Hollis Robbins on AI and higher education

There’s a growing idea I’ve seen in some circles that college could be replaced by conversations between an A.I. tutor and a student. When I think about your model, I wonder why college even needs to exist. If I can just seek out a tutor, somebody that I like, and they just charge me a little bit, and we go through these edge-knowledge cases together, what’s the degree for? Couldn’t you, as Hollis Robbins—not only a specialist in African American sonnet traditions but also an idiosyncratic thinker on the subject of A.I. and the future of the academy—just set up your own shop?

I was in Austin, Texas, a couple of times in March with a bunch of twenty-five-year-old billionaires. This is what they’re looking at. Instead of having the credential from the institution, why not have the credential from the professor? If you have a Hollis Robbins education, what would that signal? What would that credential mean as opposed to a degree from a university? There was some conversation about what that would look like, and one guy at the end of the dinner said, “Instead of OnlyFans, it’s like OnlyProfessors.”

Here is much more from The New Yorker.

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Legal Protections Following a Collision With a Roadside Service Truck

Roadside assistance vehicles operate in high risk zones where visibility is often compromised by traffic or lighting. These heavy trucks are frequently stationary while surrounding cars move at high speeds, creating a dangerous disparity in momentum. The margin for error is incredibly small.

Every year, motorists fail to account for the presence of these service crews on the shoulder. Whether due to distracted driving or poor judgment, the resulting impacts are catastrophic. These incidents happen in the blink of an eye, leaving victims with life altering injuries and significant financial burdens.

When a crash involving a tow truck  or service vehicle occurs, the legal implications are highly specific. Many people find it helpful to consult with a Dallas truck accident lawyer to navigate the complex insurance layers and safety regulations that apply to these commercial operators.

The Impact of Move Over Statutes on Driver Liability

Most states have enacted specific safety laws that require drivers to vacate the lane closest to any stationary vehicle with flashing lights. These rules are designed to create a buffer zone for workers who are exposed to the flow of traffic. Ignoring these laws is a serious offense.

If a driver stays in the lane and strikes a service truck, their failure to move over is a primary indicator of negligence. Evidence from highway cameras or witness accounts can quickly establish that the driver had the opportunity to switch lanes. This violation simplifies the recovery process.

These statutes apply to a wide range of vehicles, including tow trucks and utility vans. Respecting the flashing amber or blue lights is a fundamental duty of every person on the road. When this duty is ignored, the law provides a clear path for holding the driver accountable.

Operator Negligence and Failures in Vehicle Recovery

Service operators also have a professional responsibility to follow strict safety protocols during a recovery. This includes using proper signaling and setting up reflective cones to warn oncoming traffic. Failing to provide adequate warning is a form of negligence that puts everyone at risk.

The mechanical process of towing also requires precision to prevent a secondary crash. If a car is not properly hitched, it can break loose and become a projectile on the highway. Using worn out straps or incorrect attachment points is a sign of poor training.

Operators must also be extremely cautious when merging back into active traffic lanes. Their heavy vehicles accelerate slowly and have large blind spots. A sudden move without checking for clearance can force other drivers to swerve, leading to a multi vehicle pileup in seconds.

Sorting Through Complex Insurance and Employment Status

The business structure of a roadside assistance company often determines which insurance policy covers a crash. Some tow trucks are part of large national networks with substantial corporate coverage. Others are operated by independent contractors who may have much smaller individual liability limits.

Large corporations frequently attempt to distance themselves from an accident by claiming the driver was a third party agent. This legal tactic is used to shield the parent company from direct financial responsibility. Uncovering the true nature of the employment relationship is vital.

Determining who is actually responsible requires a thorough review of contracts and payment records. A detailed investigation ensures that the claim is filed against the right entity. This step is essential for securing a settlement that covers all current and future medical expenses.

Investigating Mechanical Integrity and Professional Training

Commercial service vehicles must undergo rigorous inspections to ensure their hydraulics and braking systems are in top condition. A failure in a tow arm or a winch can lead to a loss of control during a vehicle recovery. Maintenance logs are critical pieces of evidence.

Proper training is equally important for staff who must operate heavy machinery in high stress environments. Companies have a duty to ensure their employees understand how to handle different vehicle weights and weather conditions. A lack of preparation leads to preventable and tragic errors.

If a company sends an untrained technician into a dangerous situation, they are liable for the outcome. Negligent hiring practices and a failure to supervise staff are serious issues in the industry. Proving these systemic failures is the key to achieving a fair and just resolution.

Conclusion

The safety of everyone on the highway depends on a shared commitment to caution and awareness. Motorists must respect the space needed by roadside service crews, and operators must follow every protocol. When these standards are ignored, the consequences for victims are often devastating.

Holding negligent parties accountable is the most effective way to drive meaningful improvements in industry safety. It ensures that corporations prioritize the well being of the public over their own bottom line. Legal action provides the necessary leverage to enforce these high standards.

Achieving a successful outcome provides a sense of closure and the financial support needed for a full recovery. By focusing on the facts and the law, victims can overcome the hurdles of a complex claim. Accountability makes the roads a safer environment for everyone.

photo: Wolfgang Vrede via Pexels


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What to Know About Open-Source LMS Platforms Before Choosing

Choosing an open-source learning management system platform is not a decision to be taken lightly. The right selection ensures the achievement of the educational or training objectives effectively. An awareness of the essential considerations of these platforms will help organizations be more informed in their decisions. Before deciding on a solution, you should also factor in the following key considerations.

Cost Considerations

Open source LMS platforms, like Moodle LMS , came into the picture primarily due to the fact that they did not impose any licensing fee. Organizations can use and tailor the software without ongoing expenses. Compared to most commercial alternatives, the savings can be substantial. But then some additional costs can pop up, like hosting, support, development, etc. Allocating a budget for training, customization, and recurrent updates, if any, prevents sudden financial hiccups.

Support and Community Involvement

In most cases, the support for open-source LMS platforms comes from a strong user community. A lot of useful resources, like forums, online groups, and documentation, help you in fixing problems or learning a new feature. Support from the community encourages collaboration and constant development. That said, prompt help may not always be available. Some organizations may invest in additional professional support services, which may provide more peace of mind.

Security and Data Privacy

When choosing a solution for hosting educational content and user data, security is a prime consideration. Open-source  code transparency and thorough peer review help discover and reveal vulnerabilities more quickly. Countless contributors also regularly update and patch it. Even so, the organization is still responsible for implementing security controls. Continuous monitoring and updating, as necessary, are critical to protecting sensitive information.

Integration and Compatibility

Most modern learner environments tend to have integrations with external tools/platforms. Open-source LMS solutions generally come with plenty of add-ons and plugin support. Integration with external platforms like conferencing or assessment tools expands teaching options. Organizations must explore the integrations these tools offer and ensure they fit into the existing workflows before finalizing their selection.

Scalability and Performance

Your selected LMS should be scalable to accommodate more activity for current and new users without lagging. Not all open-source platforms scale as demand grows. It is better to identify potential performance bottlenecks upfront, which can save time and effort to a large extent later on. Load testing guarantees that the system you will be using will always be able to sustain the maximum number of users that you expect.

Security and Data Privacy

When choosing a platform to host content and user information, security is a pivotal aspect. The beauty of open-source code is that it is transparent, which means vulnerabilities are often highlighted quickly by peers. Dedicated contributors often release frequent updates and patches. However, an organization is ultimately responsible for implementing security measures, even with SSTP.

Integration and Compatibility

Integration with other tools or platforms is often a necessity for modern learning environments. Open-source LMS solutions often support a broad range of add-ons and plugins. Integrations with third-party systems, such as video conferencing or assessment tools, expand what is possible in terms of instruction. Organizations should explore possible integrations with existing workflows before they select the right platform.

Ease of Use and Training

LMS should be easily understandable by instructors and learners alike. Easy-to-use interfaces reduce the training time and help in avoiding frustration. Thorough docs and tutorials empower new users to be independent. On the downside, due to its open-source nature, the design would possibly be less aesthetic than the commercial solution. While it seems counterintuitive, spending more time training users beforehand may actually lessen the number of support requests and increase satisfaction.

Conclusion

Selecting an open-source LMS platform is about more than comparing features. There are multiple factors like flexibility, cost, support, security, integration, scalability, ease of use, and maintenance. These features may or may not work for your organization. Ultimately, you must decide what is best for your organization based on your considerations/resources.

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Skincare Habits That May Be Aging Your Skin Faster Than You Realize

Many people focus heavily on buying new skincare products while overlooking the everyday habits that quietly affect skin health over time. Premature aging is often associated with genetics or major environmental damage, but smaller routine behaviors frequently influence skin texture, hydration, elasticity, and overall appearance much more than people realize. Inconsistent care, excessive irritation, and chronic stress on the skin barrier can gradually create visible changes long before people recognize the underlying cause.

This is one reason skincare conversations have become increasingly focused on prevention and consistency rather than quick fixes alone. More consumers now understand that healthy-looking skin usually comes from long-term habits that support recovery, hydration, and barrier protection instead of constantly overwhelming the skin with aggressive treatments or trend-driven routines.

Overusing Harsh Products Can Damage the Skin Barrier

One of the most common mistakes people make is assuming stronger products automatically create better results. Over-exfoliating, layering too many active ingredients, or using overly harsh cleansers can gradually weaken the skin barrier, leading to irritation, dryness, inflammation, and increased sensitivity over time.

As a result, many skincare routines now emphasize calming and restorative products rather than constant exfoliation or aggressive correction. Collections connected to Neurogan  show the broader interest in topical wellness products designed to support comfort, hydration, and skin balance. Many consumers increasingly prioritize ingredients and routines that help reduce stress on the skin instead of repeatedly overstimulating it.

Inconsistent Hydration Often Accelerates Visible Aging

Hydration strongly affects how smooth, firm, and healthy skin appears throughout the day. When the skin becomes chronically dehydrated, fine lines often appear more noticeable, texture may become rougher, and overall radiance tends to diminish gradually over time.

This is why serums designed around moisture retention and skin support continue attracting attention within modern skincare routines. Products such as anti aging serum for face  can help consumers increasingly prioritize hydration-focused skincare that supports elasticity and long-term skin appearance rather than relying entirely on temporary cosmetic effects. Consistent hydration often influences skin quality more visibly than people initially expect.

Poor Sleep Habits Affect Skin Recovery

Photograph illustrating this sponsored article
Photo by Content Pixie on Unsplash

Many people underestimate how closely skin health connects to sleep quality and nighttime recovery. During sleep, the body naturally repairs stress-related damage and supports processes tied to hydration, circulation, and skin regeneration. Chronic sleep disruption often contributes to dullness, puffiness, dryness, and visible fatigue over time.

This is one reason skincare increasingly overlaps with broader wellness conversations. Stress management, sleep routines, hydration, and overall recovery habits all influence how skin responds long-term. Even expensive skincare products often struggle to compensate fully for persistent exhaustion or chronic stress placed on the body daily.

Sun Exposure Continues Being One of the Biggest Factors

Despite growing awareness around skincare, many people still underestimate how strongly daily sun exposure contributes to premature aging. Fine lines, uneven pigmentation, texture changes, and collagen breakdown are frequently linked to long-term UV exposure accumulated gradually over many years.

According to American Academy of Dermatology, daily sun protection remains one of the most important factors in reducing visible premature skin aging. Even relatively small amounts of repeated exposure can gradually affect skin appearance significantly over time if protection habits remain inconsistent.

Constant Product Switching Creates Skin Stress

Another increasingly common skincare mistake is constantly changing products in response to trends or short-term expectations. Social media often encourages rapid experimentation with multiple ingredients and routines simultaneously, which can overwhelm the skin and make it difficult to identify what actually works effectively.

Many dermatology professionals now recommend simpler, more consistent routines built around long-term support instead of constantly introducing new active ingredients unnecessarily. Skin generally responds better to stability and gradual improvement than repeated cycles of irritation followed by recovery attempts.

Healthy-Looking Skin Usually Comes From Consistency

One of the biggest misconceptions in skincare is that dramatic results require highly complicated routines. In reality, healthy-looking skin often depends more on consistent daily habits than extreme treatments alone. Gentle cleansing, hydration, sun protection, stress reduction, and barrier support usually create stronger long-term improvement than constantly chasing fast results.

This is why many modern skincare routines are becoming more balanced and wellness-focused overall. Consumers increasingly want products and habits that support comfort, hydration, and long-term skin health instead of routines that feel harsh or emotionally exhausting to maintain. The habits that protect skin best are often the quieter ones repeated consistently over time rather than the most aggressive or trend-driven solutions available online.

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Who Really Benefits When Private Space Companies Get Public Money

The standard story goes like this. American taxpayers fund NASA. NASA hands contracts to private companies. Private companies innovate faster than the government could on its own. Everyone wins. It is a tidy narrative. It is also missing the most important details about where the money actually ends up and who gets to call the shots once the wire transfers clear.

The Scale of the Transfer

Start with the numbers, because the numbers are the story.

SpaceX alone has received more than $15 billion in NASA contracts over the past decade. The Department of Defense has added billions more for launch services, classified payload missions, and Starshield, a military variant of the Starlink satellite constellation. The Federal Communications Commission at one point approved Starlink for nearly a billion dollars in rural broadband subsidies before reversing course under public pressure. Add in tax abatements at launch sites in Texas and Florida, free use of federally maintained infrastructure, and the value of regulatory accommodations, and the public investment in one company climbs higher still.

These are not loans. They are payments and benefits that have helped transform a private company into one of the most valuable enterprises on the planet. The growing speculation around the spacex ipo  tells you what investors already know. Public contracts built a private fortune.

The question worth asking is not whether SpaceX delivered on those contracts. By most measures, it did. The question is who actually benefits from this arrangement once the contract is signed, and who carries the risk when something goes wrong.

A Familiar Pattern Wearing a New Uniform

Defense contractors have run this playbook for decades. Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon have spent generations turning government dependence into private wealth while convincing the public that the relationship runs the other way around. DCReport has documented how defense contractors milk the Pentagon , a quiet practice that costs taxpayers hundreds of billions over the life of programs like the F-35.

The new generation of private space companies has adapted that playbook. The branding is different. The faces are younger. The press coverage is friendlier. But the financial mechanics are recognisable to anyone who has watched defense spending for the past forty years.

Government contracts private space companies receive come with several familiar features. Cost-plus structures that protect the contractor from losses. Reimbursement for research the company keeps as proprietary. Limited public access to financial data because the company itself is private. And a revolving door between NASA, the Pentagon, and the executive suites of the companies receiving the money.

The Workers Who Built It

There is also the matter of who, exactly, made the technology work.

The Falcon 9 is often described as a triumph of private engineering. Much of the underlying knowledge came out of decades of NASA research, paid for by taxpayers and made available to SpaceX engineers through technology transfer agreements, hired former NASA employees, and open scientific literature. The same is true for the heat shielding work behind Dragon, the engine technology behind Raptor, and the orbital mechanics that make reusable rockets possible.

This is not a knock on SpaceX engineers, who solved real problems in real time. It is a recognition that the foundation was paid for by the public before the first SpaceX rocket left the ground. When private space executives talk about disrupting a “stagnant” NASA, they are taking credit for a body of work they inherited.

Where the Money Concentrates

Look at how the dollars move once they leave the federal treasury.

A portion goes to launch crews, technicians, machinists, and engineers. Real workers doing real work for real wages. That part of the equation deserves credit. But a much larger portion flows into corporate equity, where it concentrates dramatically. Elon Musk’s net worth has grown roughly in line with the value of SpaceX, which has grown roughly in line with its federal contract pipeline. The wealth created by public money does not stay public.

Compare this to how a publicly funded NASA program distributed money in earlier eras. Apollo employed roughly 400,000 people directly and indirectly. The benefits flowed out across the workforce, the supply chain, and the broader economy. The current model concentrates wealth at the top of a much smaller corporate structure, with shareholders and founders capturing the upside.

This is not an argument against private space contracts. It is an argument for being honest about who the contracts actually enrich.

The Accountability Gap

There is a structural problem with handing public functions to private companies. The accountability gap.

When NASA ran the Space Shuttle program, the failure of Challenger triggered a presidential commission, congressional hearings, and a transparent public reckoning with what went wrong. When a SpaceX rocket fails, the company decides what to share, when, and with whom. Internal investigations are not subject to FOIA. Engineering decisions are protected by trade secret law. Even fatal incidents at SpaceX facilities have been slower to surface than they would have been inside a government agency.

The Federal Aviation Administration has struggled to maintain oversight of commercial launches, particularly at Boca Chica in Texas, where Starship test flights have caused environmental damage and prompted lawsuits from local communities. Musk has publicly criticised the FAA for its review timelines and has called for “comprehensive deregulation” of commercial space activity. His political endorsements during the 2024 election cycle, covered in Musk’s Trump endorsement implications , came with explicit policy expectations attached.

Private companies have a legitimate right to argue for the regulations they prefer. The public has a legitimate right to ask what happens to safety oversight when one of the largest recipients of federal contracts also has the political leverage to shape the rules that govern him.

Who Is Not at the Table

Worth listing the parties who are not represented when these contracts get negotiated.

The taxpayers who fund them have no direct seat. Congress provides authorisation but rarely scrutinises specific awards. Local communities living near launch sites, who absorb the noise, environmental impact, and occasional debris from failed launches, are not consulted in any meaningful way. Workers at the contractors, who do the technical work that makes the contracts possible, have no role in negotiating the terms. The scientific community, which provided the foundational research, has no claim to the commercial upside.

The parties at the table are NASA procurement officers, Defense Department acquisition staff, and the executive teams at the contracting companies. The shareholders sit just behind them. The political donors sit slightly further behind, but close enough to be heard.

What a Better Bargain Could Look Like

None of this requires ending commercial space contracts. Private competition has lowered launch costs and accelerated innovation. Those are real gains. The question is whether the public is getting fair value in exchange for what it puts in.

A more honest bargain might include several things the current system avoids. Equity stakes for the government when public contracts create durable private valuation. Mandatory disclosure of financial data once federal contracts exceed a certain threshold, even for privately held companies. Clawback provisions when contractors break safety regulations or environmental commitments. Worker protections that apply across the entire contractor workforce, not just the corporate office. And political activity disclosures that match the scale of the public dependency.

These are not radical ideas. Variants of them exist in countries that fund private aerospace work through different structures. They are, however, ideas that would meet aggressive opposition from the companies currently benefiting most from the existing arrangement.

The Bottom Line

When the next major private space company files for its public offering, expect the headlines to focus on valuation, founders, and market potential. Expect less coverage of how much taxpayer money went into building the company, what oversight gaps allowed it to grow, and which workers and communities are not sharing in the upside they helped create.

That is the missing part of the story. It is also the only part that determines whether the public-private space bargain is working for the public or just working past it.

photo: SpaceX via Pexels


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OH Canada: Can the Stanley Cup Curse Be Broken this Year?

It’s quite clear that there has been a lot of political sniping between Canada and the United States over the past couple of years. The back and forth with tariffs and reneging on trade deals , all of this talk of a 51 st  state, and other factors have all caused frictions not seen in a lifetime.

Of course, away from the murky depths of social media and the brinkmanship between Washington and Ottawa, things are less fractious, even in the arena of sports, where the sniping between Americans and Canadians has mostly been a friendly rivalry going back decades.

Still, in Canada’s favorite sport, ice hockey, the fans south of the border have a ready-made riposte every time the bickering gets too heated – No Canadian team has won the Stanley Cup since 1993 . It’s 33 years and counting, and it is now being viewed as something akin to a curse.

Canada’s NHL curse feels unique

“Curses” are part and parcel of sports, of course. The long-suffering Boston Red Sox fans had to deal with the Curse of the Bambino for over 80 years before breaking it in 2004. A similar drought happened in Chicago with the Cubs. And in Buffalo, well, the city is deemed one of the unluckiest in its attempt to bring home a major sports championship.

Yet, this is an entire nation in what is deemed its national sport. Technically, lacrosse is the official national sport of Canada since 1859, but it’s evident that ice hockey is more popular. Regardless, it has become a painfully long wait.

The NHL Playoffs are taking place right now, so there is a chance that we will see the curse broken in the coming two months. Yet, it is once again an American team, the Colorado Avalanche, that is cited as the favorite in the Stanley Cup odds with DraftKings sportsbook . The Carolina Hurricanes, Tampa Bay Lightning and Vegas Golden Knights round out the top four in the betting.

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The Oilers had chances in 2024 and 2025

The Edmonton Oilers – beaten finalists in 2025 and 2024 – will probably be viewed as the most likely to beat the curse this season. It’s evident that the team is not as cohesive as it has been in the past couple of seasons. The worry is that the team starts to decline, and the mid-2020s will be looked back upon as a golden opportunity – the Florida Panthers won both Stanley Cups – that was let slip.

The Montreal Canadiens – the most successful team in NHL history and the last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup – also remain in the mix, though Montreal’s odds would suggest the team is a middle-ground outsider. The Ottawa Senators need a miracle to get back into contention , down 3-0 in the series with Carolina.

A word to finish, too, on the Buffalo Sabres. As mentioned earlier, Buffalo has its own sports curse, mostly centered on the Bills’ travails and ill luck in the NFL. But the Sabres are back in the NHL Playoffs, and going nicely. The Sabres have not been in a Stanley Cup Final since the 1980s – and have never won one – so it would be nice to see the team break the city’s long championship drought. It’s not certain it would be celebrated in Canada, though.


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NASA’s Perseverance Captures Panorama at ‘Arbot’

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NASA’s Perseverance Captures Panorama at ‘Arbot’

Undulating terrain of reddish-brown soil and loose rocks stretches toward a rugged horizon. The sky above is hazy and pale. The image’s bottom edge is a jagged black border, indicating the edges of the frames stitched together to create the mosaic.
PIA26753
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

Description

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used its Mastcam-Z camera to capture this panorama of an area nicknamed “Arbot” on April 5, 2026, the 1,882nd Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater. Made of 46 images, the panorama offers one of the richest geological vistas of the mission, revealing a windswept landscape of diverse rock textures. This is an enhanced-color version, which had its color bands processed to improve visual contrast and accentuate color differences.

Undulating terrain of reddish-brown soil and loose rocks stretches toward a rugged horizon. The sky above is hazy and pale. The image’s bottom edge is a jagged black border, indicating the edges of the frames stitched together to create the mosaic.
Figure A

Figure A is a natural-color version of the mosaic.

Undulating terrain of reddish-brown soil and loose rocks stretches toward a rugged horizon. The sky above is hazy and pale. The image’s bottom edge is a jagged black border, indicating the edges of the frames stitched together to create the mosaic.
Figure B

Figure B is a 3D anaglyph version designed for use with red-blue glasses. It is composed of 92 images collected by Mastcam-Z.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover. Arizona State University leads the operations of the Mastcam-Z instrument, working in collaboration with Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego, on the design, fabrication, testing, and operation of the cameras, and in collaboration with the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen on the design, fabrication, and testing of the calibration targets.

