A simple model of authoritarian nationalism

I frequently refer to the concept of authoritarian nationalism, which is currently the driving force of history (just as it was from 1900 to 1945.) But why combine those two terms? Is there any link between authoritarianism and nationalism? In this post I will argue that the two are linked. Indeed in a sense the subtitle of the post provides the “model” that was promised in the title. I could stop now. But I imagine you’ll want a bit more explanation.

The term ‘nationalism’ has many different interpretations. Supporters of nationalism regard it as a good form of identity politics, whereas opponents (like me) view it as bad identity politics. In this post, I’ll mostly focus on another aspect of nationalism, its aversion to rules designed to constrain policymakers.

Nationalists often embrace the term nationalism while rejecting the term authoritarian. But you can probably already see why I see a link between these two ideologies. Just as nationalists reject rules than constrain the behavior of sovereign governments in the international arena, authoritarians reject rules that constrain the behavior of sovereign governments in the domestic arena. Thus the defining feature of authoritarian nationalism is its rejection of constraining rules.

[BTW, just as the line “Play it again, Sam” is never spoken in Casablanca, “We don’t need no stinking badges” never appears in Treasure of the Sierra Madre. But in both cases the famous phrases more effectively represent the film’s dialogue than do the slightly different phrases that are spoken. That’s why they are better remembered than the actual dialogue in these two classic films.]

Authoritarian nationalism is a matter of degree, not an either/or condition. I’ll illustrate this concept by comparing the Benelux countries with Putin’s Russia. Then we’ll consider the intermediate case of Hungary, a small country that is much more important than many people recognize.

I don’t plan to waste time arguing that Putin is an authoritarian nationalist. If you don’t already know that fact, then this blog is probably not for you. Instead, let’s consider the Benelux countries. What makes them the polar opposite of authoritarian nationalism?

The nadir of nationalist ideology occurred in 1945, when the devastation produced by two world wars led to an almost universal rejection of authoritarian nationalism, at least in the West. People immediately recognized that the existence of nuclear arms would result in even greater devastation in any future WWIII. The world set up all sorts of international organizations in an attempt to engender cooperation.

The European Common Market was created in 1957 with 6 members; France, Italy and West Germany, plus the three Benelux countries. The smaller European countries have traditionally been the most anti-nationalist members of the EU, as they have the most to lose from the bullying behavior of larger countries. They also have the most to gain from free trade zones. Take a look at the world’s biggest exporters. How many of you knew that the Netherlands exports more than Japan?

Over the course of my life, Europe has been a bit less nationalistic than the US, at least in terms of international affairs. That fact is not too surprising, as the US is a very large country and doesn’t have to worry about being bullied by smaller nations. In addition, the US mainland was not damaged in the two world wars.

Nonetheless, while we did not always adhere to international rules, only a cynic would argue that we were a completely lawless nation. Right after WWII, we were the only nuclear power and we had roughly 50% of world GDP. A more unconstrained nation could have taken even greater advantage of that situation. Instead, we participated in international organizations such as the UN, Nato, and various trade organizations. We funded the Marshall plan. (On the other hand we did not join the International Criminal Court.) I don’t think anyone would confuse Trump’s approach with the Marshall Plan:

Donald Trump’s demand for a $500bn (£400bn) “payback” from Ukraine goes far beyond US control over the country’s critical minerals. It covers everything from ports and infrastructure to oil and gas, and the larger resource base of the country.

The terms of the contract that landed at Volodymyr Zelensky’s office a week ago amount to the US economic colonisation of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity. It implies a burden of reparations that cannot possibly be achieved. The document has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv.

The defeated countries that suffered the greatest losses in WWII (Germany and Japan) tend to have an especially strong antipathy toward militaristic nationalism. Given the fact that West Germany was the EU’s largest member, its reluctance to bully other nations helped to insure a fairly stable balance of power within the organization.

I believe that many people get too bogged down in debates over minutiae, and fail to see the bigger picture. Over the past 10 years, I’ve done many posts at Econlog complaining of the US bullying of smaller nations. Many commenters had trouble understanding what I was talking about. Isn’t the US the victim? Aren’t foreigners taking advantage of us? Today, you’d have to be willfully blind not to recognize the extent that the US has become one of the world’s biggest bullies.

Now let’s consider the case of Hungary. In what sense is this small country an intermediate case between the Benelux nations and Putin’s Russia? Put simply, Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is much more authoritarian and nationalistic than other EU members, but much less authoritarian and nationalistic than Russia. Most importantly for American readers of this blog, it’s a sort of template for the “second Trump administration.” I use scare quotes because I regard this as the first Trump administration. It’s the second administration of Donald Trump, but it’s the first Trump administration in the sense of being composed of Trumpian loyalists.

Hungary’s nationalism is partly tribal, which makes the country a bit different than the US. Indeed the term “Hungarian” has an ambiguous meaning. Is it an ethnic Hungarian? Or a resident of Hungary? To a Hungarian nationalist, an ethnic Hungarian in a neighboring country seems more like a fellow countryman than a Roma citizen living within Hungary.

Nationalists in larger countries often have a complex view of their nation. Thus the Indian and Chinese governments define their nation both in ethnic and territorial terms. Taiwan’s population is 95% Han, an even higher proportion than on the mainland. And yet non-Han parts of the mainland are still viewed by the CCP as being “China”. Indian nationalism is basically Hindu nationalism, but non-Hindu parts of India’s territory such as Jammu and Kashmir are viewed as Indian.

MAGA nationalism is also complicated. People have rightly noted that Trump made gains among minority voters in the recent election. So MAGA is something more than white nationalism. But it would be wrong to view this as simply a decline in racial polarization, as it largely reflects the fact that the GOP has become the party of working class people who didn’t go to college. Within that demographic, the racial polarization has been increasing. In other words, the gap between the voting behavior of white and black working class voters is larger than when I was young, as many low-income whites switch from the Dems to the GOP.

Nonetheless, the tribal nature of nationalism is not the factor that is currently driving global politics. Rather it’s the “we don’t need no stinking badges” attitude that we need to be paying more attention to. That is what Trump has borrowed for Viktor Orbán.

Hungary is a member of the EU and Nato. That fact alone makes it far less nationalistic than Russia. And of course Hungary did not invade a neighboring country nor does its government assassinate political rivals. And yet Hungary is also clearly much more nationalistic than the Benelux countries, or indeed any of the other members of the EU (although a few other Eastern European countries are moving in the same direction.)

In terms of domestic policy, Orbán’s government has attempted to co-opt any institution that could offer a sort of countervailing power, anything that provides ”checks and balances” to the central government. This includes the courts, the media, the educational system, etc. And while Hungary is a member of the EU and Nato, it’s a very reluctant member. It frequently refuses to adhere to EU rules, and Orbán is by far Putin’s best friend within the EU, even opposing sanctions after the Ukraine invasion.

There’s been a great deal of discussion of the Trump administration’s decision to concede some key points to Putin on Ukraine before negotiations even begin. Why would the author of The Art of the Deal concede that Ukraine cannot reclaim lost territory or join Nato, without first getting any concessions from Russia? I think this misses the point. In the Ukraine War, Trump and Putin are essentially allies, opposed to the position taken by Ukraine and Europe. Trump isn’t trying to press Putin to make concessions, he’s trying to press Ukraine and Europe to make concessions. They are “the enemy”. Trump has hated Ukraine ever since that famously corrupt phone call in his first administration. His administration is staffed with Putin apologists that clearly prefer Russia to the EU. They like the fact that Putin supports “traditional values” such as the right to persecute gay and trans people.

You may think that I am overreacting, but if so I’m hardly alone:

If Vance hoped to persuade his audience, rather than simply insult it, he failed. Indeed, his speech backfired spectacularly, convincing many listeners that America itself is now a threat to Europe. In the throng outside the conference hall, a prominent German politician told me: “That was a direct assault on European democracy.” A senior diplomat said: “It’s very clear now, Europe is alone.” When I asked him if he now regarded the US as an adversary, he replied: “Yes.”

The Washington DC elite finds this new reality to be so horrifying that they refuse to take Trump seriously. For years he has been telling us that he respects authoritarian nationalist leaders and has nothing but contempt for the leaders of many of our democratic allies, including our neighbor to the north. People simply are not willing to accept these statements at face value.

Even many right-of-center pundits that I greatly respect are silent when it comes to things like Trump’s support for China putting a million Uyghur Muslims into concentration camps, or his endorsement of the Philippine policy of murdering drug users, his characterization of peaceful Tiananmen protestors as “rioters”, his characterization of January 6 thugs as heroes, or dozens of other similar statements. It does not fit the self-image of the Washington elite, which views the United States as traditionally being one of the “good guys” (and not without reason.) So they block it out of their minds, and pretend that this is all business as usual. “Let’s focus on policy—will DOGE achieve some efficiency gains?”

I’m not denying that policy is important, or that Trump will likely achieve at least some useful policy reforms (at least if it can find some competent people.) But authoritarian nationalism is the elephant in the room. We ignore it at our peril.

Authoritarian nationalism is like a big jigsaw puzzle. No single item presents the entire picture, so it’s hard to explain to people. Indeed many individual examples seem of almost trivial importance. And you can frequently cite similar examples in administrations not normally viewed as authoritarian nationalists. Thus FDR’s court packing scheme of 1937 seems like a very Orban-type policy.

I think the only way to think about these facts is to bite the bullet and acknowledge that the FDR administration did have some authoritarian tendencies, especially when compared to relatively passive administrations like Calvin Coolidge. Biden also had a few authoritarian tendencies, as do almost all presidents. It’s no secret that most governments seek to gain and exercise power over their rivals. So what makes authoritarian nationalism distinct?

Like most things in politics, concepts are not either/or, they are a matter of degree. Thus between laissez-faire capitalism and a 100% command economy, there are many intermediate forms of “socialism”. But that doesn’t make socialism a completely useless term. Most intelligent people understand what is meant when someone says Cuba is much more socialist than Canada, even if both have “socialized medicine”.

In my view, it is almost impossible to understand the Trump administration by looking directly at the Trump administration, at least if you are an American like me. We are too close, and Trump is too much a larger than life figure that is almost impossible to view dispassionately. It’s like looking at the sun. Rather Americans should look to foreign countries to try to understand Trump. Look at Hungary, look at India, look at Italy, and even look at Mexico.

[As an aside, Europeans in the early 1800s couldn’t see Napoleon clearly, for similar reasons. Indeed, Trump recently compared himself to Napoleon.]

Mexico’s government recently abolished the commission that was charged with insuring that elections are free and fair. The Mexican leader that initiated that move, the recently “retired” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), is essentially Mexico’s Trump, despite being nominally “on the left”. He is still the puppet-master.

The US doesn’t have that sort of electoral commission, but after taking office for a second time, Trump has begun to systematically eliminate any aspect of the federal government that might potentially check his power, or expose corruption. If Trump were younger, he’d certainly find a way to bypass term limits.

The Trump purges show some similarities to the McCarthy era purges of the early 1950s:

Writing in The New York Times, a quartet of Harvard Law professors worried the [anti-communist] program would “miss genuine culprits, victimize innocent persons, discourage entry into the public service and leave both the government and the American people with a hangover sense of futility and indignity.” . . . And that is what happened.

But at least those purges were aimed at getting rid of traitors. The Trump purges are aimed at getting rid of patriots. That seems like a difference worth noting.

Authoritarianism has such a bad connotation that its supporters generally justify it as a necessary evil to fight a deeper form of authoritarianism, the stranglehold on power of the so-called deep state. Trump’s fans implicitly buy into a sort of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington framing. Ordinary democracy is a cesspool of corruption, and we need an honest outsider to come in and shake things up, someone like Elon Musk. Move fast and break things. But Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a myth, not reality. Washington cannot be fixed by sending authoritarian leaders there to shake things up, just as the French chaos of 1795 was not fixed by sending in Napoleon. The only way to fix Washington is to make our culture more rational, more honest, and less selfish.

The common thread in most authoritarian nationalists is an unwillingness to be constrained by rules. Thus Trump refuses to adhere to international trade agreements such as Nafta. Of course a president has a legitimate right to renegotiate a trade agreement that he believes is not in the national interest. But even after negotiating a new version of Nafta, a version that he insisted was a great treaty, Trump still refuses to adhere to its provisions.

To achieve the sort of lawless society envisioned by hardcore nationalists, you need to weaken your opponents, strengthen your supporters, and co-opt anyone who can be bribed or intimidated.

On taking office, Trump immediately began trying to remove anyone seen as putting the Constitution above personal loyalty to Trump. Corruption watchdogs were fired without Congressional authorization. FBI agents who had arrested Jan. 6 criminals were placed under investigation. IRS tax cops are to be weakened, because they audit MAGA voting small businessmen. Call it “defang the police.”

In contrast, supporters were helped, even if they had broken the law. Thugs who beat up police officers were pardoned. Even history is being rewritten, as Confederate traitors are increasingly viewed as heroes deserving of statues. One unifying theme for nationalists all over the world is a desire to rewrite history in such a way as to cover up or even deny a country’s previous sins. The German nationalists supported by Musk don’t want their schools to focus on the crimes of the Nazis.

Another tactic is to co-opt one’s opponents. The Biden administration had begun to prosecute NYC mayor over corruption charges. Trump had the Justice department call off the prosecution, with the implied threat that the prosecution would be resumed if Adams did not become a loyal vassal, carrying out Trump’s wishes on immigration policy. RINO senators and congressman are forced to kiss the ring, or face a primary opponent.

I’m old enough to recall when even GOP senators were so repulsed by Nixon’s crimes that they forced him to step down. That sort of action is unimaginable in today’s America, even though Nixon was far less corrupt than Trump. The Senate used to reject unsuitable cabinet nominees like John Tower, whereas far less acceptable nominees are now waved through by senators cowed by threats Some of the choices are so repulsive that one wonders if Trump is merely trying to humiliate the Senate, as Caligula supposedly did a couple thousand years ago. (Even apocryphal stories often contain a deeper truth)

This post was easy to write—any rational person can see what’s going on. To his credit, Matt Yglesias predicted the coming authoritarianism way back in 2015, even before Trump appeared on the scene. His entire Vox article is worth reading, but this paragraph caught my eye:

Those who like these actions on their merits comfort themselves with the thought that these uses of executive power are pretty clearly allowed by the terms of the existing laws. This is true as far as it goes. But it’s also the case that Obama (or some future president) could have his political opponents murdered on the streets of Washington and then issue pardons to the perpetrators. This would be considerably more legal than a Zelaya-style effort to use a plebiscite to circumvent congressional obstruction — just a lot more morally outrageous. In either case, however, the practical issue would be not so much what is legal, but what people, including the people with guns, would actually tolerate.

Replace “political opponents murdered on the streets of Washington” with “send a violent mob to the Capitol to try to intimidate Congress into overturning a presidential election”, and you’ve described what happened 6 years after Yglesias used that seemingly “far-fetched” example, including the pardons. And I doubt that even Yglesias expected the assassination hypothetical to be discussed in the Supreme Court just a few years later.

In the end, our Constitution won’t protect us, there are too many loopholes. What matters is how much authoritarian nationalism the public is willing to stomach. I’m an optimist by nature and still expect Trump’s project to fail. My bigger concern is that the trajectory that Yglesias so presciently described in 2015 is likely to continue for many more years. Future presidents will become even more authoritarian that Trump.

To summarize, here’s how I think about the authoritarian nationalist’s credo:

We don’t need no stinking election monitors. We decide who won the election.

We don’t need no stinking trade rules. We set the rules.

We don’t need no stinking refugees, except Afrikaners who’d vote MAGA.

We don’t need no stinking international criminal court. We decide what’s torture.

We don’t need no stinking Nato.

We don’t need no stinking IRS audits of our supporters.

We don’t need no stinking press critics.

