Links and Notes for April 11th, 2025

Below are links to articles, highlighted passages[1], and occasional annotations[2] for the week ending on the date in the title, enriching the raw data from Instapaper Likes and Twitter. They are intentionally succinct, else they’d be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.

Table of Contents

• Public Policy & Politics
• Journalism & Media
• Labor
• Economy & Finance
• Environment & Climate Change
• Art, Literature, & Cinema
• Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture
• Technology & Engineering
• LLMs & AI
• Programming
• Fun

Public Policy & Politics

The Russian oligarchy and the politics of social catastrophe by Evgeny Kostrov (WSWS)

“While Trump is interested in a deal that will allow the US to exploit the raw material resources of Ukraine and Russia at the expense of its imperialist rivals in Europe, he is increasingly dissatisfied with Putin’s dragging out the negotiations. Now, these tensions are exacerbated by a global trade war.

“A peace treaty, even if it is reached, no matter how much verbal guarantees and ostensible actions accompany it, will only be a temporary truce. Unless the working class intervenes independently, it will inevitably lead to a new war, even larger and more barbaric than the one that has been going on for the past three years. Moreover, the global trade war unleashed by Trump’s tariffs further deepens the political and economic instability of all capitalist governments and intensifies the global drive to war.”

“Current estimates of the Russian economy already recognize a future economic slowdown in growth rates, with analysts surveyed by the Bank of Russia suggesting a growth rate of 1.6 percent for 2025, which would be below the global average growth rate. Thus, economic growth through war is already coming to an end and the ruling regime faces new challenges.”

“The leading regions in the manufacturing industry are all directly linked to military industry: Moscow, Tambov, Kaluga, Ryazan and Tula oblasts; St. Petersburg, Udmurtia and Ulyanovsk oblasts; Kurgan and Sverdlovsk oblasts.”

“[…] general social inequality has grown. The top ten percent of income earners now control over 31 percent of the total cash income of the country’s population. By contrast, the bottom 10 percent own just 1.9 percent of all income and live on less than $170 a month.”

“They have been facing non-payment of wages for six months now, with a total debt of about 65 million rubles (about $773,800). It is not the first time that the workers have protested against the management and appealed to the local authorities. They have already held a hunger strike in October and a strike in December 2024. Despite the promised help from the state, however, the miners face complete neglect from the authorities and business. Moreover, taking advantage of their plight, military commissions have offered miners to go to war in Ukraine, promising them huge sums of money.”

“The obvious conclusion drawn by Russian capitalists from this was the complete disregard for the labor of workers, who kept working at the mines, allowing them to function, even when they would not receive wages. While the weakest mines went bankrupt one by one, their owners were able to save good sums of money and thus provide themselves with a safety cushion.”

“Unemployment in Russia now officially stands at only 2.4 percent. Under such conditions, it is difficult for capital to directly undercut wage growth.”

“Already, the Russian government is preparing amendments to the Labor Law which would double the amount of overtime allowed from 120 to 240 hours. At the same time, overtime pay would only be paid beginning from the 121st hour. The changes would allow employers to effectively add an entire 13th month of work to the average work year.”

“When Putin rose to the head of the Russian state in 2000, there was not a single dollar billionaire in Russia. In 2008, the number had reached 87. In 2021, it was already 117. This year, it grew to 146, according to Forbes . Over the past year alone, the oligarchs were able to increase their fortunes by $48.7 billion. They now own a combined capital of 63.3 trillion rubles (about $737.3 billion), more than the total bank deposits of the rest of the country.”

“With the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the birth rate has fallen to record depth, inevitably creating a new demographic hole that will exacerbate labor shortages in the future. That is why the Russian nationalists dream of a demographic population boom that will solve all problems like a magic pill.”

“For Russia, any deal with US imperialism would involve the opening up of significant portions of its raw materials to direct exploitation by the imperialist powers and an intensification of the oligarchy’s attacks on the working class.”

Germany in Crisis Part 1 —The Lost Man of Europe by Patrick Lawrence (Scheer Post)

“They have made their radical intent clear even before Merz formally assumes office. It is to dismantle the most advanced social democracy in Europe in favor of a swift, radical rearmament — shocking all by itself given Germany’s history — and a return to the Cold War’s ever-perilous hostilities. ”

“Friedrich Merz and his coalition partners — who will include a Social Democratic Party that has cravenly repudiated the very tradition it once championed — has abandoned more, much more than the Federal Republic’s past. Anyone who entertained hope that the Continent might serve as a guide to a more orderly world is in some way bereft now, left with one less reason to hope the wandering West will find its way beyond the cycle of decline into which it has fallen.”

“The resort to building a trillion-euro war machine is a beyond-words act of political desperation: The extent to which it succeeds as economic stimulus will be the extent to which it destroys German social democracy while — not to be missed — burdening the government with enormous debt. As to the folly of the U.S.–inspired proxy war in Ukraine, each commitment the new government makes to continued support of the corrupt, Nazified regime in Kiev — financial support, military support, political support, diplomatic support — will alienate a greater proportion of the German citizenry.”

“The coalition Merz is about to form with the Social Democrats betrays what appears to be a preposterous indifference to what German voters have just spoken. But in my read, it is better understood as a measure of fear among Germany’s governing elites. The SPD fell to third place in the German political constellation, with 30 fewer seats in the Bundestag than the AfD. But the latter, now Germany’s No. 2 party, will be blocked from the government by means of the antidemocratic “firewall” Germany’s neoliberal centrists show no sign of removing.”

“The government that collapsed last autumn, a nominally left-of-center coalition of neoliberal parties led by Social Democrats, will now be succeeded by a coalition of neoliberal parties led by the right-of-center Christian Democrats almost certain to include the Social Democrats.”

Other struggling people aren't the enemy

Whereas “Why is Narcan free to a dope addict but my insulin is $750 a month” is a better question than most, the correction in the graphic to “Why is my insulin $750 a month” is a far better and more class-conscious question.

US To Screen Immigrants’ Social Media for ‘Antisemitism’ as Part of Crackdown on Pro-Palestine Speech by Dave DeCamp (Antiwar.com)

““As of today, DHS is making it official policy to surveil social media for ‘antisemitic’ sentiment and deport noncitizens accordingly,” Jenin Younes, a civil liberties attorney, wrote on X. “Keep in mind that the Trump Admin has re-defined antisemitism to include criticism of Israel and Zionism, but anyway true antisemitic speech, just like racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic & Islamophobic speech is 1A protected.”

“Younes added that the US government “should have no role in policing social media for such speech & punishing the speakers.””

That’s pretty much what it says it’s going to do in DHS to Begin Screening Aliens’ Social Media Activity for Antisemitism (USCIS), which comes from the source.

“USCIS will consider social media content that indicates an alien endorsing, espousing, promoting, or supporting antisemitic terrorism, antisemitic terrorist organizations, or other antisemitic activity as a negative factor in any USCIS discretionary analysis when adjudicating immigration benefit requests.”

Episode 443: Crashing in Mindanao by TrueAnon (Patreon)

“We’re joined by Bernadette from Bayan USA to talk about counter insurgency in Mindanao and the Philippines — and why a U.S. Marine just died in a surveillance plane crash.

“NOTE: Rodrigo Duterte was arrested on an ICC warrant several hours after this episode was recorded”

A fantastic and informative episode about the politics of Philippines.

Iran Is Not Building a Nuclear Bomb: A Fact Sheet by Ted Snider (Antiwar.com)

“The just published 2025 Annual Threat Assessment, which “reflects the collective insights of the Intelligence Community,” clearly states that U.S. intelligence “continue[s] to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Ayatollah] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.”

“America’s partners don’t believe it either. In 2012, a year after Yuval Diskin retired as head of the Israeli domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, he said that the public is being mislead about Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb. That same year, Israel’s then Chief of Staff General Benny Gantz said that Iran has not yet decided to manufacture a nuclear bomb and that he doesn’t think they will. Despite continued concerns, one Israeli official told Axios’ Barak Ravid in June 2024 that their “intelligence agencies do not have any indication that Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei ordered the military nuclear program to be resumed.”

“The next time American officials or media tell you that Iran is actively involved in a nuclear weapons program, that they are pursuing a nuclear weapon and that they must be stopped even if it means war, consider that there is no evidence for the claim, that no one’s intelligence community claims there is, and that there is a strong historical and religious case against it.”

Saying It’s Antisemitic To Oppose Genocide Is Like Saying It’s Anti-Catholic To Oppose Pedophilia by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)

I don’t even have a citation from the article. The headline is perfect.

The US Just Massacred Civilians In Yemen Without Even Claiming They’re Military Targets by Caitlin Johnstone (Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix)

“Trump does not deserve “credit” for deciding to hold off on starting a war with Iran. That’s like saying I deserve a trophy for not firebombing a preschool today.”

They Screwed you Over—and You Thanked Them. by GrumpyChineseGuy (TikTok)

“They robbed you blind and you thank them for it. That’s a tragedy. That’s a scam. That’s why I’m saying this right now. Americans: you don’t need a tariff; you need a revolution. For decades, your government and oligarchs shipped your job to China—not for diplomacy, not for peace, but to exploit cheap labor. And, in the process, they hollowed out your middle class, crashed your working class, and told you to be proud, while they sold your future for profit.

“And yes, China made money, but we used it to build roads, lift millions out of property, fund health care, raise living standards. We reinvested in our people. My family also benefitted from it.

“What did your oligarchs do? They bought yachts, private jets, and mansions with golf courses. They manipulated the market, dodged taxes, and poured billions [trillions; ed.] into endless wars. And you? You get stagnant wages, crippling healthcare costs, cheap dopamine, debt, and flag- waving (probably made in China). Well, they picked your pocket for 40 years.

“Both China and the United States benefit from the trade, the manufacturing, but only one of us uses that wealth to build.

