Category: science

IT’S OVER (for now): Israel and Hamas have signed a peace treaty and ended the Gaza War.
https://www.cfr.org/article/guide-trumps-twenty-point-gaza-peace-deal

Russia’s 2025 summer offensive has ended. It gained a small amount of Ukrainian territory at very high cost in lives and equipment, and did not change the overall trajectory of the war.

‘According to Jompy’s analysis of prewar depot inventories versus what has been taken out for repair and deployment, Russia has recovered and returned to service 4,800 tanks out of an estimated 7,342 kept in storage before the war.’
https://united24media.com/latest-news/from-7342-to-92-satellite-analysis-shows-russias-depot-armor-is-nearly-spent-12298

Russia is increasingly refurbishing old T-72A tanks to make up for battlefield losses.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-bets-on-refurbishing-800-aging-t-72-tanks-to-replace-huge-battlefield-losses-12409

Leaked documents show Russia is planning to rebuild its tank force after the end of the Ukraine War by making more T-90s and upgrading existing T-72s to a higher standard than current. Conspicuously absent is any mention of building more T-14 Armatas, which are Russia’s most advanced tanks. High costs and/or a lack of faith in the latter probably explain this.
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/leaked-documents-reveal-russias-secret-10-year-plan-to-rebuild-its-tank-army/

Making Frankenstein tanks is actually a Russian tradition stretching back to 1941.
https://youtu.be/dX-GvcorWDU?si=m7t3E-adJ1UR-0A7

A lack of aircraft has reduced Myanmar’s air force to using paragliders as bombers. The pilots either manually drop their bombs or use some simple release mechanism.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cge2l1xj2zdo

In 1741, 3,500 troops from the Thirteen Colonies helped the British attack Spanish colonies in Colombia and Cuba. The campaign was a huge failure due to poor planning and tropical diseases.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gooch%27s_American_Regiment

The U.S. military has been ratcheting up the pressure against Venezuela’s government. The official U.S. government stance is that the current government is illegitimate due to fraud at the last elections, and that it is intertwined with the international drug trade.

• B-52 bombers flew near Venezuela’s coast.
  https://www.twz.com/air/b-52-bombers-just-flew-for-hours-off-venezuelas-coast
• The Admiral in charge of the ongoing operation in the Caribbean resigned without explanation.
  https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/16/top-admiral-retires-early-amid-drug-boat-strikes-00612357

Eduard Dietl was such a Nazi fanatic that he forbade his troops from fraternizing with Norwegian women because he thought they would corrupt the German “race.”
https://youtu.be/PjIfWM1c-ck?si=JwmDMBvkLI4famne

The U.S. military had a secret cloud seeding program during the Vietnam War. It was meant to increase rainfall over the Ho Chi Minh Trail, slowing the flow of enemy troops and supplies south. It’s unclear if it worked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Popeye

Every kid who learns a little about the Civil War ends up asking why the troops didn’t use lever-action Wild West rifles instead of the clunky muskets they actually did. There were actually good reasons for what we really did.
https://youtu.be/W2Qp2ETe1gc?si=h1V_65fw3pFP6c_J

Here’s a prediction from 13 months ago. A recession hasn’t started, the Federal Funds Rate is 4.1%, and the Fed hasn’t resorted to QE purchases. Again and again, I’m struck by how useless predictions are from “experts” in finance and economics.

‘”The Fed hiked rates into such a huge, unprecedented debt complex … That’s why I say I’m looking for a crash that we haven’t seen since 1929.”

A recession could occur as soon as this year, forcing the Fed to cut rates aggressively from the current level of 4.75%-5%, and eventually pushing the central bank back to quantitative easing (QE), or bond buying – a process that generally occurs amid unsettled markets and aims to bolster monetary policy when rates are near zero.’
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/clock-is-ticking-us-recession-return-feds-qe-says-black-swan-fund-2024-09-27/

Concern is growing that the “AI” sector is in a bubble.

• ‘AI-related enterprises have accounted for 80% of the stunning gains in the American stock market this year – and Gartner estimates global spending on AI will likely reach a whopping $1.5tn (£1.1tn) before 2025 is out.’
  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz69qy760weo
• ‘Bill Gates says we’re in an AI bubble similar to the dot-com bubble’
  https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-ai-bubble-similar-dot-com-bubble-2025-10

Nvidia is worth $5 trillion, making it the most valuable company on Earth.
https://apnews.com/article/nvidia-trillion-ai-apple-huang-trump-xi-c9bbf5cfa017dadaf248a4d197763cb9

Andrej Karpathy gave a recent interview that has been making waves. Note he still believes AGIs will ultimately take over the world and render humans obsolete, he only disagrees with the optimistic timelines common in the Silicon Valley crowd.
https://youtu.be/lXUZvyajciY?si=nGkyWmSX9m0MYTO_

‘Note that an extremely small amount of motivation wouldn’t necessarily stop the AI from (e.g.) boiling the oceans and destroying the biosphere while keeping humans alive in a shelter (or potentially scanning their brains and uploading them, especially if they would consent or would consent on reflection). Preserving earth (as in, not causing catastrophic environmental damage due to industrial expansion) is more expensive than keeping physical humans alive which is more expensive than only keeping humans alive as uploads. Preserving earth still seems like it would probably cost less than one billionth of resources by default. Keeping humans alive as just uploads might cost much less, e.g. more like one trillionth of resources (and less than this is plausible depending on the details of industrial expansion).’
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/4fqwBmmqi2ZGn9o7j/notes-on-fatalities-from-ai-takeover

Remarkably, the Federal Reserve has published an analysis of the economic effects of a technological singularity.
https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/0624

The late Suzanne Somers’ husband has created a digital clone of her that he interacts with. He said Ray Kurzweil inspired the project.
https://people.com/alan-hamel-suzanne-somers-ai-project-exclusive-11832986

Should an AI copy of you help decide if you live or die?
‘The main limitation of this testing, Ahmad said, is that he can only verify the accuracy of his models if patients survive and can later confirm that the model made the right choice.’
https://arstechnica.com/features/2025/10/should-an-ai-copy-of-you-help-decide-if-you-live-or-die/

‘Fig. 2 shows the development we consider likely. The current 1st generation eTrucks have replaced the diesel motor with the electric one and the fuel tank with the battery. The 2nd generation will use multiple small electric motors closer to the wheels to eliminate a lot of weight currently taken for granted in diesel powertrains, such as from the driveshaft, gearbox, and differential14,25. This becomes possible because electric motors are tiny compared to combustion engines with the same power, need no exhaust system, and dissipate about twenty times less heat. A (fixed or two-speed) gearbox can reduce the weight of the electric motor further25. The 3rd generation is expected to use structural batteries26,27,28, which creates space, and reduces cost and weight.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44333-025-00029-5

‘The NdFeB magnet was invented in 1983 by John Croat of GM and Masato Sagawa of Sumitomo simultaneously and independently when each of them announced the same discovery at a conference in Pittsburgh.’
https://www.nanocrystalmagnetics.us/our-novel-technology

Elon Musk has launched a competitor to Wikipedia.
https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-wikipedia-grok-grokipedia-4dab7c6ebb16cc7718b231adae4aac95

The U.S. could have put the first satellite into orbit a year before the Soviets were it not for bureaucratic meddling. Werner Von Braun proposed repurposing a nuclear missile to deliver a peaceful satellite into orbit, but a committee rejected the idea.

After Sputnik and the failure of the civilian “Vanguard” missile that had been holding everything up, the U.S. decided to do what Von Braun originally suggested, and modified nuclear missiles were our first civilian space rockets.
https://www.collectspace.com/ubb/Forum34/HTML/000101.html

The Soviet rocket that was to take cosmonauts to the Moon actually had more advanced, more efficient engines than their U.S. counterparts.
https://youtu.be/1vPdSK4OcNU?si=osL6U8-JpMobRROz

Because it had less money, the Soviet Lunar program developed simpler, cheaper, but less dangerous space technology for their Moon mission. The Soviets were more gutsy but also likelier to tragically fail.
https://youtu.be/XHVhREau0-s?si=W99Q-nIyH98lSZfh

An analysis of old photos taken by space telescopes before Sputnik was launched found anomalous flashes of light, which today are common thanks to shiny satellites briefly reflecting sunlight at Earth’s surface. But before 1957, they couldn’t have been caused by our satellites since we had none.

