… America will decline, but will decline less fast than its allies, and the world will split into two competing blocs. Only this time the “Western” bloc will be the weaker, less technologically advanced one.
— US/China Trade War Heats Up, Ian Welsh
RIP Trent Zelazny. A moving tribute by his friend George. R.R. Martin georgerrmartin.com/notablog/…
Trump fans are suffering from Tony Soprano syndrome. They don’t see that characters like Tony, Walter White and Judge Dredd are villains. They think Trump is an anti-hero who will fight for them, whereas Trump fights only for himself.
I’m skeptical of this kind of analysis; it’s lacking original research and too on-the-nose to make Trump opponents feel superior.
John Gruber on using generative AI for Internet research: “I direct (and trust) ChatGPT as I would a college intern working as a research assistant. I expect accuracy, but assume that I need to double-check everything.”
Same. I also use ChatGPT to help me write descriptions, summaries, headlines and introductory and concluding sections for reports and articles. Keyword is “help” — I’m in charge and doing the work.
The Rage and Glee That Followed a C.E.O.’s Killing Should Ring All Alarms. By Zeynep Tufekci. We’re in the Gilded Age 2.0, with yawning wealth inequality and political violence. Only now the guns are bigger and more dangerous.
How Trump Targeted Undecided Voters Without Breaking the Bank. The Trump campaign was outspent by Harris, but made up for it with microtargeting.
A delightful review of the McDonalds McRib):
I had a McRib yesterday, which for the uninitiated is a sandwich from McDonald’s that was introduced in 1981 and discontinued in 1985 due to poor sales. This should have been the end of the McRib story, but some people — people who live among us!! — desperately wanted the sandwich to return, and McDonald’s then began rolling it out semi-annually in certain markets as a limited time menu item to satiate the most deranged people alive.
h/t Club MacStories
Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He’s Eager To Be America’s Top Censor. By Mike Masnick at Techdirt.
New technology from World Labs, a startup founded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, can generate interactive 3D scenes from a single photo. The tech “lets you step into any image and explore it in 3D.” Wild! I’d love to play with this with old family photos.
The Great Grocery Store Squeeze.
Food deserts are not an inevitable consequence of poverty or low population density, and they didn’t materialize around the country for no reason. Something happened. That something was a specific federal policy change in the 1980s.
Easing restrictions on “discriminatory pricing” allowed major supermarket chains to drive local groceries out of business, and forced residents of low-status city neighborhoods and rural towns to travel long distances to buy food.
“The Biden administration has begun to connect the dots.” But Trump’s re-election puts that work in doubt.
By Stacy Mitchell at The Atlantic.
h/t Garbage Day
Currently reading: Demon by John Varley 📚Book 3 in the Gaea trilogy.
Finished reading: The Closers by Michael Connelly 📚. Another good Harry Bosch yarn. Spoiler alert: Bosch catches the murderer, but only after near catastrophic failure.