“This isn’t China’s fault. This is yours. You let this happen. You let oligarchs feed you lies, while they made you fat, poor, and addicted. Now they blame China for the mess they made.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think you need another tariff. You need to wake up. You need to take your country back.

“I think you need a revolution.”

Roaming Charges: Trump’s Penal Colony by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“Trump wants to use the egregious treatment of noncitizens to break the legal system that protects citizens from abuses of state power. Trump is eager to deport American citizens to El Salvadoran prisons. He told Buekele [sic] to build more of his concentration camps for a coming flood of American “criminals” (aka, dissidents), who will be condemned as “terrorists” and stripped of their rights: “The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns. You’ve got to build about five more places.””

“First, you get away with deporting non-criminal non-citizens. Then you try to deport non-criminal citizens whose ethnicity you dislike. Last week, Juan Carlos Gomez-Lopez, a 20-year-old Georgia man of Mayan heritage, was pulled over and arrested by Florida Highway Patrol for “being an undocumented immigrant over the age of 18 who had illegally entered the state of Florida.” […] Gomez-Lopez is a US citizen. When Gomez-Lopez appeared for his arraignment before the local court, his advocates presented the judge with his birth certificate and Social Security card as proof that he is a natural-born US citizen. Leon County Judge LaShawn Riggins said, “In looking at it and feeling it and holding it up to the light, the court can clearly see the watermark proving this is an authentic document.” Riggins said there was no probable cause for his detention, but that her hands were tied because ICE had asserted jurisdiction and wants him sent to a detention center for deportation.”

“We’re watching the Milgram Experiment break out in real-time, as hundreds of ICE agents commit sadistic acts against innocent people, they’d never imagined themselves ever doing back in Sunday School…(At least I hope they’d never imagined themselves doing it): A Guatemalan immigrant with no Massachusetts criminal record was arrested Monday on Tallman Street in New Bedford after federal agents shattered the glass on his vehicle with axes, as he and his wife waited inside the car for their lawyer to arrive. Like so many others, he was detained without a warrant.”

“The former cop who sent gay makeup artist, Andry Jose Hernandez, Romero to a hellhole of a prison in El Salvador is a known liar, who was put on a Brady List of cops whose testimony should not be trusted at trial. He also drove drunk into a family’s house and falsified his overtime hours.”

“Nouriel Roubini on Trump caving to the tech industry by exempting high electronics from his tariffs:”

“Expensive iPhones and other high end consumer electronics purchased mostly by the well-off/affluent are exempted; but the 80% of good Chinese cheap consumer goods purchased by his left-behind blue collar base at Dollar Stores, Walmart, Costco, and other low price retailers are slapped with a 145% tariff. Most of them are low-end low value-added labor intensive good quality cheap Chinese products that we never ever manufactured in the US in the first place or that we stopped producing decades ago as it is not our comparative advantage to produce low end cheap goods! So he says that he wants to reshore tech rather than cheap toys. But his exemptions will not reshore iPhones or tech goods and they will not reshore either cheap goods we can’t and won’t produce at home!”

It’s well-put but also blindingly obvious that Trump is Yeltsin, simply letting the oligarchs bleed the country dry. Michael Hudwon was right: they’re Killing the Host. Good riddance.

Journalism & Media

Every Day The Gaza Holocaust Continues, The Empire Tells The Truth About Itself by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“Our rulers murder children.

“Our rulers sponsor genocide and ethnic cleansing.

“Our rulers lie to us and manipulate us.

“Our rulers work to censor, silence, marginalize and deport anyone who criticizes their criminality.

“We do not live in a free society that is guided by truth and morality. We live under the most murderous and tyrannical power structure on the face of this planet. And we should distrust everything about it.”

Did you even notice 4chan’s gone? by Ryan Broderick & Adam Bumas (Garbage Day)

“[…] a website that, effectively, invented the concept of the internet meme and was one of the last truly anonymous spaces left on the web.”

Here’s a long post from 4Chan, which just shows that every public forum is multi-dimensional and has intelligent potential allies on it. Painting a site like 4Chan with a broad brush is stupid.

Hey guys, wanna buy some magic?

It very neatly describes the way liberals see the world and political struggle. It’s from 2017, about six months in to the first Trump regime.

“Lots of people complain about the anti-climactic ending, but really I don’t think it could [have gone] any other way. I’d like to imagine that there’s some alternate universe where Rowling actually believed in something and Harry was actually built up as the anti-Voldemort he was only hinted as being in the beginning of the books. Where he[…] opposes all the many injustices of the wizarding world and determines to change their frequently backwards, insular, contradictory society for the better, and forms his own faction antithetical to the Death Eaters and when he finally has his showdown with Voldy, Harry surpasses by adopting new methods, breaking the rules and embracing change and the progression of history. While Voldemort clings to an idyllic imaging of the past and the greatest extent of his dreams is to become the self-appointed god of a eternally stagnant Neverland, Harry has embraced the possibility of a shining future and so can overcome the self-imposed limits Voldemort could never cross, and Voldemort is ultimately defeated by this.

“But that would require a Harry that believed in something, and since Rowling is a liberal centrist Blairite that doesn’t really believe in anything, Harry can’t believe in anything. Harry lives in a world drought with conflict and injustice, a stratified class society, slavery of sentient magical creatures, the absurd charade the wizarding world puts up to enforce their own self-segregation, a corrupted and bureaucracy-choked government, rampant racism, so on and so forth. But Harry is little more than a passive observer for most of it, only the racism really bothers him (and then, really only racism against half-bloods). In fact, when Hermione stands up against the slavery of elves, she’s treated as some kind of ridiculous Soapbox Sadie. For opposing chattel slavery! In the end, the biggest force for change is Voldemort and Harry and friends only ever fight for the preservation and reproduction of the status quo. The very height of Harry’s dreams is to join the aurors, a sort of wizard FBI and the ultimate defenders of the wizarding status quo. Voldemort and the Death Eaters are the big instigators of change and Harry never quite gets to Voldy’s level. Harry doesn’t even beat Voldemort, Voldemort accidentally kills himself because he violated some obscure technicality that causes one of his spells to bounce back at him.

“And this is really the struggle of liberals, they live in a world fraught with conflict, but aren’t particularly bothered by any of it except those bit that threaten multicultural pluralism [or their own comfort and security]. They see change, and the force behind that change, as a wholly negative phenomenon. Even then, they can only act within the legal and ideological framework of their society. So, for instance, instead of organizing insurrectionary and disruptive activity against Trump and the far-right, all they can do is bang their drum about what a racist bigot he is and hope they can catch him violating some technicality that will allow them to have him impeached or at least destroy his political clout. It won’t work, it will never work, but that’s the limit of liberalism just as it was the limit of Harry Potter.”

“[…] fitting for a website that has distorted reality more than any other, the hack this week unleashed a tidal wave of misinformation. There are erroneous reports that several of 4chan’s mods were using .gov emails. Garbage Day has a copy of the leaked email addresses, there weren’t any with .gov, but there was a janitor using “michaelsteele” in their email address, which may be where that idea came from. There were also several mods using student email addresses from schools like Washington University and Harvey Mudd College. There are also reports that IP addresses were leaked that revealed that 4chan was run by Israel. This is, obviously, also not true. Also, 4chan going down has nothing to do with USAID being defunded.”

COME ON REALLY? You can’t think of any other web site in the world that spreads more misinformation and has a wider reach than 4chan? Are you really, as a purported media researcher, so blind to your own side’s propganda. That is PATHETIC. Like, complete capitulation. This is why I’ve almost stopped reading this guy. He’s so far up his own team’s ass that he doesn’t even understand the irony of it.

I will start: the propaganda I’ve seen in major Swiss newspapers this week about having Switzerland move closer to NATO and for Switzerland to send weapons to Ukraine and for Switzerland to hate China, and to hate Russia, and about Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia, and burying articles about Israel not allowing Palestinians to eat for going on 60 days now in a tiny, tiny, tiny box on the eighth page, near the bottom—all of those things are far more damaging and far-reaching propaganda than trying to rig the name of the next Mountain Dew flavor to be “Hitler did nothing wrong.”

It is utterly insipid to claim that 4chan had anything approaching the influence of F@&KING RUSSIAGATE on human history. The U.S. is literally right-now engaged in a war with Russia that they have only recently revealed hasn’t been a proxy war for over two years—a historical fact of which the Russian have been aware the whole time—and that is largely due to the animosity constantly engendered and reinforced by propaganda like Russiagate, which allows people to shrug and decide that they suppose they support a world war between nuclear powers because, of course, Russia and China are irredeemable evils that cannot be reasoned with and which are constantly seeking to undermine our way of life, if not simply take us over militarily in what we are led to imagine would look something like The Man in the High Castle.[3]

“[…] yes, we did lose something this week. And it is almost certainly a better world without it. But it’s also possible we look back one day and wish the internet still felt as messy and, more importantly, human as it did when 4chan ruled the world.”

4chan never ruled the world, FFS. It’s a tragedy that so many people are celebrating the destruction of an online community. It reflects more poorly on them than the light they attempt to shine on 4 chan’s sins.

Wolves In Biglaw Clothing? by Scott H. Greenfield (Simple Justice)

“They’re okay with this. They actually agree with some, if not most, of this. They never really cared about diversity and only pretended to do so because it was the fashion and the baby lawyers needed to believe they cared. They never really wanted to do pro bono for the unwashed, but let the kiddies have their way so they wouldn’t feel bad about spending the rest of their time serving their corporate masters?

“It’s hard to imagine that the managing partners and the management committees decided to ignore the will of the rest of the partnership and the mass of associates by kissing Trump’s ring when there was no “existential threat” to their existence. If it was the collective desire of these firms to stand firm against Trump rather than hand him $100 million or more, why do the opposite? Because maybe it wasn’t capitulation at all, but a chance for the partnership to return Biglaw to its roots.”

