End February Reading Thread
Books
Agincourt: Battle of the Scarred King – Michael Livingston
Comment: this is a nice read. Fairly short and gives a good background overview of the 100 Years War up to Henry’s invasion. Especially compelling are the parts where he argues that the traditional battlefield is wrong, and where he does the brutal math of what 5,000 English Longbowman can do to 800 charging French knights as they enter arrow range. There’s also helpful discussions of Henry’s campaign plan, where he erred, and various other comments that help demythologize what is even without the traditional hagiography a fascinating and compelling battle.
Diaspora – Greg Egan
Comment: Hard sci-fi with lots of fascinating world-building. If you enjoy speculative science (especially physics, biology, and sociology) you’ll enjoy it. It has reflective/philosophical moods and the narrative itself is fairly straightforward. It is interesting reading far-future fiction now where AI doesn’t play a major role, given the role AI is lining up to play in our actual future.
Links
FDA Reverses Course on Moderna Flu Vaccine
Comment: enough money was on the line that the lobbyists did their thing. I am hoping this incident leads to RFK getting dismissed.
Government of the Gram, by the Gram, and for the Gram
Comment: the US government is run by unserious people and Stephen Miller, who is evil.
Comment: as evil as the Iranian regime is, I see no good in attacking them and I have no idea how it would count as legal without congressional action.
The Pernicious Management of Universities by Trustees: A Case Study
Comment: the trustees should include real scholars.
Michigan Bridge Drama, with a Side of MAGA Corruption
Comment: as a former Michigan resident, we need the new bridge. The owners of the old bridge are shady AF. Look up some of the sheningans in the original fight over the bridge deal.
Comment: there’s a moral here both about the resilience of a court system that is mostly honest and the danger of what will happen if/when it gets hollowed out, say by the large scale appointment of corrupt judges by a corrupt president. It makes retaking the senate that much more important, and it makes 2028 a “flight 93 election” for pro-democracy forces.
Will Republicans Force a Talking Filibuster Over the SAVE Act?
Comment: I hope they do. It will make a good ‘fight’ moment for Democrats, and paralyzing the senate means running out the clock on executive appointments until we have a short to retake it in the fall.
Comment: Daniel Litt has always struck me as sane and sensible on AI.
An Overview of Problems in Exercise Research
Comment: tl;dr: bad methods get questionable results, and you should probably just do what you can stick to.
Comment: Tim Pawl outlines a cool new project.
Stop Getting Political Slogans from Celebrities and Activists
Comment: Daniel Muñoz on “no one is illegal” and the virtues of Bad Bunny.
Who Cares About the Moral Law?
Comment: not Richard Chappell. And he’s not wrong.
Are (female) Beauty Standards Driven by a Pedo Cabal?
Comment: no. They’re virtually unattainable, but for much more banal reasons.
The Rise of Smartglasses and Surreptitious Recording
Comment: there’s a whole bunch of ethical and legal minefields here.
Denmark to Grant Citizens Copyright Protection of Themselves
Comment: pairs well with the link above. There needs to be some legal framework about likeness/voice etc so that AI and influencers don’t run wild.
Comment: there is a select few who can teach themselves. But most people need structure and guidance, not just a big library, even a sophisticated library that takes queries. Unfortunately these things don’t scale well, so business-minded people who don’t want a school so much as a cattle call keep flailing.
Comment: I have generally tried LLMs as commodities and continued to use GPT because that was the first one I began using. But this is a reason to switch to Claude, if Anthropic holds its ground. It’s also further evidence that the most pressing AI safety threat is not rogue paperclippers, but rogue men with current or near-future models.
Comment: a measured discussion of AI progress that strikes me as neither overly hype-y or overly dismissive.
Jason Furman on the Short Term Economics of AI
Comment: commoditization is the single reason I am not as fearful of an all-powerful AI company as I am of what various bad actors will do with the tools the leading labs are creating.
In Mexico, the Cartel Wars Rage On
Comment: failed anti-corruption policy, failed drug policy in the US, failed economic policy, there are a lot of complicated factors going into this disaster.
America’s Problems? The Secret Ingredient is Crime.
Comment: you can be for both racial equality and public order. Two things can be good.
Pakistan in “open war” with Afghanistan
Comment: these two regimes deserve each other.
Comment: seems serious.
Anthropic Statement on “Supply Chain Risk” Designation
Comment: this is what happens when you let them get away with things. They start abusing authority to those who do not kneel for them. This was entirely avoidable, but the Tech Right bet on Trump and now all of the valley gets to reap the “rewards.”