We don’t need no stinking United Nations

We don’t need no stinking federal court oversight

We don’t need no stinking European Union rules

We’ll do whatever the hell we want to, and who’s going to stop us?

I hope it doesn’t take another global war for the world to come to its senses.

Atlas of Surveillance

The EFF has released its Atlas of Surveillance, which documents police surveillance technology across the US.

Software development is…

There is something puzzling about software development. It doesn’t work like many tasks, it doesn’t break down the same way. It feels strangely personal, like there’s a connection between the code and the coder, or else it goes brittle.

Today I learned a word for this!

Ursula Franklin was a physicist, among other things, and she has real thoughts about technology. First, she speaks about technology as practice, not as objects. Technology is how we do things; the material objects that we use are necessary details. Second, she makes some distinctions between kinds of technologies. One of them clears up my puzzle about software development.

Franklin divides technologies into holistic and prescriptive. Holistic technologies put decision-making near the work; prescriptive ones remove control to supervisory levels.

“Holistic technologies are normally associated with the notion of craft.” Potters, cooks, woodworkers — even when the output looks the same for several iterations, the process of getting there includes feeling into this particular material. There is an interaction between the medium and the crafter, a shaping. Each person leaves their mark. When people work together, “the way in which they work together leaves the individual worker in control of a particular process of creating or doing something.”

Prescriptive technologies break production down into well-specified steps that can be executed by separate groups. Assembly lines, Taylorism, standardized procedures. Each step is designed to fit into the others. This determination happens higher in the org chart. The work and the decisions are separated. This technology makes the work controllable, scalable, in theory legible, predictable.

Software itself is the most prescriptive technology ever! It does the same thing over and over in as many copies as we choose.

Software development is wonderfully holistic. It needs one mind understanding it, implementing it, integrating it, operating it. (For resilience, that mind is best embodied by a team of several developers working closely.) When you try to partition the work (gather requirements, design, implement, test, operate), projects fail. The understanding between the steps is too thick. I need all the context of learning what is needed and where, and then I can implement it, and then look at it, and show it to you, and then we get it right and then we run it in production and keep grooming it through change.

“Any tasks that require immediate feedback and adjustment are best done holistically.” Software does need that. We never know what “good” is until we try things.

“Such tasks cannot be planned, coordinated, and controlled the way prescriptive tasks must be.” This is why managing software teams is a different task than managing industrial production. Software managers are support staff, because developers are doing holistic work, so that the software can do incredibly prescriptive work.

This is my new favorite adjective for our work. Software development is holistic.

Tuesday: NY Fed Mfg, Homebuilder Survey

Weekend:
Schedule for Week of February 16, 2025

Tuesday:
• At 8:30 AM ET, The New York Fed Empire State manufacturing survey for February. The consensus is for a reading of -1.0, up from -12.6.

• At 10:00 AM, The February NAHB homebuilder survey.  The consensus is for a reading of 47, unchanged from 47 the previous month. Any number below 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as poor than good.

From CNBC: Pre-Market Data and Bloomberg futures S&P 500 are up 7 and DOW futures are down 75 (fair value).

Oil prices were up over the last week with WTI futures at $71.39 per barrel and Brent at $75.29 per barrel. A year ago, WTI was at $80, and Brent was at $85 - so WTI oil prices are down about 11% year-over-year.

Here is a graph from Gasbuddy.com for nationwide gasoline prices. Nationally prices are at $3.12 per gallon. A year ago, prices were at $3.26 per gallon, so gasoline prices are down $0.14 year-over-year.

Here comes Jupiter. Here comes Jupiter.


‘Gulf of America’: Compliance and Resistance

Compliance While it was reported that Apple would comply with the “Gulf of America” renaming, I wasn’t sure what Apple would do outside the U.S.; now it appears that it will follow Google’s lead and… More

Monday 17 February 1661/62

This morning, both Sir Williams, myself, and Captain Cocke and Captain Tinker of the Convertine, which we are going to look upon (being intended to go with these ships fitting for the East Indys), down to Deptford; and thence, after being on shipboard, to Woolwich, and there eat something. The Sir Williams being unwilling to eat flesh,1 Captain Cocke and I had a breast of veal roasted. And here I drank wine upon necessity, being ill for want of it, and I find reason to fear that by my too sudden leaving off wine, I do contract many evils upon myself.

Going and coming we played at gleeke, and I won 9s. 6d. clear, the most that ever I won in my life. I pray God it may not tempt me to play again.

Being come home again we went to the Dolphin, where Mr. Alcock and my Lady and Mrs. Martha Batten came to us, and after them many others (as it always is where Sir W. Batten goes), and there we had some pullets to supper. I eat though I was not very well, and after that left them, and so home and to bed.

Footnotes

Read the annotations

Returning humans to the Moon without SLS and NRHO

There is speculation the Trump Administration may attempt to cancel the Space Launch System. Ajay Kothari offers an alternative architecture that could get humans back to the Moon without either SLS or Starship.

The civilization survival scale: A biological argument for space settlement

Some space advocates have argued that space settlement is vital to ensure the survival of humanity. Thomas Matula describes a scale for measuring the abilities of civilizations to survive that could be useful for space advocacy and for astrobiology.

Review: Manned and Unmanned Flights to the Moon

There is renewed interest in lunar exploration, including the launch this week of two commercial lunar landers. Jeff Foust reviews a book that provides an overview of the history of lunar exploration, but focuses on many missions that never attempted to go to the Moon.

NASA nominee previews his vision for the agency: Mars, hard work, inspiration

The likely next leader of NASA, private astronaut and pilot Jared Isaacman, has kept a low profile since the announcement last year that he was President Donald Trump's choice to lead the space agency.

This is understandable, as Isaacman must still be confirmed by the US Senate. No date has yet been put forward for a confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Typically, during this interim period, nominees meet with Senators behind closed doors before their hearings and limit public comments that could put them in the hot seat during the confirmation process.

This has meant that we've heard little from the person who is in line to lead NASA over the next four years as the space agency confronts a number of issues. These include reconfiguring the Artemis Program, a potential pivot toward Mars, an aging International Space Station, Mars Sample Return, a limited pipeline of science missions, and the likelihood of budget cuts. On top of all of this there is the uncertainty and unease federal workers face as the Trump Administration scrutinizes their activities for efficiency and, in some cases, loyalty.

Read full article

Comments

Understanding the Taxonomy of DOGE

Here’s an important resource being maintained by ProPublica. It’s a list of everyone associated with the DOGE operation. (Nice to see two TPM alums on the list of those compiling and maintaining it.) The page says it hasn’t been updated since February 11th, which by today’s standards is semi-ancient history. But presumably they’ll be doing more updates soon.

I want to add a few additional points that provide context.

First of all, there’s DOGE proper. The White House took the U.S. Digital Service, an organization which grew out of the botched launch of the Obamacare exchange system in 2014, and rebranded it as the U.S. DOGE Service. Get it? They keep the same initials, USDS. That gave DOGE a ready-made administrative shell, based out of the White House, to operate from. As 404 Media reported, they’ve also rerouted their place in the executive branch org chart to go through the White House Chief of Staff rather than OMB, where it was heretofore, so it won’t be subject to FOIA disclosure. So there’s people who are formally part of what’s now called the U.S. DOGE Service. But a number of people who are part of the same operation have gotten appointments at various agencies around the executive branch. They’re not formally part of the rebranded USDS. But they’re part of the same operation, the same group of Musk operatives carrying out Musk’s plans across the federal government.

So, for example, one person in this latter group is Tom Krause. He was one of two members of the DOGE Treasury team along with Marko Elez doing that payment stuff a week ago that made so much news. He’s now been appointed Fiscal Assistant Secretary at Treasury, basically the head of payments, a job heretofore held by a senior civil servant. He also continues to be CEO of his company, Cloud Software Group. (You wouldn’t have thought that would be possible. But apparently it is.) Thomas Shedd is Director of TTS, Technology Transformation Services, another agency charged with bringing top-flight tech expertise to the federal government. Unlike what was the U.S. Digital Service, it’s housed within the GSA (Government Services Administration) as opposed to the White House. There are many similar examples of guys like Krause and Shedd. But the point is that despite being part of Musk’s operation they now have formal, traditional appointments in the executive branch.

One additional observation.

If you go down ProPublica’s list, it’s a group that’s generally on the young side for government service. But nothing out of the ordinary. It’s mostly people in their 30s and a few in their early 40s There’s even one guy in his late 50s, one of Musk’s bankers from the Twitter acquisition. In other words, it’s quite different from the subset group first identified by Wired on February 2nd, most of whom were college dropouts ranging from 19 to 24 years of age. The “older” group is mostly made up of longtime employees of or executives at various Musk companies and in most cases they don’t seem to have hard ideological backgrounds.

On it’s face it might seem like the centrality of what we might call the feral/incel group was overplayed, or that as events have proceeded they’ve been joined by a more established group. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Each time we hear of DOGE showing up at a new federal agency it usually or perhaps always includes a member of that original feral/incel group in the lead. So for instance, when DOGE showed up at the IRS on Thursday that group was lead by Gavin Kliger, 25, part of the original group who said Matt Gaetz had been a victim of the “Deep State” when he was forced to withdraw his nomination to serve as Attorney General. He also played a lead role in the dismantlement of USAID.

I could speculate as to why this is the case. But for whatever reason Musk seems to place especial trust in that group of seven or eight young men.

This Should Go Well

DOGE is now requesting and appears soon to receive access to everyone’s and every non-human entities’ tax returns at the IRS, according to a new report out from WaPo.

Two (or more) ways to get samples back from Mars

Last week, NASA announced it would study two different ways to pick up the samples the Perseverance rover is collecting on Mars and return them to Earth. Jeff Foust reports on the two approaches as well as interest by at least one company in an alternative.

Who Needs Grids?

The Bonneville Power Administration, the largest transmission grid operator in the Pacific Northwest, will be shedding at least 600 workers as part of President Trump’s budget slashing across the federal federal workforce.

Where Are the Lawsuits Over the Chainsawing of NIH and NCI?

There’s one point that has come up, sometimes explicitly but more often by what isn’t said, in my many conversations with civil servants at HHS and especially at the core medical research agencies within it. At the simplest level, they’re not lawyers. But the issue requires a little more explanation because obviously most people aren’t lawyers in the other departments and agencies either. Outside the Department of Justice, none of these agencies are legal agencies or departments per se. But in most of the rest of the government, lawyers are ubiquitous and much of the work culture is structured around the work and ideas of lawyers. This is probably intuitively clear for most of you who’ve either reported on the federal government or worked within it. But it’s worth stating explicitly and thinking about the impact this has had in recent weeks.

Again and again in conversations with people at NIH, NCI and other public health or research agencies within the government the same basic point comes up: the people immediately affected by the events of the last four weeks have very little idea what the relevant law is, the legal standing of the actions being taken or who to talk to about any of it. I’ve had a few sources ask if I could organize some lawyers to create what amounted to a FAQ about the relevant law. I haven’t had a chance. But someone should.

I don’t know the precise history or how the origins of these agencies played into this. At a basic level they’re research institutions, which happen to be housed within the government and science labs don’t work that way. But regardless of why it is, that it is seems pretty clear to me. I’ve heard from enough people in that world to feel confident in saying that the civil servants in the medicine/research parts of the federal government have much less of a sense of the legal context they’re operating in and have fewer people with that knowledge proximate to them than people in other parts of the government.

One reader with knowledge relevant to these questions dropped me a line late last week addressing a distinct but related question. I found it very illuminating.

I can perhaps speak to the “why isn’t the calvalry” here piece.

Part of the issue is that the type of litigation that is needed is emergency litigation of the type that you get in civil rights cases.  You need a temporary restraining order, and to get those you need a pre-drafted motion shell you can execute very quickly, draft declarations you can swap in and out as needed, and to know what the individual judge’s procedure looks like.  However, none of this is really written down, it relies on lawyers who do this a lot passing on the knowledge to each other.  And the types of lawyers that work with regulatory agencies and have the subject matter expertise and relationships largely do not litigate, and when they do are not doing emergency litigation in federal court.  There’s just not a model there, they haven’t had the practice and don’t have the institutional knowledge.  And separately, as a lawyer who does health care work, there are almost no lawyers (regulatory or litigation) that are comfortable with health care.

The other part of issue is, as you mentioned, standing. The people with the clearest standing and ability to sue are grantees at research institutions.  But university’s general counsel’s offices are typically responding to being sued, not bringing cases.  And when do they litigate, many seek different outside counsel for each case, so they don’t just have someone on call who can file cases overnight.  And of course, this assumes that the university administration is willing to risk a fight with DOGE.

The next line of defense is AGs representing state universities, but they have limited staff capacity and the suits related to civil rights will likely come first in line.

Archive Request

They just want researchers in the enclosure to feel enriched and stimulated. ('The Enclosure' is what archivists call the shadowy world outside their archives in which so many people are trapped.)

Links 2/17/25

Links for you. Science:

Pricey Dam Project 7 Years In The Making Finished By Beavers For Free
Trump officials exerting unprecedented control over CDC scientific journal
Scientists globally are racing to save vital health databases taken down amid Trump chaos
There’s a Massive Tuberculosis Outbreak in the US
Lost cities of the Amazon: how science is revealing ancient garden towns hidden in the rainforest
Scientists Discover “Zombie” Fungus That Seizes Control of Spiders, Suggest It Be Used for Human Medicine

Other:

In Trump’s actions, opponents see more than cuts — they see a constitutional crisis
Indirect research costs are complicated, wonky — and crucial to science
Layoffs hit contractors and small businesses as Trump cuts take effect (One source of anger towards Democratic incumbents will come from the Notorious P.M.C. If your electoral strategy counts on them voting for you, and then you can’t protect a bunch of them, that’s a very difficult political needle to thread.)
Democrats Approach Their Enabling Moment: If Democrats provide the decisive votes to fund this government, it will reverberate through history for all time.
The Pritzker Prize: With Democrats leaderless, some in the party are looking to the states, where ambitious governors often find their “laboratories of democracy” make great soapboxes, too. Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker, an all-but-certain presidential candidate in 2028, is one of them.
What is Elon Musk doing? Not slashing the budget. DOGE isn’t getting anywhere near $2 trillion in spending cuts. Here’s a plan that would. (leaving aside the Musk hagiography at the end, the scale of the problem is correct)
Tropic Thunder: Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz has a message for shell-shocked Democrats struggling to find the right resistance in Trump 2.0: “Don’t chase every flying monkey Trump hurls at us.”
This senator says Democrats need to invoke villains, namely Elon Musk (that this is considered controversial within the Democratic Party is not good. They still want to be junior members of the governing coalition)
The USAID Grenade
Estimated Single Year Loss of NIH Funding if 15% Indirect Cost Rate is Imposed
Here’s how Democrats should fight back against Trump
It’s The End of the American Era. Period.
Anthony Mackie is finally starring in an Anthony Mackie movie
Democrats, Trump has given you a mission. Accept all of it.
The Eagles So Humiliated The Chiefs That Even Philly Fans Have To Believe
GOP senators terrified of crossing Trump, facing Musk-funded challengers
Trump signals that it’s okay to make bribes—and take them
Trump To New York: Drop Dead
“The Fagin figure leading Elon Musk’s merry band of pubescent sovereignty pickpockets”
Elon Musk is Working His Hardest to Make a Chinese Century. The Ketamine Koup will make America a mediocre backwater.
Did Trump Quietly Kill a Sensitive Pentagon Probe into Elon Musk?
Venezuelans backed Trump. Now some worry he’ll deport them.
Musk’s ex-staff warn federal workers of what’s ahead: Long hours, firings
Proposed bill would ban administration of mRNA vaccines in Montana
‘What Elon Musk Said Is a Bold-Faced Lie’: A former Republican director of USAID says the agency is critical to U.S. interests and can’t be abolished or folded into the State Department.
Americans Are Trapped in an Algorithmic Cage. The private companies in control of social-media networks possess an unprecedented ability to manipulate and control the populace.
U.S. Travel Association Warns of Economic Tourism Disaster After Thousands of Canadian Tourists Cancel Trips in Protest

Every Story is a Degrowth Story!

