Henrik C. Chulu and the Scroll of Doom

Microsoft earnings suggest $11.5B OpenAI quarterly loss : Satya has also delivered Sam most of the cash he promised

Had missed this but MSFT earnings yesterday suggest OpenAI lost $11.5bn in the quarter.

www.theregister.com/2025/10/29/m...

Libraries Scramble for Books After Giant Distributor Shuts Down Why it might have been and may continue to be harder to get new releases from your local library.

Private equity destroys 200-year-old book distribution company that libraries around the country rely on and now libraries are having trouble getting new books:

www.404media.co/libraries-sc...

Can't overstate how fucked up it is that unraveling what is arguably the greatest achievement in the history of humanity is now a motivating issue of one of the two dominant parties in the U.S.

International Criminal Court to ditch Microsoft Office for European open source alternative | Euractiv The court will move its internal work environment to Open Desk, a German-developed open source software

The International Criminal Court (ICC) will switch its internal work environment away from Microsoft Office to Open Desk, a European open source alternative, the institution confirmed to Euractiv.

www.euractiv.com/news/interna...

Not a word from the ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt on Tucker hosting Fuentes. Amazing.

I just checked his Twitter feed and plenty on Mamdani and even Norway (!) but not a word about a top conservative podcaster hosting an infamous Holocaust denier.

Greenblatt is beyond parody at this point.

Yes, Lord of the Rings is about how you must trust the “hard men.” Just as Narnia is about an evil lion. And the New Testament tells a tale of a wimp who wouldn’t fight back. Next week on “fascists read classics,” we’ll meet tech visionary George Orwell…

Zohran Mamdani caught lying that he understood Plato’s allegory of the cave, yet when asked to explain it, he seemed to instead explain Baudrillard’s theory of Simulacra and Simulation where reality has been replaced by symbols and signs, which seems similar to Plato’s theory but is not the same

Literally.

A President demolishing the White House is a little bit on the nose as a political metaphor

DR har opsøgt anti-transaktivisten Mille Sørensen for at få en kommentar på DBU Sjællands beslutning om at tillade personer med juridisk kønsskifte at spille breddefodbold med eget køn.

Men de fortier så at Sørensen er aktivist og præsenterer hende som bare en tilfældig holdleder hos et kvindehold.

a functional press would, every single day, repeatedly, across numerous paragraphs in every story about him, make it clear that this is indisputably the most corrupt President in U.S. history

"How do you expect to win back men...?"

We don't want those men. They are the hot dogs on the floor of humanity and we still have all these nice prepped hamburger patties if someone would just let them cook.

the latest letter against ai superintelligence is just further evidence we live in one of the dumbest possible timelines.

all these people who think they’re so smart getting totally hoodwinked by some skilled grifters already tearing the social fabric to shreds.

Cops complimenting protesters, cats and dogs living together, MASS HYSTERIA

Second "No Kings Day" protests likely the largest single-day political demonstration since 1970, with 4.2-7.6 million participants Here are the initial results from our crowdsourced crowd-counting estimates

Good evening. We estimate that between 4.2 and 7.6 million people turned out for the No Kings Day demonstrations held around the country on Saturday. This makes Oct 18 very likely the biggest single-day U.S. protest event since 1970. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/second-no-...

New Work by Gary Larson | TheFarSide.com Get an exclusive look at brand new cartoons and artwork from cartoonist Gary Larson, creator of the iconic comic strip The Far Side®.

It's kinda cool that Gary Larson is doing new cartoons because he picked up a digital tablet, taught himself how to use it, and it made him love drawing again.

www.thefarside.com/new-stuff/

New York Times Opinion Thomas Friedman Give Trump the Nobel for Gaza, if he does the harder parts to come Oct. 9, 2025

@paleofuture.bsky.social: Trump's Truth Social account just posted this AI video of him flying a fighter jet that reads "King Trump." AI Trump is wearing a crown while he dumps shit on protesters. He's such a pathetic little man. [Fighter jet dropping diarrhea]

The New York Times, ladies and gentlemen

Rails Needs New Governance Ages ago, when I was still a student, I taught myself Ruby on Rails for my senior thesis and fell in love. Fifteen years later, and I’ve used Rails at every job I’ve ever held in the tech industry. Fifteen years, and I still love Rails! But there’s something rotten at its core, and we share a name.

Ages ago, when I was still a student, I taught myself Ruby on Rails for my senior thesis and fell in love. Fifteen years later, and I’ve used Rails at every job I’ve ever held in the tech industry. Fifteen years, and I still love Rails! But there’s something rotten at its core, and we share a name.

EU Continues Exporting Banned Pesticides to Global South Despite Pledge to End Trade Instead of halting exports of life-threatening pesticides banned within the bloc, the European Union has continued — and even increased — shipments to the Global South, despite its pledge to end the...

Instead of halting exports of life-threatening pesticides banned within the bloc, the European Union has continued — and even increased — shipments to the Global South, despite its pledge to end the practice, Human Rights Watch says.

www.occrp.org/en/news/eu-c...

The End of Windows 10 Support Is an E-Waste Disaster in the Making In an example of egregious planned obsolescence, as many as 400 million computers will soon hit the waste stream.

The end of free Windows 10 support this Wednesday could be an environmental disaster, cutting off 400 million PCs from security updates and dooming millions of still usable computers.

🔗 www.404media.co/the-end-of-w...

Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” – Greta Thunberg on her days in Israeli captivity Beating, kicking, and threats of being gassed in cages. Greta Thunberg and several others from the flotilla ar

We’ve met with Greta Thunberg and others in the flotilla. They describe hours-long scenes of torture and sexual harassment in Israeli captivity. Experts conclude that they have been subjected to serious crimes – Sweden’s foreign minister believes they have themselves to blame.

tinyurl.se/crR

Asymmetric Information The game is rigged, the dice are loaded, the cards are stacked against us

I've reactivated my old newsletter and gathered most of my published writings from the past decade in a single website using Ghost. I probably won't send out lots of newsletters and definitely not in a regular cadence, but if you're interested in receiving them, sign up here: asymmetric.henrikchu.lu

Oh, noes.

Oh, no.

Who could have predicted this would ever happen?

We did! Everybody did!

You know how I know? Because we said this.

Everybody said this.

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

Stephen Miller said last year this was the plan. They said it out loud. Some of us highlighted his remarks at the time and warned how dangerous they were. Most of the media missed them and/or moved on from them. It’s happening:

wizard frog is insane

I have criticisms of ICEBlock, but this is authoritarian bullshit, and the fact that nearly all smartphone use one of two app stores controlled by US corporations does not bode well for the future

You absolutely should not dismiss the AT Protocol technology that runs this place as boring nerd stuff, because that is the exact technology we are going to need to ensure that usable social media that isn’t controlled by Nazis continues to exist.