James Gleick

Author.
Chaos, Genius, The Information, Time Travel

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npub1gsqxlu3pj34alvqauqpvwflw7q7xgm3mmzyjp8vdz3u9vxde425qttwxft

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gleick_at_mas.to@mostr.pub

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Last Notes

2024-10-06 00:35:58

Here is the Washington Post beginning to cover Trump as he should be covered. Will the NY Times ever wake up?
https://wapo.st/3YbBj86

2024-10-02 16:53:13

I remember the most dramatic vote of the new Trump administration, in July 2017, when John McCain defied Trump and his fellow Republicans and killed their attempt to repeal Obamacare.
Could you have imagined that seven years later Trump would deny that ever happened and pretend he was Obamacare’s protector? And expect to be believed? We are living in strange times.
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/238/867/472/930/305/original/d8dc321d0bfe0b00.png

2024-09-23 22:27:56

Springfield to Trump:
You’re not welcome here. Haitian immigrants, on the other hand, are. https://mstdn.social/@knittingknots2/113189158394416746

2024-09-20 18:45:41

Greg Abbott’s Texas now militarizing its border with A NEIGHBORING STATE.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/texas-new-mexico-border-wire-b2615743.html
#Texas

2024-09-20 17:20:19

If this is photoshopped, it’s clever. If it’s real, it’s genius. https://infosec.exchange/@cjust/113165181106764928
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/171/026/297/143/952/original/f949ae85848bc931.jpeg

2024-09-17 21:12:40

Let’s review.
Trump lives at his own 17-acre private club.
Four miles away, Trump leases 214 acres of rocky, grassy, partially wooded land from Palm Beach County. This is his private golf club. (1/4)

2024-09-17 14:05:08

I don’t know how the Secret Service can be expected to have done any better. Trump made an unscheduled visit to his 27-hole golf club, where he rides hither and yon in a open golf cart at his pleasure. A disgruntled former Trump supporter with a semiautomatic rifle never got anywhere near him. The only shots fired were fired by the Secret Service. The guy was quickly arrested.
I’d say they protected him successfully.
#SecretService

2024-09-15 15:56:49

The man is breaking down before our eyes.
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/142/386/481/103/407/original/8e620d25fd0ca911.png

2024-09-15 15:37:08

A campaign of terror against an ethnic minority is being driven by Donald Trump and JD Vance and their proxy army of violent extremists. Bomb threats, school closings, hospitals in lockdown—citizens unable to leave their homes. When will the national press treat this as the emergency it is?
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/public-menace-how-trump-mobilizes-the-violent-extremists-in-his-midst-for-political-ends/sharetoken/ce895f5c-3ec7-40c4-8dbd-e4e4244f65e1
https://haitiantimes.com/2024/09/14/springfield-ohio-bomb-threats-claims-haitians/

2024-09-15 15:00:08

The NY Times has a blockbuster story here. Somebody at the Supreme Court is LEAKING. The court is truly in crisis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/us/justice-roberts-trump-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K04.Hw-C.FVxaHPVlsDTE&smid=url-share
#SCOTUS

2024-09-12 14:21:00

This is a persuasive demolition of the fantasy of humans settling on Mars. Though I resent the snark aimed at the much-maligned Ian Malcolm, for whom I have a place in my heart.
https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colonize-mars
#Mars

2024-09-11 16:34:30

How Trump Broke Fact-Checking
One candidate speaks the truth and the other is a firehose of outlandish lies. Yet the convention is to “fact-check” both candidates equally.
What Harris said was absolutely true, yet the Times is compelled to say it “needs context”—the context being that Trump doesn’t want to be taken literally.
The context needs context, too: namely, that Trump regularly seeks to incite violence. It’s not a one-off; it’s what he does.
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/119/885/370/983/142/original/e3076dc8f9b5f74d.png

2024-09-09 21:10:05

Let’s not speak of Darth Vader. I will never forget his Claudius, in Central Park.
James Earl Jones, RIP
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/109/644/409/735/378/original/9c4e3bf4ff94ca40.png

2024-09-08 14:23:26

More press criticism:
What was the most important political news yesterday? It used to be that you would look at the front page of the New York Times, and find out. Not what would get the most readers or be the most popular, but the most “newsworthy.” The professional quality most valued by the top editors was a judgment built from years of experience and breadth of knowledge, called “news judgment.”
You can’t find that there anymore. Priorities have changed. (1/3)

2024-09-07 21:26:05

Is Kamala Harris a good retail campaigner? Watch this snippet and judge for yourself. And imagine the other guy interacting with these people in Penzey’s Spice Store.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpTCweo0tCQ

2024-09-07 13:36:07

The covert Russian influence campaign code-named “Doppelgänger” is a vast scandal, the dimensions of which are only beginning to be revealed. Paid propagandists, witting and unwitting, include “television and radio hosts, politicians, bloggers, journalists, businessmen, professors, think-tank analysts, veterans, professors, and comedians.” (Hello, Tucker Carlson.)
Here is Heather Cox Richardson:
https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/september-6-2024?r=g7z5&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