For February, the Contraptions Book club is reading Raiders, Rulers, and Traders: The Horse and the Rise of Empires by David Chaffetz, to be discussed the week of February 24. The chat thread is open for early comments.

Three big, unmanaged forces of destruction and creation are irrupting into the human world across the planet today. The story of the permaweird over the next decade is going to be the story of these three entangled forces.

  1. Internet-native nomad invasions (née: ethnonational reactionism)

  2. AIs, particularly LLMs

  3. Climate change

Fortunately for our sanity, the three forces are operating on different time-scales and in different parts of the world with different intensities. Like the villain’s henchmen coming at the hero one after the other rather than all at once, there is a certain helpful ordering here. Which is not to say the three forces are entirely serialized and decoupled. There will be significant episodes where 2/3 or even 3/3 of these forces will act together. Or appear in weirdly scrambled orders in particular scenes.

The nomad invasions — by political tribes around the world riding free-ranging internet denizens — are cued up to go first. Career politicians, operators, and their allies from business, the media, and the arts, are the equivalent of Mongols. The masses of internet supporters powering their campaign are the horses (though a surprisingly number of the horses imagine themselves to be riders). These invasions will peak over the next four years. The situation resembles the state of the world around the time of Genghis Khan’s grandsons, except there is no Genghis-like single progenitor. Trump is perhaps like Batu Khan, founder of the Golden Horde. Putin is perhaps like Hulegu Khan, founder of the Ilkhanate of Iran. Xi Jinpeng is perhaps like Kublai Khan, though I don’t think the Chinese state likes acknowledging the legacy of the Mongols or the “barbarian” strand of its imperial DNA. There are a great many other minor Khans around the world, such as Milei in Argentina and Meloni in Argentina.

Most likely the world of these modern-day Chinggisids will continue through the next decade, but like that world, it will eventually collapse due to their inability to build new institutions designed to last. The story of the world so far has been the story of nomad invaders prevailing in the short term, but sedentary civilizations prevailing over the long term. Nothing about these latest invasions, from the internet steppes, suggests this will change.

AI is queued up to truly arrive next, as the next generation of powerful hardware lands, costs fall, and the action really heats up. The metaphor I’ve been developing for this is that of a succession of sharply demarcated geological strata of collective hive-mind intelligences and memory settling. Each stratum comprises a generation of foundation models, and the short-lived linguistic era it drives. In each stratum, humans co-evolve with the models of that vintage, creating a staircase of radical transhuman evolution. The basic assumption of this metaphor is that language itself is a humanity-scale uncompressed networked intelligence. Now LLMs just compress, archive and backup this latent intelligence periodically, with those archival intelligences being plugged back in to living language, helping drive the next epoch of co-evolution. The “intelligence” in AI isn’t in the computers or models. It’s in the self-reproducing training data. AIs and brains alike are merely data’s way of making more data.

I will develop these two analogies in detail in future posts, but for now I just wanted to share these trailers.

And finally, climate change will bring up the rear in this triad of forces. As yet, I have no good metaphor or mental model for it, but it will be a bigger force than either the internet nomad invasions or AI. The rising and increasingly volatile cost of coffee and cocoa in the coming year will be a small taste of what’s to come.

I predict that the whole drama will last about 10-15 years, so let’s pick a nice round unlucky number and say 13 years, which takes our horizon out to 2028. All three forces will be at work through the entire 13 years, but will peak at different times, at different loci, and have very different magnitude profiles across time and space. And the drama won’t end up with resolutions but with our collective arrival on a particular sort of threshold I’ll characterize in a minute.

People are trying to tell themselves a variety of different stories about the next 13 years based on how they’re making sense of them.

There’s only problem. If you look closely, every currently popular big-future story is a degrowth story, driven by some flavor of panicked, uncomprehending Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (EEAAO) FUD.

To escape the paranoid EEAAO style of storytelling the future, and tell better stories, we have to start with a revisionist telling of the OG story about a series of three monsters, each bigger and badder than the last, Beowulf.

Read more

President Washington's Farewell Address

I usually celebrate President Washington's birthday by reading his Farewell Address. A brief excerpt:
To the efficacy and permanency of your Union, a Government for the whole is indispensable. No alliances, however strict, between the parts can be an adequate substitute; they must inevitably experience the infractions and interruptions, which all alliances in all times have experienced. Sensible of this momentous truth, you have improved upon your first essay, by the adoption of a Constitution of Government better calculated than your former for an intimate Union, and for the efficacious management of your common concerns. This Government, the offspring of our own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support. Respect for its authority, compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its measures, are duties enjoined by the fundamental maxims of true Liberty. The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their Constitutions of Government. But the Constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish Government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established Government.

All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle, and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put, in the place of the delegated will of the nation, the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill-concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common counsels, and modified by mutual interests.

However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterwards the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.
emphasis added

Live coverage: SpaceX Falcon 9 launch to feature first landing attempt in The Bahamas

File: A Falcon 9 rocket stands in the launch position at Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ahead of the planned liftoff of the Starlink 6-61 mission on Oct. 22, 2024. Image: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now

Update Feb. 17, 5:43 p.m. EST (2243 UTC): SpaceX pushed back the launch time.

SpaceX is preparing for its first launch that features a booster landing attempt in the midst of The Bahamas. The droneship, ‘Just Read the Instructions,’ is positioned off the coast of the island named Exuma.

Liftoff of the Falcon 9 rocket on the Starlink 10-12 mission is set for 6:15 p.m. EST (2315 UTC) on Tuesday, Feb. 18. This will be SpaceX’s 21st orbital launch attempt of the year.

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

Coming into the launch opportunity, the 45th Weather Squadron, based at Patrick Space Force Base, forecast ideal conditions at liftoff for the primary window with a  95 percent chance for favorable weather. If SpaceX needs to push to its backup window on Wednesday though, conditions deteriorate to a 50 percent chance for good conditions.

“Cool and dry conditions have overspread most of Florida today in the wake of yesterday’s cold front, which is currently sliding into far South Florida. Similar weather will continue into the first part of Tuesday, with winds veering out of the east-northeast,” launch weather officers wrote.

“The deeper moisture associated with this front will work its way back to the north late in the day as the old front starts to creep northwards. This doesn’t look to occur quickly enough to bring a significant threat for Atlantic showers on Tuesday evening for the primary launch window.”

SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster, tail number B1080, to launch the Starlink 10-12 mission on its 16th flight. It previously launched four Dragon flights to the International Space Station, the European Space Agency’s Euclid observatory, Astra 1P and nine Starlink missions.

A little more than eight minutes after liftoff, B1080 will target a landing on JRTI. If successful, this will be the 110th landing on this droneship and the 410th booster landing to date.

Monday assorted links

1. What is the meaning of life?

2. Rohit gets The Boss to write a science fiction novel.

3. AI and the Sisyphus Myth.

4. Are there workable mechanisms for fiscal discipline in the current eurozone?

5. Click on the first link here for an incredible account of a romance.

6. Who has cancelled at the Kennedy Center?

7. The Indonesian middle class seems to be shrinking (FT).

The post Monday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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Will JD Vance Save the Great Lakes From Trump?

JD Vance Once Backed Great Lakes Restoration, but as VP Under Trump, His Support for Its Funding Now Faces Uncertainty

Last year, Vice President JD Vance, then an Ohio senator, was part of a bipartisan coalition calling to increase funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, or GLRI — among the country’s largest investments aimed at protecting and restoring the Great Lakes.

“The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative delivers the tools we need to fight invasive species, algal blooms, pollution, and other threats to the ecosystem,” said Vance, who was co-chair of the Senate Great Lakes Task Force when the reauthorization bill was announced. He voted to extend and increase funding for the project until 2031.

“This is a commonsense, bipartisan effort that I encourage all of my colleagues to support,” Vance said.

Advocates hope he hasn’t changed his mind.

The five Great Lakes — Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario — represent the largest freshwater ecosystem in the world and a source of drinking water for about 10 percent of the country’s population. Since 2010, the massive GLRI spending package has helped fund everything from microplastics research to algal bloom elimination to climate-resilient shorelines. Just this week, Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan and Republican Senator Todd Young of Indiana introduced a bill that would reauthorize funding at $500 million per year for the next five years. Politicians often point to the initiative as proof that they can agree on conservation and environmental issues.

But its future may be at risk. The last time Trump was in office, his administration tried and failed to slash or even eliminate GLRI funding several times. Now, Trump is taking aim at environmental spending, including funding for programs tied to environmental justice and climate change. Vance has changed course on environmental issues as he has risen through the political ranks, such as his support for coal, electric vehicles, and even what he’s said about human-caused climate change. He also invested in and sat on the board of the disastrous indoor farming operation AppHarvest. Advocates hope that Vance might save the GLRI despite a hostile political environment.

A stormy view of the Lake Superior shoreline in Upper Michigan, with waves crashing against the sandy coast and remnants of an old wooden pier beneath a dramatic cloudy sky.
The Lake Superior shoreline in Upper Michigan is a vital part of the Great Lakes ecosystem, facing challenges like erosion, pollution, and climate change. Photo by csbonawitz via Pixabay.

Already, the Trump administration has frozen billions of dollars from two major initiatives passed under former president Joe Biden: the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. Amid escalating uncertainty around federal support, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker preemptively halted construction earlier this week on a billion-dollar megaproject to prevent the spread of invasive fish in the Great Lakes. But Trump’s blocking of federal funds for climate and DEI initiatives could put him at odds with longstanding bipartisan support for the Great Lakes — including from Vance.

“We know [Vance] supports Great Lakes restoration and protection,” said Laura Rubin, the director of Healing Our Waters–Great Lakes Coalition, a Michigan-based advocacy organization for federal environmental policy. “He was a champion of it, and we’re hoping that translates into his role as vice president.”

The vice president’s office did not respond to Grist’s requests for comment.

The GLRI began as a bipartisan response to mounting environmental problems in the early 2000s: rampant industrial and agricultural pollution, declining fish stocks, and growing threats of invasive species.

Recently retired Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow helped launch the initiative 15 years ago, during the Obama administration. “We need a fund that has broad jurisdiction, that can be activated immediately when there is a crisis,” she said at a policy conference in January.

The GLRI was preceded by a 2004 executive order from former president George W. Bush to create a regional task force — an attempt at improving coordination among federal agencies, states, and tribes to remediate freshwater ecosystems.

Since it began, the GLRI has funded over 8,000 projects, with the federal government spending approximately $5 billion over the last 14 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“That [funding] goes to cleaning up some of the most contaminated properties in our harbors and cities,” Rubin said. “It goes to improving habitats and removing invasive species. It goes to reducing phosphorus and nutrient runoff, and it goes to education and outreach.”

Many lawmakers support the GLRI for its economic benefits, such as increased tourism, job creation, and commercial development. A 2018 economic analysis from the Great Lakes Commission and the Council of Great Lakes Industries found that every federal dollar spent through the landmark program resulted in about $3 of additional benefits.

Bill Huizenga, a Republican representative from Michigan, co-sponsored the latest push to reauthorize the GLRI. He recently posted a video from a regional environmental summit, urging a plan for how to “parlay the relationships with JD Vance and people who are familiar with” the GLRI and explain what this investment means ecologically and economically. Huizenga’s office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A spotted muskellunge caught in Lake Saint Clair during winter.
The spotted muskellunge, a key predator in the Great Lakes ecosystem, faces threats from habitat loss and climate change. Conservation efforts, including those funded by the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, help protect species like this.  Photo by BenitoJuarez98, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

But funding can’t protect the Great Lakes if there’s nobody to direct it.

The Trump administration, as part of a broader campaign, has begun an aggressive push to gut federal agencies, including the EPA, which oversees the GLRI. Last week, EPA workers were notified that more than 1,000 positions filled within the previous year could be terminated at any time. Not long after, a total of 168 employees who work on environmental justice projects were placed on paid administrative leave.

Both deal a major blow to the EPA office that regulates much of the Midwest and Great Lakes, according to Nicole Cantello, president of the union that represents regional EPA workers. She estimated the Trump administration’s cuts could cost the office approximately 200 employees — one fifth of its entire workforce.

Cantellos said that’s bad news for offices like the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office, which leads GLRI implementation. “I don’t know how strong that program will be after all this round of resignations and dismissals.” she said.

The program — which has relied on funding from the the bipartisan infrastructure law to clean up some of the most environmentally damaged areas of the Great Lakes region — has a much lower percentage of obligated funds compared to many others. This means it could be at a greater risk of clawbacks; less than half of the appropriated $597 million had been obligated as of January 6, according to an EPA report.

Last year, when the Republican-controlled House of Representatives was cutting overall spending levels, it didn’t touch the GLRI, according to Don Jodery, director of federal relations for the nonprofit Alliance of the Great Lakes.

Jodery said it’s fair for new administrations to review federal funding and agency staffing. “But some of these programs are really, critically important,” he said, “and they really shouldn’t be up for debate as to whether or not they need to be funded.”

This article originally appeared in Grist HERE.

This coverage is made possible through a partnership between Grist, Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan, and WBEZ, a public radio station serving the Chicago metropolitan region.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org


CLICK HERE TO DONATE IN SUPPORT OF OUR NONPROFIT COVERAGE OF POLITICS

The post Will JD Vance Save the Great Lakes From Trump? appeared first on DCReport.org.

Gurman: ‘Apple’s Long-Promised AI Overhaul for Siri Runs Into Bugs, Possible Delays’

Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s long-promised overhaul for the Siri digital assistant is facing engineering problems and software bugs, threatening to postpone or limit its release, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Shocker.

 ★ 

Apple Research Paper Documents Anthropomorphic, Emotionally Expressive Robot Lamp, à la Pixar’s Luxo

New research published from Apple machine learning researchers Yuhan Hu, Peide Huang, Mouli Sivapurapu, Jian Zhang:

Nonverbal behaviors such as posture, gestures, and gaze are essential for conveying internal states, both consciously and unconsciously, in human interaction. For robots to interact more naturally with humans, robot movement design should likewise integrate expressive qualities — such as intention, attention, and emotions — alongside traditional functional considerations like task fulfillment, spatial constraints, and time efficiency. In this paper, we present the design and prototyping of a lamp-like robot that explores the interplay between functional and expressive objectives in movement design.

I enjoyed seeing something Luxo-esque made real, and the paper itself is fairly readable — and worth skimming at least for the illustrations. But I’ll wait for an actual product to get excited. Unlike marketing concept videos, I don’t think publishing academic research is harmful to a company — and in fact, as has been much discussed regarding Apple’s institutional penchant for secrecy, it’s seemingly essential for Apple to not only permit but encourage this, to recruit top-tier talent in the fields of machine learning and artificial intelligence. But publishing academic research is closer to publishing marketing concept videos than it is to releasing an actual product. Which is to say it doesn’t count.

 ★ 

The Best ‘Saturday Night Live’ Sketches, According to the People Who Made Them

Alan Siegel at The Ringer:

Ahead of ‘SNL50,’ we asked Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Bill Hader, and more to tell us which of their sketches they hold closest to their hearts. [...]

There’s no magic formula, but the most transcendent sketches — the ones we reference and quote, even years later — often share two traits. Just ask Seth Meyers, the show’s head writer and “Weekend Update” anchor for a decade. “A lot of great SNL sketches are both obvious and unexpected,” he says. “You have to combine the two to make it rise above what, you know, could be a very good sketch.”

Fun read with some great video clips. Really looking forward to the SNL50 special tonight.

