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Links and Notes for December 5th, 2025

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<n>Below are links to articles, highlighted passages<fn>, and occasional annotations<fn> for the week ending on the date in the title, <a href="{app}/view_article.php?id=4085">enriching the raw data</a> from <a href="http://www.instapaper.com/starred/rss/1890855/5c1g08eoy9skhOr3tCGqTQbZes">Instapaper Likes</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/mvonballmo">Twitter</a>. They are intentionally succinct, else they'd be articles and probably end up in the gigantic backlog of unpublished drafts. YMMV.</n> <ft>Emphases are added, unless otherwise noted.</ft> <ft>Annotations are only lightly edited and are largely contemporaneous.</ft> <h>Table of Contents</h> <ul> <a href="#politics">Public Policy & Politics</a> <a href="#journalism">Journalism & Media</a> <a href="#economy">Economy & Finance</a> <a href="#science">Science & Nature</a> <a href="#art">Art, Literature, Music, & Cinema</a> <a href="#philosophy">Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture</a> <a href="#technology">Technology & Engineering</a> <a href="#llms">LLMs & AI</a> <a href="#programming">Programming</a> <a href="#design">Design</a> <a href="#fun">Fun</a> </ul> <h id="politics">Public Policy & Politics</h> <a href="https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-judge-at-the-end-of-europe/" source="ZNetwork" author="Yanis Varoufakis">The Judge at the End of Europe</a> <bq>The imposed sanctions are a masterclass in the evisceration of European sovereignty. They render Guillou a non-person, not only in the United States, but also in his own country – the beating heart of Europe. He has been locked out of the global digital realm (WhatsApp, all Google apps, and social media like Facebook and Instagram). Even his French bank account is virtually useless, given the ban on all payments that require the cooperation of Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and the supposedly European SWIFT interbank messaging system. As if that were not enough, when he recently tried to book a hotel room in France, Expedia canceled his reservation a few hours later.</bq> <bq>European banks, cowed by a stern look from a US Treasury official in Washington, rushed to close Guillou’s accounts. European companies, whose compliance departments act as extensions of the US authorities, refuse to provide him services. Meanwhile, European institutions – the Commission and the Council – look the other way, wringing their hands and muttering platitudes about the “complexities” of transatlantic relations. They are not merely failing to protect Guillou; they are actively enforcing US sanctions against their own citizen.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.monbiot.com/2025/12/04/come-and-get-us/" source="" author="George Monbiot">Come And Get Us</a> <bq>If a tribunal determines that a law or policy may compromise the corporation’s projected profits, it can award damages of hundreds of millions, even billions. These sums represent not actual losses, but money the arbitrators decide the company might otherwise have made. The government may have to abandon its policy. It will be discouraged from passing future laws along the same lines, for fear of being sued.</bq> <bq>Legal experts believe the EU’s delay in using frozen Russian assets as collateral for its loan to Ukraine arises from Belgium’s fear that it could be sued in the offshore corporate courts, under the Belgium/Luxembourg-Russia bilateral investment treaty. This extraordinary, undemocratic power over elected governments could be blocking the money Ukraine desperately needs.</bq> This is such typical Monbiot to use this case as a relatively far-fetched example. He starts off strong, then makes the argument that we need to end this because it's stopping us from stealing Russia's assets, in order to punish it for a war that NATO provoked and Europe desperately wants to continue in order to prop up its failing economies with military buildup, all of which he probably disagrees with doing but his knee-jerk and ingrained support of Ukraine's eventual victory makes him believe both that Europe is bad for imposing ISDSs on countries but also good for supporting war in Ukraine. It's jarring. <bq>Corporations have so far won $114bn (£86bn) through ISDS, of which fossil fuel companies have secured $84bn (£64bn). That equates to the combined GDP of the world’s 45 smallest economies. The average payout these companies have received is $1.2bn (£910m). In some cases they threaten to suck the poorest nations dry. This is climate finance in reverse: huge payments to fossil fuel corporations from governments with the temerity to try to stop an existential crisis.</bq> <bq>We have twice beaten attempts to extend ISDS, through vast popular movements against the multilateral agreement on investment and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. Now we will need to mobilise again: this time against our own government, which seems to care more for foreign corporations than it does for us.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=143119" source="NachDenkSeiten" author="Jens Berger">Frieden ist nicht gut fürs Geschäft</a> <bq>„Ihr Geld ist nicht weg, mein Freund, es hat nur ein anderer.“ Dieses berühmte Zitat des Bankers Mayer Amschel Rothschild ist ungemein nützlich, wenn man die „Friedensangst“ verstehen will, die angesichts der Verhandlungen zwischen den USA und Russland nun in Westeuropas Hauptstädten grassiert. Die horrenden Rüstungsausgaben landen ja schließlich auf der anderen Seite der Bilanz als Einnahmen in den Kassen der Rüstungskonzerne. Und für die ist nicht nur der Krieg, sondern auch die nach dem Krieg folgende Aufrüstung der Ukraine ein äußerst lukratives Geschäft. Dieses Geschäft wäre jedoch durch Rüstungsobergrenzen und den generellen Verzicht auf einen NATO-Beitritt behindert,</bq> <bq>Folgt man den Wünschen der Rüstungslobbyisten, könnte die Ukraine gar „zum kostengünstigen, innovativen (Rüstungs-)Lieferanten für ganz Europa“ werden. Stolz stellt man fest, dass die Ukraine den Rüstungsproduktionswert bereits 2024 gegenüber dem „Vorkriegsjahr“ 2021 verzehnfacht habe und in diesem Jahr eine „erneute Verdreifachung“ möglich sei.</bq> Dies is äusserst seltsam, da die Russen das Land angeblich völlig auseinander genommen haben. Alles steht in Ruinen. Nur Schutt und Asche. Wie kann ein solches lukratives Geschäft so schnell voran kommen in einem Land weder Gebäuden noch Strom? <bq>Der deutsche Rüstungsgigant Rheinmetall ist nicht nur einer der größten Waffenlieferanten für die Ukraine, sondern hat auch bereits 2023 ein Joint Venture in der Ukraine gegründet. Man begann mit der Instandsetzung militärischer Fahrzeuge, hat die Produktion in der Ukraine aber auch bereits auf Artilleriemunition und Lynx-Schützenpanzer ausgeweitet. Bereits ab dem nächsten Jahr will der Rüstungskonzern auch eine sechsstellige Anzahl 155-mm-Artilleriegeschosse pro Jahr in der Ukraine produzieren.</bq> <bq>Die Liste deutscher Unternehmen, die an dieser Plattform teilhaben und mitarbeiten, ist lang und reicht von Rüstungs-Startups wie Circus Defence über Tytan, Alpine Eagle, Quantum Systems, ARX, ValoFly und Helsing bis hin zu den Platzhirschen Diehl und Rheinmetall. Offenbar sehen gerade deutsche technologische Rüstungskonzerne die Ukraine nicht nur als Markt und Produktionsstätte, sondern derzeit auch noch als großes Freiluftlabor für die eigenen tödlichen Hightech-Entwicklungen.</bq> <bq>Doch welche Zukunft haben die vor allem aus Deutschland und Frankreich kommenden Großinvestitionen in die ukrainische Rüstungsindustrie, wenn es strenge Obergrenzen für Waffensysteme und ein Verbot ebenjener technologischen Verzahnung mit NATO-Systemen gäbe, die Grundlage für die meisten aktuellen Investitionen ist?</bq> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/04/patrick-lawrence-zionism-on-the-upper-east-side/" source="Scheer Post" author="Patrick Lawrence">Zionism on the Upper East Side</a> <bq>This is the outcome, they say, when a people given to a culture of vengeance are told they will never suffer consequences however barbaric their conduct toward others, however many laws they break, however many their assassinations, however many their torture victims, however many exploding telephones they plant among civilian populations, etc.</bq> <bq>To put this another way, we witness an especially insidious case of chutzpah, the dangers of which I have considered elsewhere. You have your laws, the world has its, and we will ignore them before your eyes (and ostracize you as an anti–Semite if you object). This, in a sentence, is what Zionists now insist we must accept.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://tomdispatch.com/welcome-to-donald-trumps-u-s-a/" source="Tom Dispatch" author="Andrea Mazzarino">Welcome to Donald Trump’s U.S.A.</a> <bq>I investigated the government’s practice of separating kids with disabilities (and poorer kids generally) from their parents and detaining them in closed institutions. My report detailed how much changes in society when the government excludes swaths of the population from basic services like healthcare, education, and even just access to city streets. The answer? Everything. That marginalization was part of a governing process aimed at further enriching the wealthiest few and those in power. It reflected the leadership of figures lacking a basic understanding of what all people need and deserve. I consider that a hallmark of a fascist regime.</bq> <bq>Roma (or gypsy) families were no longer anywhere to be seen, as St. Petersburg’s government had conducted “purges” of the city’s informal Roma settlements. Nor were old women selling their wares on the streets, while Central Asian migrants from poorer countries to Russia’s south seemed ever fewer and less visible during the busiest times. Indeed, local authorities were rounding them up and detaining them without warrants, based on appearance and language alone. (Sound familiar?)</bq> <bq>I look around at what’s happening in our country and worry that we may already be on a superhighway to the sort of class- and race-stratified autocracy that it took Russia so many years to become after the Soviet Union collapsed.</bq> The Soviet Union was trying to transition, and it was plundered rather than aided. It didn't "collapse". Using that word obscures agency. <bq>Maybe since most Americans haven’t lived under an actual dictatorship the way many Russians have, state capture here is faster and easier, especially in a country with a resurgent Evangelical right (After all, didn’t Jesus say, “Suffer little children…”?)</bq> Oh, c'mon. This is typical military-spouse talk. Everywhere else is a dictatorship while the U.S. has simply temporarily lost its way. For some strata, the U.S. has never been distinguishable from a dictatorship. <bq>Well, good luck, and thanks for helping Trump consolidate power.</bq> This is an understandable sentiment but it's not helpful and it's also probably not fair. The elites don't put as much effort as they do into propaganda because it doesn't work. Just because the author sees through at least some of it (see her next statement just below), doesn't mean that anyone else who doesn't is stupid. We need to reach those people with better propaganda, with true propaganda. <bq>[...] the one thing I think we still do have that Russia doesn’t is mass demonstrations like the recent No Kings Day ones where a record seven million Americans turned out nationally and a (relatively) free press, which is not to be taken for granted or let go easily.</bq> Are you nuts? The U.S. press is a free press? The U.S. media system is a propaganda system that has nothing to do with the free press guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. <hr> <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/PoliticalHumor/comments/1pg7aw6/the_lords_of_facebush/" author="" source="">The Lords of Facebush</a> <img src="{att_link}the_oval_office_2025.webp" href="{att_link}the_oval_office_2025.webp" align="none" caption="The Oval Office 2025" scale="65%"> From the comments, <bq>George Strait, Sylvester Stallone, Kiss - Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Peter Criss, and Ace Frehely's daughter accepting on his behalf.</bq> They look like wax statues. Stallone definitely looks like he's in a museum. From the linked video description, <bq>U.S. President Donald Trump participates in the Kennedy Center Honors medal presentation at the White House Oval Office, honoring the 48th class: country star George Strait, actor Sylvester Stallone, rock band KISS, stage legend Michael Crawford, and singer Gloria Gaynor.