Greg Linden

Opinion | Forget Trump’s IVF promises. The GOP’s record shows contempt for fertility care. As always, pay more attention to what politicians do than to what they say.

He was lying about this from the get-go, which was obvious if you looked at literally anything he had done in his first term related to fertility care.
Pay more attention to what politicians do than to what they say. css.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

this is an absolute twenty alarm fire and I just cannot bring myself to believe capital, in one way or another, isn’t going to reel him in on this.

we can’t have a real economy without the goddamn labor numbers. it just doesn’t work.

"The trouble is that once that credibility is eroded, it is hard to repair"

if a judge had just awarded $329m against me for overselling systems that aren't self driving, and a judge were about to potentially take away my license to sell cars in California for the same thing, I simply would not tweet that my cars can drive themselves when they absolutely can not

the USA built a system of higher education so good that smart/rich people from across the world came here, spending billions to learn here, subsidizing education for Americans while spending money to live in our cities and towns. our government arbitrarily decided we should stop doing that

Terence Tao (@teorth.bsky.social) has written a thread on Mastodon about the impact of the federal grant freeze to UCLA, particularly to his own field of Mathematics. UCLA's IPAM (Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics) could shut down entirely

mathstodon.xyz/@tao/1149568...

Worth reading.

What universities will the government extort / blackmail next?

Harvard “is seriously considering resolving its dispute with the White House through the courts rather than a negotiated settlement.”

The university president said “the suggestion that Harvard was open to paying $500 million is ‘false’”

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

My guess is the AI bubble popping will be similar to the dot com bubble popping at the turn of the century. There’s a real technological advancement, it will have real long-term impact on the world, but a lot of the money now is hype, FOMO, and irrational exuberance.

But I guess we’ll see.

What if hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers results in faster, more efficient LLMs, but doesn't somehow turn into superintelligence?
Because the business model seems based on the assumption that this "AI" isn't the tech, the actual tech that'll make money doesn't exist yet but will soon.

Last week Trump lied that he ended 6 wars (but not the one he promised to in Ukraine).

Yesterday he lied he ended five wars. So, which war is back on?

The real answer, of course, is it's not specific lies to convince, it's an endless string of lies to exhaust, so it doesn't have to be consistent.

Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook

In the disinformation war, reality is losing.

The people who have promoted disinformation and conspiracy theories are now in charge of the US government.

It runs beyond Trump in this admin.

Reality, science, and education are losing to disinfo.

Gift link.

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

The story of how Trump sells access to the White House - to benefit himself and his family financially and to benefit his political operation - is shocking and sordid.

No President has ever monetized access like Trump has.

1/ It's a story you need to know.

Federal government paying 154,000 people not to work The federal government is paying more than 154,000 federal employees not to work as part of the deferred resignation program.

A total of 154,000 federal employees took the deferred resignation program.
(Remember, the government is still paying these employees, so they will not show up on unemployment figures yet)
abcnews.go.com/Politics/fed...

Also students have suddenly become extremely prolific with their code documentation. Rarely have I seen so much clean, thorough code commenting in student homework.

Check me on this: egregious use of emojis in code is a signature of AI code generation correct?

Seeing a ridiculous amount of it in the final project in my class.

AI Experts Say We’re on the Wrong Path to Achieving Human-Like AI An extensive report on the future of AI research indicated that there's skepticism about current approaches to AGI.

Yes, and more on that for anyone else reading this: "79% of respondents in the [AAAI conference] community opinion section stated that current public perceptions of AI’s capabilities do not match the reality of AI research and development"
gizmodo.com/ai-experts-s...

Part of that is the expense comes from huge AI models trying to be much more useful (and be able to charge a lot more) than small, cheap, open source models, which also leads hucksters to overpromise what AI soon will do. But yes, LLMs are useful, just not as useful as the hype claims.

I think waiting for the bubble to pop will do a lot of this for you. The money to be made at the peak of the hype cycle, both in crypto and AI, is attracting a lot of business folks at the moment, understandably so. When incentives change, I don't think parts of the criticisms will look left-coded.

People will focus on the main accountability effects of politicizing BLS. But cooking those numbers also has numerous knock-on policy effects. It’s not just the FOMC that uses BLS data. They guide revenue forecasts, UI payments, allocation formula for dozens of federal programs. (2/x)

Here is the ungated paper from the author, Luis Martinez, whose research is covered in the Economist article:

bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/u...

August 1, 2025 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION Committee on Economic Statistics and Committee on Government Relations Statement from the American Economic Association on the Dismissal of the BLS Commissioner Leaders of the American Economic Association express their grave concern over the dismissal of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) earlier today. The independence of the federal statistical agencies is essential to the proper functioning of a modern economy. Accurate, timely, and impartial statistics are the foundation upon which households, businesses, and policymakers make critical decisions. Undermining the independence or credibility of these agencies threatens the integrity of the information that markets, institutions, and the public rely on every day. Measuring the vast and dynamic U.S. economy in real time is inherently challenging. It is standard practice for statistical estimates to be revised as more complete and higher-quality data become available. These revisions reflect the commitment of statistical agencies to accuracy, transparency, and methodological rigor-not failure or bias. The BLS has long had a well-deserved reputation for professional excellence and nonpartisan integrity. Safeguarding this tradition is vital for the continued health of the U.S. economy and public trust in our institutions. We call upon elected officials to respect and preserve the independence of the nation's statistical infrastructure. Lawrence Katz President, American Economic Association Katharine Abraham President-Elect, American Economic Association Karen Dynan Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Economic Statistics Kenneth Troske Chair, American Economic Association Committee on Government Relations

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing

As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements

This is a big deal

Interesting example where Google's badly done AI instant answer picks up what's an obvious joke from an obviously unreliable source and summarizes it in a way that treats it as real. Badly misleading to searchers and damaging to the Google brand.

Welp now my post shows up on a general query about a REAL HISTORICAL FACT lmao. Google is cooked

I don’t want a left Stephen Miller, I want strong civic institutions and healthy media environment to say “what the fuck” to any right or left psychopath.

Online news publishers face 'extinction-level event' from Google's AI-powered search While many factors often drive traffic fluctuations, publishers say the introduction of Google's AI Overviews has led to dramatic declines for news outlets and other online information sources.

While many factors often drive traffic fluctuations, publishers say the introduction of Google's AI Overviews has led to dramatic declines for news outlets and other online information sources.

So many billions spent on the build out of infrastructure for a product that hardly anyone is willing to pay to use.

pivot-to-ai.com/2025/07/04/o...

Trump’s Truth Social Parent Company Posts $20 Million Loss on $883,300 in Net Sales for Q2, Ends Quarter With $3.1 Billion in Assets Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Truth Social that is majority-owned by President Donald Trump, posted earnings for Q2 2025.

Truth Social grift magnet posts $833k net sales and *operating loss* of $43.5 million in Q2, halved by crypto scam. Market cap is $4.7b of bribery and bullshit.
variety.com/2025/digital...

Rerunning that old (now unfunny) soviet era joke:
Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev are on a train. Train stops moving.
Stalin: “shoot the engineer!” Train still stuck.
NK: “rehabilitate the engineer!” Still stuck.
Brezhnev, pulling down the window shades: “Comrades! The train is moving!”

That’s great, but words are wind. Are they going to caucus with Democrats now? Are they going to vote for impeachment? Will they stop confirming his nominees? Will they do something - anything - to rein in the Mad King and restore the rule of law? Or are they just “concerned” again?