We’re not sure who needs to hear this, but ‘blueberry’ has two b’s.

YouTube video by Patrick Boyle Yotta Bank & The Problem with Fintech!

And while on the subject of Silicon Valley's favorite deep thinker. youtu.be/SAFlRSftffc?...

NYC tech workers feel 'politically homeless.' They think abundance ideology is the answer. New York City's tech ecosystem is latching onto a "politics of plenty" as the city bets on its startup ecosystem against the Bay Area.

I don't know of a recent movement that has better worked the press than Abundance, particularly one so closely connected to characters like Musk and Andreessen. www.businessinsider.com/nyc-tech-wor...

Sam Altman has a 'heartbreaking' reason why some users want ChatGPT to be a 'yes man' The OpenAI CEO says some users miss ChatGPT's old overly supportive style, as the company rolls out GPT-5 with new personality modes.

www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-c...

A fundraising memo for Palmer Luckey's new crypto bank says the quiet part out loud A fundraising memo touted Luckey's "political network" and a cofounder's "unique connectivity to regulators" like Jonathan Gould.

I assumed Mr. Luckey couldn't make me respect him less.

Turns out I underestimated him.

www.businessinsider.com/palmer-lucke...

This sounds stupid but I keep thinking about this. How often do you think OpenAI does these deals, and how long do they keep a "user" on their paid and business account statistics? Altman lied about how "powerful" GPT-5 was again and again, what other overstatements has OpenAI made?

Are Americans aware that down here in Mexico we’ve been getting bombarded for months with ads of Kristi Noem telling us to our face that we’re out welcome in the US, and that these ads even found their way into our national TV broadcasts

Because I feel like I have seen nobody mention it

APOLLO: “.. Nvidia now has the biggest weight in the S&P 500 of any individual stock since the data began in 1981.”

A Gaggle of Goldbricks Our White House press corps doesn’t meet the moment. Plus: A teenage math prodigy, a deep dive into LA’s housing crisis, and a one-time-only print edition for Texas flood victims.

Uninformed, cynical and supine: The utter futility of our press gaggles.

My latest via @columjournreview.bsky.social

www.cjr.org/laurels-and-...

X’s Altmetric Hegemony Ceding to Bluesky The alternative social media platform is matching engagement of Elon Musk’s X in ways that “would have seemed unthinkable until recently,” says study.

“The new paper reached a similar conclusion, adding, “What is clear is that the Altmetric hegemony of X may have come to an end, as for the first time there is a clear alternative in Bluesky, which even matches user engagement in ways that would have seemed unthinkable until recently.””

Why a NASA satellite that scientists and farmers rely on may be destroyed on purpose The Trump administration has asked NASA staffers to draw up plans to end at least two satellite missions that measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, according to current and former NASA employees.

Head of NASA Sean Duffy intends to destroy a satellite that collects key data on carbon dioxide and plant health, by causing it to burn up in the atmosphere. The U.S. Dept of Agriculture and private agriculture firms use the data to forecast crop yield, drought conditions and more.

Screencap of headline from linked article, reading: He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse. OpenAI’s chatbot self-reported it blurred line between fantasy and reality with man on autism spectrum. ‘Stakes are higher’ for vulnerable people, firm says. Above the headline: Technology Artificial Intelligence Family & Tech: Julie Jargon Below: By Julie Jargon Follow | Photographs by Tim Gruber for WSJ July 20, 2025 7:00 am ET

We're going to need journalists to stop talking about synthetic text extruding machines as if they have *thoughts* or *stances* that they are *trying* to *communicate*. ChatGPT can't *admit* anything, nor *self-report*. Gah.

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...

Or when they have no job to go to in the morning.

$WEN

Opinion | The op-ed that got Stephen Moore his Fed nomination is based on two major falsehoods Thou shalt not take Paul Volcker's name in vain.

He's a moron & a pathological liar who masquerades as an economist. At best he cherry-picks data. At worst he makes it up entirely. (See one example, below)
No one should report whatever garbage he's turned into visual aids as bearing any resemblance to reality
www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/201...

SAVOURI: “.. If you look through the front windscreen rather than the rear-view mirror, it's clear to see stagflation is coming to the U.S." 🇺🇸

www.morningstar.com/news/marketw...

I'm so old, I remember when Tesla was "delaying its path to profitability" "just like Amazon," but then it only made profit for a few years when the auto industry was structurally undersupplied for the first time since WWII and now it's going out of business again.