</bq> I notice that Gloria Gaynor (82 years old) didn't show up for her "honor". I wonder why? <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/sudan-venezuela-and-other-notes" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Substack">Sudan, Venezuela, And Other Notes</a> <bq>As the US war machine escalates in Venezuela I’m seeing more and more online accounts claiming to be Venezuelans urging Trump to attack Caracas and remove Maduro by military force. As a general rule you should always be skeptical of anyone saying “Please invade/bomb/sanction my country,” because it means they either (A) aren’t living in that country, or (B) have some socioeconomic reason to believe they’ll be safe from the repercussions of what they’re asking for which everyone else will suffer from. But honestly it doesn’t even matter if they are 100 percent legit. I don’t care if you really are an impoverished Venezuelan civilian living in Venezuela, it’s still an indisputable fact that US regime change interventionism is reliably disastrous. Your position isn’t made any less stupid and crazy by where you happen to live; anyone who supports US regime change interventionism is still always wrong.</bq> <bq>After genocidal war criminal Joe Biden was elected in 2020 I wrote an article titled “<a href="https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2020/11/09/biden-will-have-the-most-diverse-intersectional-cabinet-of-mass-murderers-ever-assembled/">Biden Will Have The Most Diverse, Intersectional Cabinet Of Mass Murderers Ever Assembled</a>”. On Friday the Hague fugitive former president was presented with an award at the International LGBTQ+ Leaders Conference for running “the most inclusive administration in US history.” The US empire is impossible to satirize.</bq> <bq>I’m good with so-called “extreme” pro-Palestine positions like saying every Israeli family who wasn’t there pre-Balfour Declaration needs to leave, because you never come to the negotiating table with your compromise. If you come to the Israelis saying “Perhaps we might one day have two small pieces of land with no military?” if you’re lucky you might wind up getting a pat on the ass and a slice of land the size of a Walmart parking lot. If you begin from the position of “This entire state is illegitimate, all of you get the fuck out” you’re starting from somewhere that might actually end in a positive outcome for Palestinians.</bq> <bq>I saw an account I follow on social media talking about their “relationship” with a chatbot the other day. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen someone doing this. For some reason people feel compelled to not only engage in this behavior but also to ask for support and validation about it from their online community, like they’re coming out of the closet about a sexual orientation or something. It’s weird because obviously I’m not going to go pick on someone who’s plainly suffering from crushing loneliness and probably some mental health struggles, but also it’s so painfully dystopian. This is a really dark thing that’s happening. I mean, what does it say about people that they can feel like they’re having a loving relationship with something that has no subjective experience?</bq> <bq>[...] If you’re emotionally incapable of seeing your partner as a real person like yourself, maybe it is better if you’re not roping a real human being into an emotional relationship with you and just spending your time verbally masturbating into a mechanical ear instead. At least that way you’re not hurting anyone else.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trumps-henchmen-keep-calling-their" author="Caitlin Johnstone" source="Substack">Trump's Henchmen Keep Calling Their War Slut President A Peacemaker</a> <bq>This rhetoric about Trump being the “President of Peace” is just that: rhetoric. It’s words. This administration has been taking credit for resolving a bunch of conflicts it either made up, didn’t help resolve, or was an active belligerent in, while in actual reality turning the gears of the imperial war machine as rapidly as any other president the United States has ever had. Trump campaigned on being a president of peace and continues to stake his personal reputation on big talk about peacemaking, but in terms of concrete action he’s just as much of a warmonger as the psychopaths who came before him. There is no basis to continue to support Trump if you are opposed to war. You can support him because he “triggers the libs” or “fights wokeness” or whatever other dopey culture war reason you want if that’s what you’re into, because he absolutely does feed into that nonsense. But if you support him because you think he’s making peace, draining the swamp, or sticking up for the little guy, you’re just plain delusional.</bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5D749TRBo94" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/5D749TRBo94" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="" caption="Dr. Daniele Ganser: Eine Abrechnung mit der NATO (Sevim Dağdelen)"> <bq>Am 24. November 2025 habe ich mit Sevim Dağdelen ein Gespräch über die NATO geführt. Sevim Dağdelen wurde am 4. September 1975 in Duisburg geboren. Ihre Eltern waren aus der Türkei nach Deutschland eingewandert. Von 2005 bis 2025 war sie 20 Jahre lang Mitglied des deutschen Bundestags — zuerst für die Partei Die Linke, danach ab 2023 für die neue Partei Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). Im Bundestag war sie Mitglied im Auswärtigen Ausschuss, Sprecherin für Außenpolitik und Abrüstung sowie Mitglied im Verteidigungsausschuss. Sevim Dağdelen kennt den Bundestag als Insiderin. Sie hat sich für die Freilassung des australischen Journalisten Julian Assange engagiert und ihn in der Botschaft von Ecuador in London besucht. In Moskau hat sie den US-Amerikaner Edward Snowden besucht, der die weltweite Überwachung durch US-Geheimdienste wie NSA öffentlich gemacht hat. Sevim Dağdelen gehört zu den wenigen Politikerinnen in Deutschland, die sich kritisch zur NATO geäußert haben. 2024 erschien ihr Buch „Die NATO: Eine Abrechnung mit dem Wertebündnis" (Westend Verlag). Sie schreibt regelmäßig Artikel und Kolumnen — etwa zu Außenpolitik, Frieden, Abrüstung und europäischen Sicherheitsfragen. Sie ist eine der wenigen Politikern, die sich klar gegen jede Form von Aggression und Krieg aussprechen. Nach der vorgezogenen Bundestagswahl im Februar 2025 schied sie aus dem Bundestag aus, weil das BSW die 5%-Hürde nicht erreichte.<pre>00:00:00 Teaser 00:03:12 BSW nicht im Bundestag 00:01:53 Begrüßung 00:25:38 Krieg in der Ukraine 01:14:07 Deutschland sollte aus der NATO austreten</pre></bq> Ab 01:10:00 hat sie nur von China und ihren chinesischen Reisen erzählt. Ab 01:35:00 gab sie einen hoffnungsvollen Bericht: Die Jugend in Deutschland will keinen Krieg, eine multipolare Welt kommt, die Reste der Welt scheinen weniger kriegsgeil zu sein, mehr interessiert an Aufbau, die Bekämpfung des Klimawandels, usw. <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03NZ6e6fLRU" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/03NZ6e6fLRU" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="India and Global Left | Jyotishman Mudiar" caption="Chandran Nair: Understanding China — What the West Gets Wrong"> This is an excellent and informative discussion, highlighting the structures in China and how those differ from the Nair's experience in the West. He says that the focus is very much on how tools like AI will serve infrastructure needs, there is an incredible focus on higher learning, on engineering, on education at all levels, with so, so much of it freely available to anyone and everyone. That has paid off incredibly so far. He says that discussions about investment and business are so much less about shareholder value---like not at all---and all about generating value. The mindset is just different at the higher echelons. You can find companies that work like this in the west (I work for one) but they are rare, and they are rare precisely because the legal infrastructure incentivizes the worst among us to chew such companies up and spit them out. They discuss debt for a while, talking about the relative levels of public and private debt, where China has over 60% public debt, with Nair thinking that this is a lot. However, the U.S. has a lot more private debt...but it's all backstopped by the lender of last resort, which jumps in to save everything that's too big to fail. The profits are private; the risk public. The Chinese system has public risk, but profit, benefit, value accrue to the public as well. Of course there's corruption but the proof is visible: their system is lifting its people up, and their infrastructure is not only orders of magnitude better than it was just decades ago, but much better-organized and efficient and available definitely than the U.S., but also than many more publicly advanced European countries, whose elites are tripping all over themselves to plunder their own public coffers for themselves. Toward the end, <bq>[...] particularly with the events of recent years, the United States is sadly what could classify a warmongering state. Unfortunately, the military-industrial complex---this is not a lefty argument---is a massive industry and if you sell ice creams, you want hot days. If you sell arms, you need wars. It's just a business-model thing. So, my view on China is that it is a force for good. It's I think very clear that it carries risk because it's so big, but its restraint, with so much provocation over the last 10 years, I think should convince the world that it doesn't want war. [...] So, whilst the west---and particularly United States---has been squandering and creating mayhem in different parts of the world, the Chinese understand the value of peace. So I think it's a force for good. It's the world's largest consumer market. That's good for the world, if you believe in consumption-driven economic models (which I don't necessarily believe). It's a vital source of development aid. It facilitates trade. It's become the trading anchor partner for many small countries. It's gone out of his way to do it. It provides capital for developing countries and through the one road-one belt scheme, it has allowed infrastructure to penetrate many countries.</bq> <bq>There is this view, which is so naive and you can't explain it, that somehow the Chinese are trying to make all the other countries be like them, and that there's a "China model". Well, if there is this intention, then the China model has worked for its people. So, if you want to...if others want to copy it, please go ahead. But as a Chinese diplomat told me, 'if our model is so good, why would we want to give it to others? We ought to keep it to ourselves, right?' But if others want to copy it, that's good. And so I think this again is the old-fashioned propaganda that they're [the Chinese are] communists. Not looking at the results. You know, the World Bank results, 800 million out of poverty. But, because they are communists, whatever results they have, we can label them communist. Whatever results they've achieved should be ignored because they are about to take over the world. The evidence is very clear. The Chinese are not about to take over the world, but they will be a force to be reckoned with. And I dare say that one part of the Chinese foreign policy, and the shape the geopolitics is, we should all recognize that it's for the first time in about 400 years that the western world has had to confront a non-Caucasian civilization. And I feel the pain of my western brothers and sisters. But that is no excuse to demonize another large country. And as you're Indian, Jyotishman, I would say that I've said to my Indian friends, be careful. You might be next. Once you get your act together, the focus will be on you. And so I think the western world, in terms of foreign policy, needs to have wise leaders and it hasn't had wise leaders for a long time. Wise in terms of appreciating that the old world is over and you'll have to live with others. And those others include nations with thousands of years of civilization. So we hope that the west will come up with good leaders who can come to terms with the new world.</bq> This will not happen. This culture likes to run straight into the wall and pick up the shards afterward. They don't care about damage because they never feel it. They are creatures in a world without consequences. They are children, throwing toys out of the pram. <hr> <a href="https://reason.com/2025/12/11/cbp-agents-held-this-u-s-citizen-for-hours-until-he-agreed-to-let-them-search-his-electronic-devices/" author="Jacob Sullum" source="Reason">CBP Agents Held This U.S. Citizen for Hours Until He Agreed To Let Them Search His Electronic Devices</a> <bq>Last July, Wilmer Chavarria, a naturalized U.S. citizen who lives in Vermont, was returning from Nicaragua, where he had visited his mother and other relatives, when he was detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston for no apparent reason. Chavarria was held for more than four hours and released only after he finally agreed to let the agents search his smartphone, tablet, and laptop computer. The agents, who persistently pressured Chavarria to surrender his devices and the passwords for them, informed him that he had no Fourth Amendment right to resist.</bq> <a href="https://reason.com/2025/12/11/want-to-vacation-in-america-trump-wants-to-see-your-social-media-posts-first/" author="Emma Camp" source="Reason">Want To Vacation In America? Trump Wants To See Your Social Media Posts First.