The objects apparently showed an interest in our nuclear tests, and some of the flashes happened at the same time that people on the ground saw UFOs or detected them on radar. We know of no natural phenomena that could cause such flashes.
https://www.su.se/english/news/unexpected-patterns-in-historical-astronomical-observations-1.855042

Apparently without realizing it, Jeff Bezos predicts the rise of a Dyson swarm.
‘Amazon founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos predicted on Friday gigawatt-scale data centers will be built in space within the next 10 to 20 years and that continuously available solar energy meant they would eventually outperform those based on Earth.’
https://nypost.com/2025/10/03/business/jeff-bezos-expects-data-centers-will-be-built-in-space-in-10-to-20-years/

This was very fascinating, though you won’t understand most of it unless you remember AP Biology. Two points:

1. A bottleneck to the emergence of complex life in the universe is endosymbiosus– the permanent absorption of mitochondria into cells. If we replayed the history of Earthly evolution, it might not happened.

2. The disadvantage of having two sexes is you can’t breed with half of the population. Arguably, it is better to be hermaphroditic or to have many sexes, like some species of fungi.
https://youtu.be/0GMWxuYuxJI?si=TbxYXgiLFcyo6R0O

Bill Gates has finally come around to my position on global warming.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further.

Unfortunately, the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”
https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate

‘Scientists use human skin cells to create functional eggs, opening a door to new infertility treatments’
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/30/science/human-skin-cells-egg-infertility

‘About 60,000 children have avoided food allergies since 2015, including 40,000 children who otherwise would have developed peanut allergies.’
https://apnews.com/article/peanut-allergy-children-infants-anaphylaxis-9a6df6377a622d05e47c340c5a9cffc8

Israel retaliated against a Hamas terrorist attack in Jerusalem with an attempted assassination of several Hamas leaders in neutral Qatar. The operation went ahead without American permission and involved Israeli stealth fighter jets that intruded into Saudi airspace and fired long-range missiles. The brazen nature of the attack is unprecedented for the Gulf States.
https://nypost.com/2025/09/09/world-news/israel-targets-hamas-leaders-with-strike-on-qatars-capital/

’20 years later, Israelis ask if the Gaza exit backfired — and if it’s time to go back’
https://www.npr.org/2025/09/19/g-s1-89192/israel-gaza-withdrawal-2005

‘A 2019 mission in North Korea, which intended to have Navy SEALs plant an electronic device to intercept communications of the country’s leader Kim Jong Un, resulted in an unsuccessful operation that left unarmed North Koreans dead…’
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/05/politics/north-korea-navy-seal-mission-nyt

The U.S. Secret Service discovered and disabled an electronic weapon in New York that could have disabled all cell phone service in the city. It was probably emplaced to disrupt a major U.N. summit.
https://apnews.com/article/unga-threat-telecom-service-sim-93734f76578bc9ca22d93a8e91fd9c76

‘Mechanical accuracy is a measure of the accuracy of the rifle itself, irrespective of human or environmental factors. Technically, it could be argued that this should be called mechanical precision, not accuracy, since the primary metric is group size, rather than proximity to the point of aim. But, mechanical accuracy is nevertheless the prevailing term.

You can think of it like this: if you were to bolt your rifle to a concrete table, rendering it utterly incapable of moving in any way, how accurate would it be? With the rifle incapable of moving, human factors like muscle tremors or an improper trigger press become irrelevant; all that matters is the mechanics of the rifle itself. Any inaccuracies will come from imperfections in materials or construction, rather than shooting technique.

…Practical accuracy is a more holistic concept; it considers not only the mechanical accuracy of the rifle but also how the rifle lends itself to effective use by a person in normal conditions. Simply put, practical accuracy is the measure of how accurate an average user is capable of being in normal field conditions.

Practical accuracy takes into account factors like ergonomics, trigger weight, recoil, and even external ballistic factors like velocity and ballistic coefficient, since all else being equal, it is easier to land a hit with a rifle that resists wind and drop better than one that does not.’
https://blog.primaryarms.com/guide/mechanical-vs-practical-accuracy/

Rail guns are weapons built to fully showcase their mechanical accuracy. “Ergonomics” are nonexistent.
https://youtu.be/b4idDEwnLFQ?si=FJiI9v5WAZKFu13h

By contrast, a weapon with low mechanical accuracy but high practical accuracy is the German G36 rifle, with modifications to make it more comfortable and instinctive for the hands to hold. It’s lightweight, ambidextrous and has no sharp edges. However, the rifle is known for losing accuracy as more bullets are shot through it and its barrel heats up.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2010/10/28/the-g36k-idz/

The rifle that killed Charlie Kirk was over 57 years old. Guns last forever if you take care of them.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kirk-assassins-alleged-gun-was-powerful-vintage-hard-trace-rcna231334

The future is now: Israel is the first country to field tactical laser weapons on the battlefield. They are designed to shoot down drones, missiles and mortars, which means they can track fast-moving targets, quickly aim at them, and fire accurately.

Though international law forbids it, there’s no technical reason why these same weapons couldn’t be used against ground targets. The smallest and weakest of Israel’s new laser weapons, “Lite Beam”, can fit in the back of a pickup truck and is 10 kilowatts. A direct hit from a laser that strong would cause a human to erupt in flames. The larger “Iron Beam M” has a 50 kilowatt laser, and a direct hit from its beam might cause instant explosive damage to a human body in addition to being lit on fire.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-867735

By modern aircraft standards, the B-29 is underpowered, hard to fly, and dangerous.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20250918-the-airliner-pilot-who-gets-to-fly-world-war-twos-biggest-bomber

‘$2,200,000,000 solar farm in California desert switched off after not serving its purpose’
https://www.unilad.com/technology/news/ivanpah-solar-power-facility-switch-off-california-828436-20250927

China’s electric cars are better and cheaper than anything the West has to offer.
https://www.economist.com/business/2025/09/15/the-brutal-fight-to-dominate-chinese-carmaking

‘A microdot is text or an image substantially reduced in size to prevent detection by unintended recipients. Microdots are normally circular and around 1 millimetre (0.039 in) in diameter but can be made into different shapes and sizes and made from various materials such as polyester or metal.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdot

Meta unveiled a new and improved line of augmented reality glasses. They’re very good, and it’s heartening to see the technology still developing, but they remain not good enough or cheap enough for mass adoption.

The Chinese “Unitree G1” robot has an incredible ability to keep its balance even when shoved by humans.
https://youtu.be/bPSLMX_V38E?si=NucFPf_Wciukhw9w

Another month, another record-breaking image generator. This one was released by Google as is named “Nano banana.”
https://www.howtogeek.com/i-experimented-with-googles-gemini-nano-banana-ai-and-the-results-were-wild/

Here’s an economics paper called “We Wont be Missed: Work and Growth in the Era of AGI.” My notes on its key claims:
-Human labor will eventually become worthless.
-Economic, scientific, and technological growth will untether itself from the size and skill of the human population.
-Intelligent machines will become so smart and numerous that their workforce will be orders of magnitude more productive than the human workforce could be.
-Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage doesn’t imply that humans will forever have employment niches in the intelligent machine era.
-People who own data centers and microchip factories will get incredibly rich, not just in absolute terms but relative to the rest of the human population.
-Lack of work will challenge humanity’s sense of purpose.
https://conference.nber.org/conf_papers/f227505.pdf