For more about Perseverance: science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/

The post NASA’s Perseverance Captures Panorama at ‘Arbot’ appeared first on NASA Science.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Snaps Westernmost Selfie

2 Min Read

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Snaps Westernmost Selfie

The head of a robotic rover looks down at a rocky outcrop in the foreground. The dusty, orange-red Martian surface stretches away toward the crater rim in the distance. The Sun seems to bloom in a hazy sky.
PIA26752

Description

NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on March 11, 2026, the 1,797th Martian day, or sol, of the mission, during the rover’s deepest push west beyond Jezero Crater. Assembled from 61 individual images, the selfie shows Perseverance training its mast on the “Arethusa” rocky outcrop after creating a whitish circular abrasion patch. The crater’s western rim of Jezero Crater is visible in the background.

The head of a robotic rover looks toward the viewer, above a rocky outcrop in the foreground. The dusty, orange-red Martian surface stretches away toward the crater rim in the distance. The Sun seems to bloom in a hazy sky.
Figure A

Figure A is a version of the selfie in which the rover appears to be looking at the camera.

The head of a robotic rover looks down at a rocky outcrop in the foreground. The dusty, orange-red Martian surface stretches away toward the crater rim in the distance. The Sun seems to bloom in a hazy sky.
Animation (.gif)

Here is a GIF combining the main image and Figure A, in which the rover appears to look up and down.

The selfie is composed of images taken by the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the end of the rover’s robotic arm. The images were stitched together after being sent back to Earth.

WATSON is part of an instrument called SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals). WATSON was built by Malin Space Science Systems (MSSS) in San Diego and is operated jointly by MSSS and JPL.

The rover’s process for taking a selfie is explained in this video.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for the agency by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

For more about Perseverance:

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/

The post NASA’s Perseverance Rover Snaps Westernmost Selfie appeared first on NASA Science.

Tuesday assorted links

1. Is it too expensive to sell a house? (NYT)

2. Sumner on Halperin on macro.

3. Why progress under Milei has stalled (WSJ).

4. Why is Latin America so violent?

5. Diet Coke parties are the rage in India.

6. Optimizing AI models for creativity.  “They simply have not done it yet” is one of the most useful phrases to keep in your mind these days.

7. Yes there is a European productivity crisis.

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The Virginia Microcosm

Kate Riga has a good summary of the stakes Democrats currently face in Virginia. There’s a way to reverse the state Supreme Court’s decision tossing out the majority statewide vote supporting the new Dem-friendly districts. It involves intense political hardball. But it’s the same kind of political hardball Democrats will need to embrace at the national level in 2028-29 with a trifecta if there’s any hope on turning the tide against Trumpism. So Virginia will give us some view into what kinds of fights Democrats are ready for.

The US-Iran War Groundhog Day

Again we see that, contrary to numerous press reports, the U.S. and Iran remain lightyears apart in their on-again, off-again negotiations to end their war. Iran’s demands, its response to Trump’s latest proposal, amount to a maximal package of winnings for a war Iran won: an end to the decades-long sanctions regime, sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, reparations. It is true that antagonists can sometimes seem very, very far apart and then suddenly arrive at an agreement. But these two sides seem really, really far apart.

One key dynamic appears to be almost entirely what we might call a weather pattern inside Donald Trump’s brain, which is increasingly the only venue that matters in anything to do with policy in the United States. Trump really, really, really wants out of this conflict. I mean, really wants out. He’s made that super clear to everyone by his actions. That gives Iran the whip hand in every negotiation.

But though Trump really, really wants out, he is also unable to suck it up and do the things he’d need to do to get out. He keeps saying an agreement is super close. He’s trying to manifest an agreement into being. Then you have moments like yesterday when the disconnect between Trump Hype World and the real world break into view: they’re nowhere close. He wants out desperately. But the price of getting out, at least for the moment, would involve an abject humiliation and thus for him a kind of ego death. So he’s stuck. And therefore so is everyone else.

Many of us in the United States both see Trump’s situation more clearly and we care a lot more about it, inasmuch as Trump’s situation is the situation of the country, even if many of us understand that equation in inverse terms. That can make it hard for us to see just how bad a situation the Iranian government is in, with catastrophic levels of economic damage that will be very hard for the state to emerge from without severe challenges to its rule.

Still, the U.S. Intelligence Community is telling the White House that Iran can probably hold out for three or four more months. Can Trump hold out that long? Can he handle $5 gas in September? I’m really skeptical. Iran thinks it can hold out longer than Trump can and there’s a good chance they’re right, even if Trump’s calculus is an electoral one.

TPM Wins 2026 New York Press Club Award for Undocumented Underground Series

TPM’s own Hunter Walker has won a 2026 New York Press Club award for his seven-part investigative series delving into the impact of President Trump’s mass deportation agenda in New York, the U.S. city with the greatest population of immigrants, and which has seen the highest number of violent courthouse detentions. 

Over two months in New York City’s federal courts, churches, and safe houses, Hunter spoke to more than 50 migrants, organizers, ICE agents and lawmakers, including then-mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani and Reps. Dan Goldman and Nydia Velasquez (D-NY). At the heart of the series are the New Yorkers, many of them volunteers, operating in secret to protect and serve their immigrant neighbors. 

Hunter’s series, brought to life with original illustrations from Salvadoran artist Jennifer Dahbura, focused on what he calls the “modern underground railroad” working to provide food, clothing, legal assistance and court support to New York City’s immigrants. He introduces us to pastors operating out of churches that were used by abolitionists during the 19th century and are now opening their doors to migrants fleeing ICE raids. At a “Welcome Center” in Manhattan, we find a volunteer barbershop for young West African food delivery workers who organizers call “the forgotten migrants.” Inside Goldman’s office, a family tearfully reunites after their son is released from detention thanks to the efforts of organizers and the congressman’s staff. 

It’s fitting that Hunter won the Press Club’s Rev. Mychal Judge Heart of New York award, which recognizes journalism that celebrates the people and spirit of New York City. His individual stories celebrate the best of TPM’s hometown and give readers an intimate look at some of the millions of lives upended by the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crusade. 

If you missed it when it first ran, you can check out the full Undocumented Underground series here. And it goes without saying, but this kind of in-depth original reporting, which requires a lot of time and resources, is only possible with your support. To support TPM and see more work like this, please consider becoming a member

Heather Cox Richardson Talks to Kate and Josh About What It’s Like to Cover the News Now and the Future of Independent Media

Independent media can feel like an isolating place. Most of us operate as individuals or in small newsrooms with limited resources, throwing spaghetti at the wall to try to reach new audiences and get our stories in front of people in an ever-more-consolidated media environment.

But we’re in this together, as celebrated historian and writer Heather Cox Richardson reminded us in a generous live interview with TPM’s Kate Riga and Josh Marshall this afternoon. 

HCR had Josh and Kate on to talk about what it’s like to report on today’s frenetic politics; the founding and future of TPM; and what independent media will look like in the years to come.

She also showered us with some blush-inducing praise, telling Josh that he’s the “reason I got involved in digital media” and Kate that if her “name is on something, I drop everything and read it.” Of TPM, she said: “It’s been such an important outlet for a quarter century now and I certainly couldn’t live without you all.”

Check out the full conversation to learn more about Kate’s first job and reporting process; why our current media moment reminds HCR of that of the muckrakers of the 1890s; and how ordinary people can push back on authoritarianism.

VA Democrats Should Remove the VA Supreme Court, Even If It Will Not Save Redistricting

Yesterday, Virginia state Democrats joined the milquetoast caucus:

Top Virginia Democrats have decided against exercising a controversial procedural end run around last week’s state Supreme Court ruling that struck down their redistricting, which wiped away a gain of four House seats, the Democratic leader of the state Senate told The New Republic.

The decision—which nixes a complicated idea, discussed over the weekend by Democrats, to replace the state Supreme Court and get the case reheard—is likely to anger rank-and-file Democrats who had hoped the party would respond aggressively to the ruling, which has made it more likely that Republicans hold the House this fall.

This is the part that should upset rank-and-file Democrats (boldface mine):

“As a practical matter,” Virginia’s state Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell said in an interview, the move “would not be capable of being implemented” given the “time frame.”

…Surovell insisted in an interview with The New Republic that the plan is unworkable. He cited a May 12 deadline set by the state Department of Elections for having congressional maps entered into the state’s election system. That’s necessary in order to be prepared for the congressional primaries set for August 1, for which early voting starts in mid-June.

That May 12 deadline would not leave enough time to execute the end run, Surovell said. The tactic would involve state legislative votes lowering the retirement age for judges followed by a new hearing of the case and other associated procedural arcana.

In a revelation that will dismay a lot of Democrats, the problem appears to be that the voting system has not been updated recently enough to make faster entry of the new maps possible (it’s currently being updated). If this ends up costing Democrats the House—which is unlikely but not impossible—the recriminations will be severe.

“Because the technology is so old, it takes a lot of time to input new districts into the computers, to ensure that people are assigned the correct ballots and that voting is not completely chaotic in November,” Surovell told me…

Surovell said that practical considerations weren’t the only thing motivating the decision not to exercise the retirement-age tactic. “Wiping out the entire Supreme Court is an incredibly extreme step to take over a decision you don’t like,” Surovell said…

Still, many Democrats will look at this situation and note that Republicans keep finding ways around procedural obstacles, while Democrats keep getting stymied by them. After the U.S. Supreme Court killed the protection against racial gerrymanders, it took Tennessee only a few days to wipe out a Democratic district by carving up the Black population in Memphis.

We will leave aside the reality that Virginia Democrats did not have a plan for dealing with the Virginia Supreme Court (though it will become obvious what it should have been). But Surovell* makes a fundamental error here: he assumes this awful decision will be the last awful decision the Virginia Supreme Court, as currently constituted, will make. Based on their recent decision, it certainly will not be the only bad decision it will hand down. And now the Virginia Supreme Court knows that Virginia Democrats will do nothing to stop them, so they will have no incentive to stop; they likely will be emboldened.

This is to say that Virginia Democrats should remove the Virginia Supreme Court on the basis of malfeasance, even if it will not fix this problem, because it will certainly prevent future problems that would have been created by this court. It is time for the courts to experience some checks and balances too, especially when the fight against fascism demands it.

And Virginia Democratic primary voters have an important role to play here (and this is a point that generalizes nationally). Democratic primary voters (which includes me too!) must start disciplining Democratic officials to the point where they are afraid to not use constitutional hardball to stop the fascists. As long as the milquetoast caucus keeps winning primary elections, they have no reason to change. Democratic primary voters can and have enforced party discipline on a few issues, such as basic abortion rights. While some Democratic officials might not be stalwarts on this issue, only a handful break at all from the party line—because if they do, they know they will be dead meat in their next primary.

It is time for Democratic primary voters to push their officials to fight–and fight to win.

*For what it is worth, autocorrect changes “Surovell” to “Shrivel.” Make of that what you will.

Live coverage: NASA, SpaceX to launch 34th Cargo Dragon mission to the space station

A SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft, tail number C209, is seen atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: SpaceX

SpaceX is getting ready to launch a Cargo Dragon loaded with 6,500 pounds of science and supplies to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Tuesday evening, weather permitting.

Liftoff of the CRS-34 mission, atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40), is scheduled for precisely 7:16:31 p.m. EDT (2316:31 UTC), with the rocket flying on a northeasterly trajectory to target a rendezvous with the orbiting space station. SpaceX’s 34th mission for NASA as part of its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff.

The 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 35 percent chance for acceptable weather on Tuesday evening, thanks to a slow moving front moving across the State of Florida. During a media briefing on Monday, Launch Weather Officer Brian Cizek said that the forecast has been trending worse these past few days.

“The big difference in the forecast that we’ve seen today compared to the last few days is the models are really slowing down the progression of that front moving from north to south,” Cizek said. “So that will help pool more moisture over East Central Florida for tomorrow, which will lead to higher shower and storm coverage tomorrow afternoon into the evening hours.”

He said as the week goes on, there’s a “slight drying trend,” which offers a better outlook on Wednesday and better still on Thursday.

SpaceX will launch the CRS-34 mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster B1096. This will be its sixth flight following the launches of NASA’s IMAP, GPS III-9, NROL-77, Kuiper Falcon 01, and Starlink Group 6-87.

Less than eight minutes after liftoff, B1096 will return for a touchdown at Landing Zone 40 (LZ-40) adjacent to the launch pad at SLC-40. This will be the fourth booster recovery at this site and the 74th landing across the three pads SpaceX has used since 2015.

A SpaceX Cargo Dragon spacecraft, tail number C209, is seen atop a Falcon 9 rocket at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Image: SpaceX

This will also be the sixth flight for the Cargo Dragon spacecraft, serial number C209. It launched the CRS-22, -24, -27, -30, and -32 missions. This is the first time that a Cargo Dragon spacecraft will launch for a sixth time, but the second for the Dragon-2 program overall. The Crew Dragon Endeavour has already flown for a sixth time.

“We completed similar life extension qualification for the crew vehicles, reviewing all hardware components across the vehicle, and ensuring we had at least six-flight qualification rationale for the crew capsule,” said Lee Echerd, SpaceX’s senior mission manager for its Government and Commercial Mission Management division.

“And then for the cargo qualification for this flight, it was essentially a delta certification with looking at the hardware items that are unique to the cargo configuration and completing a similar at least 6x qualification for for this mission.”

Cargo Dragon will separate from the Falcon 9 second stage about 9.5 minutes into the mission, kicking off a nearly 50-hour period during which the spacecraft plays catch up with the ISS. It’s set to dock with the orbiting outpost at about 9:50 a.m. EDT (1350 UTC) on Thursday, May 14).

Busy year in LEO

The arrival of the newest cargo spacecraft comes about two weeks before the next scheduled spacewalk on the Russian segment of the ISS.

Over the summer, there are spacewalks on the U.S. side scheduled in June and August. Between those, on July 14, the Soyuz MS-29 mission is scheduled to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying Cosmonaut and Commander Pyotr Dubrov, alongside fellow cosmonaut Anna Kikina and NASA astronaut Anil Menon.

Less than two weeks after the arrival of MS-29, MS-28 will depart. Before that happens, NASA astronaut Jessica Meir will become the commander of the space station.

The next crewed Dragon mission will launch in September with the Crew-13 quartet, led by NASA astronaut Jessica Watkins. She becomes the first active NASA astronaut to fly for a second time on a Dragon spacecraft.

The last quarter of the year will include another Cargo Dragon mission and the next Northrop Grumman Cygnus spacecraft.

A lingering question though is whether Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft will make a cargo run to the ISS. NASA previously said it was hoping to fly the spaceship in 2026, without a crew to check the numerous problems encountered during its 2024 flight were resolved.

“Obviously, there’s a process that we go through. We continue to maintain as close to launch readiness as possible on Starliner-1 for all of our other factors that play into it,” said Bill Spetch, operations and integration manager for NASA’s ISS Program, in response to a question from Spaceflight Now on Monday.

“We’re continuing on to investigate the issues that that we saw, and so we’re working very close with our Boeing colleagues on that, and we will end up flying it when it’s ready. Some of that will determine exactly how much notice we have in front of the launch. As you know, our our schedule is pretty busy, but we’re trying to maintain windows where we can go, where we can go fly that.”

A promising Indian launch startup nears its first orbital test flight

After decades of controlling all aspects of spaceflight, the Indian government decided in 2020 to open things up to private industry. Essentially, the government said, companies could build their own rockets, obtain permission to launch them, and even use state-operated facilities.

The government and the country's space agency, ISRO, instituted this change in response to the rise of commercial space industries in the United States, and later China, that were playing an increasingly important role in global spaceflight.

Now, six years later, this structural shift is beginning to bear some fruit. The most promising Indian launch company, Skyroot Aerospace, is nearing the pad with its first orbital rocket.

Read full article

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Ideas Behind Their Time: Part Two

In 2010 I wrote about Ideas Behind Their Time:

We are all familiar with ideas said to be ahead of their time, Babbage’s analytical engine and da Vinci’s helicopter are classic examples.  We are also familiar with ideas “of their time,” ideas that were “in the air” and thus were often simultaneously discovered such as the telephone, calculus, evolution, and color photography.  What is less commented on is the third possibility, ideas that could have been discovered much earlier but which were not, ideas behind their time.

I gave experimental economics, random clinical trials and view morphing (“bullet time”) as examples. Jason Crawford has a list discussing the wheel, the steam engine and bicycles among other possibilities. In some cases, further exploration indicates that an idea required precursors and so was not as behind its times as first suspected, in rare cases, however, good ideas really could have been invented much earlier.

Using Claude, Brian Potter has significantly expanded the list by looking systematically across a wide range of inventions and asking could they have been invented earlier? Most could not. Put the other way, most useful technologies tend to be invented quite quickly once they are possible–this is reassuring. The airplane, for example, could not have been invented before a high power-to-weight engine, which happened circa 1880 making the late 1880s the earliest feasible date for powered flight. Thus, the Wright Brothers (1903) were only just behind the earliest feasible date–and that is true for many inventions.

The ideas very far behind their time include the stethoscope, general anesthesia and reinforced concrete and quite far behind are the Jacquard loom and canning. Is there a pattern here?

Addendum: Brian’s Github with the full prompt and output for each invention is here.

The post Ideas Behind Their Time: Part Two appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Beneath our human shallows

Aerial photo of a giant sinkhole in an urban area causing buildings to collapse into the hole.

We need a new imagination for the whole Earth, linking the power of the deep planet with the vitality of the surface

- by James Dinneen

Read on Aeon

Felix Salmon, at Bloomberg, reviews Moral Economics

  Felix Salmon, at Bloomberg, reviews Moral Economics, which starting today is now sold in stores (at least in the U.S.):

An Economist’s Case for Selling a Kidney.  In a new book, Nobel laureate Alvin Roth argues that decriminalizing taboo markets can save lives.  

He tells this story from the book:

"Roth gave a talk in 2017 at the Organ Donation Congress in Geneva about one such chain that started in 2015. A woman from the Philippines, known in the literature as FW, was willing to give up one of her kidneys to save the life of her husband, FM. The two flew to the US, where FM received a kidney from an altruistic donor in Georgia, and FW’s kidney was transplanted into a man in Minnesota. A friend of the Minnesota man, who had been willing to give up one of her kidneys to save his life, instead gave one to a man in Washington, whose father-in-law gave a kidney to a woman in Georgia, and so on. By the end of the year there had been 11 successful transplants, and the chain was still continuing.

" After his talk, Roth was confronted by a Spanish doctor who was deeply concerned about the potentially problematic implications of the economic inequality between the Philippines and the US. Roth pointed out that without the transplant, the patient would surely have died. Replied the Spanish nephrologist: “He should be dead!” Spain’s National Transplant Organization later denounced Roth as an organ trafficker.

"Roth tells this story in his most recent book, Moral Economics (Basic Venture, May 12), which, at least in part, is an attempt to apply the empiricism of economics to domains that are often resistant to such analysis. The opposition to the 2015 kidney chain, for instance, comes from nephrologists who have no problem with chains but who draw the line at international chains, or at least chains linking poor and rich countries."

######

Much of the objection to cross-border kidney exchange appears to be fading, some of it was based on the idea that countries should be self-sufficient in transplants.

See earlier posts:

Friday, January 9, 2026  WHO Says Countries Should Be Self-Sufficient In (Unremunerated) Organs And Blood by Krawiec and Roth (now open source)

 

Friday, September 11, 2020  Global Kidney Exchange supported by the European Society of Transplantation's committee on Ethical, Legal, and Psychosocial Aspects of Transplantation .

These people are not in danger. These people are not in danger.


How to Tell If You're Living in a Binary Crisis

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How to Tell If You’re Living in a Binary Crisis

By Ted Gioia

I want to start with a story about Texas. It’s also a good description of what I call a binary conflict.

I recently wrote a letter of recommendation for an engineering student at Texas A&M. He’s an impressive, hardworking young man—with solid character and very trustworthy.

To help cover college costs, he does part time work helping people move. It’s grueling physical labor. But he never complains.

Someday soon he may be an engineer. But when he does a moving job, he has no attitude—and he puts 100% effort into the physical labor.

This young man recently showed up at a Texas house, where he was scheduled to help a family move But as soon as they opened the door, he could see they were shocked, even horrified, by his presence on their doorstep.

“I’m here to help with the move,” he explained.

“No you aren’t,” the woman at the door said, ready to slam it in his face.

“You don’t understand,” he replied. “I’m helping with your move today.”

“No, you are NOT,” she repeated, and pointed at his shirt.

His shirt had just one thing written on it: Texas A&M.

She scowled—and after a moment, explained: “This has always been a Longhorn house. We never let Aggies in here.”

And so he didn’t have a job that day. That’s how they roll in the Lone Star State.

And if, by some terrible destiny, a Texas A&M supporter marries a University of Texas fan, they put this “House Divided” banner outside their home.

That’s how a binary conflict works in society. Life may be complex—but it gets simpler if you can reduce things to two opposing forces.

But sometimes the binary conflict escalates into a binary crisis. When that happens, events spiral out of control.


Did you ever wonder why the biggest sports battles always involve two teams?

You could easily design a basketball court with three hoops—and play the game with three teams. Or four or five or any number you want.

But that never happens.

Despite all the talk of threesomes, you’re not gonna find one on ESPN. Well, not on screen—who knows what those athletes (or sportscasters) do after the game?

But every team competition I’ve seen in my entire life has featured a binary opposition—whether we’re talking football, baseball, hockey, volleyball, or even quidditch in a Harry Potter film.

It’s always two opposed forces.

That was even true when I competed in an academic contest during my student days—the national quiz bowl competition known as College Bowl. My team had to defeat dozens of other schools to win the national title—but every competition was a head-to-head matchup. We beat Yale in the televised finals, and the binary opposition was what drew the ratings.

The producers even told us so. “We like this Stanford versus Yale matchup—the ratings will be good.”

Photo of College Bowl TV series
Even I had a team back in college, and we faced down a single enemy—Yale! (That’s Art Fleming, the original Jeopardy host behind me.)

Only a few individual sports allow for multiple participants competing all at once. Can you spell B-O-R-I-N-G? That’s why track events and swim meets don’t get much TV coverage—audiences demand the binary opposition.

In my youth, I was a fan of TV wrestling, and I recall with fondness the famous Battle Royale, which took place once each year at the Olympic Auditorium in downtown LA. But these free-for-alls never lived up to expectations—because so many competitors made it hard to identify the enemy.