</a> <bq>The requirement will affect citizens from nations eligible for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, which includes most European countries, as well as other developed nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Australia.<bq>The program currently requires tourists from eligible countries to fill out a short application and pay a $40 fee before coming to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. While the application has allowed visitors to list their social media accounts since 2016, this newest proposal will make doing so mandatory. In addition to submitting years of posts for analysis, prospective tourists may also have to provide years of telephone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, and information about family members.</bq></bq> <hr> <a href="https://blog.simplejustice.us/2025/12/12/only-the-right-kind-of-tourists/" author="Scott H. Greenfield" source="Simple Justice">Only The Right Kind Of Tourists</a> <bq>So the Trump administration has come up with a proposal to make visitors from our friendly nations, those developed countries eligible for the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, subject to a social media colonoscopy.<bq>The program currently requires tourists from eligible countries to fill out a short application and pay a $40 fee before coming to the United States for up to 90 days without a visa. While the application has allowed visitors to list their social media accounts since 2016, this newest proposal will make doing so mandatory. In addition to submitting years of posts for analysis, prospective tourists may also have to provide years of telephone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, and information about family members.</bq>If ever there was a way to make people not want to come to the United States, this is it. </bq> <bq>More to the point, however, is what normal, decent, tourist or business visitor would expose his and his family’s world to the United States government in this way. Is it really worth it just to come here, or does this onerous and stunningly intrusive burden mean that no sane foreign traveler would tolerate providing this cornucopia of personal information just to watch a soccer match in person that he could watch on his telly?</bq> <hr> <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2025/12/11/fbi-is-making-an-enemies-list-and-most-corporate-media-didnt-even-check-it-once/" author="Jim Naureckas" source="Scheer Post">FBI Is Making an Enemies List—and Most Corporate Media Didn’t Even Check It Once</a> <bq>he Trump FBI is drawing up an enemies list that could encompass well over half the US public: Do you “advance…opposition to law and immigration enforcement”? Do you have “extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders”? Show an “adherence to radical gender ideology,” meaning you think trans people exist? Do you exhibit (what the Trump administration would interpret as) “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism” or “anti-Christianity”? Do you display “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion and morality”?</bq> <hr> <a href="https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israels-biggest-con-trick-hiding-the-true-numbers-it-has-killed-in-gaza/" author="Jonathan Cook" source="ZNetwork">Israel’s Biggest Con Trick: Hiding The True Numbers It Has Killed In Gaza</a> <bq>[...] the biggest con trick is that Israel has successfully penned us all into a “debate”, one entirely divorced from reality, that relates only to those killed directly by its bombs and gunfire. The truth is that far, far larger numbers of people in Gaza have been actively killed by Israel not through these direct means but through what statisticians refer to as “indirect” methods. These people were killed by Israel destroying their homes and leaving them with no shelter. By Israel destroying their water and electricity supplies and their sanitation systems. By Israel levelling their hospitals. By Israel starving them. By Israel creating the perfect conditions for disease to spread. The list of ways Israel is killing people in Gaza goes on and on. Imagine your own societies levelled in the way Gaza has been. How long would your elderly parents survive in this hellscape? How well would your diabetic child fare, or your sister with asthma, or your brother with cancer? How well would you cope with catching pneumonia, or even a common cold, if you hadn’t had more than one small meal a day for months on end? How would your wife deal with a difficult childbirth if there were no anaesthetics, or no hospital nearby, or a barely functioning hospital overwhelmed with victims from Israel’s latest bombing run. And what would be the chances of your baby surviving if its mother could produce no milk from her starvation diet? And if you could not give the baby formula feed because Israel was blocking supplies from entry into the enclave? And if, anyway, the contaminated water supply could not be mixed into the formula powder? None of these kinds of deaths are included in the figure of 70,000.</bq> <bq>The UN’s child protection agency, Unicef, reports that less than a quarter of aid trucks are getting into Gaza, past Israel’s continuing starvation blockade, despite Israeli commitments agreed as part of the “ceasefire”. Apparently, this doesn’t register as a gross ceasefire violation. It goes unnoticed. Unicef reports further that in October alone, at the start of the “ceasefire”, nearly 18,000 new mothers and babies had to be hospitalised in Gaza from acute malnutrition.</bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvYAqC0_HXI" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/IvYAqC0_HXI" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Some More News | Cody Johnston" caption="George W. Bush Was A Bad President And Guy"> This is an excellent, accurate, reasonably complete, and entertainingly sarcastically presented biography of George W. Bush, taking us from his nepo-baby upbringing in the business world, to his machinated governorship, to his appointment to president in a stop-the-steal decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. From there, 9/11 and the cavalcade of awfulness that ensued. That takes a while. Then there's Katrina, during which cops were shooting minorities left and right, the entire response was militarized as it were an occupation of a colony, while completely incompetent administrators said and did horrible things. Throughout: <bq>Boy, why does all of this sound so familiar?</bq> <bq><pre>0:00:00 - Introduction 0:00:50 - Remember W? 0:04:25 - Growing A Bush 0:14:11 - Starting The Steal 0:28:07 - The War On Terror. The Torture. And The Truthiness. 0:58:21 - George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black People 1:09:24 - George W. Bush Is An A-Hole</pre></bq> This is part 1 of 2. <h id="journalism">Journalism & Media</h> <a href="https://www.racket.news/p/democrats-press-gloss-over-original" source="Racket News" author="Matt Taibbi">Democrats, Press Gloss Over Original "Double Tap" Operations</a> <bq>The piece explained that British and Pakistani journalists had counted 50 civilians had died in recent “follow-up strikes” that sources on the ground claimed were intended to kill rescuers and first responders. The Times report elicited a bizarre non-denial denial from Barack Obama’s White House, in which an unnamed spokesman said we should “wonder” about “misinformation” coming from “elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and help Al Qaeda succeed.”</bq> Sound familiar? Some of us have been listening to and hearing this kind of shit for decades. It doesn't matter which actual people are in the U.S. administration---they all act and talk the same, for all practical purposes. This kind of bullshit precedes Trump, and it will probably outlive him. <bq>The Trump/Hegseth scandal grew out of multiple different strains of recent American military history. One involves those prior “targeted killing” and bomb operations mainly across the Middle East that killed somewhere between 22,000 and 48,000 people from 9/11 through 2021 (a former CIA analyst who oversaw some of these operations put the number closer to 60,000). Another is in Barack Obama’s abortive Libyan campaign from 2011, which in some ways bore the closest resemblance to Trump’s Venezuelan mess. That brief display of what one lawyer called “total lawlessness” was a ghastly bloodletting involving high-powered weapons and essentially defenseless targets, deployed for questionable if not outright fraudulent reasons by another White House acting unilaterally. Like Trump’s White House, Obama’s deputies concluded his campaign fell short of the definition of “hostilities,” among other things because “there are no troops on the ground” and “Libyans cannot meaningfully exchange fire with American forces.”</bq> It wasn't hostile because the prey had no way of fighting back. Your own actions cannot be considered hostile, a priori. <bq>We documented really shocking killing from both Democratic and Republican administrations. When you look at the data we captured, it wasn’t that different than what these guys are doing in Venezuela. These strikes are more efficient, but they’re really being brazen about it. It’s like the mask is off.</bq> <bq>Mustafa Qadri: My personal opinion is that it’s very clear double taps are an act of terrorism. The U.S. military is not the first to do a double tap. It’s been done for many years. The only reason they are doing it is they are trying to convey a sense of terror.</bq> Like napalm! Napalm was an indiscriminate killing of so many people. Mining the entire countryside. It's all the same thing. It is an impunity to kill whatever the fuck moves or doesn't move or is considered an enemy. Or whatever. They barely even care enough, probably. Just kill, kill, kill. And make a ton of money while doing it. <bq>Mustafa Qadri: It’s really hard for a lot of liberal commentators to appreciate this. Trump is seen as a tough guy by a lot of non-western audiences. When he acts beyond the law, it is affirming for a lot of people that this is the way you deal with terrorists and your enemies. Many see Trump as out of control, but the U.S. is still seen as the main global power, so the actions of the Trump administration are still very influential. I don’t think the western audiences realize it’s norm-setting. It sends the message that everyone can do this.</bq> They've never experienced blowback it's been almost 25 years. They'll cry when troops are attacked. Imagine if valuable civilians were to be killed by non-Americans. <bq>Mustafa Qadri: What Trump is doing is expanding on something that already existed. That’s something important for people to realize. As an international lawyer, I’m a huge fan of the role the U.S. played in setting up the international legal system. The Americans were the ones who insisted people go to trial. That system is being systematically dismantled, and it’s really a worrying development.</bq> <h id="economy">Economy & Finance</h> <a href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2025/12/04/the-biggest-heist-in-america-is-being-sold-as-a-gift-to-children/" source="CounterPunch" author=" Sean Carlton">The Biggest Heist in America Is Being Sold as a Gift to Children</a> <bq>The Dell announcement isn’t about helping children. It’s about normalizing a future where the only people who can fix failing systems are the same corporations and billionaires who helped break them. The government could’ve built real support for families. It could’ve raised wages, stabilized housing, funded public education, or given parents actual resources instead of symbolic ones. Instead it built a program where kids get locked into market accounts, and then it waited for a billionaire to swoop in and finish the job. That isn’t policy. It isn’t progress. It’s the privatization of the public good. A one-time $250 deposit isn’t lifting anyone out of anything. At best it turns children into unwilling investors in a financial system that’s already eaten their parents alive.</bq> <bq>Americans have been trained to applaud the spectacle. They forget to ask why one of the richest men in the country gets to decide how twenty-five million children experience their first introduction to money. They forget to ask why the richest people get public praise for giving back pennies compared to what they extract. They forget to ask why children need investment accounts instead of stable housing, food, medical care, and schools that aren’t falling apart.</bq> <bq>Their “gift” enriches the very companies that helped create the inequality this program is pretending to solve. It’s a perfect loop. The wealthy get to look generous while reinforcing the machine that made them wealthy. The public gets a story about hope. The corporations get the money.</bq> <bq>The cruelty of it is that it works. It works because people are tired. Everything’s expensive. Everything feels unstable. Families will take whatever crumbs show up because the alternative is nothing. They’re told this is opportunity. They’re told this is investment. They’re told this is how you get ahead. They don’t ask why a country with the wealth of America is giving children numbers in an account instead of conditions they can survive.