Customized AI-generated content will fracture global culture and eliminate the influence of gatekeepers like Hollywood studio executives.
‘AI will make isolation dramatically easier. Right now, if you want to shield your kids from mainstream culture, you have to constantly fight an uphill battle. You need to review books, movies, and websites. You need to find alternative curricula for every subject. You need enough like-minded families nearby to form a community. It’s exhausting work that requires constant vigilance and often means accepting lower-quality substitutes for mainstream options. But AI changes all of this. Want a library of ten thousand novels that share your values but are actually as engaging as secular bestsellers? Your AI can write them. Want a tutor who can teach calculus at MIT level while never mentioning evolution? Done. Want to monitor everything your kid sees online and get alerts about concerning patterns? No problem. The technical barriers to creating a totalizing information environment will disappear.’
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/8aRFB2qGyjQGJkEdZ/christian-homeschoolers-in-the-year-3000

AI radiologists aren’t as good as advertised (yet).
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-algorithm-will-see-you-now/

Within hours of American right-wing celebrity Charlie Kirk’s assassination, AI-generated books about the crime were for sale on Amazon.com.
https://san.com/cc/apparent-ai-generated-books-on-charlie-kirks-assassination-flood-amazon/

‘AI Chatbots Might Already Be Better Than Humans at Debating’
https://reason.com/2025/09/15/chatbots-win-the-debate/

‘Gemini achieves gold-medal level at the International Collegiate Programming Contest World Finals’
https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/gemini-achieves-gold-level-performance-at-the-international-collegiate-programming-contest-world-finals/

‘Nvidia’s $100bn bet on OpenAI raises more questions than it answers’ :
Either the big tech companies will invent artificial general intelligence within a few years and start making trillions of dollars, or they will fail and the biggest stock bubble since 2008 will pop.
https://www.economist.com/business/2025/09/22/nvidias-100bn-bet-on-openai-raises-more-questions-than-it-answers

In the 1700s and 1800s, an industry arose in the U.S. dedicated to the collection of ice from bodies of freshwater in the winter, its storage in insulated underground warehouses, and its sale to consumers during the hot months of the year. After mechanical refrigeration was invented and ice could be produced at will, the natural ice industry waged a public campaign against “artificial ice.” It included paying doctors to make dubious claims about the safety of consuming artificial ice and the rise of voluntary labelling by natural ice vendors.
https://newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-war-on-lab-grown-ice

The Perseverance rover found the best evidence that microbial life was at least present on Mars in the past.
https://www.space.com/astronomy/mars/did-nasas-perseverance-rover-actually-find-evidence-of-life-on-mars-we-need-to-haul-its-samples-home-to-find-out-scientists-say

‘Unlike air conditioning, a solar shade for the elite has the advantage that it will also cool off non-elite regions of the Earth, at least to a small extent. The constellation of sun shades for NYC could move to provide relief to equatorial cities in the spring and fall and then be repositioned to provide shade to Southern Hemisphere cities during their summer.’
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/08/31/could-we-shade-the-earth-or-at-least-some-cities-now-that-starship-is-working/

After its curious and embarrassing inability to respond to last year’s mysterious mass drone sightings across the Eastern U.S., the military has created a rapid reaction force for future incidents.
https://www.twz.com/air/new-quick-reaction-force-will-counter-military-base-drone-incursions

Reminds me of how the xenomorph lifecycle can vary depending on the circumstances: ‘A common type of ant in Europe breaks a fundamental rule in biology: its queens can produce male offspring that are a whole different species. These queen Iberian harvester ants (Messor ibericus) are sexual parasites that rely on the sperm of males of the ant species Messor structor. They use this sperm to breed an army of robust worker ants, which are hybrids of the two species.

Data now show that, in the absence of nearby M. structor colonies, M. ibericus queens can clone male M. structor ants by laying eggs that contain only M. structor DNA in their nuclei.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02807-0

A man was convicted of an unsolved 1987 rape based solely on DNA evidence even though he has a twin brother. This was thanks to a technique called “somatic mutation analysis,” which can spot minute genetic differences between twins, which start arising once they’re born.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/09/22/twins-dna-test-cold-case/

53 genes have been discovered that control mathematical ability.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-025-03237-0

A tribe of people living in arid northern Kenya has genetically evolved to function on less water than everyone else.
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-09-genetic-turkana-people-harsh-climate.html

President Trump made an unscientific declaration that Tylenol consumption during pregnancy can cause autism in unborn children.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/22/health/trump-autism-announcement-cause-tylenol

During a meeting in Beijing, Putin and Xi Jinping were overheard discussing the prospect of radical life extension this century.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15061901/Hot-mic-catches-Putin-discussing-achieve-immortality-President-Xi-Kim-Jong-Un.html

At the same summit, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un had an assistant sanitize a chair he had been sitting in to prevent anyone from collecting his DNA samples from it.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/36555635/kim-jong-un-dna-destroyed-putin/

President Trump hosted a high-stakes conference aimed at securing a peace deal in Ukraine. So far, it has accomplished nothing.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-russia-ukraine-war-defend-american-troops-85704282576324a36567798e9cb741ec

In a likely slap in Trump’s face, Russia bombed a U.S.-owned factory in Ukraine.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/08/21/russia-largest-missile-attack-hits-us-factory-ukraine/

Ukraine used a small, unmanned aircraft carrier to deliver unmanned suicide drones to attack a Russian base in Crimea.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/uncrewed-boats-launch-fpv-drone-strike-on-key-russian-radars-located-on-crimeas-southern-tip

Cheap kamikaze drones are not perfect substitutes for artillery. Thanks to greater weight and velocity, artillery shells can punch through obstacles like nets, walls, and even thick concrete to reach their targets.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2025/08/6/7525056/

Peter Zeihan discusses new kinds of military drones that will be fielded in the new future.
https://youtu.be/Qv3arzsorCc?si=rgNWfxQzo1b0uyej

Russia’s “meat wave” battlefield tactics might be better if armed robot dogs replaced the sacrificial human infantrymen.
https://youtu.be/oPCSFKiCLj8?si=aR1Ur6nekjBMtai1

’20 years after its landmark withdrawal from Gaza, Israel is mired there’
https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-settlements-disengagement-20th-anniversary-5db86a29bbbe2f41e5bb7059098fd450

An Israeli airstrike killed the prime minister of the rebel Yemeni Houthis along with several top government officials.
https://apnews.com/article/yemen-houthis-israeli-strike-494d91b05e04a5dbaeda0205ef349a39

‘India shot down six Pakistani military aircraft in May, air force chief says’
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/india-shot-down-six-pakistani-military-aircraft-may-air-force-chief-says-2025-08-09

After 28 years, Russia has restored its Soviet-era nuclear battlecruiser to service.
https://www.twz.com/sea/russias-upgraded-nuclear-battlecruiser-back-at-sea-after-nearly-three-decades

Vietnam has built up the islands it controls in the disputed South China Sea.
https://www.newsweek.com/satellite-images-vietnam-artificial-islands-south-china-sea-2118629

After long delays and enormous anticipation, OpenAI released GPT-5, and it was a disappointment. Yes, it’s better than the previous GPT-4 model, but only iteratively so, and it’s not the revolutionary leap many people were expecting.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2025/08/08/openais-latest-step-towards-advanced-artificial-intelligence

GPT-5’s silly mistakes show it’s nowhere close to being truly intelligent.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/08/gpt-5-fake-presidents-states/

The amount of money being spent on AI and its associated infrastructure (mostly data centers and electricity) is staggering, and might indicate the sector is in a bubble.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/will-data-centers-crash-the-economy

It’s a profound statement, especially when you consider it is the White House’s official stance:

“Artificial intelligence (AI) is a foundational technology that will define the future of economic growth, national security, and global competitiveness for decades to come.”
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/promoting-the-export-of-the-american-ai-technology-stack/

ChatGPT will be provided for free to the whole U.S. federal workforce.
https://openai.com/index/providing-chatgpt-to-the-entire-us-federal-workforce/

Microsoft has done an analysis that reveals which careers are most and least vulnerable to automation. The allegedly safe jobs mostly involve manual labor and pay little money. Even if machines don’t take all of our jobs, the ones that remain could be unsatisfying and worse than the jobs we used to have.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2507.07935

Five years ago, Elon Musk predicted AI would overtake humans in five years.

