2025, the combined GDP for the European Union was $20 trillion. America was fifty percent larger with a GDP of $30 trillion. And the gap continues to widen, as EU growth is pegged at around 1% in 2024 compared to almost 3% for the US.
Now this is usually when the euro cope begins to screech the loudest. Trying every which way to explain that actually Europe is a better place to live than America, despite having a GDP per capita that's almost half.
And on a subjective level, that might well be true! There are plenty of reasons to prefer living in Europe, but that doesn't offset the fact that America is simply a vastly richer country, and that matters when it comes to everything from commercial dominance to military power.
But it's the trajectory that's most damning. In 2008, Europe was on near-parity in GDP with America! But if the 1% vs 3% growth-rate disparity continues for another decade, America will grow its economy by another third to $40 trillion, while Europe will grow just 10% to $22 trillion. Making the American economy nearly twice as large as the European one. Yikes.
These should all be sobering numbers to any European. Whether it's the 10,000 yearly arrests in the UK for social media posts or the risk of an economy that's half the size of the American one in a decade.
But Europe isn't doomed to fulfill this tragic destiny. It's full of some of the most creative, capable, and ambitious people in the world (like the fifth of US startup unicorns with European founders!). But they need much better reasons to stay than what the EU (and now a separate UK) is currently giving them.
Like drastically lower energy costs to for a competitive industrial base and to power the AI revolution, so best we quickly revive European nuclear ambitions. Like an immigration policy designed to rival America's cherry-picking of the world's best, rather than mass immigration from low-average-IQ regions of net-negative contributors to the economy (and society). Like dropping the censorship ambitions and bureaucratic boondoggles like the DSA. Like actually offering a European internal market for remote labor and a unified stock exchange for listings.
There are plenty of paths to take that do not end in a low-growth, censorious regime that continues to export many of its best brains to America and elsewhere. So: make haste, the shadows lengthen.
Several recent papers claim that expanding programs like Medicaid reduces crime (e.g. here). I’ve been skeptical, not because of weaknesses in any particular paper, but just because the results feel a bit too aligned with social-desirability bias and we know that the underlying research designs can be fragile. As a result, my priors haven’t moved much. The first paper using a genuine randomized controlled trial now reports no effect of Medicaid expansion on crime.
Those involved with the criminal justice system have disproportionately high rates of mental illness and substance-use disorders, prompting speculation that health insurance, by improving treatment of these conditions, could reduce crime. Using the 2008 Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, which randomly made some low-income adults eligible to apply for Medicaid, we find no statistically significant impact of Medicaid coverage on criminal charges or convictions. These null effects persist for high-risk subgroups, such as those with prior criminal cases and convictions or mental health conditions. In the full sample, our confidence intervals can rule out most quasi-experimental estimates of Medicaid’s crime-reducing impact.
It could still be the case that very targeted interventions–say making sure that released criminals get access to mental health care–could do some good but there’s unlikely to be any general positive effect.
A similar story is found in Finland where a large RCT on a guaranteed basic income found zero effect on crime
This paper provides the first experimental evidence on the impact of providing a guaranteed basic income on criminal perpetration and victimization. We analyze a nationwide randomized controlled trial that provided 2,000 unemployed individuals in Finland with an unconditional monthly payment of 560 Euros for two years (2017-2018), while 173,222 comparable individuals remained under the existing social safety net. Using comprehensive administrative data on police reports and district court trials, we estimate precise zero effects on criminal perpetration and victimization. Point estimates are small and statistically insignificant across all crime categories. Our confidence intervals rule out reductions in perpetration of 5 percent or more for crime reports and 10 percent or more for criminal charges.
As the space industry explores orbital data centers to meet growing demands for sovereignty, resilience and sustainability, one critical lens remains underutilized: cost. Not just launch cost or CapEx; but total cost of ownership, sourcing strategy and operational efficiency. We think it would be helpful to reframe the conversation around space-based infrastructure from technical feasibility […]
A proposed European Union space law could cost both European and American space companies hundreds of millions of euros in lost revenue annually, according to a new study.
NASA has extended an agreement with a nonprofit organization to manage the portion of the International Space Station designated as a national laboratory, likely for the final time.
China launched four missions in four days, accelerating its record-setting launch cadence while expanding its Guowang LEO megaconstellation and deploying new Yaogan reconnaissance assets.
December 8, 2025 – Washington, D.C. – The Commercial Space Federation (CSF) is pleased to welcome its four newest members to our Space Supply Chain Council (S2C2): McCollister’s, MERC Aerospace, […]
MILAN – When the European Space Agency announced its new three-year spending plan last month, two countries stood out for the increased size of their contributions. Poland boosted its budget from 198 million euros ($230 million) in 2022 to 735 million euros in 2025 (a 276% increase). Spain raised its contribution from 933 million euros […]
I’ve written a number of times over the years about the fact that Americans mostly believe that the post-World War II world order is the normal state of things. Of course, it is not. The last 80 years are unparalleled in global history for their general prosperity, lack of great power wars, a fairly predictable system of global rules. One has to say the obligatory caveats about all the ways the United States honored its values and rules in the breach, the slow run of proxy conflicts it participated in or fomented around the world. But these caveats only serve to illustrate the larger point in a paradoxical way. Things can always get worse and getting worse — conflict, instability, mass death — are the normal order of things in world history. Even a thin appraisal of the American ascendency shows its close to uniqueness in this regard.
It’s a great stroke of luck to find yourself in an island of history in which this basic order of things is put on hold, held in relative abeyance, even more to be part of the great power which undergirds these social goods and inflects the whole system — subtly but decisively — in its own favor. But for the last decade we’ve been actively dismantling that system. The middling attempt to reassert or rebuild it in the Biden years of course proved ephemeral and nostalgic, an unintentional demonstration of the American republic’s inability to defend the system it had built almost a century earlier.
I note this because just over this last week we are seeing this work of dismantlement both accelerating and entrenching itself. The new national security strategy document the administration released last week essentially says the United States will retreat to the Western Hemisphere and focus on a kind of neo-Yankee imperialism in which it seeks to dominate the countries of its own hemisphere while leaving western Eurasia to Russia and Asia to China.
Yet the most revealing parts of the document comes in the animus expressed toward Europe. The content is dressed up as part of a larger geostrategy. But beneath this thin sheen is an open statement of great replacement ideology: Europe is an unreliable ally because it risks “civilizational erasure” and a near future when it will no longer be white.
There’s not much fig leaf.
At the beginning of the Trump era, 2015-16, the truth was that I was always more personally worried about the impact of Trumpism abroad than at home. (I didn’t say this a lot because it sounds like it contains an indifferent privilege to things that happen at home. To me, thinking otherwise shows an easy obliviousness to how rapidly the world abroad can upend our security and brass tacks physical safety at home.) Even with the turbocharged Trumpism of the second term, I still largely feel that way. This is an incomplete and partly notional analysis. But things we screw up at home we can at least in theory undo. When the public puts its mind to something, things can change quickly. It’s not the same with the global state system. We can’t simply put trends we’re unleashing into the world today back into their bottles or their boxes. Once the chaos is unleashed, you can’t just undo it because you decide unleashing it wasn’t a hot idea. To add to the litany of doom, even the most unpopular president retains his vast powers abroad. At best we’re only one year into this, with three to go.
I’ve become something of a broken record on this. But repetition sometimes serves a critical purpose. Supreme Court reform is now the sine qua non of any reformist program in the United States, any program to re-implant/re-secure civic democracy in the United States. Filibuster reform, abolition of the filibuster, is comparably important. In fact, the two are interwoven with each other in such a way as to be almost indistinguishably joined together.
But a lot of people know the filibuster has to go. Reforming the Supreme Court, which involves one of several ways of breaking the power of the six corrupt Republican appointees, is a much harder lift. It’s not a harder lift in voting terms. It can be done by passing an ordinary law (once you’ve done away with the filibuster) and having a president to sign it. But for many in the political class, for many elected officials, it remains unthinkable. On the plus side, Democratic voters and opinion leaders have some time to lay the groundwork. The soonest anything can happen is January 2029. (You need Congress and the White House.) But there’s a huge amount of work to do. Because my sense is that Democratic officeholders, party elites, aren’t even close to being there. And there’s really no future without it.
Apple chip leader Johny Srouji addressed rumors of his impending
exit in a memo to staff on Monday, saying he doesn’t plan on
leaving the company anytime soon. “I love my team, and I love my
job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” he wrote.
Bloomberg reported on Saturday that Srouji had told CEO Tim
Cook that he was considering leaving, citing people with knowledge
of the matter.
It wasn’t rumors, plural. It was one report, on Saturday, from Mark Gurman at Bloomberg, and Srouji just called bullshit on it.