 ★ 

Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in January

Today, in the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter: Lawler: Early Read on Existing Home Sales in January

A brief excerpt:
From housing economist Tom Lawler:

Based on publicly-available local realtor/MLS reports released across the country through today, I project that existing home sales as estimated by the National Association of Realtors ran at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.09 million in January, down 3.5% from December’s preliminary pace and up 2.3% from last January’s seasonally adjusted pace.

Note that this month’s existing home sales release will incorporate new seasonal factors, which will probably “smooth” monthly sales a little for last year – with slightly slower SA sales for the February-May period and slightly higher SA sales for the June-October period. I am assuming this January’s seasonal factor won’t be materially different from last January’s.

Local realtor/MLS reports suggest that the median existing single-family home sales price last month was up by about 5% from a year earlier.

CR Note: The NAR is scheduled to release January Existing Home sales on Friday, February 21st at 10:00 AM. The consensus is for 4.10 million SAAR, down from 4.24 million in December. Last year, the NAR reported sales in January 2024 at 4.00 million SAAR.
There is much more in the article.

50 Years of Travel Tips

50 Years of Travel Tips

These travel tips from Kevin Kelly are the best kind of advice because they're almost all both surprising but obviously good ideas.

The first one instantly appeals to my love for Niche Museums, and helped me realize that traveling with someone who is passionate about something fits the same bill - the joy is in experiencing someone else's passion, no matter what the topic:

Organize your travel around passions instead of destinations. An itinerary based on obscure cheeses, or naval history, or dinosaur digs, or jazz joints will lead to far more adventures, and memorable times than a grand tour of famous places. It doesn’t even have to be your passions; it could be a friend’s, family member’s, or even one you’ve read about. The point is to get away from the expected into the unexpected.

I love this idea:

If you hire a driver, or use a taxi, offer to pay the driver to take you to visit their mother. They will ordinarily jump at the chance. They fulfill their filial duty and you will get easy entry into a local’s home, and a very high chance to taste some home cooking. Mother, driver, and you leave happy. This trick rarely fails.

And those are just the first two!

Via Hacker News

Tags: travel, museums

LLM 0.22, the annotated release notes

I released LLM 0.22 this evening. Here are the annotated release notes:

model.prompt(..., key=) for API keys

  • Plugins that provide models that use API keys can now subclass the new llm.KeyModel and llm.AsyncKeyModel classes. This results in the API key being passed as a new key parameter to their .execute() methods, and means that Python users can pass a key as the model.prompt(..., key=) - see Passing an API key. Plugin developers should consult the new documentation on writing Models that accept API keys. #744

This is the big change. It's only relevant to you if you use LLM as a Python library and you need the ability to pass API keys for OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini etc in yourself in Python code rather than setting them as an environment variable.

It turns out I need to do that for Datasette Cloud, where API keys are retrieved from individual customer's secret stores!

Thanks to this change, it's now possible to do things like this - the key= parameter to model.prompt() is new:

import llm
model = llm.get_model("gpt-4o-mini")
response = model.prompt("Surprise me!", key="my-api-key")
print(response.text())

Other plugins need to be updated to take advantage of this new feature. Here's the documentation for plugin developers - I've released llm-anthropic 0.13 and llm-gemini 0.11 implementing the new pattern.

chatgpt-4o-latest

  • New OpenAI model: chatgpt-4o-latest. This model ID accesses the current model being used to power ChatGPT, which can change without warning. #752

This model has actually been around since August 2024 but I had somehow missed it. chatgpt-4o-latest is a model alias that provides access to the current model that is being used for GPT-4o running on ChatGPT, which is not the same as the GPT-4o models usually available via the API. It got an upgrade last week so it's currently the alias that provides access to the most recently released OpenAI model.

Most OpenAI models such as gpt-4o provide stable date-based aliases like gpt-4o-2024-08-06 which effectively let you "pin" to that exact model version. OpenAI technical staff have confirmed that they don't change the model without updating that name.

The one exception is chatgpt-4o-latest - that one can change without warning and doesn't appear to have release notes at all.

It's also a little more expensive that gpt-4o - currently priced at $5/million tokens for input and $15/million for output, compared to GPT 4o's $2.50/$10.

It's a fun model to play with though! As of last week it appears to be very chatty and keen on using emoji. It also claims that it has a July 2024 training cut-off.

llm logs -s/--short

  • New llm logs -s/--short flag, which returns a greatly shortened version of the matching log entries in YAML format with a truncated prompt and without including the response. #737

The llm logs command lets you search through logged prompt-response pairs - I have 4,419 of them in my database, according to this command:

sqlite-utils tables "$(llm logs path)" --counts  | grep responses

By default it outputs the full prompts and responses as Markdown - and since I've started leaning more into long context models (some recent examples) my logs have been getting pretty hard to navigate.

The new -s/--short flag provides a much more concise YAML format. Here are some of my recent prompts that I've run using Google's Gemini 2.0 Pro experimental model - the -u flag includes usage statistics, and -n 4 limits the output to the most recent 4 entries:

llm logs --short -m gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05 -u -n 4
- model: gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05
  datetime: '2025-02-13T22:30:48'
  conversation: 01jm0q045fqp5xy5pn4j1bfbxs
  prompt: '<documents> <document index="1"> <source>./index.md</source> <document_content>
    # uv An extremely fast Python package...'
  usage:
    input: 281812
    output: 1521
- model: gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05
  datetime: '2025-02-13T22:32:29'
  conversation: 01jm0q045fqp5xy5pn4j1bfbxs
  prompt: I want to set it globally so if I run uv run python anywhere on my computer
    I always get 3.13
  usage:
    input: 283369
    output: 1540
- model: gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05
  datetime: '2025-02-14T23:23:57'
  conversation: 01jm3cek8eb4z8tkqhf4trk98b
  prompt: '<documents> <document index="1"> <source>./LORA.md</source> <document_content>
    # Fine-Tuning with LoRA or QLoRA You c...'
  usage:
    input: 162885
    output: 2558
- model: gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05
  datetime: '2025-02-14T23:30:13'
  conversation: 01jm3csstrfygp35rk0y1w3rfc
  prompt: '<documents> <document index="1"> <source>huggingface_hub/__init__.py</source>
    <document_content> # Copyright 2020 The...'
  usage:
    input: 480216
    output: 1791

llm models -q gemini -q exp

  • Both llm models and llm embed-models now take multiple -q search fragments. You can now search for all models matching "gemini" and "exp" using llm models -q gemini -q exp. #748

I have over 100 models installed in LLM now across a bunch of different plugins. I added the -q option to help search through them a few months ago, and now I've upgraded it so you can pass it multiple times.

Want to see all the Gemini experimental models?

llm models -q gemini -q exp

Outputs:

GeminiPro: gemini-exp-1114
GeminiPro: gemini-exp-1121
GeminiPro: gemini-exp-1206
GeminiPro: gemini-2.0-flash-exp
GeminiPro: learnlm-1.5-pro-experimental
GeminiPro: gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-exp-1219
GeminiPro: gemini-2.0-flash-thinking-exp-01-21
GeminiPro: gemini-2.0-pro-exp-02-05 (aliases: g2)

For consistency I added the same options to the llm embed-models command, which lists available embedding models.

llm embed-multi --prepend X

  • New llm embed-multi --prepend X option for prepending a string to each value before it is embedded - useful for models such as nomic-embed-text-v2-moe that require passages to start with a string like "search_document: ". #745

This was inspired by my initial experiments with Nomic Embed Text V2 last week.

Everything else

  • The response.json() and response.usage() methods are now documented.

Someone asked a question about these methods online, which made me realize they weren't documented. I enjoy promptly turning questions like this into documentation!

  • Fixed a bug where conversations that were loaded from the database could not be continued using asyncio prompts. #742

This bug was reported by Romain Gehrig. It turned out not to be possible to execute a follow-up prompt in async mode if the previous conversation had been loaded from the database.

% llm 'hi' --async
Hello! How can I assist you today?
% llm 'now in french' --async -c
Error: 'async for' requires an object with __aiter__ method, got Response

I fixed the bug for the moment, but I'd like to make the whole mechanism of persisting and loading conversations from SQLite part of the documented and supported Python API - it's currently tucked away in CLI-specific internals which aren't safe for people to use in their own code.

Technically not a part of the LLM 0.22 release, but I like using the release notes to help highlight significant new plugins and llm-mlx is fast coming my new favorite way to run models on my own machine.

I wrote about this previously when I announced llm-anthropic. The new name prepares me for a world in which Anthropic release models that aren't called Claude 3 or Claude 3.5!

Tags: projects, ai, annotated-release-notes, openai, generative-ai, chatgpt, llms, llm, anthropic, gemini

What to do about SQLITE_BUSY errors despite setting a timeout

What to do about SQLITE_BUSY errors despite setting a timeout

Bert Hubert takes on the challenge of explaining SQLite's single biggest footgun: in WAL mode you may see SQLITE_BUSY errors even when you have a generous timeout set if a transaction attempts to obtain a write lock after initially running at least one SELECT. The fix is to use BEGIN IMMEDIATE if you know your transaction is going to make a write.

Bert provides the clearest explanation I've seen yet of why this is necessary:

When the transaction on the left wanted to upgrade itself to a read-write transaction, SQLite could not allow this since the transaction on the right might already have made changes that the transaction on the left had not yet seen.

This in turn means that if left and right transactions would commit sequentially, the result would not necessarily be what would have happened if all statements had been executed sequentially within the same transaction.

I've written about this a few times before, so I just started a sqlite-busy tag to collect my notes together on a single page.

Via lobste.rs

Tags: sqlite, transactions, databases, sqlite-busy

It’s happening at The New York Times

The New York Times is greenlighting the use of AI for its product and editorial staff, saying that internal tools could eventually write social copy, SEO headlines, and some code.

In an email to newsroom staff, the company announced that it’s opening up AI training to the newsroom, and debuting a new internal AI tool called Echo to staff, Semafor has learned. The Times also shared documents and videos laying out editorial do’s and don’t for using AI, and shared a suite of AI products that staff could now use to develop web products and editorial ideas.

“Generative AI can assist our journalists in uncovering the truth and helping more people understand the world. Machine learning already helps us report stories we couldn’t otherwise, and generative AI has the potential to bolster our journalistic capabilities even more,” the company’s editorial guidelines said.

Here is the full story, via the excellent Samir Varma.

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Trump’s Push for ‘Efficiency’ May Destroy the EPA. What Does That Mean for You?

Trump’s Second Term Begins With Deep EPA Cuts, Mass Layoffs, and Office Closures, Weakening Environmental Protections

In keeping with the promises he made while on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump has begun the process of shrinking the Environmental Protection Agency. It started on January 28, about a week after he was sworn in for his second term. That day, around 2 million employees across the federal government received an email saying they could either accept a “deal” to resign and receive eight months of pay or remain in their jobs and risk being laid off soon.

A few days later, on February 1, over 1,100 EPA workers, all of whom are still in the trial period of their positions, received a second email informing them that the administration has the right to immediately terminate them. While some of these employees are in their first year at the EPA, others had recently switched into new roles after spending decades in the agency.

The following week brought another blow. The new Trump-appointed management announced their plans to close the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights and place 168 of its employees on administrative leave.

Staffers that spoke to Grist under the condition of anonymity for fear of losing their jobs blamed new EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, and the director of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk, for the job-cutting measures.

Zeldin has said he is committed to protecting Americans’ clean air and water. But, as Margot Brown, the senior vice president of environmental justice and equity at the Environmental Defense Fund told Grist, he has offered no plan towards achieving that goal. “It is the height of irresponsibility. It is the height of inefficiency,” Brown said, referring to the Trump administration’s actions so far.

Steve Gilrein, who spent 40 years working in the air division of the EPA’s regional office in Dallas, before retiring in 2022, echoed Brown’s concerns and chalked the agency’s moves up to a public relations stunt. “It’s for a splash and I think it’s the wrong way to do it,” he told Grist. “I’m not saying the government can’t be more efficient. But I wish there was a plan that focused on keeping a healthy EPA that provides the services it’s meant to provide.”

Amid a storm of rhetoric about a bloated federal government, the events of the past two weeks raise questions about whether the EPA, an agency long plagued by budget and staff shortages, can continue to fulfill its legal obligations with a contracted workforce. Even before “efficiency” became the highest priority for federal agencies, the number of workers employed by the EPA had been declining for decades. “We’ve been steadily shrinking,” Gilrein said. “They just didn’t tell people.”

In the years after its founding in 1970, the EPA had only a few thousand staff members. Then, as the number of laws and programs under its purview grew — the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act — so did its workforce. The 1990s are often thought of as the agency’s golden years. During that decade, the workforce reached around 18,000 employees — a staffing apex that produced a flurry of new regulations for protecting the public from chemical dumping, tailpipe pollution, and petrochemical plant emissions.

Staff numbers then began a long decline. The EPA shrank the most dramatically during President Barack Obama’s administration, then further during Trump’s first term. Federalism, Gilrein explained, was the reason for the trend that has continued until this moment. Federal programs to ensure compliance with laws like the Clean Air Act were increasingly outsourced to the states to run. But, for agencies like the EPA, federalism must have a balance point; there are certain things that states can’t — or shouldn’t — do on their own.

During Trump’s first year and a half in office, approximately 1,600 workers, or 18 percent of the EPA workforce, left. The exodus caused widespread “brain drain” that continues to afflict some agency programs to this day. Nonetheless, Brown, who worked at the time in the agency’s Office of Children’s Health Protection, recalled that there continued to be some level of cooperation between Trump’s first term appointees and EPA staff. Structural changes handicapped certain offices, and the budget limped along, but many staff members were able to keep their heads low and do their jobs.

“There was an unbelievable amount of oversight because there was immense mistrust in the staff, but it was nothing like today,” Brown said.

President Biden’s four years in office amounted to a momentary aberration. Biden and his EPA administrator Michael Regan added hundreds of new staff members, advanced the federal climate policy objectives, and strengthened enforcement against companies in industrial corridors like Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” For as much promise as Biden and Regan brought, their approach angered conservative state politicians known to favor the oil and gas industry, resulted in a spate of lawsuits against the EPA, and set the stage for Trump’s second term.

Trump’s renewed mission to crush the agency promotes a severely limited type of federalism in which states have full power to administer the nation’s environmental laws as they please, with minimal oversight from the federal government. The problem with that approach, Gilrein said, is that it overlooks state environment agencies’ reliance on the EPA to fulfill practically every aspect of their mandates.

During his four decades in the Region 6 office, Gilrein said that federal staffers worked “hand in hand” with the states, offering everything from technical guidance on regulatory decisions to millions of dollars in federal grant money. Agency staffers, many of whom have advanced degrees in fields like chemical engineering and toxicology, simply have expertise that states cannot afford with their limited budgets, Gilrein said. He recalled that under Obama and the first Trump administration, the regional office maintained positive relationships with the states in its jurisdiction, often helping them review permits and plan inspections.

“We wanted our states to be as strong as they could be,” he said.

One current staff member in the air division told Grist that few colleagues he knew were even considering taking the “deal,” believing that it was legally dubious and a bullying tactic to spur mass resignations. Furthermore, he continued, it was insulting to the American public that he should be able to collect a government salary while doing nothing for eight months.

Trump and his appointees are explaining their early actions against the EPA as measures to spur economic growth. But current and former staff told Grist that the importance of the EPA will come into sharper focus when it is no longer able to fulfill the duties that staff have long dedicated themselves to.

For instance, the Office of Environmental Justice, which Trump recently announced would be closing, is responsible for administering billions of dollars in funds to communities on the front lines of the climate crisis. Under the previous Trump administration, the office had about 30 staff members; today, that number is over 160. If the plan to dismantle the office is seen through, Brown warned, “it will be impossible for those funds to be managed appropriately.”

