Adam Rogers

I try to be literary and stuff, and this is the thanks I get.

Old Newsstand With a New Beat: Police Set Up Shop at West Fourth NYPD officers are now stationed at the former kiosk on the northbound platform on the A, C, E lines.

I've always liked the idea of the koban, a small local place where police are...but the metaphor of replacing magazines with cops does hurt my heart.
www.thecity.nyc/2025/11/25/n...

The Case That A.I. Is Thinking ChatGPT does not have an inner life. Yet it seems to know what it’s talking about.

Here, look, this one is better.
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

the AEB mandate was voluntarily adopted by the entire US auto industry because it has an unambiguous and independently validated impact on safety... eliminating it is the stupidest automotive safety proposal I have heard in my entire life

Right? Come on.

But it's also OK to change the terms of the debate. Things can have value even if they _never_ make anyone rich. There's value in just knowing and appreciating.

Society as a Service

Exclusive | Senate Committee to Challenge Auto-Safety Mandates That Hurt ‘Affordability’ Republicans are questioning the value of some features, such as automatic braking and rear-seat reminders.

And then the price of cars without these things will not go down, people will die, *and* carmakers will charge *more* for them as optional extras, so only rich people will be safe. And then we will all have to be shocked, shocked.
www.wsj.com/business/aut...

Yeah I can imagine that’s a heavier lift.

Not everything has to make a few people rich right this instant in order to have value.

Yes and! Since it takes about 20 years for an initial insight to turn into a commercial product, and since the commercialization usually isn’t done by the person who had the insight…you never know! Without orchids, we wouldn’t have vanilla.

That might be as close as I ever get to thinking of something as a sacred duty.

And this all elides the fact that it's just really cool to understand how things work, as a part of being a human on Earth in the universe.

Studying extremophile bacteria in Yellowstone resulted, decades later, in the polymerase chain reaction—the enabling tech for all genetic research. GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic came from research on gila monster venom. Without general relativity, no GPS. You just never know what's going to hit.

In the US, public money spent on scientific research—not including defense research—redounds somewhere between 140 to 210% in total productivity.

Fieldhouse and Mertens. “The Social Returns to Public R&D.” doi.org/10.3386/w33780.

(yes yes also, come on, excercise control over bread, peanut butter, and jam choices and make your own sandwich)

Interesting! The round shape and crimped edges are functional, but Smuckers made them part of the product's trade dress...and then Trader Joes immovated their own house-brand version using similar tech, necessarily echoing the design, too. (via @ibogost.com)

Also

bsky.app/profile/rick...

George Miller’s Justice League

…forcing chinstrokers like me to say things like “ah, but an Abundance of *what*, pray tell? And for whom doth it abund?” Pffft.

Lotta folks trying to make it easier to build green energy infrastructure, transit, and new homes, and then a few guys’ ears and bank accounts perk up and they go “oh so data centers and fulfillment warehouses?”

Duke has sought to tighten faculty media engagement to minimize federal scrutiny The messages reflect a broader University strategy: keeping Duke out of the national spotlight by exercising caution at the faculty level when it comes to politically sensitive topics.

To try to avoid the Trump administration’s ire, Duke has instructed faculty not to speak to reporters dukechronicle.com/article/duke...

Yes. The writing is not the problem these days. It’s the fear of buying/development the studios/nets seem to have, it’s the lack of opportunities; the town feels like it’s been shut down since LAST October. And we only had about 2 good weeks before then.

Amazing to learn that Isaac Chotiner can apparently just come for you in your replies. Like suddenly realizing you're swimming in open ocean

Right?

I had not! That's very cool.

Seriously what are we even doing here.

This website plays all of the departure tunes for each station on the Yamanote ring train line around central Tokyo. Real city heads will want to click Ebisu. Akihabara is the banger you hope it will be.
yamanot.es#current

Thank you for it. It has meant a lot to me.

(Prime Rule of Fight Club is that you're not allowed to interfere with the development of other Fight Clubs.)