</bq> <bq>The real collapse is right here. It looks like a billionaire being framed as a public institution. It looks like a government outsourcing its responsibilities to private wealth and calling it innovation. It looks like children being turned into financial products. It looks like the normalization of scarcity. It looks like the public begging for symbolic solutions because no one can imagine real ones anymore.</bq> <bq>A country that expects billionaires to fund children has already chosen its future. It’s a future where the public good is a privilege and every solution is a product. It’s a future designed to keep people grateful for scraps. The Dells aren’t giving children a head start. They’re giving everyone a warning.</bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW8-XlxR_YM" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/vW8-XlxR_YM" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="India & Global Left" caption="Alex Krainer: Capitalism vs Socialism — A Surprising Friendly Debate"> <bq>The strategy of European elites is war. It's war. It's really simple. [...] I don't think it's a question of capitalism. I don't think it's even a matter of left versus right. It's really a matter of fraud because the monetary system that we have is fraudulent. But it's not just fraudulent on the right side. It's fraudulent everywhere.</bq> At 17:00, <bq>Alex: You know, people are really struggling [in the former Yugoslavia]. They're struggling to meet their bills compared to the way life was 20, 30 years ago. It's radically worse. I see hundreds of reports in social media where people say, "How can this be?" You know, "I make more more money than I did 20 years ago, but 20 years ago, I felt comfortable. Today, I'm ridden with anxiety because I can't arrive to the end of my bills."</bq> At 22:00, <bq>Alex: So, what happens then? You get social pressures. You get risk of social revolts, potentially revolutions and civil wars because people say enough. It's not that the economy doesn't work. The economy does work. The economy is still productive because, you know, the land still grows wheat and rice and potatoes and chickens still grow and cows still grow and they still give milk. All of that is there. Mechanics can still fix cars and bakers still bake breads and dentists still do their thing. Let's say the productive capacities of an economy are there. They're intact. They work. It's the means of exchange that dry up. So, you know, if a baker can't pay for the shipment of wheat, then the farmer will stop delivering the wheat and the baker will close down and go bankrupt. Not because people don't need bread or there's no wheat or the baker doesn't know how to bake bread anymore. It's because the money grinds down to a halt. That's the problem in all cases. So, when this starts to happen, there's a risk of social revolt. And then the people who are at the top echelon of a society, the people who are in power, they reckon, okay, so we might end up with a revolution on our hand and we might all get guillotined in the public square. So we need an external enemy. So they start saying the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. You know, this is what's happening in Europe. And so, what happens then is that you take, fighting-age males, military-age males, which are probably the biggest source of risk for you, and you ship them off to a foreign battlefield where you, you know, the idea is to sacrifice them in large numbers so that they are no longer a risk to you. And, at the same time, you create conditions in which you can deal with all opposition in a very radical way because, you know, like if you're engaged in a foreign war anybody who government can be put away because they can accuse you of being unpatriotic. They can accuse you of aiding and abetting the enemy, of being a Russian agent or something like this. So they can clean up the their opposition. They can justify everything by the foreign war. You know, if there's no more food in supermarkets or there's no medicines in pharmacies and you can't get an appointment with your doctor and you're not receiving your pension, you're not receiving your salary. Well, they can all say like, well, you know, it's a shared sacrifice. We have to defend our nation and, you know, everything is the Russians' fault. And so, they kind of deflect the blame from themselves to the foreign enemy and then after the big war they get a blank slate. You know they get a clean slate and they say oh now we need to rebuild the country and so we will provide credits for reconstruction and development. And then they put the surviving population back to work. The credit cycle starts from scratch and they perpetuate their dominance over society for another cycle of history. And so I think that's basically what their strategy is at the moment.</bq> At 33:00, <bq>Alex: If you look at all countries in the world, socialist and capitalist, you will see that their budget deficits always have these tendencies and the quantity of debt in the system always grows and always faster than the output. So the difference between the capitalist and socialist systems is the way the government enters as a participant. And so in what we call socialist systems, most of the government spending goes bottom-up, meaning people get generous benefits with their employment. They get relatively more generous salaries, pensions, public workers have good salaries, governments invest in health care, education, public spaces, safety and so on. The effect of that is that investment and spending decisions are made bottom-up. Meaning people have money to spend in shops, in restaurants, on trips, tourism, travel, cars, houses, you know, furniture, stuff like that. In what we call capitalist systems, government largesse flows top-down which means that the governments give large amounts of money to big pharma, big oil, military-industrial-complex, big agriculture, and so on. And the problem with that is, that you're empowering corporate players and then corporate players become political participants because they now define employment, they define spending. Some of that money goes back through lobbying to the political representatives and then by funding big military industrial complex you're even seeding the seeds of fascism.</bq> At 36:45, <bq>Alex: I'm not saying that both systems are equally bad. I'm saying that both systems have the same problem that they need to address because it renders them unsustainable. I do think that the socialist approach is better. [...] People never complain if the government gives money to large agricultural corporations and military-industrial complex because they can always say foreign threats---the Chinese are coming, the Russians are coming---and, you know, nobody complains if they give money to big oil, if they give money to big pharma, because public health emergencies, blah blah...you know, they they never complain. But they complain bitterly if like a woman who has five children, gets money from the government, and she didn't deserve it. And I think, why? Because if that woman, let's say you're a you're an entrepreneur, you own a restaurant. If that woman has money, she will be your customer. If she has no money, she ends up on the street and she will end up a burden to you because somehow you're going to have to take care of her and her children. And so I do think that the bottom-up approach is better because it creates better social cohesion, a more diverse economy.</bq> <bq>Jyotishman: From your clarification, [...] what you mean is that both systems have contradictions which need to be managed.</bq> At about 43:00, <bq>Alex: Keynes worked for the establishment that, in Britain, basically ambushed the world with this monetary system. Not ambushed, [...] but which kind of forced this monetary system on all the rest of the world. And you know, today if you want to try a different monetary system, you're going to find yourself under sanctions and you're going to be cut off from the world trade. So, everybody has to accept this because, ultimately, it benefits the western financial banking cartels which are present pretty much everywhere around the world.</bq> <h id="science">Science & Nature</h> <a href="https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec9014" source="Science" author="Emily Riehl">Mathematics is hard for mathematicians to understand too</a> <bq>Recent progress on the Langlands Program, a challenging vision suggesting how to connect some seemingly distant mathematical fields, has led to a great expansion in the global corpus of mathematical knowledge. But the objectives of this program, laid out in 1967 by mathematician Robert Langlands, are known to be “fiendishly difficult to describe.” Last summer's resolution of one of the goals, known as the geometric Langlands conjecture, consisted of a series of five papers totaling almost a 1000 pages. But the celebration of this milestone was tempered by the realization of how few people can credibly claim to understand any of it at all.</bq> <bq>The Mathematics Subject Classification taxonomy divides the field into 63 primary classifications partitioned further into 529 subfields, each of which has developed its own specialized language used to state and prove technical theorems and that requires years to learn.</bq> <bq>The lack of relevant personal experience contributes to the difficulty in understanding something like the Langlands Program, where expert mathematicians in different fields find it difficult not only to understand the solutions but to even grasp what questions are being asked.</bq> <bq>Perhaps too much energy has been devoted to new discoveries, no matter how obscure, with not enough effort reserved for improving ways to make sense of what is already known.</bq> <bq>Thurston, who like Venkatesh focuses on the human experience, suggests that technical mathematical jargon must be supplemented by an alternate effort to develop “mathematical language that is effective for the radical purpose of conveying ideas to people who don’t already know them.”</bq> <bq>As Venkatesh concludes in his lecture about the future of mathematics in a world of increasingly capable AI, “We have to ask why are we proving things at all?” Thurston puts it like this: there will be a “continuing desire for human understanding of a proof, in addition to knowledge that the theorem is true.”</bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBluLfX2F_k" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/HBluLfX2F_k" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Veritasium" caption="You've (Likely) Been Playing The Game of Life Wrong"> The title of this video is a silly nod to the algorithm. This video is actually a deep dive into the universal prevalence of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_law">power law</a>. <bq>In statistics, a power law is a functional relationship between two quantities, where a relative change in one quantity results in a relative change in the other quantity proportional to the change raised to a constant exponent: one quantity varies as a power of another. The change is independent of the initial size of those quantities. For instance, the area of a square has a power law relationship with the length of its side, since if the length is doubled, the area is multiplied by 22, while if the length is tripled, the area is multiplied by 32, and so on.</bq> The video shows the applicability to probability and a plethora of scientific applications. <pre> 00:00 What is a power law? 04:31 Expected Values 08:49 The St. Petersburg Paradox 11:37 Outliers Dominate Averages 15:23 Fractals and Power Laws 19:28 Self-Organized Criticality 24:08 Why do we light controlled forest fires? 26:40 How We Can Predict Earthquakes 32:11 Critical Systems and Universality 36:31 How Some Businesses Are Built On Power Laws 39:30 What game are you playing? Normal or power? </pre> At 39:00, <bq>All these domains follow the same principle that Pareto identified over 100 years ago where the majority of the wealth goes to the richest few. The entire game is defined by the rare runaway hits. But not every industry can play this game. Like, if you're running a restaurant, you need to fill tables night after night. You can't have one particularly busy summer evening that brings in millions of customers to make up for a bunch of quiet nights. Over a year, the busy nights and quiet ones balance out and you're left with the average. [...] It really pays to know what kind of world or what kind of game you're playing.</bq> Oh, now the title makes more sense. 🙃 <h id="art">Art, Literature, Music, & Cinema</h> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgqaxMOKfnI" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/WgqaxMOKfnI" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Billy Strings" caption="Tiny Desk Concert"> I'd only heard of him a few months ago. He's brilliant. This is the kind of music people should glom onto from the U.S.