an excellent post from @peterodrigue.bsky.social and @ggwash.org, worth a read for anyone who has an opinion about speed cameras. I'm grateful to him for advancing the conversation (and the generous shout-out) ggwash.org/view/102070/...

I can’t get over how weird this Starfleet Academy show is. Just so obviously the same people and ideas as Discovery, from the timeline to the endless JJ-style flares to the returning non-beloved characters (feat Admiral, You Know, The Tall One). Angry outsider/matriarch mentor. New kind of Klingon!

did not expect the first great and empathetic piece of criticism I read in 2026 to be about Dilbert www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-dilber...

This video shows ICE holding children hostage to bait parents out of their homes. Just unspeakable levels of cruelty and inhumanity.

the 2025/2026 #treelemetry season has concluded treelemetry.tomlee.space

we are nearing the end of the #treelemetry xmasalytics season. some valuable insights gleaned, and a major evolution in our software architecture. more to do, particularly with respect to automated segmentation of events. but we're emerging with a great dataset to iterate on

As a reminder, the reason that the Federal Reserve renovation cost so much is because they followed the law: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

we put on the Paw Patrol Christmas special for our youngest yesterday (the season's not over until we get around to taking down the tree!) they attempt a "true meaning of Christmas" plot but it's tricky.

TIL the FBI has its own image format fbibiospecs.fbi.gov/certificatio...

Thought-provoking project from @dbreunig.bsky.social www.dbreunig.com/2026/01/08/a...

USDOT and a major outlet are framing DC's traffic cameras as a cash grab. They're essential for keeping people safe on our streets. But the revenues should go to Vision Zero as the Council planned, not DC's general budget.

I sat in a fucking court room and heard Apple imply that a naked cartoon banana was somehow inappropriate but somehow Grok non consensually undressing women and children is ok?? www.theverge.com/policy/85990...

had this @ggwash.org tab open for ages, finally got to it. lovely stuff ggwash.org/view/101838/...

it me simonwillison.net/2026/Jan/4/c...

Eldest said “I hate the Muppets” today. Where did I fail her

scandalous

“Car bloat”—increasingly oversized automobiles—worsens road safety, affordability and the environment. Here are some of the stories I wrote in 2025 examining the trend and proposing solutions. 🧵 In @vox.com, I likened car bloat to secondhand smoke (which helped bring down the US tobacco industry).

absolutely true, but... now do humans en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confabu... it seems plausible, maybe even likely, that thinking systems do less hallucination as their scope & power improves

it's totally normal for a politician--elected or aspiring--to be seen in the community doing Good Works. we have council members show up and give little speeches at monthly family bike rides, it's very nice. Abughazaleh's campaign running mutual aid seems firmly in this tradition. The interesting

Everyone is so backward on this! - eventually we will decide AI is conscious bc the Problem is Hard and humans feel empathy - that will carry numerous ethical consequences - if you’re an AI hater you should welcome this, it will crush the field - if you’re an AI booster you should deny it

I don't really get the left's romantic views about mutual aid when the whole point of progressive politics is that the state should provide the safety net — not charity

The fun thing about AI is that some people think it’s a big speculative bubble while other people think that’s hysterical catastrophizing and what’s actually going to happen is just unprecedented economic dislocation

you should read Jamelle for the full details but my assumption is that “heritage Americans” are somewhat more expensive and flavorful than the fatter Americans you would typically find at the supermarket

"Did you see what Mark Cuban posted? Oh did you see the clapb—" You shake yourself awake in the cold North Atlantic water. You are not online. It is July of 1858. You are a baleen whale, and you have changed your mind. The future most not come to pass. The telegraph cable must break.

Eastern Gate succeeds at depicting the Polish Intelligence Service as sophisticated and cosmopolitan, steely eyed and cold hearted in the face of an implacable foe of immense international scale. Then it turns out the bomb is disguised as an accordion.

profuse apologies to all of our users: a mishandled cleanup routine resulted in #treelemetry systems consuming over 1.8TB of disk space on the host system, blocking writes and stalling updates. the issue has been resolved, and we hope to recover much of the missing data treelemetry.tomlee.space

a great read, a kind I've missed github.com/celoyd/potat...

book is absolutely lovely so far, but this little section stood out to me. "Drivers and pedestrians said they typically broke laws to save time. Cyclists, however, said they typically broke laws to stay safe." ridiculously true. at no point on my bike do i think about The Law. i think about safety

sadly this has been the dominant editorial mode of all tech journalism since we left the initial era of gee-whiz naivete. obviously there are many talented writers who are exceptions but in general our popular treatment of it is reductive and hysterical

I started thinking about this around this date--that fact that the most productive use of AI "agents" is "using an interface initially designed for a teletype" is just one of those weird things. but of course, it's all text bergmayer.net/ai-and-telet...

enjoyed this well-deserved appreciation of @daveweigel.bsky.social's work www.semafor.com/newsletter/1...

my understanding is that the New Yorker does well for itself--network effects favoring superstar brands & all--so perhaps they have adequate incentive for gross banner ad chum? if so, is that good? like watching a lost & lamented species return to its ecological niche

it’s Christmas Eve and the pediatric fevers have begun

I made a Mac word game: bergmayer.net/plaintextpanic

My annual letter is out. Please do give it a read. The team has really delivered incredible things this year, and next looks to be another step up.

Told my family I don’t really care what christmas gift they get me as long as it’s Tactical

this is so good www.311wrapped.com

I am enjoying Eastern Gate for many reasons but maybe most of all because of foreign TV's charming insistence on casting dudes who must be beloved national leading men & emblems of virility, who are now too old but get shoved into parts w/ cool-guy leather jackets and five o'clock shadows anyway

I think Gruber is mistaking differences in business culture for substantive differences in Apple's perspective between the EU and Japanese markets. daringfireball.net/2025/12/appl...

Here's a quilt of Volume 4 of the Epstein document dump. Gives you a 10,000 foot view of the redactions. that's 2,704 docs.

This blows everything wide open

trump: prices are down. we're living deliciously. it's beautiful kilmeade: democrats say you met with black phillip-in essence the devil. can you squash that rumor? trump: i won't say who but we had a conversation that might be one of the most wonderful conversations in terms of the things we said

it is basically impossible to provide enough disclosures to assuage the concerns of conspiracy theorists under any circumstances, but especially with heavy redactions, and ESPECIALLY ESPECIALLY when even normies think there's a conspiracy Epstein will remain part of our politics for years to come

not exactly why I subscribe to the Seven Days RSS--though "being surprised" is the biggest reason after all, I suppose--but I enjoyed these three poems, you might too www.sevendaysvt.com/arts-culture...

seeing this getting shared a lot. is there anything new here? online companies do not have a duty to secure your data against LE requests. you have to find & reward the ones that will--or, better, who don't collect or retain the data in the first place therecord.media/google-searc...

I appreciate Anil's effort to improve the accuracy of the Bluesky community's ideas about AI, and suspect his approach is the most productive one available. It does strike me as extremely solicitous. Skeptics here have polarized themselves to a truly wild degree.

The funniest/saddest way this manifests is people lamenting the loss of their dear friend 4o, forcing Sam to keep it online. Turning down obsequiousness was one of their design goals for the models that succeeded it

great news for @brianbeutler.bsky.social’s clothing budget

America has deindustrialized so much they can't even manufacture consent

No matter how many US citizens you illegally detain, no matter how many immigrant kids you separate from their mothers, no matter how many college students you kidnap off a sidewalk because of an anodyne op-ed ... ... Deep down, you still want to be thought of as just a nice guy.