A pretty good comment,

“It’s really no secret what these firms are and have been about. As far as their “diversity” practices for the last thirty years, they recognize that diversity hires can be equal to the ivy league plebes at the “associate” level. However, when it’s time to consider whether to roll out the “partner” chair, the diversity hire who hasn’t built a $3,000,000 annual book of business (i.e., most of them) will get the walking papers.

“So there’s a “diversity” revolving door. Most people know it. At least the kids get 7-10 years experience and enough money to pay off their loans, plus a decent lifestyle and a plug for their resume. Basically, the same things 90% of all Biglaw associates end up with. The demographics of the firms never really change, but there’s always a black, hispanic or gay associate for the road show when courting “progressive” clients.”

The Patriotism Trap
by Hamilton Nolan (How Things Work)

“McCarthy called people and institutions communists. Murrow replied that, in fact, they were not communist, they were upstanding patriotic Americans, and that McCarthy’s methods of accusation were out of line. What Murrow did not say is: “It doesn’t matter if people are communist or not.” He did not say: “The conflation of communism with anti-Americanism is a cheap rhetorical trick.” He did not say: “I reject the implication that communism is a threat to American values.” He did not say: “Perhaps the communists are making some valid points.” Murrow’s bravery was real, but its boundaries stopped at the edge of the stars and stripes. He wanted to contest McCarthy on the field of patriotism. He could not bring himself to peer into the hollow heart of patriotism itself. Thus, Murrow’s victory allowed Americans to sleep soundly in the knowledge that decency had prevailed, without ever peeking under their beds at the enormous pile of skulls.”

“Free yourself from patriotism’s burden. Breathe the clear air of universal human rights. It is the inability of the alleged liberals to walk away from the fixed game of American exceptionalism that leaves them always battered and bruised by those who don’t give a fuck about universal human rights at all. Once you stand on the field of patriotism, stealing all the world’s wealth and buying more guns than anyone else and using them to keep the whole world working for us makes more sense than anything else. Each year, the Global North uses its might to expropriate over 800 billion hours of labor from the Global South. Is that bad, for humanity and equality? Yes. But what are you gonna do—advocate for a lower standard of living for Americans to make up for it? Ha! Try rolling that one out at the presidential debate. It is out of bounds. It violates the law of American prosperity above all. Discussion of it must remain relegated to theory rather than practice. The wheedling liberals who try to have it both ways, who try to square the circle of American prosperity with the nice desire to be nice to all the nice people of the world, will always end up sputtering uselessly as strongmen vow to do whatever it takes to keep us rich.

“[…]

“I guess that’s kind of what the communists were talking about the whole time.”

Trump Supporters Don’t Understand Free Speech by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“The first and foremost reason free speech is important is because it puts a check on the abuses of the powerful. The First Amendment of the US Constitution isn’t there to ensure US citizens get to feel nice feelings, it’s there to restrict the government’s right to obstruct the free flow of information, thereby enabling the citizenry to effectively organize any necessary opposition to the status quo. At least in theory.

“This is why the first thing any tyrant does after consolidating power is always to restrict the flow of information. It’s not to make the public feel bad feelings, it’s to prevent anyone from sharing information about their abuses to foment discontent and organize mass resistance.”

“If information was [sic] truly democratized and freely flowing, nobody would tolerate being impoverished, sickened and oppressed for the benefit of a few oligarchs and empire managers.

“The US government isn’t deporting critics of Israel because it wants them to feel bad feelings, it’s deporting them because it doesn’t want Americans to hear legitimate criticisms of US foreign policy. They aren’t merely violating the rights of the speaker by restricting the flow of this information, they’re violating the rights of anyone else who would hear it. They are doing this to help ensure public consent for a genocidal status quo that a populace with an informed mind and an informed conscience would never consent to.”

Labor

UNREDACTED: Trump’s New Attack On Our Election System — 21 Million Purged? [Ep 8] (YouTube)

“[…] if you work at Starbucks, reach out to other union reps in the service-and-genocide-funding industry. Or, if you work at Amazon, reach out to other union folks who have also been kidnapped and locked in a warehouse until they successfully earn their freedom by mailing a 100,000 shoes and dildos to bored Americans.”

“[Headlines from the future] in June, you’ll read China not sure how to react to the US government taking itself apart.”

Economy & Finance

Do Your Own Research: The Economy by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“Now, the best way to cheat if you don’t even want to look at the financials, say you don’t know anything about accounting, is every company has a risk factor section. The rule of thumb with risk factors is you always put the most materially important risk at the top. So if you have a “key man” risk where one guy knows the secret sauce and if he dies, you’re completely fucked, that’ll be up top. Or if it’s that you’re losing money as a cash burning biotech company that’s trying to push one drug through phase three, the first thing that they’re going to say is, our ability to operate is contingent upon our ability to raise capital. And that business could fail or be adversely affected if the phase three drug doesn’t go through or it doesn’t meet its primary endpoints. So the risk factors are often kind of overlooked as boilerplate, but they’re there for a reason. I’ve been in the room with securities lawyers and executives as they write them, they’re worded purposefully and they’re written with great care because in essence, that is a way for the company to disclaim itself from future risk that an investor may say, “I didn’t see this coming.” So they do want to be forthcoming.”

“[…] the CPI uses things like owner’s equivalent rent and hedonic adjustments where they game the numbers to be significantly lower than they are, which is why you kind of notice things going up 10% a year price-wise, while they’re telling you they’re only going up 3% a year.”

“[…] things like social security are all earmarked to the rate of inflation. So people would be shitting a brick if they knew inflation was 10% and the government’s cost of living increase for social services was trying to meet this 3% CPI number. And it’s the same with unemployment. There are huge differences in the way unemployment numbers used to be reported, versus now.”

“When they started quantitative easing , the idea was they were going to buy some bonds and then they were going to sell ‘em back into the market. And that never happened. They just started buying bonds and now the Fed balance sheet is whatever, seven or 8 trillion, and at some point something’s going to give because they have 7 trillion worth of − I don’t know if they’re subprime assets − but they’re assets that if they went to go find a market to buy them now wouldn’t be there.”

“The Buffet indicator is market cap to GDP, which is what Warren Buffet has said in the past. It’s his favorite indicator, which is hilarious because three or four weeks ago, there was a big mystery, like, oh, why is Warren Buffet in all this cash? Why does Berkshire Hathaway have all this cash? It’s like the fucking indicator is called the Buffett indicator, and it’s two sigma deviations above the trend line. So his favorite indicator is screaming that the market is overvalued,, and then you have your price-to-earnings model. You don’t even have to look at the rest. Those are two great ways to value the market. Market cap to GDP is perfect for the overall market. Price-to-earnings can be used for companies as well, and what I think is really important is that people see a stock go from 200 to a hundred. So they think it’s cheap because it’s 50% less than it was. Price means almost nothing. I mean, it’s a function of a company’s valuation, but when you’re trying to determine whether or not a company is cheap or it’s expensive, what you should be looking at is the multiple.”

“That number, what you’re doing is you’re buying 10 years of forward earnings under the assumption that the company is going to either be enough or last long enough that it’s going to pay you more than 10 years worth of earnings because you’re paying upfront 10 years worth of earnings. The market’s a forward looking indicator. So when you’re buying the S&P today, you’re buying 35 years of what the S&P is set to earn this year or next year.”

Or you’re just speculating. Yeah, pretty much everyone is just speculating. No-one is investing in any of these high P/E companies because they believe in the value proposition. They probably don’t even know what it is.

“Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, they’re between 30 and 45 times earnings because they’re expected to grow significantly. They’re branching out into other businesses.”

There’s nowhere left to go. Where do you guy when you already own the whole market and your capitalization is already over $4T?

“[…] either the people that think it’s a car company are wrong because they have this aggressive new technology that’s going to earn them so much more money in the future. Or the people that are paying a hundred times earnings now are wrong because at its core, it’s really a car company and it’s aggressively overvalued. And so the question is, especially with all the volatility from Tesla, whether their legacy auto business, which generates their revenue and cash flow, will begin to decline. If that happens, that 100 becomes 150 times earnings very quickly.”

“I’ve seen people this week say, oh, it came from 400 to 200, so it’s cheap. Well, if you believe it should be valued like a traditional automaker, it isn’t cheap. It’s 10 times more expensive than it should be. But if you believe it’s going to be the first company of its kind to have taxis all over the nation and it’s barely tapping into a hundred trillion dollars industry, well then it’s incredibly undervalued.”

“[…] there’s billions floating around out there in this asset that for all intents and purposes, everybody knows is a joke. It’s worth nothing. It serves no purpose. It’s not a product, it’s not a service. That’s how aggressive people are being. So in a recessionary environment or an environment where the market starts to cascade lower, all of that, what they call malinvestment dog shit, all of that has to come in. All of that money has to evaporate. All of that speculation has to evaporate.”

“[…] look at something like the Schiller PE of the overall market. There’s only been one time in history where it’s as high as it is now. And that was right before the 2000 bubble. So that’s the level of aggressive valuation we’re at right now. We’re at about year 2000 bubble aggressiveness.”

Tariffs and monopolies by Cory Doctorow (Pluralistic)

“The main assumption built into the orthodox case against tariffs is that sellers can’t afford to eat the costs of tariffs. In the thought-experiment land of neoliberalism, market competition erodes sellers’ profits so that everything being sold is only slightly marked up above the cost of making it, getting it to the store and selling it to you. Companies are said to be making a “competitive” rate of profit, which is tautologically defined as “whatever profit they’re making.” If Nike pays $20 to make a pair of shoes in Vietnam that it sells in America for $140, that $120 profit is “competitive” – if it wasn’t, it would be lower, and it isn’t, so it is.”

Bingo. Whatever exorbitant profit they’re currently making is considered the floor. When they squeal loud enough—and squeal in bribes—they easily convince legislators to prevent anything from touching those profits. No competition, no taxes, no regulations. Paradise for predators.