And it wasn’t just the audience that got confused Even the participants and referees looked lost up in that ring. Without the binary opposition, the sport felt meaningless.

Just look at a video and see for yourself. A bunch of dudes in a brawl should be a lot more exciting than this.

There’s a rule here, but an ugly rule. The key to effective teamwork is having a single enemy.

Now here’s something even uglier. The same team-building hostility is heating up over in the enemy’s camp. That evil team is getting bigger and stronger because it hates you—and precisely because you’re bonding with your own team.

Some of this stuff is so toxic nobody wants to talk about it. But I’ve actually seen management teams bond together more effectively because they all hate the CEO. That’s what finally brings them together, and gets them to cooperate.

But don’t expect to hear human resources explain this at your next office seminar on teamwork. The reality is that, at some companies today, workers bond together to battle HR.


Somebody should write a global history of binary conflicts—because no force has exerted more influence over human affairs.

Rome collapsed while its citizens fought over the colors blue and green. That sounds crazy, but it’s absolutely true.

I believe this is the single most significant fact about Roman history.

  1. The conflict between Blues and Greens lasted for a thousand years.

  2. During that period, each color enjoyed periods of dominance, and could have used its power to make tangible improvements and fix a broken system.

  3. But they rarely did this—because were obsessed with punishing the other color team.

They won’t teach that in history class. But they should. It ought to be the first lesson.

Illustration of greens fighting blues

It’s hard to explain this Roman mania, but here’s what I’ve written elsewhere:

The conflict may have started as a sporting rivalry, but in time the battling colors impacted every aspect of society. Your chosen color could influence your political loyalties, your pastimes, your religious views, and almost every other affiliation in day-to-day life….

The more you study the phenomenon, the clearer it becomes that the main motivating force of each group was hatred of the other group. Making the opponent suffer was far more satisfying than any mere policy outcome.

As a result, the most trifling incident at the chariot races or theaters could set off the factions, and as Rome declined the violence got worse. By the time we get into the fifth century AD, the conflicts sometimes took the form of pitched battles in the streets.


That’s what a full-blown binary crisis looks like.

It happened in Rome. It happened during the medieval witch hunts. It happened during the French Revolution. It may be happening in some parts of the world today.

How can you tell when you’re living in a binary collapse? Here are seven warning signs:

  1. All conflicts are channeled into a single binary opposition between two teams. There is never a third team—if someone tries to create it, one or both of the two teams will work fervently to destroy the third option.

  2. Each team is obsessed with punishing the other—and this becomes more important than taking steps that might help their own supporters.

  3. The common good turns into an empty concept, and is only mentioned as a rhetorical device in attacking the other team (which is always opposed to the common good). Policies that might help everybody are ignored (as in the Roman example), because they can’t be used to energize team supporters—which is where all power and resources reside.

  4. Even institutions and vocations that have no direct connection with the two teams get drawn into the battle. Everything becomes part of the conflict—science, entertainment, math, medicine, architecture, etc.

  5. The fault of the other team is never a simple matter, but always involves a long list of extreme accusations. As Rene Girard shows in his book The Scapegoat, the same charges are invariably lodged against the other team—violence, sexual transgressions, greed, ethical abuses, moral corruption, violation of taboos, and a litany of other abuses. Even if the conflict begins with a single difference (class, religion, race, etc.), it soon expands to encompass every one of society’s most feared transgressions. It sounds absurd but, in periods of binary collapse, the opposing team is always accused, sooner or later, of incest, rape, murder, devil worship, profanations of all sorts.

  6. Despite their espoused hatred, the two teams repeatedly imitate each other—in fact the hated enemy is also the main role model. Like warring Mafia gangs, they engage in tit-for-tat behavior. Hence, the exact same accusations are made, back and forth. Threats, excuses, reprisals are always identical; even promises for the future (after the victory) are eerily similar. These mirror-like reflections merely increase the polarization and escalate the conflict.

  7. People who try to operate outside this binary conflict have no impact. They are literally individuals without a team—which in a binary crisis is always the worst possible situation. They are the weakest of all parties. To have any influence, they must join one of the two teams…and so the cycle continues.

As Girard points out, the other team may actually deserve punishment. But he avoids trying to “determine precisely where injustice begins and ends.” The more salient fact is that, in a binary collapse, things always push to extremes, beyond any reasonable limits. In this totalizing ideology, degrees of justice or injustice hardly matter, and merely serve as rhetorical fuel for escalating the conflict.

Photo of The Scapegoat by Rene Girard
René Girard’s The Scapegoat (and other books to help you through a binary crisis)

He gives as example the trial of Marie Antoinette. Girard readily admits that the French monarchy bears a large degree of responsibility for the revolution and its violence. But when the Queen went on trial, the accusations became all encompassing.

Her foreign birth was frequently mentioned, and all her vices. (No, she never said “Let them eat cake!”—but facts like that don’t matter in a binary crisis.) And, eventually, Marie Antoinette was even accused of committing incest with her son. That was just slander, but (as noted above) these situations invariably escalate into demoniac obsessions—because there are no reasonable limits in a binary crisis.

Girard argues that this is a repeating pattern in human society. He focuses on the scapegoating, while I emphasize the collapse of all social problems into a battle of two teams—which can be an even more powerful, totalizing force.

So I will point out that after the King and Queen were finally executed, the coalition that killed them quickly broke into a new binary opposition—and the former team members started killing each other.

Tens of thousands of people died in the aftermath. In other words, the binary crisis was so strong it outlasted the murder of the scapegoat.


Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Of course it does. That’s because this happens again and again in history—and it’s happening again today, especially in an election year. After all, politics is the main sphere where binary conflict plays out today. (Five hundred years ago, it was religion.)

But what if the binary opposition escalates into a total conflict—a binary crisis—and spreads into every aspect of daily life?

At that stage, the battlefield is everywhere. Everybody becomes a soldier—the gym teacher, the nurse, the fire fighter, the sports journalist, the film critic, the librarian, the checkout clerk at the drugstore, you name it. I’m not necessarily describing a military civil war—but that can happen too, and precisely in situations like this.

Many will seek a way out. But guess what? Anybody who dares suggest a remedy outside the binary conflict will be attacked by the now massive forces of the two teams.

And they will get lectured endlessly about the “lesser of two evils” theory. (When you start hearing that argument constantly, pay close attention—because it identifies the source of a potential structural shift in the situation.)

This oft-stated theory declares that you must always limit yourself to the best of two bad options—because anything else is EVIL.

Maybe that’s true. But there’s another theory, perhaps even more persuasive. This other theory states that a system which only offers lesser-of-two-evil choices is already broken, and people deserve more and better options.


Is there any escape from destructive binary conflict?

In the opening sentence to The Scapegoat, Rene Girard tells readers to pay close attention to a forgotten text from the fourteenth century. This work is Judgment of the King of Navarre by Guillaume de Machaut.

My learned musician friends will recognize that name. Machaut was the most innovative composer of his day—they even called his music ars nova (which translates as new art).

Music by Guillaume de Machaut

But the story Girard relates is more brutal than musical. He writes:

Guillaume claims that he participated in a confusing series of catastrophic events before he finally closeted himself in his house in terror to await death or the end of the indescribable ordeal….

There are signs in the sky. People are knocked down by a rain of stones. Entire cities are destroyed by lightning. Men die in great numbers in the city where Guillaume lives (he doesn’t tell us its name)…..

People continued to die in ever greater numbers, however, until one day in spring when Guillaume heard music in the street and men and women laughing. All was over, and courtly poetry could begin again….

In the case of Machaut’s story, the main source of the crisis is binary opposition between Christian and Jews. The latter are persecuted as scapegoats, and are even accused of responsibility for the Black Death. Soon lightning is striking, and stones are falling out of the sky.

I hardly need to point out that this was all ignorance and hate, not science. Jews didn’t cause the plague, or falling stones, or whatever.

But in a binary crisis, as Girard explains (although he doesn’t use that term, referring instead to crowds and mobs), natural causes are of no interest to anybody. The mob must always have human enemies.

That’s why the science in Machaut’s story is bogus.

But the music that marks the resolution of this conflict is the most accurate thing in the whole narrative. The scapegoating was a fantasy, but the music represented a real moment when a rupture healed, and the killing stopped.

Can we draw any comfort from this?

I note that music is the opposite of the sporting events mentioned at the start of my story. When athletes play, they turn against a common enemy—the opposing team. But when musicians play, they operate in a purer realm—and the audience still packs into the arena or stadium (the same venues!) for this peaceful way of forming into teams.

It’s easy to point out where music falls short. Historians of Nazi Germany, for example, like to point out that the same people who committed atrocities during the day, came home and listened to Mozart or Beethoven at night. Yet the very fact that we are shocked by this testifies to our expectation that music should pacify and soften, even in these extreme situations.

And consider those miraculous moments when songs prevail on actual battlefields. During the famous Christmas truce of 1914, opposing soldiers put down their weapons, and joined together in singing “Adeste Fidelis” (“Oh Come All Ye Faithful”). That happened on Christmas Eve, and the next day some soldiers actually crossed battle lines to exchange gifts.

The military leaders and politicians feared this. They hated it. One English general declared that this singing represented “the greatest danger” to troop morale.

He was probably right.


This countering of the binary crisis with music happens more often than people realize. Consider an example from pop culture.

Many were upset when country star Luke Combs recorded Tracy Chapman’s song “Fast Car,” and enjoyed a hit with his cover version. But what could they say after the two musicians joined together at the Grammy Awards?

If this keeps up, who knows where it might lead? The next thing you know, they’ll be exchanging gifts, like those WWI soldiers.

By the way, the power of music to defuse violent impulses is amplified if the performance takes on symbolic and ritualized elements of conflict. I don’t have space here to provide full details—this subject really deserves an entire book. Nobody has adequately told the story of ritualistic conflict in music, which shows up everywhere from marching bands to punk rock to American Idol.

But you can see it even in the video above, where Luke Combs clearly offers a symbolic victory to Tracy Chapman during the performance.

Anybody who knew what to look for could see this—just read the account in the NY Times, which spells it out, almost as if it were a heavyweight boxing match:

Combs never overshadowed Chapman. He knew that in that moment, no one could. Something about the way he looked at her said it all: His eyes shone with irrepressible respect. Here was a grown man, an assured performer who sells out stadiums, visibly trembling before the sight and the sound of the folk singer Tracy Chapman.

Real conflict is defused. But only because a ritualized resolution has occurred.


Music can’t turn the world into a 24/7 love-in.

But a song can create a 3-minute love-in. And if art short-circuits the binary conflict for even just that brief spell, it deserves our reverence.

Nothing in human culture has done more to bring people together than music. I discussed team-bonding through hate above, but you can form an even more beautiful bond through song. Many of us would not be here today if our parents hadn’t heard the right romantic song at just the right moment.

That’s real magic for you.

There’s scientific reasons for this. When we join together in singing or music-making, our bodies release the hormone oxytocin—which makes us more trusting and less suspicious of others.

And trance-inducing rhythms have a similar impact—although now its our brainwaves that are impacted, as well as our body chemistry. This is why dance is so liberating—it reduces our defenses, and actually lets us enjoy the moment when we become most vulnerable.

This is the role the arts should play in a divisive culture. Songs bring us together—and diminish the deadly energy of the binary crisis. The dance, by the same logic, is the opposite of the military march—it is the rhythm that frees us, instead of dominating us.

The same can be true of poetry, and painting, and movies, and games, and the rest of it. Even if they can’t defuse a crisis on their own, they are still the best place to start the process.

Pullback Drive

"How does the spring not run out almost immediately?" "We pull it back REALLY far."

Tyrants are losing wars

Photo by the Kremlin via Wikimedia.org

“And the only way to fight the bastards off in the end is through intelligence.” — Enoch Root

“In human life it's also true/ The strong will try to conquer you/ And that is what you must expect/ Unless you use your intellect” — Merlin

Five years ago, I wrote a post about the wave of authoritarianism sweeping the world:

That unhappy trend has continued. Freedom House’s 2026 report is subtitled “The Growing Shadow of Autocracy”, and finds that freedom continues to decline across the globe:

V-DEM’s 2026 report, subtitled “Unraveling the Democratic Era?”, delivers the same message:

Source: V-DEM

Both organizations note the rapid deterioration in freedom under Donald Trump’s second administration, including attacks on free and fair elections, persecution of critics in the press, and the rise of a violent and unaccountable security state. In the 20th century, the U.S. was the Arsenal of Democracy — as the world’s most powerful country, and one of its most free, it often used its industrial might to support liberal democracy around the world. In the 21st century, America is increasingly incapable and unwilling to play this role.

Instead, the industrial powerhouse of this century is China. In addition to its own rapidly growing military power and technological supremacy, it supports various autocratic satellite powers to keep potential rivals off-balance — Russia, Iran, North Korea, and so on. This geopolitical grouping has been given various names — I called it the “New Axis”, and others have called it things like the “Axis of Autocracy”. But Trump has shown that Cold War 2 will not be a clean contest of liberal democracy versus totalitarianism; instead, it’ll be a hodgepodge of amoral competing power blocs, more reminiscent of the time before World War 1.

Liberal democracy hasn’t been defeated, but it’s definitely the underdog again. The hope that regular folks would rise up and overthrow the one-party states, petty tyrants, and populist strongmen is fading; the Hong Kong protests of 2019, the Belarus protests of 2020, and various waves of Iran protests all failed to make headway against autocratic regimes, while America’s protests in 2020 did little to halt the country’s slide into strongman rule.

That’s all very sad and disturbing. But we’re starting to see another trend quietly emerge — tyrants are losing wars.

The first example of this was the Syrian Civil War. After brutally crushing various rebel factions for over a decade with the help of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, the Assad regime suddenly collapsed in late 2024. Despite a lot of hand-wringing over whether Syria’s HTS militants would bring jihadist rule to Syria, the country’s new leaders seem reasonable, pragmatic, and a lot more tolerant than any of the alternatives.

The second example was the collapse of Iran’s shadow empire of proxies in the Middle East. In addition to Assad, they lost Hezbollah, whose catastrophic defeat by Israel in 2024 belied its fearsome reputation, and mostly lost Hamas. The Israelis are not exactly liberal democrats at this point, but they’re certainly less illiberal than Iran and its proxies.

But the most important loss for the Axis of Autocracy, or whatever you want to call it, is shaping up in Ukraine. It’s still early days, but there are clear signs that the tide has turned against Russia. Ukraine’s drone industry has really hit its stride, producing several million drones a year and innovating all kinds of new and deadly weapons.

This has enabled the Ukrainians to fight a successful defensive war while taking fewer and fewer casualties. Some sources estimate that Ukraine is now killing 5 Russians for every Ukrainian lost. Even if that’s an overestimate, the ratio certainly seems to have tilted significantly in Ukraine’s favor. The Russians are taking horrendous losses — over 30,000 each month in recent months, probably more than the Russians can currently recruit. Russia’s total estimated losses in the war were over 350,000 killed and 1.4 million at the end of last year; by now the numbers are significantly higher.

Russia’s territorial gains, meanwhile, have slowed or even reversed, despite all the bodies Putin is throwing into the meat grinder. Here’s The Economist:

Not only has Russia’s expected spring offensive been a flop, but in April Russian forces suffered a net loss of territory for the first time since August 2024…By our calculations…Russia has lost control of 113 square kilometres over the past 30 days.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s long-range drones are inflicting more and more pain on Russia. Ukraine is destroying Russian oil infrastructure and closing Moscow’s airports. Russia’s air defenses can’t even protect the capital; Putin was so afraid of Ukrainian drones that he had to scale down his recent annual “Victory Day” parade, removing military vehicles from the procession, appearing only briefly in public, and asking Donald Trump to persuade the Ukrainians to declare a temporary ceasefire to allow the parade to happen:

Ukraine’s long-range drones are so powerful that they could soon even be able to cut off Crimea from Russian resupply.

None of this means that Russia or its military is about to collapse. But even if Putin declares a full mobilization and throws millions more Russians into the Ukrainian drones, it’s not clear what that’ll win him except further depopulation of his country. This is probably why Putin has recently declared that the war is “coming to an end”:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on ​Saturday that he thought the Ukraine war was coming to an end…"I think that the matter is coming to an end," Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe's deadliest conflict since World War Two. He also said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements for Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany's former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

This is still wildly over-optimistic on Putin’s part — he seems to think he can just end the war on favorable terms any time he wants, choose Russian patsies as negotiating partners, and dictate the future of European security. Most of that is highly unlikely to happen; barring an unforeseen Ukrainian collapse, the Ukrainians will simply keep hammering away at Russia’s troops and infrastructure with their drones. But Putin’s sudden willingness to talk is very significant — it means he knows he’s starting to lose the war, and wants to beat some kind of face-saving retreat.

Ukraine is the clearest and most important example of how 21st century autocrats, having triumphed in the streets and on social media, are losing on the actual battlefield. Trump’s losing war in Iran is part of the trend too — although the Trump regime isn’t technically part of the Chinese-led Axis, he’s definitely cut from the same cloth as the other populist, illiberal strongmen who have proliferated around the globe in recent decades.

What’s going on? Why are tyrants suddenly getting their butts kicked? I see several reasons.

First, the defender usually has the advantage. The strategic advantages are well-known. Almost by definition, the attacker’s forces are far from home and have to be resupplied, which incurs cost and risk. Conquering and subduing a whole country is also just an inherently more complex and difficult task than halting an invading army’s advance.

But I’m talking about something deeper — the moral advantage that you get from defending your homes and families against an invader.

Ukraine never threatened Russia at all. The whole Russian cause in this war is based on the notion that Ukraine’s potential accession to NATO and the EU was threatening Russia’s “sphere of influence.” But the idea of “spheres of influence”, while sometimes a good factual description of how powerful countries operate, is not a good moral principle. The idea that countries deserve “spheres of influence” is just the claim that powerful countries ought to dominate their weaker neighbors. In other words, it’s just imperialism.

Morality doesn’t field divisions, of course…or does it? Putin can pay desperately poor people to fight in his wars, or empty his prisons of criminals, or buy mercenaries, but can he persuade regular middle-class Russians in Moscow and St. Petersburg to die for the glory of the New Russian Empire? Not really, no — which is why as soon as casualties get too high to replace without general mobilization, he starts to think about ending the war.

Ukraine, meanwhile, was defending itself against conquest — a conquest that would have stripped away its national identity, brutalized its population, and kept it in poverty. That threat provided a powerful motivation for regular Ukrainians to sign up and risk their lives on the battlefield. Ukraine became a nation in arms, while Russia was still trying to fight a “special military operation”, because Ukraine had a compelling cause and Russia had an unconvincing one.

This lesson is useful in explaining why Trump’s war on Iran has failed. When Iran was the attacker — trying to control the Middle East through a network of armed proxies — its aggression provoked a backlash from people in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, and elsewhere who didn’t want to be ruled by foreign powers. But when Trump attacked Iran without direct provocation, Iran’s cause suddenly shifted to the defense, and its fortunes improved.

The people of Iran have no love for their regime — it recently mowed down tens of thousands of protesters in the streets, and the country’s economy is in a state of protracted collapse. But even so, they refused to rise against their rulers when Trump’s bombs started falling. Meanwhile, most Americans disapprove of the Iran war, and have no desire to endure the economic hardship of high gas prices just to topple someone else’s dictator.

This provides us with an important lesson. Reality is not Star Wars — dividing warring sides into “good guys and bad guys” is never really accurate. But “invaders vs. defenders” is a lot less ambiguous. If America ditches Trumpism and goes back to the principle of upholding territorial integrity, we’ll see our military fortunes improve, because we’ll associate ourselves with causes that people want to fight for.

The second reason tyrants are losing wars is because democracies tend to cooperate more than strongman regimes. The liberal democratic ideal is of a peaceful, positive-sum world, where people are free to get rich and express themselves. But for dictators like Putin and Xi, or populist strongmen like Trump, the goal is to dominate everyone else — including the other autocrats.

This was vividly illustrated in World War 2. Hitler started off the war by making a pact with Stalin to divide up Poland. But he ended up betraying his erstwhile ally, because he couldn’t suffer the idea of another dictator more powerful than himself. The Nazis cooperated only very loosely with Imperial Japan, if at all, and probably would have fought them in the end had the USSR fallen. Meanwhile, Roosevelt and Churchill were highly pragmatic and would cooperate with any power they thought would help stabilize the world — even the USSR.

It’s not a universal principle that democracies cooperate more than autocracies — in fact, democracies are often reluctant to come to each other’s aid directly in wartime. But personalist systems — the type that Trump, Putin, and increasingly Xi all favor — are less likely to cooperate than other types of regimes. Someone has always got to be the Big Man.

So although Trump may be drawn to the ideologies and the absolute power of Xi and Putin, and though he might entertain the notion of carving up the world with them, his ego will get in the way. So you see Trump currying favor with Putin, but then taking out Russia’s ally in Venezuela and seizing Russian oil tankers. And you see him going to war against a Chinese proxy and Russian ally in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has survived thanks to staunch support from European countries, who recognize that if Ukraine falls, they’re next on the menu for the empire next door. But while Russia has gotten some help from its ostensible Chinese ally, China has been extremely circumspect with this aid — not providing direct military assistance, gouging Russia to the bone on oil purchases, and halting cooperation as soon as U.S. sanctions loom.

Under Trump, the U.S. has put itself in a very perilous position by throwing its alliances overboard and going it alone. The U.S. alone has little chance to achieve the scale of production needed to match China. And when Trump alienated his European allies by throwing up huge ridiculous tariffs and threatening to conquer Greenland, he lost any chance for assistance with the Strait of Hormuz.

Meanwhile, there are signs that defenders — even some autocratic ones — are starting to band together against big empires. Ukraine is selling anti-drone technology to the Gulf states, and informal quiet connections are growing between Ukraine and Taiwan. An unofficial global anti-imperialist alliance would not be a bad thing.

The third reason tyrants are losing wars is that the civilizations they’re attacking are usually technologically superior. Hezbollah lost to Israel when Israel blew up their pagers and killed their leaders with pinpoint decapitation strikes. Russia is starting to lose to Ukraine because the Ukrainians are more inventive — with their world-beating drone industry, they’ve created an entirely new form of warfare just to defeat the Russians. Russia tries hard to keep up, but so far it hasn’t succeeded.

Much has been made, especially in rightist circles, of Russia’s supposed warrior culture. Their ads emphasize macho masculinity and show soldiers working out in the gym:

Ludicrously, the Trump administration has tried to copy the Russian example instead of the Ukrainian one. Hegseth constantly emphasizes warrior ethos and masculine toughness:

But big muscles don’t do much against exploding drones, nor do they help plan the complicated logistics that modern militaries depend on, nor do they produce innovative new technologies. Hegseth may be able to do a bunch of pushups, but the whole country is now recognizing that he’s dangerously incompetent.