What a colossal fuck-up for Gurman and Bloomberg. There’s no possible scenario where Srouji was threatening to leave Apple for a competitor on Saturday and telling his staff (in a memo meant to leak to the press) “I love my job at Apple, and I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon” Monday morning.
The most gracious interpretation for Gurman and Bloomberg is that Srouji had expressed this to Cook, at some point in the recent past, and Cook addressed whatever it took to keep Srouji on board. But even in that scenario, they ran a story Saturday that was wrong at the time it was published.
If someone wanted to sow seeds of doubt among Apple employees in
an effort to help their own poaching efforts, there are at least
three publications who would have no problem offering an anonymous
microphone to that person.
I.e., the source for this story about Srouji being unhappy at Apple and considering leaving for a competitor was aligned with one of those competitors, and Gurman and his editors Bloomberg said “Sure, we’ll print that.” Meta, of course, is the competitor that comes to mind.
It speaks to Gurman’s personal and Bloomberg’s institutional influence that Srouji and Apple saw the need to shoot the bogus narrative down in public like this. I can’t remember the last time an Apple executive saw the need to send an intended-to-leak memo like this to shoot down one bogus story. After last week, though, this one couldn’t be ignored.
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Apple could ultimately have to pay up to an estimated 637 million
euros to address the damage suffered by 14 million iPhone and iPad
users in the Netherlands.
That’s about €45/user.
The lawsuit dates back to 2022, when two Dutch consumer
foundations (Right to Consumer Justice and App Store Claims)
accused Apple of abusing its dominant market position and charging
developers excessive fees. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of
Dutch iPhone and iPad users, and it claimed that Apple’s 30
percent commission inflated prices for apps and in-app purchases.
I’m curious what these consumer foundations would consider a “fair” (and thus legal) commission rate.
This all comes back to the argument that Apple’s App Store commission inflates prices. A recent Apple-funded (and Apple-promoted) study suggests this is not true — that with lower commissions mandated by the DMA, prices paid by consumers stayed the same and the difference went to the developers. That’s good if you’re a developer, but it’s not the argument being made by these consumer advocate groups.
That said, I pointed out just the other day that Tiimo, a to-do app that Apple just named as the iPhone app of the year in the 2025 App Awards, charges about 20 percent less for subscriptions on its website compared to its in-app subscriptions. An Apple-funded, Apple-promoted study showing that the App Store’s commissions don’t raise prices ought to be taken with a few grains of salt.
Apple argued that the Dutch court did not have jurisdiction to
hear the case because the EU App Store is run from Ireland, and
therefore the claims should be litigated in Ireland. Apple said
that if the Dutch court was able to hear the case, it could lead
to fragmentation with multiple similar cases across the EU, plus
it argued that customers in the Netherlands could have downloaded
apps while in other EU member states.
I know Apple wants this litigated in Ireland because the Irish government sees Apple as an ally, not an adversary, but it does seem contrary to the idea of a single market if a company doing business in the EU is subject to different antitrust laws from each of the EU’s 27 member states.
Simply extraordinary stuff coming out this morning about the battle over what used to be Time Warner and now goes by the name Warner Bros Discovery (which includes CNN in addition to the more lucrative media stuff). The company had agreed to be acquired by Netflix. So Paramount — now the vehicle of the Ellison family successor and a Trump state media entity-in-the-making — has launched a hostile takeover effort to swoop in and gobble up WBD for itself. In its public pitch, it has openly advertised to shareholders that it is the better acquirer because the Ellisons are tight with Trump, and the White House will never let a Netflix deal go through. Trump, in comments yesterday, as much as agreed. Trump has refashioned antitrust oversight to be little more than a personal veto for the Trump family. Friends can do mergers; foes can’t. Indeed, the indifferent and uncommitted can’t either. You need to get right with the Trump family.
When you ask why so much of corporate America is beholden to Trump now, this is why. A big diversified corporation simply cannot compete and thus, in practice, can’t exist with a determinedly hostile administration.
Now we learn this: who else is part of the hostile takeover bid? None other than Jared Kushner. Yes, Jared — international M&A man when he’s not cutting “peace” deals in Israel-Palestine or Ukraine. And wait, there’s more! Just moments ago I saw that it’s not just Jared: the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis are also in on the deal. Backstopping the deal is a fund, RedBird Capital, seen by many as a stalking horse for China.
My main interest in all of this is narrow and specific: the fate of CNN. The outlook for the institution seems bleak over time. Netflix, as I understand it, doesn’t care about it and doesn’t want it. In economic terms it’s an afterthought, if not a liability. This is really about the streaming wars and to a secondary extent the content-producing entities that feed it. But Paramount does want CNN because either neutering it on behalf of Trump (´à la CBS) or turning it into a Fox News competitor is part of its alliance with Trump, and more general commitment to oligarchic rule in the U.S.
When I say CNN’s outlook looks bleak in general, it’s because no company looking to run it as a business has much interest in acquiring it. It’s not some huge profit center. And owning it is a major liability inasmuch as allowing it to run as anything like a legitimate news operation almost guarantees Trump harassment. The companies that have a strong interest in acquiring it are those who want to Fox-ify it as a favor to Trump and reap secondary benefits from doing that favor even if they lose money on CNN itself. So it’s hard to see how these incentives lead to anything good even if Paramount doesn’t manage to grab it in this round.
Seth Larson reports that urllib3 2.6.0 released on the 5th of December and finally removed the HTTPResponse.getheaders() and HTTPResponse.getheader(name, default) methods, which have been marked as deprecated via warnings since v2.0.0 in April 2023. They had to add them back again in a hastily released 2.6.1 a few days later when it turned out major downstream dependents such as kubernetes-client and fastly-py still hadn't upgraded.
Seth says:
My conclusion from this incident is that DeprecationWarning in its current state does not work for deprecating APIs, at least for Python libraries. That is unfortunate, as DeprecationWarning and the warnings module are easy-to-use, language-"blessed", and explicit without impacting users that don't need to take action due to deprecations.
Something I always encourage people to do, and try to get implemented anywhere I work, is running Python test suites with -Wonce::DeprecationWarning. This doesn't spam you with noise if a deprecated API is called a lot, but still makes sure you see the warning so you know there's something you need to fix.
I didn't know about the -Wonce option - the documentation describes that as "Warn once per Python process".
It’s been 50 years since Patti Smith put out the classic punk rock album entitled Horses. Looking back on the long list of albums from 1975, I’m stuck by the number of major works from mid to late in the career of some pop stars (Blood on the Tracks, Physical Graffiti) and earlier in the career of others (Born to Run, A Night at the Opera). You could form a fairly representative collection of 1970s music from just that single year.
It was just one of those moments where a lot of people converged [in Greenwich Village], and even if we didn’t always get along or there was pettiness or this or that, we were still like minds.
When I was working at Scribner’s, I waited on Larry Rivers, I waited on Robert Rauschenberg, I delivered books to the building where Mark Rothko lived and saw him on the elevator.
You saw these people. They were there. You knew where their studios were. Jimi Hendrix’s studio was across the street from where Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock painted. Art was everywhere. Andy Warhol ate in the same restaurants as we did. We all comingled more.
I sometimes joke: Janis Joplin was staying at the Chelsea Hotel when I lived there. We dressed similarly, only she had feather boas. We lived in the same hotel, only she had a bigger room. She had a suite of rooms, and I had the tiniest room. Other than that, we were all similar.
We dressed similarly, we listened to the same music, we had the same references. Art was like the jewel in our crown.
When I see older films of the music scene at that time, I’m struck by their amateurish informality. The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus looks like it was made by high school students. Stars seemed to freely mix with their audience.
In contrast, in recent concert films of Taylor Swift and Beyonce the production values are impressive, and the artists looked like they moved through the world like royalty, inside carefully curated bubbles. Perhaps it’s a more dangerous world today, or perhaps we care more about danger today. (A long list of major rock stars died around 1970, almost all due to drugs and alcohol. And John Lennon was murdered in 1980.)
It seems to me that it isn’t just the stars that are increasingly unapproachable, average people have moved in the same direction. Back in the 1960s, we’d sometimes go to a friend’s house and ring the doorbell to see if they were home. By the 1990s, that was considered kind of intrusive, you’d typically call them first. Younger people have told me that today even calling someone on the phone is often seen as invasive, you generally text them first. (When I first heard this, I found it hard to believe.) Perhaps by the 2050s people will be sending out emails: May I text you?
When society starts moving in a certain direction, there’s no obvious stopping point. Consider our evolving euphemisms. We go from cripple to handicapped to physically disabled. We go from moron to retarded to mentally disabled. Perhaps if we have a deep desire for safe spaces, then once any given degree of safety is reached, we yearn for even safer spaces.
Thus far, I’ve implied that society is getting softer. But is that true? I’ve noticed that impersonal electronic communication tends to be colder and less polite than face to face communication. So perhaps people today need thicker skins to deal with all the insults that appear on social media. I’ve never used platforms like Facebook, so I’m not speaking from firsthand experience. But I do see a lot of insults from trolls in the comment section, and I can only imagine what it would be like to be an unpopular high school student today.
