It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick. Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.

what drives me nuts about people using chatGPT for math in particular is that wolframalpha has existed for a fucking decade and a half and people act like it never existed

We're seeing lots of headlines about the catastrophic impact of massive data center expansion. But what else could data centers look like? In my perpetual quest to seek out alternative technofutures, I want to highlight the really cool work of Keolu Fox. 🧵

In short, the ANES data shows: 📉 Social media use is shrinking 💥 Twitter/X posting has moved ~50 points to the right 🧩 Platforms are splintering 🔊 Fewer people are talking — but those still talking are more politically extreme

“Now Scientific American has updated and re-released what it calls the “classic graphic” that shows that a human on a bicycle—able to coast, or freewheel, without pedaling—remains the world’s most energy effecient traveler.” @carltonreid.com on the re-release of the iconic graph in @forbes.com.

“Today, we’re very similar to each other. Even the most different people are at most maybe 200,000 years separated, with little gene flow,” Reich said. “But 70,000 years ago, there were at least five groups far more different from each other than any groups living today.”

In ShopTalk, @chriscoyier.net and @davatron5000.bsky.social tron5000.bsky.social‬ talked about my recent post about RSS, and the curation challenge posed by RSS when you mix together high-volume feeds like The Verge with more infrequent posters (solo bloggers, etc).

Newsletter: In a media landscape dominated by algorithmic feeds that aim to manipulate and extract, sometimes the most radical thing you can do is choose to read what you want, when you want, without anyone watching over your shoulder. Here’s how to use RSS. www.citationneeded.news/curate-with-...

📣 RE-UP! SHARE! *Do not stop talking about this* 60 Minutes Australia has been far ahead of U.S. broadcast media in featuring survivors of Epstein and Maxwell — a year ago! 📺 youtu.be/VQOOxOl9l80?... #LetSurvivorsTestify 🚨 📺 60 Minutes Australia Epstein Playlist: youtube.com/playlist?lis...

The Solar for All program is a multi-billion dollar federal investment to help lower electricity costs & cut US energy poverty. The Trump Administration ended it. @carleysanya.bsky.social & I talked with @juliaradio.bsky.social & @jeffbradynews.bsky.social about it: www.npr.org/2025/08/08/n... 🔌 💡

R/betteroffline is in the top 25 podcast communities on Reddit, this is wild www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffl...

My latest newsletter is about how big tech and big business has guaranteed that the next generation to enter the workforce will be poorer, less secure, and lonelier. And why every generation that follows will be a lost generation. whatwelost.substack.com/p/how-silico...

So you're going to "teach AI" this year. That's great! Start with "How Eugenics Shaped Statistics" nautil.us/how-eugenics... #mtbos #ITeachMath #AIinEd

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.

@yasminejibril.bsky.social That scam was attempted on me some months ago and two moots fell for it. An already hacked moot/oomf saying he mass reported your account and redirecting me to a shady Discord account. I guess you lost some money too. bsky.app/profile/yasm...

Well, with the PSG winning the Champions League, and Luis Enrique winning his second treble, I am learning that one of the assistant coaches of Luis Enrique, Rafel Pol uses Systems Thinking in his training methodology. #SystemsTeaching www.researchgate.net/profile/Rafe...

I am surrounded by young people with solutions to every problem. We have no time for doomerism. It's nice to have those that talk truth to power but resistence is building an army of mums and dads and media and young men and women who will not accept anything less than a future inhabitable planet.

I think Nafeez Ahmed is fundamentally correct (more correct than Fressoz). And at the same time, unchecked exponential growth in AI adoption and data center expansion will make the hill a lot steeper to climb, which will have the effect of delaying the end stages of the complete transition.

This is a fantastic, long and strongly-evidenced rebuttal of the "no energy transition" meme popularised wrongly by Jean-Baptiste Fressoz I am probably one notch less optimistic on renewables than Nafeez but entirely agree w/ the overall thesis: fuel elimination exists, and it can exist everywhere

Coral reefs around the world have been subjected to unprecedented heat stress since early 2023. A new report finds heat-related coral bleaching has damaged corals in more than 80 countries, making it the most extensive bleaching event ever recorded, with no clear end in sight.

