Adrian Boutel

It’s Merz, so obviously some of it is going on tax cuts. But frankly even that is better than mindless fiscal tightness.

Merz accused of using debt bazooka for welfare and tax cuts instead of investment Two prominent institutes and the Bundesbank sound alarm over use of new borrowings

German budget lunatics shocked to find out that money is fungible.

on.ft.com/4qUndnM

A Quick Take on Team Cave’s Big Win I have what I suspect is a somewhat counterintuitive take on the...

Heartening take from @joshtpm.bsky.social

talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-qui...

“Like” obviously not being the right sentiment here.

More delay for the Wings of Winter.

All that murder, and he won’t even be a trillionaire. If those things vest I’ll eat a Tesla.

See also: managed exchange rates are libertarianism, socialism is when you let people exchange things at market prices

And in “Dear God, don’t let these things near live systems!” news:

“In June, rival research firm Gartner predicted that more than 40 percent of agentic AI projects would be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, unclear business value, or insufficient risk controls.”

But of course… : “"We predict that much of this work will be given to lower-wage human workers, offshore or at lower salary," the report adds.“

AI layoffs to backfire: Half quietly rehired at lower pay : Bosses banking on automation? 55% will regret those job cuts

“Forrester's analysis found that using AI for financially driven layoffs can backfire: 55 percent of employers regret laying off workers because of AI. More people in charge of AI investment expect it to increase headcount (57 percent) than to decrease it (15 percent) over the next year.”

They’re SNAP recipients even though they’re not getting SNAP benefits, because they would be getting SNAP benefits if the government was open, so you can’t help them, because the government is helping them, even though it isn’t. Who writes these rules?

All the photos of him look like AI. #someconspiraciesarereal

I don’t get how neutrals could support the Blue Jays. Yes LA have a big payroll, but that’s baseball, and they also have Otani (and underdog heroes like Klein!) aaand they weren’t in the Series because they hired a cheat.

Caught the extra innings again this morning. Apparently the rest of the game was exciting as well?

Holy crap

“They coldbloodedly killed everyone they found inside the Saudi hospital, including patients, their companions, and anyone else present in the wards,” a spokesperson for the Sudan Doctors Network said, adding that the RSF had transformed hospitals “into human slaughterhouses”.

A pair of scissors with a zip tie holding the finger ends together. To make them usable, a pair of scissors is required.

I thought this was just an abstract paradox.

Un panneau de magasin qui bloque plus que la moitié du trottoir, déjà étroit à cause des travaux

Pas de subventions pour les commerces de la #ruedecarouge qui font ceci :

Sudan siege ends in bloodbath despite pleas for mercy Evidence emerges of atrocities committed by the paramilitary RSF after it seized control of El Fasher

There are no words for Sudan-- the "blood bath" conclusion marks the complete failure of the international community. This is a horrific situation & like so many other wars, I doubt there will be justice for these survivors & their families.

*prompting. Freudian autocorrect.

This is right, of course, but the results do offer a corrective to anyone who thinks (or would like customers to think) that humanlike reasoning somehow emerges from all the associative inference. In particular, “chain of thought” promoting makes no exception.

in the first part of Luttwak's Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, he challenges armchair generals to organize a moderately large trip to the beach. After walking through all of the ways it goes wrong, he then drops "now imagine people are shooting at you"

Iow, you do not gotta hand it to the Gipper.

I’m going to charitably assume this is all a Saint-Ronald-would-never gotcha, and not people getting negatively polarised by Trump’s (absurdly high and chaotic) tariffs into stanning neoliberal globalisation.

Labour suffers seismic by-election defeat to Plaid Cymru in Caerphilly Results deal a blow to Keir Starmer’s leadership ahead of Welsh elections in May

Link: on.ft.com/4hw7OWQ

Only thing missing from this is a Greens surge. Otherwise, (4th) Tory implosion, (3rd) you can’t beat the right by tacking right, (2nd) racists losing, (1) I’m a cel-tic nation, get me out of here.

Chart of visa costs by country, the UK massively highest—almost entirely due to the “health surcharge”, but labels are just labels and pounds are pounds

Way to grab disaffected US scientists, Kier love.

www.ft.com/content/7144...

And the “no one needs to use a slide rule/memorise the Iliad” response fails, because we absolutely still need to be able to do the things LLMs pretend to do.

Yes, indeed. Sadly I have no quibble with the “us dumber” part.

It’s a good line, but I think it’s apples and pears (dare I say category error?). It’s not doing the same thing we’re doing. As long as we retain the capacity to reliably count the ‘r’s in ‘strawberry’, anyway.

Even if we invent actual AI in the meantime, it will (I mean come on) be using some level of reasoning, rather than brute-force statistical inference. This scale of computing resources will be ludicrously unneeded. ISWIS.