Now, it’s not universally true that autocratic countries value innovation and technology less than democratic ones. China is arguably now the world’s leading technological nation — or at least on par with the U.S. In a war over Taiwan, China’s advanced drone and electronics capabilities would be a powerful asset.

But the autocratic regimes that have been the aggressors in the 21st century tend to value a warrior ethos, or religious fervor, over innovation and cleverness. In Neal Stephenson’s terminology, they worship Ares instead of Athena.

I hope people don’t interpret this post as a claim that liberal democracies are inherently stronger than autocracies. Trump is a fool, but the New Axis might yet rally, backed by the awesome technological and industrial might of China. Or even if autocracies continue to fail in their foreign military adventures, the natural disruptiveness of social media might simply bring down every liberal democracy from within, leaving the world to be fought over by incompetent tyrants.

But if current events have convinced you that tyranny is on the march and freedom is forever in retreat, you should probably look at the actual battlefield, and feel a little encouraged. If the wave of illiberalism that began in the mid-2000s is going to break and roll back, battlefield losses will probably have a lot to do with it — just as they did in previous eras.


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Early evidence on school smartphone bans and mental health

The word “early” is appropriate here and is to be stressed, nonetheless I am not surprised by these results, given the relative impotence of treatment effects in so many settings:

To provide causal evidence of the effects of these bans, I rely on synthetic difference-in-difference models and the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) from 2016 to 2024. Currently, there are data for only one state with two post-ban periods and two states with one post-ban period, which makes the results preliminary evidence only. The outcome variables are screentime and measures of psychological wellbeing. Overall, these early results provide no clear evidence that the school ban policy reduced screentime or improved psychological wellbeing.

That is from a recent NBER working paper by Henry Saffer.

The post Early evidence on school smartphone bans and mental health appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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LLMs and Text-in-Text Steganography

Turns out that LLMs are really good at hiding text messages in other text messages.

Using agents to build economic datasets

Constructing datasets from primary sources is one of the costliest tasks in empirical economics. We propose Deep Research on a Loop (DRIL), a methodology that uses AI agents to assemble datasets from publicly available sources. DRIL applies a fixed research instrument across a mapped unit space (e.g., countries by years), with a two-stage architecture separating design from implementation. The instrument specifies variables and coding rules, an evidence policy governs sources and citations, and data quality mechanisms track gaps and uncertainty explicitly. We exercise DRIL on a 2025 update of the Global Tax Expenditures Database for eight Latin American and Caribbean countries. The run produces 129 sources and 136 evidence records, covering 22 qualitative fields fully and 6 quantitative estimate types with documented gaps, at the cost of a standard LLM subscription comparable to a few hours of research-assistant work. We argue that even partial automation of dataset construction can shift the production function of empirical economics.

That is from a new NBER working paper by Santiago Afonso, Sebastian Galiani, Ramiro H. Gálvez & Raul A. Sosa.  Be ready people, this and related uses of AI are the future of much of science.  Do not be left behind.

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Australia’s Cloudy Beauty

Wide patches of fog fill river valleys cutting through rugged, dark green mountains in eastern Victoria.
Fog fills networks of river valleys in eastern Victoria in an image captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite at 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time) on May 11, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

It’s autumn in the Southern Hemisphere, which means it’s fog season in the Victorian Alps. NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of morning fog filling valleys in several national parks across the mountains of eastern Victoria in May.  

As nights lengthen with the season, the atmosphere has more time to cool and approach the dew point—the temperature at which the air becomes saturated and water vapor can condense into radiation fog. Because cold air is denser than warm air, it sinks and drains into valleys, allowing fog to develop there first. In low-elevation areas, radiation fog usually fades as the Sun warms the ground, but it tends to linger in mountain valleys because they remain shaded longer. On this day, geostationary satellite imagery shows the fog persisting for about two hours.

Fog is a low-lying type of cloud composed of tiny water droplets suspended in the air. The main difference between a cloud and fog is that the base of fog reaches the ground, while the base of a cloud is generally well above the surface. Radiation fog forms in clear, calm conditions at night. In this case, a blast of cold, soggy weather primed the region by moistening land surfaces a few days prior to the arrival of a slow-moving high that brought calmer, warmer conditions that were conducive to fog formation. 

Many valleys in the mountains also have rivers, streams, and lakes, which amplified the process by providing a ready supply of water vapor. In the image above, zones of fog have formed along several water bodies, including the Mitta Mitta River, Buffalo River, Livingston Creek, Lake Dartmouth, and Snowy River.  

A narrow arch-shaped cloud is visible over the blue waters of Port Phillip Bay.
An arch-shaped cloud drifts over Port Phillip Bay in this image captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Terra satellite at 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time) on May 11, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

The same conditions fueled another noteworthy cloud a few hundred kilometers to the southwest. At about 8:19 a.m. local time (22:19 Universal Time), the Terra satellite captured an arch-shaped cloud over Port Phillip Bay, roughly stretching from St. Leonards on the bay’s western shore to Mount Eliza on the eastern side.

The feature likely formed as converging land and sea breezes interacted with the horseshoe-shaped terrain that defines the bay. Geostationary satellite imagery shows the arch-shaped cloud moving southward across the bay as the valley fog to the northeast faded.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

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Monday 11 May 1663

Up betimes, and by water to Woolwich on board the Royall James, to see in what dispatch she is to be carried about to Chatham. So to the yard a little, and thence on foot to Greenwich, where going I was set upon by a great dogg, who got hold of my garters, and might have done me hurt; but, Lord, to see in what a maze I was, that, having a sword about me, I never thought of it, or had the heart to make use of it, but might, for want of that courage, have been worried.

Took water there and home, and both coming and going did con my lesson on my Ruler to measure timber, which I think I can well undertake now to do.

At home there being Pembleton I danced, and I think shall come on to do something in a little time, and after dinner by coach with Sir W. Pen (setting down his daughter at Clerkenwell), to St. James’s, where we attended the Duke of York: and, among other things, Sir G. Carteret and I had a great dispute about the different value of the pieces of eight rated by Mr. Creed at 4s. and 5d., and by Pitts at 4s. and 9d., which was the greatest husbandry to the King? he persisting that the greatest sum was; which is as ridiculous a piece of ignorance as could be imagined. However, it is to be argued at the Board, and reported to the Duke next week; which I shall do with advantage, I hope.

Thence to the Tangier Committee, where we should have concluded in sending Captain Cuttance and the rest to Tangier to deliberate upon the design of the Mole before they begin to work upon it, but there being not a committee (my Lord intending to be there but was taken up at my Lady Castlemayne’s) I parted and went homeward, after a little discourse with Mr. Pierce the surgeon, who tells me that my Lady Castlemaine hath now got lodgings near the King’s chamber at Court; and that the other day Dr. Clerke and he did dissect two bodies, a man and a woman; before the King, with which the King was highly pleased.

By water and called upon Tom Trice by appointment with Dr. Williams, but the Dr. did not come, it seems by T. Trice’s desire, not thinking he should be at leisure. However, in general we talked of our business, and I do not find that he will come to any lower terms than 150l., which I think I shall not give him but by law, and so we parted, and I called upon Mr. Crumlum, and did give him the 10s. remaining, not laid out of the 5l. I promised him for the school, with which he will buy strings, and golden letters upon the books I did give them. I sat with him and his wife a great while talking, and she is [a] pretty woman, never yet with child, and methinks looks as if her mouth watered now and then upon some of her boys.

Then upon Tom Pepys, the Turner, desiring his father and his letter to Piggott signifying his consent to the selling of his land for the paying of us his money, and so home, and finding Pembleton there we did dance till it was late, and so to supper and to bed.

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Tahoe’s UI Issues Have Nothing to Do With Display Technology, and Maybe, Just Maybe, We Should Stop Assuming Gurman Knows Anything About Apple’s Vision Hardware Roadmap

Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter for Bloomberg over the weekend:

Though the Mac software introduced the same Liquid Glass interface seen in iOS 26, the design language hasn’t translated as smoothly to the larger displays and different input methods of desktops and laptops. Part of the reason is that Liquid Glass was created with more modern hardware in mind: the crisp OLED displays that are used on iPhones, some iPads and Apple Watches. The software also will be well-suited to the more glass-centric iPhone 20 coming in 2027.

Most Macs, in contrast, still rely on industrial designs introduced several years ago. The current look of the MacBook Air debuted in 2022, while the latest MacBook Pro and iMac designs date back to 2021. Macs also continue to use LCD displays, which don’t render translucency, shadows and glass effects as effectively as OLED screens.

If you’ve used Tahoe, you’re likely familiar with some of the quirks — particularly the transparency effects and shadows that can make lists and other text-heavy areas harder to read.

Trying to argue that the differences between LCD and OLED displays have anything to do with MacOS 26 Tahoe’s UI problems is like arguing that the reason your undercooked poorly prepared food tastes like shit is that it was designed to be served on higher-quality dinnerware. A nicer display is just a nicer display. A bad UI is a bad UI. Shitty undercooked poorly prepared food is shitty undercooked poorly prepared food.

You can actually see MacOS 26 Tahoe on an OLED display using Sidecar with a recent iPad Pro. It doesn’t help. You can also see iOS 26 and iPadOS 26 on devices that don’t have OLED displays. It looks fine. The notion that anything on MacOS 26 Tahoe was optimized for OLED displays makes no sense — there are no MacBooks or Apple desktop displays that use OLED. OLED MacBooks are purportedly coming at the end of this year or next year, but by the time that happens we’ll be mid-cycle for MacOS 27. Lastly, Apple just came out with the new $3,300 Studio Display XDR, using Mini-LED not OLED technology, in March. Even the future of Mac display technology is only partially OLED.

Last year’s Liquid Glass UI redesigns for iOS and iPadOS 26 were pretty good. The Liquid Glass redesign for MacOS 26 was pretty bad. That’s it. It has nothing to do with display technologies.

I’m happy to see Gurman report that the upcoming MacOS 27 release sports a revised UI, but you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Apple revises their UIs almost every year. Given the obvious problems with Tahoe and the pervasive criticisms from UI critics this year, it’d be absolutely flabbergasting if MacOS 27 did not reflect some noticeable changes.

Elsewhere in this week’s column, Gurman writes:

If a new Vision Pro-like device does end up coming together, I wouldn’t expect it for around two more years at least given the hardware resources are so concentrated elsewhere.

I suggest taking Vision headset product timelines from Gurman with a few grains of salt. In mid-October 2025 Apple announced and began shipping the second-gen Vision Pro, with a speed bump from the M2 to M5 chip. But in January 2025, Gurman wrote:

One thing missing from this 2025 road map is the Vision Pro. As of now, I don’t believe there will be a new headset from Apple shipping this year, though there theoretically could be an unveiling ahead of a release later. Signs point to a second-generation model coming in 2026 with an M5 chip.

Worse, in April last year, Gurman not only whiffed again on the second-gen model with M5 being released later in the year, he actually suggested that the M5 speed bump revision was cancelled:

So the company is pushing forward and is currently working on two new models, I’m told. Though Apple had previously considered doing a more basic refresh of the current hardware (changing the chip from the M2 to upcoming M5), it’s now looking to go further.

That exact “previously considered” product shipped just six months after Gurman wrote that. Signs point to Gurman having terrible sources — or just making shit up — regarding Apple’s Vision Pro hardware roadmap.

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NASA’s Curiosity Takes Close Look at Rock That Got Stuck on Drill

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NASA’s Curiosity Takes Close Look at Rock That Got Stuck on Drill

A dark, brownish, roughly textured rock with a circular hole sits on the sandy-looking Martian surface. It has broken into several pieces after falling.
PIA26724
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

Description

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover used its Mast Camera, or Mastcam, to capture this view of a rock nicknamed “Atacama” on May 6, 2026, the 4,877th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. The rock had gotten stuck to the drill on the end of Curiosity’s robotic arm on April 25. Engineers spent several days repositioning the arm and vibrating the drill to try and get the rock loose, finally detaching the rock on May 1.

Atacama is estimated to be 1.5 feet in diameter at its base and 6 inches thick. It would weigh roughly 28.6 pounds (13 kilograms) on Earth (and about a third of that on Mars). The circular hole produced by Curiosity’s drill is visible in the rock.

This mosaic is made up of eight images that were stitched together after being sent back to Earth. The color has been approximately white-balanced to resemble how the scene would appear under daytime lighting conditions on Earth.

Curiosity was built by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California. JPL leads the mission on behalf of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington as part of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program portfolio. Malin Space Science Systems in San Diego built and operates Mastcam.

To learn more about Curiosity, visit:

science.nasa.gov/mission/msl-curiosity

The post NASA’s Curiosity Takes Close Look at Rock That Got Stuck on Drill appeared first on NASA Science.

[Sponsor] Drata

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iOS 26.5 Includes Beta Support for End-to-End Encrypted RCS Messaging

Apple Newsroom:

Starting today, end-to-end encrypted RCS messaging begins rolling out in beta for iPhone users running iOS 26.5 with supported carriers and Android users on the latest version of Google Messages. When RCS messages are end-to-end encrypted, they can’t be read while they’re sent between devices. Users will know that a conversation is end-to-end encrypted when they see a new lock icon in their RCS chats. Encryption is on by default and will be automatically enabled over time for new and existing RCS conversations.

I hope this leads to a future where all RCS messages are end-to-end encrypted, but I doubt it. Currently this E2EE RCS depends both on the carriers (of both parties) in a direct chat, and the software running on their devices. The carrier list is pretty broad, but as far as I can tell, it still doesn’t include Google’s own Google Fi.

But the indication for this is subtle. You have to read the small print metadata in each chat to see if it’s encrypted. The message text remains the same shade of green. If it’s a group chat and even one single member isn’t on a phone and carrier that supports E2EE RCS, the entire chat will not be encrypted.

With iMessage, all chats are always E2EE, and always have been. iMessage has been exclusively E2EE since it was created. With RCS you have to look in the metadata small print to check. That’s better than not supporting encryption at all, but my recommendation is to assume all RCS chats are not encrypted unless you double-check every time.

Other than bug fixes, encrypted RCS is the biggest new feature in iOS 26.5.

 ★ 

iPhone Models Ranked 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th in Counterpoint’s List of 10 Bestselling Phones Worldwide in Q1 2026

Samsung phones took spots 4, 5, 7, 8, and 9. The one phone not from Apple or Samsung in the top 10 was the Xiaomi Redmi A5 at #10. As I always say, take these numbers with a grain of salt, but according to Counterpoint, the bestselling phones, in order, are:

  1. iPhone 17
  2. iPhone 17 Pro Max
  3. iPhone 17 Pro

And Apple’s phone in spot #6 was not the iPhone Air, alas, but the year-old iPhone 16.

(Via Horace Dediu.)

 ★ 

The New PowerMac

Apple stopped selling the Power Mac G5 (with space) in August 2006, so I’m not sure how much they care about Kraft using “PowerMac” (sans space) as a trademark for protein-enhanced macaroni and cheese. (I feel like there’s got to be a joke to be made here about a “cheese grater”...)

 ★ 

Lisa Ramirez refuses to be underestimated

Lisa Ramirez.

Lisa Ramirez, a Democratic candidate in the CA-40 congressional race, wrote this piece as a response to my recent post.

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

— Margaret Mead

The biggest problem with politics in this country is the money it takes to run for office. The next biggest problem is that people who complain about the money dictating our politics still use it as the measuring stick for campaign viability. I firmly believe that our democracy was designed to be powered by the people and if the people are awake, vigilant and engaged we can out-beat the spend 100 percent of the time.

A true “grassroots” campaign is one that prioritizes localized knowledge and is genuinely grounded in relationships with the community over time. It is connection, community and consensus that delivers victories, not the dollars.

We don’t need to look too far back in history to know that money alone does not win races—people do. Zohran Mamdani defeated a Republican, a fellow Democrat, and an army of billionaire donors when he won the New York City mayoral election. If we count the independent expenditures, Andrew Cuomo outspent Mamdani by approximately $37 million!

In 2026 alone we can look to the U.S. Senate Primary, U.S. House District 2 and Senate District 9 races in Texas, where grassroots prevailed every single time!

And let’s not forget AOC or our history right here in Orange County when, in 1996, Loretta Sanchez was outspent by a factor of five but still won the primary and went on to beat B-1 Bob Dornan in the general election as the second Democrat elected to Congress in Orange County.

Still not convinced? For the moviegoers, we need look no further than streaming services for the feature-film versions of these true American stories: “The Long Game,” “Spare Parts,” “McFarland, USA,” “Moneyball”1 and “Norma Rae”—all ripe with examples of underfunded contenders triumphing over well-heeled opponents.

Does money matter? Absolutely, no matter how much I wish it didn’t. The dollars play a critical role in reaching voters so they know we exist. Advertising, canvassing literature, signs, etc.—they all cost lots of money. Yet, truth be told, it won’t take millions to win these primaries when you have two things: 1) a strong candidate whose demonstrated track record and character resonates with the people and 2) an army of volunteers who are hungry, who are inspired and who are motivated to step up in extraordinary ways.

It takes a candidate with a message that resonates. A candidate who embodies the qualities, characteristics and values that voters can connect with and relate to and want to fight for because she makes them feel heard. That is the campaign we have built and I continue to be shaped and inspired by our community of volunteers just the same.

Our 300-plus volunteers (none paid, no bots … and Republicans included) can speak from their heart as to why they are sacrificing their time to support our campaign. Our volunteers roll up their sleeves, start postcard parties, canvass on their own, create their own signs and stand out on street corners on a Friday night without me being there or even knowing. Our volunteers take to the streets and to the phones because they believe in the cause, the greater mission. They understand what’s at stake and what it’s going to take to win our country back. They know that by giving it all they’ve got, they are making a difference. Anyone can pay for canvassers; you can’t buy heart.

You can get ICE in an ice cream truck, but that doesn’t get ICE off the streets. Voters are looking for leaders who don’t just talk the talk but walk the walk. Leaders who are willing to walk with them, amplify their voices and fight for them. Leaders whose work is relevant not 25 years ago, but today. The challenges and crises this country is facing calls for new leadership. We need a closer, a Trevor Hoffman or Mariano Rivera—someone who will get the job done.

I have a work ethic that is unmatched by any candidate. I have garnered more support from every Dem Clubs whose members voted (minimum 70 percent, even when there were four candidates in the race!), the overwhelmingly majority vote of the delegates at the pre-endorsement conference and at the Convention (65 percent and 52 percent, respectively), and more votes than the other two candidates combined—despite being the last candidate to enter the race. This is my batting average at work and a testament to the decades of service I have given to this community.

My campaign has the money we need to land in the top two in the primary and win this seat. Every dollar is used strategically, intentionally and with precision. And what’s more valuable than the money is the people-power that fuels our campaign.

I think when there are leaders who really get what it means to be hungry, they fight harder. When you have a leader who knows not to take a vote, a voice or a volunteer for granted and who exhibits the kind of leader people want to see, that defines campaign viability.

The movement we are building is not a movement against something but it is a movement for something greater than ourselves and a vision for what is possible. It’s a fight for the heart of this country rooted in love and service to neighbor. The only limitation we face is the one we create in how we answer the timeless question of, “Who is my neighbor?” My answer: You are. Most great leaders understand this. This campaign is not about me, it’s about We.

Lastly, never underestimate the power of a woman or what she will do to protect her family and her community. What the Lisa Ramirez for Congress campaign is building in CA-40 is nothing short of miraculous.

If I believed that money was the determining factor, I would not be running, and I certainly wouldn’t have the tremendous support of voters, volunteers and donors. I invite your readers who agree with me to join our volunteer movement and/or make yes, a financial contribution at www.lisaramirez.com.

Lisa Ramirez is a Democratic candidate in the CA-40 congressional race.

1

Jeff’s note: As a sports writer, don’t get me started on “Moneyball.” Or just watch this.

Two Celebrations

American Conversations: Josh Marshall & Kate Riga of Talking Points Memo

May 10, 2026

There were two very different celebrations in Russia and in Hungary yesterday.

Russia celebrated Victory Day, the anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in World War II. Most of the Allies honor Victory in Europe Day, or V-E Day, on May 8, the day in 1945 that jubilant celebrations broke out as news spread of the Nazis’ unconditional surrender in Reims, France, on May 7, 1945. The Russians celebrate victory over the Nazis on May 9, for by the time the Germans surrendered to the Soviets in Berlin, the time difference meant it was already May 9 in Moscow.

May 9 is an important national holiday in Russia, marked with parades and honoring of relatives who fought in the war. In 2005, when Russia was still embracing democratic nations, more than fifty world leaders attended the sixtieth anniversary of Victory Day, including President George W. Bush; the leaders of China, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, and Denmark; the secretary-general of the United Nations; and the president of the European Commission.

But for the past several years, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has used the event to demonstrate the nation’s military strength and to rally supporters behind him and the war in Ukraine. He has showcased troops and military hardware in a grand parade in Moscow’s Red Square.

This year, as Zahra Ullah of CNN reported, Putin followed his usual pattern of equating the troops fighting in Ukraine with those who fought in World War II. As he has often framed the war as a struggle against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), he claimed today’s soldiers for Russia are “standing up to an aggressive force armed and supported by the entire NATO bloc.”

But the similarities between past celebrations and yesterday’s ended there. This year, the parade was dramatically scaled back. The parade included four parade units, including some from North Korea, and there was no heavy military hardware. Instead, screens spread across Red Square showed pre-recorded videos of drones, air defense forces, and submarines that state media claimed were from the front lines.

Although foreign leaders have attended the event in the past, this year there were few. As Matthew Luxmoore noted in the Wall Street Journal, Russian allies Venezuela and Hungary have recently lost their pro-Russian leaders, and Russian ally Iran is at war with the U.S. China’s leader Xi Jinping attended last year but did not attend this year. Russian officials allowed few foreign reporters to cover the event and warned people there could be restrictions on texting and the internet “to ensure security during the festive events.”

Putin’s scaled-back celebration reflects fear of Ukrainian drone strikes, which are hitting deep inside Russia. It also reflects growing discontent over the war and its devastation of the economy, and anger at the increasing repression with which Putin is trying to control opposition.

As former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul noted in McFaul’s World, Putin’s war on Ukraine has now lasted longer than the Soviet Union’s war with Nazi Germany and has achieved none of the goals Putin set out for the conflict. He has not subjugated Ukraine and has not succeeded in regime change. He has not “demilitarized” Ukraine; indeed, Ukraine is more militarized than ever before and has become an important player in global weapons systems. And not only has Putin failed to stop NATO from expanding, but in response to his invasion of Ukraine, both Finland and Sweden have joined the defensive alliance.

