Sam Learner

any new BLS commissioner would presumably know that next month's jobs report is also likely to be bad and that releasing a bad jobs report can now be a fireable offense. so they'd have to either be someone who's prepared to get fired weeks into a new job or someone willing to manipulate the data

Inside the relentless race for AI capacity The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed

NEW: The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed

Our visual story on the relentless race for AI capacity: ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...

New visual story: Inside the relentless race for AI capacity

The quest for superintelligence is spurring a data centre boom — but critics question the cost, environmental impact and whether it is all needed

ig.ft.com/ai-data-cent...

The American guns turning Haiti’s gangs into an army Weapons smuggled from Florida are empowering the country’s militias and enabling them to challenge a fragile government

New: The American guns turning Haiti’s gangs into an army.

Caches of weapons — including sniper and military-style rifles — are being smuggled from Florida, enabling Haitian militias to challenge the country’s fragile government. The UN says gangs now outgun the police.

ig.ft.com/haiti-gangs/

New Eric Adams ‘Donors’ Say They Never Gave to His Reelection Campaign An investigation by THE CITY uncovered Adams donors who insist they didn't donate, a donor who paid with a credit card linked to their employer and donors who don't live where they claimed to.

An investigation by THE CITY uncovered donors who insist they didn’t donate to Eric Adams’ campaign, a donor who paid with a credit card linked to their employer and donors who don’t live where they claimed to.

www.thecity.nyc/2025/07/24/e...

these kinds of "skills"/tricks for interacting with an LLM are a bug, not a feature, based on unintended friction in the system. it's like having a Texting 101 class in 2006 that teaches you tricks for typing quickly on a T9 keypad

Chart showing risk of being murdered in the subway if you rode 500 times last year (0.4 in 100,000) versus other risks such as that of dying in a traffic accident in the US last year (12.1 in 100,000)

The subway risk chart you've been waiting for (Sawyer County, Wisconsin, is where Sean Duffy is from). Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

How many times do we have to remind people: the chatbot *cannot* admit to *anything*. It *doesn't know*. When you ask it about itself, it generates its answer the same way it generates your request that it write an email. It takes what you tell it and responds in way to sound plausible.

god the last two Alex G albums are so good

New visual investigation: Inside America's booming immigration detention industry where record levels of incarceration are leading to deteriorating conditions, legal representatives & detainees say. ⁦

ig.ft.com/us-immigrati...

With @upyorkshire.ft.com, @nassosstylianou.bsky.social, @inari-ta.bsky.social, @janatausch.bsky.social, @gakuito.bsky.social

Inside America’s booming immigration detention industry The enormous US deportation programme is enriching companies as detainees complain of poor treatment

NEW: inside America's immigration detention industry, where lawyers and detainees describe overcrowding and deteriorating conditions

Our visual investigation: ig.ft.com/us-immigrati...

Inside America’s booming immigration detention industry The enormous US deportation programme is enriching companies as detainees complain of poor treatment

NEW: Even before Donald Trump began his mass deportation plans, the US had the world's largest immigration detention system - 85% run privately.

Record numbers are now being held and detainees, lawyers and relatives have spoken of poor conditions.

🔗 ig.ft.com/us-immigrati...

you're expecting that people will put aside their beliefs/interests/enthusiasm to vote strategically based on your *perception* of the electorate (which is probably wrong)

the thing about these kinds of arguments ("sure, you might like the guy, but lots of other people won't, so you shouldn't vote for him") is that it asks voters to engage in a kind of meta-politics on behalf of the party that I just have trouble believing most people would care about at all

Inside Gaza’s ‘death traps’ [FREE TO READ] A US-backed scheme forces hungry Palestinians to trek kilometres for food aid. Many never make it back

NEW: Inside Gaza’s ‘death traps’ via @FT
GHF’s plan forces hungry Palestinians to trek miles to aid sites, often through the IDF’s active military areas. Hundreds have been killed and thousands injured. This is how…
www.ft.com/content/6c74...

In the meantime, formal entries into the CFPB’s consumer complaints database have soared, suggesting that the business of junk fees, predatory terms, and routine swindles is booming just as loudly as the Prospect has been predicting it would since Elon Musk memorably typed out “CFPB RIP” on X. All told, 2.5 million complaints have flooded into the CFPB over the past six months, roughly a quarter of the total complaints the agency has recorded since its inception in 2011, with reports of everything from being shut out of bank accounts after a hurricane to scammers impersonating ICE officials who convince consumers to buy them gift cards in order to help them avoid deportation.

By the way scammers have taken notice.
Your must-read today. prospect.org/economy/2025...

tbh, it would actually be a little disarming in real life if someone prefaced their hate speech with "ey, compadre"

bsky.app/profile/elio...

Periodic reminder that AIs hallucinate, we have no idea if this is actually true

grok, during training: "this hate speech is on fleek, fam!"
50 year-old xAI engineer: "perfect"

"brainwashed into nazism? nah, bro!" -a computer

Exclusive: Operation Excalibur in Los Angeles “Show of Presence” Leaks from military's LA deployment reveal Coca Cola vs. Pepsi rivalry, sweaty guardsmen, and abject failure

I've obtained a trove of leaked documents about today's federal crackdown on Los Angeles' MacArthur Park. One revelation is its codename: "Operation Excalibur"

Tony Blair’s staff took part in ‘Gaza Riviera’ project with BCG Former UK prime minister’s institute participated in meetings on plan to turn shattered enclave into trading hub

The Tony Blair Institute participated in a project to develop a postwar Gaza plan that envisaged kick-starting the enclave’s economy with a “Trump Riviera” and an “Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone”.

www.ft.com/content/0b1b...

Astonishing story. Huge questions over the company culture that allowed this. www.ft.com/content/c0e6...

Since 2016 the mainstream media (self included) has spent God knows how many hours fretting and gaming out and strategizing the right and ethical way to cover hack and leaked information. I don't see any way to justify doing this story the way the NYT did here.

Republicans Are Cutting Medicare. Not Only Medicaid, Medicare. Passage of the Big Beautiful Bill will force mandatory sequestration that will mean half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts.

Hakeem Jeffries is still speaking but eventually Republicans are going to pass their megabill.
And it hasn't been discussed much, but that is going to force $500 billion in cuts to Medicare. Not just Medicaid. Medicare.
Here's why:
prospect.org/politics/202...

How to rig a polling average GOP-aligned pollsters are propping up Trump in polling averages that don't account for pollster "house effects." This risks misleading the public.

I’ve removed the paywall on my piece about right-wing pollsters boosting Trump in polling averages (but not ones as smart as the model at Strength In Numbers): www.gelliottmorris.com/p/how-to-rig...

Is Europe prepared for war? With US support for transatlantic security faltering, Nato nations are fortifying the eastern frontier with Russia

Is Europe prepared for war? https://on.ft.com/4nsBo1V

Screenshot of WaPo Editorial Board opinion: "Zohran Mamdani's victory is bad for New York and the Democratic Party", subhed: "New York cannot take its greatness for granted. Mismanagement can ruin it."

I could've sworn that our current mayor was indicted on corruption charges and that four deputy mayors resigned in protest just a few months ago?

no mention of any of that in this piece about the dangers of New York being mismanaged though, I must be imagining it!

going to be haunted forever by the fact that the space for the y-axis labels on this chart was too narrow when screenshots of it started going around

bsky.app/profile/luck...