Tyler

Kendrick Lamar, in a blue jacket, black shirt and jeans holds a microphone on a stage high above the crowd in front of him. A headline reads: “Kendrick Lamar's Bell Bottoms Steal The Halftime Show.” Photo credit: Doug Mills/The New York Times.

Could the lasting impact of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show be the return of bell bottoms? A varsity jacket referenced his own career, and a chain inspired some questions. But the cut of his jeans was the biggest surprise of the night, writes our fashion reporter. nyti.ms/4k5sBkX

In #Syria it’s all over but the crying. Will speak with US foreign service people tomorrow morning. Broad feeling seems to be uncertainty. How do you balance the assumptions of Islamic extremism v the self described pragmatism of HST. What’s propaganda? Notably #Russia & #Iran take a massive L.

Successful coups by political figures aren’t generally spontaneous, but the culmination of a political movement, and a sense of overwhelming crisis.

If citizens within a state don’t strongly perceive an acute attack against their ways of life, or institutions they economically rely upon they are likely to perceive the coup as that threat. For an anti-democratic coup to succeed, there needs to be an intense justification to invoke the sovereign.

There have been a number of poorly executed coup attempts recently. Bolivia & Peru both had similarly ineffectual attempts. Typically, a successful #coup by a political leader is born out of a perceived or cultivated crisis that extends beyond electoral politics. #southKorea

I'm at the National Assembly building. The army is here. And I just saw two soldiers in fatigues getting pushed around by belligerent ajusshis. and they looked legit scared.

WATCH: Soldiers arrive at South Korea's parliament after president declares martial law

#SouthKorea president declares #martialLaw to try and keep “pro-NK” elements at bay. The main parties are disavowing the declaration. Korean democracy is so new & so fragile. My mother was in Korea during the student protests for democracy. We can only hope the military refuses this.

Like Israel, it will engage in a long Cold War with its larger neighbor. Displacing Russian weapon sales, fighting Wagner in Africa. I expect that after the war, Ukraine will be aggressively accelerate the dissolution of Russia’s power block. Lack Russian weapon sales will be the greatest threat.

I don’t believe that this is just the information war, or an attempt to make the Russians look weak. I believe it points to a more international perspective of the Ukrainians, and how they will continue the war, after a settlement. Because they won’t be able to enter NATO, Ukraine won’t be passive

Tbh it’s not clear if this is true — Assad had gone to Moscow last week, returning to Syria after his absence was noted. It’s quite likely that a partial evacuation of the embassy has begun. What’s notable is that this is being pushed by UKR news.

There are reports of #Russian diplomats evacuating Damascus. These stories come from #Ukraine and its (propaganda) news outlets. #Syria became a front in their war against the Russians. As the war in Ukraine increasingly looks like it will resolve in an armistice — a UKR-RUS Cold War seems likely.

#China plays a similar game. Attacks on Philippine fishermen, colonies in Bhutan, Himalayan skirmishes, South China Sea. Korean War, etc. a long war in Taiwan may trigger massive opportunism amongst its neighbors seeking to resolve things on their own terms. #geopolitics #war #news #military

Iranian power was never stronger than 10/6, and has totally collapsed into a complete economic, social and political crisis. When the crisis plays out, they will be left with a shadow of their power, and the men and material expended. Their many enemies will be lionized.

If one conflict goes hot, the victim states are likely to force resolution at the same time. Critically, this doesn’t require coordination, but opportunism. This leads to massive system collapse as the cost of fighting all these hot wars are far too high.

Frozen conflicts encourage networks of adversaries as each conflict is maintained at a low cost rather than finding a mutually disagreeable resolution, instigators ensure a permanent crisis in their victim states. Individually the costs of maintaining the wars are low, but have high downside risk.

In #Syria, we are seeing the limits of frozen conflicts. Structurally they encourage over extension of force. #Iran axis was built upon the broad dispersal of frozen conflicts. 10/7 became a trigger for Israel to force an outcome. In turn, Iran’s proxies became overwhelmed. Systemic collapse.

The disaggregating of social media is becoming increasingly apparent. Whereas mod lists and feeds are posed as a technical solution, competition amongst Twitter alts & TikTok Alts shows that platform competition will likely be the future. Particularly after companies fail.

Any good culture feeds? It’d be great to get a film, literature, fashion feed.

How much of blue sky’s culture can remain unique? How much is dictated by the structures of a social network (likes, retweets, etc). The choices that a social network has makes it more or less likely to form consensus. This is a bit of an experiment in how much structure forms a culture vs leaders.

Eat more street meat.

There is a unique joy to drinking wine with a friend while watching the rain.

Piggly wiggly till I die

An image of an older person wearing a face mask. The image is distorted by the soft plastic window it has been shot through.

I think relearning how to take photos has Been one of the most gratifying experience of my life. Strongly believe everyone should have an artistic outlet.

haven't seen discussed: more art-related protocol features we have thought about are attribution and license metadata on post content (eg, creative commons). and alt-text (which is sort-of-there but not in UI yet)

Oh for damn sure.

Men don’t want to work, men want to sit in their cement meditation chambers listening to Phillip glass and pondering the evolution of 21st century classical and how to balance appreciate traditional western music without devolving into historicism. Or so I’m told.

Off to repost jail with this!

Hot take: LLMs are simple enough in their design that economically they will be a race to the bottom. The big winners won’t be the people who build the LLMs but people who leverage it into a definable product with — something that doesn’t seem to have really happened yet.

From my naive perspective LLMs seem conceptually difficult, but simple in implementation. Their main growth in ability derives from parameter increase. It would be interesting to understand what other technologies are just waiting to be unlocked through increased data/computing power.