Articles Published On p. 22 of a Newspaper at the Beginning of a Disaster Movie #2534 via @mathewingram.com

Obvious Thought #4,562: Cleaning up is just putting smaller things into bigger things.

In a study of 22.7 million vaccinated & 5.9 million unvaxxed, the vaxxed had 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19 and no increased risk of death 45 months later. Me: Obvious hoax. I'm gonna need to see all their birth certificates first. jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... PS: Fuck RFK,jr

LPT: Any shoe worn long enough turns into a slipper.

Fascinating exploration of machine learning "reward hacking": The ML not only learns how to appear to be accomplishing its task, but generalizes this more broadly. Makes me want to say, as in Jurassic Park, "Clehvah gurl." Hats off to @Anthropicfor the research www.anthropic.com/research/eme...

Why would anyone want to buy shoes for slipping on boats? Weird category.

A painting by Klimt has at auction sold for $236.4 million. Ah, a quarter billion dollars so the painting can be enjoyed by one person and their invited guests. Why isn't this considered for-profit looting of our culture? www.wsj.com/arts-culture...

I just sent to MIT Press a book ready for copy-editing. Been working on it for 4 years, full time for 3, and obsessively for 6 months. First time I haven't had something pushing aside all other duties. (Exception: grandkids.) I'm going outside to rake some leaves! (I hear it's autumn already!)

Articles I'm Not Going to Read Past the Headline www.technologyreview.com/2025/11/17/1...

Could someone please goad #Trump into saying that he should be #Pope? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Tired of unambitious clocks that change the position of their hands but nothing else? Welcome to AI World Clocks: 9 clocks from 9 different models, updated per minute. clocks.brianmoore.com Now do lawnmowers!!

Donald T#rump is the best proof that we're living in a simulation. From the name "Trump", to it actually being "Drumpf", to the self-applied orange skin, to the gold-plated everything, to the billionaire's hamberders, to the MTV cartoon sons. It's not a coincidence. It's a sign from our overlords.

Thank Heaven!!! (I hear all love counts there.) I feel like a weight's been lifted.

Please consider making a donation to GlobalVoices.org, a voice from the early Web days when we thought at last the world had a way to hear all its voices.

I had a fun interchange with #chatGPT to determine the eastern most head on Mt. Rushmore. The #AI kept explaining why its wrong answer was right. When #Gemini finally convinced it, ChatGPT lied about learning from its mistakes. dweinberger.medium.com/chatgpt-is-o...

BREAKING NEWS: Trump to tear down Mt. Rushmore's east wing. Lincoln to be replaced by the head of the highest bidder to honor America's Art of the Deal.

The Mac's new UI design makes me I feel like I'm using a toy computer designed for kiddies. Is that so bad? Yes, it is.

"Hitler, Stalin, Trotsky and Freud all lived within a short walk of each other in Vienna" What would be the title of the one act play set in a Viennese café based on this fact? via @mathewingram.com newsletter.mathewingram.com/why-one-arli...

Jeesh! This Kurzweil guy was *way* ahead of his time! www.amazon.com/How-Create-M... #Amazon #Kurzweil #oops

Another entry for the "Headlines ignored at the start of cheap sci fi movies" club: "Interstellar Object Is Spraying Something Weird, Scientists Find" futurism.com/space/inters...

Ever wonder how far a Belgian Malinois dog can jump? Me neither, but be prepared for some high-flying @barkour. (via @mathewingram.com x.com/gunsnrosesgi...

This is mildly mind blowing. The word you hear is the one you are reading at the time. Brains are nuts. www.reddit.com/r/blackmagic...

Creative ways to protect pedestrians in crosswalks x.com/Thebestfigen... via @mathewingram.com #traffic #funny

I tried the new video- and talk-based Gemini AI app this morning, and the very first thing it said to me, unprompted, was "You look tired. Are you okay?". For real.

Outstanding Wired piece by @StevenLevy about how the Valley went MAGA. Great writing by someone who has been chronicling the Valley - its dreams, geniuses, failures, and now its utter political corruption - since well before it was the Valley. Pulitzer-worthy www.wired.com/story/silico...