Instead of achieving Putin’s goals, the war has killed or wounded more than 1.2 million Russian soldiers and eaten up the economy. As criticism of the regime has become more outspoken, the Kremlin has curbed access to the internet, not only exacerbating that criticism but also, as McFaul notes, making it harder for people to use mobile banking, order a taxi, or use other online services. Rumors are circulating that Putin is increasingly concerned for his own safety. Rather than walking to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to lay flowers as usual, yesterday he took an armored bus.

Russia had announced a ceasefire for Friday and Saturday, but when it unraveled, President Donald J. Trump announced that he had persuaded Russia and Ukraine to agree to a three-day ceasefire that would cover the Victory Day celebration and allow an exchange of 1,000 prisoners from each country. After the announcement of the ceasefire, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky trolled Putin with a formal presidential decree to “allow” a parade in Moscow. It said: “For the time of the parade…the territorial square of Red Square shall be excluded from the plan of application of Ukrainian weapons.”

By Sunday—after the parade—the ceasefire had already broken down.

Today McFaul noted: “Ukrainian warriors have stopped the invading Russian hordes. Putin is losing his war in Ukraine…. Putin would be wise to cut his losses.”

In Hungary, a different kind of celebration was underway as Péter Magyar took the oath of office as prime minister after winning a landslide victory over Putin ally Viktor Orbán.

In his 16 years of rule, Orbán rejected the liberal democracy his country used to enjoy, saying that its emphasis on multiculturalism weakened the national culture while its insistence on human equality undermined traditional society by recognizing that women and LGBTQ people have the same rights as straight white men. The age of liberal democracy was over, he said, and a new age had begun.

In place of equality, Orbán advocated what he called “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” “Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal,” he said in July 2018; “it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues—say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.”

Orbán focused on LBGTQ rights as a danger to “Western civilization.” Arguing the need to protect children, his party has made it impossible for transgender people to change their gender identification on legal documents and made it illegal to share with minors any content that can be interpreted as promoting an LBGTQ lifestyle. After Orbán put allies in charge of Hungarian universities, his government banned public funding for gender studies courses. According to his chief of staff: “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women.”

The American right wing championed Orbán, who called for the establishment of a global right wing to continue to work together to destroy liberal democracy and establish Christian democracy. Before Hungary’s April election, Trump not only repeatedly endorsed Orbán but also promised “to use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy, as we have done for our Great Allies in the past, if Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and the Hungarian people ever need it.” Vice President J.D. Vance actually traveled to Hungary to campaign for Orbán.

But the Hungarian people overwhelmingly rejected Orbán and his party, giving Magyar’s party more than a two-thirds majority in parliament. This will give it the power to overturn not only the laws Orbán and his party passed, but also the changes Orbán made to entrench himself and his party in power permanently. Magyar promised to root out the corruption that has made Orbán and his cronies rich, to restore the rule of law and freedom of speech, and to repair Hungary’s ties with the European Union, which Orbán had frayed almost to the breaking point with his loyalty to Vladimir Putin.

In his inauguration speech, Magyar vowed to “serve my country, not rule over it.” He noted that the corrupt members of the outgoing government “stole from the pockets of Hungarians” and left behind a huge budget deficit and a broken healthcare system. He vowed accountability for those who plundered the country and broke its laws, and promised to rebuild the nation’s shattered checks and balances. He urged Hungarians always to criticize their leaders and hold them accountable.

“We inherited a country where politics deliberately pitted Hungarians against each other,” he said, and he explained how Orbán mobilized supporters with hatred and fear, poisoning “the collective psyche of an entire nation.” “The Hungarian state must never again do this to its own citizens,” he said. He vowed to heal the country: “We will once again learn to think of ourselves as one nation,” he promised.

Then Magyar and members of his party walked out to the crowd outside the parliament on Lajos Kossuth Lajos Square. Magyar urged them to see themselves as one community. He assured them that the story of the day had not been written by politicians in backrooms, but by them. “[I]t was all of you. You wrote it, through your work, your hope, your concern, and your determination. This is now your transition to democracy, this is your homeland, your National Assembly, and we thank you!”

After Magyar spoke, as Roma singer Ibolya Oláh, a lesbian, began performing her anthem “Magyarország,” the crowd crossed the reflecting pool in front of the parliament building to surge forward, taking back their public spaces and their parliament, illustrating their faith in a new era for their country.

Notes:

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-moscow-parade-ceasefire-cde7ec7a0fb10a3e2563171b931485e8

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/05/09/europe/russia-military-parade-ceasefire-intl-hnk

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/putin-victory-day-parade-moscow-803efb57

McFaul's World
Growing Cracks in Putin’s Dictatorship
Since coming to power in 2000, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has built one of the most repressive and effective dictatorships in the world. That process accelerated sharply after his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, when, increasingly paranoid about his society’s reaction to the wisdom of that war, Putin cracked down on all internal diss…
Read more

https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/09/nx-s1-5816478/trump-russia-ukraine-ceasefire

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-economic-support-viktor-orban-hungarian-election/

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/09/nx-s1-5779235/jd-vance-stumps-for-hungarys-orban

https://apnews.com/article/hungary-peter-magyar-inauguration-orban-a12b25cb022dedb777a54686e59c65a8

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/9/13/17823488/hungary-democracy-authoritarianism-trump

https://visegradpost.com/en/2018/05/12/viktor-orbans-full-speech-for-the-beginning-of-his-fourth-mandate/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/11/19/22787269/conservatives-america-chris-rufo-patrick-deneen

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2022/09/15/hungary-is-no-longer-a-full-democracy-but-an-electoral-autocracy-meps-declare-in-new-repor

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/10/vladimir-putin-suggests-ukraine-war-is-coming-to-an-end

https://telex.hu/english/2026/05/09/i-will-serve-my-country-not-rule-over-it-peter-magyar-sworn-in-as-hungary-s-new-prime-minister

X:

McFaul/status/2053510455784886304

zsoltsb/status/2053198434333544570

AlexTaylorNews/status/2053164567023288723

SzabadonMagyar/status/2053147093624078789

Bluesky:

united24media.com/post/3mlglex7ayp2t

onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3mlgb25wu7c2h

onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3mlg54y44mk2u

maks23.bsky.social/post/3mlfzb4ui6c2o

wartranslated.bsky.social/post/3mlegfaz7js25

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Mothers' Day

Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain

Your AI Use Is Breaking My Brain

Excellent, angry piece by Jason Koebler on how AI writing online is becoming impossible to avoid, filtering it is mentally exhausting and it's even starting to distort regular human writing styles.

I particularly liked his use of the term "Zombie Internet" to define a different, more insidious alternative to the "Dead Internet" (which is just bots talking to each other):

I called it the Zombie Internet because the truth is that large parts of the internet are not just bots talking to bots or bots talking to people. It’s people talking to bots, people talking to people, people creating “AI agents” and then instructing them to interact with people. It’s people using AI talking to people who are not using AI, and it’s people using AI talking to other people who are using AI. It’s influencer hustlebros who are teaching each other how to make AI influencers and have spun up automated YouTube channels and blogs and social media accounts that are spamming the internet for the sole purpose of making money. It is whatever the fuck “Moltbook” is and whatever the fuck X and LinkedIn have become. It’s AI summaries of real books being sold as the book itself and inspirational Reddit posts and comment threads in which people give heartfelt advice to some account that’s actually being run by a marketing firm. [...]

Via @jasonkoebler.bsky.social

Tags: definitions, ai, generative-ai, llms, slop, jason-koebler, ai-ethics

Using LLM in the shebang line of a script

TIL: Using LLM in the shebang line of a script

Kim_Bruning on Hacker News:

But seriously, you can put a shebang on an english text file now (if you're sufficiently brave) [...]

This inspired me to look at patterns for doing exactly that with LLM. Here's the simplest, which takes advantage of LLM fragments:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -f
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

But you can also incorporate tool calls using the -T name_of_tool option:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -T llm_time -f
Write a haiku that mentions the exact current time

Or even execute YAML templates directly that define extra tools as Python functions:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -t
model: gpt-5.4-mini
system: |
  Use tools to run calculations
functions: |
  def add(a: int, b: int) -> int:
      return a + b
  def multiply(a: int, b: int) -> int:
      return a * b

Then:

./calc.sh 'what is 2344 * 5252 + 134' --td

Which outputs (thanks to that --td tools debug option):

Tool call: multiply({'a': 2344, 'b': 5252})
  12310688

Tool call: add({'a': 12310688, 'b': 134})
  12310822

2344 × 5252 + 134 = **12,310,822**

Read the full TIL for a more complex example that uses the Datasette SQL API to answer questions about content on my blog.

Tags: llm, llm-tool-use, llms, ai, generative-ai

Learning on the Shop floor

Learning on the Shop floor

Tobias Lütke describes Shopify's internal coding agent tool, River, which operates entirely in public on their Slack:

River does not respond to direct messages. She politely declines and suggests to create a public channel for you and her to start working in. I myself work with river in #tobi_river channel and many followed this pattern. Every conversation is therefore searchable. Anyone at Shopify can jump in. In my own channel, there are over 100 people who, react to threads, add color and add context, pick up the torch, help with the reviews, remind me how rusty I am, and importantly, learn from watching. [...]

As so often with German, there is a word for the kind of environment: Lehrwerkstatt. Literally: A teaching workshop. The whole shop floor is the classroom. You learn by being near the work. Being a constant learner is one of the core values of the firm.

Shopify wants to be a Lehrwerkstatt at scale and River has now gotten us closer to this ideal than ever. It’s osmosis learning, because it does not require a curriculum, a training plan, or a manager. It just requires everyone's work to be visible to the maximum extent possible. Everyone learns from each other.

I'm reminded of how Midjourney spent its first few years with the primary interface being public Discord channels, forcing users to share their prompts and learn from each other's experiments. I continue to believe that the early success of Midjourney was tied to this mechanism, helping to compensate for how weird and finicky text-to-image prompting is.

Tags: ai, slack, generative-ai, llms, midjourney, coding-agents, tobias-lutke

Quoting New York Times Editors’ Note

This article was updated after The Times learned that a remark attributed to Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was in fact an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation. The reporter should have checked the accuracy of what the A.I. tool returned. The article now accurately quotes from a speech delivered by Mr. Poilievre in April. [...] He did not refer to politicians who changed allegiances as turncoats in that speech.

New York Times Editors’ Note

Tags: ai-ethics, hallucinations, generative-ai, new-york-times, journalism, ai, llms

Remember Tariffs?

Remember tariffs? They have not gone away.

Hi, Paul Krugman with another video update from another cafe. You may remember that back in April 2025, which was seven years ago — well, actually just about one year ago, but it feels like longer — Donald Trump shocked us all with massive tariffs on basically everybody. It was an extraordinary policy move.

It was also clearly illegal. It was also clearly really very stupid from the point of view of any kind of rational economic strategy. All of that seemed like the biggest thing in the world at the time.

But of course it’s been overshadowed in the last 70 plus days by something new which was also illegal and massively stupid and even more so because it’s war. So the tariff issue has kind of receded in our perception. But it has not gone away.

Since the initial imposition of tariffs, we’ve had a lot of action. Again, it would be the biggest thing in the world if it wasn’t for everything else that is going on.

The whole legal basis of the tariffs was tossed out by the Supreme Court after having been ruled illegal by lower courts in several different hearings. The basis of the original tariffs was an obscure law called the International Economic Emergency Power Act, which clearly did not apply to the situation as of April 2025. When those tariffs were tossed, Trump responded or his people responded by invoking “Section 122.”

I know there’s a lot of section numbers in all of this stuff and one question is what law are they sections of. and the answer is mostly they’re all different laws but anyway, 122 is for a balance of payments emergency. It allows a 10% tariff — lower than the IEEPA tariffs — but that was also clearly illegal, and a court has just ruled that it was illegal too. So now that will be appealed and there will be a couple more stages and we’ll see what the Supreme Court does.

In many ways I think people kind of tuned this out because there’s a time limit on 122 tariffs —150 days — so by the time the courts reached a decision that story would probably be over anyway and the Trump administration would have turned to other tariffs.

But it turns out to actually not be good to ignore these tariffs because one thing we have learned — actually we should have known if we thought about it — was that when the administration imposes illegal tariffs and they are eventually ruled illegal, that is a machine for ripping off the American public. When the tariffs are imposed they get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. When they are ruled illegal many of the companies that were importing goods get refunds — which is slowly getting underway for the original tariffs and will eventually happen, probably, for the new tariffs — but they don’t pass that on to consumers. And as I’ll explain in a minute, that’s not a result of conspiracy. It’s basically a policy failure, given the way this works. There’s no reason to think that consumers would benefit from the refunds on the past tariffs.

But in any case, what we’re seeing now is really, really destructive policies, although it takes a lot of bad economic policy to do as much damage as a war, especially a stupid failed war, but that’s where we are.

Let’s talk for a second about the tariffs. The crucial point for the immediate effects is this. When a tariff is imposed, the tariff is paid by importers, which is either companies that specialize in import-export or fairly often U.S. companies or retailers that are buying stuff from abroad and arranging for it to be shipped, either to be used in production or to be sold on to US consumers.

From their point of view, the tariff is a cost per unit sold. It’s a marginal cost, to use economic jargon. And so, of course, they have every incentive to pass the tariff on to consumers, unless foreigners bear the tariff, which actually doesn’t happen, although Trump insists that it does.

When the tariff is eventually ruled illegal, you can’t say oh well sorry about that but water under the bridge. If you’ve collected taxes from somebody and you didn’t have the right to do that then rule of law at the most minimal level says you have to pay it back. Which is in fact going to happen to a lot of a lot of the Trump tariffs. But that is not a marginal cost. The amount that an importer gets as a refund from illegal tariffs that were imposed in the past doesn’t depend on how much they sell now.

So it’s not a marginal cost, again, to use the economics jargon. Some people have been saying that the fact that there’s no sign that the tariff refunds will be passed on to consumers is somehow monopoly power or collusion or something. Well, I’m not saying there isn’t monopoly power and collusion, but you don’t need that. That’s exactly what you would expect even if there was lots of competition among the importers. The refund doesn’t affect the price that a company needs to charge to make back its expenses. It doesn’t affect the price they need to charge to stay in line with their competitors.

So we have created a machine which rips off consumers when the tariffs are imposed, then hands a bunch of money to corporations when the tariffs are ruled illegal.

So this is really not great stuff, and it’s pretty big. The Trump tariffs have been something like 1% of GDP, and most of them illegal and therefore a ripoff of consumers. That’s a big deal. That’s hundreds of billions of dollars that were taken for no good reason.

It almost seems beside the point to point out that the tariffs have also failed. All of the things that they were supposed to do rebuild manufacturing — manufacturing employment is down — reduce the trade deficit — the trade deficit isn’t down — haven’t happened. So this was all a really large burden on the US public completely without any payoff.

What happens from here? Well, you might think that maybe at least Trump and maybe at least the people around him have learned a lesson and they’ll stop doing such stupid things.

Not going to happen. Nothing is learned here. The latest is that Kevin Hassett, the administration’s chief economist, more or less, says that we’re going to have 6% growth this year. Which is, doesn’t happen except when you’re coming out of a deep, deep recession. The last time it happened, except for recovery from COVID, was in 1984, Morning in America. There is no reason at all to think that we’re going to have Morning Under Trump.

So another policy disaster, although it’s overshadowed by the war.

But this is really, really bad. Take care.

Will our Hyper-Gilded Age Usher in Genuine Populism?

Elon Musk is no Andrew Carnegie

America used to be a middle-class society. But income and wealth disparities began rising rapidly during the Reagan years, and by the late 80s many observers began drawing parallels between the new era of inequality and the Gilded Age.

At this point, however, it’s clear that we are not experiencing a mere replay of the reign of the robber barons. We are living through something much worse. The tech bros make the “malefactors of great wealth” called out by Theodore Roosevelt look benign by comparison.

Some widely used measures of inequality suggest that income disparities, which soared in the 1980s and 1990s, have plateaued since then. But the concentration of wealth at the top is continuing to soar. Today’s oligarchs control a huge share of America’s wealth — much larger than their share even at the end of the 1980s:

The growth in wealth concentration is even more extreme if we look at the very, very top. Gabriel Zucman, one of the world’s leading experts on wealth and income inequality, argues that the concentration of wealth is now much higher than it was at the peak of the Gilded Age:

Source

Tellingly, unlike the robber barons of yore, many modern plutocrats show little sense of gratitude for their good fortune, little inclination to give back to society by devoting a significant part of their wealth to good works. Forbes reports that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel have devoted almost none of their wealth to philanthropy, while Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are only slightly better.

More important than the stinginess of the superrich, however, is the fact that their wealth has brought great political power, arguably more than the robber barons ever possessed — power that they abuse on an epic scale.

Thanks to the Roberts Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling, plutocrats are able to pump vast amounts of money into elections. Here’s a recent headline from the New York Times:

One example of many: Peter Thiel bankrolled J.D. Vance’s Ohio Senate campaign, burying his Democratic populist rival under a flood of PAC money. Without Thiel’s big bucks, J.D. Vance would not now be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

And Elon Musk actually controlled a significant part of U.S. government operations in 2025 — control that he used, among other things, to eviscerate foreign aid. Those aid cuts have already led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths, mostly children, with millions more deaths likely to come.

The big political question going forward is whether there will be a significant backlash against the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small number of mean-spirited men.

I believe that there will be such a backlash, indeed that it is already starting, and that there is a political opening for some genuine populism if politicians have the courage to take a stand.

Polling suggests that an overwhelming majority of Americans — roughly speaking, almost everyone except MAGA Republicans — now consider the gap between rich and poor a major problem:

Source: YouGov

And anger over the Trump administration’s corruption — which isn’t the same as anger over the power of the superrich but overlaps with it — is clearly on the rise, becoming a major issue for the midterms.

What we need to push back against 21st century oligarchy are political figures who won’t let themselves be intimidated by the hysteria the wealthy always exhibit at any hint of an effort to limit their privileges. That hysteria is on full display right now in New York City, where some of the wealthy are crying persecution over a planned tax on expensive pieds-a-terre — apartments owned by nonresidents. It’s even more extreme in California, where a proposal for a one-time wealth tax has led Google’s Sergey Brin to compare the state to Soviet Russia.

What politicians and pundits need to understand is that while the ultrawealthy would like us to believe that concern about their excessive power and privileges is a radical, left-wing, anti-centrist position, it isn’t. It is, in fact, a view shared by a large majority of Americans. And in any case, as G. Elliott Morris has shown, few voters, even those who describe themselves as moderate, really support what pundits call “centrism.”

It’s true that any politician who proposes a pushback against modern American oligarchy will face a tidal wave of lavishly funded venom. But given the realities of who today’s plutocrats are and what they do, there are big opportunities for leaders willing to pull an FDR and declare, “I welcome their hatred.”

MUSICAL CODA

Quoting James Shore

Your AI coding agent, the one you use to write code, needs to reduce your maintenance costs. Not by a little bit, either. You write code twice as quick now? Better hope you’ve halved your maintenance costs. Three times as productive? One third the maintenance costs. Otherwise, you’re screwed. You’re trading a temporary speed boost for permanent indenture. [...]

The math only works if the LLM decreases your maintenance costs, and by exactly the inverse of the rate it adds code. If you double your output and your cost of maintaining that output, two times two means you’ve quadrupled your maintenance costs. If you double your output and hold your maintenance costs steady, two times one means you’ve still doubled your maintenance costs.

James Shore, You Need AI That Reduces Maintenance Costs

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

Links 5/11/26

Links for you. Science:

Here’s the Covid-19 vaccine paper the CDC censored. RFK Jr. and the CDC’s top official, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, don’t want you to read this. That’s exactly why you should.
Biotech is in a high-stakes game. RFK Jr.’s FDA keeps changing the rules.
A bill to gut endangered species protections faced a major setback this week
Researchers perplexed by growing numbers of ‘zombie’ fish deep in Lake Superior
Dogs’ brains began to shrink at least 5,000 years ago, study finds. Research offers insights into domestication of dogs but it remains unclear why they ended up with smaller brains than wolves
The Measurement Problem Has a Donut Hole
The Triumph of Ego Depletion

Other:

Newsworthy
Will the White House press be even more submissive?
The Loneliness of Donald Trump
Schumer’s Enemies Within. Democratic donors are feeling jazzed about the midterms but still haven’t made peace with leadership over the party’s post-’24 aimlessness. Support for Chuck Schumer, in particular, has become a litmus test for candidates and donors alike.
The Peak Comeback Kid Column
Trump blames No Kings for assassination attempt
D.C. AG Sues Multifamily REIT Over ‘Illegal Hidden Fees’
Sen. John Fetterman backed a stock trading ban — but his household reported buying shares tied to industries he oversees
College Football’s Biggest Gambling Scandal Also Reveals How to Prevent It
Are ICE warehouses just another Trump grift?
Stephen Colbert Gets Ready to Hang It Up
Virginia’s Paid Family Leave Law Signals Shift in the South
Conspiracy America
Virginia’s new law blocks counties from banning solar
Claude-powered AI coding agent deletes entire company database in 9 seconds — backups zapped, after Cursor tool powered by Anthropic’s Claude goes rogue
‘Disappointed,’ ‘Surprised,’ ‘Betrayed’: 12 Trump Voters on What Has Gone Wrong (I’m not a fan of the information deficit hypothesis in general, but, Dear Gritty, these people are just stone cold ignorant)
Study Finds A Third of New Websites are AI-Generated
Deranged Trump Rants Edited Out of 60 Minutes Interview After Shooting
AI’s Economics Don’t Make Sense
Alito Pens Decision That ‘Eviscerates’ The Voting Rights Act
Supreme Court limits key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act
Leaf Eaters
The YOLO Presidency: Trump is focused on becoming one of history’s “great men.”
Supreme Court Deals a Death Blow to the Voting Rights Act
The Pentagon May Not Be Telling Trump the Full Picture About the War
Dario Amodei, hype, AI safety, and the explosion of vibe-coded AI disasters
Make Greater D.C. Again? GOP embraces bid to add Arlington and Alexandria to the capital
Book bans and culture wars came for libraries. They’re still standing strong.
How Long Are DC Homeowners Staying Put? A Long Time
Trump administration rejects women picked for soybean board, appoints men instead

SpaceX launches intelligence-gathering satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base to begin the NROL-172 mission on Monday, May 11, 2026. Image: SpaceX

Updated May 12, 10:07 a.m. EDT (1407 UTC): The NRO confirms deployment of its satellites.

The National Reconnaissance Office flew its 13th mission supporting an intelligence-gathering constellation it calls the “proliferated architecture” on Monday night.