As an analogy, at a superficial level our society seems more puritanical than back in the 1970s. But beneath the surface there is far more pornography than back in the days when teenage boys would sneak a peek at Playboy magazine. Perhaps teenage life is now more emotionally brutal, and the 1960s was the softer decade.
Boomers often bemoan the fact that children no longer roam around town on their own like we did when we were kids. Perhaps that’s why younger people now find it harder to approach strangers. But didn’t boomers create the world that we live in today? So, who are we to complain?
I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin in the 1960s. At the time, I thought that was normal life. In retrospect, it seems extremely WEIRD, one of the most egalitarian societies in modern history. Perhaps people are becoming less approachable because society is becoming more stratified by race and education and income. I suspect that in smaller midwestern towns the level of approachability remains higher than elsewhere.
I’d guess that the biggest factor is electronic communication. Back in the 1920s, there was no TV and people often socialized on their front porch. Lots of average people didn’t have a home phone and thus there was no expectation that you’d call ahead. Each advance in electronic communication allows for more long-distance connections but makes close by connections seem more awkward. Sort of like how the internet gave us more information, but also more misinformation.
I recall a valet parking employee being annoyed when I asked for directions. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t just use GPS (which I rarely do.) As AI becomes more common, perhaps any sort of question on any topic will seem increasing annoying. “Why are you asking me? Check with ChatGPT.”
Dear readers: You have my permission to comment on this post. I won’t be offended. Unless you are a troll.
PS. Robert Mapplethorpe took the picture used on Patti Smith’s debut album (which is punk more in attitude than sound):
PPS. Is Sargent’s Madame X unapproachable? I’d say her dress welcomes alpha males but her arrogance rebuffs betas.
In 1972, when I finally gave up on domes (as homes), I decided to study real building. Over a quarter of a million people had read Domebook 2, believing — as I did at one time — that domes were a new and improved method of building homes.
With two cameras (a Nikon and a Nikkormat) — loaded with Kodacolor slides and Tri-X black and white film — I travelled across the United States, then Canada, and then to Ireland and England, where I found a treasure trove of information on building: homes, barns, farm buildings, churches. Traditional.
In my previous life as an insurance broker (1960-’65), one of my clients was the Irish-American Club of San Francisco and they had 30-day charter flights to Ireland for $200 round trip. I took my 12-year-old son Peter with me on the first trip.
Hollingbourne, Kent. Watercolor by Mrs. Allingham, R.W.S.
All of the drawings and paintings here are from Old English Country Cottages - Special Winter Number of the Studio - 1906-7. The pen and ink drawings are by Sidney R. Jones.
We got off the plane in Shannon and started hitchhiking. We took a ferry across the Irish Sea and continued hitchhiking. Our destination: Mapledurham, a small English village on the Thames river near Reading, where my friends, the Geraghty brothers, had rented the two-story miller’s house in the village.
In Derbyshire or Lancashire, we got a ride with a salesman heading south. When he learned that I was interested in building, he started pointing things out.
“You see that farmhouse? It blends in with the landscape because it’s built with local materials — bricks made with local soil and slate for the roof from nearby quarries.”
As we travelled on, he’d point out buildings made with locally-available materials, all blending in with their surroundings. Also that designs came from local conditions. Designers (often farmers) and builders took into account wind and rainfall patterns, site orientation, climate, and this knowledge was passed along to future-generation builders. A far cry from domes, all based on the same geometric mathematics and the same materials, plopped down anywhere.
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Landewednack. Cornwall, by Mrs. E. Stanhope Forbes, A. R. W. S.
In London, I hooked up with people at the Architectural Association, a wonderful multi-disciplinary college of architecture. My favorite contact there was Richard Harris, who had published a great little book, with black and white drawings, titled Discovering Timber Frame Buildings.
Richard and I shared a love of traditional British building techniques and materials. He went on the become the director of the Weald and Downland Open Air Museum in Singleton, West Sussex, one of the world’s finest museums of traditional building.
Another friend I made at the AA was Robin Middleton, the school’s librarian, who one day took me across Bedford Square to Weinreb Books, a hidden-away architectural bookstore. Every time I ‘d come to London, I’d go to Weinrebs and buy books, including the one shown here.
Mapledurham, where we stayed with our friends when we were not in London, was a real English village, with the manor house, alms houses, water-driven mill, miller’s house, church, graveyard and town square — surrounded by fields planted in barley and wheat. The village was somewhat run down, with half of the buildings unoccupied,. This was in early ‘70s and the village had not yet been “discovered.” It was a great place to hang out while I studied traditional building practices.
Fifty years ago, gathering material for Shelter, traditional building seemed perhaps more relevant than it does today. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, we had TIME to utilize traditional building techniques, and building materials were magnitudes less expensive than they are now.
So I don’t know how much immediate relevance building techniques of the past have for today’s home builders, but I still cherish the beauty of timber framing, materials dictated by local conditions, and techniques honed by experience and practicality.
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There was a time, not so long ago, when America was the leader of the free world. It was the first among equals within an alliance of nations bound together by shared values — above all a commitment to democracy and civil liberties. From London to Berlin to Tokyo, in the aftermath of genocide and the utter devastation of World War II, America – as Ronald Reagan put it – was the shining city on the hill. We should never forget that Americans played the pivotal roles in the Nuremberg trials, upholding the rule of law in an impartial and transparent manner in the trials of those who had committed unspeakable atrocities and acts of war. “Ich bin ein Berliner,” declared John F. Kennedy in Berlin, as East Germany tried to trap its own people behind the Berlin Wall.
MAGA, however, doesn’t want to be part of that world. In fact, it doesn’t want a world of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law to exist. The Trump administration has become especially hostile to Europe, precisely because the Europeans are trying to hold on to the values MAGA is trying to destroy at home.
Last week the Trump administration released its updated National Security Strategy for the United States. Much of the document is vague, meandering and self-contradictory. But it becomes clear and focused when it turns to Europe. Quite simply, Trump and those around him hate Europe. And they hate it because it still honors the ideals they’re abandoning in America.
The language is astonishing. Europe, the document warns, faces “the stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” Why? Because “it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European.” I don’t know why they bothered with the euphemism: “non-European” clearly means “nonwhite.”
But there’s hope, the document declares, thanks to “the growing influence of patriotic European parties,” by which it clearly means parties like Germany’s neo-Nazi AfD.
The political scientist Henry Farrell sums it up this way:
This is, quite straightforwardly, a program for regime change in Europe, aimed at turning it into an illiberal polity. Accomplishing this transformation would involve undermining existing liberal governments in cahoots with Europe’s own far right, and turning Eastern Europe into an ideological wedge against its Western neighbors.
Where is this attack on Europe coming from? Some readers may remember the old slogan from the War on Terror days, “They hate us for our freedom.” Clearly, MAGA hates Europe for its freedom. The people trying to turn America into an authoritarian, white supremacist state, who want us to forsake democratic ideals in favor of Volk, of blood and soil nationalism, want to see Europe go down the same path.
There’s also the role of the tech bros — billionaires who still describe themselves as libertarian but have in practice become hardline authoritarians with enormous sway over the Trump administration. After the European Commission imposed a modest fine on X for failing to obey its rules on transparency, Elon Musk declared that the EU should be abolished and threatened personal retribution against the “EU woke Stasi commissars” responsible for the ruling. And the Trump Administration is acting as the tech bros’ enforcer against Europe, threatening to keep steel tariffs high unless the EU scales back its tech regulations.
Moreover, this is part of a general pattern: the broligarchs hate Europe because the Europeans are trying to impose sensible limits to protect their societies from the well-documented psychological and economic harms that are inflicted by an unrestrained Silicon Valley agenda. For example, the EU is trying to limit the proliferation of digital hate speech as well as the pernicious effects of social media on the young. And more so than the US, it has sought to constrain the monopoly power of the tech titans like Google and Facebook. We should remember that the moderate antitrust and AI regulations adopted by the Biden Administration prompted the tech broligarchy to swing hard behind Trump in the 2024 election.
There are two striking consequences of Trump’s assault on Europe: it weakens the US against what is clearly its only serious geopolitical rival, China, while weakening Europe against the assassin on its doorstep, Russia. As the New York Times points out, this new strategy breaks with Trump’s past rhetoric, which emphasized the dangers posed by China and Russia.
First, turning on our erstwhile allies guarantees that China will best the US in the competition for influence and economic hegemony. The chart below (adjusted for differences in price levels) illustrates this reality:
As of now, China is clearly the world’s largest single economy. But the group of nations that constituted the “free world” (as we knew it) is a much greater economic power than China. So by treating Europe and Canada as enemies rather than allies, Trump has destroyed any plausible capacity to stand up to China. In effect, Trump has chosen white supremacy over actual national greatness.
