As a species, we’re gonna spend 2.7 trillion dollars on the military. The generation born in the 1880’s had the right idea. You can punish politicians by forcing them to talk to each other in conference rooms, and keep young people off the killing fields. Win-Win. news.un.org/en/story/202...

I still giggle when I tap my knee and it simply kicks. I’m not consciously causing that reaction. It’s so simple. I came to associate the political term reactionary with simple and unconscious. The fear-to-change response akin to patellar response. “Grrrrr! I’m angry that I’m afraid, grrrrrr!”

All along I thought that if we only knew better, we’d do better. Access to knowledge doesn’t seem to be a bottleneck. So what’s the brake on the system? What’s the bottleneck?

Having read 1929, the stupid shit they were doing 1921-1929 in stocks, with the self-dealing, grifting, plungering is awefully like the current era in crypto. Every generation is exceptional though. And it’ll never happen to them. It’s different this time!

Merry Christmas tree nebula!

“To make a long story short, the Second Bill was spurred by a recognition that the wealthy, at least as much as the poor, receive help from government and from the benefits that it bestows” Banger after banger after banger.

Year 1 data on congestion pricing in Manhattan… * Vehicle traffic: -11% * Foot traffic: +3.4% * Storefront vacancy: -0.9% * Pollution: -22% * Revenue for mass transit: $548M So YES this has been a huge success.

“If the problem lies in a lack of information, the standard economic prescription is the same as the behaviorally informed one: fix the label and provide that information so that consumers can easily understand it.”

“In Hayek’s view, “The only question here is whether in the particular instance the advantages gained are greater than the social costs that they impose.”9”

Excited to have just finished this pre-analysis plan with @larahankeln.bsky.social, @johannesbrehm.bsky.social, and Henri. It will be interesting to see which, if any, of our predictions will be borne out by the data. More on that in the new year. In the meanwhile, let me tell you about our theory.

The Competition Bureau hates it! Check out this one weird trick winners use to unconsciously coordinate prices!

AI agents built on LLMs can now develop coordination strategies. This challenges existing oversight models, write Nikhil Jain and Meghana Kiran, who conducted an experiment to explore the issue. If language drives behavior, then AI governance must treat prompts as a regulatory surface, they say.

A new major logistics hub for Ukraine will open in Romania by the end of January 2026, becoming the second-largest in Europe after Rzeszów. It will allow NATO to double the flow of military aid to Ukraine, including through the PURL mechanism, where the U.S. supplies arms and Europe covers the cost.

Why? I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.

Those are trace amounts of flurries in -2c gusty wind in DT Toronto.

"Most top achievers (Nobel laureates and world-class musicians, athletes, chess players) demonstrated lower performance than many peers during their early years. Across the highest adult performance, peak performance is negatively correlated with early performance" www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Chapter 1 is 85 points of fun. I’ve never had so much bias reinforced at me. I’m a product of a Robichaud-McKenna society elevated by Chrétien-Martin social capital investments. Of course the first Chapter is pure dopamine delivery. YMMV

I’m in awe. Zubok’s version of those happenings has a clarity to it. It’s a girthy read, and I think I’d sequence it after The Gulag, The Bloodlands, and The Russian Civil War material. It’s a nice endpoint on the Soviet Chapter.

Leo is walking us through Robot Army For Good. github.com/inaimathi/ro...

I am in for a treat. Mario is a fantastic speaker. “The Rise of Parasitic AI”

Like the middle classes, close reading is always rising

2008. Night Club. New York. Amplified music. Banker leans over: “It’s not our fault they lost their house. We didn’t hold a gun to their head and force them to sign a mortgage they knew they couldn’t afford. They’re adults. Fuck’em.”

Classic Toronto Man story. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

Availability bias a hell of a thing.

Any Canadian Revolution would begin with a declaration from the chair that even though Robert’s Rules of Order are in the 12th edition, the copy she has at hand is the 11th, so we’re all going to roll with it to start and we’ll look into getting an updated version in a few months if that’s in order.