As with the first dozen missions, this batch of satellites (of an undisclosed quantity) flew to orbit on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The mission, dubbed NROL-172, launched from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Liftoff happened at 7:13:50 p.m. PDT (10:13:50 p.m. EDT / 0213:50 UTC), nearly four hours after the opening of the window.

SpaceX launched the mission using the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1097. This was its ninth flight following the launch of the Twilight rideshare, Sentinel-6B, and six batches of Starlink satellites.

At 8.5 minutes after liftoff, B1097 landed on the drone ship, ‘Of Course I Still Love You’, positioned in the Pacific Ocean. This was the 196th landing on this vessel and the 610th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

Given the nature of reconnaissance operations, the NRO doesn’t offer much detail on these satellites or specifics on their capabilities. It did state in its prelaunch press kit that having hundreds of satellites as part of this constellation will “provide greater revisit rates and increased coverage, and eliminate single points of failure.”

For this mission, the NRO did add some additional information by noting that its Geospatial Intelligence Systems Acquisitions Directorate (GEOINT) is contributing to the satellite constellation.

“GEOINT’s contribution to the NRO’s proliferated architecture includes electo-optical, radar, and relay satellites,” the NRO said. “Additionally, these relay satellites enable inter-satellite optical communications and serve as a key component of the NRO’s resilient communications architecture as well as the Department of War’s (DoW) upcoming space-data network.”

The mission patch for the NROL-172 mission. Graphic: National Reconnaissance Office.

The NROL-172 mission is the second flight booked on a Falcon 9 rocket as part of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 contract, managed by the United States Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC). The first of those was the NROL-145 mission, which launchd on April 20, 2025.

The two missions were assigned to SpaceX as part of the NSSL Task Order (NTO)-2 on Oct. 18, 2024.

“The Lane 1 path is ideal for shorter, more responsive mission timelines in addition to being the ideal entry avenue for prospective NSSL providers,” said USSF Col. Jim Horne, Launch Execution Senior Materiel Leader,” in a press release at the time.

Since the launch of NROL-145, there were two other missions supporting the proliferated architecture constellation: NROL-48 on Sept. 22, 2025, and NROL-105 on Jan. 16, 2026. Those two missions secured for launch onboard SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets through a procurement structure outside of the SSC’s NSSL program

In a statement to Spaceflight Now on Monday, a NRO spokesperson said it sometimes used procurement structures outside of the NSSL contract, as a bridge between the conclusion of NSSL Phase 2 and of Phase 3 Lane 1. Like with all the missions leading up to NROL-145, a NRO spokesperson said both the NROL-48 and NROL-105 missions were procured using “the same structure as with earlier proliferated launches.”

“During a satellite system acquisition lifecycle, cost, schedule, and performance analyses are completed to determine the best way to develop, acquire, launch, and operate systems to meet Intelligence Community and warfighter requirements,” the spokesperson said. “During those analyses, NRO makes decisions to meet those requirements most efficiently and effectively. For NRO’s proliferated architecture, NRO recognized a bridge was needed between Phase 2 to Phase 3 Lane 1. This resulted in some missions being procured outside of NSSL. Going forward, future proliferated architecture missions will be launched with a mix of NSSL Phase 3 Lane 1 and missions procured through other acquisition vehicles.”

“The NRO has been a staunch supporter of NSSL since its inception and is committed to using National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 for major system acquisitions,” the NRO spokesperson said. “The NRO is partnered with USSF Space Systems Command’s Assured Access to Space Team in the acquisition of Phase 3 and influenced the development of Phase 3, Lane 1 – as a means of procuring flexible launch solutions with tailorable mission assurance.”

“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. This resulted in some missions being procured outside of NSSL. NSSL has, and will continue to be, the NRO’s principal mechanism to procure launch services.”

Using LLM in the shebang line of a script

This comment on Hacker News inspired me to investigate patterns for using my LLM CLI tool in a shebang line:

But seriously, you can put a shebang on an english text file now (if you're sufficiently brave) [...]

LLM can end up installed in all sorts of unpredictable places so the best way to run it is via the #!/usr/bin/env pattern.

Here's how to make English (or Spanish or any other language) text executable via LLM:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -f
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

Save this as pelican.sh and make it executable with:

chmod +x pelican.sh

Then run it:

./pelican.sh

Other arguments will be passed through to LLM, so if you want to use a different model:

./pelican.sh -m gpt-5.4-nano

This prompt often returns commentary in addition to an SVG. To extract just the first code block in the response add the -x LLM option:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -x -f
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle

The -f option needs to come last as it will be passed the path to the script file.

How this works

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -f

The -S (for split) option to env is required because, without it, the env command will treat the rest of the line as the full name of the command, producing this error:

/usr/bin/env: 'llm -f': No such file or directory

With -S the -f is passed as an argument to LLM, and then the path to the file itself is passed after that:

llm -f path/to/pelican.sh

This takes advantage of LLM's fragments mechanism. The argument to -f is the path to a file, and the contents of that file will then be appended to the prompt.

Adding tools

Scripts like this are a lot more interesting if they can execute tools.

LLM has some default tools which you can try out. Here's how to use the llm_time tool which makes the current time available for the model to call:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -T llm_time -f
Write a haiku that mentions the exact current time

I got (at 17:52 UTC):

Whispers of the hour,
Seventeen fifty-two chimes,
Time flows ever on.

Using templates

LLM supports templates - YAML files that can mix a prompt, system prompt, model options, and tool definitions.

These can be used with a shebang line by ending that line with a -t, for example:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -t
prompt: Write a haiku
system: Output Spanish

I got this:

Brisa en el bosque,
hojas susurran sueños,
paz en el silencio.

Templates can include parameters, for example:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -t
prompt: |
  Two line poem about $animal who lives in $place

This needs to be run like this:

./poem.sh -p animal skunk -p place "hovercraft port"

In hovercraft's hum, where the engines start,
A skunk claims his kingdom, with pride and art.

Templates with tools

The most interesting way to use templates is with embedded tool functions. Here's a simple example of that, saved as calc.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -t
model: gpt-5.4-mini
system: |
  Use tools to run calculations
functions: |
  def add(a: int, b: int) -> int:
      return a + b
  def multiply(a: int, b: int) -> int:
      return a * b

Then:

chmod 755 calc.sh
./calc.sh 'what is 2344 * 5252 + 134' --td

Which outputs (thanks to the --td tool debug option):

Tool call: multiply({'a': 2344, 'b': 5252})
  12310688

Tool call: add({'a': 12310688, 'b': 134})
  12310822

2344 × 5252 + 134 = **12,310,822**

Here's a more complex example which defines a tool for searching my blog:

#!/usr/bin/env -S llm -t
model: gpt-5.5
system: |
  You answer questions from Simon Willison's blog
functions: |
  import httpx

  url = "https://datasette.simonwillison.net/simonwillisonblog.json"
  sql = """
  WITH results AS (
    SELECT 'entry' AS type, blog_entry.id AS id, blog_entry.slug AS slug,
           blog_entry.title AS title, blog_entry.created AS created,
           snippet(blog_entry_fts, -1, '<mark>', '</mark>', '…', 100) AS snippet,
           blog_entry_fts.rank AS rank
    FROM blog_entry_fts JOIN blog_entry ON blog_entry.rowid = blog_entry_fts.rowid
    WHERE blog_entry_fts MATCH :q
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'blogmark', blog_blogmark.id, blog_blogmark.slug,
           blog_blogmark.link_title, blog_blogmark.created,
           snippet(blog_blogmark_fts, -1, '<mark>', '</mark>', '…', 100),
           blog_blogmark_fts.rank
    FROM blog_blogmark_fts JOIN blog_blogmark ON blog_blogmark.rowid = blog_blogmark_fts.rowid
    WHERE blog_blogmark_fts MATCH :q
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'quotation', blog_quotation.id, blog_quotation.slug,
           blog_quotation.source, blog_quotation.created,
           snippet(blog_quotation_fts, -1, '<mark>', '</mark>', '…', 100),
           blog_quotation_fts.rank
    FROM blog_quotation_fts JOIN blog_quotation ON blog_quotation.rowid = blog_quotation_fts.rowid
    WHERE blog_quotation_fts MATCH :q
    UNION ALL
    SELECT 'note', id, slug, title, created,
           -- crude snippet: ~100 chars around the first match
           -- because notes do not yet have FTS enabled
           '…' || substr(body, max(1, instr(lower(body), lower(:q)) - 40), 200) || '…',
           0.0  -- no real rank available
    FROM blog_note
    WHERE body LIKE '%' || :q || '%' OR title LIKE '%' || :q || '%'
  )
  SELECT snippet FROM results
  ORDER BY rank
  LIMIT 20
  """

  def search_blog(query: str) -> str:
      """Search Simon's blog"""
      return httpx.get(url, params={"sql": sql, "q": query}).text

This sets up a tool called search_blog(query) which then executes an HTTP request against my datasette.simonwillison.net Datasette instance carrying a SQL query that searches various types of content.

Result:

./blog.sh "Has Simon implemented GraphQL?"

Output:

Yes. Simon implemented GraphQL support for Datasette as a plugin called datasette-graphql.

He described it as “a plugin that adds GraphQL query support to Datasette,” and later as a “Datasette plugin providing an automatic GraphQL API for your SQLite databases.” It can expose Datasette tables through GraphQL, including nested fields based on foreign-key relationships.

Here's the full log of that response showing the tool calls that were executed.

Why are stock prices still so high?

That is the topic of my latest Free Press column, here is one excerpt, with the general theme that plenty is going well in the global economy:

A second important fact is that American presidents, whether Democrat or Republican, usually have very little influence on the economy. That is a hard truth for people to hear, since partisan sentiments often run strong, especially when it comes to President Trump. Yet the research literature is clear that most business cycles are not caused by presidents.

As for the current cycle, the core reality is that our economy continues to hum along. Yes, gas prices above $4 a gallon cause dismayed news stories and consumer worry. But energy prices have less influence on the overall economic picture than they once did. The chances of a recession have been falling, and a recent jobs report showed strong progress in hiring.

Of course the Trump administration will take credit for such developments, but mostly they are due to underlying structural factors.

And this:

During the current war, many parts of the global economy have shown more resilience and fortitude than might have been expected. Stocks in South Korea at first plummeted 20 percent, due largely to its dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Today, the Korean stock market, pushed along by the chip-making achievement of Samsung and memory maker SK Hynix, is reaching new highs.

…In previous times, sharp oil price hikes often brought catastrophe to the economies of Latin America. These days Latin American government bonds have held up well and are even considered a safe haven.

Recommended.

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Former NASA chief of staff returns to lead agency launch operations

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Thinkie: Wider Scope

I came across the following example & I wanted to write about it but I realized it was a good example of a Thinkie & I haven’t written about thiat Thinkie yet so here it is. Whew! Quite the opening sentence.

Pattern: You’re stuck thinking about a complicated problem.

Transformation: Look at the problem in its wider context. What are the “sources & uses” (from Permaculture) of the problem? What feedback loops does it participate in?

Okay, here’s the motivating example. I’ve been hearing the slogan, “Profit is theft.” I’m not convinced but where does the idea come from? Here’s the quote that got me thinking about wider scope:

In economics there’s a concept called “ecosystem exploitation.” It’s what happens when a producer appropriates the difference between what an input costs and what it contributes to the final output. In the original framing this was strictly about labor.

  • A factory owner pays a worker a wage.

  • That worker produces something worth considerably more than that wage.

  • The owner sells that product and pockets the difference in value.

That final act is exploitation because the surplus created in production is not returned to the input that generated it.

The paper goes on to talk about how training LLMs is exploitive in this way, which I happen to agree with. However, not my point.

The structure above—paid a wage→produce→sold—isn’t the whole picture. “Profit is theft” makes good sense if that’s the whole picture. However, there’s a larger sequence into which this picture fits:

  1. Capital owner invests in building a factory.

  2. Worker paid a wage.

  3. Produces widget.

  4. Widget sold at a profit.

  5. Capital owner gets paid back with interest.

What incentive does the capital owner have to build the factory, without which there is no production, without step 5? If we give all the profit to the worker, the factory never gets built. We’re going to have to find a way to split the excess of sales price - cost of production.

Now, I realize I have stepped into a giant centuries old debate, no, war, but that’s not my point (although my question about incentives for those producing content digested by LLMs holds). My point is rather than pick apart the pieces of a complicated problem, sometimes it’s more productive to zoom out & see the problem in context.

BlackSky’s Lyn Chassagne on using satellite imagery to solve problems

In this episode of Space Minds, Mike Gruss talks with BlackSky’s Lyn Chassagne about AI’s role in the imagery sector, how international partners are thinking about sovereignty and the quest […]

The post BlackSky’s Lyn Chassagne on using satellite imagery to solve problems appeared first on SpaceNews.

Creotech plans $118 million capital raise, investment in new satellite factory

WARSAW, Poland — Polish space technology company Creotech Instruments has announced plans for a $118 million fundraise that will allow the company to open a new satellite production facility in Poland by 2029 as part of a new long term development strategy. Creotech Instruments hopes to quadruple its manufacturing capacities to around 40 satellites annually […]

Special Operations Forces test mobile platform for direct satellite imagery access

The software, developed by SkyFi, operates on tactical Android devices

Cowboy raises $275 million to build rockets with orbital data center upper stages

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Failing to pass a defense budget is a self-inflicted wound in the space race

As we have learned from the current conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, space-enabled capability has become critical to all we do in the military. It is persistent (always there) and operates in denied areas (first in the battlefield). These capabilities provide critical combat effects: intelligence, missile threat warning, rapid communications and necessary and amazingly accurate […]

China wants more robots but not fewer workers

A human-first approach to automation

America is experiencing a productivity miracle

AI hasn’t—yet—got much to do with it

Monday assorted links

1. Why Dunkin’ Donuts failed in India.

2. Rents in the Middle East, and is the region less dependent on oil than before?  And why is Jordan still relatively stable in economic terms?

3. Kakistocracy, the pending Richard Hanania book.

4. Brad Mehldau defends Billy Joel.  Slowly, but even I am being brought around to this position.

5. Kurtis Hingl on the future of research papers: “But this will evolve to a demand-side system where “papers” are accompanied by a platform of all the tools used in the process, and the reader will ask their AI their “what if we did X instead of Y, does that change the estimate?” Like if I were reading an experimental chemistry paper, and it came with a pre-set lab with all the ingredients, a lab director and assistants, and I could ask them as I read the paper, “what if we tweaked the proportions by X?” and they did it right there in front of me and together we saw the outcome.”

6. Yes China understands their security risks from ChatGPT and other LLMs.

7. Another strange German festival.

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Jeetcity Login and Registration: Step-by-Step Instructions

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Now, the fun part: the registration form! You’ll encounter a few essential fields designed to get your account up and running. First up is your unique username  – make it memorable, but remember it’s what everyone else will see. Then comes the password . Seriously, don’t skimp here. Aim for a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and a symbol or two. Think “Secur3@Pass!” not “password123”. You’ll then need to provide your email address ; this is super important for verification and any important updates. Next, you’ll select your preferred currency  from a dropdown menu. Make sure it’s the one you plan to use for deposits and withdrawals. Lastly, you’ll confirm your country of residence . Double-check everything; typos happen, and it’s much easier to fix them now than later!

Agreeing to Terms and Conditions

Before you hit that final button, you’ll see a checkbox. It’s for the Terms and Conditions  and the Privacy Policy . Look, nobody enjoys reading dense legal jargon, but give it a quick skim at least. It outlines the rules of the road, what you can and can’t do, and how your data is handled. You can typically find a direct link to the full documents right near the checkbox. Checking this box is your official confirmation that you’ve read, understood, and agree to abide by these terms. It’s a crucial step to ensure a smooth gaming experience without any nasty surprises down the line.

Finalizing and Confirming Your Account

You’re almost there! The grand finale involves clicking the “Submit Registration” or “Complete Registration” button. Once that’s done, Jeetcity will whisk you away to a confirmation page, often saying something like “Account Created!” or “Welcome Aboard!”. The most important part now is to check your inbox for a verification email. It might be hiding in your spam or junk folder, so be sure to look there too. This email will contain a link – click it! This is the crucial email verification link  that officially activates your account. Without it, your account remains incomplete. Once clicked, you’re officially registered, verified, and ready to dive into the exciting world of Jeetcity!

The Verification Process: Your Key to Full Access

So, you’ve picked out your favorite games on Jeetcity and you’re ready to dive in, but then you hit the KYC wall. Don’t sweat it! The Jeetcity verification  process, or KYC process  as it’s widely known, isn’t some arbitrary hurdle. It’s actually your golden ticket to a secure and fully functional gaming experience. Think of it as putting on your lucky charm, but for your account’s safety. This identity verification  is a standard practice in the online casino world, and it’s designed to protect everyone involved.

Why Verification is Crucial

Let’s cut to the chase: KYC importance  boils down to robust security measures  and staying on the right side of the law. For you, it means safeguarding your funds and personal information from unauthorized access and potential fraud. For the casino, it’s about maintaining regulatory compliance, fighting against money laundering (AML), and promoting responsible gaming. It’s a win-win, really, setting up a secure environment where you can focus on the fun, not on worrying about your account’s integrity.

What Documents Are Typically Needed?

Getting through this part smoothly means understanding what the casino actually needs. Usually, you’ll be asked for a proof of identity  and a proof of address . For identity, a clear scan or photo of your government-issued ID like a passport  or driver’s license  is standard. For your address, a recent utility bill  or a bank statement, typically dated within the last three months, will do the trick. Just make sure all four corners are visible, and no vital information is conveniently cropped out. Keeping copies handy makes this whole thing a breeze.

Expert Tips for Seamless Document Submission

Alright, let’s talk about making this as painless as possible. When it comes to document scanning tips  and ensuring good photo quality , a few simple things go a long way. Find a well-lit area – natural light is your best friend. Make sure your document is flat and in focus; blurry photos are a surefire way to invite a delay. Avoid using flash if it causes glare. When uploading documents , stick to common formats like JPG, PNG, or PDF, and always double-check the specific upload instructions on the casino’s portal to avoid rejection . Easy peasy.

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Nobody likes a verification rejection , right? The most common document issues  often stem from little oversights. Think expired IDs – they’re a no-go. Blurry photos or images where essential details like your name, photo, or address are obscured are also frequent culprits. Sometimes, a proof of address that’s too old is the sticky wicket. The fix? Ensure your documents are current, legible, and complete. Double-check all the details before you hit submit, and you’ll cruise through the process.

Troubleshooting Common Login & Registration Hiccups

We’ve all been there, staring at a screen, trying to get into your account, and… nothing. It’s frustrating, right? Let’s be real, login issues and registration problems can feel like locked doors when you just want to get inside. But don’t sweat it too much. As your go-to for navigating the digital world, we’ve seen just about every hiccup and have a few tried-and-tested remedies up our sleeves. Think of this as your personal troubleshooting guide to getting back to account access problems without the headache. Whether it’s a forgotten password or a registration that just won’t stick, we’ve got your back.

Forgotten Passwords & Account Recovery

So, the password you’ve definitely used a million times has suddenly vanished from your brain? Happens to the best of us. The good news is that the ‘Forgot Password’ link is your best mate here. Usually, you’ll click that, provide a bit of info like your email address or username, and we’ll send a password recovery link. Keep an eye on your inbox (and maybe your spam folder, more on that later). Once you click the link, you’ll be prompted to create a new, super-strong password. Pro tip: go for a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols to keep things secure.

The Elusive Verification Email

Registration is going swimmingly, you hit submit, and then… crickets. The verification email just isn’t showing up. First things first, take a deep breath and check your spam or junk mail folder. Seriously. These emails can sometimes get caught in the digital weeds. Also, double-check that you entered your email address correctly during registration – a tiny typo can send it to the ether. If you’re still drawing a blank, look for a ‘Resend Verification Email’ option on the platform. Give it a few minutes; sometimes, there’s just a slight delay in the system.

Login Denied: What It Could Mean

You’ve entered your details, feeling pretty confident, and then BAM! “Login denied.” This is often down to a couple of things. Most commonly, it’s just a case of incorrect credentials – a typo, or maybe Caps Lock is playing games with you. Double-check those fields. Another possibility is that your account might be temporarily locked due to too many failed login attempts – a security measure, though annoying when you’re the one locked out! In this scenario, waiting a short while and trying again is usually the fix. If it persists, it could be a fleeting technical issue on our end. Give it a little break, and if all else fails, reaching out to our support team is always an option to smooth things over.

Jeetcity Login Methods & Secure Access

Getting into your Jeetcity account should be a breeze, but keeping that access secure is where the real magic happens. Think of your login as the key to your personal vault of gaming entertainment, and we’re here to make sure only you hold that key. Jeetcity offers straightforward ways to get logged in, prioritizing both ease and robust security to protect your gaming experience.

Standard Username/Password Login

The most common way into your Jeetcity account is through the classic username and password combo. Simply pop your unique username into the designated field, followed by your password. Double-check that your Caps Lock is off for password entry – it’s a small detail that trips up many! This traditional login method is quick and familiar.

Leveraging Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

For an extra layer of security that’s seriously worth the minimal effort, we can’t stress enough the importance of enabling Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) if Jeetcity offers it. Think of it as adding a second lock to your door. Once you’ve entered your username and password, you’ll be prompted for a second verification step. This could be a code generated by an authentication app on your phone, or a code sent via SMS directly to your registered number. You’ll usually find this super-powered security option tucked away in your account settings or security profile area. It’s a small step that makes it exponentially harder for anyone else to get into your account, even if they somehow snag your password.

Best Practices for Secure Access

Beyond the built-in features, your own vigilant habits are your strongest ally in keeping your Jeetcity account safe. Always opt for strong, unique passwords – a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols makes them tough to crack. Never, ever save your login details on public computers or shared devices; it’s a red flag waiting to happen. Be on high alert for phishing attempts; if an email or message asks for your login information, it’s highly suspect. And when you’re logging in, steer clear of unsecured public Wi-Fi networks; they can be a playground for cyber eavesdroppers. Sharing your login details is a big no-no, plain and simple. Stay sharp, and your gaming world remains yours alone.

Your Expert Take: Play Responsibly with Jeetcity

Diving into the thrill of online gaming is exciting, but let’s be real, a little foresight goes a long way. At Jeetcity, we’re all about making sure your gaming experience is not just fun, but also firmly under your control. Think of it like this: setting up those responsible gambling tools isn’t a buzzkill; it’s your secret weapon for lasting enjoyment. Jeetcity offers a handy suite of features, from setting deposit and session limits to taking a breather with timeouts or even opting for self-exclusion if you feel the need. Embracing these options is the smartest play you can make, ensuring you always stay in the driver’s seat and keep the good times rolling, safely. Remember, playing it safe is playing smart.