Gilrein wondered aloud if Trump had been able to get away with a lot of his rhetoric about the agency because the services it provides have long been invisible to the public.

“Why are you celebrating the dismantling of an agency that’s proven critical to human health and the environment?” Gilrein asked. “You take for granted that you can drink the water out of your faucet. You can do that because of the EPA.”

DCReport Update: On February 14, nearly 400 probationary staffers were fired at the EPA.

This article originally appeared in Grist HERE.

Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Learn more at Grist.org


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

The post Trump’s Push for ‘Efficiency’ May Destroy the EPA. What Does That Mean for You? appeared first on DCReport.org.

Housing Feb 17th Weekly Update: Inventory Up 0.9% Week-over-week, Up 29.2% Year-over-year

Altos reports that active single-family inventory was up 0.9% week-over-week.

Inventory always declines seasonally in the Winter and usually bottoms in January or February. Inventory is now up 2.2% from the bottom five weeks ago in January.

The first graph shows the seasonal pattern for active single-family inventory since 2015.

Altos Year-over-year Home InventoryClick on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2024.  The black line is for 2019.  

Inventory was up 29.2% compared to the same week in 2024 (last week it was up 27.8%), and down 22.1% compared to the same week in 2019 (last week it was down 22.1%). 

Back in June 2023, inventory was down almost 54% compared to 2019, so the gap to more normal inventory levels has closed significantly!

Altos Home InventoryThis second inventory graph is courtesy of Altos Research.

As of Feb 14th, inventory was at 638 thousand (7-day average), compared to 632 thousand the prior week. 

Mike Simonsen discusses this data regularly on Youtube

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Climate crisis contributing to chocolate market meltdown

 The canary in the coalmine that is climate change is starting to show important signs of stress.

The Guardian has this story:

Climate crisis contributing to chocolate market meltdown, research finds.  Scientists say more-frequent hotter temperatures in west African region are part of reason for reduced harvests and price rises

"The climate crisis drove weeks of high temperatures in the west African region responsible for about 70% of global cacao production, hitting harvests and probably causing further record chocolate prices, researchers have said.

Farmers in the region have struggled with heat, disease and unusual rainfall in recent years, which have contributed to falling production.

The decline has resulted in an increase in the price of cocoa, which is produced from the beans of the cacao tree and is the main ingredient in chocolate.

A new report found that “climate change, due primarily to burning oil, coal and methane gas, is causing hotter temperatures to become more frequent” in places such as the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria.

The study, by the independent research group Climate Central, found the trend was particularly marked in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two biggest cacao producers."

Italy’s Superbonus: The Dumbest Fiscal Policy in Recent Memory

Luis Garicano has an amazing post on “one of the dumbest fiscal policies in recent memory.” Launched in Italy during COVID by Prime Minister Conte, the “Superbonus” scheme subsidized 110% of housing renovation costs. Now if one were to use outdated, simplistic, Econ 101 type reasoning one would predict that such a scheme would be massively costly not only because people would rush to renovate their homes for free but because the more expensive the renovation on paper the bigger the bonus.

The proponents of the Superbonus, most notably Riccardo Fraccaro, were however, advocates of Monetary Monetary Theory so deficits were considered only an illusory barrier to government spending and resource constraints were far distant concerns. Italy still had to meet EU rules, however, so the deficit spending was concealed with creative accounting:

rather than direct cash grants, the government issued tax credits that could be transferred. A homeowner could claim these credits directly against their taxes, have contractors claim them against invoices, or sell them to banks. These credits became a kind of fiscal currency – a parallel financial instrument that functioned as off-the-books debt (Capone and Stagnaro, 2024). The setup purposefully created the illusion of a free lunch: it hid the cost to the government, as for European accounting purposes the credits would show up only as lost tax revenue rather than new spending.

In MMT terms, Fraccaro and his team effectively created money as a tax credit, putting into practice MMT’s notion that a sovereign issuer’s currency is ultimately a tax IOU​.

So what were the results? The “free renovation” scheme quickly spiraled out of control. Initially projected to cost €35 billion, the program ballooned to around €220 billion—about 12% of Italy’s GDP! Did it drive a surge in energy-efficient renovations? Hardly. Massive fraud ensued as builders and homeowners inflated renovation costs to siphon off government funds. Beyond that, surging demand ran headlong into resource constraints. Econ 101 again: in the short run, marginal cost curves slope upward.

Construction costs sharply increased – the Construction Cost Index grew by roughly 20% after the pandemic and surged another 13% after September 2021, with the Superbonus directly responsible for about 7 percentage points of that rise, according to Corsello and Ercolani (2024). The price of setting up scaffolding, an essential first step for renovation, increased by 400% by the end of 2021.

…Even the program’s environmental benefits came at an astronomical cost – any calculation will yield far north of €1,000 per ton of carbon saved (versus an ETS Carbon price of around €80 per ton).

Moreover, as Garicano trenchantly notes once started the program’s structure made it fiendishly difficult to stop:

The benefits were concentrated among vocal constituencies: homeowners getting renovations, the environmental movement, and contractors seeing booming business. The costs, while enormous, were spread across all taxpayers and pushed into the future through the tax credit mechanism. No government—leftist, technocratic, or right-wing—was able to resist its logic. Parliament consistently pushed back against efforts to limit its scope, even after fraud estimates hit €16 billion. As prime minister, Mario Draghi, despite publicly criticizing the program for tripling construction costs, could not halt it — in fact, his initial action was to simplify access to it. When his government attempted to curb abuse, the Five Star Movement reacted with anger, and even modest controls on credit transfers were fought. By 2023, Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government faced the same constraints—industry groups protested, coalition partners balked.

In normal times, the EU might have intervened to curb the reckless deficit spending—everyone knew what was going on, even if the numbers were temporarily kept off the books. But during COVID, the EU turned a blind eye, and the ECB kept interest rates low.

In fact, Garicano argues that the Superbonus story is merely the most blatant example of deeper systemic issues which now trouble the entire EU:

This erosion of discipline isn’t limited to Italy. France’s deficit has drifted to 6.1% of GDP. Spain reversed its post crisis pension reform right around the time Italy was passing the Superbonus, with much larger negative consequences for fiscal sustainability. In a world where the ECB will always intervene to prevent bond market pressure and Brussels cannot credibly enforce fiscal rules on large states, sustainable fiscal policy becomes politically almost impossible.

The very mechanisms designed to protect the euro may now be undermining it.

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The bookends of time

A monochrome painting of a moonlit lake scene with a mountain silhouette and figures on a pier under a crescent moon.

Nothing lasts forever: not humanity, not Earth, not the Universe. But finitude confers an indelible meaning to our lives

- by Thomas Moynihan

Read at Aeon

Prayer is the greatest freedom of all

Photo of a person sitting in a dimly lit church with stained glass windows and sun rays filtering through.

‘I think that freedom everywhere, anywhere is love.’ Father Giles, a monk for 47 years, shares his radical view of freedom

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

Europe's impotent rage

Europe has become a third-rate power economically, politically, and militarily, and the price for this slowly building predicament is now due all at once.

First, America is seeking to negotiate peace in Ukraine directly with Russia, without even inviting Europe to the table. Decades of underfunding the European military has lead us here. The never-ending ridicule of America, for spending the supposedly "absurd sum" of 3.4% of its GDP to maintain its might, coming home to roost.

Second, mass immigration in Europe has become the central political theme driving the surge of right-wing parties in countries across the continent. Decades of blind adherence to a naive multi-cultural ideology has produced an abject failure to assimilate culturally-incompatible migrants. Rather than respond to this growing public discontent, mainstream parties all over Europe run the same playbook of calling anyone with legitimate concerns "racist", and attempting to disparage or even ban political parties advancing these topics.

Third, the decline of entrepreneurship in Europe has lead to a death of new major companies, and an accelerated brain drain to America. The European economy lost parity with the American after 2008, and now the net-zero nonsense has lead Europe's old manufacturing powerhouse, Germany, to commit financial harakiri. Shutting its nuclear power plants, over-investing in solar and wind, and rendering its prized car industry noncompetitive on the global market. The latter leading European bureaucrats in the unenviable position of having to both denounce Trump on his proposed tariffs while imposing their own on the Chinese.

A single failure in any of these three crucial realms would have been painful to deal with. But failure in all three at the same time is a disaster, and it's one of Europe's own making. Worse still is that Europeans at large still appear to be stuck in the early stages of grief. Somewhere between "anger" and "bargaining". Leaving us with "depression" before we arrive at "acceptance".

Except this isn't destiny. Europe is not doomed to impotent outrage or repressive anger. Europe has the people, the talent, and the capital to choose a different path. What it currently lacks is the will.

I'm a Dane. Therefore, I'm a European. I don't summarize the sad state of Europe out of spite or ill will or from a lack of standing. I don't want Europe to become American. But I want Europe to be strong, confident, and successful. Right now it's anything but.

The best time for Europe to make a change was twenty years ago. The next best time is right now. Forza Europe! Viva Europe!

Naming AI models correctly

Are you confused by all the model names and terminology running around?  Here is a simple guide to what I call them:

o1 pro — The Boss

4o — Little Boss

o3 mini — The Mini Boss

GPT 4o with scheduled tasks — Boss come back later

o1 — Cheapskates’ boss

Deep Research — My research assistant

GPT-4 — Former Boss

DeepSeek — China Boss

Claude — Claude

Llama 3.3, or whichever — Meta.  I never quite got used to calling Facebook “Meta,” so I call the AI model Meta too.  Hope that’s OK!

Grok 3 — Elon

Gemini 2.0 Flash — China Boss suggests “Laggy Larry,” but I don’t actually call it that.

Perplexity.ai — Google

Got that?  Easy as pie!

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Leave it to the Germans

Just a day after JD Vance's remarkable speech in Munich, 60 Minutes validates his worst accusations in a chilling segment on the totalitarian German crackdown on free speech. You couldn't have scripted this development for more irony or drama!

This isn't 60 Minutes finding a smoking gun in some secret government archive, detailing a plot to prosecute free speech under some fishy pretext. No, this is German prosecutors telling an American journalist in an open interview that insulting people online is a crime and retweeting a "lie" will get you in trouble with the law. No hidden cameras! All out in the open!

Nor is this just some rogue prosecutorial theory. 60 Minutes goes along for the ride with German police, as they conduct a raid at dawn with six armed officers to confiscate the laptop and a phone of a German citizen suspected of posting a racist cartoon. Even typing out this description of what happens sounds like insane hyperbole, but you can just watch the clip for yourself.

And this morning raid was just one of fifty that day. Fifty raids in a day! For wrong speech, spicy memes, online insults of politicians, and other utterances by German citizens critical of their government or policies! Is this is the kind of hallowed democracy that Germans are supposed to defend against the supposed threat of AfD?

As I noted yesterday, even Denmark has some draconian laws on the books limiting free speech. And they've been used in anger too. Although I've yet to see the kind of grotesque enforcement -- six armed officers at dawn coming to confiscate a laptop! -- but the trend is none the less worrying all across Europe, not just in Germany.

I suppose this is why European leaders are in such shock over Vance's wagging finger. Because they know he's dead on, but they're not used to getting called out like this. On the world stage, while they just had to sit there. I can see how that's humiliating.

But the humiliation of the European people is infinitely greater as they're gaslit about their right to free speech. That Vance doesn't know what he's talking about. Oh, and what about the Gulf of America?? It's pathetic.

So too is the apparent deep support from many parts of Europe for this totalitarian insanity. I keep hearing from Europeans who with a straight face will claim that of course they have free speech, but that doesn't mean you can insult people, hurt their feelings, or post statistics that might cast certain groups in a bad light.

Madness.

"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command."
-- Orwell, 1949

It's time for Europe to stand up

America is not coming to save Europe this time.

That is the clear message of two landmark speeches from the past week — one by U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the other by the Vice President JD Vance. Hegseth, speaking at a summit in Brussels on February 12th, declared that Europe is no longer America’s primary security focus:

We're…here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe…The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland. We must – and we are – focusing on security of our own borders…We also face a peer competitor in the Communist Chinese with the capability and intent to threaten our homeland and core national interests in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity, and making the resourcing tradeoffs to ensure deterrence does not fail…Deterrence cannot fail, for all of our sakes…As the United States prioritizes its attention to these threats, European allies must lead from the front…Together, we can establish a division of labor that maximizes our comparative advantages in Europe and Pacific respectively. [emphasis mine]

Hegseth also warned that the U.S. will eventually pull its troops out of Europe, and said that Europe must provide the vast majority of support for Ukraine going forward.

Two days later, at the Munich Security Conference, Vance argued that Europe’s biggest threat was not Russia or China, but what he perceives as a slide toward anti-democratic values:

[T]he threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor…[W]hat I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.

As evidence of Europe’s retreat from democracy, he cited Romania’s cancellation of an election result due to supposed election interference, Sweden’s jailing of a rightist activist for burning a Koran, and Britain’s arrest of an anti-abortion activist for silently praying near an abortion clinic. He also urged European governments to spend more on defense, and to listen to their citizens who are upset about recent waves of immigration.

Now, there are two very different ways you can interpret these speeches, but they both lead to the same basic conclusion.

The first interpretation is that Hegseth and Vance are telling Europe hard truths that it needs to hear. After all, even if America wants to be the guarantor of European security as it was in the Cold War and the World Wars, it can’t be — at least, not if it wants to be the guarantor of security in Asia, where its most formidable foe looms. China dramatically overmatches America in terms of manufacturing capability, has four times America’s population, and is a peer in terms of technology. Even with Japan, India, Korea, Australia, and other allies fully on board, America would be desperately hard-pressed to withstand a concerted Chinese attempt to take over Asia.

Stretched by decades of deindustrialization and smothered in layers of lawsuits and regulations, America is not the arsenal of democracy it once was. It has no choice but to prioritize. Asia is more economically important to the U.S., and China is a much bigger long-term threat to the U.S. than Russia is. Thus, it’s simply inevitable that America will have to turn towards Asia and away from Europe and the Middle East.

Meanwhile, Vance has a point about European values. The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights claims to protect freedom of expression, as does the UK’s Human Rights Act of 1998. The laws that criminalize burning the Koran and praying near an abortion clinic definitely seem to go against the principle of free expression. And even though Russia interfered in Romania’s election, annulling an election sets a dangerous precedent, because it’s always pretty easy to claim foreign interference if you’re an unscrupulous autocrat.

So it’s possible that Hegseth and Vance are not only being sincere, but are giving Europe a needed wake-up call.

The second interpretation is that Hegseth and Vance are being disingenuous. According to this narrative, the MAGA movement admires and is closely aligned with Russia. Trump draws a false moral equivalence between Russia and Ukraine, unfairly laying some of the blame on Ukraine for the war. Russia has always favored Trump over his rivals, whether or not their support has been materially important; Trump tends to like people who support him. And many on the American right see Russia (wrongly) as a supporter of traditional Christian and masculine values, unlike the Europeans, who they see as godless deracinated socialists. So perhaps Trump and his people simply want Russia to prevail over Ukraine.

When Hegseth says America needs to divert resources toward securing its own borders, he’s obviously blowing smoke — even quadrupling the amount America spends on border security (just $7.3 billion in 2024 despite years of big increases) would leave it far smaller than Ukraine aid. And it’s a bit rich for JD Vance to criticize Romania for annulling an election, when he supports Trump’s effort to do something extremely similar back in 2020.

In this interpretation, everything Trump’s people are saying is simply an extension of right-wing culture-war politics — their concern for free speech is a fig leaf, they like European far-right parties because they’re anti-immigration, and they want to switch America’s foreign policy back to isolationism and the Western Hemisphere.

I’m a bit agnostic as to which of these interpretations is correct. My instinct is that Hegseth is being sincere, while Vance is probably playing to his domestic political base in the U.S. And I think the Trump administration probably contains a fair number of both right-wing isolationists who want America to withdraw from the world and focus all its energy on internal ideological conflicts, and conservative internationalists who recognize the magnitude of the threat from China.