Second, that goes for Russia as well. Although Russia is far weaker than China, the US or the EU, the war in Ukraine has shown that an emboldened Russia can wreak long-lasting devastation. By attacking the EU, notably on the same blood and soil grounds that Putin attacked Ukraine — as well as by insulting Zelensky and releasing a “peace plan” that was clearly a Russian wish list — Trump has made it clear that our erstwhile allies cannot rely on us to stand up to Russian aggression. Should we be surprised that some allies have recently begun to refuse intelligence sharing?
Now, it’s important to admit that America often failed to live up to its own ideals in the past. For decades we championed freedom and equality abroad while practicing Jim Crow at home. We were a force for democracy and freedom in Europe, but we often propped up dictators and sometimes engineered the overthrow of democratically elected governments — often at the behest of American business interests — in Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. So in a very real way, the tech broligarchy is trying to use the power of the US government to subjugate the EU the same way the United Fruit Company once used the power of the US government to subjugate Central America.
In truth, Europe is much closer to being Reagan’s shining city on the hill than Trump’s America. Yet it’s important to acknowledge that in the face of economic and immigration challenges, it too is having a hard time preserving its liberal democratic values. Those “patriotic” — i.e., neo-fascist — European parties are indeed on the rise. Yet, on the whole, Europe is dealing with its economic and social strains without giving up on its core values. For example, the recent Dutch elections, while not a decisive victory for the center, did at least push the far right out of government.
And America itself is not yet lost. Many, and I believe most, Americans still believe in our foundational values of freedom and democracy. For the time being power lies in the hands of people who hate those foundational values — and hate Europe because it still clings to those values. But we can still turn this around and claw our way back to being who we should be.
MUSICAL CODA
For a bit of relief, some trans-Atlantic cooperation:
Martin Kleppmann makes the case for formal verification languages (things like Dafny, Nagini, and Verus) to finally start achieving more mainstream usage. Code generated by LLMs can benefit enormously from more robust verification, and LLMs themselves make these notoriously difficult systems easier to work with.
We introduce a novel Bayesian Item Response Theory framework to quantify human–AI synergy, separating individual and collaborative ability while controlling for task difficulty in interactive settings. Unlike standard static benchmarks, our approach models human–AI performance as a joint process, capturing both user-specific factors and moment-to-moment fluctuations. We validate the framework by applying it to human–AI benchmark data (n=667) and find significant synergy. We demonstrate that collaboration ability is distinct from individual problem-solving ability. Users better able to infer and adapt to others’ perspectives achieve superior collaborative performance with AI–but not when working alone. Moreover, moment-to-moment fluctuations in perspective taking influence AI response quality, highlighting the role of dynamic user factors in collaboration. By introducing a principled framework to analyze data from human-AI collaboration, interactive benchmarks can better complement current single-task benchmarks and crowd-assessment methods. This work informs the design and training of language models that transcend static prompt benchmarks to achieve adaptive, socially aware collaboration with diverse and dynamic human partners.
Here is a useful tweet storm on the work. I do not love how the abstract is written, I would stress these sentences: “We demonstrate that collaboration ability is distinct from individual problem-solving ability. Users better able to infer and adapt to others’ perspectives achieve superior collaborative performance with AI–but not when working alone. Moreover, moment-to-moment fluctuations in perspective taking influence AI response quality, highlighting the role of dynamic user factors in collaboration.”
If you want to work on the future of energy, we’re hiring for a wide range of opportunities at Terraform Industries.
Current fuel mix and uses
The US consumes about 100 quadrillion BTUs of energy per year. Of this, about 80 start life as coal, oil or gas, and roughly a third of the energy mix serves the electrical grid. Less than 1% is food, reflecting our enormous energy wealth in comparison to our pre-industrial forebears.
Energy mix and outlook
We’re in the middle of a period of rapid transition. Much will be much clearer in retrospect. This is how I think it will shake out.
Primary production will be mostly solar
Solar is decosting at an accelerating rate.
The production-weighted learning rate is 48%! Module cost falling up to 20% per year, twice what it was five years ago.
Coal is shrinking. Nuclear is flat. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to see which way the wind is blowing.
Solar power production will locally feed the grid, but also provide power behind the meter, and beyond the meter in off-grid developments.
Batteries everywhere, the grid will shrink
Do we need to drastically expand the grid in order to metabolize renewables? No.
Battery production is growing while costs continue to plummet.
Will we build more batteries? Yes. Per capita allocation of batteries has already increased from a few grams to a few tonnes in a single generation. It will only continue up and to the right. Demand will not saturate until after it stops being induced.
Democratized battery ownership is good for freedom
Will batteries be deployed behind the meter, at the point of generation, or within the grid?
Yes.
Batteries at solar arrays allow higher utilization of offtake grid connections, matching evening power consumption. Batteries behind the meter allow granular, independent assurance of power continuation. Batteries in devices and vehicles. Batteries in houses. Batteries on power poles. Batteries at substations. Batteries in schools. Batteries in appliances. More!
Already we are seeing adoption of behind the meter batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall for individual consumers who can justify the expense relative to the hassle of utility power cuts. In a world where every consumer can choose the size of their battery, it doesn’t make sense to spend 10x the money trying to keep the distribution grid at 99.9% production. Less developed markets are pointing the way – Pakistan has cut most domestic power consumption over to solar and batteries in about two years. This is analogous to the growth of cell phones in developing countries that never ran copper phone lines to every house. This trend puts more value and market power in the hands of individual consumers. In the limit, market power will shift from the monopoly electricity utility to amorphous confederations of illegible behind-the-meter demand in the form of networked batteries.
Datacenters will be the nexus of electricity production growth
In 2025, headlines scream that datacenters are pushing prices up and consuming all the power. I think datacenters are exposing the rot in a moribund power generation and delivery industry which has proven unable to meet demand in recent years. But it is a moot point.
Datacenters are already building their own captive power plants. As AI demand outstrips production of gas turbines, hyperscalers will turn to offgrid solar+battery power systems, which are already competitive with pure gas or gas+solar in the sunnier parts of Earth.
Datacenters will be net power sources for their communities
On the flip side, these captive solar power plants will be curtailing approximately 75% of their generated power and will be able to provide net power on all but a few days per year. That is, 99% of the time, which is substantially higher utilization than any conventional thermal power plant.
Within the next five years, market power between utilities and datacenters will flip, with DCs becoming the preferred load growth power generation partner.
To spell out the implications, this means that consumers will get access to extremely competitive (cheap) power most of the time, and some combination of utility-owned and privately owned batteries will be needed to smooth out the gaps, as they would be anyway.
Solar datacenters will ultimately be pure DC constant voltage systems
Solar PV modules are approximately constant current sources. Lithium ion batteries are approximately constant voltage sources. GPU power consumption scales like the cube of token production. Why fill the entire thing with DC-DC converters and inverters? In the limit, it’s all a single piece of silicon.
Substantial cost improvements are needed to make space AI competitive
If SpaceX or a competitor can ship inference compute to a 560 km unshaded sun-synchronous orbit which is 80% 1 kg/m^2 solar arrays by mass and 80% compute by cost, then it should be possible to make money. Otherwise, we can expect to see compute being developed on the ground.
Electricity power markets should evolve toward real time and local prices
Real time matching of supply and demand will require responsive time- and location-based pricing. Different regulatory regimes are already experimenting with versions of this. In general, regulatory insistence on unphysical pricing schemes are a choice to socialize the costs of pathological markets. Almost by definition, capital allocation in opaque or non-existent markets with unresponsive prices will be less optimal, driving costs higher and increasing the value of the available price arbitrage.
I pre-register my belief here that electricity governance markets will bifurcate. On one side, we’ll see those that embrace a steady cadence of pricing reforms, allowing effective competition between many private operators of generation, storage and transmission assets, pushing prices down. On the other side, increasing prices for consumers will drive increasingly desperate governance measures that allow far less competitive storage operators to extract vast rents from the difference between real world power conditions and the conditions approximated by some legal framework.
Just remember, the universe does not care about how we encode our opinion as to how we think the world should work. It has given us an infinitely powerful sun and a planetary crust composed largely of silicon. What we do with that is up to us.
Seasonal load variation – summer
Hot climates see increased loads due to air conditioning during the summer. Solar power systems also produce more power during the hottest days of summer, so this is a complete non-issue. Essentially all suburban houses can easily run their own ACs off rooftop solar, so we don’t even need an expansion of power distribution capacity. As an exercise, figure out how cold a standard issue suburban house could be made with a rooftop system.
Seasonal load variation – winter
Nearly all winter load increase occurs in cold climates which also suffer a reduction of solar power in winter. This load is for heating.