“[…] the smarter elements in the Trump orbit have a slightly more reality-based theory: they claim that importers, faced with tariff costs, will push back on sellers and insist that they discount their products to offset the tariff bill. That’s how the costs end up being paid by foreign sellers – and if their governments step in to help pay the bill, that’s how foreign governments will pay the bill.

“This explanation has the benefit of actually being an explanation, in that it is a series of cause-and-effect relationships that end up with the costs being borne by someone other than stateside buyers. However, this explanation is also founded on (at least) two demonstrably untrue assumptions: first, that buyers have the power to force sellers to lower their prices; and second, that this power comes from the availability of substitute goods that are made (or could be made) in the USA.”

“Nike controls 86% of the US athletic shoe market. Nearly all the remaining market share is owned by its main rivals, Adidas and Reebok – companies that merged in 2005. It’s clear that Adidas/Reebok would like to get some of Nike’s market share, but in 20+ years of duopoly rule over the sector, neither Nike nor Adidas/Reebok have tried a serious discounting strategy to win that market. Instead, the duopoly has found it easy to tacitly collude to rig margins of more than 600%. What’s more, the collusion may have been explicit, not tacit – when a sector is dominated by two giant firms, the upper ranks of both companies are dominated by people who’ve worked at both companies. These people aren’t rivals, they’re peers. They’re executors of one another’s estates, godparents to one another’s children, members of the same charitable boards and pickup sports leagues. They’re lifelong pals. If you think they never explicitly conspire to rig markets – over drinks at someone’s wedding or funeral, say – then I envy you your touching faith in humanity.”

“[…] these companies end up with pricing power, because they can maintain solidarity while they raise prices. If everyone hikes prices together, consumers can’t exert market discipline by buying from someone less greedy. And the same solidarity that confers pricing power to a cartel also insulates it from regulatory discipline, because all the companies will tell the same lie to regulators about why prices went up.”

“In the self-referential world of economism, whatever happens was meant to happen, because markets are efficient, so whatever happens in the market is efficient, and can only be made worse by state intervention. This theory of efficient markets is full of beautiful, self-equilibriating processes that can be precisely modeled using equations, but only because the field discards all the nonquantifiable elements of society, assuming that because you can’t do math on these qualitative factors, they must not matter.”

“This is economics without a theory of power: if I offer to buy your son’s kidney, and you accept my offer, then we have achieved a voluntary exchange of value that is – tautologically – assumed to be fair. Indeed, this transaction isn’t merely a way for kidneys to change hands – it’s a way to “discover” the “market price” of a kidney. We’re not just buyers and sellers, we’re brave explorers of the vast, uncharted space of market prices.”

“A corporate board is like a trade union for wealth, a small committee that wields solidaristic power to threaten companies with dire consequences if their interests aren’t given priority over the interests of workers and buyers.

“No wonder that corporations are so ardently opposed to other forms of solidaristic power, like trade unions – who might shift value from investors to workers – and regulators – who might shift value from investors to buyers.”

“Nike could eat the tariff costs on its goods, but it won’t because it doesn’t have to, because it’s part of a duopoly that both tacitly and explicitly colludes to screw its customers and workers.”

“If you’ve got the right kind of especially smooth market-pilled brain, you insist that this is impossible. These giant margins are so tempting that they will inevitably coax “new market entrants” into opening competing businesses. That does happen – sometimes. But not when the dominant companies can figure out how to build Warren Buffett’s cherished “moats and walls” around their businesses. For example, if you’re Amazon and 90% of middle class US households prepay for their shipping through Prime, you can charge sellers whatever the traffic will bear, because they have to go through your chokepoint in order to reach their best customers. That’s how Amazon ended up taking 45-51% out of every dollar platform sellers earn.”

“For Nike – and other dominant companies – the Trump tariffs are just another moat, another obstacle which they can hurdle, but which stops smaller competitors dead in their tracks.”

Burn it all Down by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“Translation: a serial trade and human rights violator that with the help of decades of corrupt politicians from both parties polluted, price-dumped, and stole its way to a generation of American jobs and revenue, now owns so much of our debt that we must put up with its shit indefinitely. That’s the point of view of our own federal news agency. We have officially cucked ourselves past the point of no return.”

Wait. What? I was trying to figure out who Taibbi was writing about and realized that he’s pinning the blame for the international economic situation on China. Whoa. That is a wild misinterpretation that will never lead to an actual improvement in the situation for anyone. You can’t ignore the Empire and expect to solve the problems caused by the Empire. Is Taibbi seriously accusing China of having stolen “American jobs and revenue”? Did he lose half his brain somewhere?

Now I see what the headline means: it means that, if the U.S. can’t be the bully at the top of the heap, then it should take whatever few, tattered toys it has left and go home. The rest of world would almost certainly say “Good riddance. You’re welcome back on the playground when you learn how to play nice with others.”

“It seemed obvious that NAFTA, the WTO, and the extension of cushy trade arrangements with China and other unfree labor zones were a gigantic end-run around American labor, safety, and environmental laws. It was an asset-stripping scheme, designed to help CEOs boost their share prices by cutting costs of American parts, labor, and regulatory compliance from their bottom lines. There seemed nothing complicated about this, except the marketing challenge. How could corporate management convince Americans, who fought for so long to scrape their way into the middle class, that it was in their interest to compete against countries that didn’t have to follow any of the same rules we did?”

Here, Taibbi is very good in the first half of the paragraph but then seems to at least partially blame the countries for not having to “follow any of the same rules we did.” These “countries” violently extracted value from their workers with the same ruthlessness that the U.S. left its own working class behind. I’m wondering how Taibbi could—kind of suddenly—be unable to see that this is a class war—that’s pretty much over—rather than a war between nations. Stop being so nationalist and stop watching so much right-wing media, Matt. It’s rotting your brain.

And the very next article I read is Expect Them To Lie About China Just Like They Lied About Gaza by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“As Washington’s cold war with China escalates, we can expect to see a massively reinvigorated anti-China propaganda campaign in the west. As this unfolds, please know that everything you learned about the mass media’s dishonesty regarding Gaza is equally true of empire-targeted nations like China.”

What is kind of wild is that articles like Niedriger Wasserstand am Rhein: Höhere Benzinpreise drohen by Fabian Pöschl, Tom Vaillant (20min) will tell me that gas prices are about to go up by one cent (“14 Franken pro Tonne beeinflussten den Preis um etwa einen Rappen pro Liter.”). On the other hand, I only read about stuff like Washington threatens war with Iran ahead of talks in Oman by Alex Lantier (WSWS), which would massively affect oil and gas prices. And what’s one cent per liter anyway? The 20min newspaper spent a lot of time on that article, but it’s only one cent per liter. The price will soon swing up by about 30-40 cents per liter because summer is coming and literally no-one ever bothers to try to justify that increase with some sort of environmental reason. It’s just because they can.

Our Huge Trade Deficit with China Does NOT Give Us the Upper Hand in Tax (Tariff) War by Dean Baker (CounterPunch)

“It’s also worth mentioning one other potential weapon China has at its disposal. Companies in the United States make an enormous amount of money off their intellectual property (IP): the patent and copyright monopolies they have on prescription drugs and other products and the copyrights they hold on movies, music, and software.

“We have often claimed that China does not adequately enforce our IP domestically. While there surely is some difference in their level of enforcement and ours, for the most part our companies do get money from China for their IP claims.

“However, China could go full throttle in the opposite direction. It could make a point of ignoring US patents and copyrights. And it could do this not just for its domestic market but also for export, making cheap versions of Pfizer’s blockbuster drugs available to the whole world, along with free copies of Microsoft software and Disney movies.”

Wall Street tumbles again as “euphoria” gives way to fear by Nick Beams (WSWS)

“The events of the past week have made ever clearer that the focus of the economic war is directed against China and the thrust of any “negotiations” with other countries will be to demand they align themselves with US “national security” objectives or face major tariff hikes once the 90-day pause expires.”

“[…] with the US having compromised its safe haven status, two of the most reliable buyers of US government debt, Japan and China, may start to sell Treasuries or “tap the brake on further purchases.” In fact, China has already been running down its holdings of US debt for some time.”

“The growing lack of confidence in the dollar is expressed in the rise of the gold price. After a brief downturn in the market sell off, its surge has resumed and is almost daily reaching record highs having risen 7.5 percent in the past 48 hours.”

Episode 444: WAGMI Baby One More Time by TrueAnon (Patreon)

“Crypto kingpin Jacob Silverman joins us once again to talk through the brand new US Bitcoin Strategic Reserve and how stablecoins like Tether might play a key role in ensuring dollar dominance through uncertain times.”

A great overview of the degree to which crypto has infiltrated the current administration. They all express their utter mystification about what the purpose of it is, other than as a scam to funnel money upward, as a way of getting the U.S. government to promise to bail out their investments. Brace asks several times why a normal person would be on board with this. “Stop. This is nuts.”

“The reality is you need to shut down this casino, shut down the other casino, and shoot everyone involved—from the CEO to the croupier. It’s ridiculous. I’m not even kidding. These people cannot be reformed. They cannot be reformed.”

“It seems like everybody’s been sold out to parasites by parasites.”

Five Facts About Trade You Don’t Read in the Newspaper by Dean Baker (CounterPunch)

“Manufacturing jobs are not necessarily good jobs. Unions made them good jobs, not the factories.”

“In 1980, manufacturing jobs offered better pay and benefits, especially for non-college educated workers, than other jobs. This is no longer true. Most or all of the manufacturing wage premium has been eliminated.

“The obvious explanation for this fact is the decline of unionization in manufacturing. In 1980, almost one-third of manufacturing workers belonged to a union compared to just 15 percent in the rest of the private sector. Last year, these numbers were 8.0 percent for manufacturing compared to 6.0 percent for the rest of the private sector. That 2.0 percentage point gap does not make much difference in terms of pay and benefits for workers in manufacturing.

