Noah Nathan

Who knows if AI will replace us. But I'm feeling pretty confident its about to overwhelm us in an absolute tsunami of crap research...

This is the part about the Gen AI revolution that gives me great pause. This is a real example: compare two PDFs, text only, tell me if one copied the other. Claude Code *cannot do it*

What level of task do you trust without verification?

going to keep saying: to keep functioning, a society must discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

The former African minister in ICE detention Federal agency says Ghana’s Kenneth Ofori-Atta overstayed his visa but lawyers accuse US of aiding ‘political’ extradition request

www.ft.com/content/84ea... The former African minister in ICE detention

Underrated just how much the US and Israel have been desecrating the very idea of diplomatic engagement by doing these obvious bait and switches.

This is the third time now that negotiations were used as cover to prepare for a war already decided. The lesson is to never speak to the US.

Demanding Idi Amin-level sychophany will destroy our military and bureaucratic capacity for generations to come.

The United States has just begun a massive, open-ended war — and nobody knows why

The Board of Peace has wasted no time starting its first war.

If you still believe a word that comes out of this man’s mouth I have a plot of land on Jupiter I would like to sell you that could be great for onion farming.

-Zero Congressional consultation or approval.
-Zero preparation of public for need/consequences of war.
-Zero evidence of thought about "OK, what might the other side do?" Next month. Next year.
-Zero mention of anti-nuke agreement Trump voided, or Trump claim last year that nukes "obliterated."

And they wouldn't even have to caucus with the Ds. If 4 R senators came to the Ds and said "vote to make one of us the majority leader and we'll oppose Trump's democratic abuses, while still otherwise pursuing an R agenda," the Ds would be insane not to say yes.

Have had this same thought for months. The Thom Tillises of the world, who clearly seem to think poorly of a lot of Trump's most extreme behaviors, can go out quietly, retire into complete anonymity, and be lost permanently to America's historical memory by February 1 2027. Or...

Have had this same thought for months now. The Thom Tillises of the world, who clearly seem to think poorly of a lot of Trump's most extreme behaviors, can go out quietly, retire into complete anonymity, and be lost permanently to America's historical memory by February 1 2027. Or...

They Did Deals With Trump to Get Lower Tariffs. Now They Are Stuck.

This is also true of the universities, law firms, and media orgs that settled with Trump. They gave away their integrity and their rights—and got what in return? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/b...

Medgar Evers’ killer was a Klansman, but Trump administration says stop calling him a racist - Mississippi Today Among anticipated changes to a new visitor brochure for the Medgar & Myrlie Evers Home National Monument is no longer using "racist" to describe the killer of the civil rights leader.

Civil rights activist Medgar Evers was shot in the back by a Klansman in 1963.

The National Park Service has removed visitor brochures from Evers' museum and reportedly plans to remove references that call his murderer a “racist"

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Imagine how much they’d be lying about what happened without all the videos showing it from multiple angles.

People still somehow naively laugh off Trump's claims as bluster. But the Miller CNN interview is as clear as can be. They've backed themselves into a corner where they'll probably now think they can't not attack Greenland, to avoid looking like capitulating to their critics. It's completely insane.

Opinion | Peace Is Unraveling

So important.

Peace Is Unraveling www.nytimes.com/2026/01/06/o...

I know it was funny for people to laugh about "TACO" a few months ago... but we actually really *do* want him to chicken out on most of this stuff. Sheesh. In a government where all policy is ego and preening and performative dominance displays, giving him an off ramp to chicken out is a good thing.

As I can recall, the "policy planning process" is a) in first term, Trump makes stray offhand, uninformed remark about Greenland; b) people laugh at him about; c) defensive to the slights, he post hoc decides he meant it; d) sycophants race to tell him its genius; e) now its policy... ... RIP NATO??

Life under personalist rule...

I know it was funny for people to laugh about "TACO" a few months ago... but we actually really *do* want him to chicken out on most of this stuff. Sheesh. In a government where all policy is ego and preening and performative dominance displays, giving him an off ramp to chicken out is a good thing.

As I can recall, the "policy planning process" is a) in first term, Trump makes stray offhand, uninformed remark about Greenland; b) people laugh at him about; c) defensive to the slights, he post hoc decides he meant it; d) sycophants race to tell him its genius; e) now its policy... ... RIP NATO??

People still somehow naively laugh off Trump's claims as bluster. But the Miller CNN interview is as clear as can be. They've backed themselves into a corner where they'll probably now think they can't not attack Greenland, to avoid looking like capitulating to their critics. It's completely insane.

Urbanity, Here and There I am reading Vishaan Chakrabarti’s (visually, substantively) beautiful . Setting the stage, Chakrabarti defines an urbane community not as "elitist or metrop...

Taking a cue from @mattglassman312.bsky.social, I have created a text-first blog for occasional musings of the sort that fit better into 300 words than 300 characters. Here is my first post—on urbanity, and where we see it. scottgehlbach.bearblog.dev/urbanity-her...

Thanks. And sorry for my Sunday morning spelling 🤣

Serendipitous Encounters On and Off the Grid Chicago is a city on a grid. Noah Nathan’s innovative “Do Grids Demobilize?” () suggests this should be bad for social interaction, and thus collective actio...

On days like today, it’s nice to have a preoccupation that isn’t tied too directly to current events. Here, a few thoughts on urban design and social interaction, inspired by @nlnathan.bsky.social’s really innovative work on gridded streets and political mobilization.

But in an urban grid, where the paths are more efficient, people will likely choose walking more often, which creates more street-level interaction. The opposite effect of my paper, basically.

Anyway, though that might be interesting to think about.

But in the US, the grid vs tangled layout comparison is confounded by transit mode choices: the inefficienecy in paths in the tangled layout induces people to just drive, and avoid each other, rather than meet. Nobody walks in those kinds of suburbs because the routes are too circuitous.