Current battery technology is marginal for seasonal power storage. Conventional wisdom would dictate that we either need radically cheaper batteries, greatly expanded overbuild of solar or wind generation, continued burning of fuel for heat in winter, or a bunch of winter-only power plants that will have the same terrible utilization economics as seasonal-only batteries.
These ideas overlook one important fact. Storing electricity for months is economically difficult, but storing heat is easy. Austin Vernon has been building ultra-low-cost thermal energy storage at Standard Thermal. Essentially a giant hair dryer blows hot air into a large pile of sand during the summer months with abundant cheap power. In winter, the fan switches direction, extracting heat. The storage medium can be made almost any size and is self-insulating. You can think of it as artificial geothermal power storage – in fact it has several strengths that geothermal lacks, like the ability to cheaply build and renew stored power.
While heat pumps can achieve higher efficiency, consumer uptake has been much lower than expected because fundamentally, a heat pump is a 20 year bet on future power prices that most homeowners are unwilling to make.
Synthetic fuel is our path to chemical energy abundance
At Terraform Industries, we’re pioneering the technology to convert cheap solar power, air, and water into synthetic natural gas and other hydrocarbons. Within the next five years, solar cost reductions will drive our process to be cost-preferred in all hydrocarbon import markets, and geological sources of oil and gas will never again be able to compete. Our grandchildren will be swimming in copious cheap energy and wondering what all that drilling was for.
We believe that the path forward is lime-calcite captured CO2 + electrolyzed H2 to make CH4 and CH3OH (methanol). Methanol can be upgraded via a wide variety of existing petrochemical processes to make DME, ethylene, propane, gasoline, kerosene, and almost anything else you can imagine.
Hydrocarbon usage patterns will change a lot
In 2025, most gas is used for electricity generation, while most oil is used for cars, trucks, ships, and aircraft.
Solar is going to continue to displace all other primary electricity generators. And electric cars and trucks will continue to dominate growth in ground transportation.
By 2045, natural gas will be used as LNG primarily for high performance supersonic aviation, shipping, and industrial heat.
Methanol will be used as the universal industrial chemical precursor for plastics, paints, fertilizers, adhesives, as well as specialty fuels. Kerosene will service the legacy aviation fleet. Internal combustion piston engines will ultimately go the way of the piston steam engine.
The United Kingdom needs wind
The only highly populated industrial country unable to trivially meet its electricity and synthetic fuel needs with solar alone is the United Kingdom, due primarily to a high population density and high latitude. The Nordic and Baltic countries are tiny by comparison.
Among other problems, the UK needs to decide if it wants the future where energy is cheap and it is rich, or the future where energy is expensive and it is poor.
If the former, it is time to get serious about large scale deployment of wind power, using home-grown vertically integrated technology at prices as low as $10/MWh. It is not forbidden by the laws of physics.
Ultracheap solar power will eventually change mining
They don’t want you to know this, but rocks are made of metal oxides, and infinitely abundant commonly occurring rocks such as basalt contain basically every metal you could ever want.
With sufficiently cheap power, we no longer need to travel to the ends of the Earth to build mines. Instead, build a solar powered rock refinery at your local gravel pit.
Coastal deserts will be irrigated with desalinated water
Israel already does this at scale. But much of the coast of Australia, Chile, Peru, Namibia, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and other gulf states have essentially infinite quantities of cheap land, free solar power, and sea water. Democratized solar desalination technology can turn any and all these areas into arbitrarily lush paradises with <1% of the available land under solar arrays.
And, above all things else, as the writer has somewhere pointed out, Conrad was a politician. He loved the contemplation of humanity pulling away at the tangled skeins of parties or of alliances. Until, suddenly a strand gave, a position cleared up, a ministry was solidly formed, a dynasty emerged. He was, that is to say a student of politics, without prescription, without dogma, and, as a Papist, with a profound disbelief in the perfectibility of human institutions. The writer never saw Conrad read any book of memoirs except those of Maxime Ducamp and the Correspondence of Flaubert; those we read daily together over a space of years. But somewhere in the past Conrad had read every imaginable and unimaginable volume of politicians’ memoirs, Mme de Campan, the Duc d’Audiffret Pasquier, Benjamin Constant, Karoline Bauer, Sir Horace Rumbold, Napoleon the Great, Napoleon III, Benjamin Franklin, Assheton Smith, Pitt, Chatham, Palmerston, Parnell, the late Queen Victoria, Dilke, Morley…. There was no memoir of all these that he had missed or forgotten—down to Il Principe or the letters of Thomas Cromwell. He could suddenly produce an incident from the life of Lord Shaftesbury and work it into Nostromo: which was the political history of an imagined South American Republic. That was one of the secrets of his greatness.
But certainly he had no prescription. Revolutions were to him always anathema since, he was accustomed to declare, all revolutions always have been, always must be, nothing more in the end than palace intrigues: intrigues either for power within, or for the occupancy of, a palace. The journalists’ bar in the palace of the Luxemburg where sits the present Senate of the Third Republic was once the bedchamber of Marie de Medicis. That is not to say that Conrad actively desired the restoration of the Bourbons: he would have preferred the journalists to remain where[Pg 60] they were rather than have any revolution at all. All revolutions are an interruption of the processes of thought and of the discovery of a New Form … for the novel.
The short book, online and free, is interesting throughout. Ford knew Conrad well, and appreciated him at a deep level.
This should be the headline, one day soon, in a world where these decisions are primarily technical and think long term. At no extra cost, while we wait for lunar landers, Artemis II uncrewed and Artemis III as the first flight of SLS/Orion with crew, would close out all non-lander risk. Artemis IV, with the … Continue reading “Artemis II will launch without crew, and Artemis IV will be the crewed lunar landing”
Both stocks and bonds lost ground on Monday. This pushed mortgage rates up near their highest levels in just over 3 months (because mortgages are based on bond prices). To put the 3-month highs in perspective, today's rates are right in line with those seen 2 weeks ago. [30 year fixed 6.36%] emphasis added
Tuesday:
• At 6:00 AM ET, NFIB Small Business Optimism Index for November.
• At 10:00 AM, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for October from the BLS.
Up, and carrying Gosnell by coach, set her down at Temple Barr, she going about business of hers today. By the way she was telling me how Balty did tell her that my wife did go every day in the week to Court and plays, and that she should have liberty of going abroad as often as she pleased, and many other lies, which I am vexed at, and I doubt the wench did come in some expectation of, which troubles me.
So to the Duke and Mr. Coventry, and alone, the rest being at a Pay and elsewhere, and alone with Mr. Coventry I did read over our letter to my Lord Treasurer, which I think now is done as well as it can be. Then to my Lord Sandwich’s, and there spent the rest of the morning in making up my Lord’s accounts with Mr. Moore, and then dined with Mr. Moore and Battersby his friend, very well and merry, and good discourse. Then into the Park, to see them slide with their skeates, which is very pretty. And so to the Duke’s, where the Committee for Tangier met: and here we sat down all with him at a table, and had much good discourse about the business, and is to my great content. That done, I hearing what play it was that is to be acted before the King to-night, I would not stay, but home by coach, where I find my wife troubled about Gosnell, who brings word that her uncle, justice Jiggins, requires her to come three times a week to him, to follow some business that her mother intrusts her withall, and that, unless she may have that leisure given her, he will not have her take any place; for which we are both troubled, but there is no help for it, and believing it to be a good providence of God to prevent my running behindhand in the world, I am somewhat contented therewith, and shall make my wife so, who, poor wretch, I know will consider of things, though in good earnest the privacy of her life must needs be irksome to her. So I made Gosnell and we sit up looking over the book of Dances till 12 at night, not observing how the time went, and so to prayers and to bed.
I’m working on the 2025 gift guide right now, but I wanted to separately shout-out my favorite gift recommendation of the year: Kelli Anderson’s incredible popup book about typography & the alphabet, Alphabet in Motion (Amazon).
Aging has a funny habit of sneaking in new decisions when no one asks for them, and yet many older adults are navigating these choices with a level of clarity that deserves far more attention. The conversation around healthy independence is changing, not because of flashy trends but because people want to stay in control of their lives without turning daily routines into a project plan. The shift has opened doors to practical tools, smarter support, and better planning that actually lighten the load rather than complicate it.
The Growing Value Of Practical Fitness For Daily Life
Strength training and balance work used to be the thing gyms pushed as optional add ons, but seniors are choosing them for a very different reason. The goal is less about sculpted arms and more about keeping basic mobility comfortable so getting dressed or stepping over a curb does not feel like a chore. Functional training can look like gentle resistance moves, walking short intervals, or practicing controlled motions that mimic everyday tasks. Many older adults say they feel steadier and lighter when they focus on this kind of movement, and that sense of physical confidence carries over into everything from grocery shopping to spending time with grandkids. Small gains matter here because they build momentum without overwhelming anyone with complicated routines.
