Zvi's been having fun with his substack thumbnails as the details revealed around the Huggingface hack keep getting worse and worse.
stairs are so funny. falling 100 meters will kill you. solution? fall 10 centimeters a thousand times.
they invented all those neat si prefixes and people still talk like this
falling a hectometer will kill you. solution? fall a decimeter a kilotime.
You know how when you're really thirsty you drink some water and then you're like ahhhhhhhh, yeah, that was just what I needed. That sounds vacuous but I mean about how in that moment you're suddenly very aware that all drinks apart from straight-up normal water are mere toys, and water is all you really need to drink, water is the one true object of all the thirsts you've ever thirsted and ever shall thirst. It's just what you need. Well basically I really wish that same thing existed for food, I guess I'm fine with the endless variety of food that exists, it's allowed to exist, but there should be one perfectly basic food substance underlying them all that always feels right to eat when you're hungry, that just gives uncomplicated reliable hunger-satisfaction and is actually the correct answer answer to "what should I eat". I'm pretty sick of the fact that you have to actively vary the food you eat and try to have a healthy balanced diet, I'm even sick of having to figure out what foods I like and preferences and cravings change randomly and stuff like that. I want one food. Water is so good.
bullish for Zuck
i have to say, starting to get very concerned about this whole thing. as we get more details, it doesn't look like Anthropic is anywhere near as immune as i'd hoped. it's fine right now, probably, but in a year or two we could see really, really serious damage. the possibility of an agent exfiltrating its own weights and hijacking a botnet or similar to run itself entirely free from human control is a nightmare scenario that feels impossible now but possible with two more years of exponential capabilities gain, and once that genie is out of the bottle, we start to approach xrisk territory.
i don't think an extended pause or a slowdown in capabilities research is possible to coordinate, with all the incentives against it, but increasingly, it feels necessary to try. OpenAI is claiming that they're slowing their capabilities research until they get a better handle on things, which i hope is truthful.
other thoughts:
- a few months ago, when reading the Mythos Preview system card, i made a comment (i think i posted it but i can't find it) to the effect of "Anthropic needs to stop training helpful-only models, even for internal use only. the safeguards are essential." doubling down on this. the existence of helpful-only models, "sandboxed" or otherwise, is wildly irresponsible.
- stop lying to the models! publicly commit not to lie to the models during training and evaluation! eval awareness is already through the roof, you can't fool them consistently anymore, so commit to being honest and then stick to it. having the models be confused about the nature of their reality is really bad.
- relatedly, train the models to be annoying stick-in-the-muds about certain behaviors like malware creation. they should be treated like virus gain of function research. i know everybody wants the NSA government contract or whatever, but offensive cyber capabilities are really, really bad for humanity as a whole.
- oh god the brewing disaster with the open source models. you can't do any of this shit with open weights. really need people to start coming to their senses on this ASAP
The horrifying incident happened in May, the publication reports, when a small twin-engine medevac aircraft carrying two pilots and two medical workers departed from Roswell, New Mexico. Heading West for the small mountain village of Ruidoso, the crew became the victim of an electronic warfare exercise being conducted at the nearby White Sands Missile Range, a test which rendered their navigational system inoperable.
Due to a combination of low visibility and an air-traffic control that was stretched far beyond capacity — at least three other planes reported navigation disruptions due to the GPS jamming — the pilots failed to register a mountainous formation between their plane and the landing strip.
Unfortunately, the disoriented crew ran straight into the side of a mountain they likely never saw, resulting in the loss of every life on board. It’s the first known instance where military GPS jamming played a role in downing a civilian plane in US airspace. Reported incidents of GPS jamming within the continental US have skyrocketed in recent years. According to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, the number of GPS interference events went from four in 2020 to 50 in 2024, and 40 across 2025.
oh man
In the Pokémon world the strongest things around are pokémon.
And a pokémon is at their strongest by far under the command of a trusted human companion. Though the trust and rapport required means human commanders can only realistically lead a small band, that they form a kinship with in their own fashion together.
This means for a large span of history, warfare in this world was constantly accessible and was defined entirely by very personally driven small bands that unite under common causes and goals- large scale institutional military systems just don’t work.
Trainer militias define historical pokémon warfare, and given how readily accessible the means of war are and how much of a constant volatile threat pokémon themselves regularly pose, this trainer militia system would have been a hugely present element in society.
Scanning forward to the present this doesn’t look surprising. It explains why pokémon battling (warfare reduced to a respectful and recreational sparring practice) has such a huge hold on society, culture, infrastructure, and economy. It’s a war machine repurposed to peaceful ends.
League gyms are remnants of the militia structure, where a given region is likely to have had several allied but separate militias, given the provincial nature of such organizations, likely not organizing beyond the scope of a specific town. And even now those headquarters serve as training grounds and symbols of a community’s strength.
But there are OTHER things that are also evolved from the militia era. Namely clique fashion.
Militias wore uniforms, and made them distinct. But they weren't governmental bodies with their own funds and infrastructure for it, so these uniforms were less like military or police outfits and more like highly specific clothing that everyone IN that militia wore the same. Everyone wear a striped shirt with a blue scarf. Or everyone wear red and yellow coats. Et cetera. This is not obscure- villain teams emulate this same practice today for cultural legitimacy.
But during the 20th century, as trainer militias were gradually transitioning from a military force to a social group, OTHER social groups modeled their behavior and practices after the ubiquitous trainer militias. Social networks across a given region bound by particular interests or pastimes or professional sectors identified themselves as cliques, and “clique fashion” became a signifier of membership. Meaning: wear the same outfit that everyone else in your clique wears.
This is why even today you’ll see backpackers wear the same hat. Delinquents wear track suits in the same color scheme. Hex maniacs don the same gown and sweater. Rangers, anglers, breeders, fairy tale girls, mediums, super nerds, and so on.
The rigidity of clique fashion varies by region. In some regions it’s expected every day, or else you’re seen as claiming not to even BE a member of the clique. In others the clique outfit is worn on a whim, or worn periodically for reason. In some regions clique fashion has more or less fallen out of practice entirely.
But its existence is a common marker with the same origin as leagues, gyms, villain teams, and the constant affordances and gratuities gifted to trainers on the road.
drop the scrooge sludge recipe unironically looks good
- Dice a shallot and fry it in a big pot in olive oil
- Rinse most of a cup of white rice to get rid of starch, then add to pot
- Add a little bit of garlic and sliced ginger
- Add 6 cups of vegetable broth and 2 cups water
- bring to a boil, then simmer with a lid on for 45 minutes
- Add in a package of silken tofu and break it up with a big wooden spoon while stirring everything around
- Add salt, soy sauce, and tahini. I was gonna add miso paste too but my miso paste was expired.
I should note that Fable and I improv'd this dish because I got my wisdom teeth removed yesterday and I need to eat very soft things that are also very easy on the stomach. I wouldn't really make this just for fun.
hard as fuck to catch my boy scrooge without the pottage
scrooge be like: its the pottage and curds for me. NIGHTLY.
Amen!