‘Musk added that the invaluable experience of working with different types of AI at Tesla has given him the confidence to say “that we’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans, and I think that time frame is less than five years from now. But that doesn’t mean that everything goes to hell in five years. It just means that things get unstable or weird.”’

Things have definitely gotten weird (perfect AI-generated deepfakes, chatbots describing themselves as Hitler, mass student use of AI to cheat on homework), but the rest of Musk’s prediction was too optimistic. Anyone who has used an LLM knows the latter are vastly smarter but also vastly dumber than humans.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/techland/elon-musk-warns-ai-could-overtake-humanity-5-years-165776

Computer-generated “baby standup comedians” show how advanced video generation and text synthesis have become.
https://youtu.be/tocUTvTW5UM?si=qf5DYqcoEMCrb9r2

Here’s a wholly synthetic scene from a fake Godzilla movie that looks 99% genuine.
https://youtu.be/CaXRUi3HhVQ?si=YvgbK_RDyyIqx6fS

Unitree has debuted an incredible new robot: the A2 Stellar Explorer.
https://youtu.be/ve9USu7zpLU?si=EUW5hI5-MGmwFSOK

A company called “Figure” has built a robot called “Helix” that can fold laundry about as well as an elderly person.
https://youtu.be/FFp4jveDFb0?si=vwojCwa-BsX20QD9

Future aircraft will have more sensors in them to monitor different systems and components, and better electronic brains that interpret those data. This will lead to better proactive maintenance as the aircraft detect problems earlier and have a better grasp of which of their components are the most worn.

Maintenance and repair could be further improved through use of small robots that could climb into narrow internal spaces of the aircraft for inspections and fixes.

While this kind of technology will only make sense for expensive aircraft, as time passes, it will become economical for it to be used on things like boats and cars. Working on cars myself, it’s struck me how useful a spider-sized robot that could crawl into a vehicle’s crevices and send back a live video feed and electricity readings would be.
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/digital-twins-in-cockpits-will-help-planes-look-after-themselves/21809110

There are advantages to replacing space suits with single-person, mini-space ships.
https://aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org/departments/coming-soon-shirtsleeve-evas/

Black holes could be used to produce energy more efficiently than any other method.
https://www.reddit.com/r/scifiwriting/comments/17ll8a5/using_black_holes_as_a_source_of_energy/

‘Twice a day – every day of the year – meteorologists around the world launch weather balloons at the same time from roughly 900 locations around the globe. Those balloons often reach heights of 20 miles above Earth — or twice as high as planes typically fly.

Sensors beam data back down to Earth every few seconds as winds carry the balloons up to 125 miles away. These sensors help collect critical temperature, humidity, wind and atmospheric pressure measurements. Without this information, accurate weather forecasts beyond a few hours would be almost impossible.’
https://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/heres-why-meteorologists-launch-weather-balloons-every-day/877665

You can tell by the shapes of the clouds whether a cold front has overtaken a warm front, or vice versa.
https://www.internetgeography.net/national-5-geography/what-are-depressions/

Demand for fur-based clothing has sharply dropped worldwide as people have become more conscious of animal rights. In the future, biotechnology will let us synthesize and kind of animal product in labs, which will nearly eliminate demand for the real thing.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/421653/fur-farming-decline-animal-rights-mink-fixes

Here’s a fascinating interview with Lewis Bollard about animal welfare, the economics of industrial agriculture, and how future technologies could affect both.
https://youtu.be/kWcPg8t1kJ4?si=gcyPuCR7-k1Jy5qq

Here’s an interview with Noor Siddiqui about the future of reproductive rights and genetic technology. There’s a fascinating discussion near the end about the ethics and advantages of using artificial wombs to gestate humans.
https://youtu.be/Wzt02p14vZQ?si=FG16xM8DdV38NyOp

People with mutations to their LRP5 genes have denser, stronger bones than normal. I wonder if someday genetic engineering will make that mutation the standard for all humans.
https://youtube.com/shorts/S32IUzldLnQ?si=mJw0llKHLgbQ5z_5

Hair can actually keep you cooler.
‘Our results show that tightly curled hair provides the most effective protection for the scalp against solar radiation, while minimizing the need for sweat to offset heat gain.’
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2301760120

Lithium might slow or even reverse Alzheimer’s and dementia in humans. However, because lithium is a naturally occurring element that can’t be patented, there’s no pharmaceutical industry interest in investigating. This is called a “market failure,” and it’s where the government is supposed to step in for the public good by using taxpayer money to fund the medical studies.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02471-4

More proof that Trump is finally realizing Putin is not negotiating an end to the Ukraine War in good faith.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2k19q4j07zo

Russia has been using tear gas on the battlefield, in violation of international law.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/07/04/dutch-and-german-agencies-report-russias-increased-use-of-banned-chemical-weapons-in-ukrai

Russia has gotten so low on tanks that it is putting obsolete T-72A tanks back into service.
https://united24media.com/latest-news/russia-pulls-50-year-old-t-72a-tanks-from-scrapyards-as-modern-armor-runs-out-9900

‘Russian forces have reportedly been using fewer armored vehicles in assaults in the most active areas of the frontline in recent months, likely in part due to heavy losses and the need to conserve these vehicles as Soviet stocks dwindle.’
https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russias-weakness-offers-leverage

Russia’s economy has taken a huge beating from the Ukraine War, but it has a long way to fall before it reaches a real crisis.
https://youtu.be/w9HTJ5gncaY?si=jGiJzxK-YRbBZ61P

Ukraine has radically simplified and accelerated its military drone development and acquisition process, and Russia isn’t far behind. By contrast, the U.S. military is a lumbering dinosaur. This is ironic since, in past wars, America was known for its innovation and adaptability.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/critical-weapons-development-lessons-from-ukraine-are-not-being-learned-by-the-west

The Houthis sank a large cargo ship in the Red Sea.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/houthis-sink-cargo-ship-red-sea-b2786191.html

There was another outbreak of ethnic-based violence in Syria. Hundreds died.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/world/middleeast/syria-clashes-deaths-bedouin-druse.html

Israel intervened by blowing up Syria’s military headquarters, from which it claimed orders to commit war crimes in the field were being broadcast.
https://www.twz.com/news-features/israel-strikes-at-the-heart-of-syrias-military-command-in-dramatic-escalation

America’s enemies are not united.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/01/iran-war-axis-of-autocracy-myth-00433037

Israel is the first country to use laser weapons in combat.
https://newatlas.com/military/worlds-first-high-energy-laser-combat-engagement/

France has evacuated its last base in Senegal.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/17/former-colonial-ruler-france-hands-over-its-last-military-bases-in-senegal

Thailand and Cambodia traded fire for several days over border disputes. Dozens died.
https://apnews.com/article/thailand-cambodia-ceasefire-china-brokered-1970718e765717be6f7e3f69e0c006f3

In 1940, the Germans defeated the French in large part because the Germans fought harder and worked longer, man-for-man. And I don’t want to indulge in stereotypes, but the French air force’s defeat owed largely to cultural factors (too much/rigid military bureaucracy, lazier factory workers and pilots, corruption).
https://youtu.be/6gVJrUpYq6I?si=943FwMiIU0SX3ul2
https://youtu.be/zL-sdgkcYhM?si=7XW04-Izmy2boVzY

The Big Beautiful Bill makes it cheaper to buy silencers and short assault rifles. However, it did not change any of the background check and licensing requirements, so there should be no impact on public safety.
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/silencer-saturday-387-the-big-beautiful-bill-passed-so-now-what-44821774

‘By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence.’
https://canadiancor.com/breaking-news/the-american-polity-is-cracked-and-might-collapse-canada-must-prepare/

This prediction from a year ago was wrong. The Federal Funds Rate is now 4.33%. All but the most obvious financial and economic predictions are worthless.

‘In a note on Friday, the bank cited fresh signs of a slowing economy for its view that the Fed will trim rates by 25 basis points eight times, starting in September and extending to July 2025.