But more importantly, I think that from Europe’s vantage point, it mostly doesn’t matter which interpretation of America’s recent words and actions is more accurate.

Whether America really wants to focus on deterring China in Asia, or whether it just wants to retreat from the global stage and focus on bullying Canada, Panama, and its own minorities, that doesn’t change the cold hard fact that America is retreating from its role as the guarantor of European security. And whether or not Trump’s people actually think Russia is a threat to Europe, that doesn’t change the fact that Russia is a threat to Europe. And whether Trump’s people truly care about free speech, that doesn’t change the fact that Europe’s people are angry about recent immigration waves, and if that anger isn’t accommodated through the democratic process, Europe’s stability could be in danger.

In other words, both the challenges that Europe faces, and the fact that the U.S. is not going to help with those challenges, are clear and obvious. Europe must either stand on its own against the threats that face it, or capitulate to those threats.

Fortunately, some of the Europeans may finally be realizing this. Benjamin Tallis has an excellent thread in which he argues that although it’s bad that the U.S. is withdrawing its protection, Hegseth is essentially right that Europe needs to step up and fill the void that the U.S. is leaving. Ukraine’s President Zelensky has been saying similar things. And France’s President Macron has called an emergency EU summit to discuss America’s withdrawal from the region.

And fortunately, Europe has the fundamental strength required to defeat the threats it faces, even without America’s help.

Europe can handle Russia by itself — if it wants to

Just as the U.S. is overmatched by China, Russia is overmatched by Europe. Two years ago, I wrote out the basic case, with some relevant numbers:

Europe has far more people and industry than Russia does. The EU and UK together have half a billion people — more than three times as many as Putin’s empire:

Source: UN

With Turkey in the mix, the ratio is even more lopsided.

As for industrial output, even after Russia’s big wartime mobilization, Europe still makes far more stuff. If Russia is included in Europe, it’s only be the fifth-largest manufacturing economy in the region:

Source: World Bank via Wikipedia

Even the UK manufactures more than Russia!

Now, not all kinds of manufacturing are equally useful for war — Russia tends to make a lot of tanks and artillery shells, while Europe makes a lot of pharmaceuticals and medical devices — so this is just a rough measure. But the comparison is so lopsided that it’s clear that in any protracted conventional conflict, a united, determined Europe would prevail over Russia, even without an iota of American help. And Europe has its own nuclear deterrent as well, mostly in the hands of France and the UK.

Nor is it fanciful to think that Europe might unite to fight Russia. Even if the U.S. formally withdraws from NATO, or simply refuses to come to its allies’ aid, NATO command can serve as a unified military command for any and all European efforts against Russia. Crucially, NATO also includes Turkey and the UK, who aren’t in the EU, but both of which are rivals of Russia. In fact, without a Trump-led U.S. weighing the alliance down, it could be free to become the pan-European military force that the region needs.

Politically, too, Europe is more united than it has been in its entire history — witness how the whole region came together to apply sanctions on Russia in 2022, and how even traditionally neutral countries like Sweden have been joining NATO.

With Europe, there’s always the danger that But in fact, there’s a historical precedent for European countries putting aside their

But even with unity, Europe will still need the will to fight. Currently, despite a lot of bold rhetoric from officials in Germany, France, and the UK, none of Europe’s biggest nations are doing anywhere near what it would take to contain Russia without American help.

Usually, this is put in terms of the percentage of GDP that European countries spend on their militaries. And yes, Russia spends far more of its GDP on its military than the major European countries do:

Changes in this number can also give us information about a country’s priorities. The fact that military spending hasn’t climbed much in Germany, France, and the UK shows that they aren’t yet taking the Russian threat as seriously as they should. Poland, in contrast, is clearly taking the threat seriously, which is why Hegseth consistently praises Poland.

Of course, Europe has a much higher GDP than Russia does, so even a smaller percentage of GDP could translate into a larger total amount of military spending. But it’s important to remember that real military purchasing power also depends on prices — if soldiers’ salaries and health care, weapons, vehicles, transportation, etc. are cheaper in Russia than in Europe, that means $1 of Russian defense spending counts for more than $1 of European defense spending.

In fact, Russia gets its military stuff for a lot cheaper. Taking this into account, it probably spends about as much on its military as all of Europe combined:

Russia's military expenditure is rising so fast that it is outperforming all European countries combined despite their effort to boost budgets and rearm, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ latest Military Balance report…The think tank said that Russia’s military expenditure last year was forecast at 13.1 trillion rubles ($145.9 billion)…Meanwhile, Europe’s combined 2024 defense spending was $457 billion…11.7 percent higher in real terms than the previous year…

But if Russia's spending is calculated in purchasing power parity terms — used in countries like Russia where domestic inputs are significantly cheaper than on the world market — the Kremlin's military expenditure would come to $461.6 billion, the IISS said.

In terms of active military personnel, Russia has about 1.1 million, while NATO without the U.S. still has about double that. But it’s not clear how many of those troops NATO could actually bring to bear in a fight.

Germany, France, and the UK need to raise their defense spending — immediately, and by a large amount. Hegseth is right — Poland’s target of 5% of GDP in 2025 is appropriate, and is about the same as the U.S. spent during its peacetime military buildup in the 1980s. Furthermore, European countries need to make sure their troops are well-trained and their militaries are well-integrated. And Europe needs to beef up its nuclear deterrent, to be less reliant on the (now likely nonexistent) U.S. nuclear umbrella — France and the UK need to build more nukes, while Germany and Poland need to get their own.

There are basically two dangers here for Europe: lack of popular will within each country, and lack of coordination between countries.

It’s possible that European publics simply don’t worry enough about the Russian threat, or that they’ve become so rich and complacent — or perhaps so infused with leftist ideology — that they hate the very idea of spending money on the military. European elites — especially elites in Germany, France, and the UK — simply need to sell their public on the notion of a strong, integrated defense.

If they can’t do that, the European countries will prove true the common authoritarian accusation that democracies are inherently weak and unable to defend themselves. In the 20th century, democracies passed the toughness test, sacrificing blood and treasure to crush fascism and contain communism. Perhaps America is failing that test in the 21st century. But if so, it becomes all the more important that Europe pass the test.

The other danger is that each European country will look after its own narrow interests, throwing the other countries to the wolves. There’s a tendency of each country to view the nations to the east of it as buffer states — a defense-in-depth to hold off the Russians. This is a dangerous fantasy. The more Russia conquers, the more powerful it growth, since it basically enslaves each conquered group into its army to conquer the next group. When the USSR attacked Poland in 1919, it did so with many Ukrainian troops; when it menaced West Europe during the Cold War, it did so with Polish troops. And so on. Europe has to make a stand and put up a hard wall, instead of letting Russia continue to absorb and enslave its people bit by bit.

If the U.S. abandons Ukraine to Russia entirely, as now looks fairly likely, it might make sense for Europe to actively intervene in the war, helping the Ukrainians stop Russia from grabbing any more territory. Ukraine has grit and inventiveness, but they lack manpower; Europe could send troops to shore up their defenses, and learn how modern warfare works in the process. But even if direct intervention doesn’t happen, Europe will need to fortify its borders in the east against continued Russian encroachment.

In fact, there’s a historical precedent for this. In 1853-56, the UK and France — who at that time were generally rivals — forged an alliance to help shore up the weakening Ottoman Empire against Russian territorial grabs. The result was the Crimean War, in which the alliance of Britain, France, and Turkey — depicted at the top of this post — defeated the Russians and halted their westward expansion. But even if Europe doesn’t actually fight in Ukraine, if it raises defense spending and deploys its militaries to its eastern borders, it can face down the new Russian empire over the next two decades.

Europe needs to fix its economy and immigration

It should also go without saying that Europe needs to fix its economy. The region has stagnated over the past decade and a half. Even measuring at purchasing power parity — which isn’t affected by exchange rate movements — it’s clear that Europe has been falling behind the U.S.:

It’s not just that the U.S. has more immigration, either — Europe’s per capita GDP has lagged as well.

Germany has done especially poorly in recent years. Its industrial production has been falling since long before the Ukraine war started and Russian gas got cut off:

Europeans who are confronted with these facts typically comfort themselves (or attack their American critics) by pointing out Europe’s lower inequality, higher life expectancy, and lower crime. But while those advantages make Europe a nice place to live, they aren’t much use against hundreds of thousands of Russian drones. To build up military-industrial strength, you need higher GDP and you need higher industrial production.

Just how Europe can get those things is a difficult question. There are some obvious policy moves, like eliminating internal trade barriers between European countries, general deregulation, and copying the Danish “flexicurity” system to increase labor mobility. Europe also needs as much cheap energy as it can get, since factories are especially power-hungry. Restarting any and all mothballed nuclear reactors is a must, and a lot more should be built. Europe should also be building as much solar power as possible, especially in Spain where it’s sunny and relatively underpopulated, and then piping that power to the industrial heartland using high-voltage transmission lines.

On top of that, Europe needs to build a better software industry. Software, especially AI, will be increasingly important for manufacturing, and software exports can give the economy a boost as well. Europe is already home to huge amounts of talented coders, especially in East Europe, and it also has tons of capital to invest. But so far the region has really struggled to build a U.S.-style software ecosystem. The first thing to try here is deregulation — reform laws like GDPR until they present essentially no barrier to innovation. After that, tweak financial laws to encourage venture capital, and work to harmonize standards and regulations across EU member states so the market isn’t fragmented.

Europe’s biggest challenge, of course, is aging — something every country in the world is either dealing with or will have to deal with fairly soon. Sadly, effective pro-natalist policies still mostly don’t exist (though France gets modest results with them) Until recently, robust immigration partially plugged Europe’s gap, but there’s clearly a giant backlash against the kinds of immigrants Europe has been taking in en masse for the past decade and a half. Even if you doubt JD Vance’s motives, he’s right that European countries need to accede to the will of their increasingly immigration-skeptical populaces; to do otherwise would risk political instability.

The most obvious move here — in addition to deporting immigrant criminals so that the populace feels more positively about the whole thing — is to simply restrict the set of source countries. Taking fewer refugees from violent war-torn regions, and taking more skilled or semi-skilled immigrants from stable low-crime countries, would probably be a good idea.

Anyway, I have much more to say about the European economy, but for right now, I just want to point out that although Europe desperately needs a stronger military, countries that pump up their militaries without concomitant increases in their economic output typically don’t fare well. The Europeans need to think about economics and military power as one big interrelated effort — a Europe that stands up and fights for itself, instead of waiting for America to swoop in and save the day like it did in the 20th century.


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Not too close encounters of the galactic kind

This Picture of the Week shows NGC 3640, an unusual elliptical galaxy 88 million light-years away. The image, taken with the VLT Survey Telescope hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory, reveals a menagerie of galaxies of all shapes and sizes, ranging from slight blue smudges to the fried-egg shape of NGC 3640. But amidst this colourful cosmic neighbourhood, one thing stands out — this egg has a double yolk: a smaller galaxy that might be too close for its comfort.

Throughout their extremely long lifetime, galaxies change. As they soar through space, they may steal gas and stars from other galaxies, or even engulf and merge with them. After these events, galaxies can become distorted, as exemplified by the misshaped NGC 3640 and the diffuse light around it. The galaxy is then left with ‘scars’ that hint at a violent past, which astronomers can use to know its past and present history.

To trace the history behind this galaxy and its smaller companion, a team of astronomers at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics used the VST to analyse their globular clusters, spherical and compact aggregations of stars bound by gravity. These usually contain some of the first stars created within a galaxy and can therefore act as fossil markers, revealing the galaxy’s history, even after merging events.

The results confirm that NGC 3640 has engulfed other galaxies before, an ominous sign for the smaller galaxy now in its path, NGC 3641. Yet, this small galactic underdog shows a distinct lack of distortions in its shape or the globular clusters within. This suggests that their interaction, while fast, is not happening close enough for NGC 3640 to pose a threat. NGC 3641 might be safe… for now.

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More Than You Wanted to Know About Tariffs

Hello, subscribers. Some people I trust have been urging me to write a sort of primer on tariffs, and Donald Trump’s latest diktat seems to provide an occasion. This long post, practically a working paper, will, at least at first, be for paid subscribers only — while my weekday rants are always free, those of you who have contributed should get a few perks for your generosity. And something like this, a fairly big project that I hope people will find informative but isn’t part of understanding what happened in the past 24 hours, seems like a good candidate.

For those of you deciding whether to chip in, here’s what is behind the wall. First, a survey of the actual levels of tariffs around the world. Second, a summary history of how advanced economies — all of them, not just the United States — got from the protectionism of the 1930s to nearly free trade, at least in manufactured goods. Third, a brief overview of the quite different history of tariffs in emerging economies, which had very high tariffs until the 1980s, then brought them way down, although they’re still higher than those in the advanced world. Finally, what you should know about value-added taxes, which shouldn’t be part of this discussion but probably will.

OK, let’s get started.

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Ravyn aims to distrupt missile sector

Washington-based Ravyn Technology Corp. is developing low-cost missiles propelled by solid rocket motors.

The post Ravyn aims to distrupt missile sector appeared first on SpaceNews.

Kevin Kelly’s fifty travel tips

Here is one of them, in part:

Here in brief is the method I’ve honed to optimize a two-week vacation: When you arrive in a new country, immediately proceed to the farthest, most remote, most distant place you intend to reach during the trip. If there is a small village, remote spa, a friend’s farm, or a wild place you plan on seeing on the trip, go there immediately. Do not stop near the airport. Do not rest overnight in the arrival city. Do not pause to acclimate. If at all possible proceed by plane, bus, jeep, car directly to the furthest point without interruption. Make it an overnight journey if you have to. Then once you reach your furthest point, unpack, explore, and work your way slowly back to the big city, wherever your international departure airport is.

In other words you make a laser-straight rush for the end, and then meander back. Laser out, meander back. This method is somewhat contrary to many people’s first instincts, which are to immediately get acclimated to the culture in the landing city before proceeding to the hinterlands. The thinking is: get a sense of what’s going on, stock up, size up the joint. Then slowly work up to the more challenging, more remote areas. That’s reasonable, but not optimal because most big cities around the world are more similar than different. All big cities these days feel same-same on first arrival. In Laser-Back travel what happens is that you are immediately thrown into Very Different Otherness, the maximum difference that you will get on this trip.

Here are the rest, mostly I agree.

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ESA astronaut with physical disability medically cleared for ISS missions

McFall

In a first, a European astronaut with a physical disability has been medically cleared for missions to the International Space Station.

The post ESA astronaut with physical disability medically cleared for ISS missions appeared first on SpaceNews.

Despite High Performance at National Park Service, Civil Servant Axed By DOGE … and She’s Here to Tell You About It

This is a new series – Sacrificed for ‘Savings’ … in which we are showcasing the true impact of the Trump-Musk purge of federal employees via DOGE, by allowing those affected to tell their stories in their own words. Angela Moxley was a dedicated civil servant of the National Park Service. She was one of about 1,000 NPS staff terminated on Valentine’s Day. Here she is … in her own words: 


“I don’t know what the future holds, but I will continue fighting for myself, my family, my colleagues, the American public, and our parks.”

On Friday, at 6:47 p.m., after I had gone home for the day from my position with the National Park Service (NPS), I received an email on my work computer that I was being “separated from federal service” because I have “failed to demonstrate fitness or qualification for continued employment.” I had been waiting for the email, because six of my colleagues had already received theirs.

I had earned a high performance rating at my annual evaluation, I was recently asked to serve on a subject matter expert hiring panel, and my supervisor disagrees with the decision and didn’t have anything to do with it.

As a career conditional employee of the NPS, I had just 10 days to go until the end of my probation period. My only rights are to appeal based on a claim that the decision was motivated by partisan political purposes or marital status. I cannot make a claim based on unfounded statements about my performance.