We’re going to build a high-speed rail network that will connect millions of Canadians, build our economy, and create thousands of high-paying careers.

can we just call it? DiT is a failed experiment i loved it, it was creative, promising even. But we’ve scaled it up and it doesn’t get better regular autoregressive LLMs win on every measure here

I remember getting told in the 80’s that it really hadn’t been that long since we figured light out. And I thinking then that it was soooo long ago. 40 years later, the 1900’s feel like yesterday. Wow! I’m just in awe how they worked it out given what they knew! youtu.be/jQ3wvEDMJus?...

Are the people-who-decide things aware of the second and third order effects of their decision?

I’m at page 123 of this girthy read. It’s good. A new horror on every page. This Canadian Maritime liberal is going to relate to decentralization as a tool. But dude, sans civil society?! It’s like sabering a champagne bottle! And I laughed to hard at Gorby’s realization of Lenin’s true nature.

We’re really going to do this again. Okie dokie.

oh no, we’re doing credit default swap explainers again

Prime Minister Carney joined Inuit leaders for the uncrating of Inuit cultural belongings from the Vatican, along with other belongings of cultural significance to First Nations and Métis communities. Their return, after over a century, marks a vital step in reconciliation.

“We just can’t go on living like this.”

Makes sense that they believe they’ve caught up. Maybe short-sighted though.

that was a fucking stupid question he got asked and a fucking stupid response. ticking time bomb-ass hypothetical

this is from a neurips panelist i wish him all the compassion and selflessness he shows towards those with cancer

Whew! What a read! Silverman is clear. The framing is consistent throughout. Well sourced. He brings receipts. I got a lot of conflicting, inconsistent, thoughts about it. I’ll share those in the thread below. It may be a painful read for some of you. And that’s okay! Feel the burn!

🆕 Ten key insights from development economics in 2025 The world is changing rapidly. Can research inform what comes next? I spent a long time trying to condense everything I read this year at @voxdev.bsky.social into ten key insights, you can read the full blog here: voxdev.org/topic/ten-ke...

WHY NOT TODAY JAMIE DIMON? WHY. NOT. TODAY?

Zbig’s “The Grand Chessboard” (1997) aged well. He got a lot right. And just when I wondered if he was going to break it to the people-who-decide-things … he did. I heard honesty in that last chapter. It was delicate. Gentle. Even compassionate. Written for a NE American ear.

“Japan could thus become a much more powerful and globally equivalent influential of Canada: a state that is respected for its constructive use of its wealth and power but one that is neither feared or resented.” Zbig’s (1997) “The Grand Chessboard” p. 188

Access journalism is access for the journalists but not access for the reader! Perfectly stated.

If our median ancestor is a well fed four year old playing with frogs in a swamp near the Red Sea, then I imagine she’d be feeling a sense awe that a creature can jump so high.

LLMs overwhelming choose octopus as their favorite animal. But if asked 2nd-favorite animal first, they *also* choose octopus and say corvids are their top favorite, then mistakenly deny that their answers are affected by question order. Link to full blog post in thread.

Chapter 1 of Zbig’s “The Grand Chessboard” is 100% 1990’s orthodoxy. That is what they really believed. Here in 2025, reflecting at the choices some Americans have made, on the tech pillar in particular, I mean… yikes.

Timothée Parrique’s “Slow Down Or Die: The Economics of Degrowth” contains strong arguments. Chapter 8 in particular, covering 12 objections, is on fire. I’ll share a few reflections below.

“Our results show that if these constellations are completed, one-third of the images of the Hubble Space Telescope will be contaminated”

It’s blowing snow in Toronto. That works on two levels. Naturally the entire country will be alerted.

#Arctic air temperature rank by month over the satellite era - now updated through November 2025... + Ranks: 1=warmest (red), 46/47=coldest (blue) + Download higher resolution version: zacklabe.com/arctic-tempe...