Musk states "the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy". Charles Darwin, who actually researched this stuff, showed it was empathy, specifically, that enabled humanity to flourish.

Looks interesting, gonna order it soon

Climate impacts means lower yields and less land for food in the future, but what can we do? How do we provide healthy food using fewer inputs, less land, less capital etc? I argue that biophysical limits mean we'll likely go much more plant based in this keynote 🧵 www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2nl...

Was passiert, wenn man in einer Großstadt konsequent an der Verbesserung der Luftqualität arbeitet - indem man etwa Autos verdrängt - sieht man an Paris. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solu...

If the government can pay a foreign state to imprison you and, in so doing, remove you from the protection of US law, the Constitution is worthless.

Oh we’re gonna DIE, die

Jesus—Trump just said that he will be looking at exempting certain US companies from tariffs. Reporter asks: “How will you determine that” Trump: “Instinctively”. Sounds like whoever will bend the knee and kiss the ring.

The problem was never that 1.5c was presented as unrealistically achievable - the problem was that it was presented as achievable through dangerously harmful means. Such as vast tree plantations. nice @reddmonitor.bsky.social piece: reddmonitor.substack.com/p/the-delusi...

The new @ember-energy.org report out today shows that both wind and solar are still growing - but that wind's growth has been decelerating for four straight years now. IMO this is pretty worrying. At the system level and globally, wind and solar complement each other. A solar-only approach = worse

🚨In my latest: "By emphasising only competition and efficiency, and completely ignoring things like ethics, human irrationality and the entire planet on which we live, capitalism has nurtured the seeds of its own destruction."

A former French military base, Vauban is a thriving neighbourhood of 5,500 residents connected to Freiburg town centre by bus and light rail. Built in the late 1990s as a radical experiment in low-car living, it forgoes virtually all on-street parking in favour of active, green, and social spaces. 🧵

Trump is basically handing China the entire clean energy market

3000/5000 still needed urgently I'm tired and embarrassed from asking so many, but my situation is deplorable. Hope the line is complete now :(((

A thought experiment I often raise: imagine Palestinians were on course to outnumber Jews w/in Israel purely through internal population growth, no refugee return. No measure reliant on free choice will avert this. If you see Jewish demographic majority as absolutely necessary, you have 4 options:

a functioning country would impeach this guy for demolishing the world economy bc they asked chatgpt for tariff policy and didnt double check the accuracy or numbers

“At 3C of global heating, climate damage cannot be insured against, covered by governments, or adapted to. That means no more mortgages or new real estate devt, no long-term investment, no financial stability. The financial sector as we know it ceases to function and capitalism ceases to be viable.”

Very sad to see this www.economist.com/graphic-deta...

So it's increasingly looking like the current occupants of the executive branch have been using off-the-shelf LLM chatbot "AI" to figure out how to set and apply tariffs, and fuck knows what other aspects of policy. In related news, I'm really seriously considering taking up smoking again.

You can totally see how this mf bankrupted a casino.

Morgan Stanley planning for a 3°C world is an astonishing admission. It's a commitment to business as usual while writing off billions of lives and, in all likelihood, dozens of nation states.

This is, in large part, pandemic revenge. As far as these oligarchs are concerned, all science does is tell them stuff they cannot do. They can't keep spewing carbon. They can't keep businesses open as usual when millions are dying. They have concluded that research is the enemy of profit.

Dumb meets dumber www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The Wikimedia Foundation, which owns Wikipedia, says its bandwidth costs have gone up 50% since Jan 2024 — a rise they attribute to AI crawlers. AI companies are killing the open web by stealing visitors from the sources of information and making them pay for the privilege

It’s an engineered collapse of the economy so right-wing venture capitalists and techno fascists can swoop in and pick Americas bones and remake it in their image.

Dear people who may soon suffer food insecurity Listen up, it super fucking sucks and will do lasting psych damage the rest of your life. This is not a joke or exaggeration. What you have on hand will forever after be a source of anxiety. SO. To help you in the coming days here's some tips