---not rehashed pop-country, now even AI-produced, for God's sake. And it's not just him: his whole band is fantastic. The third song in the set list is an instrumental, with mandolin, violin, and then a guitar solo. From the description: <bq>It's rare these days for an artist to ask for fewer microphones, but after warming up in our space, Billy Strings did just that. Surrounded by his band, the bluegrass virtuoso brings back the spirit of Tiny Desk's early days. We capture, in his own words, "the way these instruments are meant to sound." "We've been lucky to play a lot of cool venues," Strings says, pausing to reflect. "But this one's different. It has that same soul to it because — I've seen so many amazing performances that happened right here and I kind of believe that love and spirit kind of soaks into this environment, so just standing here feels like a special thing." Strings found his roots in bluegrass from his dad. Since then, he's managed to expand the genre to new audiences, amassing a following of super fans — self-proclaimed "billy goats" — that sometimes schedule their lives around his tour. Once you meet Strings, it's not hard to understand why: He's a humble musician and a sorcerer of his craft, wielding a guitar as if it's a part of him. SET LIST:<ol> "Red Daisy" "My Alice" "Malfunction Junction" "Gild the Lily"</ol></bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIStD15SNM8" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/QIStD15SNM8" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="The Chris Hedges Report" caption="The Toxic Pursuit of Greatness in Chess (w/ Brin-Jonathan Butler)"> This was a wonderful 55-minute discussion of the pathology and sociopathy amongst chess players, then of boxers, then of people who aspire to win at all costs. They discuss how the people who end up being "winners" are absolute psychos who are wholly unaware of themselves. <bq author="Brin-Jonathan Butler" source="The Grandmaster">I think that chess Itself is a very troubling game for geniuses and for ordinary people, and perhaps much more for ordinary people," he told me. "The analogy I would make is to Plato's Republic: Socrates talks about how philosophy is important for young people to work on, but that young people should first have experience with the more practical side of life, adult life, adult responsibility, and then when they are worldly and generally experienced, then they're ready for philosophy.</bq> <bq author="Brin-Jonathan Butler" source="The Grandmaster">Or, rather, they are raised to the level of life experience that makes them worthy of philosophy. Philosophy is too real and too perfect. If you study philosophy when you're young, it spoils you for experience, which spoils experience for you. It actually makes you think. the realm of ideas and the realm of books is better, worthier, than the realm of life that one experiences. A young person who has an imagination and energy and is given good books of philosophy as a teenager will never go out and live. And that is terrible. And chess is the same.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://en.stryko.sk/brother-may-i-have-some-oats-transcribed-text/" author="" source="">Brother, may I have some oats – transcribed text</a> <bq>Brother: May I have some oats? Other Brother: No, I am starving, brother. Brother: As am I. Other Brother: Brother, the tall, skinny figure has thrown the oats at me! Me, brother! I believe they have taken a liking to me. Brother: No, brother. I have seen this before. [...] From my experiences, I have learned that they will give extra oats to one of us before taking them into the Shed of No Return. They will do terrible things in that shed, brother. Other Brother: Lies! That shed is where the chosen ones go to dine with our tall, skinny Gods. You are a fool, brother, and you shall be left behind in the mud with your backward ideas. Brother: No, brother, you must believe me! Share with me the oats, and you shall not reach the desired girth for the tall, skinny ones. They will spare your life, brother. Other Brother: Aha! So this was all a plan to steal my oats? You truly are despicable, brother. I will not trust your lies. Brother: Brother, when they took me outside the reaches of the pointy fences, into the Roaring Beast, and away over the horizon, I saw it. I was taken to a gathering of these tall, skinny figures. They paraded me around, brother, and I saw the truth. I saw the tall, skinny ones consuming our flesh. I could not have been mistaken, brother. The smell of the flesh was surely one of us. They suspended the flesh above a fire and let it burn before consuming it. They did not just consume it either, brother—they took pleasure from this. Their mouths curved a wicked smile, and some even let out moans of satisfaction from consuming our flesh. Brother, the figures are consumers. They are no different than the furry red demon that consumed and terrorized us in the feathered ones. Other Brother: Your story amuses me, brother, but does not convince me. I shall have these oats myself and dine with the tall, skinny Gods. Brother: I am sorry for you, brother. Your eyes cannot take the blinding light of the truth, and you scurry back to your cave. I shall take care of your spawn once they consume you, brother—as they have consumed your lover, our father, our mother, and many more.</bq> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7FIiYsVy3U" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/O7FIiYsVy3U" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="burialgoods" caption="brother may I have some oats"> The author of the video thanks Joe Capo, who is the <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/editorials/guides/what-does-brother-may-i-have-some-oats-mean-the-meme-of-two-hungry-pigs-explained" author="" source="Know Your Meme">originator of the meme</a>. I'd missed the whole thing when it happened but it has a strange appeal. <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WliFJKbzF7M" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/WliFJKbzF7M" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Professor Asma's Guide To Unusual Knowledge" caption="Writing, Acting, and the Untamed Imagination"> Another discussion with Paul Giamatti. <bq>[...] Giamatti: this notion that like you can only be free by being disciplined first. Asma: I mean that's how I work too. To play jazz you better know the scales and the chords because you can't just fucking wing it, you know? [...] But then you do need to get to this place where you are not thinking at all, like you are just acting with a kind of second nature that is also very spontaneous but you've trained up to that like you can't just do that without the training.</bq> <h id="philosophy">Philosophy, Sociology, & Culture</h> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3592DMH-eyM" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/3592DMH-eyM" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Esoterica" caption="Was Lilith a Joke? How Bad Translation and Parody Created a Demon"> This guy has 1M subscribers. I've listened to a few of his history lessons. This one's pretty interesting. It's about "Lilith," which for a religious scholar and Diablo fanatic, should be appealing. I like the reason that she was thrown out of the garden of Eden. <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTElCmNkkKc" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/wTElCmNkkKc" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Academy of Achievement" caption="Frank Gehry, Academy Class of 1995, Full Interview"> I just casually listened to this long interview from 2017 but that seems to collect several different interviews from different times. The following stuck out to me, at around 33:00: <bq>On a hunch I tried architecture tracks math takes places and at first I didn't do great in fact I flunked the first class in perspective drawing and it really got me angry so I went back and the next semester and took it in got an A.</bq> <bq>I took a class at night in architectural design and I did really well and I was skipped into second year. I couldn't afford it, but---and they didn't have scholarships for architects---somehow I worked and got through. And, once I got in and I was off to the races, except the first half a second year, my teacher came and called me in and said 'this isn't for you; you're not going to make it,' and somehow I worked through that and that guy works at the airport. We see him every once in a while. He's the teacher but...and he acknowledges his mistake of course but it's, uh, I mean, I just sort of kept going.</bq> <bq>Once I got into it, what got me excited, the beginning of the social issues---I come from a very lefty liberal family---Canada and architecture looked like it was the panacea, you know, you could make housing for the poor and make wonderful cities. City Planning in the future and so on. That was the initial turn-on and, all the way through, so that lasted me all the way through school, actually. When I got out of school and started to hit---I hit the brick wall---that you can't do any of that. That doesn't exist. You can't do it. There's no clients for social housing in America. There's no program, nothing. City Planning? Forget it. I mean, it's a kind of bureaucratic nonsense. As for ideas, it only has two: real estate and politics. So, and I used to say, I don't want to do houses for rich people.</bq> At 01:07:00 <bq>I think that most the world wants to live in the past. I think it's going to catch up with us at some point. And I don't know when that's going to happen. Maybe it's my fantasy. Maybe I want it to, and because I'm tired of it. I think we should start living in the present. Trying to deal with it, it seems like it would be much more positive.</bq> <bq>In architecture, you can't build...I don't think you can build Rockefeller Center today. It represents a different politics, a different ethic, a different idea.</bq> At 01:13:00, <bq>I'm more critical than any of you guys could be but the thing I don't like, is the cliche critic thing. The latest one was on Bilbao. They had a list of all the great buildings of the century and Bilbao's there. And there's a little thing, and it says, it's a great building, of course, it's messy, and, of course, it's wasteful of materials, and egregiously, over-spatial ... very negative. And the person that wrote it, I called the editor and I said prove it. I challenge you to prove it. And why they---that's the kind of stuff that---and the New York Times gal does it all the time---and I think there's a snarky reporting---which you're aware of, I'm sure, that is not appreciated, you know. That doesn't do anybody any good. I mean: be critical. I like to hear people's criticism if it's not snarky, [...] if it's not based on some kind of...I don't know what feeling that's pro-forma...Frank Gehry did the building, therefore it's got to be wasteful, therefore it's got to be expensive. I've tried this in a lecture with business people. I started the lecture, I said, what I'd like to ask the audience...how many people here think my buildings are expensive? Everybody puts up their hand. How many people here think I'm a prima donna? Everybody puts up their hand. OK. Well, both things are not true. So, there is that kind of assumption. That if somebody does something that's free, that they must be expensive. It must be. So, if critics did their homework, then we could have a real discussion. They could disagree with the forms and character, the space, or the direction it took...but get the other facts right.</bq> <h id="technology">Technology & Engineering</h> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHHEOjd0z3s" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/LHHEOjd0z3s" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Computerphile | Ayse Kucukyilmaz" caption="Path Planning for Robotics"> Sense, Plan, Act. She demonstrates the ROS (Robotics OS) software, which visualizes the a robot's view of the world versus where the robot actually is in the world, as well as clouds of particles that represent possibilities. It's pretty neat. Things then settle down into a solid block of writing on computer paper with magic markers to describe algorithms, which is standard fare for Computerphile, and always educational. her <c>A*</c> algorithm diagram got really messy... The plan she shows is for a 2-D plan, where a robot that swims or flies would be in 3-D, which is exponentially more complex. A robot with a manipulator arm that moves in three dimensions as well adds three more layers of exponential complexity. The algorithm is reasonably straightforward and reliable but not particularly scalable. Other algorithms like <c>RRT*</c> have much better diagrams. <hr> In other news, my 4-year-old Apple M1 laptop battery is still capable of squeezing 20 hours of use over 6.5 days. <img src="{att_link}6.5_days_on_battery_on_a_4-year-old_laptop.png" href="{att_link}6.5_days_on_battery_on_a_4-year-old_laptop.png" align="none" caption="6.5 days on battery on a 4-year-old laptop" scale="75%"> <h id="llms">LLMs & AI</h> <a href="https://www.seangoedecke.com/ai-detection/" source="" author="Sean Goedecke">AI detection tools cannot prove that text is AI-generated</a> <bq>A 90% success rate can be surprisingly bad if the base rate is low, as illustrated by the classic <a href="https://tomrocksmaths.com/2021/08/31/bayes-theorem-and-disease-testing/">Bayes’ theorem example</a>. If 10% of essays in a class are AI-written, and your detector is 90% accurate, then only half of the essays it flags will be truly AI-written. If an AI detection tool thinks a piece of writing is AI, you should treat that as “kind of suspicious” instead of conclusive proof.