Tal Beery

Opinion | There’s More to Selfies Than Meets the Eye Is a selfie embarrassing? It depends on how you think about it.

A thoughtful and convincing take on selfie culture here from two smart people I’ve been following for a verrry long time: www.nytimes.com/card/2025/04...

Public Statement on Supporting Science for the Benefit of All Citizens TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE We all rely on science. Science gave us the smartphones in our pockets, the navigation systems in our cars, and life-saving medical care. We count on engineers when we drive acr...

The tragic irony of nearly 2000 scientists, members of the National Academies, coming together to write a letter condemning the attacks on science: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/s...

And then today: Mass cuts to federal health www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04...

State of the Global Climate 2024 The global climate system is complex. In order to unpack such complexity, the WMO State of the Global Climate uses seven Climate Indicators to describe the changing climate. The following site aims to...

A very informative Story Map on the State of the Climate 2024, for multiple audiences. Important sections on
"Atmosphere"
"Land"
"Ocean"
"Cryosphere"
"Extreme Events"
"Risks & Impacts" and
"What can we do?"
Well done @WMO!
storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/43a9...
🧪 cc @katharinehayhoe.com

Bombs, mines and chemicals: how agricultural soils in Ukraine have been ravaged by war After the war in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands of hectares will have to be surveyed and demined and countless craters will have to be refilled. A recent study by Wageningen University & Research…

Shocking and depressing to read about this @Wageningen University Research how war in Ukraine is damaging its fertile soil with long-term impacts on its potential agricultural productivity www.wur.nl/en/news-wur/...

New York’s forests are migrating. Here’s what the future might bring. Forest migration, when tree species move to cooler temperatures as their historical habitats become too hot, is hitting New York.

Kudos to the Albany @timesunion.com for this excellent story about how New York's forests will respond to #climatechange. #TreeMigration www.timesunion.com/hudsonvalley...

They…turned off…National Institutes of Health grants? That’s nearly $50 billion of scientific research.

An unpopular opinion, based on my time at CEA updating the social cost of carbon, is that Democrats should work with Trump to get rid of it, as called for in this EO, while demanding an alternative.
Counterintuitively, this could be a win for both sides.
Here’s why: (1/x)

Three top tech firms on Tuesday announced that they will create a new company, called Stargate, to grow artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison appeared at the White House Tuesday afternoon alongside President Donald Trump to announce the company, which Trump called the “largest AI infrastructure project in history.” The companies will invest $100 billion in the project to start, with plans to pour up to $500 billion into Stargate in the coming years. The project is expected to create 100,000 US jobs, Trump said.

Trump in 2017 announced with Foxconn a massive $10 billion electronics factory in Wisconsin that was expected to create 13,000 jobs. But the company eventually abandoned most of its plans for the facility and the high-tech products it was set to build. The company in 2021 said it would invest just $672 million in a revised deal that would create fewer than 1,500 jobs. Foxconn has said it invested $1 billion into the state, however, and it still has a major manufacturing site for data servers with more than 1,000 employees. But the facility Trump announced has become a Microsoft data hub that aims to train employees and manufacturers on how to best use artificial intelligence.

I was mad about this, but then it hit me: this is the kind of thing that happens at the top of a bubble. The nice round numbers, the stolen sci-fi name, the needless intertwining with politics, the lack of any clear purpose for it.

Props to CNN for mentioning Foxconn. 😂
www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/t...

Turkish strikes in Syria cut water to one million people The attacks have added to a humanitarian crisis in a region reeling from civil war and extreme drought.

YSK Turkey is using the current political instability and drought in Syria to step up attacks against the Kurds. Clearly articulated ethnic cleansing intensions from Turkish leaders. A humanitarian crisis is unfolding and we should all pay attention.

www.bbc.com/news/article...

This Elon Musk nazi salute thing makes me feel nuts and scared. I mean what the hell. And now the ADL is arguing it's not what it is. They are tell us to "give one another a bit of grace." Gaslighting 101.

AND THIS IS JUST DAY 2. We've got so much more of this nonsense to come. Ok Ok. Breathe.

Great thread

Yup, @jamellebouie.net has this exactly right. What these guys are celebrating/pursuing/yearning for is not masculine energy, it's *adolescent* energy. Drinking Red Bull, crushing Call of Duty, refusing to clean your room. It is indescribably pathetic. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/o...

So this is STILL happening??

I’m really feeling it today, folks. The hegseth stuff, the fires… it’s overwhelming. I think I need to quit the internet and focus on real stuff like pottery and blankets.

Absolutely true. I get a ton of spam calls, the spammers leave VMs, then I get legit-sounding AI summaries of their VMs. Literally as I was writing this, the AI reminded me that Kate Wilson wants to get my back taxes forgiven. Such a waste - all of it.

I have concluded from this saga that 1. Some scientists aren’t careful enough about numbers (!!) and 2. Everything is trying to kill us and that’s just fine for our economy 🫣🫣

🤕 “While being off by an order of magnitude seems like a significant error, the authors don't seem to think it changes anything… The corrected study still ends by saying that the flame retardants "significantly contaminate" the plastic products, which have "high exposure potential."”

Another environmental catastrophe caused by Russians east of Crimea, after one of their decaying oil tankers broke apart on high seas 2 days ago, 35km of pristine coastline has been contaminated in true Russian style.

And these tankers are now all over the world.

Hoping it’s actually @theyesmen.bsky.social

This is critically important work and the mission of @wright-ingraham.bsky.social, esp. at nexus of culture/ecology. Development of frameworks/methodologies to this end is challenging and vital!

I’m interested to know what you cook up-

Uh oh

Most interesting thread of the day by far!

The Coming Generative AIPocalypse Better Offline · Episode

I’m officially a fan of @edzitron.com and Better Offline. I’m also a fan of @caseynewton.bsky.social and Hard Fork. They don’t represent polar opposite positions, but contrasting views that are *super* important for understanding this moment.

Listen to this:

open.spotify.com/episode/2yiX...

😢

Thanks Liran, but you’ve got the wrong guy! Somehow there are two Tal Beerys in the United States and one of them does cyber security stuff and the other is me. I guess my phone number is online somewhere and I get phone calls for the other Tal all the time, even some job offers!

Colorado River states fear a long legal battle as talks falter over shortage rules States agree that climate change is making the Colorado River less reliable, but at a water conference, they did not meet to talk.

California's lead Colorado River negotiator accuses Upper Basin states of seeking to build "pipelines to more golf courses." Wyoming's lead negotiator calls those kinds of claims "bullshit." Things are not going well in Las Vegas: www.azcentral.com/story/news/l... via @brandonloomis.bsky.social

Interested in this too. Is there a similar graphic visualizing wealth inequalities?

There’s some good news to all the news bout me this week. We helping raise some real money for the Bowery Mission and helping feed and house so many people in need. Thankx to the team at SONIA HEALTH for their generous $2000 donation. Thankx to GoFundMe for matching all donations 👍🏾👍🏾

t.co/x1oXRIBgpW

Yeah that’s pretty amazing, tbh. I’m not versed in any of that. LLMs have been helpful to me as a writing partner, “thought” partner, and now with notebookLM, it’s helpful in research. But I’ve found the products to be increasingly clumsy lately and i spend way too much time editing.

Yep, We're At Peak AI Better Offline · Episode

This ⬆️

Gotta avoid these binaries otherwise feels like boosterism. I use LLM products nearly every day, and still think aspects of the argument below are reasonable, esp considerations of diminishing returns:

open.spotify.com/episode/25fG...