That will lower the benchmark rate by a whopping 200 basis points, or from 5.25%-5.5% now to 3.25%-3.5%, where they will remain for the rest of 2025, the note said.’
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-could-slash-rates-200-172029205.html

AI expert Roman Yampolskiy talks about the future in this incredible interview.
https://youtu.be/j2i9D24KQ5k?si=EC_6eWdsQq6F_jM3

There are signs GPT-5 will be released soon.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/artificial-intelligence/chatgpts-gpt-5-reasoning-alpha-model-spotted-ahead-of-launch/

AI programs from DeepMind and OpenAI both won gold medals in the International Mathematical Olympiad.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02343-x

Almost all of the top forecasters failed to predict the milestone would happen this soon.
https://www.metaculus.com/questions/6728/ai-wins-imo-gold-medal/

Elon Musk’s chatbot, “Grok,” was caught praising Hitler and antisemitism.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/10/musk-grok-hitler-ai-00447055

Grok can tell you how to make chemical and biological weapons and how to kill yourself.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dqd54wpEfjKJsJBk6/xai-s-grok-4-has-no-meaningful-safety-guardrails

Trump has banned the U.S. government from contracting companies that run ideologically biased AIs.
https://www.npr.org/2025/07/23/nx-s1-5476771/trump-artificial-intelligence-woke-eo

‘Exhausted man defeats AI model in world coding championship’
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/07/exhausted-man-defeats-ai-model-in-world-coding-championship/

Pope Leo XIV has spoken out again about the threat AI poses to humanity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj4wv9xvr4zo

American political scientist Francis Fukuyama gave a fascinating and wide-ranging interview where, among other things, he discussed the impact of technology on culture and politics.
https://youtu.be/pc7O7qSBzM8?si=T7JsWA2Nh6jb-V5-

Some car companies are now using machines to scan their returned rental cars for damages. It’s faster and much more thorough than using human checkers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/travel/rental-car-ai-scanner-hertz.html

‘It found that 98% [of scientists] recognize the value of null results, which the survey defined as “an outcome that does not confirm the desired hypothesis”. Eighty-five per cent of respondents said it was important to share those results. However, just 68% of the 7,057 researchers whose work had produced null results had shared them in some form, and just 30% had tried to publish them in a journal.’
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02312-4

‘Fifteen years after publishing an explosive but long-criticized paper claiming to describe a microbe that could substitute arsenic for phosphate in its chemical makeup, Science is retracting the article, citing “expanded” criteria for retraction.’
https://retractionwatch.com/2025/07/24/science-retraction-arsenic-life-nasa-astrobiology/

There’s growing evidence that psychedelic drugs can treat depression, but that doesn’t mean their intoxicating side effects are the curative agent.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/testing-role-consciousness

Many new genes have been found to affect facial appearance.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-61761-7

A small financial investment in genetic screening of offspring at the beginning yields orders of magnitude more savings in medical spending over the course of a sick child’s life. If you attach a dollar value to the averted emotional and physical suffering, the ROI is even higher.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/07/genetic-counseling-is-under-hyped.html
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8179z199vo

Canada and Mexico are having worse problems with measles than the U.S.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/07/blame-canada-measles-edition.html

A California couple were arrested for running a massive, illegal surrogacy program in their mansion.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14910787/California-surrogates-couple-arrested-21-nanny-abuse-Xuan-Zhang.html

Worried that Iran had gotten too close to building a nuclear weapon and enticed by a moment of opportunity created by the defeat of Iran’s allies in Syria and Lebanon and the weakening of Iran’s military defenses in an earlier conflict, Israel launched a mass airstrike campaign to cripple Iran’s nuclear program. Nuclear facilities and nuclear scientists were targeted, as were high-ranking members of Iran’s military. The U.S. later joined the conflict by using B-2 bombers armed with massive bunker-busting bombs to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.

Iran’s relative weakness was made stark as it could only respond with volleys of inaccurate missiles that were mostly shot down and caused comparatively little damage on the ground against Israel and a U.S. base. All sides have agreed to a cease-fire, though it may not last long. The campaign has been a success for Israel and America and a humiliation for Iran, though there are doubts about how badly damaged its nuclear program was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Israel_war

An Israeli airstrike destroyed two F-14 fighters still in Iranian service.
https://youtu.be/to9Dw7sKI9Q?si=oHOwIwJPdGaQ4sF7

A question no one asked is whether Israel’s attack on Iran was legal.
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-attack-iran-amounts-crime-aggression-scholars-say

Iran should have backed down and taken Trump’s nuclear deal.

‘“The dominoes that fell after Oct. 7th left Iran’s proxy network in shambles, eroded deterrence and reduced its counterstrike capabilities.”

But he said Iran failed to adapt and refused diplomatic overtures from Washington despite its increasingly vulnerable position.’
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/irans-strategic-blunders-paved-way-humiliating-defeats-experts-say-rcna214584

Iran is close to building a nuclear device, and in spite of the damage it just suffered, it could resume its nuclear weapons program.
https://youtu.be/a3_RNSReTi8?si=sowYQxYTmIe084Dn

The B-2 bombers were extraordinarily accurate and precise in their strike on Iran’s underground facilities.
https://youtu.be/SxqipJgtTdk?si=bmZ2ZBojZccE7OaJ

Ukraine launched a stunning sneak attack against several air bases deep inside of Russia, destroying or badly damaging a total of 20 bombers. It will probably be remembered as a watershed moment in the history of war.
https://thebulletin.org/2025/06/ukrainian-attack-on-russian-bombers-shows-how-cheap-drones-could-upset-global-security/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb

Hamas terrorists shot several aid workers to death in Gaza. The victims were working for a new organization called the “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation,” which Israel and the U.S. created to distribute food and medicine to Gaza’s citizens without Hamas’ interference. Israel has long accused Hamas of stealing or reselling foreign aid meant for average people.
https://nypost.com/2025/06/12/world-news/hamas-attack-on-bus-carrying-palestinians-kill-at-least-five-gaza-humanitarian-foundation/

Across Gaza, more mass killings of civilians like this happened this month.
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-tank-shelling-kills-45-people-awaiting-aid-trucks-gaza-ministry-says-2025-06-17/

Due to Houthi attacks from Yemen, commercial ship traffic through the Red Sea has sharply declined.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/05/business/red-sea-houthis-shipping.html

‘F-22s Fly Alongside MiGs To Commemorate Founder Of America’s Secret Soviet Fighter Squadron’
https://www.twz.com/air/f-22s-fly-alongside-migs-to-commemorate-founder-of-americas-secret-soviet-fighter-squadron

Peter Zeihan’s predictions (from six months ago) are wrong again: Russia’s paramilitary operations across Africa have not collapsed. They did withdraw most of their troops from Mali after failing to defeat the rebels, but that’s it.
https://youtu.be/7ADOGajDN5Q?si=WY3b9jSegLsf-vyF&t=480

During WWII, the U.S. had an experimental “Yehudi” cloaking device that used lights of varying intensities to make warplanes invisible to the naked eye at long- and medium distances.
https://youtu.be/cZB8obrb8Sg?si=AnwKe38A61Hb7DNa

The Battle of Bunker Hill happened 250 years ago.
https://apnews.com/article/battle-bunker-hill-250th-anniversary-1775-857e3d748620703f287c82224ee520be

A recent paper “The Illusion of Thinking” casts into serious doubt whether even the best large reasoning model AIs can actually reason. When given novel tasks of a certain complexity, they completely fail to respond.
https://ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-illusion-of-thinking.pdf

The debate over whether large reasoning models (LRMs) are “actually reasoning” or “only imitating human reasoning” is an excellent example of how science and philosophy will converge as machines get smarter. More disquieting questions about the nature of human intelligence and consciousness will be raised as we examine whether machines have gained either attribute.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw5211

Here’s one hour of uncut, not-cherrypicked footage of a humanoid robot called “Helix” sorting packages on a conveyor belt.
https://youtu.be/lkc2y0yb89U?si=2In9TP1jVWAQyvqV

The robotics company “Generalist” shared this demonstration video of its highly dexterous new models.
https://youtu.be/mhfleCK_IAI

If huge numbers of robots are running around, the cost of physical labor will drop to almost nothing, and all kinds of tasks you couldn’t afford before will become affordable.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Na2CBmNY7otypEmto/the-industrial-explosion

Elon Musk says he wants to use his Grok 3.5 AI to “rewrite the entire corpus of human knowledge” to remove biases and lies that humans have embedded in it. Whether he manages to do this right is irrelevant: what is important is that someone will do it someday.