200,000 federal workers have been let go as part of the Valentine’s Day Probationary Purge. It’s just the tip of the iceberg for what is planned. Huge cuts are imminent and my former park’s staff could be slashed to just a small core.

Angela Moxley carrying seedlings of imperiled plant species to be planted back into the wild at Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park in Maryland. Photo: Layne Strickler/NPS

I can’t even begin to fathom how these actions will reverberate throughout all corners of our society. But I do have a pretty good idea what will happen to our national parks – America’s best idea. Without staff, the National Park Service will be unable to carry out its 100-plus-year mandate to leave the parks unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations. This is a mission that my colleagues and I take seriously. We work for far less pay than we could in the private sector, and we spend many, many years working our way up the career ladder because we are passionate about serving our country by protecting public lands.

Yes there will be long lines at the parks’ fee booths, closed visitor centers, overflowing toilets, and poop on the trails, but there will also be severely impaired natural and cultural resources. This is happening at a time when we need public lands more than ever, to provide breathing room and landscape connectivity for wildlife who are losing habitat everywhere, to protect rare species, to preserve biodiversity, and to provide everyone with a measure of resilience in the face of climate change. The benefits that our parks provide are irreplaceable.

Working for the National Park Service has been a dream job, a hard-fought new beginning after I left a previous career in journalism almost 10 years ago. I don’t know what the future holds, but I will continue fighting for myself, my family, my colleagues, the American public, and our parks.

Call your senators and representative, support the National Parks Conservation Association and friends groups of national parks such as Harpers Ferry Park Association, and mobilize your networks. We cannot win if we do not fight back.


CLICK HERE TO DONATE IN SUPPORT OF A FREE AND INDEPENDENT PRESS. WE NEED YOU AND WE HOPE YOU AGREE THAT YOU NEED US!

The post Despite High Performance at National Park Service, Civil Servant Axed By DOGE … and She’s Here to Tell You About It appeared first on DCReport.org.

Sunday 16 February 1661/62

(Lord’s day). To church this morning, and so home and to dinner. In the afternoon I walked to St. Bride’s to church, to hear Dr. Jacomb preach upon the recovery, and at the request of Mrs. Turner, who came abroad this day, the first time since her long sickness. He preached upon David’s words, “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord,” and made a pretty good sermon, though not extraordinary. After sermon I led her home, and sat with her, and there was the Dr. got before us; but strange what a command he hath got over Mrs. Turner, who was so carefull to get him what he would, after his preaching, to drink, and he, with a cunning gravity, knows how to command, and had it, and among other things told us that he heard more of the Common Prayer this afternoon (while he stood in the vestry, before he went up into the pulpitt) than he had heard this twenty years.

Thence to my uncle Wight to meet my wife, and with other friends of hers and his met by chance we were very merry, and supped, and so home, not being very well through my usual pain got by cold.

So to prayers and to bed, and there had a good draft of mulled ale brought me.

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Hotels: Occupancy Rate Decreased 0.5% Year-over-year

From STR: U.S. hotel results for week ending 8 February
The U.S. hotel industry reported negative year-over-year comparisons, according to CoStar’s latest data through 8 February. ...

2-8 February 2025 (percentage change from comparable week in 2024):

Occupancy: 55.9% (-0.5%)
• Average daily rate (ADR): US$156.03 (-2.2%)
• Revenue per available room (RevPAR): US$87.22 (-2.7%)
emphasis added
The following graph shows the seasonal pattern for the hotel occupancy rate using the four-week average.

Hotel Occupancy RateClick on graph for larger image.

The red line is for 2025, blue is the median, and dashed light blue is for 2024.  Dashed purple is for 2018, the record year for hotel occupancy. 

The 4-week average of the occupancy rate is tracking last year and is a little lower than the median rate for the period 2000 through 2024 (Blue).

Note: Y-axis doesn't start at zero to better show the seasonal change.

The 4-week average will increase seasonally for the next couple of months.

Links 2/16/25

Links for you. Science:

How New York’s Decentralized Public Health System is a Firewall Against Data Chaos
Letter to the US President and Congress on the Scientific Understanding of Sex and Gender
US sees no let-up in rising flu activity
New journal co-founded by NIH nominee raises eyebrows, misinformation fears
National Institutes of Health radically cuts support to universities
‘It’s a Circus’: Trump Unleashes Chaos at Key US Science Agency. Muddled directives and early-morning emails at NOAA, one of the world’s top weather and climate forecasters, have put the agency on edge.

Other:

White Nationalist Forces Consolidate Power Alongside Musk’s Junta
The Business Community Is Extraordinarily Stupid. Is a dictatorship good for business?
Home rule is under threat again. This time it’s different. With Republicans in charge, D.C.’s governance is in its most vulnerable position in half a century. (King is correct regarding the threat, but wrong in that no amount of good governance would placate Republicans)
Lawmakers flooded with calls about Elon Musk: ‘It is a deluge on DOGE’
Elon Musk Has Broken the Constitutional Order
The Dehumanization Is the Point
In chaotic Washington blitz, Elon Musk’s ultimate goal becomes clear. Shrink government, control data and — according to one official closely watching the billionaire’s DOGE — replace “the human workforce with machines.”
Dear Fellow College Presidents: We Need to Do More Than Wait This One Out
Parenting In the Age of Trump
White South African Lobby Group Rejects Trump’s Aid Cut
Who Will Stop Elon Musk’s Coup?
The F-Word
The Dubious Return of the Brutalists
The Real Reason Musk Is Mad at Us
The excuses for anticipatory obedience
Major Jewish Organizations Voice “Deep Alarm” Over Trump Administration’s Attacks on Democratic Norms and Values
18 Thoughts On The Omnicrisis
Trump threatened college research, culture and funding. Confusion reigns.
It’s Grim at the Department of Labor
As Trump wages war against the federal bureaucracy, some workers fight back
“Fear Itself” Is Palpable
Trump dismisses archivist to the United States (all the groveling didn’t save her…)
US Transit is Abysmal and Unacceptable
Starbucks Is Everything Wrong With American Capitalism
The Time of the Preacher
When the arsonist demands praise for his firefighting skills

Job Cuts Hit Medicare

Critical development overnight both in terms of immediate impact on tens of millions of Americans and the political dynamics of the moment. Overnight, big rounds of firings got underway at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — the folks who run the Medicare system — as well as the FDA. Those who evaluate medical devices and administer Obamacare were also hit. More here.

Trump Can’t Be Allowed to Control Almost Half Of New York State

I said last week that after the events of last Monday it was important for New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) to remove Mayor Eric Adams (D) from office. The voters of New York City are entitled to a mayor who is not being held hostage by a President most New Yorkers don’t support. The argument is straightforward; I make it here. But this is part of broader necessity. As long as the sitting President persists in governing in defiance of the federal Constitution, the power and autonomy of state governments become critical bases of legitimate political power. Blue states need to be expanding ways to work together to protect the liberties of their residents against unlawful uses of power, harassment and abuse. This is a difficult challenge since the supremacy of federal law is a cornerstone of the constitutional system. But state governments are not subordinate to the federal government in the way that regional and local governments are in unitary states. There are many areas where the federal government has no say in state action. And at the most basic level, state officials do not answer to federal officials. The tether binding one to another is at best through the courts. With Democrats for the moment excluded from power in Washington, Democratic power at the state level becomes a critical hold on power and executive authority. It’s in that context that removing Adams from power becomes even more critical. The federal government is now run by a lawless President enabling criminal conduct across the executive branch. He can’t be allowed to extend that power within New York state — or in any other state for that matter. New York City, after all, has a larger population than all but about a dozen states.

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Screenshot 2025-02-16 at 20.27.39

Reforming the NIH

It seems the Trump proposal to simply cut overhead to fifteen percent will not stand up in the courts, at least not without Congressional approval?  Nonetheless a few of you have asked me what I think of the idea.

My preferred reforms for the NIH include the following:

1. Cap pre-specified overhead at 25 percent, down from a range running up to 60 percent.

2. Encourage more coverage of overhead in the proposals themselves, where the researchers are accountable for how the overhead funds are spent.  Severely limit how much the “overhead” cross-subsidizes other university functions, as is currently the case.

3. Fund a greater number of proposals, with the money coming from overhead reductions, as outlined in #1 and #2.

4. Set up a new, fully independent biomedical research arm of the federal government, based on DARPA-like principles.  In fact this was seriously proposed a few years ago, with widespread (but insufficient) support.

I would note a few additional points, which have been covered in earlier MR posts over the years:

5. The NIH could not get its act together during Covid to make fast grants with sufficient rapidity during a time of crisis.  They performed much worse than did say the NSF.

6. A while back the NIH set up a program to make riskier grants.  The program did not in fact make riskier grants.

7. The NIH killed the idea of an independent DARPA-like biomedical research agency, fearing it would limit the size and influence of the NIH itself.

8. The submission forms, their length, and the associated processes are absurd.  Whether or not the costs there are high in an absolute sense, it is a sign the current NIH is far too obsessed with process, as happens to just about every mature bureaucracy.

At this point it is obvious that the NIH cannot reform itself.  It is also obvious that a slower, technocratic approach just gives the interest groups — in this case it is “the states” most of all — time to mobilize to protect the current NIH.  There are universities in many Congressional districts and a fair amount of money at stake.

I do not per se favor a move to fifteen percent overhead, as I do understand the associated costs on scientific research.  Nonetheless I take very seriously the possibility that a radical “thoughtless” cut now stands some chance of getting us to where we ought to be in the longer run, especially since subsequent administrations will get further cracks at this problem.  They can up overhead to 25 percent, and set up the new DARPA-H.  I just don’t see why that is impossible, and it may not even be unlikely.  So what exactly is your discount rate and risk aversion here?

I feel the defenses of the NIH I am reading do not take the entire broader analysis seriously enough.  They do not take sufficiently seriously that the writers themselves have failed to adequately reform the NIH.  And over time, without serious reform, the bureaucratic stultification will only get worse.

The post Reforming the NIH appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

       

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w/e 2025-02-16

The usual pattern this week after returning home: a day or two of being excited about being back followed by a few days of gloom.


§ The latter was deepened this week by my previous post – which I thought of as a simple bit of housekeeping for the handful of people who might be interested – appearing on Hacker News for some reason.

There are people I know who appear to relish being submitted there, and rising high up the page, and the ensuing discussion. But for me and others the only reaction is “oh no”. Maybe if I’ve just launched a thing and simply want more eyeballs on it, no matter whose, then OK I guess. But a random blog post aimed at both of you reading this? Ugh, save me from the hot takes of all the Hackernews. I love feeling awful.

Still, I hope whoever submitted it is super pleased with the magic bean points they got for doing so.


§ I also had a glum time this week watching a webinar about the UK’s Online Safety Act. I’m very grateful to those doing the work to make this mess of ill-considered legislation coherent, and organising sessions like this. But…

First, watching a man read out his slides over Zoom is the kind of thing I’ve done my best to avoid my entire working life, so having to do it for non-work is even worse.

And second, this whole thing depresses me. The legislation is supposed to cover everything published online in the UK – and, I think, accessible to anyone in the UK – no matter whether it’s by Meta, Google, et al. or a single person’s hobby site, or something in between.

Sure, yes, your blog is probably fine. But maybe if you have people posting comments that go off-topic and people reply to each other, then you should probably examine the hundreds of pages of PDFs to decide whether it affects you. Or if you run a forum for your little club, or your neighbourhood, or a few random people, with images and direct messages… ooh, seems dodgy. Or you self-host a tiny Mastodon instance… what’s Mastodon?

The nice man from Ofcom assuring everyone that they “probably” wouldn’t be chasing the little people is not reassuring. I love it when it’s hard to tell whether you fall afoul of a law and whether the authorities will or won’t do anything about it if you do. Love it!

It’s such a mess that making stuff online, sharing enthusiasms with people, can get tied up in such a legal mess that’s both boring and costly (in time and possibly money). Why do we bother? Perhaps we should leave the Internet for people to share AI-generated images on Facebook, while we get on with crafting pitchforks or making guillotines.

It’s a good job everyone else isn’t as tired.


§ Aaanyway. At the house, this week’s work was a couple of guys removing a doorway we don’t use and covering both sides of it with plasterboard. More dust to hoover and clean and wipe away, but good progress.

My home office continues to be a mess. Waiting for an electrician, and for me to decide how best to manage all the cables, wanting to make it all nice and neat eventually. This week’s purchase was an 8-gang surge protector.


§ We watched Miss Austen this week. I’m not a massive costume drama fan (unless it’s grim, what can I say) but this was OK. The best bits were Jessica Hynes’ consistently unpleasant sister-in-law and Thomas Coombes’ brief appearances as an oleaginous vicar.


§ Sorry that’s all a bit down. Some weather apps promise a few hours of slight sunshine over the next week so maybe that will help.


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What should I ask David Robertson?

Yes, David Robertson the conductor.  He studied with Boulez and Messiaen, and arguably is the second best Boulez conductor ever.  He also is famous for his recordings of John Adams.  I find him consistently excellent, for instance his Unsuk Chin, Milhaud, or Porgy and Bess.  Here is his Wikipedia page.  Here is his TEDx talk on conducting.  Here is his home page.  He is very smart.

So what should I ask him?

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Disabled Vet Discarded by VA … and He’s Here To Tell You About It

“The Very Agency Responsible for Caring for Veterans Is Now Discarding Its Own Disabled Veteran Employees”

This is the first installment of a new series – Sacrificed for ‘Savings’ … in which we are showcasing the true impact of the Trump-Musk purge of federal employees, by allowing those affected to tell their stories in their own words. We don’t question the need to evaluate agencies and cut where cutting makes sense. However, what’s clear is that very little thought is being given to the consequences of the cuts being made, which does not serve our country well, nor those that have served our country. Raphael Garcia has served with honor, only to be dismissed. Here he is … in his own words: 


My name is Raphael Garcia. I’m a 100% disabled Army Veteran who has been connected to the VA for many years. Today, that’s no longer true, and that’s not by choice.

Before I joined active duty in the U.S. Army in November of 2016, I spent much of 2016 volunteering at the Jefferson Barracks VA Medical Center in St. Louis, Missouri, logging around 1,155 volunteer hours in their Physical Therapy Department over a nine-month period. I assisted physical therapists by transporting patients to their appointments, picking up prosthetics, coordinating with occupational therapy, and learning about the daily treatment procedures and medical equipment. Those nine months of volunteer work reaffirmed my desire to support fellow Veterans in any way I could (as I am also the son of a Navy Veteran who served 23 years in both active duty and active reserve), which is why I later chose to work for the VA in a professional capacity upon separating from active duty in April of 2024 due to a plethora of my physical and mental injuries.

I’ve always believed in the mission of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs — to serve those who have served. But today, along with thousands of others, including over 200,000+ federal employees, facing termination … not because of performance, but due to sweeping workforce reductions.

Raphael Garcia’s termination notice from the VA.

The abrupt nature of my dismissal—especially given my disability status—was both shocking and disheartening. I’m still processing the impact this will have on my livelihood, and I’m worried about the ripple effects it may have on the VA’s ability to serve other disabled Veterans who depend on these essential services.

These cuts are not about efficiency. They are about dismantling the very government systems meant to support the public to include Veterans. This week, an entire wave of employees at my regional office, many in critical roles, were abruptly let go with less than a day’s notice.

I rarely speak about my own disability, but the irony is painful, as the very agency responsible for caring for Veterans is now discarding its own disabled Veteran employees. In my case, this is despite two outstanding performance evaluations, balancing multiple hats and staff shortages, working outside of my tour of duty without compensation, and an established record of going above and beyond to support the mission.