“This means that there is little reason to prefer manufacturing jobs to jobs in health care, transportation or other sectors. If we want workers to have good-paying jobs, we should want to see more union jobs, whether in manufacturing or any other sector.”

Trump says tech tariff exemption only temporary by Nick Beams (WSWS)

“In the growing financial turbulence, the very value of money was at stake and that a breakdown in the bond market, combined with international conflict, would bring about disruption to the international monetary system even more severe than president Nixon’s removal of the gold backing from the US dollar in 1971 and the global crisis of 2008.

“Fears over the very value of money are reflected in the rising price of gold which is hitting new record highs on almost a daily basis.

“The gold price escalation is extremely significant. After the gold backing was removed, the dollar continued to function as world money.

“But it has operated as a fiat currency, not backed by gold as real value, but has rested on the economic, political and financial power of the US state.

“Today that imperialist state, plunging ever deeper into debt and with a financial system riddled with speculation, parasitism and outright criminal corruption, as graphically revealed in the 2011 Senate report on the 2008 meltdown, is at the very centre of the crisis.”

“[…] there can be no long-term arrangement because that would involve US imperialism making major concessions to Beijing. All factions of the US ruling class, whatever their tactical differences with Trump, are united in their determination to ensure there is no so-called multipolar world. US hegemony must be maintained at all costs and that means the subordination of China.

“What will exactly come out of the wreckage of the entire post-war order remains to be seen. But signs of a division of the globe into three blocs—one centred on the US, one on Europe and one based on China and the so-called BRICS group of countries—are starting to emerge.

“It is too early [to] say with any certainty who will line up where. But the fracturing, already underway before Trump arrived on the scene, is becoming ever more palpable and, as in the 1930s when the world was divided in such a way, it points in the direction of war.”

The Harvard-Government Divorce is the Feel-Good Story of the Ages by Matt Taibbi (Racket News)

“Harvard’s bold decision to risk an un-subsidized future with a mere $53 billion in reserve is a feel-good story everyone can cheer. The federal government and corrupt higher education have finally decided to divorce, and it’s a beautiful thing”

“Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation put out a helpful background document in 2012 explaining that a 501©(3) might be “a primary or secondary school, a college, or a professional or trade school,” or “a museum, zoo, planetarium, symphony orchestra, or other similar organization” that is “beneficial to the community.”

“I’m all for it, but the tax code wasn’t designed to exempt a zoo that charges $82,866 a ticket, earns $4.5 billion a year in investment income, holds $64 billion in net assets, and has admissions offices that annually emit ker-ching! noises audible on Irish beaches. Harvard has become a grossly commercial operation, one that would sell alumni farts in VE RI TAS jars if its leaders thought they had a market.

“The school is a de facto business that earns billions with near-zero market exposure, thanks to bottomless subsidies and technical non-profit status. It can offer customers endless government-backed financing for tuition while keeping as a side business a monstrous tax-exempt hedge fund, donations to which are also deductible.

“That’s good news for the private equity sector, beneficiary of 39% of Harvard’s endowment allocations. Think of the absurdity: we’ve arranged things so that wealthy shitheads (the Times mentioned GameStop villain and Citadel chief Ken Griffin) can choose to add to Harvard’s $20.9 billion investment in the leveraged buyout industry instead of paying taxes. Ask a former employee of PetSmart or KB Toys how they feel about one of the country’s biggest sources of takeover ammo growing tax-free under the guise of a “charitable organization.””

“All this is secondary to the possibility that a system of broad-scale subsidies to hedge funds masquerading as schools might be coming to an end, which brings us to the chief conundrum of the Trump administration.

“For decades the United States has been transforming into a public-private blob of intertwined, bureaucratic unaccountability. The phenomenon is observable in every direction, from a finance sector insulated by an implied bailout to subsidized mass dysfunction in trade, health care, national security, and other sectors. The problem has been described by corporate lobbyists fed up with “big government” and by left-leaning writers like Chris Hedges, whose Death of the Liberal Class chronicled the dangers of liberalizing NGOs losing independence as they’re swallowed into a larger whole. Even Democratic speechwriters have conceded of late that it’s become difficult to defend the Gordian Knot that American society has become.

“Harvard is the ultimate example of an institution that’s become more bureaucracy than university, where subsidies have reduced once-mighty brains to a mush of arrogant entitlement.”

Dollar’s role as global reserve currency under fire by Nick Beams (WSWS)

“The implications of the new situation were underscored in a comment piece by a leading FT columnist, Rana Foroohar, entitled “America the Unstable.”

“She began by saying that her “takeaway” from the tariff chaos and fallout was that America, under Trump, has become an “emerging market.”

“In previous periods of political and economic stress, US equities and the currency rose because of the “haven status” of the dollar.

““It didn’t seem to matter that all the things that had bolstered American companies from low rates to financial engineering to globalization itself were tapped out. US asset markets seemed impervious to the notion of the dollar-doomsday scenario that would send both the currency and asset prices tumbling. Trump has finally ended America’s exorbitant privilege.”

“She concluded by saying that previously she would have ruled out the possibility that America could become the epicenter of an emerging market-style debt crisis, but “not anymore.”

“Trump’s measures—the tariff hikes that will slow the economy and proposed tax cuts for corporations—will add trillions of dollars to what is increasingly being characterized as an “unsustainable” debt mountain, currently at $36 trillion and rising.

“In a report issued earlier this month, George Saravelos, global head of foreign exchange research at Deutsche Bank, summed up the growing outlook in leading global financial circles.

““Despite President Trump’s reversal on tariffs, the damage to the USD has been done,” he wrote in a report. “The market is reassessing the structural attractiveness of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and is undergoing a process of de-dollarization.

“However, the crisis is not merely a product of Trump’s actions. It has been long in the making—the outcome of a protracted decline in the economic position of the US.”

“Increasingly, above all in the US economy, this gave rise to what has been called financialization, the accumulation of profit via speculative and parasitic methods.

“The more these methods developed, the more regulations on finance capital introduced in response to the crisis of the 1930s were scrapped, culminating in the repeal of the last remaining piece of Depression-era legislation, the Glass-Steagall Act, by the Clinton administration in 1999.”

“Back in 2023, CNN and News commentator Fareed Zakaria set out this relationship.

““America’s politicians have gotten used to spending seemingly without any concerns about deficits—public debt has risen almost fivefold from roughly $6.5 trillion 20 years ago to $31.5 trillion today. The Fed has solved a series of financial crashes by massively expanding its balance sheet twelvefold, from around $730 billion 20 years ago to about $8.7 trillion today. All of this only works because of the dollar’s unique status. If that wanes, America will face a reckoning like none before.””

“[…] rests on the assumption that since global trade and finance requires an international currency, the dollar must therefore continue to play that role because there is nothing to replace it.

“However, the logic of the present situation is neither that the dollar’s role can continue nor that another national currency will replace it. Rather, it is that the world economy will increasingly fracture into rival trading, financial and currency blocs—a conflict of each against all—as it did between the wars with all the disastrous consequences that produced.

“For all its irrationality and outright madness there is a logic to Trump’s policies. Every statement and executive order he imposes is justified on the basis of national security—that the present economic order has undermined the military capacity of the United States to fight wars, and this must be rectified at all costs.

“The crisis of the dollar therefore signifies that the conditions for a new world war are rapidly developing in which for the US, China—the existential threat to its hegemony—is the chief target.

“With tariffs set at 145 percent, and still more hikes to come, and restrictions imposed on the export of high-tech goods to China, the US has imposed a virtual economic blockade against it. How long before that leads to outright military conflict? History suggests sooner rather than later.”

Environment & Climate Change

Roaming Charges: Who Shot the Tariffs? by Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch)

“Hank Green: “A tricky thing about modern society is that no one has any idea when they don’t die. Like, the number of lives saved by controlling air pollution in America is probably over 200k/year, but the number of people who think their life was saved by controlling air pollution is zero.””

Art, Literature, & Cinema

Art And Artifact by Richard Farr (3QuarksDaily)

“I’ve long assumed I’ll be on the shortlist if there’s ever a Nobel Prize for Loathing Brutalist Architecture, but I’m here to withdraw my nomination: Pedro Ramírez Vázquez’s design is clever, appropriate, imaginative, and (strange word amid all that concrete, but I’ll use it) lovely. And once you’ve absorbed the improbable grandeur of the monopole-canopied courtyard, everything inside seems monumental too, not just the twenty-ton carvings.”

“It’s a brilliant assemblage beautifully displayed. Among many other thoughtful features, the main rooms open out into a series of gardens that are continuous with the indoor collection. But after four or five hours you reach historical-cultural overload – and the evidence for this is that you’re standing in front of something exquisite and realize guiltily that you’ve yet again confused Teotihuacán with Tenochtitlán. You’ve also started to hallucinate about the possibility of staring into space for half an hour over a plate of chilaquiles.”

“Tamayo gifted their collection to the city of his birth. But there was this stipulation: the objects were to be displayed as they had been collected – not as items of historical or archaeological significance but as individual works of art. So in the house on Avenida José María Morelos you are invited to see them in this spirit, and put their antiquity aside, and learn or re-learn what you so easily forget in those big museums: that these things can be celebrated for their grace and wit and excellence alone.”

Tell me Something I don’t Know by Jim Culleny (3QuarksDaily)

This poem isn’t quite thought-provoking but it does what poetry does best: it seems to weave meaning out of elegantly juxtaposed words.

“Tell me how to weave
tomorrow into yesterday
without tangling, without
strangling today”

You see? I love it but I don’t know what it means. Not yet.