Your Confident Start at Jeetcity

So, we’ve navigated the ins and outs, and now it’s time to wrap things up. Getting started at Jeetcity, while it might seem like a bit of a puzzle at first, really boils down to a few crucial steps, each designed with your safety and enjoyment in mind. Think of it as building a solid foundation for your gaming adventures. Remember, a little bit of attention to detail during the initial setup, especially when it comes to verifying your details, is your golden ticket to a smooth and secure experience. It’s not about complexity; it’s about empowerment. This expert advice summary is your blueprint – follow it, and you’ll bypass the common hiccups, heading straight for the fun. The next steps? Crystallizing that plan, embracing the security features, and finally, diving headfirst into the vibrant world Jeetcity has waiting. Your confident start is just a few clicks away, built on a process that’s as reliable as it is rewarding.

Photo: Castorly Stock via Pexels


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The post Jeetcity Login and Registration: Step-by-Step Instructions appeared first on DCReport.org.

Classroom 4

Photo of a woman speaking in a room with people. She’s wearing a red top and a ring, others are seated in the background.

In this award-winning short, inmates and college students explore the history of incarceration from inside a US prison

- by Aeon Video

Watch on Aeon

Children are apprentices

Children playing by a weathered brick wall painted blue and white, wearing coats in a playground.

The emotional and practical skills of adulthood can only be learned from (appropriate) levels of discomfort and stress

- by Niklas Serning & Nina Lyon

Read on Aeon

Roth and Fisman at Cambridge Public Library, discussing Moral Economics: THIS Evening

 Alvin E. Roth at the Cambridge Public Library   Monday, May 11 at 6 pm 

Alvin E. Roth at the Cambridge Public Library 

 


Harvard Book Store and the Cambridge Public Library welcome Alvin E. Roth—Nobel Prize–⁠winning economist, the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University, and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University—for a discussion of his new book, Moral Economics: From Prostitution to Organ Sales, What Controversial Transactions Reveal About How Markets Work. He will be joined in conversation by Ray Fisman—who holds the Slater Family Chair in Behavioral Economics at Boston University.

Ticketing

RSVP for free to this event or choose the "Book-Included" ticket to reserve a copy of Moral Economics and pick it up at the event. Following the presentation will be a book signing.

Note: Books bundled with tickets may only be picked up at the venue the night of the event, and cannot be picked up in-store beforehand. Ticket holders who purchased a book-included ticket and are unable to attend the event will be able to pick up their book at Harvard Book Store up to 30 days following the event. This offer expires after 30 days. Please note we cannot guarantee signed copies will be available to ticket holders who do not attend the event.

About Moral Economics

A Nobel Prize–⁠winning economist shows us why we have to deal in trade-offs when we can’t agree on what’s right and what’s wrong.

Some of the most intractable controversies in our divided society are, at bottom, about what actions and transactions should be banned. Should women and couples be able to purchase contraception, access in vitro fertilization, and end pregnancy by obtaining an abortion? Should people be able to buy marijuana? What about fentanyl? Can someone be paid to donate blood plasma, or a kidney?

Disagreements are fierce because arguments on both sides are often made in uncompromising moral or religious terms. But in Moral Economics, Nobel Prize–winning economist Alvin E. Roth asserts that we can make progress on these and other difficult topics if we view them as markets—tools to help decide who gets what—and understand how those markets can be fine-tuned to be more functional. Markets don’t have to allow everything or ban everything. Prudent market design can find a balance between preserving people’s rights to pursue their own interests and protecting the most vulnerable from harm.

Combining Roth’s unparalleled expertise as market design pioneer with his incisive, witty accounts of complicated issues, Moral Economics offers a powerful and innovative new framework for resolving today’s hardest controversies.

Bios

Alvin E. Roth is the Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics at Stanford University and the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration Emeritus at Harvard University. A pioneering expert in the field of market design, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2012. A member of the National Academy of Sciences and past president of the American Economic Association, he lives in Stanford, California.

Ray Fisman holds the Slater Family Chair in Behavioral Economics at Boston University. His research focuses primarily on corruption, both in the U.S. and globally. It has appeared in leading economics journals including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, and Review of Economic Studies, and has been widely covered in the popular press, in such outlets as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, the Economist, and the Washington Post. His next book, on the economics of business social responsibility, will come out in 2027.

Masking Policy

Masks are encouraged but not required for this event.

Co-Sponsor

The Cambridge Public Library serves as a doorway to opportunity, self-development, and recreation for all its residents, and as a forum where they may share ideas, cultures, and resources among themselves and with people around the globe. Learn more at cambridgema.gov/cpl.

Orion never had a sword like this. Orion never had a sword like this.


Another use of AI in research (from my email)

“Another thing we (John [Horton] and I) have thought about is having a swarm of AIs “fight” over a literature. They could take the cumulative datasets available and continuously argue until they understand the question. One line of thinking says they reach a stalemate (as scientists currently do). But we think not. More likely, they push evidentiary understanding to the limit and coalesce around what’s most probable — if not definitive!”

That is from Benjamin Manning.

The post Another use of AI in research (from my email) appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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The interstate trade effects of autonomous trucks

Recent advances in autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicle technologies promise substantial cost savings for goods shipped by truck. In this study, we quantify the impacts of these transport cost reductions on the US interstate trade using a structural gravity model of domestic trade. Based on projected cost savings from the widespread adoption of self-driving technologies, we estimate significant increases in total interstate trade value. State-level impacts vary from 40.3% of GDP in Mississippi to 5.9% in Florida, while the largest impacts in dollar value are observed in Texas and New York. The sectoral analysis highlights motorized vehicles, mixed freight, and electronics as the industries experiencing the largest trade value growth. Additionally, goods with low value-to-weight ratios—where shipping costs represent a large share of the delivered value—are expected to benefit most in relative terms. These findings underscore the transformative potential of autonomous vehicle technologies in reshaping US trade patterns and sectoral dynamics.

That is from a recent paper by Taejun Mo, et.al., via the excellent Kevin Lewis.

The post The interstate trade effects of autonomous trucks appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Adapted for extremes

Today’s Picture of the Week features two distinct families: a collection of ALMA antennas and a trio of vicuñas , a type of camelid, related to llamas and alpacas. Unlike in almost every way, the subjects of this image are linked by their extremely hostile home environment, high up in the Chilean Andes.

The Chajnantor plateau, site of the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) shown here, is 5000 metres above sea level, making it one of the driest places on Earth. The aridity is perfect for observations with ALMA, which searches for cosmic signals from the cold Universe that are readily absorbed by moist air. But the low number of cloudy days, along with a thin atmosphere, produces harsh conditions, pushing the limits of both engineering and evolution.

The ALMA receivers –– the devices that catch signals from space –– are enclosed in cryostats that keep them very cold, protecting them against the drastic day-to-night temperature swings of the desert. The antennas are designed to withstand extremely strong winds, up to 100 kilometres an hour. ALMA’s electronics are cooled with extra-fast spinning fans to account for the thinner air. For the workers, like technicians and engineers who maintain the site, portable medical oxygen is mandatory on the plateau to limit the risk of high-altitude sickness.

Like ALMA, vicuñas, are also well-suited to these extreme conditions. They have several adaptations to cope with low oxygen density, including an increased ability to bind oxygen to red blood cells and hearts 50% heavier than similar-sized mammals. Vicuñas are also protected from large temperature variations with their dense fleece of fine hairs, which traps warm air to insulate them during cold nights and forms a breathable barrier to prevent overheating during the day.

Color Off the Mid-Atlantic Coast

Bright milky blue ribbons of water are visible along the coast along with patches of brown and green in some areas.
Colorful waters swirl off the Mid-Atlantic coast in an image captured by the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) on NASA’s Aqua satellite on May 3, 2026.
NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

Starting in early April, NASA satellites began to detect a patch of brownish, blue-green water lingering off the coasts of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. The colors and patterns were most intense in the shallow coastal zone where the waters of Raritan Bay, Delaware Bay, and Chesapeake Bay merged with the Atlantic Ocean—an area known as the Mid-Atlantic Bight

It’s a part of the ocean that remote sensing scientists typically describe as being “noisy” or “dirty” because rivers often discolor coastal waters with plumes of suspended sediment, water stained with colored dissolved organic matter, and an array of microscopic and aquatic plant life. All of this can mingle with ephemeral phytoplankton blooms, sometimes in mucky waters against a varied backdrop of seagrass, sand flats, and rocky sea bottoms. 

This mix creates optical complexity that has long made it harder for scientists to distinguish and categorize phytoplankton blooms in shallow coastal zones compared to the deeper, darker, more uniform waters of the open ocean. Yet with the arrival of missions like PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem), which launched in 2024 and measures more wavelengths of light than previous ocean color missions, scientists are growing increasingly confident in identifying phytoplankton blooms even in optically complex coastal areas.

Multiple NASA satellites—including PACE, Aqua, and Terra—have captured images of colorful water in recent weeks. While some of the color visible in the images may be due to outflows from coastal rivers and sediment churned up by spring storms, “there are likely phytoplankton blooms happening,” said Anna Windle, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center supporting the PACE science team. “Diatoms typically dominate blooms early in the spring, but we are seeing some signs of coccolithophores mixed in as well,” she said. PACE data helped confirm that at least some of the greens and blues offshore are phytoplankton blooms by mapping chlorophyll in the region on the same day.

Diatoms are a class of phytoplankton that often experience explosive growth in their population in the spring when the combination of river runoff, increased sunlight, and seasonal shifts in winds and currents brings upwellings of cool, nutrient-rich water to the surface. Diatom-dominated blooms typically appear greenish in natural-color satellite imagery. 

Coccolithophore-dominated blooms generally have a brighter, chalkier, more turquoise look to them. The milky appearance is a product of the coccolithophores—tiny plant-like organisms that live in the upper layers of the ocean and surround themselves with scaly platings called coccoliths made of calcite, or calcium carbonate.

These highly reflective hubcap-shaped scales are only a few thousandths of a millimeter thick, but coccolithophores are found in such massive numbers during blooms that their plates play a key role in global biogeochemical cycles. The organisms are responsible for about one-half of modern precipitation of calcium carbonate in the ocean, according to one estimate. Off the Mid-Atlantic, coccolithophore blooms generally occur in the late spring or summer, after surface water temperatures have warmed and diatom blooms have lowered nutrient levels somewhat.

Phytoplankton are to the ocean what grasses and ground cover are to land: primary producers, a key food source for other life, and the main carbon recyclers for the marine environment. Diatoms, coccolithophores, algae, and other forms of phytoplankton are floating organisms that absorb sunshine, sponge up nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus, and create their own food through photosynthesis.

The ocean surface is typically quite nutrient-rich in the spring after cold winter weather and winds have mixed the water vertically, bringing nutrients upwards. “But over time, as big spring phytoplankton blooms grow, they deplete the nutrients,” said Rutgers University oceanographer Oscar Schofield. “Unless big river outflows or storms replenish the nutrients, we’ll likely see this bloom start to decline in the coming weeks.”  

NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS LANCE and GIBS/Worldview. Story by Adam Voiland.

References & Resources

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The post Color Off the Mid-Atlantic Coast appeared first on NASA Science.

Sunday 10 May 1663

(Lord’s day). Up betimes, and put on a black cloth suit, with white lynings under all, as the fashion is to wear, to appear under the breeches. So being ready walked to St. James’s, where I sat talking with Mr. Coventry, while he made himself ready, about several businesses of the Navy, and afterwards, the Duke being gone out, he and I walked to White Hall together over the Park, I telling him what had happened to Tom Hater, at which he seems very sorry, but tells me that if it is not made very publique, it will not be necessary to put him away at present, but give him good caution for the time to come. However, he will speak to the Duke about it and know his pleasure.

Parted with him there, and I walked back to St. James’s, and was there at mass, and was forced in the crowd to kneel down; and mass being done, to the King’s Head ordinary, whither I sent for Mr. Creed and there we dined, where many Parliament-men; and most of their talk was about the news from Scotland, that the Bishop of Galloway was besieged in his house by some women, and had like to have been outraged, but I know not how he was secured; which is bad news, and looks just as it did in the beginning of the late troubles. From thence they talked of rebellion; and I perceive they make it their great maxime to be sure to master the City of London, whatever comes of it or from it. After that to some other discourse, and, among other things, talking of the way of ordinaries, that it is very convenient, because a man knows what he hath to pay: one did wish that, among many bad, we could learn two good things of France, which were that we would not think it below the gentleman, or person of honour at a tavern, to bargain for his meat before he eats it; and next, to take no servant without certificate from some friend or gentleman of his good behaviour and abilities.

Hence with Creed into St. James’s Park, and there walked all the afternoon, and thence on foot home, and after a little while at my office walked in the garden with my wife, and so home to supper, and after prayers to bed. My brother Tom supped with me, and should have brought my aunt Ellen with him; she was not free to go abroad.

Read the annotations

Basil Halperin on eclectically optimal policy

David Beckworth recently interviewed Basil Halperin on his podcast MacroMusings. The interview focused on two primary issues: the effect of AI on the macroeconomy and how to think about optimal monetary policy. I see Halperin as a pragmatist in the tradition of Bennett McCallum, which is one reason why he’s my favorite young macroeconomist. Later, I’ll offer some comments on recent trends in the economy.

Halperin’s model suggests that if extremely rapid AI growth were to occur, it would lead to much higher interest rates. The fact that we do not see extremely high rates is taken as evidence that the financial markets do not expect explosive growth over the next decade or two:

Halperin: . . . I think it’s totally plausible that we just get something like the late ’90s, the dot-com boom, where we have a large surge in growth. AI companies make a lot of money and continue to have really fast revenue growth, like the 10 times a year that Anthropic has had last year. Not reaching the 30% GDP growth, certainly in the next five years, again, that some people take very seriously.

Maybe 20 years down the line, things change. I do think that rapid acceleration really is possible in the long run if we have something closer to full automation of human labor. Those sci-fi scenarios, I actually do think our models say that’s quite possible. Economic history says rapid economic speed-ups are quite possible. In the next five years, the next 10 years even, maybe even the next 20 years, that’s where the markets are not seeing this. Markets are pretty good at predicting the future, its own form of artificial intelligence.

Beckworth: You’re hopeful that, within my lifetime, I will see transformative AI?

Halperin: “Hopeful” is a strong word because big changes are both good and scary.

Others have argued that an AI boom might actually lower interest rates, but I don’t find the assumptions about income distribution in those models to be plausible.

The interview is full of great observations. Here he pushes back on the view (which I once held) that AI might solve our public debt problems:

Faster growth means higher tax revenue, but faster growth in general equilibrium means higher interest rates, that is, higher rates on new debt. The average maturity of Treasuries is like six years or something so the US has to roll over its debt stock every six years or something like that. After six years, we’re going to be stuck with all those higher new interest rates. Hence then, the question is this R versus G, or really R minus G, is the effect of AI on interest rates or on growth larger? What determines that? . . .

And this is what the empirical estimates in my paper with Zach and Trevor would find where . . . we have some nice data showing that R and G are indeed lined up. Higher growth leads to higher interest rates or correlationally leads to higher interest rates. We estimate something around one for the slope of that relationship, this elasticity of intertemporal substitution. I would say that higher growth leads to one-for-one higher interest rates so that new debt is not any easier or any harder to pay off as a response to AI. That would say that AI is not a magic solution to our debt problem.

Halperin is a fan of NGDP targeting, citing the influence of George Selgin’s book Less Than Zero:

[Selgin’s] book has influenced me a lot. I think, to my very idiosyncratic taste, it’s one of the most conceptually important works on monetary economics in the last 30 or 40 years because it really drills in on what should central banks actually be doing from a number of directions that the formal literature eventually developed on, even if George’s work wasn’t mathematically formalized so much and wasn’t so much directly cited. He previewed works in top journals that were published 20 or 30 years later, including inspiring my paper that you mentioned with Daniele Caratelli.

Milton Friedman is another influence:

Halperin: . . . If the real interest rate is going to rise, if r-star is going to rise, that means monetary policy needs to pay attention to that, to either not keep interest rates too low so that you have some inflationary outcome, or not have interest rates too high to have excess unemployment, like the Citrini scenario. That’s the second point.

A third point is that I think monetary policy can be helpful to not screw up how the economy goes during an AI-driven transition, but cannot solve the problem. This really is a question for fiscal policymakers. It is a question of redistribution. What monetary policy should be sure to do is just not screw things up. I keep saying Friedman in this episode, maybe appropriately because he’s the GOAT, as your boss, Tyler, would say.

What monetary policy can do versus what it can’t do: What it can do is ensure that it doesn’t screw up the economy in response to shocks. That’s the fundamental lesson of his 1968 presidential address, famous paper. Implementing the less-than-zero policy that Selgin recommends or this countercyclical inflation that comes out of my work would be one plausible way of doing that.

Halperin agrees with Bennett McCallum that because we don’t know exactly which form of wage and price stickiness is the most important, we need a robust approach to monetary policy that is relatively optimal under a wide range of assumptions.

Halperin: Even zooming out, is sticky prices obviously the most important nominal friction in the world? I’ve written a paper on this. That’s still not clear to me. Sticky prices as opposed to sticky wages or sticky nominal debt contracts or sticky information. No one’s done a head-to-head comparison of all these different frictions. I think that’s desperately needed. Though, it’s not clear how you do that. Otherwise, I would have written the paper. . . .

That’s the core logic of what we show to be optimal in the model. The way that gets you NGDP targeting or nominal wage targeting or this countercyclical inflation is that if this firm was having a positive productivity shock, it’s producing more stuff. Output’s going up. Y is going up. It’s cutting its price. Every other firm is keeping prices constant, but that one firm is lowering its prices. The average level of prices in the economy is then falling. Y up, P down. In a baseline setup, those are one for one. P times Y, nominal GDP, is kept constant. You can also see this as nominal wage targeting. Stabilizing nominal wages ensures that the nominal costs of all those unaffected firms is stabilized so that they don’t want to change their prices. Nominal wage targeting is another way we frame optimal policy in the paper. All of these terms—NGDP targeting, nominal income targeting, nominal wage targeting—all of these things are pointing to this countercyclical inflation, looking through shocks rather than aiming for strict inflation stabilization, which is the baseline new Keynesian logic. . . .

The way I think about this is that NGDP targeting or something like it is eclectically optimal.

Back in 2011, I had this to say about Bennett McCallum:

McCallum first proposed NGDP targeting some time around 1980. McCallum has an interesting position within the field of macroeconomics. Unlike me, he is comfortable with the IS-LM approach. Unlike me, he is comfortable working with rather sophisticated new Keynesian models. But unlike people like Michael Woodford, he has always insisted on the importance of the quantity of money (rather than merely the effects of monetary policy on interest rates.) And unlike most new Keynesians, he’s argued that NGDP targeting is superior to the various flexible price inflation targets that are frequently proposed. I think this is rather unusual, as when your model includes both P and Y separately, there is no obvious reason to put the same coefficient on the reaction function for each variable. So I’ve always seen him as being in the mainstream of modern macro research, but a little off to the side of that mainstream.

I met him only once, and that was at a conference in March. He has a very appealing personality; quiet and very polite. . . . I have great respect for his intuition. He seems to have a good sense of which developments in macro are fruitful and which are not.

Like McCallum, Basil Halperin seems to have absorbed both the best of New Keynesian economics and the best of Milton Friedman thought. He also favors NGDP targeting. He also seems to have excellent intuition about which sort of macro models are plausible and which are not—a skill that’s hard to teach. Even their personalities seem a bit similar, as both come across as being very polite. (Here’s a much longer post explaining McCallum’s excellent intuition.)

Next, I’ll offer some related observations on the current state of the economy.

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Meta to Start Capturing Employee Mouse Movements, Keystrokes for AI Training Data

Katie Paul and Jeff Horwitz, reporting for Reuters in late April:

Meta is installing new tracking software on U.S.-based employees’ computers to capture mouse movements, clicks and ​keystrokes for use in training its artificial intelligence models, part of a broad initiative to build AI agents that can perform work tasks autonomously, the company told staffers in internal memos seen by Reuters.

The tool, called Model Capability Initiative (MCI), will run on work-related apps and websites and will also take occasional snapshots of the content on employees’ screens, according to one of the memos, posted by a staff AI research scientist on Tuesday in a channel for the company’s model-building Meta SuperIntelligence Labs team.

I love this. Anyone who works at Meta knows who they’re working for. I hope they’re all as creeped out by this as I would be. What I’d really like to know is how far up the chain does this go? If they have any honor, every single employee at the company, right up to Zuckerberg, would get this MCI spyware. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I presume that’s not the case, and there’s a two-class system where if you’re high enough in the org chart, you don’t get it. I would love to hear from any little birdies about this, but I don’t have many little birdies in Menlo Park. (Alan, baby, help me out?)

Also:

Meta is planning to lay off 10% of its workforce globally starting on May 20 and is eyeing additional large cuts later this year.

If I worked there I’d raise my hand to get a buyout, but, I’d never work there in the first place.

Horwitz, by the way, won a 2026 Pulitzer for his investigative coverage of Meta.

 ★ 

Look, Ma. A U.F.O!

May 9, 2026

If you google the history of Mother’s Day, the internet will tell you that Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—actually started in the 1870s, when the sheer enormity of the death caused by the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War convinced writer and reformer Julia Ward Howe that women must take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society.

The Civil War years taught naïve Americans what mass death meant in the modern era. Soldiers who had marched off to war with fantasies of heroism discovered that newly invented long-range weapons turned death into tortured anonymity. Men were trampled into blood-soaked mud, piled like cordwood in ditches, or withered into emaciated corpses after dysentery drained their lives away.

The women who had watched their hale and healthy men march off to war were haunted by its results. They lost fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers. The men who did come home were scarred in both body and mind.

Modern war, it seemed, was not a game.

But out of the war also came a new sense of empowerment. Women had bought bonds, paid taxes, raised money for the war effort, managed farms, harvested fields, worked in war industries, reared children, and nursed soldiers. When the war ended, they had every expectation that they would continue to be considered valuable participants in national affairs, and had every intention of continuing to take part in them.

But the Fourteenth Amendment, which established that Black men were citizens, did not explicitly include women in that right. Worse, it introduced the word “male” into the Constitution when it warned states against preventing “male inhabitants” from voting. In 1869, the year after the Fourteenth Amendment was added to the Constitution, women organized two organizations—the National Woman Suffrage Association and the American Woman Suffrage Association—to promote women’s right to have a say in American government.

From her home in Boston, Julia Ward Howe was a key figure in the American Woman Suffrage Association. She was an enormously talented writer who in the early years of the Civil War had penned “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” a hymn whose lyrics made it a point to note that Christ was “born of woman.”