Indoor wellness programs have also become a reliable anchor, especially for people who prefer consistency over intensity. Water aerobics reduces joint strain, yoga encourages flexibility, and chair based exercise allows participation without pressure. The point is not perfection, it is comfort, and comfort makes people stick with a routine long enough to enjoy the benefits. A body that moves with ease often supports an outlook that feels more open to possibility.
Nutrition That Supports Energy Instead Of Restricting It
Food advice aimed at older adults used to read like a never ending rulebook. That is changing, thankfully, as nutritionists emphasize steady energy and overall nourishment instead of elimination. Seniors gravitate toward balanced meals that keep digestion calm and blood sugar steady, which usually means leaning into protein, fiber, and hydration while enjoying flavors that feel satisfying instead of sparse. Many find that their energy lasts longer when meals follow a predictable rhythm without becoming repetitive.
There is also a growing interest in nutrient density rather than diet culture. Omega rich foods, colorful produce, and fermented ingredients that support gut health have become staples because they help people feel grounded and clear headed. The goal is simple fuel, not complicated formulas that require weighing every part of a meal. When eating well fits naturally into daily life, it becomes far easier to maintain independence with confidence.
Technology Is Becoming A Quiet Partner In Senior Living
Even the most tech resistant individuals have started to notice a shift. Devices are becoming friendlier, designs are less intimidating, and the focus is shifting toward everyday usefulness rather than novelty. Smart medication systems reduce the pressure of remembering doses. Wearable monitors can track heart rate or movement patterns without constant fuss. Voice based interfaces make tasks like setting reminders or adjusting lighting surprisingly easy. These tools support autonomy without drawing attention to themselves, which is exactly why adoption is rising among older adults.
In community settings, innovations are making life smoother for residents who prefer structure without rigidity. Safety sensors, simple video communication systems, and adaptive scheduling tools help maintain normalcy in a way that feels respectful rather than intrusive. When tech in senior living communities is designed with subtlety, seniors feel like they are getting support rather than supervision. The heart of the shift is dignity, and dignity is what keeps people engaged and comfortable in their daily routines.
Financial Planning That Protects Lifelong Independence
Money decisions often land on seniors with all the grace of a falling tree. Retirement income, healthcare expenses, and supplemental coverage can feel tangled, especially when benefits change with little warning. The most successful planners tend to approach the topic early and revisit it often, not because they love spreadsheets but because financial clarity eases stress. Many older adults find that working with specialists who understand retirement age concerns gives them a clearer path toward decisions that preserve their long term comfort.
Some focus on simplifying recurring expenses so daily budgeting does not feel like detective work. Others shift priorities toward investments that create predictable income rather than chasing growth. What matters is that the plan matches the person, not the other way around. Independence does not happen by accident. It grows from steady choices that allow people to live the way they want without second guessing every financial step they take.
Support Systems That Strengthen Autonomy Instead Of Replacing It
Good support has a way of widening a person’s world. Seniors are increasingly drawn to planning tools and professional guidance that protect the life they have built rather than overhaul it. Health coverage assistance is a major part of that trend. Many older adults have learned that Medicare consultants like the ones at Senior Advisors in Scottsdale can save you serious money, especially when benefits feel like they are written in a secret code. Reducing unnecessary spending gives people more bandwidth for things that actually matter to them, from hobbies to travel to simply enjoying a calmer daily rhythm.
Beyond insurance, support comes from transportation services, community engagement programs, and home based resources that keep routines running smoothly. These approaches allow seniors to choose how they want to spend their time rather than being boxed in by logistics. Autonomy grows in spaces where people feel respected and heard, and thoughtful support makes that possible.
Looking Ahead With Confidence
The choices older adults make today are shaping a future where aging feels less like a series of limitations and more like a steady adjustment toward comfort and possibility. Independence thrives when people have the right tools, the right support, and the right information, and those pieces are far more accessible than they once were. There is strength in shaping the next chapter deliberately, and seniors are proving that thoughtful planning can keep life moving in a direction that feels empowered and steady.
College education is a key determinant of political attitudes in the United States and other countries. This paper highlights an important source of variation among college graduates: studying different academic fields has sizable effects on their political attitudes. Using surveys of about 300,000 students across 500 U.S. colleges, we find several results. First, relative to natural sciences, studying social sciences and humanities makes students more left-leaning, whereas studying economics and business makes them more right-leaning. Second, the rightward effects of economics and business are driven by positions on economic issues, whereas the leftward effects of humanities and social sciences are driven by cultural ones. Third, these effects extend to behavior: humanities and social sciences increase activism, while economics and business increase the emphasis on financial success. Fourth, the effects operate through academic content and teaching rather than socialization or earnings expectations. Finally, the implications are substantial. If all students majored in economics or business, the college–noncollege ideological gap would shrink by about one-third. A uniform-major scenario, in which everyone studies the same field, would reduce ideological variance and the gender gap. Together, the results show that academic fields shape students’ attitudes and that field specialization contributes to political fragmentation.
The Dodge Momentum Index (DMI), issued by Dodge
Construction Network, decreased 1.1% in November to 276.8 (2000=100) from the downwardly
revised October reading of 280.0. Over the month, commercial planning ticked down 0.1% and
institutional planning declined by 3.4%. Year-to-date, the DMI is up 36% from the average
reading over the same period in 2024.
“The influx of high-value data center work, compounded by inflationary cost pressures,
continues to support elevated DMI levels,” stated Sarah Martin, Associate Director of
Forecasting at Dodge Construction Network. “Overall, nonresidential construction is expected to
strengthen in 2027, led primarily by data center and healthcare projects. Other nonresidential
sectors are more likely to face softer demand and heightened macroeconomic risks.”
On the commercial side, activity slowed down for warehouses and hotels, while planning
momentum was sustained for data centers, traditional office buildings and retail stores. On the
institutional side, education, healthcare, public and recreational planning saw weaker
momentum, after strong activity in recent months. Planning for religious buildings, however,
continued to accelerate. Year-over-year, the DMI was up 50% when compared to November
2024. The commercial segment was up 57% (+36% when data centers are removed) and the
institutional segment was up 37% over the same period.
...
The DMI is a monthly measure based on the three-month moving value of nonresidential
building projects going into planning, shown to lead construction spending for nonresidential
buildings by a full year to 18 months. emphasis added
Click on graph for larger image.
This graph shows the Dodge Momentum Index since 2002. The index was at 276.8 in November, down from 280.0 the previous month.
According to Dodge, this index leads "construction spending for nonresidential buildings a full year to 18 months".
Commercial construction is typically a lagging economic indicator.
Abstract: In this article, I investigate the hypothesis that the Voynich Manuscript (MS 408, Yale University Beinecke Library) is compatible with being a ciphertext by attempting to develop a historically plausible cipher that can replicate the manuscript’s unusual properties. The resulting ciphera verbose homophonic substitution cipher I call the Naibbe ciphercan be done entirely by hand with 15th-century materials, and when it encrypts a wide range of Latin and Italian plaintexts, the resulting ciphertexts remain fully decipherable and also reliably reproduce many key statistical properties of the Voynich Manuscript at once. My results suggest that the so-called “ciphertext hypothesis” for the Voynich Manuscript remains viable, while also placing constraints on plausible substitution cipher structures.
importaxiosfrom'axios';// Or, less often, dynamically:constaxios=awaitimport('axios');
However, there’s another layer of complexity: import specifiers.
2021: Node.js introduces the node: protocol
I think the first kind of specifier for a real runtime - and I’ll be specific about that because the Webpack bundler supported a tremendous variety of import styles before this - was Node.js, in 2021 when they introduced the node: protocol.
Before the node: protocol was introduced, in Node.js you’d import the OS library like this, by importing a module called os:
importosfrom'os';
After they introduced the node: protocol, you’d do this:
importosfrom'node:os';
This has some benefits:
NPM modules can’t contain the : character, so there can’t be overlap between these node: modules and userspace modules from NPM. So Node.js can introduce more modules in the future without fearing overlap from NPM. Plus, it’s more explicit - you immediately know which modules are from Node.js itself.
Node.js supports both versions still, but there are linter rules like useNodejsImportProtocol to push you to using the node: protocol.
2018: Deno introduces https imports
Deno (a Node alternative) originated from Ryan Dahl (Node’s creator) reflecting on his mistakes and building something new. In his talk 10 Things I Regret about Node.js from 2018, he proposed that defaulting to NPM was bad because it centralized on only one module registry. And then he presented the first look at Deno, which would work with “relative or absolute URLs ONLY.�
From their v1 launch blog post, here’s what importing a module looks like with HTTPS imports:
Sidenote that the main popular language to also feature HTTP imports is the Go language. Here’s what importing the GitHub SDK in Go looks like if you import in a package:
Supporting the NPM ecosystem, which is the largest and most popular registry for JavaScript, was probably a necessity for Deno to have any traction. At this point, Deno did not support package.json, the NPM standard for storing which versions of NPM modules you were using. So compatibility looked like:
Node & Deno: import * from "chalk" only if Deno has an import map. In this case, you need an import map for Deno and a package.json file for Node.js.
