Профиль

You laugh, but the world would be a far better place if more anti-woke culture warriors threw themselves into hard drugs instead of pursuing a political agenda.

We don't talk enough about how the Supreme Court is directly responsible for all the chaos Trump is causing. Trump v United States not only cleared the way for him to run again, but had the predictable effect of leaving him completely untethered from any laws that might reign in his worst impulses.

One of the deep ironies about claims that we should support Israel as the region's only democracy is that both Israel and the U.S. have been instrumental in propping up despotic regimes, and helping to crush democratic movements, in Jordan and elsewhere in the Middle East.

I think this is partly a result of Carney's flashy rhetoric, which people (even professional analysts) pay attention to more than substantive strategic moves, and partly a recognition that Carney has a legitimately very difficult hand to play. But I agree that this honeymoon period won't last.

Lots of folks are skeptical Trump has the manpower, or rank-and-file loyalty, to actually pull off a self-coup. But it's clear he learned from last time and that he can and will cause chaos in a way that makes Jan 6 look like a walk in the park. It's less clear his opponents are ready to respond.

At a certain point, this is starting to look like incompetence. There's clearly been no positive movement on the trade front. At best, maybe this gets Canada a reprieve from the latest 50% tariff hike... but then nothing stops Trump from reimposing that in another month with a set of new demands.

We’ve barely gotten our heads around the impacts of social media on the information environment and we are absolutely not ready for what’s coming down the pike once LLMs become a dominant source of news and information.

My guys just because *you* were surprised doesn’t mean it was a surprise attack.

The real financial incentives are in telling rich people what they want to hear. That's true whether you're in journalism, academia, public policy, etc. Whatever field you're in, playing lackey to moneyed interests is always the safest career choice.

Agree, but there's a collective action problem with LLMs. I *don't* use it to write grant proposals. But funding agencies are seeing a huge spike in applications b/c of LLMs. Which drives down success rates. Which means researchers need to write more proposals, which leads you back to LLMs...

My vote still goes to "the campaign contributions were carried out on behalf of <redacted> who was subsequently elected President of the United States."

Yeah - this is excessive. U.S. State Department rates, which are pretty generous, max out at 600CAD for London & 711CAD for Milan, so the Premier spending $1072/night & $914/night is completely unnecessary. No reason the Premier needs a higher standard of luxury than U.S. diplomats enjoy.

The thing is though, regardless of his popularity or legacy Trump has *already* won. He cleared his legal troubles, massively enriched himself and his supporters, and will pardon everyone on the way out the door. So approval ratings aside, I'm not sure this is a cautionary tale for the next guy.

A better journalist than Zanny Minton Beddoes would have had this kind of specific information at hand during the interview, especially since: (1) he’s made to “nobody died” claim repeatedly, and (2) The Economist has deep network across Africa to dig this up.

I understand why most of the focus from this interview was on the crazy stuff Musk said, but the fact that the editor of one of the most influential publications in the English-speaking world is about half a shade less authoritarian is an equally important takeaway.

I very much agree that countries like Canada should be doing more to support global democracy, and should be treating this a national security priority, but the unfortunate fact is it’s much cheaper to destroy institutions than it is to build them.

This tracks with my experience. I’ve given a bunch of talks on AI to federal officials in Canada & the U.S., and generally found staff are quite sophisticated in thinking about risks. By contrast, when I spoke to California municipalities, all the issues I mentioned seemed entirely new to them.

Grampa’s only got two years and change in office, assuming he doesn’t die or become incapacitated first. At what point do countries start trying to run out the clock, especially if there are multi-decade deals on the table?

One of the more interesting takes about lawyers getting busted for hallucinated case citations is that LLMs are not creating sloppy lawyers, but they are giving sloppy lawyers an outlet to take worse shortcuts: it’s the same people who otherwise would turn in a student’s work without reviewing it.