Lynn Layman

So proud of the EQ we're demonstrating in the Oval Office. So happy that the delegation is telling it as it is, warts and all. Well done South Africa. Let's tackle the violence head on. God bless you and your delegation @cyrilramaphosabsky.bsky.social 🕊️🇿🇦

When ordered by Nazis to give lists of disabled people by disability severity, some doctors sent back exaggerated data to protect patients from forced work

They didn't know that the "most disabled" were to be killed first

The moral here isn't to tell the truth

It's to never co-operate with Nazis

The Largest Sofa You Can Move Around a Corner | Quanta Magazine A new proof reveals the answer to the decades-old “moving sofa” problem. It highlights how even the simplest optimization problems can have counterintuitive answers.

If you’ve ever moved into a new home, then you know how difficult it can be to steer bulky furniture through narrow hallways or around awkward corners. A new proof reveals the biggest shape that can slide down an L-shaped hallway. Richard Green reports: www.quantamagazine.org/the-largest-...

Add F*cking to Your Google Searches to Neutralize AI Summaries Google will probably close this loophole soon enough.

Important PSA

Trade Flows and Trade Balances A primer for the confused

I put up a paid audio post on trade flows this morning, but a number of readers have asked that it be made free. So now it is paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trade-flow...

Musk's Treasury Incursion Puts Entire Financial System at Risk Former Treasury Department officials Graham Steele and Emily DiVito say Elon Musk’s role at Treasury poses an existential threat to the banking system, and that Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break t...

Here's my piece with @rooseveltinstitute.org colleague Emily Divito on how the Musk-Treasury payments scandal is worse than it appears.

When people lose trust in the money and payments systems, that's how panics, bank runs, and financial crises happen. 1/
news.bloomberglaw.com/tax-insights...

This is a my linocut print of an Arctic fox running over snowy grown against the night sky, printed in a gradient of indigo to dark indigo from the base to the top. The print has a tetradic colour scheme. Along with indigo the aurora shines in swathes of lime, lemon yellow and pinkish purple. This is a variable edition of 10 prints, printed by hand on Japanese paper, 9.25’ by 12.5”.

In Finnish the word for aurora “revontulet” means “fox fire” because according to legend the origin of the Northern Lights are arctic foxes running so fast that their large, furry tails would brush up snowflakes into the sky - as in my #linocut #FolkloreSunday

minouette.etsy.com/listing/1632...

Note that this is an independent developer building this. But that's very cool. This is what an open network enables.

And this is already as good as it will ever get as once it models those "inventions" it gets worse in a loop of regression.

bsky.app/profile/timn...

Researchers say an AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said Whisper is a popular transcription tool powered by artificial intelligence, but it has a major flaw. It makes things up that were never said.

Remember this? A problem we didn't have in automated speech recognition tools until OpenAI decided they were going to do away with alignment (not the kind that so-called "AI safety" people do)? And they're giving us "artificial general intelligence" any day now right?

apnews.com/article/ai-a...

1/2 This is a superb overview of the Fed and monetary policy from 1913 to the present day by James K. Galbraith.."The biting reality is that resource costs and global supply chains drive price increases. When inflation from these sources hits, some consequences are inevitable;

Prowling for Pelicans - bioGraphic In Mozambique’s Gorongosa National Park, wildlife is making a comeback.

During Mozambique's civil war, up to 90 percent of large wildlife in what's now Gorongosa National Park was slaughtered. Today, the park has more wildlife than before the war--showing that healing of both human and nonhuman communities is possible.

www.biographic.com/prowling-for...

Very cool to see the Financial Times name one of my pieces (You Can’t Make Friends With Rockstars) as one of the best pieces of the year (in their Further Reading section).
www.ft.com/content/7849...

www.wheresyoured.at/rockstars/

Conjuring the Lost Land Beneath the North Sea | Hakai Magazine New research reveals that Doggerland—a sunken swath of Europe connecting Britain to the mainland—was more than a simple thoroughfare. It was home.

I LOVE reading articles about Doggerland and this @hakaimagazine.com article is fascinating.

New research reveals that Doggerland—a sunken swath of Europe connecting Britain to the mainland—was more than a simple thoroughfare. It was home.

hakaimagazine.com/features/con...

Oh, and one more thing: wealthy regime supporters who imagine that they'll be calling the shots will soon discover that under crony capitalism their wealth is always contingent; it can disappear very quickly if they have a falling out with the people they helped gain power 9/

Weaponized interdependence is happening…https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/44/1/42/12237/Weaponized-Interdependence-How-Global-Economic

1. Donald Trump has said that he is going to impose 100% tariffs on BRICS countries that move away from the U.S. dollar. Where does this idea come from and where will it go? I have answers, based on @abenewman.bsky.social and my book on U.S. economic coercion, Underground Empire amzn.to/3PbIyqX

China Has a New Playbook to Counter Trump: ‘Supply Chain Warfare’ A series of swipes at American companies show how China could take the initiative in a new trade war, using its economic dominance to exact pain.

The new NYT piece on China's supply chain strategy reveals how Beijing is rewriting the rules of economic warfare. Trump's claim that "China pays for tariffs" fundamentally misunderstands modern economic power. Here's why: 1/

www.nytimes.com/2024/11/27/b...

ChatGPT’s $8 Trillion Birthday Gift to Big Tech Two years in, generative AI’s value to the world is still unclear. But these charts show that it’s been a bonanza for the largest tech firms.

"money has flowed to tech giants and others in their orbit... [and] raises an uncomfortable prospect: that this supposedly revolutionary technology might never deliver on its promise of broad economic transformation, but instead just concentrate more wealth" www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

South Africa and Silicon Valley: From Gold Mines to Elon Musk A Conversation with Dr Tim Karayiannides

“there is in fact a much deeper history between California and South Africa — from exporting gold mining engineers, to the establishment of technical universities, computer engineers who joined finance, to the histories of eugenics and racial capitalism.“

Yes, X is "bigger" than Bluesky. But only if what you are posting advances Musk's ideological agenda.

Other information is suppressed, no matter who you are.

Major breaking news from the NYT, with 55 MILLION FOLLOWERS, gets almost no engagement.

When I criticize a system, they think I criticize them and that is of course because they fully accept the system and identify themselves with it.

~Thomas Merton

To some ancient Romans, gladiators were the embodiment of tyranny Politicians like Cicero saw gladiators as vain and self-indulgent, while the true warriors engaged in wars of words.

Gladiators as heroes? Not to everyone in ancient Rome. A classics professor explores how the two “Gladiator” films misrepresent the way Roman gladiators and their bodies were viewed by their republic-minded Romans. https://buff.ly/411t7JA
(John M. Oksanish @wakeforest.bsky.social) 🗃️#movies #film

Friends, this is exciting.
As well as InVerse podcast, St Stephen’s University has approached @steveschallert.bsky.social & I to curate an exploration of who Bayard Rustin called, “angelic troublemakers” for this moment.

Want the introductory episode now? Reply “yes” and I’ll DM it to you.

Hey J., listened to the teaser and just adore the concept. Thank you to you and @steveschallert.bsky.social for everything you do.

che meraviglia