Node & Deno: import * from "chalk" with package.json
Deno only:
import * from "https://esm.sh/chalk"
import * from "npm:chalk"
2024: Deno introduces the jsr: protocol
Then Deno introduced JSR, an alternative to NPM. You could import JSR modules a bunch of different ways, but one of them was:
import*aschalkfrom"jsr:@nothing628/chalk";
So now Deno supports three protocols (jsr:, npm:, and node:) and Node supports one (node:).
JSR has been a mixed bag so far,
not clearly ‘better’ than NPM in ways that the community values, and it’s very hard to overcome
the network effects of something like NPM.
Here’s a basic chart of the module specifier situation as of today (December 8, 2025), the best
I can see based on manual testing and reading documentation.
Specifier
Deno
Node
Bun
Val Town
axios
✅ (with deno.lock)
✅
✅
⛔� (no user-provided deno.json/package.json yet)
Note that runtime support trickles into downstream tools. So for example, the TypeScript
compiler targets Node and doesn’t have any support for the npm: protocol, https imports,
or other things that Deno does. The ‘safe subset’ of features for tools is what Node
does, which is bare imports and the node: protocol.
Certainly one of the lessons of the last years for both Deno and Bun is that
in order to compete effectively with Node they need to provide all of the functionality
of Node and then more: there isn’t an angle for support https imports only, as Dahl
optimistically planned in 2018.
Having invested heavily into https imports for Val Town, the state of
play for module import specifiers is pretty important to me, and this is a difficult
ecosystem to play with. The elegance of importing npm:chalk@9 from Deno - specifying
the source, module, and version all in an import string - is super nice. HTTPS imports are
really great in the sense that you don’t need to put everything on a huge filesystem
and you don’t need to publish everything to NPM or create a lot of tarballs.
But the future is unpredictable and sometimes we really take two steps forward and one
step back.
As I was drafting my last piece on Friday, “They have to be able to talk about us without us”, my thoughts of course went to one of the most famous slogans of the disability rights movement, “Nothing about us without us.” I wasn’t unaware that there were similarities in the phrasing of what I wrote. But I think the topic of communicating effectively to groups, as I wrote about the other day, and ensuring that disabled people are centered in disability advocacy, are such different subjects that I didn’t want to just quickly gloss over the topic in a sidebar of a larger piece. They're very distinct topics that really only share a few words in common.
One of the great joys of becoming friends with a number of really thoughtful and experienced disability rights activists over the last several years has been their incredible generosity in teaching me about so much of the culture and history of the movements that they’ve built their work upon, and one of the most powerful slogans has been that refrain of “nothing about us without us”.
Here I should start by acknowledging Alice Wong, who we recently lost, who founded the Disability Visibility Project, and a MacArthur Fellow, and a tireless and inventive advocate for everyone in the disabled community. She was one of the first people to bring me in to learning about this history and these movements, more than a decade ago. She was also a patient and thoughtful teacher, and over our many conversations over the years, she did more than anyone else in my life to truly personify the spirit of “nothing about us without us” by fighting to ensure that disabled people led the work to make the world accessible for all. If you have the chance, learn about her work, and support it.
But a key inflection point in my own understanding of “nothing about us without us” came, unsurprisingly, in the context of how disabled people have been interacting with technology. I used to host a podcast called Function, and we did an episode about how inaccessible so much of contemporary technology has become, and how that kind of ruins things for everyone. (The episode is still up on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.) We had on Emily Ladau of The Accessible Stall podcast, Alex Haagaard of The Disabled List, and Vilissa Thompson of Ramp Your Voice. It’s well worth a listen, and Emily, Alex and Vilissa really do an amazing job of pointing to really specific, really evocative examples of obvious places where today’s tech world could be so much more useful and powerful for everyone if its creators were making just a few simple changes.
What’s striking to me now, listening to that conversation six years later, is how little has changed from the perspective of the technology world, but also how much my own lived experience has come to reflect so much of what I learned in those conversations.
Each of them was the "us" in the conversation, using their own personal experience, and the experience of other disabled people that they were in community with, to offer specific and personal insights that the creators of these technologies did not have. And whether it was for reasons of crass commercial opportunism — here's some money you could be making! — or simply because it was the right thing to do morally, it's obvious that the people making these technologies could benefit by honoring the principle of centering these users of their products.
Taking our turn
I’ve had this conversation on various social media channels in a number of ways over the years, but another key part of understanding the “us” in “nothing about us without us” when it comes to disability, is that the “us” is all of us, in time. It's very hard for many people who haven’t experienced it to understand that everyone should be accommodated and supported, because everyone is disabled; it’s only a question of when and for how long.
In contemporary society, we’re given all kinds of justifications for why we can’t support everyone’s needs, but so much of those are really grounded in simply trying to convince ourselves that a disabled person is someone else, an “other” who isn’t worthy or deserving of our support. I think deep down, everyone knows better. It’s just that people who don’t (yet) identify as disabled don’t really talk about it very much.
In reality, we'll all be disabled. Maybe you're in a moment of respite from it, or in that brief window before the truth of the inevitability of it has been revealed to you (sorry, spoiler warning!), but it's true for all of us — even when it's not visible. That means all of us have to default to supporting and uplifting and empowering the people who are disabled today. This was the key lesson that I didn’t really get personally until I started listening to those who were versed in the history and culture of disability advocacy, about how the patronizing solutions were often harmful, or competing for resources with the right answers.
I’ve had my glimpses of this myself. Back in 2021, I had Lyme disease. I didn’t get it as bad as some, but it did leave me physically and mentally unable to function as I had been used to, for several months. I had some frame of reference for physical weakness; I could roughly compare it to a bad illness like the flu, even if it wasn’t exactly the same. But a diminished mental capacity was unlike anything I had ever experienced before, and was profoundly unsettling, deeply challenging my sense of self. After the incident I’d described in 2022, I had a series of things to recover from physically and mentally that also presented a significant challenge, but were especially tough because so much of people’s willingness to accommodate others is based on any disability being visible. Anything that’s not immediately perceived at a superficial level, or legible to a stranger in a way that’s familiar to them, is generally dismissed or seen as invalid for support.
I point all of this out not to claim that I fully understand the experience of those who live with truly serious disabilities, or to act as if I know what it’s been like for those who have genuinely worked to advocate for disabled people. Instead, I think it can often be useful to show how porous the boundary is between people who don’t think of themselves as disabled and those who already know that they are. And of course this does not mean that people who aren't currently disabled can speak on behalf of those who are — that's the whole point of "nothing about us without us"! — but rather to point out that the time to begin building your empathy and solidarity is now, not when you suddenly have the realization that you're part of the community.
Everything about us
There’s a righteous rage that underlies the cry of “nothing about us without us”, stemming from so many attempts to address the needs of disabled people having come from those outside the community, arriving with plans that ranged from inept to evil. We’re in a moment when the authoritarians in charge in so much of the world are pushing openly-eugenicist agendas that will target disabled people first amongst the many vulnerable populations that they’ll attempt to attack. Challenging economic times like the one we’re in affect disabled people significantly harder as the job market disproportionately shrinks in opportunities for the disabled first.
So it’s going to take all of us standing in solidarity to ensure that the necessary advocacy and support are in place for what promises to be an extraordinarily difficult moment. But I take some solace and inspiration from the fact that there are so many disabled people who have provided us with the clear guidance and leadership we need to navigate this moment. And there is simple guidance we can follow when doing so to ensure that we’re centering the right leaders, by listening to those who said, “nothing about us without us.”
1. New Yorker best films of 2025. The full panoply (not always available to actual viewers in advance) is in fact quite good, once the full list is out.
• About one-third of markets are seeing annual home price declines, while two-thirds are posting gains
• The Northeast and Midwest dominate growth, with 24 of the top 25 markets for annual price gains located there, while all 36 markets with annual declines are in the South and Westbr />
... • New Haven, Conn., leads with prices up +7.3% year-over-year, followed by Syracuse, N. Y. (+7.2%), and Scranton, Pa. (+6.9%). The largest declines are in parts of Florida, Texas, Colorado and California
• Markets are showing signs of rebalancing, with inventory improving in the Northeast and tightening in the South and West
• The 10 hottest markets saw monthly gains below their 12-month averages, hinting at cooler growth ahead, while 27 of 36 markets with annual declines posted adjusted price increases from October to November, signaling modest firming in late 2025 emphasis added
We provide an overview of the explanations for the relative lack of state formation historically in Africa. In doing so we systematically document for the first time the extent to which Africa was politically decentralized, calculating that in 1880 there were probably 45,000 independent polities which were rarely organized on ethnic lines. At most 2% of these could be classified as states. [emphasis added by TC] We advance a new argument for this extreme political decentralization positing that African societies were deliberately organized to stop centralization emerging. In this they were successful. We point out some key aspects of African societies that helped them to manage this equilibrium. We also emphasize how the organization of the economy was subservient to these political goals.