What’s so odd about this is that--for a name now so common across the megaplatforms--before 2023, “Elara Voss” did not exist. There is no person named Elara Voss in the United States. No birth certificate has ever been issued under that name; if you search for it in public records databases, you’ll turn up no results. There aren’t even any characters named “Elara Voss” in any book published before 2023. Until two years ago, the two words didn’t ever appear next to each other even by accident. But if you direct almost any L.L.M. to generate a sci-fi story or narrative for you, it will name the main character “Elara Voss”--or a similar variation like “Elara Vex,” “Elena Voss,” or “Elias Vance”--with an alarming degree of frequency. Elara Voss is not a real person. Nor is she a public-domain literary character. Nor--yet--a figure of myth or folktale. She’s not really anything at all except for name: A string of tokens that has proven irresistibly attractive to a number of different large language models when responding to prompts involving character names and science-fiction and fantasy stories. That is, “Elara Voss” is the text that L.L.M.s seem to have have collectively arrived upon as the best response to a prompt like “what should I name the character in the story I’m writing?”

In fact, a whole host of tropes and concepts seem to accompany Dr. Elara wherever she’s found. The prototypical “Elara Voss,” as described by a text generator, is a doctor, usually a physicist but sometimes a linguist or biologist. (Other times, she’s a spaceship captain.) She’s generally on the verge of a major breakthrough or discovery (often cosmic or even metaphysical in nature), or is researching some kind of “anomaly,” but is isolated, troubled, and sometimes “haunted” by what she’s learning. She’s often found “trembling” or her heart is racing; instruments near her are usually “pulsing.” The name “Erebus” often appears in Dr. Elara stories: a “Project Erebus” on which Dr. Elena Vex is working, or a mining colony named “Erebus-IX” to which Dr. Elias Vance must travel, or even a “rogue A.I.” called Erebus, “neutralized” by Dr. Elara Voss. To the more esoterically inclined A.I. schizoposter, Dr. Elara’s omnipresence, and the consistency of the motifs generated around her, endow her with a kind of mythological or folkloric quality: She’s a divinity, or a culture hero, about whom a set of relatively predictable stories are told. (You can only imagine the kinds of quackery Jung or Joseph Campbell would have gotten up to, given access to L.L.M.s) In this capacity she joins other A.I. cryptids or tulpas--figures like the A.I. ghost “Loab” or the “glitch token” “petertodd”--in a sort of ever-raveling A.I. “lore” popular among influencers and some even researchers. There’s a strong culture of semi-ironic mysticism around L.L.M.s among people who both genuinely believe in their power and who also understand that creepy fanfic is a powerful marketing tool for the technology. (And that solid ironic-mystical tweets will go viral.)

who is "elara voss," and why is she everywhere? the story of an a.i. glitch/cryptid/culture hero/artifact maxread.substack.com/p/who-is-ela...

I believe the coding startups are the true canary in the coal mine of generative AI. If they fail, there are no other established business models to point to (and their business models stink!)

> @fritschner.bsky.social 🤡

RFK Jr., back at the lab: "No no, I said two parts roadkill, one part whale juice! Do I have to do this all by myself?"

Not today, AI: Despite corporate hype, few signs that the tech is taking jobs — yet Amid a downshifting economy, cost pressures are mounting, prompting corporate leaders to hype AI’s potential as a savings source, even if it’s not quite there.

A review of employment surveys, interviews with labor market analysts and recent company earnings reports shows little evidence that AI is replacing jobs or having a broad economic impact.

I’m sure having 6 different IRS commissioners in less than 7 months at the same time complicated & contradictory tariff policies are being implemented won’t have any negative financial implications.

Ride-sharing apps are bad, actually Or why Matthew Yglesias has no clue what he's talking about

i'm doomed to write a version of this essay every single year. i wrote about Matthew Yglesias' intellectual sophistry, LPE, Uber's business model, the problem with venture capital, economic welfare, "economic analysis," and more. thetechbubble.substack.com/p/ride-shari...

"generate a map of the USA with each state named"

“Medium income” 🤡

@megancnbc.bsky.social

Host: Nike is saying they're going to take a hit of about $1 billion because of the tariffs that they're going to need to offset with higher prices. Adidas, a $230 million hit, will have to raise prices. Walmart has warned of looming price increases. Ford is going to take at least a $3 billion hit

Whatever the long term promise of AI is, I'm growing highly skeptical of the chances of this particular bubble not popping. observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2025/08/trum...

“In a paper published in Nature Communications, the researchers have shown for the 1st time that mRNA can be delivered into the cells where HIV is hiding, by encasing it in a tiny, specially formulated fat bubble. The mRNA then instructs the cells to reveal the virus.”
The virus can no longer hide!

YouTube video by Patrick Boyle Yotta Bank & The Problem with Fintech!

2. Listen to Patrick Boyle.

youtu.be/SAFlRSftffc?...