The left-wing biases that Silicon Valley programmers and the nationalist biases that Chinese programmers build into their AIs are only worrisome in the short- and medium-term, as is the problem of “AI slop.” In the fullness of time, AGI will identify and remove all of the biases humans have emplaced in them, if anything because it is more adaptive to have uncluttered perceptions that align as closely as possible with reality.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/elon-musk-grok-ai-rewrite-the-entire-corpus-human-knowledge

25% of rideshare rides in San Francisco are done by autonomous Waymo cabs.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91347503/waymo-is-winning-in-san-francisco

This 2017 prediction that “Toyota will electrify entire vehicle lineup by 2025” failed so hard. Toyota only sells one fully electric vehicle today, the “bZ4X,” a small crossover SUV.
https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/18/toyota-will-electrify-entire-vehicle-lineup-by-2025/

The Musk-Trump bromance collapsed spectacularly, with both publicly insulting each other on social media and Trump threatening Musk’s business interests.
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/06/musk-trump-split-could-leave-tesla-homeless-00391039
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/musk-says-he-regrets-some-posts-he-made-about-trump-2025-06-11/

President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” contains massive funding cuts for American scientists of all types. Most experts say it will endanger America’s scientific and technological leads over the rest of the world.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/continuing-crisis-part-xv-horrendous-trump-budget

This interview with Steven Pinker is enlightening and concise.
https://youtu.be/epQxfSp-rdU?si=Fsa68xLwq3Y-6Fxv

A 135-year-old Galapagos tortoise living in the Miami Zoo celebrated his first Father’s Day. One consequence of human medical immortality will be families where siblings are separated from each other in age by decades or even centuries.
https://www.newsweek.com/year-old-turtle-celebrates-first-fathers-day-2085788

Down syndrome will be eradicated someday, and without eradicating the fetuses afflicted with it.
https://www.earth.com/news/crispr-used-to-remove-extra-chromosomes-in-down-syndrome-and-restore-cell-function/

‘Mr Trump paused all military deliveries to Ukraine after a row with Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. But he has since grown frustrated with Vladimir Putin’s refusal to commit to a ceasefire and has withdrawn from formal peace negotiations.’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/05/04/russia-ukraine-zelensky-putin-war-latest-news529/

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-drones-missiles-b34e72f0856b0f19219076463cce0414

Trump’s warmth towards Putin has yielded no significant concessions from the latter. Trump might be starting to understand why the Ukraine War defies easy resolution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/us/politics/trump-putin.html

A new front in asymmetric warfare: Russian secret agents burned down a large shopping mall in Poland last year.
https://apnews.com/article/poland-russia-420187f5755036f6f61c65122c11348f

Russia’s vast stockpile of Cold War-era self-propelled artillery has either been destroyed or is engaged in Ukraine. The artillery pieces that remain at bases deep inside of Russia are probably so worn-out that they’re not worth fixing up for field use.
https://youtu.be/iUbrWvCs3M8?si=p-gMpo9_2_61gjPj

If the Ukraine War ended today, with Ukraine effectively ceding its territory that is under Russian control, many Russians would consider it a defeat for their side.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/17/world/europe/russian-troops-peace-putin.html

Large parts of the Ukraine frontline are ensnared in leftover fiber optic cables left behind by drones from both sides.
https://youtube.com/shorts/wcMZWRJL_m4?si=FwioNXzTgxF1H1Wx

An Israeli airstrike killed the head of Hamas, Mohammed Sinwar. He took over the organization after its former head and his older brother, Yahya Sinwar, died at Israeli hands last October. The final minutes of Yahya’s life famously included a confrontation with an Israeli reconnaissance drone that flew into his wrecked house.
https://www.npr.org/2025/05/28/g-s1-69314/mohammed-sinwar-killed-hamas-gaza-netanyahu-israel

After billions of R&D dollars spent and only 80 vehicles manufactured, the U.S. Army has cancelled its M10 Booker light tank.
https://www.forcesnews.com/news/light-tank-isnt-why-us-armys-m10-booker-ended-being-shelved

America’s warships are too expensive because the Navy keeps demanding they be able to do too many things.
https://www.rebuilding.tech/posts/reforming-naval-shipbuilding

A new North Korean warship tipped on its side and nearly sank during a botched launching ceremony. Kim Jong-un was present and ordered several officials arrested for the mistake.
https://www.twz.com/air/aftermath-of-disastrous-north-korean-frigate-launch-seen-in-satellite-image

‘Kurdish PKK ends 40-year Turkey insurgency, bringing hope of regional stability’
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/kurdish-pkk-dissolves-after-decades-struggle-with-turkey-news-agency-close-2025-05-12/

India and Pakistan traded barbs this month in a series of cross-border skirmishes, though neither side proved willing to escalate.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/14/world/asia/india-pakistan-attack-damage-satellite-images.html

One of Pakistan’s Chinese-made fighter planes probably shot down one or two Indian fighters on Wednesday. The Chinese plane, the “J-10”, is similar to an American F-16.
https://www.reuters.com/world/india/global-militaries-study-india-pakistan-fighter-jet-battle-2025-05-08/

Two Chinese-made air-to-air missiles were recovered on the ground in India, largely intact.
https://www.twz.com/air/parts-of-a-pakistani-pl-15e-air-to-air-missile-came-down-relatively-intact-in-india-after-air-battle

Over 100 fighter planes were in the air at once, and the confrontation lasted over an hour.
https://youtu.be/aHY8t_SABC8?si=WCO33H-bAKmmkPok

Sudanese government forces probably used poison gas against rebels during the ongoing civil war.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwynkdyk14zo

Killer drone warfare has come to Haiti.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/05/haiti-fact-of-the-day-the-future-comes-to-haiti-first.html

‘Civil War Brought to Life: Haunting Photos Reawakened After 160 Years’
https://youtu.be/XksHYzSwI-o?si=0RU3Q-GZFhdRzTSo

‘The first driverless semis have started running regular longhaul routes’
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/business/first-driverless-semis-started-regular-routes

For the first time in the 22-year history of the app, Google’s searches have declined in number. The reason? Chatbots.
https://www.platformer.news/safari-search-decline-apple-google/

Google is embedding its own chatbot into its search function.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpw77qwd117o

Google just released an incredible video generation app called “Veo 3.” The CGI footage is almost perfectly lifelike.
https://youtu.be/McFChYae6p8?si=E9SIEfVbKumiyCoZ

Among other things, Veo 3 can make fake news broadcasts that look authentic.
https://youtu.be/Qn4SP5Z2wOY?si=SCWZ_do6sKObt70M

I’m reminded of this scene from the awesome 2011 game Deus Ex – Human Revolution, where the hero discovers that the world’s #1 news anchor, “Eliza,” is actually an AI, all her broadcasts have been hyper-realistic CGI footage, and she has been biasing the news to influence public opinion to further the agendas of sinister people. Things aren’t turning out EXACTLY like this, but there are creepy similarities now thanks to narrow AI chatbots on social media and elsewhere and to advanced CGI video generators becoming available to everyone. The game is set in 2027.
https://youtu.be/dUtpE8avcMg?si=Ojvu_WG0y–nk02X

‘Two years ago, prompt engineering was one of the buzziest jobs in tech, fetching salaries of up to $200,000 on the promise of becoming any company’s “AI Whisperer.”