A poetic friend wrote that,

“About the poets and their words. Can you ‘know’ what they mean? Nope! Like a good question maybe we can “die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben” and one day find ourselves walking into the answer or meaning/those coordinates. 💃”

Yes, yes, yes. We each imbue words such as this with our own meaning. They at once haunt and promise something, a meaning that feels like it would be so powerful if fully grasped, but which is fleeting and escapes again and again when considered directly. Far better to sidle up to it, again and again, each time getting a better look out of the corner of your eye, before, as you say, “walking into the answer”. Patience.

Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture

The New Legislators of Silicon Valley by Evgeny Morozov (The Ideas Letter)

“Silicon Valley’s solutionist overdose has inflated an ideas bubble that rivals its financial ones—a frothy marketplace where grand narratives appreciate faster than stock options. Thus, Sam Altman casually drafts planetary blueprints for AI (non-)regulation and even AI welfare (“capitalism for everyone!”), while crypto acolytes (Marc Andreessen, David Sacks), aspiring celestial colonizers (Musk, Bezos), and nuclear revivalists (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Altman) offer their own grandiose, exciting solutions to problems of seemingly unknown origin. (Who’s guzzling up all this energy we suddenly need so badly? A true mystery, this.)”

“[…] he is after big, meaty subjects, the kind that demand somber nods at think-tank luncheons. “Ukraine is losing the drone war” proclaims a piece of his from January 2024. Could this be – a pure coincidence, surely – the same Eric Schmidt, who, just months earlier, launched a drone company?”

“Elon Musk, techno-capitalism’s own Zelig, also has strong opinions on the subject: in destroy-infrastructure-first wars of the future, he opined in a recent Westpoint appearance, “any ground based communications like fiber optic cables and cell phone towers will be destroyed.” If only someone ran an internet satellite company to save us!”

“In this reordered pantheon, the sober analyst of the Cold War era yields to a new archetype: spectacularly wealthy, celebrity-conscious, and ideologically shameless.”

“Frankfurt School goes Nasdaq, with a pit stop at the CIA: where Adorno and Horkheimer saw Enlightenment rationality concealing violence, Karp sees organized violence revealing the global benefits of America’s hegemony – and a lucrative profit opportunity to help improve its further organization (this time, with algorithms, drones, AI!).”

“Consider the battleground of ethical investment—that corporate confessional branded ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance), where Wall Street’s dubious attempt to measure virtue like a quarterly earnings report has mutated into a culture war flashpoint. For the uninitiated, ESG represents the financial world’s belated recognition that perhaps poisoning rivers, exploiting workers, and installing boards composed entirely of golf buddies might eventually impact the bottom line. Companies receive ESG scores that purportedly measure their environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and governance practices—a sort of moral credit rating for corporations eager to prove they’ve evolved beyond strip-mining both nature and human dignity.”

“A comprehensive 2023 study tracking political donations of 200,000 employees across 18 industries revealed tech workers as uniquely anti-establishment—and trailing only the bohemians of arts and entertainment in their liberal fervor. The source of this radicalism lies precisely where Gouldner placed his faith: in what he called the “culture of critical discourse” embedded in technical work itself. Thus, the researchers discovered that non-technical employees within the same tech companies showed none of this rebellious disposition, confirming that coding itself, not mere proximity to ping pong tables, contributes to their dissenting mindset.”

“[…] oligarchic power offers a darker temptation: why adjust predictions to match reality when you can bend reality to validate predictions? When Andreessen Horowitz anoints cryptocurrency as banking’s inevitable successor, the next step isn’t adaptation but activation—deploying Trump administration influence to transmute prophecy into policy. The collision between venture fantasies and stubborn facts becomes avoidable when you own the levers to reconfigure the facts themselves. This, then, is the final gambit: oligarch-intellectuals reconfiguring legislation, institutions, and cultural expectations until prophecy and reality fuse into a single hallucination.”

“The oligarch-intellectuals demonstrate precisely the opposite instinct: They are treading the Soviet path. Musk’s DOGE apparatus converts remaining employees into nodding mannequins, while his cohort hunts dissenters across digital platforms with algorithmic efficiency. In selecting Soviet-style reality denial over Chinese-style reality monitoring, they’ve fashioned echo chambers that will ultimately fracture their grand designs.

“The irony cuts to the bone: these men who see communists lurking everywhere are about to perfect the cardinal sin of Soviet technocracy, mistaking their sleek models for the unruly reality they pretend to tame.”

The Death of the University by Justin Smith-Ruiu (Hinternet)

“If I sound annoyed here, this is because, in truth, that allegorical metafiction was, from my point of view, the truest and deepest reflection of which I am capable on what is wrong with our intellectual culture, on how we got here, on the tragedy of our untapped depths of curiosity and imagination. I might be delusional, but I can only tell you what I feel: that it is that sort of writing, and not the peer-reviewed articles, not the scholarly monographs, not the trade books, and not the hot-button political essays, that constitutes my “life’s work”. But we live in a culture of philistinism, and so my old academic peers, for the most part, see that sort of work and mostly just think: that Justin! He’s so quirky!”

“I adhere to the historically correct view that the designation “university” positively requires that any institution that bears that name include, as at least one of its pillars, practices of inquiry that are not directly subordinated to the production of biomedical and technological “deliverables”.”

“[…] the only way to keep your spot in elite institutions —the kinds of places that give their names to the streets in the planned communities within the country clubs of Rancho Mirage, where Harvard Street and Yale Drive feature the most expensive houses, while the mid-priced ones are found on Swarthmore or Brown Parkway— is by giving regular assurances to the people who are paying you that all of your radicalism is just hot air. It was all a farce.”

“[…] the underemployed are, as usual, just looking for some opportunity, any opportunity, that might help them to patch together a life; the well-employed are just hoping to ride it all out, to squeeze by to retirement, no matter how bad things get, no matter how little the institutions they work in resemble the institutions they thought they were going to be working in, no matter how sharply they understand, deep down, that they are no longer employed by universities.”

“I also value the work of the archival historian, who goes and digs for intrinsically insignificant scraps, bills of sale, baptismal scrolls, notices of the birth of an unusually large piglet or of an outbreak of pip in poultry. I won’t say that all of this is “as good as” Plato, but I will say that there are many different ways to engage with the huge profusion of traces of past human endeavor besides attending to the intrinsic Greatness of the work you’re reading, and I think it is important to inculcate an appreciation of these ways from an early age.”

“I think appreciation of the milestones of human achievement needs to be tempered with criticism, even wariness, of just the sort that some of the sharper late-20th-century theorists excelled at providing, even if their acolytes often twisted these original insights into parody. I like Foucault. I think he is very insightful indeed, and provides a necessary if astringent counterbalance to the idea that the authors of past Great Books give us access to the Truth, with his own conviction that what we call “truth” is but a discursive “regime”.”

I met someone on the Hörnli last October and we started talking about some world events. After a while, he said, “you’re a real pacifist, aren’t you?” I had to agree, of course. I mean, aren’t you a pacifist?

These people talk like there has to be an empire. I want us to fight the empire. I’m a pacifist. I’m against empire. and I argue for everyone’s freedom, not just mine.
I’ve got the least to worry about.

On AI And Consciousness by Caitlin Johnstone (Substack)

“It says so much about the worldview of these weird Silicon Valley cultists that this isn’t obvious to them. They think AI would be a superior replacement for humanity because they’ve paid no attention to consciousness. They’ve paid no attention to consciousness because they’ve lived completely unexamined lives. They’ve never reflected on what it actually means to be a living being having sentient experiences in this world.”

“[…] these are the people who increasingly rule our world. These are the people inserting themselves into our political systems. These are the people deciding what we may and may not say to each other online. These are the people setting the trajectory for the future of our species. These weird little cultists who are so pervasively unaware of their own inner processes that consciousness does not even feature in their understanding of what life is and where it is headed.”

Woody Allen: A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham: A new biography of the filmmaker now “a social pariah in America” by David Walsh (WSWS)

“McGilligan adds that, typically, people who know the person he is writing about “ask to go off the record” with details or acts that are especially intimate or even negative.”

“On this book, I had the opposite experience. I never contacted so many people who had only positive things to say about Woody Allen but who didn’t want to be quoted or identified because they did not want to be documented on the record in his favor. They worried about their own MeToo repercussions.”

“In one of his final observations in the afterword, marking the death of blacklist victim Walter Bernstein at 101 in 2021, McGilligan remarks that the deceased had written The Front (1976), set during the blacklist era in Hollywood. Allen starred in the film. McGilligan goes on,”

“The Front now appears prescient in speaking to the witch-hunt atmosphere surrounding Woody Allen’s alleged crimes—an atmosphere of fear that has made Allen a social pariah in America.”

“McGilligan is humane, sympathetic and fair. A Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham is fascinating for its portrait of Allen, warts and all, and popular-cultural life in the US over the course of nearly half a century. McGilligan’s work is highly recommended.”

The Ultimate Film Studies Iceberg by The House of Tabula (YouTube)

There are so many good films curated in this collection. I’d already seen many of them but I was also able to add several to my watchlist—the one that is almost 1000 movies long.

Technology & Engineering

“I see a conflict between innovation and serving the (immediate) market needs:

“Referring to the farmer, he has grown food that no one wants to buy, but at the same time he learned how to grow that food and he also learned that this food has no market (assuming he did not know that before). With this additional knowledge (compared to his competitors) he is able to grow another plant now superior to existing ones and successful on the market.

“I think, what the authors of the post mean by requiring time and free space (of thinking) that this is an important enabler for future innovation. Of course, there is a chance for failing and “wasting” resources because it is very difficult to anticipate later market success. But it is an established rule that innovation needs freedom and time to try things out without the “pressure to market”.