Howe was drawn to women’s rights because the laws of her time meant that her children belonged to her abusive husband. If she broke free of him, she would lose any right to see her children, a fact he threw at her whenever she threatened to leave him. She was not at first a radical in the mold of reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who believed that women had a human right to equality with men. Rather, she believed strongly that women, as mothers, had a special role to perform in the world.

For Howe, the Civil War had been traumatic, but that it led to emancipation might justify its terrible bloodshed. The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 was another story. She remembered:

“I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, ‘Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?’”

Howe had a new vision, she said, of “the august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities.” She sat down immediately and wrote an “Appeal to Womanhood Throughout the World.” Men always had and always would decide questions by resorting to “mutual murder,” she wrote, but women did not have to accept “proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror.” Mothers could command their sons, “who owe their life to her suffering,” to stop the madness.

“Arise, women!” Howe commanded. “Say firmly: ‘We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’”

Howe had her document translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Swedish and distributed it as widely as her extensive contacts made possible. She believed that her Women’s Peace Movement would be the next great development in human history, ending war just as the antislavery movement had ended human bondage. She called for a “festival which should be observed as mothers’ day, and which should be devoted to the advocacy of peace doctrines” to be held around the world on June 2 of every year, a date that would permit open-air meetings.

Howe organized international peace conferences, and American states developed their own Mothers’ Day festivals. But Howe quickly realized that there was much to be done before women could come together on a global scale. She turned her attention to women’s clubs “to constitute a working and united womanhood.”

As Howe worked to unite women, she came to realize that a woman did not have to center her life around a man, but rather should be “a free agent, fully sharing with man every human right and every human responsibility.” “This discovery was like the addition of a new continent to the map of the world,” she later recalled, “or of a new testament to the old ordinances.” She threw herself into the struggle for women’s suffrage, understanding that in order to create a more just and peaceful society, women must take up their rightful place as equal participants in American politics.

While we celebrate the modern version of Mother’s Day on May 10, in this momentous year of 2026, it’s worth remembering the original Mothers’ Day and Julia Ward Howe’s conviction that women must have the same rights as men, and that they must make their voices heard.

Notes:

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/rbc/rbpe/rbpe07/rbpe074/07400300/07400300.pdf

Julia Ward Howe, Reminiscences, 1819-1899 (Boston: 1900).

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Brett Channing comes to Aliso Viejo

So last week week, the Aliso Viejo City Council introduced the new city manager, Brett Channing.

And, before we dive into the nitty gritty of what it all means, I’d like to welcome Brett to town with this image of a donut.

Now that that’s out of the way—Channing!

He is a man I have yet to meet, yet a man it would be wise to befriend, for his new salary is (this is not a misprint) $342,000 per year, plus (also not a misprint) phone, transportation, vacation package, 240 hours of paid leave (seriously—two hundred and forty hours) and all sorts of perks, goodies and office desk doodads. Here’s the contract. Put different: If anyone in local government has the means to throw the kick-ass Chanukah party of 2026, it’s Brett. Bring the chips and guac, y’all!

And, to be clear, I am not dogging Brett Channing. For all I know, he winds up doing a great job and, upon retirement, Aliso Viejo will be coined, “Brettville.” Hell, this Q&A makes him sound like a lovely chap. I’m being serious—perhaps he kicks ass. That would be tremendous.

But, well, this whole jamboree makes no sense. Let’s review …

So, last December Mitzi Ortiz, the Aliso Viejo city manager, died at age 45. By all accounts, Ortiz was a lovely person and committed public servant. A good egg, as my Grandpa Nat would have said. And it was (technically) up to the five-member Aliso Viejo City Council to find a replacement. Normally, when people are blessed with human skulls and IQs clearing 50, this would involve hiring an executive search firm to line up a slate of candidates. After all, one can argue this is the most important position in the metropolis.

According to sources inside City Hall, however, instead of enlisting a head hunter, Tim Zandbergen and Garrett Dwyer (both council members, both MAGA bruhs) decided they would take the lead.

What followed was, well stupidity. Resumes were solicited, phone calls were made, Samantha Fox DVDs were watched—and Zandbergen and Dwyer offered up a handful of finalists who were vetted in a hyper-specific and impressive manner that involved breaking down the qualities, examining past experiences, researching municipal trends apparently very little. And with almost no public scrutiny.

They chose Channing.

And, to reiterate, I’ve got no beef with the man. He might wind up great. Better than great. Uber great!

But riddle me this: David Doyle, Ortiz’s predecessor, was paid approximately $350,000 for his (shitty) services before being fired in 2024. Ortiz, his replacement (and—gasp!—a woman of color) had to settle for $70,000 less. And now Channing is back, bling blinging his best life. Why the skyrocketed pay? Why the tight lips? Why so little (aka almost no) transparency? Well … hmm … um … it’s not entirely clear.

The Aliso Viejo City Council is made up of five people. Four of the five are white Trumpy dudes who, together, look like the the members of a reunited Grade-D midwestern boy band who moonlight as pharmaceutical salesmen …

… and the fifth is Tiffany Ackley (aka: a woman whose brain wasn’t hollowed out by the MAGA virus, and serves as the glue holding together any lingering morsels of municipal sanity).

When one attends a council meeting, there is a palpable weirdness—Ackley fighting for reason, the four boy band members fighting against Pride flags and non-existent DEI efforts. It forces one to question whether, for $342,000, they’re hoping for more than a well-run city and a pioneering spirit.

It forces one to question what the hell just happened.

Is Europe in Economic Decline?

The world's most complex machine - Works in Progress Magazine

An ASML chipmaking machine

I’m in Europe for a few weeks, giving myself some physical (if not mental) distance from Trumpland. So I decided to take a short break from my healthcare series to write about the European economy — specifically the perception that Europe is in economic decline. According to conventional wisdom, Europe is falling far behind the United States. It has lost any dynamism it once had and is quickly becoming a museum of its former glories.

This perception is widespread: at Davos in January Howard Lutnik, Trump’s Commerce secretary, gave a speech that was so insulting toward Europe that Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, walked out. The Wall Street Journal recently published an article under the headline “What happens when Europeans find out how poor they are?” which asserted an equivalence between the European economy and the poorest U.S. states, such as Alabama and Mississippi.

Granted, what would you expect from an Epstein pal, stablecoin profiteer, Trump minion like Lutnick? Yet smart Europeans are also concerned: in 2024 Mario Draghi, one of history’s greatest central bankers, issued a report on EU competitiveness that highlighted Europe’s lagging productivity and raised serious alarms.

But how accurate is this perception of European underperformance? While there are valid reasons to be concerned about Europe’s future, the trash talk reflects ignorance of the real issues. And even economically sophisticated, Draghi-type discussions are, I would argue, misleading. Europe is simply not poor the way Mississippi is poor. Moreover, by many measures — arguably the most important measures — Europe is, in fact, keeping up with the United States.

Europe, along with China and the United States, is an economic superpower. And, at this point in time, it is arguably the world’s only democratic superpower. However, misperceptions about its economic performance keep it from playing the global role that it should and is so desperately needed.

So while this primer is primarily informational, intended to give an overview of Europe’s long-term economic performance and how it compares to that of the U.S., it is also a wake-up call to Europeans to stop being gaslit by American triumphalism and to realize their own strengths – strengths that are critically needed in a world of encroaching authoritarianism.

Beyond the paywall I will address three questions:

1. Does Europe have a lower standard of living than the U.S.?

2. Is Europe falling behind the U.S.?

3. Has Europe failed to match its global influence with its economic power?

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Quoting Andrew Quinn

One could say in the first quarter-century of my life, that while I was always fascinated by programming, I could never overcome the guilt of not really knowing whether the tool I am building right now isn’t already superceded by some much better implementation someone else has already written 30 or 40 years ago; I could write a TSV-aware search and replace, or I could find out about awk and solve that entire class of problems in one fell swoop, for example. My central conceit is that this is a trap. You need to reinvent a couple of wheels to get to the edge of what we know about wheel-making, not a thousand wheels, and not zero; probably four or five is sufficient in most domains, maybe closer to twenty or thirty in the most epistemically rigorous and developed fields like mathematics or computer science. Each wheel you reinvent, and every directed question you ask along the way, will propel you faster to the true frontier than that same amount of time spend in idle study, or even five times that amount.

Andrew Quinn, footnote on Replacing a 3 GB SQLite database with a 10 MB FST (finite state transducer) binary

Tags: careers, sqlite

Links 5/10/26

Links for you. Science:

I Was Treated for Tuberculosis While Millions Were Robbed of Care
Cocaine Pollution Seems to Make Salmon Swim Farther Than Usual. Scientists Don’t Know the Long-Term Consequences
‘Why is publishing so expensive?’
The Destroyed Remnants of a Lost World Are Falling to Earth, Scientists Discover
Doctor, wife of acting U.S. attorney general, appointed to NIH advisory council
Trump fires all 24 members of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s governing body
A new way to stop global spread of pathogen once linked to Ireland’s Great Famine

Other:

It Is 2006… It is 2026…
Transit, school decisions are putting DC students in danger
D.C. child care workers got life-changing raises. Now they may be cut.
Trump’s Losing Streak Takes a Truly Humiliating Turn
The Trouble with Trump’s Bunker and Ballroom
Walking near a D.C. school raises the chance of being hit by a car, data shows
A Bad Look: Eight years ago, I argued the White House Correspondents’ Dinner should end. The years since have only made the case stronger. And Saturday wasn’t even the worst part.
Do Not Authorize The F@cking Ballroom. A message to frontline Democrats.
‘I was left unprotected’: Star golfer accuses school administrators of failing to remedy harassment from male teammates
Hegseth’s Useful Tool: Gen. Christopher LaNeve, the new chief of staff of the U.S. Army, has enjoyed a spectacular rise from obscurity, often at the expense of more popular generals that Pete Hegseth has purged—fueling suspicions that he’s become a proxy in Hegseth’s feuds and an active participant in his “slow-motion coup.”
A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts
It’s time to fire Kash Patel
Making Sense of the Iran War
Originalist Judges Are Spitting On the Constitution and Think You Won’t Notice
HORRORS OF ZORRO: First claims of men being gang raped at Epstein’s Zorro ranch revealed in bombshell doc – amid probe over ‘buried girls’
Kick Him Right In the Ballroom
Elite impunity has fueled the fantasy that catastrophes are for other people.
A MODEST PROPOSAL: THE NEW YORK TIMES SHOULD FACT-CHECK ITS FOCUS GROUPS
Cultifying the U.S. Military
Tim Heidecker and Onion Chief Ben Collins on Their Infowars Takeover — and Bringing Down Alex Jones: “The Final Gasps of a Beached Whale”
Is the Justice Department lying about Saturday’s “shooting”?
‘The Apprentice’ Shows Donald Trump Morphing From Man to Cartoon
The Only Thing Americans Care About
Data Centers Reveal America’s Economic Development Brain Rot
Georgetown Law’s Finest
Mood in Russia turns bleak as war in Ukraine drags on and economy suffers
MAGA’s Strange Quiet After the Shooting
The hardest-working staff at the airport? These two good boys.
At Least The War Is Over
Pennsylvania Race Pits Corporate Defender Against Union Organizer. Ryan Crosswell is running to represent Pennsylvania’s Seventh District after a career helping bosses fight their workers.

In Case You Missed It…

…a week of Mad Biologist posts:

Democratic House Candidate Jack Schlossberg Says Lazy and Ignorant Things About D.C. Statehood

Well, Vinay Prasad Was Wrong About the Moderna mRNA Flu Vaccine

A Better Week for D.C. on the Crime Front

USA sectoral shift fact of the day

Healthcare and Social Assistance have added nearly 1.8 million private-sector jobs in the US since the end of 2023 while all of other industries combined have lost 127,800 jobs.

Here is the source (Charlie Bilello) and a graph.  In relative terms, is this good or bad for men?

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f/e 2026-05-10

Two weeks of notes, in the middle of which I went to Glasgow for three nights and then Edinburgh for the same. A “holiday”. I was lucky with the weather and had a good time.

I was touristing with my friend J, from Germany, and despite having seen very little of each other over the past 30+ years, we got on fine, saw several sights, drank nice coffees, and ate nice foods. Neither of us had been to Glasgow before, and there:

  • We did the Sightseeing Bus one day which does make you (me) feel like a complete dork, when you’re looking out at locals from the open top deck while a tour guide explains buildings to you, but is also a really good way to get a good overview of a place, as well as “hop-off”, see a sight, and “hop-on”, until you’ve completed a loop.
  • We went to the Riverside Museum which is full of many, many old vehicles of all kinds, from a Sinclair C5 and skateboards, through many intricate model ships, up to a fire engine, steam engines, and subway cars. The building’s quite nice – by Zaha Hadid Architects – although we noticed the standard feature of specialized, bespoke roofs: damp patches on the ceilings.
  • We also popped into the huge and impressive Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum but only stayed long enough to look at the French and Dutch paintings.
  • We went to three good secondhand bookshops, all very close: Voltair & Rousseau, Thistle Books (Instagram), and Caledonia Books.
  • We went to some nice cafes/coffeeshops: Ottoman Coffeehouse (impressive interior, fancy coffees), Offshore (lovely bright corner spot near the bookshops), Willow Grove (friendly little place), The Spitfire Cafe on High Street (light, nice breakfast, dubious theme to take a German to), Through the House (minimal, modern, nice), Rose & Grants (Instagram) (good breakfast).
A photo of a slice of toast with feta, spinach, and hollandaise sauce on top, topped with pea shoots.
Breakfast at Rose & Grants, Glasgow

We left plenty of sights unseen. We stayed at the Premier Inn on St Enoch Square which was fine if typically characterless, although the square itself was a bit of an adventure of an evening… I imagine it’ll get “cleaned up”, for better or worse, when they redevelop the adjoining shopping centre soon.

Then off to Edinburgh where I stayed with my sister in Leith, not far from the awesome bright yellow offshore wind turbine foundations that – I assume arrive there before being taken out to their resting place. In Edinburgh:

  • I went in Armchair Books, Edinburgh Books (which seems to have a great built-in sound system of big cabinet speakers, playing classical), and Tills Bookshop.
  • We went for a 10.6km walk in the Pentlands, where we could have been more lucky with the weather – no views through the grey back to the city.
  • We had a tour of Edinburgh College of Art, where my sister works, which is preparing for the annual grad show, so lots of bare rooms ready for exhibition, and great views up to the castle. Art colleges are the best.
  • More good coffee and food at The Walnut (a lovely dinner), The Haven Cafe (Instagram) (great breakfast, as ever), Cult Coffee (cosy cavernous place), Ante (cool coffees and pastries).
  • I went round to T’s for coffee and chat, and met A for the same just before I headed home.
A photo looking over some still water at several tall yellow tripods and cylinders, reflecting in the water under a cloudy sky. They're several stories tall.
Wind turbine foundations

All-in-all, very good. I’m glad to have visited Glasgow for the first time; very different to Edinburgh, both with the pros and cons. I could have had longer in both but I was pretty knackered by the end and ready to come home.

I felt a bit dazed for the first couple of days back home, after nearly a week of being constantly around other people. Decompressing. Then a day or two of being really pretty down for – amazingly – the first time in three or so weeks, followed by a bit of being furious at myself and the world for all the usual vague reasons. As I write, I’m back to an even keel.


§ I made a little progress on destroying the broken concrete pond just before I went away but haven’t yet continued, thanks to an aching shoulder and neck incurred on the first night away in an unfamiliar bed, which has not yet quite eased up.


§ This week I actually went to a gig! In Hereford! In desperately googling for things that might interest me in this county I came across this series of monthly gigs which looked like it might be interesting. Always hard to tell with things like that, and I would not have said “psych/wyrd folk” is necessarily my cup of tea, but worth a try.

So I went along this month and saw Alex Rex who was good and funny and bleak, supported by George Nash whose percussive guitar playing was very impressive (although I don’t really get “storytelling” as it applies to instrumental music). There were less than 20 people there in a small room, but I’ll be going back to try out more.


§ Rouvy, which I use for cycling on a bike trainer at home, got bought by Zwift and despite the inevitable “nothing will change” protestations from Rouvy, has me (and the folks on r/Rouvy) apprehensive about the future. I love Rouvy’s “real” videos of cycle routes compared to Zwift’s computer graphics, and I hope those won’t disappear…


§ A photo looking out through a window at Edinburgh Castle up on its cliffs under an almost clear sky. In front of and below the window are several white rectangular boxes, plinths and platforms.
Edinburgh Castle from Edinburgh College of Art

§ In an effort to extend our WiFi more reliably to the other side of the house we got a UniFi Express 7 on the basis that (a) it might provide better WiFi than our Huawei 4G modem does, (b) it will give us a clearer idea of how strong/weak the WiFi is around the house, and (c) if we want to extend it, we can buy another of the same – further units can behave as mesh endpoints connected to the original one as a router.

Other options include ethernet cables (I do not want to cable the house), or powerline networking (I’m sceptical our power sockets etc will make this any better than wireless).

After a false start at the first attempt, today I got it all set up and working, with some help – after exhausting google and reddit – from Professor C.G.P. Tee. It turns out that even if I enable Bridge Mode on the modem, Three are still “using carrier-grade NAT (CGNAT)” upstream so there’s no simple escape from being “double NATed”. Which, as I understand it (I don’t), isn’t really a problem for our needs, so I’ve disabled Bridge Mode on the modem (but kept its WiFi turned off) as the simplest, least troublesome solution for now.

My first job was as a sysadmin, responsible for the company’s computer network etc. and I did not know anything about networking then. Very little has changed over the past three decades. But I do now have access to UniFi’s very nice and very complicated control panels to reinforce just how little I understand.


§ In Glasgow, J and I saw Rose of Nevada (2025, Mark Jenkin) at the nice Glasgow Film Theatre. It was good, interesting, slightly spooky.

And at home Mary and I watched Wake Up Dead Man (2025, Rian Johnson) which, like all Benoit Blanc mysteries, suffered because it includes the character Benoit Blanc. I was enjoying the ride up until he appeared and then proceedings dragged every time he was on screen, as if it was time itself slowing down that caused the movie to extend to an unjustifiable 1 hr 25 min.


§ Many things to be doing over the next couple of weeks for which I am bracing myself.


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ESA and JAXA finalize agreement on Apophis asteroid mission

ESA and JAXA have finalized an agreement to collaborate on a mission to study the asteroid Apophis during its close flyby of Earth in 2029.

MDA Space continues work on Gateway robotic arm

MDA Space is continuing work on a robotic arm for the lunar Gateway while it discusses the future of the project with the Canadian Space Agency.

Sunday assorted links

1. What should be our Bayesian priors on von Neumann probes?

2. AI book mirrors.

3. Why power in Spain is so cheap.

4. The comments on Mick West here are pretty tough.  We still do not know what it is, and yes the national security people have pondered these questions in advance.  Most broadly, trust people who are in “explorer mode,” not debunker mode.  Debunker mode is tempting, because you often end up right, and feeling good about yourself, but it also means you miss big discoveries when they come along.

5. More on the cell phone ban study.

6. Technological breakthroughs and the progress of science.  The early papers based on digital computing techniques did very, very well, at least on average.

7. Germany’s deer calling championship.

8. 2019 appreciation of Genoa.

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Will AI kill the research paper?

Imagine taking a macroeconomics paper and adding a little button at the end “Press this button to update this paper with the latest macro data.”

All of a sudden you have multiple papers rather than one, and no single canonical version.  It is the latter versions, not created directly by the authors, that people will look at.

Imagine adding another button, to either micro or macro papers “Please rerun these results using what the AI thinks might be five other different yet still plausible specifications.”

Then you have more papers yet.

Ultimately, why not just build a “meta-paper,” using AI, to answer any possible question about the subject area under consideration.  This meta-paper would allow the reader, using AI, to make many sorts of modifications and additions to the basic work.  The meta-paper also would allow the reader to add new data, to run additional robustness checks, and to do whatever else you might think of.  Once again, the canonical version of the paper evolves away.

A researcher might spend a significant part of his or her career building such a meta-paper.  Imagine a meta-paper, or sometimes I call it a “box,” devoted to answering questions about say fiscal policy, minimum wage hikes, or maybe the Industrial Revolution.  Fed researchers would spend their entire careers, not writing papers, but improving the Fed’s “box” that answers questions about monetary policy and also prudential supervision.

Who will be good at doing such things?  Is it the people today who become the top economists, or not?  Will it be a highly decentralized endeavor, or, given the compute and team work requirements, a highly centralized one?

Economics is going to change a lot, as will many of the other sciences.

It is funny, and tragic, how much some of you are still obsessed with writing and publishing “papers.”

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Perils of podcasting

 I had a stimulating 3 hour discussion with famed podcaster Lawrence Krauss a few days ago, about my forthcoming book Moral Economics.  Almost immediately after we concluded, it turned out that neither of us had recorded it. (We did a  shorter makeup later.)

 Here's his tweet on that:

I did a 3 hour  @OriginsProject podcast with Nobel Laureate Alvin E. Roth on his wonderful new book, Moral Economics, that I thought was one of the best podcasts I have recorded. Except I forgot to hit record! Lost it all! With amazing grace and perseverence, he agreed to redo it 2 hours later. What resulted may have been even better. My colleague and friend @slsatel at AEI (who will do an event with him there May 14 ) told me he was a mensch. And boy was she right. I cannot believe his kindness. Thank you Al! And your book is truly inspiring. Hope to release the podcast next week. Watch it and then buy the book! Or buy the book and then watch it. :)

 Image

Which are the most common everyday phenomena that we don’t properly understand?

Off the top of my head:

• Lightning (how does it happen?)

• Sleep; dreams (why do they exist?)

• Glass (thermodynamics of formation)

• Turbulence (when does it start?)

• Morphogenesis (how does a creature know what should go where?)

• Rain (it seems to start faster than models would predict)

• Ice (dynamics of slipperiness)

• Static electricity (which material will donate electrons?)

• General anaesthetic. (And the mechanism of a lot of drugs, e.g. paracetamol.)

That is from Patrick Collison.  It is a further interesting question how many of those questions will be answered by what is sometimes called AGI.  Perhaps none of them?  In at least some of those cases, what is scarce is experimental data, not reasoning per se.

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Saturday assorted links

1. Do chatbots ever follow the interests of advertisers?

2. Approaching the Star Trek universal translator.

3. Jon Haidt response to the new cell phone study.

4. U.S. electricity prices have been flat since June.

5. Friend Alla Keselman now has a Substack.

6. I am enjoying the new Elizabeth Strout novel The Things We Never Say.  It is arguably “too American” for me, and also “too New England,” still it is quite good.

The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Isolated Severe Storms in the Midwest; Fire Weather Concerns in the Northern Plains; Record Heat in the West

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