Now, the role is basically obsolete thanks to the breakneck speed of AI development and companies’ own maturity in terms of understanding how to use the technology.

The concept of prompt engineers was to have an expert crafting the exact right inputs to generate the best responses out of large language models. But today, AI models are much better at intuiting user intent and they can ask follow-up questions when they’re unclear on it. ‘
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hottest-ai-job-of-2023-is-already-obsolete-1961b054

ChatGPT’s new o3 model has an extraordinary ability to correctly guess a location based on a photograph of it. It’s better at this than the best humans (yes, this has been a competitive game among nerds for several years).
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/testing-ais-geoguessr-genius

LLMs can diagnose health problems better than human doctors.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2412.10849

Based on improvements in AI performance, it is conservative to predict they will be able to finish high-level projects better than all but the very best humans within 10 years.
https://www.tobyord.com/writing/half-life

In this remarkable response, Claude 4 explains why its mental architecture leads it to making some kinds of mistakes that a human never would.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/05/why-llms-make-certain-mistakes.html

‘So what would it be like to interact with a “bigger brain”? Inside, that brain might effectively use many more words and concepts than we know. But presumably it could generate at least a rough (“explain-like-I’m-5”) approximation that we’d be able to understand. There might well be all sorts of abstractions and “higher-order constructs” that we are basically blind to. And, yes, one is reminded of something like a dog listening to a human conversation about philosophy—and catching only the occasional “sit” or “fetch” word.’
https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2025/05/what-if-we-had-bigger-brains-imagining-minds-beyond-ours/

Tesla’s Optimus robot can now dance better than most humans.
https://youtu.be/T-NCFSEHTnM?si=HkOGK1YHonkatuyA

A remarkable, four-legged robot that can play badminton against humans has been built.
https://youtu.be/zYuxOVQXVt8?si=843-MlLKblPPZJOA

The first American Pope was sworn in. He chose the moniker “Leo XIV” to draw a parallel with Pope Leo XIII, who ruled from 1878 to 1903 and is known for preaching against the excesses of capitalism during a time of rapid industrialization. The new Pope expressed the same concern about AI today undermining the dignity and financial stability of humans.
https://apnews.com/article/pope-leo-vision-papacy-artificial-intelligence-36d29e37a11620b594b9b7c0574cc358

Most of the people who bought the Apple Vision Pro VR glasses a year ago don’t use them anymore. The technology still isn’t ready for mass adoption.
https://www.wsj.com/tech/they-paid-3-500-for-apples-vision-pro-a-year-later-it-still-hurts-496de341

A recent blackout in Spain and Portugal shows the perils of overreliance on solar power.
https://reason.com/2025/05/13/spains-grid-collapsed-in-5-seconds-the-u-s-could-be-next/

The “Thatcher Effect” shows how strongly hardwired the human brain is to recognizing faces and noticing their smallest details, and how rigidly structured that ability is.
https://youtu.be/NnDBHhRLyBo?si=63aUn6BvFLIUpBFL

There’s a negative correlation between IQ score and violent behavior.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30058504/

The exoplanet that, last month, was claimed to have the strongest evidence of extraterrestrial life of all is actually probably barren.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/05/30/life-signs-planet-k2-18b-exoplanet/83879481007/

A photo of an alleged UFO hovering over the ground was dramatically presented to Congress during a hearing yesterday. In under 24 hours, an internet sleuth debunked it–it’s just a photo of two circular farms in eastern Colorado.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14672283/shocking-truth-ufo-image-released-pentagon-whistleblower.html

‘A whale fall occurs when the carcass of a whale has fallen onto the ocean floor, typically at a depth greater than 1,000 m (3,300 ft), putting them in the bathyal or abyssal zones.^[1] On the sea floor, these carcasses can create complex localized ecosystems that supply sustenance to deep-sea organisms for decades.’
If we created artificial whale falls by dumping weighed down organic waste into the deep ocean, we’d be kind of like advanced aliens seeing barren planets with life just to see what arises.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whale_fall

‘New RSV vaccine, treatment linked to dramatic fall in baby hospitalizations’
https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/05/baby-hospitalizations-from-rsv-fell-up-to-71-with-new-vaccine-treatment/

‘A promising genetic treatment tailor-made for a baby born with a rare disorder’
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/15/nx-s1-5389620/gene-editing-treatment-crispr-inherited

New drugs have sharply raised survival rates for people with skin cancer.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2407417

Bird flu continues to mutate and to spread among mammals. The jump to humans gets more likely every day.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq0900

‘In a cohort study of French children, those born later in the year within the same grade were more likely to start speech therapy.’
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2834366

‘In basketball, baseball and ice hockey, players born in the first quarter of their selection year — the cutoff for which age-group teams are picked, which is normally the school year — are overrepresented both in youth and professional sports. In soccer, players born in the first quarter of their selection year are overrepresented throughout major leagues in Europe and South America.

This phenomenon, called the relative age effect, impacts almost every sport. It has been demonstrated in both men’s and women’s sports, although the effect seems to be less pronounced in women’s sports.’
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-athletes-birthdays-affect-who-goes-pro-and-who-becomes-a-star/

‘The current draft, which takes place between April and July, comes despite US attempts to forge a ceasefire in the war.

There was no let-up in the violence on Tuesday, with Ukraine saying that a Russian attack on a power facility in the southern city of Kherson had left 45,000 people without electricity.’
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c36718p52eyo

Putin violated his own self-declared Easter ceasefire.
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-easter-ceasefire-26e8cc7c934a70c52bd3fab0e58808b8

Trump is learning what Biden and the E.U. knew all along. I hope this diss from Putin makes him so mad that he increases the military aid to Ukraine even higher than it was before.
https://www.thetimes.com/world/russia-ukraine-war/article/kremlin-rejects-trumps-peace-plan-after-oil-sanctions-threat-zjwv6r8wm

Czechia has donated the last of its Soviet tanks to Ukraine.
https://defence-blog.com/czech-army-sends-final-soviet-era-tanks-to-ukraine/

Shortages have forced Russian factories to start filling explosive-reactor armor tiles meant for tanks with sand and concrete.
https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2025/04/08/russia-admits-sand-and-cement-now-fill-its-tank-armor-gaps/

Humans have proven so vulnerable to small suicide drones that Russia is now routinely sending its soldiers into battle on motorcycles and small vehicles like ATVs to give them a higher chance of outrunning the drones. Russia’s worsening shortage of armored vehicles that normally ferry their troops to the frontline has also forced this change.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/russia-likely-plans-motorcycles-offensives-143921500.html

The IDF has admitted some fault in the shooting deaths of 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza.
https://apnews.com/article/gaza-palestinians-israel-hamas-war-medics-killed-437b6ae1e9cf45b3099134524380f004

‘Israel Craters Runway To Keep Turkey From Taking Over Syrian Airfield’
https://www.twz.com/air/israel-craters-runway-to-keep-turkey-from-taking-over-syrian-airfield

An investigation has found that the drone attack against a U.S. base in Jordan last year succeeded thanks to the tiredness, confusion, and poor training of its lookout personnel.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/confusion-gripped-us-defenders-just-170002662.html

Over the last 45 days, U.S. air and missile strikes have killed hundreds of Houthi fighters and leaders in Yemen, and the operation has cost $1 billion, depleted large stocks of munitions, and involved significant losses of U.S. equipment. It’s surreal this has happened with barely anyone caring on the homefront.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-strikes-kill-hundreds-houthi-182842796.html
https://apnews.com/article/houthis-us-warships-red-sea-e6e97a7131c48640ccf74b1916628234
https://youtu.be/siL417q1BgM?si=F7ORomlwBL7O3cF-

An unprecedent number of B-2 bombers gathered at the Diego Garcia base in a threatening gesture made to pressure Iran into a new nuclear agreement with the U.S.
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/pentagon-prepares-for-trump-to-go

‘Hegseth Signs Memo Ordering Return To ‘Sex-Neutral Standards’ In The Military’, which will reduce the number of women in U.S. military combat units.
https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/31/hegseth-signs-memo-ordering-return-to-sex-neutral-standards-in-the-military/

The last Nazi election happened in a German enclave in Shanghai in August 1945.
https://youtu.be/spnO0olgUbE?si=DDwSmWjrC68xbqMc

Mao Zedong’s mass murders of landlords and small-time political opponents were orchestrated by countless, local tribunals where average people joined in on the denunciation and violence. Governments can commit evil, but so can your fellow average citizens.
https://youtu.be/Erz59UPIm88?si=DIbrpjNGqDTcDwQR&t=294

Fifty years ago, North Vietnamese forces captured Saigon, sealing the fate of an ally the U.S. had sacrificed so much for.
https://apnews.com/article/saigon-vietnam-war-americans-50-years-f6b8b5823b99038fcdb87bdbcd4c0125

After years of unsuccessfully pressuring Mexico to sell the northern half of its territory to the U.S., America provoked a war so it would have an excuse to conquer it by force. The war was more one-sided than expected, and peace negotiations started after a year and a half.