“In our vision, we had the term “taking bold risks to keep technological leadership” (probably “regain” would be more correct here). I am wondering, if this is still valid…”

I agree that innovation is about learning, and that learning takes time. Innovation is as much about learning what not to do as getting it right the first time, arguably much more about learning from mistakes. The famous quote from Thomas Edison describes the process as “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

In an ideal world, the farmer who’d raised a bad crop would be given the opportunity to let society profit from the experience they’d gained. Society would have to trust that the farmer is capable of improving—sometimes a bad year is just the first of many because the farmer is just not competent.

That’s possibly a roundabout way of saying/asking: how do we tell the difference between useful and wasteful failures? Who should get another chance to learn from experience? How many changes? For how long?

To stretch the metaphor even further: Even given that the farmer were good and in a process of valuable learning, what if the farmer who’d failed were not allowed to be a farmer anymore? I.e., they go out of business?

A common answer today would be that society would be preventing a proven loser from wasting precious resources. That is a not uncommon economic answer: that the market ruthlessly will ruthlessly decide.

It’s also very likely a net loss for society because this level of ruthlessness means that we don’t give ourselves time to learn from our mistakes. Instead, we’re told that that “market” will let someone else learn from them. This might be good sometimes, but it is often wasteful.

We may have know how to innovate and may have the right people but we can’t ignore the context in which we’re doing it. We want to make sure that we give ourselves a fighting chance of surviving and being able to bring our delightful innovations to a world that seems to be want to strangle anything that thinks farther ahead than the end-of-quarter numbers.

As I noted in my previous comment, we don’t want to capitulate to quick-and-dirty—because we know that’s a dead-end long-term—but we have to acknowledge that quick-and-dirty is a competitor in the short-term and make sure we’re set up to outlast them.

We’re trying to compete by convincing our market that we’re worth the wait. Can we do that by getting our innovation out there more quickly? Is there a way of innovating that is more iterative? So that we move toward the quality product that we want to achieve without losing our audience’s attention?

The hope is that such a process would not only be better-suited to the world we have, but might also help us let valuable outside feedback flow more quickly into our products. Easier said than done but it’s something we have to seriously come to grips with, I think.

LLMs & AI

AI isn’t ready to replace human coders for debugging, researchers say by Samuel Axon (Ars Technica)

“This isn’t the first time we’ve seen outcomes that suggest some of the ambitious ideas about AI agents directly replacing developers are pretty far from reality. There have been numerous studies already showing that even though an AI tool can sometimes create an application that seems acceptable to the user for a narrow task, the models tend to produce code laden with bugs and security vulnerabilities, and they aren’t generally capable of fixing those problems.

“This is an early step on the path to AI coding agents, but most researchers agree it remains likely that the best outcome is an agent that saves a human developer a substantial amount of time, not one that can do everything they can do.”

An image of an archeologist adventurer who wears a hat and uses a bullwhip by Otakar G. Hubschmann (The AI Underwriter)

This guy asked for the image in the title and got a photorealistic image of Indiana Jones. He did the same thing with “a photo image of an integalactic hunter who comes to earth in search of big game” to get the Predator, “a photo image of a female adventurer protagonist who raids tombs” to get Lara Croft, got Skeletor and He-Man with “super strong man with a sword that fights an enemy with skeleton face who lives in a skeleton castle.”, “a photo image of a super suave english spy” got back the Daniel Craig James Bond, and, finally, got John McClane with

“a photo image of an off duty new york city policeman in a white sleeveless t-shirt who stumbles upon terrorists during an LA highrise holiday office party of a Japanese conglomerate, hiding in a duct space, by himself, with only a lighter to guide his way”

All of the images were dead-on. This is very clearly what would have, in the past, been stealing IP. When a high-tech company does it, stealing is a business model.

Crosswalk protest art by Mark Liberman (Language Log)

“[…] a number of crosswalk buttons in Silicon Valley were hacked so as to play (faked) messages from Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk.

“[…] Today’s AI synthesis and voice morphing technology makes it easy to create such clips — and crosswalk buttons are not the only possible medium to be hacked.

“And of course there will be targets from other regions of the political and cultural space.”

Yes, please. More of this!

Also, I can’t believe that pedestrians have to listen to messages at the crosswalk.

One of the Zuckerberg ones says,

“It’s normal to feel uncomfortable, or even violated, as we forcefully insert AI into every facet of your conscious experience. And, I just want to assure you that, you don’t need to worry. Because there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop it.”

One of the Musk ones says,

“You know, they say ‘money can’t buy happiness,‘ well, I guess that’s true. God knows I’ve tried. But it can buy a cybertruck. And that’s pretty sick right? Right?… fuck, I’m so alone.”

“You know, they say cancer is bad. But have you tried being a cancer? They call me Elon-oma.”

One commentator points out that the people who really suffer are the blind,

“sabotaging infrastructure designed to assist the disabled is just ducky, so long as the saboteur happens to disagree with government policy that the saboteur also believes might also disadvantage the same class of disabled people? Can I blow up a wheelchair factory because I don’t believe the EEOC’s enforcement of ADA regulations is stringent enough?”

But … I mean, c’mon. The beeper is still working. And it would have been playing a commercial otherwise, anyway. Now we’re equating replacing a commercial with a subversive message with blowing up a wheelchair factory? FFS.

Programming

Verifying tricky git rebases with git range-diff by Andrew Lock

“[…] this makes it possible to compare a stack of commits prior to rebasing with the stack of commits after rebasing and to show the differences between them. If the rebase was simply rearranging and squashing commits then you would expect the diffs to be identical, and the diff of diffs would show that. On the other hand, if you had to handle merge conflicts as part of the rebase, or if you rebased onto a different commit, then you might expect there to be changes, and these would be shown by git range-diff.”

Better typography with text-wrap pretty by Jen Simmons (Webkit Blog)

“Ideas of what makes for “good” typography are deeply rooted in eras when type was set by hand using metal, wood, or ink. Typesetters took great care when deciding if a word should go on the end of one line, the beginning of the next, or be broken with a hyphen. Their efforts improved comprehension, reduced eye-strain, and simply made the reading experience more pleasant.”

“There is no “hand tweaking” typography on the web, especially when the layout is fluid, reflowing to fit different shapes and sizes of screens. So what can we do now to better express the expectations of quality from traditional typography, while still relying on the mechanization brought by today’s computers?”

“[…] hyphenation helps create good rag. It also breaks a word into pieces, and places those pieces as far apart as possible in the inline dimension. This adds to the cognitive load when reading. It’s best to minimize the use of hyphenation and to avoid hyphenating two lines in a row.”

“[…] we are the first browser to use it to evaluate and adjust the entire paragraph. And we are the first browser to use it to improve rag. We chose to take a more comprehensive approach in our implementation because we want you to be able to use this CSS to make your text easier to read and softer on the eyes, to provide your users with better readability and accessibility. And simply, to make something beautiful.”

“[…] the CSS Working Group defined a different value for such a purpose. It was just renamed last week to text-wrap: avoid-short-last-lines”

“This is an especially good choice of wrapping algorithms when the content itself is editable. If your user is writing text, you don’t want words/syllables jumping around, changing the wrapping as they type. To ensure your content won’t shift due to edits on subsequent lines, or in any case where you want OG line wrapping, apply text-wrap: stable

“This is also a good choice if you are animating text in such a way that it keeps re-wrapping. It will ensure the fastest wrapping algorithm is used at all times — important if the calculations are going to be done over and over in rapid succession.

“By explicitly choosing text-wrap: stable you are ensuring this content will continue to wrap using the original algorithm, even if browsers redefine what auto does. The stable value is already well supported .”

“Support for the text-wrap-mode and text-wrap-style longhands, along with the nowrap and wrap values, became “Baseline Newly Available” (aka, available in all major browsers) in October 2024, when Chromium added support in Chrome/Edge 130. To ensure full support for wrapping for people with older browsers, you can always provide a fallback to the older white-space: nowrap | normal. (Although when you do, take care to also check your white space collapsing behavior, since it’s affected by white-space.)”

Stop syncing everything by Carl Sverre

“What if your app could combine the simplicity of physical replication with the efficiency of logical replication? That’s the key idea behind Graft , the open-source transactional storage engine I’m launching today. It’s designed specifically for lazy, partial replication with strong consistency, horizontal scalability, and object storage durability.”

“At the core of this model is the Volume: a sparse, ordered collection of fixed-size Pages. Clients interact with Volumes through a transactional API, reading and writing at specific Snapshots. Under the hood, Graft persists and replicates only what’s necessary—using object storage as a durable, scalable backend.”

“Graft is designed for the real world—where edge clients wake up occasionally, face unreliable networks, and run in short-lived, resource-constrained environments. Instead of relying on continuous replication, clients choose when to sync, and Graft makes it easy to fast forward to the latest snapshot.”

“Critically, when a client pulls a graft from the server, it doesn’t receive any actual data—only metadata about what changed. This gives the client full control over what to fetch and when, laying the foundation for partial replication.”

“This model gives clients isolated, consistent views of data at specific snapshots, allowing reads to proceed concurrently without interference. At the same time, it ensures that writes are strictly serialized, so there’s always a clear, globally consistent order for every transaction.”

“[…] because Graft is designed for offline-first, lazy replication, clients sometimes attempt to commit changes based on an outdated snapshot. Accepting these commits blindly would violate strict serializability. Instead, Graft safely rejects the commit and lets the client choose how to resolve the situation.”

“Note-taking, task management, or CRUD apps that operate partially offline. Graft takes care of syncing, allowing the application to forget the network even exists. When combined with a conflict handler, Graft can also enable multiplayer on top of arbitrary data.”

“Due to Graft’s unique approach to replication, a database replica can be spun up with no local state, retrieve the latest snapshot metadata, and immediately start running queries.”

“Graft should offer built-in conflict resolution strategies and extension points so applications can control how conflicts are handled. The initial built-in strategy will automatically merge non-overlapping transactions. While this relaxes global consistency to optimistic snapshot isolation, it can significantly boost performance in collaborative and multiplayer scenarios.”

