Sean Hecht

I figured!

True. But hoping you’re not correct about the immortality thing

How Elon Musk’s Sci-Fi Hyperloop Failed Before his misadventures in government efficiency, Musk promised to revolutionize commuting with a subway that would speed passengers between DC and Baltimore in a matter of minutes. The project was a...

A year long investigation into the Hyperloop found …

“The truth was far simpler, far dumber, and far more prescient: Musk and his lieutenants truly had no idea what they were doing.”

washingtonian.com/2026/02/12/h...

Big Oil Is Urging Trump to Stop Battle on Offshore Wind The president’s assault on wind farms is stalling a legislative push to speed permitting for energy projects.

I hope folks give serious consideration to what the effects of "permitting reform" in the 119th Congress would be.

I'm skeptical it'd have any GHG redux benefits. Might even boost GHGs, esp. considering data center buildout & legal structure that'd facilitate fossil fuel entrenchment.

That moment sure ended quickly

Also the Great Depression. (Just to name a few in the past 100 years.) It’s useful to have some perspective on what prior generations have faced and how much progress we’ve made on so many fronts.

Yes, in every generation, here in the US. WWI and WWII; Cold War threat of nuclear war; Jim Crow; the early-70s era of Vietnam war + regular airplane hijackings + more; the entire pre-1970s era when women weren’t allowed to have their own credit & were systematically excluded from most professions.

tbf the chances are high he is making all this up and there was no such list in the first place 🤷🏻‍♂️

the idea that bombing and invading a country with a bad record on human rights is likely to lead to a situation with better human rights is pretty well debunked to the degree that it's a laughable proposition and yet I see it non stop on mainstream news like it will definitely happen

And it’s not just *an* example—this meaning of
the word “blowback” entered the lexicon after US involvement in the 1953 Iran coup!

He literally says this in the interview, immediately after the part quoted here. He says: “You know that idea—you break it, you own it? I don’t buy that one bit.”

These assholes are really gonna go with “war is peace, actually.”

I also think there’s actually a world of political difference between:

“All democrats are annoyed and said Trump needs to explain himself”

and

“All Democrats call the attacks unconstitutional and call for Trump’s impeachment”

Well, he certainly has dismantled our capacity to enforce environmental regulations and opened up public lands to more exploitation, as many property rights advocates have been wishing for for two generations 🤷🏻‍♂️

The Iran Deal and the Madman Theory Why pulling out severely damages American interests Nicholas Grossman Oct 6, 2017 https://medium.com/arc-digital/withdrawing-from-the-iran-nuclear-deal-is-trumps-worst-decision-so-far-a88356e3ff2c

If the United States ends up withdrawing, it sets the Middle East on a path to two possible futures: A nuclear Iran. War. Both are much worse than the status quo. From: https://medium.com/arc-digital/withdrawing-from-the-iran-nuclear-deal-is-trumps-worst-decision-so-far-a88356e3ff2c

"If the US ends up withdrawing [from the Iran nuclear deal], it sets the Middle East on a path to two possible futures:

1) A nuclear Iran.

2) War.

Both are much worse than the status quo."

Oct 2017, warning against breaking JCPOA, saying no "better deal" would arise.

I was hardly the only one.

Live Updates: U.S. and Israel Conduct Strikes on Iran

It's unfortunately happening--another joint US-Israel war on Iran. This is Trump's war. He will own the consequences but we will all live with them.

Many of us who are practicing in the legal profession and paying attention to Gen AI are actually tracking this situation empirically. That’s how we are coming to our conclusions.

Also, with a human, there are social and institutional systems of accountability and discipline that can be designed to minimize the chance of error or intentional mistake and to catch those errors. The most effective of these systems cannot be applied to AI, but only to the humans who use AI.

Of course in a sense that is true. And rmpirically, there are a *lot* more false citations in legal documents than there used to be! There are few situations in which a human lawyer would have the incentive to make up a citation. With GenAI it’s a matter of course.

Just leaving this here www.damiencharlotin.com/hallucinatio...

Pretty nearly all fruits are good, actually—if they are high quality, good varieties (not bred for shipping/storage life or general durability), and neither over- nor under-ripe

(To not *cite* adverse authority)

I mean, it’s clearly a violation of ethical rules to not known adverse authority to a court in a situation like this—even more so in a context where there is no adversarial lawyer in court. Judges should do due diligence but our whole system relies on lawyers following rules governing legal ethics.

Yes, and it’s still also every lawyer’s duty to not mislead the court. Judges are generalists and rely on lawyers’ analysis and integrity—this is the role of lawyers as “officers of the court”

The left tried for decades to pass green energy subsidies, passed them, the subsidies worked, and now literally the entire planet's electricity grid is going to convert to solar+battery. It just doesn't feel like "tech" because it mostly produces kinda boring blue collar jobs instead of billionaires

you can really blow some minds with “actually there was an entire library and research institute for queer / trans history, science and medicine founded by a Jewish sexologist but the Nazis destroyed it in the hopes of exactly this outcome, ie future generations not believing trans people are real”

Disastrous. No adequate words, atm, for just how ruinous this is for those of us with rheumatoid autoimmune musculoskeletal disease and others. This is outrageous.

You can read about the work NIAMS does, did?

www.nih.gov/about-nih/ni...

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

—FDR, 1937

ChatGPT promised to help her find her soulmate. Then it betrayed her ChatGPT sent screenwriter Micky Small down a fantastical rabbit hole. Now, she's finding her way out.

Just a reminder that ChatGPT cannot betray anyone because it doesn’t have feelings or motives or thoughts

this continent long before. The man who settled and built the nation of my birth arrived on our shores carrying the memories and the traditions and the Christian faith of their ancestors as a sacred inheritance, an unbreakable link between the old world and the new. We are part of one civilization - Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.

The Rubio speech really is appalling, and if you haven’t read it yet, you should.

www.state.gov/releases/off...