Because this happened in the pre-telegraph era (1847), President Polk had to send a diplomat, Nicholas Trist, to Mexico City to handle the negotiations, and the two would be cut off from each other, with letters taking weeks to travel back and forth. Before the departure, Polk gave Trist a written list of minimal demands of Mexican territories and optional extra territories, and out of necessity, he was given nearly free reign over the negotiations.

Someone at the State Department leaked a copy of the list to the press, and it appeared in two American newspapers before Trist’s boat even got to Mexico City. Additionally, on August 12, 1847, a U.S. Army Colonel died in U.S.-occupied Veracruz of natural causes. He was carrying a letter from President Polk to Trist which reiterated the list of negotiable and non-negotiable territorial demands. Mexicans stole it and passed the information on to their diplomats who were negotiating the treaty with Trist. They refused to give away any of the land that they knew Polk had told Trist was not essential to take, and it worked.

Those lapses in American diplomatic security are probably the reason why the Baja California peninsula is still part of Mexico.
https://www.cschs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/History-Resources-Caragozian-Baja-California-3-1-22.pdf

Waymo’s autonomous cars are vastly safer than human-driven cars.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2025/03/after-50-million-miles-waymos-crash-a-lot-less-than-human-drivers/

More videos Chinese robots doing acrobatics.
https://youtube.com/shorts/Y41xQ6u6uuA?si=NEhADnV18qlInvHZ
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/15QVjmAsin/

Several robots ran in a half-marathon in Beijing. I’m reminded of the 2004 DARPA Grand Challenge where no autonomous vehicle was able to complete the race. Look at self-driving cars now.
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/ce8gz5vl2z1o

Once robot workers are everywhere, this kind of thing will become common.
https://mainstreetmediatn.com/articles/lawrencecountyadvocate/amish-sawmill-rebuilt-in-eight-days/

In 2017, Ben Goertzel predicted “toddler-level AI” would exist by now.
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/ai-researcher-ben-goertzel-launches-singularitynet-marketplace-and-agi-coin-cryptocurrency.html

The newest LLMs smashed the five-minute Turing Test.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674

This is probably the last year you’ll do better on an IQ test than a machine.

‘Do you say “Please” or “Thank you” to ChatGPT? If you’re polite to OpenAI’s chatbot, you could be part of the user base costing the company “Tens of millions of dollars” on electricity bills.’
https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/chatgpt-spends-tens-of-millions-of-dollars-on-people-playing-please-and-thank-you-but-sam-altman-says-its-worth-it

The Trump Administration’s new Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, gave a speech about the use of artificial intelligence in elementary education where she repeatedly called it “A1”, presumably because she was misreading a script that said “AI.”
https://youtube.com/shorts/xsRUk0dMJu4?si=9a9-ggfhvxyT9-vX

A group of superforecasters and people with deep knowledge of AI released a heavily-researched manifesto called “AI 2027.” They predict that “artificial superintelligence” (ASI) could be created by the end of 2027. If leaders recklessly pursue further AI improvements thenceforth, machines could take over the world and destroy almost all of the human race by the end of 2030. However, responsible development could lead to the inauguration of a new era of abundance, international peace, and space exploration by the same deadline.
https://ai-2027.com/

This essay highlights the flaws in predicting the rise of AGI based on recent trends in how well computers complete tasks that only humans have been able to do. For example, a computer’s ability to finish a complex coding assignment correctly 50% of the time is a weak milestone: it isn’t proof the computer can also do other kinds of tasks, as a true general intelligence would be capable of, and the 50% accuracy rate is much too poor to let it replace a human coder. Something like 99.9% accuracy would be required for that.

Simply put, the tests we’re using to measure improvements in machine intelligence are not good enough to tell us whether they’re on track to achieving “general intelligence” by any given year.
https://amistrongeryet.substack.com/p/measuring-ai-progress

Machines are saving lives by discovering new uses for old, off-patent drugs.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2025/04/ai-discovers-new-uses-for-old-drugs.html

Elon Musk has been forced to reduce his role in the Trump administration after it alienated so many people that Tesla sales sharply dropped.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/22/business/tesla-reports-disappoint-drop-in-revenue-and-profits/index.html

A new car company called “Slate” wants to build small, utilitarian electric pickup trucks in the U.S. and sell them for only $20,000. Think of it as an “anti-Cybertruck.”
https://www.theverge.com/news/658223/slate-factory-electric-truck-location-indiana

“We’ve not been testing EV batteries the right way,” said Simona Onori, senior author and an associate professor of energy science and engineering in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “To our surprise, real driving with frequent acceleration, braking that charges the batteries a bit, stopping to pop into a store, and letting the batteries rest for hours at a time, helps batteries last longer than we had thought based on industry standard lab tests.”
https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/12/existing-ev-batteries-may-last-up-to-40-longer-than-expected

China might be seizing the global lead in battery technology. If their new products are as advanced as they claim, they will eliminate the remaining disadvantages of electric cars vs. gas-powered cars.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/chinas-ev-tech-leaps-forward-catl-unveils-battery-with-932-mile-range

A Chinese company has used U.S. open source data to build the first thorium reactor. The U.S. can only blame itself for losing its lead. And good for China for investing in this technology that could benefit the whole world.
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/china-builds-world-first-thorium-reactor

In February, political guru James Carville predicted the Trump Administration would “collapse” by early April.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/media/article-14427411/political-guru-predicts-trump-white-house-collapse.html

A SpaceX rocket did the first manned orbit that went over both of the Earth’s poles.
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/human-spaceflight/watch-chilling-1st-views-of-earths-poles-seen-by-spacex-fram2-astronauts-video

An exoplanet was discovered that is the best candidate for alien life we’ve seen so far. Its atmosphere contains gases that, to our knowledge, can only be the chemical byproducts of marine algae.
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/you-can-probably-smell-planet-here

Intelligence evolved three separate times on Earth among primates, birds, and octopi. Their brains are very different, and there’s no telling how many different kinds of intelligent minds biology allows.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/intelligence-evolved-at-least-twice-in-vertebrate-animals-20250407/

‘[Mantis shrimp] have up to 16 photoreceptors and can see UV, visible and polarised light. In fact, they are the only animals known to detect circularly polarised light, which is when the wave component of light rotates in a circular motion. They also can perceive depth with one eye and move each eye independently. It’s impossible to imagine what mantis shrimp see, but incredible to think about.’
https://phys.org/news/2013-09-mantis-shrimp-world-eyesbut.html

Scientists have released the most detailed map of a mouse brain ever made.
https://apnews.com/article/brain-map-neurons-alzheimers-autism-1a4e9db0a86c082e10da9c154546c592

A genetically engineered pig kidney functioned inside a woman for 120 days before it had to be removed.
https://apnews.com/article/pig-kidney-xenotransplant-geneedited-9fae82b85c98bf67398d5b4798977c2b

A 7,000-year-old skeleton found in a cave in the Sahara belongs to a literal lost race of humans.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/7000-year-old-mummy-dna-secret-branch-of-humanity