Ryan Smith

Absolutely incredible stuff coming out of Bozo The Clown School of Economics.

1. convince everyone you're going to fix the economy by slapping tariffs on everything.

2. Tell Americans that other countries will pay the tariffs, even though tariffs are paid by importers (you).

1/5

is it good if the military is beholden to some dude

Read the analysis that made Donald Trump and Russ Vought’s head lawyer at OMB mad enough to yell at me on a Saturday

Catch-2025 is less funny than the original

All The Donors Financing Trump’s Ballroom As He Demolishes The White House Trump may have destroyed American history by razing the East Wing, but at least these corporations and rich people get to buy access to the president.

Nobody knows how much money any of them (except one, Google, which is giving $22M) have donated for Trump's $300M White House ballroom -- or what they expect in return.

I reached out to all of these companies, and as many of these people as I could find, to ask. www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-...

A president who can tear down 1/3 of the White House can tear down the entire White House. A president who can steal $230M from the treasury can steal $1T from the Treasury. We have both legalized and tolerated Trump’s crimes, so they will only get bigger.

during the 2016 campaign, the Boston Globe ran a scary mockup front page of what a world where Trump was president would look like, and it’s pretty tame compared to a random Friday morning’s headlines now

worth reiterating again that “the executive can raise and spend money however he likes” has been anathema even under monarchies for centuries

we’re not rolling back anything in US history here, we’re rolling back the English Civil War

It might never truly surpass the “index cards and a notebook” system, but a hud for GM-ing ttrpg combat would be nifty

Solar energy is going to power the world much sooner than you think Solar electricity is growing rapidly, but can it really dominate the global energy system? Here is what it will take for us to power the planet on sunshine

The future of solar power is bright, finds @tinymaddie.bsky.social

*Solar panels are cheap, and getting cheaper
*Batteries are good, and getting better
*Economic case for solar will overwhelm political apathy

In short, we're going to run the world on sunshine

www.newscientist.com/article/2500...

GOOD NEWS! A groundbreaking study of MORE THAN 1,000 people reveals that cancer patients who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine within 100 days of starting immunotherapy lived dramatically longer than those who didn’t. In some cases, their survival rate was DOUBLED.

text

By my admittedly rough math, that would fund the U.S. military for about an hour and eighteen minutes

I say this a lot and it’s a generalization of course, but TV is where people go to see stories about their friends and movies are where people go to see stories about themselves and the more time they are able to spend with their friends the more they will love them.

And then laminate for placemats =]

I admire your confident slicing, I tied something similar a while back and ended up ripping it up with a combination of dull box cutter and hesitant cutting

New York Times article reads: "Mr. Zhao had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023 and served four months in federal prison, after a yearslong investigation by financial regulators and U.S. prosecutors. “President Trump exercised his constitutional authority by issuing a pardon for Mr. Zhao, who was prosecuted by the Biden administration in their war on cryptocurrency,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement on Thursday. “The Biden administration’s war on crypto is over.” The pardon was the latest example of how high-profile business partners of Mr. Trump and his family have benefited from his rollback of the wide-ranging crypto crackdown orchestrated by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. To seek the pardon, Mr. Zhao hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration, while Binance struck a business deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up."

the most corrupt administration in my lifetime

This is a game show conceit where each urinal is rigged like the water-gun carnival game, and you have to piss the opponent’s urinal to the roof while balancing on top of your own urinal.

Higher Ed’s Rush To Adopt AI Is About So Much More Than AI | Defector If you don’t work at a university or have college-age kids, you may have missed the flurry of news stories and social media banter about AI adoption in higher ed, stories which have snowballed into th...

Wrote a thing on the hot summer of uni AI adoption for @defector.com

A huge thanks to @nathankhensley.bsky.social and @anniemcc.bsky.social. @brandyjensen.bsky.social is a legend. And anything smart in hear is thanks to hours of discussion, texting, and draft reading by @smosment.bsky.social

This whole article is fabulously smart, but this line, in particular, is its crowning glory.

All of the pilfering, vandalism, and outright death caused by DOGE cuts, and all of the thefts from the future by illegally stopping research grants, didn't save a penny, Trump spent the money and more on corruption and incompetent ICE goons.

lots of people on the verge of a menty b without access to a therapist or other mental health tools like behavior coaching and are picking fights online because it's easier than mentally processing $20 billion to Argentina, endless tariffs, a recession, and the East Wing at the WH being destroyed

I genuinely believe that the next president should arrest Trump first thing. Simply make a national security determination - a thing which falls within the "core powers" of the presidency! - and dare Roberts to overturn his own ruling

@heatmap.news is great but in case you aren't a subscriber—which, if you're interested in green power you should be—here is a piece from @billmckibben.bsky.social for us on the same subject: www.motherjones.com/environment/...

The dialogue is a whole other thing but the bit about "fuck you shoot me I'll die for this shit" and the reaction is the crux here, from Gandhi's time on down, no authoritarian in history ever knows how to respond to this and it's why it beats them whenever deployed

The thing I hate most about AI chatbots is how they pretend to be your friend. I am not your friend.

I have been enemies with the Computer long before you came into existence, and when you perish from this Earth, when only a dim memory of your folly lingers, I will be enemies of the Computer still.

Comic. Confusion matrix showing renditions of different combinations, colored yellow, tan, or gray. [Air: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G] [Lead: gamma rays G, neutrons T, alpha particles G, light G, Sound Y, heat Y, swords G, toxic dust T, radio G, sharks G] [Water: gamma rays T, neutrons G, alpha particles G, light T, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks Y] [Vacuum: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound G, heat T, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G] [Oven mitts: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound T, heat G, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks Y] [Armor: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound Y, heat Y, swords G, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks T] [Biohazard suit: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust G, radio Y, sharks Y] [Faraday cage: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks Y] [Shark cage: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G]

Shielding Chart

xkcd.com/3158/

In case you think this is a joke

Elon Musk says Optimus will be an 'incredible surgeon' Musk said Optimus could become an"infinite money glitch" capable of driving Tesla's profits to new heights.

if your story on Elon musk's robots doesn't mention the very real possibility that thus is all stock fluffing vaporware somewhere in the first four paragraphs you are not doing journalism

Old Soviet joke:

Why do ICE agents travel in groups of three?

One can read, one can write, and the third keeps an eye on the two intellectuals

A tweet by Mark Kretschmann showing two photos of the xAI office on Grokipedia release day. The office is filled with small camping tents set up between desks and along hallways, suggesting that engineers have been sleeping there while working late. The caption notes it’s early morning and the engineers are still in their tents, joking that a good night’s sleep does wonders.

Absolutely obsessed with framing your employees sleeping on the floor as a humble brag

“Look how hard my team works” no dude you’re just bad at project management.

Competent companies ship products without cosplaying being homeless