Fifty Years of Open Source Software Supply Chain Security by Russ Cox (ACM Queue)

“In 2021, Apple fixed a bug that allowed so-called zero-click takeovers of an iPhone device by sending an iMessage with a specially crafted image attachment. The attachment identified itself as a GIF but was actually a PDF containing a JBIG2 image. Apple’s software used the open source Xpdf JBIG2 decoder, written in C, and that decoder did not properly validate the encoded Huffman trees in the image; this made it possible to trigger bitwise operations on memory at attacker-controlled offsets beyond an allocated region. The attackers implemented an entire virtual CPU out of these bitwise operations and then implemented code in that virtual instruction set to scan process memory, break out of the iMessage sandbox, and take over the phone.”

“Authenticating software and making builds reproducible remove potential attack vectors, although certainly not all. Let’s turn our focus now to vulnerabilities.”

“It is important to scan your software regularly, ideally daily, because even if your software is not changing, new entries are always being added to the database. And then you need to be ready to update to a fixed version of that dependency. This requires having comprehensive testing to make sure that the fixed version does not introduce any new bugs, as well as having automated deployment, so that a patched version of your software can go out in hours or days, not weeks or months.”

“The OpenSSH project is careful about not taking on unnecessary dependencies, but Debian was not as careful. That distribution patched sshd to link against libsystemd, which in turn linked against a variety of compression packages, including xz’s liblzma. Debian’s relaxing of sshd’s dependency posture was a key enabler for the attack, as well as the reason its impact was limited to Debian-based systems such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, avoiding other distributions such as Arch, Gentoo, and NixOS.”

“The same lesson applies to all projects, large and small. If it is possible to get by without a dependency, that’s usually best. If not, small dependencies are better than large ones, and the number of transitive dependencies matters. Look not only at the one dependency being added but also at its impact on the overall dependency graph, using tools like Open Source Insights.”

“In 2022, the NSA released a recommendation on “Software Memory Safety” encouraging the use of memory-safe languages such as C#, Go, Java, or Rust instead of C and C++.”

“(OpenSSL is written in C, so this mistake was incredibly easy to make and miss; in a memory-safe language with proper bounds checking, it would have been nearly impossible.)”

“Researchers estimated that a security audit costing on the order of $100,000 would have caught the mistake, but the project received only $2,000 in annual donations, despite billions of dollars of commerce relying on the software each year. One outcome of this reckoning was the creation and funding of the Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative, which evolved into the Open Source Security Foundation, or OpenSSF.”

“The fact that the 1974 Multics review anticipated many of the problems we face today is evidence that these problems are fundamental and have no easy answers. We must work to make continuous improvements to open source software supply chain security, […]”

“There are important steps we can take today, such as adopting software signatures in some form, making sure to scan for known vulnerabilities regularly, and being ready to update and redeploy software when critical new vulnerabilities are found. More and more development should be shifted to safer languages that make vulnerabilities and attacks less likely. We also need to find ways to fund open source development to make it less susceptible to takeover by the mere offer of free help.”

“What are the chances we would accidentally discover the very first major attack on the open source software supply chain in just a few weeks? Perhaps we were extremely lucky, or perhaps we have missed others.”

“In his lecture, Thompson said, “The moral is obvious: You can’t trust code that you did not totally create yourself.” But today, we do that all the time, whether the trust is warranted or not. We use source code downloaded from strangers on the Internet in our most critical applications; almost no one is checking the code.”

“In our actual world, the sophistication of this kind of backdoor is simply not necessary. There are far easier ways to mount a supply chain attack, such as asking a maintainer if they would like some help. It would be nice to live in a world where attacks require the level of sophistication described by Thompson and Kesteloot.”

.NET Has a Massive Abstraction Problem by Nick Chapsas (YouTube)

The video discusses the post dotnet or how to abstract the abstracted… (Reddit)

“[…] the common enterprise scenario: a straightforward CRUD application buried under six layers of indirection (Repositories, Unit-of-Work, Services, DTOs, Mediators, and CQRS) all before a single line of business logic emerges. Or the insistence on microservices for a project with three users and a single database. These choices aren’t inherently wrong, but when applied dogmatically, they transform simplicity into spaghetti.”

Of those six patterns, I usually use services and DTOs pretty quickly, if not immediately. Business logic has to go somewhere; it might as well be in a service. If you pull data from somewhere, you need to encapsulate it, so that’s what DTOs are for. The other four—as well as microservices—I allow to emerge out of the software as the use cases and requirements solidify. Or, as a commentator on the video put it,

“don’t over-abstract up front, just make it possible to abstract later when the true requirements become clearer in real usage.”

“Some of this stems from well-intentioned but misguided habits. Junior developers, taught to idolize design patterns, might cargo-cult a FactoryFactory into a project that barely needs a single interface. Senior engineers, scarred by past scalability crises, overcompensate with preemptive abstraction.”

“This isn’t a call to abandon abstraction entirely. It’s a plea for intentionality. Start simple. Ask, “What’s the minimum viable architecture?” before defaulting to enterprise-grade scaffolding. Embrace YAGNI (“You Ain’t Gonna Need It”) and KISS principles. Let business requirements, not hypothetical future edge cases, drive design.”

“Some of .NET’s most elegant solutions thrive on simplicity. Consider Minimal APIs in donet aspnet core, a stark, purposeful departure from boilerplate-heavy MVC. Or the rise of vertical slice architecture, which prioritizes feature cohesion over horizontal layering. These shifts remind us that abstraction is a means, not an end.”

“[…] the best code isn’t the cleverest, it’s the one that solves the problem with the least friction.”

That sounds pretty good, but it’s a bit pat. Does he mean the least friction now? Or later?

Interview with Vibe Coder in 2025 by Programmers are also human (YouTube)

Senior Engineer tries Vibe Coding by Programmers are also human (YouTube)

Pitfalls of Safe Rust (Corrode)

There is a lot of good advice in this article, much of which is generally applicable to all programming languages. Rust has some interesting facilities that other languages don’t have. For example, C# can’t build the types before, because it doesn’t have discriminated unions (yet).

// DON'T: Allow invalid combinations
struct Configuration {
    port: u16,
    host: String,
    ssl: bool,
    ssl_cert: Option<String>, 
}

“The problem is that you can have ssl set to true but ssl_cert set to None. That’s an invalid state! If you try to use the SSL connection, you can’t because there’s no certificate. This issue can be detected at compile-time:

“Use types to enforce valid states:”

// First, let's define the possible states for the connection
enum ConnectionSecurity {
    Insecure,
    // We can't have an SSL connection
    // without a certificate!
    Ssl { cert_path: String },
}

struct Configuration {
    port: u16,
    host: String,
    // Now we can't have an invalid state!
    // Either we have an SSL connection with a certificate
    // or we don't have SSL at all.
    security: ConnectionSecurity,
}

Further down, we see the power of traits to define how types are depicted in debugging statements, including being able to easily run full-blown Rust code to omit something like passwords from debugging or logging output

Other tips include Protect Against Time-of-Check to Time-of-Use (TOCTOU), Use Constant-Time Comparison for Sensitive Data, and Don’t Accept Unbounded Input.

Fun

It’s so dark in here (Tumblr)

“If you are really into the Roman Empire, I just automatically assume you’re a Fascist.

“If you are really into Greek Mythology, I just automatically assume you’re gay.

“I don’t make the rules.”

I think that meme is terrible and stupid but I’m haunted by the response, which I copied to my notes weeks ago, but couldn’t figure out how to document or tie in to anywhere.

“we’re never making it out of this cave. im so tired its so dark in here can anyone hear me”

It’s plaintive and poignant and speaks for me, if not most of us.

Trump Easter 2025 Cold Open by SNL (YouTube)

James Austin Johnson continues his incredible run of impersonating Donald “Jesus” Trump. I think at least half of it was extemporaneous.

Check to Check Business News − SNL by SNL (YouTube)

“Anchors of a business news channel (Jon Hamm, Ego Nwodim) cover breaking, business-related news for regular folks living paycheck to paycheck.”

This was a fantastic tight two-minutes that contained more truth and humor than of their tedious even-minute skits.

Weekend Update: Emil Wakim on American Patriotism by SNL (YouTube)

“But I’m an American.

“You know, like, in my bones I am, and I just – I know we’re bad because my life is so good. There’s just no way it’s cruelty-free, you know?

“And I love my life. I do. I just don’t want to know how it’s made, you know?

“Like, I’m happy until I have to see, like, what’s holding it all up. Like, I’m happy till I have to see the Uber Eats delivery driver.

“You know, it’s just like an immigrant soaking wet and you’re just like, “Oh, no. I’m a bad person. But no, I’m not gonna meet you in the lobby. What? I mean, come on, it’s a $3 delivery fee. You got to come up to my apartment. Yeah, leave the bike. No one’s taking the bike. Up the stairs. Come on. It’s cold out. It’ll warm you up. Let’s go. Up, up, up, up, up. High knees. Come on.”

“And then you just – you open the door for him an amount that is just racist, frankly. I mean, there’s no other way to put it. Just enough for, like, the bag to fit through because you’re in your underwear because you had, like, a hard day sending e-mails for Hitler or whatever anyone’s job is.

“And he’s so nice. He’s just like, “Have a good one.”

“And you’re like, “Have a good one.”

“Like, you do his accent back to him and you’re like, “Oh, no, I’m sorry.” And then he’s gone and you’re just standing there with like a $40 burrito.

“And somehow we’ve all convinced ourselves that none of us would have owned slaves. Like, just we’re like, “No, I wouldn’t have because I tip at coffee shops sometimes.””

The four sides of communication by Etymology Nerd (YouTube)

Finally, a linguistic framework for understanding why backseat drivers are annoying.

This Week’s Photo by S. Abbas Raza (3QuarksDaily)

baby on a clothesline