</bq> <bq>[...] it was easier to train a classifier on the logits themselves: they pass each candidate document through a bunch of simple LLMs, record how much each LLM “agreed” with the text, then train their classifier on that data. DNA-GPT takes an even simpler approach: they truncate a candidate document, regenerate the last half via</bq> <bq>[...] they pass each candidate document through a bunch of simple LLMs, record how much each LLM “agreed” with the text, then train their classifier on that data. DNA-GPT takes an even simpler approach: they truncate a candidate document, regenerate the last half via frontier LLMs, and then compare that with the actual last half.</bq> <bq>I ran one of my blog posts through JustDone, which assessed them as 90% AI generated and offered to fix it up for the low, low price of $40 per month. These tools don’t say this outright, but of course the “humanizing” process involves passing your writing through a LLM that’s either prompted or fine-tuned to produce less-LLM-sounding content. I find this pretty ironic. There are probably a bunch of students who have been convinced by one of these tools to make their human-written essay LLM-generated, out of (justified) paranoia that a false-positive would get them in real trouble with their school or university.</bq> <bq>Even the AI labs themselves would like to pretend that AI detection is easy and reliable, since it would relieve them of some of the responsibility they bear for effectively wrecking the education system.</bq> <bq>I know students who are second-guessing how they write in order to sound “less like AI”, or who are recording their keystrokes or taking photos of drafts in order to have some kind of evidence that they can use against false positives.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/12/hype-artificial-intelligence-vc-capital" source="Jacobin" author="Hagen Blix">Don’t Believe the Hype — or Doom — About AI</a> <bq>The seeming ineffectiveness of anti-hype (no matter how correct the anti-hype may be) suggests that Whittaker’s little sidestep is important. Instead of playing whack-a-hype-mole, she suggests that the aim of critique should be “understanding the growing chasm between the narrative of techno-optimists and the reality of our tech-encumbered world.” The promises of a technology differ from its real effects, and the gap between those two seems to grow ever more pronounced. Surely hype, PR, and constant over-promising are part of this. But is hype all there is to the chasm? And why is there a chasm in the first place? Why, Whittaker encourages us to ask, are the promises of technology always so loud and always so hollow?</bq> <bq>[...] the state department is using AI to mass scan social media posts, in order to revoke visas of those who engage in the “wrong” kind of speech.</bq> I've been writing for years that this would happen. It was only a matter of time. The desire was there and vociferously expressed. It just took some time for technology to catch up. Having spent trillions over decades to bring those technologies into existence helped a lot. <bq>Capital can indeed decrease those costs by increasing productivity. But it can also decrease those costs by reducing not the labor time needed but simply its cost to capital by depressing wages. One may be socially desirable (more goods in less time) and the other one may be a force for immiseration (less pay in the same amount of time) — but to capital they’re basically the same thing.</bq> I would emphasize that this analysis is so purely theoretical as to be useless because the labor pool is also responsible for consuming the goods. Lower wages means less buying power means less income. The tactic works only in the short term, in that you can benefit from depressed wages and then leave the market before consumption collapses. Or you build a culture of private debt to artificially fuel consumption through a medium term. You are still killing the host, though, just a little more slowly. <bq>Why does VC produce this particular discrepancy between promise and reality? Because, like all capital, it sees the world through ledger books. There is no chasm, as far as they’re concerned — their wage costs are reduced and all the numbers are in the black. They literally can’t tell the difference.</bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcPthlvzMY8" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/RcPthlvzMY8" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="The Daily Show" caption="Ronny Chieng Investigates the Promises of AI, the Most Expensive Circle Jerk Ever"> <bq>So this is the most expensive circle jerk of all time?</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/premium-the-ways-the-ai-bubble-might-burst/" author="Ed Zitron" source="Where's Your Ed At?">The Ways The AI Bubble Might Burst</a> <bq>So, OpenAI's big plan is to improve ChatGPT, make the image generation better, make people like the models better, improve rankings, make it faster, and make it answer more stuff. I think it's fair to ask: what the fuck has OpenAI been doing this whole time if it isn't "make the model better" and "make people like ChatGPT more"?</bq> <bq>For some reason, Anthropic is hailed as some sort of "efficient" competitor to OpenAI, at least based on what both The Information and Wall Street Journal have said, yet it appears to be raising and burning just as much as OpenAI. Why did a company that's allegedly “reducing costs” have to raise $13 billion in September 2025 after raising $3.5 billion in March 2025, and after raising $4 billion in November 2024? Am I really meant to read stories about Anthropic hitting break even in 2028 with a straight face? Especially as other stories say Anthropic will be cash flow positive “as soon as 2027.” And if this company is so efficient and so good with money, why does it need another $15 billion, likely only a few months after it raised $13 billion? Though I doubt the $15 billion round closes this year, if it does, it would mean that Anthropic would have raised $31.5 billion in 2025 — which is, assuming the remaining $22.5 billion comes from SoftBank, not far from the $40.8 billion OpenAI would have raised this year.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://gricha.dev/blog/the-highest-quality-codebase" author="Greg Pstrucha" source="">The highest quality codebase</a> <bq>Tests alone went from 10k to 60k LOC! We went 20k -> 84k on "improvements" to the quality of the codebase. We went from around 700 to a whooping 5369 tests. In the original project I had e2e tests using actual simulator - they are pretty important to make sure that the coding agent has closed feedback loop, but in the process of improving the quality they seemed to have been forgotten ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Btw. we went from ~1500 lines of comments to 18.7k.</bq> <h id="programming">Programming</h> <a href="https://sinclairtarget.com/blog/2025/08/thoughts-on-go-vs.-rust-vs.-zig/" source="" author="Sinclair Target">Thoughts on Go vs. Rust vs. Zig</a> <bq>Both Rust and Zig have a slice type, but these are fat pointers and fat pointers only. In Go, a slice is a fat pointer to a contiguous sequence in memory, but a slice can also grow, meaning that it subsumes the functionality of Rust’s <c>Vec<t></c> type and Zig’s <c>ArrayList</c>. Also, since Go is managing your memory for you, Go will decide whether your slice’s backing memory lives on the stack or the heap; in Rust or Zig, you have to think much harder about where your memory lives.</bq> <bq>If something goes wrong in your program, immediate termination is great actually! Because the alternative, if the error isn’t caught, is that your program crosses over into a twilight zone of unpredictability, where its behavior might be determined by which thread wins the next data race or by what garbage happens to be at a particular memory address. Now you have heisenbugs and security vulnerabilities. Very bad.</bq> <bq>The idea seems to be that you can run your program enough times in the checked release modes to have reasonable confidence that there will be no illegal behavior in the unchecked build of your program. That seems like a highly pragmatic design to me.</bq> These are classic debug/release, which have been available in so many other environments I've used over the last 30 years that it seems odd to discuss them in a tone that makes it seem like they might be unique to Go. I've had exactly this configuration in Borland Pascal, Delphi, Visual C++, Eiffel, Java, and C#, to name just a few. It's perhaps in dynamic environments, like JS, TS, Python, and so on, where this is not standard practice. But then, there are so many, many things that software developers have learned painstakingly over the years that have either not been adopted by <iq>Quereinsteiger</iq><fn> or that have been slowly and painfully reinvented as if there weren't myriad blogs, essays, articles, book, videos, and interactive tutorials online about those very same things. <bq>OOP has been out of favor for a while now and both Go and Rust eschew class inheritance. But Go and Rust have enough support for other object-oriented programming idioms that you could still construct your program as a graph of interacting objects if you wanted to. Zig has methods, but no private struct fields and no language feature implementing run-time polymorphism (AKA dynamic dispatch), even though <c>std.mem.Allocator</c> is dying to be an interface. As best as I can tell, these exclusions are intentional; Zig is a language for data-oriented design.</bq> <bq>Zig has a fun, subversive feel to it. It’s a language for smashing the corporate class hierarchy (of objects). It’s a language for megalomaniacs and anarchists. I like it. I hope it gets to a stable release soon, though the Zig team’s current priority seems to be rewriting all of their dependencies. It’s not impossible they try to rewrite the Linux kernel before we see Zig 1.0.</bq> <hr> <ft>The German word is great for this. It means "person who has made what amounts to a lateral move into a completely different field". That is, they are starting fresh in a new field like software programming but with the benefit of an educational base in many other things. The presumption is that, with some very programming-specific training, they will be up to speed much more quickly.</ft> <hr> <a href="https://deadsimpletech.com/blog/failed_software_projects" source="deadSimpleTech" author="Iris Meredith">Failed software projects are strategic failures</a> <bq>I'd be hard-pressed to think of any projects where the strategic underpinnings of the project are sound, the supporting logistics and suchlike behind the company work as expected and the project simply fails because despite all this being in place, the software engineers assigned to the project just aren't good enough. What usually sinks projects are mistakes like a lack of clarity about what a project is actually meant to achieve for a business, a failure to properly understand requirements, under-resourcing or a failure to provide missing capabilities [...]</bq> <bq>It's unclear to me how the breach initially occurred, but it seems to me much more likely to have been a phishing attack or something similar than a website breach. Already, then the fact that a data breach triggered a focus on the website is questionable: it probably is the case that the website needed a rebuild, but initiating projects with the wrong motivation is risky, as emotive strategy always is: if you wish to improve the security of the BOM's systems, a website overhaul probably isn't your first-order priority.</bq> <bq>The single biggest security hole in the old website, after all, was that it wasn't served over TLS, exposing visitors to a whole host of potential Man-in-the-Middle attacks and other unpleasant things. If the primary focus was on security, this should have been a first-order priority to deal with. It's also very easy: these days you can basically set it up with Caddy and LetsEncrypt in a few minutes, and they could easily have just done that and reverse-proxied to the existing site. Instead, the current website still has a bunch of pages being served over standard HTTP, which means that the most glaring vulnerabilities are still there.