2024-09-06 17:28:15

Even when he lies, Trump can’t stop confessing.
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/091/785/218/956/031/original/2c714b78972d7ee1.png

2024-09-05 21:52:11

This is an under-appreciated point about using LLMs to summarize text (turning a longer text into a shorter text that maintains the essence of the original). Making summaries is hard to do well! It requires understanding and subtlety.
Making a BAD summary is an easy task for an LLM, which flattens everything probabilistically. People using these cheap tools are going to be throwing a lot of babies out with a lot of bathwater and never even knowing it. https://infosec.exchange/@david_chisnall/113085164920773681

2024-09-05 21:36:37

The U.S. presidential election is taking place in about seven states. If you’re in one of those states, you know that. Otherwise you may not realize: The presidential election is taking place elsewhere and you’re not relevant.
How can ANYONE still like our absurd Electoral College system? It keeps choosing the losing candidate. It disenfranchises most of the country. It’s a farce.
This is a way forward, if only more people understood it: https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

2024-09-04 14:03:25

The commies at Goldman Sachs discover what everyone knows: Democrats are better for the economy. https://mastodon.social/@uspolitics/113076833189542013

2024-09-03 17:31:29

Allow me to recommend @npub1yme…r5de’s broad-spectrum down-ballot fundraising project, Mastodon for a Blue Wave. It is thoughtfully curated—a highly effective way to make that Blue Wave a reality.
P.S. Zero overhead. Every dollar goes to a candidate who needs it.
https://mastodon.social/@heidilifeldman/113074731041884919

2024-09-03 17:08:30

More of this, please. Where’s the Senate? @npub1rs0…rev3?
https://wapo.st/3Mxu0ky

2024-09-03 15:28:44

Seems about right. https://masto.ai/@lovelylovely/113071195751462922

2024-09-01 16:17:00

“With artificial intelligence, we’re basically relaundering a lot of this shit through broken models that are giving Google more and more authority to claim intelligence when what they’re actually doing is issuing derivatives of the shitty data they have.”
Meredith Whittaker runs Signal. She is a rare model of how to hang onto ethics and values while succeeding in tech, and is wise about the “mass Big Tech surveillance business model.”
Brilliant interview:
https://www.wired.com/story/meredith-whittaker-signal/

2024-09-01 15:51:47

The headline is strangely mild; the piece is devastating. Trump’s national security adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster shows him to have been a walking catastrophe in international affairs.
“An unpredictable waffler.” “A chump.” China “ate our lunch.” Undisciplined, disruptive, tired, inane. He has receipts.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/27/books/review/at-war-with-ourselves-hr-mcmaster.html?unlocked_article_code=1.HU4.FGk8.FRtj371rRW8b&smid=url-share

2024-08-31 20:32:50

When he’s not busy being one of our best fiction writers, Ted Chiang has become our best critic of generative AI:
“The programmer Simon Willison has described the training for large language models as ‘money laundering for copyrighted data,’ which I find a useful way to think about the appeal of generative-A.I. programs: they let you engage in something like plagiarism, but there’s no guilt associated with it because it’s not clear even to you that you’re copying.”
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/why-ai-isnt-going-to-make-art

2024-08-29 14:42:33

Why is the responsibility to press charges laid upon the harassed cemetery employee, who understandably fears a stream of abuse from the Trump people? The Army can and should enforce its rules.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/us/politics/trump-arlington-cemetery.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Gk4.yfYT.BjBAm7NZFY8L&smid=url-share
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/045/835/156/583/694/original/40fba9a9eab5dd09.png

2024-08-28 13:43:21

Donald Trump’s campaign forced its way into a restricted area of Arlington National Cemetery on Monday, physically assaulting cemetery staff and staging a political event in violation of federal law.
[fixed your lede, NYT]
https://media.mas.to/media_attachments/files/113/039/940/026/339/532/original/a7a24ee63156f58f.png

2024-08-26 20:18:26

Jack Smith’s new brief has a few things to say about Trump’s pet judge, Aileen Cannon:
She “erred.” She “deviated from binding Supreme Court precedent.” She “misconstrued the statutes.” Her reading was “misguided.” She “likewise erred. She “was wrong.” She “compounded [her] error.” She “relied on a flawed textual analysis.” Her reasoning “lacks merit.” Her conclusion “finds no support in text, context, history, or common sense.”
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822/gov.uscourts.ca11.87822.18.0_1.pdf

2024-08-25 15:42:57

I’m an author and journalist especially interested in science and technology and their cultural effects. My books include Chaos, The Information, and Time Travel, as well as biographies of Richard Feynman and Isaac Newton.
I’m working on a history of the telephone.
#Introduction #authors #science #chaos #books #information #timetravel #telephone