[SPOILER: Contains a NYT Xword hint] Aren't things bad enough ... is the feeling you get as you do today's NY Times Crossword puzzle with the sinking realization that, yes, it's a product placement.

He's got the taste of blood. It only gets worse from here. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Here's a web server running on a cheap vape thingy. bogdanthegeek.github.io/blog/project... It's cool, but the idea that it could probably run Doom (as a friend said) is unimpressive. I'm running Doom right now by shaking a box of paperclips.

Lameen Souag: How "butterfly collecting" became the go-to example of something that's not actually science. To me, this is an excellent example of the compelling power of details. lughat.blogspot.com/2017/10/butt...

125x zoom video camera. (via @mathewingram.com ) x.com/ChannelInter...

There's a rumor that on Wednesday Jacob Collier is making a big announcement. My guess, guaranteed to be wrong, is that Paul McCartney wants to re-record the Beatles catalogue with him. Of course it's perfect as is, so maybe it's Paul Simon. You mis-heard it here first! 🫢

#RFK is correct that #autism rates have increased 60x in the past 30 years ... because we've changed our assessment criteria. If only there were a way to extract heads stuck up their own a-holes. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/o...

Awesome, mesmerizing Inuit throat singing. aeon.co/videos/inuit...

@stephtara.bsky.social has been suspended by #Facebook for no good reason. Much of her decades of life online is there. She's as fine a person as you'll meet, but the faceless FB demigods move fast and break communities. bsky.app/profile/step...

Looking for a rabbit hole to fall down, and given how things are here on Earth, who isn't? Ask your favorite #AI what time it is on the Moon. Mention time zones. Way more action-packed than it seems!

Denmark's Post Office will no longer deliver letters because the Danes don't send them any more. Parcels, yes. So, if you want to send me a letter, please send it straight to my Danish address. Thank you for your attention to this matter. businessday.ng/world/articl... via @mathewingram.com

Democrats should propose amendments - and a new Constitution Convention? - to fix what Trump, the Supremes, and other Republicans have broken.

Well, it's August 18...further proof that Memorial Day is the first day of the end of the #summer.

40 billion Oreos are produced a year [1], which works out to 1,268 per second. The average human produces about 63 trillion million red blood cells a year, or 2 million per second. [2] Oreo factories really need to up their game! [1] aymag.com/national-ore... [2] www.blood.co.uk/the-donation...

I had my pal chatGPT 5 write a Google Chrome extension that shows the real domain of a suss link. (Gemini then checked it for security.) It's beta at best. Try it (carefully) and tell me if it if fails. (Open source. Collects no data. Does not open the linked page.) github.com/dweinberger/...

I gave #Gemini a long dream to analyze, specifying the Gestalt method. It nailed the method, caught some of the dream's major themes as I understand them...and got the crucial and dreadful ending totally wrong. By totally inverting what it said, I learned something new about myself. #AI #psych

Q: What do you call s'mores when each child is allowed only one? A: No'mores. But seriously, one is more than enough. #DadJokes #Summertime

Pudding.cool has indexed 148 signs and other pieces of text discoverable in Google Street View in NYC. Very fun browsing. pudding.cool/2025/07/stre... via @mathewingram.com at newsletter.mathewingram.com/r/17f298f5?m...

The impact on one town — and global #science —of #Trump's cuts : Woods Hole, home of the WH Oceanographic Institution. Heart breaking. www.capenews.net/falmouth/opi...

If you're looking to convince someone that the assault on #science is real and really dangerous, a friend at MIt just posted what I think is a clear, compact, well-linked article on the topic... thehill.com/opinion/whit...

Corporation for Public Broadcasting is closing, all part of America's attempt to make culture more accessible and appreciated by redefining it as a supercut of all the boob scenes on the streaming services that day. A proud day for all! cpb.org/pressroom/Co...

Do not ask for whom the D'oh slaps. It slaps for thee. #ExpensiveLifeLessons

Iran apparently is switching from GPS to BeiDou, the Chinese system, in part because it experienced GPS outages during the recent, um, flareup, and in part to lessen its reliance on Western tech/spyware. www.aljazeera.com/opinions/202...

A charming reminiscence about the late Tom Lehrer shows his humility and care for others. improbable.com/2025/07/29/t...