</bq> <bq>Drupal is notorious for being full of security vulnerabilities (the CMS advertises itself as providing "enterprise-level security", so of course it fucking is), and is in general a bizarre, Accenture-worthy choice that actively makes the coupling</bq> <bq>[...] the Bureau of Meteorology clearly lacked the domain knowledge to accurately judge whether what they were doing was fit for purpose. They lacked the UX capability to accurately judge whether or not people could find what they needed to on the website, the security expertise to accurately understand their risk model or the software engineering knowledge needed to accurately identify the flaws in their architecture. Lacking all of this knowledge, they decided (as you do) to farm out the work to Accenture, which any competent engineer would have told them to run away from as fast as possible. And of course, without having at least some of that expertise in-house, they found themselves completely unable to identify that Accenture was either incompetent, actively gouging them or both.</bq> <bq>[...] it's easy enough to come up with some vague aim like becoming "AI-forward" or "data-driven" because they're seen as fashionable without giving any thought to how either of those things would look in practice or how they can be put to use to help an organisation achieve its strategic goals.</bq> <bq>In any instance, Clausewitz begins his analysis at the level of policy or statecraft: this is where you decide what your basic goals are, consider your positioning in your environment and look at your strengths and weaknesses as a strategic entity. In the case of a business that's writing some tech, your first sweeping goal is your continued survival as an entity, followed, in almost all cases, by maximising your total profitability.</bq> <bq>These tasks, in industry, more or less correspond to project-level objectives. When describing them, the broad outline should be something along the lines of a) the current state of the area in which your project objective sits, b) the end-state you want, or what you want that area of your organisation to look like once the objective has been achieved and c) what barriers exist to getting from a) to b). There will by definition be barriers: after all, if getting from a) to b) was meaningfully beneficial and there were no barriers to making it happen, it would have already been done. Clausewitz calls this barrier the Centre of Gravity.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://tigerbeetle.com/blog/2025-11-28-tale-of-four-fuzzers/" source="Tiger Beetle" author="Alex Kladov">A Tale Of Four Fuzzers</a> <bq>Most messages exchanged in the process of ring replication are critical: if a single message is lost, then the whole chain of replication unravels until the retry timeout kicks in. This means that network errors are visible as elevated P100 latencies (bad), and, when they happen, we have to run rarely-executed retry code (worse!). Such “cold code” is the preferred habitat for bugs! Ideally, a system should have built-in redundancy such that any operation completes without tripping timeouts even in the presence of errors.</bq> <bq>How do you find the best route? One approach is to build a model of the system. For example, replicas can exchange heartbeat messages, note pairwise latencies, and then solve traveling salesman problem in the resulting small six-node graph to find the most perfect route. This works algorithmically, but relies on a pretty big assumption — that our model of the world is faithful. But imagine, for example, a network with a link with very low latency, but also very low throughput. Using (small) heartbeat messages to measure the link quality would give us a misleading model that breaks down for (much larger) prepares.</bq> <bq>As another example, consider a replica with a very slow disk. Although the ping time for it is very fast, the replication is going to be slow, as <c>.prepare_ok</c> is only sent once the <c>.prepare</c> is durably persistent. Pings only measure network latency, but we also care about storage latency (and throughput).</bq> <bq>This is how ARR works: for every <c>.prepare</c>, the primary tracks how long did it take to replicate (via tracking <c>.prepare_ok</c> messages). Every once in a while, it runs an experiment, where a prepare follows a different, experimental route. If that experimental route is measured to be better than the route we are currently using, the topology is switched. Over time, the cluster converges to the optimal route.</bq> <bq>First, whole system simulation might not be as efficient at exercising deeper layers of the system. For every permutation of events affecting the target layer, the simulator also needs to handle all other events above and below. Furthermore, the permutations you get might be restricted by the way the subsystem is used by the larger system. </bq> He's basically making a case for both unit and integration testing, in a way. Imagine reading this and not trusting that there is meaning behind it. Like if you don't get it, should you bother rereading it to grok it? What if an AI had written it and there's nothing to get? What if a moron wrote it? Is there any difference? <bq>There’s a fairly general recipe for how to fuzz a subsystem in isolation:<ul>Identify all the connections between the target and the rest of the system, abstract the connections behind an interface, supply a stub implementation for fuzzing.</ul></bq> <bq><c>Routing</c> needs to be aware of the view, and the most straightforward way to do that is to inject the entire <c>Replica</c> in <c>init</c>, using banana-gorilla-jungle pattern of Joe Armstrong. The textbook fix would be to abstract “thing with a <c>get_view</c> method” behind an interface and inject that. But that indirection makes the code more verbose and harder to reason about. It also is not enough: not only <c>Routing</c> needs to know the current view, it must actively react to changes in the view! This can be fixed via Observer pattern, but Observer is notorious for destroying readability of control flow and bring a host of problems of its own, including complicated lifetime management, non-deterministic order of execution and potential for feedback loops.</bq> API design is hard. It's all about tradeoffs, so the first thing you have to do is make you peace with having tradeoffs and get down to the business of deciding which ones are acceptable for your design. <bq>The trick to making the code more easily fuzzable is to minimize the interface. You want to get rid of accidental dependencies and leave only the essential ones. And to do that, it helps to apply data-oriented design principles — thinking in terms of input data, output data, and the fundamental data transformation that the system implements.</bq> <bq>[...] all communication is protected by a strong checksum. So it is actually correct to assume that the encoding is valid, modulo bugs. But there might be bugs! And, if there’s a bug somewhere which manifests itself as an invalid encoding, we want to detect that and crash loudly, rather than silently misinterpret valid data.</bq> Yes! You want to test your behavior with bad data. <bq>The purity reason is that, if there exists a seed value that makes the test fail, the test (or the code) is buggy and needs to be fixed! Sure, it’s unfortunate if you discover that bug while working on an unrelated change, but it is less unfortunate than not knowing about the bug at all!</bq> <bq>Zig I think has the best design in this space. It provides you with the <c>std.testing.random_seed</c> value, which is a ready-to-use random seed that is different per run. Crucially, the seed is generated outside of the test process itself and is passed to it on the CLI. It doesn’t matter what happens with the test process. It can explode completely, but the parent process will still print the seed on failure. Conveniently, the seed is printed as a part of a CLI invocation which you can immediately paste into your shell!</bq> <bq>The median tracks the moment in time when a half of the cluster acknowledged the prepare, which, due to flexible quorums, is the moment where it is safe to commit prepare. The median replication time is a proxy for user-visible latency, and it is the primary number we are optimizing for. After we replied to the user, we still want to replicate the prepare to the rest of the cluster, to maximize durability. The maximum replication time directly tracks full replication, and it’s the second most important metric to optimize. Finally, we don’t want the cluster to oscillate between two nearly identical routes simply due to random delay noise, so we also add a fuzz factor and consider close enough numbers to be equal for comparison purposes.</bq> <bq>This is our third fuzzer. It is a whole subsystem positive space fuzzer. It’s actually an exuberantly optimistic fuzzer, as it sets up an ideal lab environment with extremely predictable network latencies. While not realistic, this setup ensures that there’s a clear answer to the question of which route is the best, and that allows us to verify that the algorithm is exactly correct, and not merely crash free This is the catch — in the real system with faults and variants, the notion of optimal route is ill-defined and constantly changes. The acceptance criteria has to be fuzzy in a realistic simulation, but can be very strict in the lab.</bq> <bq>There isn’t much we can check here, but we can check something. At minimum, we should never crash. Additionally, we can check that whatever route we have, it “connects”. That is, if we follow the chain of next_hops, we’ll visit each replica exactly once.</bq> <bq>You want both a whole system fuzzer AND subsystem (minor) fuzzers. Main fuzzer works out the seams between components, while minor fuzzers divide&conquerer the resulting combinatorial explosion. Good fuzzing is tantamount to good interfaces. Interfaces can be extracted mechanically, by introducing indirection whenever a dependency happens. But such a mechanical interface extraction risks ossifying accidental dependencies. Long-term more efficient approach is to think in terms of fundamental input and output data. Sometimes a little copying is better than a little dependency!</bq> <bq>Don’t write fuzzers to find bugs in the code, write fuzzers to find bugs in your understanding of the problem. Positive space fuzzing tries to be realistic, negative space fuzzing tries to be un-realistic.</bq> <hr> <dl> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0Af7y7aMBE" source="YouTube" author="dotnet | Daniel Roth">✅ Build better web apps with Blazor in .NET 10</a> <div>The author talks a bit about large-scale apps in the U.S. and Europe that are built with Maui and, specifically, Maui Blazor. His presentation in this part is quite stilted and seems to have been massaged by the PR department. Like, he says that .NET Aspire makes you <iq>cloud-ready,</iq> which, if you've watched the Aspire talks, is no longer the focus of Aspire, and hasn't been for a while. Deploying to the cloud is possible and well-supported, but it's not the main use case. He does demo some code, though. He shows passkey-integration for Blazor apps. I love how people watch this and think, "this is great; so much easier to log in," whereas I watch it and have just watched someone log in using a 4-digit PIN rather than a safe password. How is this better? It's similar to using a password manager on your device that's always logged in, though. But passkeys are really replicating a bunch of the convenience that you already had with a password manager. Next up is better integration for telemetry, which all appears in the Aspire dashboard. There are also advanced diagnostics, like being able to extract memory dumps and low-level runtime metrics from a running WASM Blazor app using a JavaScript command. The <c>dottrace</c> file can be easily converted to a <c>gcdump</c> file using the <c>dotnet</c> command and can then be analyzed in Visual Studio. This got very technical very quickly and I am here for it. Blazor is also about 20% faster in .NET 10. For developers, <ul> Hot Reload is better; he demonstrates an over 10x speed improvement, from 38s to about 3s. Full-graph form-validation, so complex forms no longer need custom validation. Automated browser/end-to-end testing using <c>WebApplicationFactory</c> but then also launching a full-fledged headless browser and then running Playwright tests against it. Better state-persistence support, with automatic persistence on idle, pause/resume on idle, etc. This all integrates with the telemetry and can be inspected in the Aspire dashboard. </ul> Very interesting and encouraging.</div> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjDRYqtRkWA" source="YouTube" author="dotnet | Nik Karpinsky">🆗 Real-World .NET Profiling with Visual Studio</a> <div>The first four minutes is a discussion of what profiling even is, with a nice workflow diagram for noobs. Next, he grabs the NLog open-source repository and opens the solution in Visual Studio. <bq>Now I want to talk to the profiler agent.