The termination of these employees will have severe consequences: Thousands of Veterans awaiting benefits will now experience longer wait times, as key positions managing claims processing remain vacant. The VA already struggles with claims delays, and these cuts will only worsen processing times. Many of us covered multiple roles due to chronic understaffing, and our departure leaves gaps in critical services that cannot simply be filled overnight. The VA’s promise to “care for those who have borne the battle” rings hollow when it cuts the very workforce responsible for ensuring Veterans receive their benefits.

Raphael Garcia
Raphael Garcia during active duty service with the US Army, seen here at Fort Leonard Wood, MO back in 2019. Photo: Raphael Garcia

And this doesn’t even include the thousands of federal employees who accepted the Deferred Resignation Program (many of whom aren’t even getting compensated and were let go regardless of the offer acceptance), leaving massive gaps with no staffing backfills. This isn’t about efficiency — it’s about dismantling the system. Some will argue that these cuts are about “streamlining” government. But let’s be clear — removing employees who are actively processing Veteran disability claims, overseeing compliance, managing system access, and handling policy implementation is not about efficiency. It is about weakening essential services to benefit the wealthy, leaving Veterans short of the services they deserve.

I have worked countless of unpaid hours, sacrificed my own medical appointments, and absorbed additional workloads just to keep the system running — not because it was required, but because I know what’s at stake for Veterans who rely on these benefits. Yet, instead of support, I was given a termination notice. These workforce reductions are not just numbers — they are real people who have dedicated themselves to ensuring we serve the public.

To say the least, this experience has been jarring and heartbreaking, both personally and for all the other Veterans who now face mounting delays in their claims. I genuinely believe that talking about these experiences—how they contradict the VA’s promise to care for those who served—can help protect others and reinforce the mission we all care about.


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The post Disabled Vet Discarded by VA … and He’s Here To Tell You About It appeared first on DCReport.org.

Will Europe return to Putin’s gas?

A deal with the devil would boost the continent’s miserable economy

Introducing Perplexity Deep Research

Introducing Perplexity Deep Research

Perplexity become the third company to release a product with "Deep Research" in the name.

And now Perplexity Deep Research, announced on February 14th.

The three products all do effectively the same thing: you give them a task, they go out and accumulate information from a large number of different websites and then use long context models and prompting to turn the result into a report. All three of them take several minutes to return a result.

In my AI/LLM predictions post on January 10th I expressed skepticism at the idea of "agents", with the exception of coding and research specialists. I said:

It makes intuitive sense to me that this kind of research assistant can be built on our current generation of LLMs. They’re competent at driving tools, they’re capable of coming up with a relatively obvious research plan (look for newspaper articles and research papers) and they can synthesize sensible answers given the right collection of context gathered through search.

Google are particularly well suited to solving this problem: they have the world’s largest search index and their Gemini model has a 2 million token context. I expect Deep Research to get a whole lot better, and I expect it to attract plenty of competition.

Just over a month later I'm feeling pretty good about that prediction!

Tags: gemini, ai-agents, ai, llms, google, generative-ai, perplexity, chatgpt

Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander arrives in lunar orbit

While in lunar orbit, Firefly’s Blue Ghost lander captured an image of the Moon’s south pole on the far left. Image: Firefly Aerospace

A robotic lander from Texas-based Firefly Aerospace is now in orbit around the Moon and going through its final preparations to land in the coming weeks.

On Thursday, the company announced that its Blue Ghost lander fired its main engine and thrusters for four minutes and 15 seconds in a maneuver called the Lunar Orbit Insertion, which put it in an elliptical orbit around the Moon.

Its arrival comes nearly a month after the spacecraft launched onboard a Falcon 9 rocket from pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. This is the third mission launched as part of the agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program, an initiative designed to bring science and technology demonstrations to the Moon at a cheaper cost.

Shortly before launch, Brigette Oakes, the vice president of Engineering at Firefly, described the moment as an incredible time for her and her coworkers.

“The energy in the team right now is just a whole other level. And so, just feeding off of that excitement, it’s super exciting to see,” Oakes said. “And I grew up with stories of Apollo and everything, so to see that come full circle, just personally, is awesome.”

Manifested on this lander are 10 NASA payloads, which cover a range of objectives. Those include the Lunar Instrumentation for Subsurface Thermal Exploration with Rapidity (LISTER) instrument, which will drill between 2- to 3-meters into the Moon’s surface to study the heat flow; and the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS) 1.1 instrument, which will use a series of cameras to capture the plume generated at landing to help create a three-dimensional model.

“We have a group at NASA that gets to gather to define what is the NASA cargo that we want to compete with industry to take to the Moon and we competed all these individual instruments, these 10 instruments that we ended up manifesting on this Firefly-owned mission,” said Joel Kearns, the deputy associate administrator for Exploration within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

“And we saw that for the type of advanced scientific or engineering measurements we wanted to make, the instruments were small enough and compact enough that we could actually fly 10, if someone could actually schedule them to get all of their operations done over the 14 Earth day lunar daytime.”

Firefly Aerospace ended up winning that bid and carries with it the most NASA instruments manifested on a single CLPS lander so far.

With its arrival in lunar orbit, it will spend the next 16 days performing some additional checkouts as well as maneuvers to circularize its orbit. Landing on the Moon at Mare Crisium near Mons Latreille is targeting 3:45 a.m. EDT (0745 UTC).

Realtor.com Reports Active Inventory Up 27.5% YoY

What this means: On a weekly basis, Realtor.com reports the year-over-year change in active inventory and new listings. On a monthly basis, they report total inventory. For January, Realtor.com reported inventory was up 24.6% YoY, but still down 24.8% compared to the 2017 to 2019 same month levels. 

 Now - on a weekly basis - inventory is up 27.5% YoY.

Realtor.com has monthly and weekly data on the existing home market. Here is their weekly report: Weekly Housing Trends View—Data for Week Ending Feb. 8, 2025
Active inventory increased, with for-sale homes 27.5% above year-ago levels

For the 66th consecutive week, the number of homes for sale has increased compared with the same time last year. This week also marked the fifth straight week where the growth rate has increased, fueled by the entrance of many new listings on the market.

New listings–a measure of sellers putting homes up for sale–increased 11.3%

Fresh inventory increased year over year for the fifth week in a row, as sellers trickled back into the market. We project home sales to increase in 2025 compared with 2024, which notched the lowest existing-home sales since 1996.
Realtor YoY Active ListingsHere is a graph of the year-over-year change in inventory according to realtor.com

Inventory was up year-over-year for the 66th consecutive week.  

New listings have jumped recently but remain below typical pre-pandemic levels.

Kidneys, compensation, and altruistic activists

 Here's a well written story about kidney donation, and  some of the very interesting people involved in the debate over compensating donors.  It's written by the talented science writer Carrie Arnold, in  Noema magazine (which she described to me as "a pub that has a philosophical bent published by the Berggruen Foundation," when I was among the many people she interviewed for the story). 

 It starts by introducing us to non-directed donors like Elaine Perlman and her son Abie Rohrig (he donated first and she followed). Elaine is now a leader in promoting organ donation and compensation of donors, not least through the End Kidney Deaths Act.   We also meet the indefatigable Frank McCormick, an economist at the forefront of understanding the finances of transplantation (and how much money it saves society and the healthcare system compared to dialysis).

 Here's the story:

How Much Is Your Kidney Worth? To address the deadly organ shortage, some are proposing compensating living kidney donors, creating an ethical dilemma.  By Carrie Arnold , in Noema, February 13, 2025

Ms. Arnold gives me the last word. The very last line of the story concerns the End Kidney Deaths Act:

This is a proposal that just says donors are really generous,” Roth said, “maybe we can be generous to them in return.

Which economic tasks are performed with AI?

I have now read through the very impressive paper on AI tasks to have come out of Anthropic, with Kunal Handa as the lead author, including Dario, Jack, and quite a few others as well.  Here is the paper and part of the abstract:

We leverage a recent privacy-preserving system [Tamkin et al., 2024] to analyze over four million Claude.ai conversations through the lens of tasks and occupations in the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*NET Database. Our analysis reveals that AI usage primarily concentrates in software development and writing tasks, which together account for nearly half of all total usage. However, usage of AI extends more broadly across the economy, with ∼ 36% of occupations using AI for at least a quarter of their associated tasks. We also analyze how AI is being used for tasks, finding 57% of usage suggests augmentation of human capabilities (e.g., learning or iterating on an output) while 43% suggests automation (e.g., fulfilling a request with minimal human involvement).

There is also a new paper on related topics by Jonathan Hartley, Filip Jolevski [former doctoral student of mine], Vitor Melo, and Brendan Moore:

We find, consistent with other surveys that Generative AI tools like large language models (LLMs) are most commonly used in the labor force by younger individuals, more highly educated individuals, higher income individuals, and those in particular industries such as customer service, marketing and information technology. Overall, we find that as of December 2024, 30.1% of survey respondents above 18 have used Generative AI at work since Generative AI tools became public.

Both recommended, the latter supported in part by Emergent Ventures as well.

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Emergent Ventures winners, 40th cohort

Akhil Kumar, 19, Toronto, global health issues and general career development.

Janet Shin, Berkeley, neurotech and brain imaging.

Diana Leung, San Francisco, AI and bio and machine learning.

Kyle MacLeod, Oxford University, economics videos on YouTube.

Aarav Sharma, Singapore, high school, to work on exoskeletons and AI.

Megan Gafford, NYC, writings on aesthetics, Substack.

Alice Gribbin, Berkeley, to write a book on Correggio and beauty.

Kaivalya Hariharan, MIT,  to work on man-machine collaboration and AI, with previous EV winner Uzay Girit.

Eve Ang, Singapore, high school, biosciences and building exoskeletons.

Alex Chalmers, London area, writing on tech, progress, and policy.

Elanu Karakus, Stanford, Turkey, a smart flower to help bees find flowers.

Ishan Sharma, Washington DC, policy work on geologic hydrogen.

Parker Whitfill, economics PhD student at MIT, evaluations of differing AI systems.

Sympatheticopposition.com, @sympatheticopp, San Francisco, writing and Substack.

Yes there are further EV winners and an additional cohort coming soon!  Apologies for any delays.

Again, here is the AI engine, built by Nabeel Qureshi, for searching through the longer list.  Here are previous cohorts of EV winners.

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‘The Hardest Working Font in Manhattan’

Extraordinary illustrated essay by Marcin Wichary, documenting a typeface — and its long, fascinating, splintered history — that exemplifies the difference between beautiful and pretty. The beauty in Gorton isn’t just in its plainness and hardworking mechanical roots — it’s in the history of the 20th century itself. Gorton became such a part of the world that the bygone world of the previous century imbues how this font makes me feel.

Do yourself a favor and read this one in a comfortable chair, with a tasty slow-sipping beverage, on a screen bigger than a phone. Everything about this piece is exemplary and astounding — the writing, the photography, the depths of research. But most of all, Wichary’s clear passion and appreciation. It’s a love letter.

 ★ 

Of Firebirds and lunar rovers

In the 1960s, a unit of General Motors was working on new vehicles -- for the Moon. Dwayne Day explores the efforts by GM to develop rovers that could have flown on Surveyor missions that led to work by the company on the Apollo lunar rover.

The lifecycle of space telescopes

NASA has four large optical or infrared space telescopes in various stages of development or operations, from the venerable Hubble to the future Habitable Worlds Observatory. Jeff Foust reports on the progress and challenges those observatories are facing.

Review: Sally

A new documentary about Sally Ride premiered last week at the Sundance Film Festival. Jeff Foust notes the film is both about Ride becoming the first American woman in space as well as her long, and private, relationship with Tam O'Shaughnessy not revealed until after her death.

Review: Lunar: A History of the Moon in Myths, Maps, and Matter

The Moon is much more than an object of scientific and exploration interest. Christopher Cokinos reviews a book that combines maps of the Moon with essays on many facets of the Moon.

What's happened to the sky? What's happened to the sky?


Review: A Crack in Everything

Black holes have been topics of many science and science fiction books over the years. Jeff Foust reviews a new book that offers another account of their development with a focus on the people who have advanced our understanding of them.

Redirecting NASA's focus: why the Gateway program should be cancelled

NASA states that the lunar Gateway is a key part of the overall Artemis effort to return humans to the Moon. Gerald Black disagrees, arguing that the Gateway is a diversion of resources if NASA is really serious about getting humans back on the lunar surface and going on to Mars.

The spaceport conundrum

There's both a growing number of spaceports and a growing number of launches, but those launches are not equally distributed. Jeff Foust reports that the busiest spaceports are struggling to keep up while the rest struggle to make ends meet.

What makes a lunar landing mission "successful"?

Two commercial lunar landers are on their way to the Moon with a third scheduled to launch later this month. Jatan Mehta explains why the companies operating those spacecraft should be more transparent about what constitutes success for their missions.

Tales of two rockets

On the same day last week two companies performed test flights of heavy-lift rockets they have been developing. Jeff Foust reports on the launches and the contrasts in vehicle design and development approaches.

Surveyor sample return: the mission that never was

NASA's Surveyor program landed several robotic spacecraft on the Moon in the 1960s. Dwayne Day examines one study to look at using Surveyor for a lunar sample return mission.

India demonstrates space docking

Last week, two Indian spacecraft docked with each other in low Earth orbit, a first for the country. Ajey Lele describes the milestone and its importance to India's future space plans.

The satellite eavesdropping stations of Russia's intelligence services (part 1)

Russia's intelligence services operate a network of ground stations to listen in on satellite communications. Bart Hendrickx discusses the history and current status of those facilities.

Review: Star Bound

Summarizing the history of American spaceflight in one book requires hard choices on what to emphasize. Jeff Foust reviews a book that tackles that effort at an introductory level, going from Goddard to the present day.

The (not quite) definitive guide to the legal construct of "space resources"

The ability to own space resources has been a long-running debate in space law. Michael Listner examines the legal concept of space resources at the national and international level.

Planning for space rescue

NASA has bristled at the suggestion that astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore are "stranded" on the ISS even as their stay there is extended from a few weeks to more than eight months. Jeff Foust reports that the situation nonetheless highlights the importance some see in developing technologies and approaches when a real space rescue is needed.

Moonraker revisited

Moonraker is not remembered as one of the great James Bond films, but its space theme is still warmly recalled by some fans. Dwayne Day describes how new products about the film have highlighted its strengths.

Clerk

My thanks to Clerk for sponsoring last week at DF. Integrate authentication and user management services with applications made for the Apple ecosystem with Clerk’s iOS SDK. Built with Swift, Clerk’s SDK adheres to modern standards, delivering the idiomatic and consistent developer experience you expect from Clerk.

Clerk’s iOS SDK makes use of the latest in Swift networking, allowing your code to be as readable and expressive as possible. Authenticate with your favorite social providers in just a few lines of code. Let the iOS SDK take care of managing your users’ authentication state so you can get back to building your app.

If you’re a developer looking for a modern, full-fledged user management and authentication SDK, check out Clerk.

 ★ 

Extreme Cold and Winter Weather Expected for Portions of the U.S. This Week

Phasing out the SLS and Orion programs and embracing Starship

The new Trump Administration is reportedly considering major changes to NASA's Artemis lunar exploration effort. Gerald Black argues one such change is to replace the Space Launch System and Orion with a version of Starship.

A tumultuous start to a new administration at NASA

Many people expected the Trump Administration to shake up NASA. Jeff Foust reports that while the space agency saw changes in the first week of the new administration, those had little to do with space policy.

The satellite eavesdropping stations of Russia's intelligence services (part 2)

In the second part of his examination of Russian eavesdropping stations, Bart Hendrickx reviews antennas at those sites and potential satellite targets of those stations.

Titan's spinners: the FARRAH satellites

Through the Cold War, the US launched a series of signals intelligence satellites, initially as hitchhikers on other launches. Dwayne Day links the later history of that program with an unusual object found at a California airport.