While the bias in acceptance rates towards men in college admissions isn’t news to those who follow this stuff and actually know what they’re talking about, a bunch of people are about to be in for a very rude awakening (boldface mine):
Brown University, one of the most selective institutions in America, attracted nearly 50,000 applicants who vied for just 1,700 freshman seats last year.
The university accepted nearly equal numbers of male and female prospects, though, like some other schools, it got nearly twice as many female applicants. That math meant it was easier for male students to get in — 7 percent of male applicants were admitted, compared with 4.4 percent of female applicants, university data shows.
The Trump administration’s policies may soon put an end to that advantage enjoyed by men at some colleges, admissions and higher-education experts say.
While much of the president’s recent scrutiny of college admissions practices has focused on race, these experts say his ban on diversity, equity and inclusion is likely to hit another underrepresented group of applicants: men, and particularly White men — the largest subset of male college applicants.
“This drips with irony,” said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, or ACE, the nation’s largest association of universities and colleges, who said he expects that colleges and universities will end any consideration of gender in admission. “The idea of males, including White males, being at the short end of the stick all of a sudden would be a truly ironic outcome.”
…Universities are looking at the administration’s edicts “and they’re saying, ‘Well, we’d rather be cautious than stick our neck out’” by continuing to give advantages to male applicants, said ACE’s Mitchell, who was undersecretary of education under President Barack Obama. “I think we will see people dropping gender preferences, even though it is still within the law.”
…Private institutions are allowed to consider gender in admission under Title IX, the federal law otherwise banning discrimination by universities and colleges that get federal funding. That’s due to a loophole dating from when the law was passed, in 1971.
It would be fitting for our times if this somehow was brought before the Supreme Court, and they determine that, of course, one can discriminate against women. No doubt, this also will serve as ‘culture war’ fodder.
Altos reports that active single-family inventory was down 2.7% week-over-week. Inventory usually starts to decline in the fall and then declines sharply during the holiday season.
The first graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015.
Click on graph for larger image.
The red line is for 2025. The black line is for 2019.
Inventory was up 15.3% compared to the same week in 2024 (last week it was up 15.6%), and down 4.1% compared to the same week in 2019 (last week it was down 4.3%).
Inventory started 2025 down 22% compared to 2019. Inventory has closed most of that gap, but it appears inventory will still be below 2019 levels at the end of 2025.
This second inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.
As of December 5th, inventory was at 795 thousand (7-day average), compared to 817 thousand the prior week.
Abstract: This paper examines the authorship of post-publication criticisms in the scientific literature, with a focus on gender differences. Bibliometrics from journals in the natural and social sciences show that comments that criticize or correct a published study are 20% to 40% less likely than regular papers to have a female author. In preprints in the life sciences, prior to peer review, women are missing by 20% to 40% in failed replications compared to regular papers, but they are not missing in successful replications. In an experiment, I then find large gender differences in willingness to point out and penalize a mistake in someone's work.
Agitators in the city have attempted to document the deterioration by posting ominous images of barren casinos, conjuring the perception of a place hollowed out by economic armageddon. The reality is more nuanced, but it is true that practically every conceivable indicator tracking tourism to Las Vegas is flashing warning signs. Hotel occupancy has cratered. Rooms were only 66.7 percent full in July, down by 16.8 percent from the previous year. The number of travelers passing through Harry Reid International Airport also declined by 4.5 percent in 2025 during an ongoing ebb of foreign tourists, for familiar reasons. Canadians, historically one of the city’s most reliable sources of degenerates, have effectively vanished. Ticket sales for Air Canada jets flying to Las Vegas have slipped by 33 percent, while the Edmonton-based low-cost carrier Flair has reported a 62 percent drop-off.
Here is the full story, which shows it is by no means an exclusively Canadian phenomenon. Overall, I am happy to see a shift away from gambling, drinking, and “shows for wealthy old people”?
I finally got to check off the museum that's been top of my want-to-go list since I first started documenting niche museums I've been to back in 2019.
The Museum of Jurassic Technology opened in Culver City, Los Angeles in 1988 and has been leaving visitors confused as to what's real and what isn't for nearly forty years.
We develop a novel approach to measuring long-run economic growth by exploiting systematic variation in the use of color in European paintings. Drawing inspiration from the literature on nighttime lights as a proxy for income, we extract hue, saturation, and brightness from millions of pixels to construct annual indices for Great Britain, Holland, France, Italy, and Germany between 1600 and 1820. These indices track broad trends in existing GDP reconstructions while revealing higher frequency fluctuations – such as those associated with wars, political instability, and climatic shocks – that traditional series smooth over. Our findings demonstrate that light, decomposed into color and brightness components, provides a credible and independent source of information on early modern economic activity.
That is new research by Lars Boerner, Tim Reinicke, Samad Sarferaz, and Battista Severgnini. Via Ethan Mollick.
This view of the seemingly endless expanses of the Chilean Atacama Desert is definitely worth to be today’s Picture of the Week. The silver full Moon shines bright in the beautiful gradient evening sky. Below it, to the right, the giant dome of ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) glows with the golden sunset light.
The ELT is perched atop Cerro Armazones, at an altitude of 3046 m. The dome might look small in the image, but the full 30-minute walk via the set of stairs from the entrance of the dome to its top, indicates its gigantic size: 80 m high and 93 m wide. Weighing about 6100 tonnes, the dome is designed to protect the telescope and its mirrors, including the 39-m wide primary mirror — the biggest eye on the sky.
To the left of Cerro Armazones the last sunbeams of the evening cast a dark triangular shadow: Cerro Paranal, home to ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), from where this picture was taken by Luca Sbordone, ESO staff astronomer. It’s no wonder that this site hosts so many professional telescopes, as it boasts the darkest skies on Earth. Chile is in fact home to all of ESO’s observatories, thanks to a long-lasting partnership that goes back more than 60 years — may it be as timeless and inspiring as this view.
Go’s embed feature lets you bundle static assets into an executable, but it
stores them uncompressed. This wastes space: a web interface with documentation
can bloat your binary by dozens of megabytes. A proposition to optionally
enable compression was declined because it is difficult to handle all use
cases. One solution? Put all the assets into a ZIP archive! 🗜️
Reading from a compressed archive is not as fast as reading a flat file. A
simple benchmark shows it is more than 4× slower. It also allocates some
memory.2
Each access to an asset requires a decompression step, as seen in this flame
graph:
CPU flame graph comparing the time spent on CPU when reading data from embed.zip (left) versus reading data directly (right). Because the Go testing framework executes the benchmark for uncompressed data 4 times more often, it uses the same horizontal space as the benchmark for compressed data. The graph is interactive.
While a ZIP archive has an index to quickly find the requested file, seeking
inside a compressed file is currently not possible.3 Therefore, the files
from a compressed archive do not implement the io.ReaderAt or io.Seeker
interfaces, unlike directly embedded files. This prevents some features, like
serving partial files or detecting MIME types when serving files over HTTP.
For Akvorado, this is an acceptable compromise to save a few mebibytes from an
executable of almost 100 MiB. Next week, I will continue this futile adventure
by explaining how I prevented Go from disabling dead code elimination! 🦥
You can safely read multiple files concurrently. However, it does
not implement ReadDir() and ReadFile() methods. ↩︎
You could keep frequently accessed assets in memory. This
reduces CPU usage and trades cached memory for resident memory. ↩︎
SOZip is a profile that enables fast random access in a compressed
file. However, Go’s archive/zip module does not support it. ↩︎
Sarwagya Singh Kushwaha has become the youngest player in chess history to earn an official FIDE rating at the age of three years, seven months and 20 days.
Born in 2022, Sarwagya — from Sagar in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh — has been rated by FIDE, the international governing body of chess, which requires a player to score points against at least five rated opponents in official events.
The toddler’s first rating of 1572 is considerably above the minimum rating of 1,400, having won five of his eight rated matches. As detailed by chess.com, Sarwagya’s victories have come against opponents including 22-year-old Abhijeet Awasthi (FIDE-rated 1542), 29-year-old Shubham Chourasiya (1559) and 20-year-old Yogesh Namdev (1696).
Sarwagya has broken the record held by another Indian child, Anish Sarkar, who set it at three years, eight months and 19 days old, in November 2024.
Oil prices were up over the last week with WTI futures at $60.11 per barrel and Brent at $63.76 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $69, and Brent was at $74 - so WTI oil prices are down about 15% year-over-year.
Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $2.90 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $2.97 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.07 year-over-year.
Market Design
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