</bq> Oh no. He has the agent build a benchmark for a given class. The build fails, though because the solution uses advanced trimming options. Of course, he can figure this out, but if a developer who needs an agent to write benchmarks gets this failure, their day is already over. Copilot is not going to figure something like this out, either. He goes on to generate more code but it's very clear that the agent is a support tool because he brings a lot of knowhow to the table. For example, he sees immediately that the agent's proposed solution never cleared the <c>StringBuilder</c>, which would skew the results toward better initial performance because of thrashing caused by reallocation that affects only subsequent runs. Of course, if you don't notice this, then you have a shit benchmark that you will trust unreservedly because we've all long since stopped doubting the output of our new overlords, LLM agents. What I don't understand is why he keeps having the agent build and run the benchmarks. There are <kbd>hotkeys</kbd> for this. Is the future of Visual Studio just a chat interface? Who is the target audience here? Anyway, his new benchmark finds a problem with <c>Boolean</c> boxing issue and the profiler agent jumps on it, optimizing the code. He shows how tedious the stack trace would be to investigate---which is not tedious at all because he clicks through it quickly---but we're also supposed to ignore how long that little progress circle next to "Analyzing performance trace" in the agent window is spinning. It takes long minutes while the developer has long since explained what the problem is and would likely have fixed it. The agent is really there for people who wouldn't have understood the problem illustrated by the profiling trace and who wouldn't be capable of judging the proposed solution. The solution is wrong. He characterizes it as <iq>the first time I ran it, it came up with a better solution,</iq> but that's a cop-out because the solution shown in the video doesn't compile. He begs the agent to return a boolean instead of a string which, like, duh, because the whole problem was with boxing booleans. But, sure, let's run the profiler by writing <iq>run the benchmark again</iq> in the chat window instead of hitting a f@&king <kbd>hotkey</kbd>. F@&k, people are absolutely in a cult about these agents! <bq>What's really cool here is that the profiler agent was able to have a, um, successful impact on this code and help me contribute to this repository in a meaningful way when I don't really know anything about this repository.</bq> WTF BRO. You just made a video showing non-developers how to pad their GitHub commit histories with performance-improvement PRs that they don't understand (and that might not even work) by spamming open-source projects. I was more excited about this one, and I think it would have worked better without the agent, but he wanted to show the agent.</div> </dl> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1GvSPaRQ-U" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/h1GvSPaRQ-U" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="dotnet | Scott Hanselmann" caption="Cancellation Tokens with Stephen Toub"> This one takes a little while to get rolling, and Hanselmann's "dumb it down for me" gets a little too unbelievable at a couple of points, but it is still interesting to hear Toub's discussion and analysis of this core construct or any asynchronous library. <hr> <a href="https://addyo.substack.com/p/21-lessons-from-14-years-at-google" author="Addy Osmani" source="Elevate">21 Lessons from 14 Years at Google</a> I've condensed the list to the things that I thought were important. <ol> <div> <bq>User obsession means spending time in support tickets, talking to users, watching users struggle, asking “why” until you hit bedrock. The engineer who truly understands the problem often finds that the elegant solution is simpler than anyone expected. The engineer who starts with a solution tends to build complexity in search of a justification.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>First do it, then do it right, then do it better. Get the ugly prototype in front of users. Write the messy first draft of the design doc. Ship the MVP that embarrasses you slightly. You’ll learn more from one week of real feedback than a month of theoretical debate. Momentum creates clarity. Analysis paralysis creates nothing.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>Your code is a strategy memo to strangers who will maintain it at 2am during an outage. Optimize for their comprehension, not your elegance. The senior engineers I respect most have learned to trade cleverness for clarity, every time.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>The punchline isn’t “never innovate.” It’s “innovate only where you’re uniquely paid to innovate.” Everything else should default to boring, because boring has known failure modes.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>The problem isn’t that engineers can’t write code or use AI to do so. It’s that we’re so good at writing it that we forget to ask whether we should.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>Senior engineers spend more time clarifying direction, interfaces, and priorities than “writing code faster” because that’s where the actual bottleneck lives.</bq> </div> <div> I moved this one up from the bottom of Addy's list. <bq>Deleting unnecessary work is almost always more impactful than doing necessary work faster. The fastest code is code that never runs. Before you optimize, question whether the work should exist at all.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>Energy spent on what you can’t change is energy stolen from what you can.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>Senior engineers keep learning “lower level” things even as stacks get higher. Not out of nostalgia, but out of respect for the moment when the abstraction fails and you’re alone with the system at 3am.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>If you think you understand something, try to explain it simply. The places where you stumble are the places where your understanding is shallow. Teaching is debugging your own mental models.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>People stop fighting you not because you’ve convinced them, but because they’ve given up trying [...] Real alignment takes longer. You have to actually understand other perspectives, incorporate feedback, and sometimes change your mind publicly. The short-term feeling of being right is worth much less than the long-term reality of building things with willing collaborators.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>When a leader admits uncertainty, it signals that the room is safe for others to do the same. The alternative is a culture where everyone pretends to understand and problems stay hidden until they explode.</bq> </div> <div> <bq>Expertise comes from deliberate practice - pushing slightly beyond your current skill, reflecting, repeating. For years. There’s no condensed version.</bq> </div> </ol> <hr> <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/a/4621882" author="gte525u" source="StackOverflow" date="2011">What makes Lisp macros so special?</a> The following is not standard Lisp but becomes Lisp with a macro that extends the language with the Python list-comprehension syntax. <bq><code>(lcomp x for x in (range 10) if (= (mod x 2) 0)) (0 2 4 6 8)</code></bq> <bq>You have a mechanism, or a paintbrush, if you like. You can have any syntax you could possibly want. Like Python or C#'s <c>with</c> syntax. Or .NET's LINQ syntax. In end, this is what attracts people to Lisp - ultimate flexibility.</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.w3.org/TR/html-design-principles/#pave-the-cowpaths" author="" source="W3C">2.4. Pave the Cowpaths</a> <bq>When a practice is already widespread among authors, consider adopting it rather than forbidding it or inventing something new. Authors already use the <c> </c> syntax as opposed to <c> </c> in HTML and there is no harm done by allowing that to be used.</bq> <h id="design">Design</h> <a href="https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2025/icons-in-menus/" author="Jim Nielson" source="">Icons in Menus Everywhere — Send Help</a> <bq>What I find really interesting about this change on Apple’s part is how it seemingly goes against their own previous human interface guidelines (as pointed out to me by Peter Gassner). They have an entire section in their 2005 guidelines titled “Using Symbols in Menus”: See what it says?<bq>There are a few standard symbols you can use to indicate additional information in menus…Don’t use other, arbitrary symbols in menus, because they add visual clutter and may confuse people.</bq></bq> This is what the MacOS Apple menu looks like in Tahoe: <img src="{att_link}apple_menu_in_macos_tahoe.webp" href="{att_link}apple_menu_in_macos_tahoe.webp" align="none" caption="Apple Menu in MacOS Tahoe" scale="50%"> 😔😔😔 <h id="fun">Fun</h> <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5700367" author="Jon" source="GoodReads" date="September 5, 2007">A 1-start review of the Holy Bible: New International Version</a> I didn't think that the review was particularly well-written. It didn't really review the book so much as people who love the book, so, you know, it's not really surprising that people crawled out of the woodwork to complain and threaten. Some of his comments are better. <bq>I'd just like to point out that your derisive comments about the Koran and the Rig-Veda do nothing but validate my comments about your holy book. You can scoff at them, you can call them pathetic, but you cannot prove that the Bible makes any more sense or is any more accurate than either of them. You know you're right about your book. They know they're right about their books. Nobody can give any evidence. The only difference between you and me is that I'm not peddling another book or religion as an alternative to this one.</bq> <bq>I suppose the difference between our opinions is that I'm not telling you that if you don't accept mine you'll suffer an eternity of burning in the pits of Hell. In that way I think I'm being more rational about it. The only reason you have for not respecting my opinion is because it's in conflict with yours? That's closed-mindedness at its very finest. An opinion ceases to be an opinion when you form an entire belief system around it and then attempt to force it on others. Give me proof that stands up to logical scrutiny and I'd be more open to seriously evaluating it and then making an informed decision.</bq> My favorite part is the reading history: <img src="{att_link}bible_reading_progress.webp" align="none" caption="BIble reading progress"> <hr> <a href="https://babylonbee.com/news/taylor-swift-hoping-travis-kelce-forgot-theyre-engaged" author="" source="Babylon Bee">Taylor Swift Hoping Travis Kelce Forgot They’re Engaged</a> Most of the Babylon Bee’s headlines these days are mindlessly partisan, shockingly immoral, inhuman, and cruel, or both, but even a blind pig finds a truffle every now and then. <bq>Fortunately, with Kelce being a football player and regularly receiving blows to the head, Swift was holding out hope that he might just forget about the engagement altogether. "He's probably only a couple of hard hits away from remembering what year it is," the source continued. "So it's not out of the realm of possibility that one more shot to the dome away from losing any recollection that they're supposed to get married. She's already got the breakup album written and everything, just in case." When asked about the rumors of the team's struggles causing any relationship troubles, Kelce responded by saying, "I like ham."</bq> <hr> <img src="{att_link}a_lopsided_relationship.webp" href="{att_link}a_lopsided_relationship.webp" align="none" caption="A lopsided relationship" scale="75%"> <bq>Pop Crave: Travis Kelce reveals he and fiancée Taylor Swift have never argued in their 2.5-year relationship. flynn: lowkey I feel like I also wouldn't argue with my partner if our combined net worth was $1.67 billion and her half of that was $1.6 billion</bq> <hr> <a href="https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/dunno-2" author="Zach Weinersmith" source="SMBC">Dunno 2</a> <img src="{att_link}what_influencers_think_people_who_don_t_live_online_think.webp" href="{att_link}what_influencers_think_people_who_don_t_live_online_think.webp" align="none" caption="What Influencers think people who don't live online think" scale="75%"> <bq>I dunno...some days I wish my life could be an endless public performance designed to sell cosmetics and nutritional supplements.</bq> Hover text: <bq>The fantasy of reacting to reactions to cultural ephemera grows more vivid every night until he can bear it no longer.</bq> Red-button text: <bq>Oh! Maybe I could filter my own appearance with AI, so that even my superficiality is false, completing a monstrous symmetry in which I become both hollow and surfaceless, thus made nothing by my own strivings.</bq> <hr> <media href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EvQmncHGK0" src="https://www.youtube.com/v/6EvQmncHGK0" source="YouTube" width="560px" author="Kubotube Makers" caption="【じゃんけん】最後に何が出るのか予想しよう！ピタゴラスイッチ！(Rock-Paper-Scissors! Predict what will come out last! Pythagoras Switch!)"> A lovely Rube-Goldberg marble run. 1m18s.