ACB

Great piece on the labs.patch.com platform!

@inimitablepgw Webster the cat. If you haven’t read the Mulliner stories you are really missing out. “The story of Webster” and “cats will be cats” are unsung heroes.

Which Wodehouse character steals the scene every time they appear?

@sama It’s still the DoD, legally. Maybe articulating it that way might change your oleaginous perspective from offense to defense.

(I also would like to share this, which I wrote after thinking a little more.) There is a lot we will talk about in the coming days, but since this is one of the first "real deal" decisions we have faced, I wanted to share a few things that have been heavily on my mind the past few days. These are the principles I care most about for this decision: alignment, democratization, empowerment, and individual agency. The democratic process must stay in control, and we must democratize AI. OpenAI should not decide the fate of the world; no private company should. We need to work with governments, but also we need to make sure individuals get increasing power. Things are moving so fast that we need to urgently educate the world so that the democratic process has time to catch up. I think one of our most important strategic decisions ever was the principle of iterative deployment. In particular, the key element required for democracy, such as protection of privacy, must be defended by all of society. I believe that, as some of the creators of this new technology, we deserve to and are obligated to have a loud voice about the risks, pitfalls, and benefits we see. I think we are heading towards a world where the relationship between governments and AI efforts is critical. This will be difficult but it has to happen; I do not see any good future where we don't get there. There should not be games and fights in the press like this; drastic government action should be avoided. I think there are real dangers coming to the world, and maybe pretty soon; I tried to put myself in the mindset of how I'd feel the day after an attack on the US or a new bioweapon we could have helped prevent.

Here is re-post of an internal post: We have been working with the DoW to make some additions in our agreement to make our principles very clear. 1. We are going to amend our deal to add this language, in addition to everything else: "• Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, National Security Act of 1947, FISA Act of 1978, the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals. • For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information." It’s critical to protect the civil liberties of Americans, and there was so much focus on this, that we wanted to make this point especially clear, including around commercially acquired information. Just like everything we do with iterative deployment, we will continue to learn and refine as we go. I think this is an important change; our team and the DoW team did a great job working on it. 2. The Department also affirmed that our services will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies (for example, the NSA). Any services to those agencies would require a follow-on modification to our contract. 3. For extreme clarity: we want to work through democratic processes. It should be the government making the key decisions about society. We want to have a voice, and a seat at the table where we can share our expertise, and to fight for principles of liberty. But we are clear on how the system works (because a lot of people have asked, if I received what I believed was an unconstitutional order, of course I would rather go to jail than follow it). But 4. There are many things the technology just isn’t ready for, and many areas we don’t yet understand the tradeoffs required for safety. We will work through these, slowly, with the DoW, with technical safeguards and other methods. 5. One thing I think I did wrong: we shouldn't have rushed to get this out on Friday. The issues are super complex, and demand clear communication. We were genuinely trying to de-escalate things and avoid a much worse outcome, but I think it just looked opportunistic and sloppy. Good learning experience for me as we face higher-stakes decisions in the future. In my conversations over the weekend, I reiterated that Anthropic should not be designated as a SCR, and that we hope the DoW offers them the same terms we’ve agreed to. We will host an All Hands tomorrow morning to answer more questions.

@inimitablepgw A lovely girl needs, of course, no jewels but her youth and health and charm, but anybody who had wanted to make Veronica understand that would have had to work like a beaver.

@inimitablepgw Veronica Wedge, to wit, Lady Hermione’s outstandingly beautiful daughter, who was lying in bed staring at the ceiling and wishing she had some decent jewellery to wear at the forthcoming County Ball.

What is the single funniest line Wodehouse ever wrote? No wrong answers, only joy.

@searchmartin Twain’s story about typesetting it in “Roughing It” is a scream: he was berated (and lost a weekend fishing trip) because he used the initials “JC” to fit a line of type and was called back to reset the entire job. So as revenge he reset it as “Jesus H. Christ.”

the way chatGPT infers context is mindblowing

@pesach_lattin @Emolclause Are you so naive as to be incredulous?? Of course they won’t report it because they are cowards.

@Rainmaker1973 M*A*S*H not on the list? Disqualified

Ranking the greatest TV shows of all time.

@CoffeewClassics In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.

Nothing like a good hook to reel in the reader! A Thread of the 50 Best Opening Lines in Classic Literature. 🧵 👇

@glenngabe Or for destroying publishers

Working on headlines for Google Discover? That might be pointless if this rolls out -> Google Discover builds on latest redesign with showing article previews over headlines "While this looks like, at a glance, an AI summary of the article, it is the first paragraph of the post. Google pulls this paragraph and trains it off with an ellipsis (…) if the text is too long for the preview." 9to5google.com/2025/06/10/goo…

How does a local news ecosystem survive this ripoff? Google pays pubs ZERO for their reporting—scrapes & aggregates it, spits out an ai-digest, & no one will visit originating site(s). Ad revenue will collapse & they go under. Who is doing this, & how does democracy survive?

@thinkingwest Most replies here are of people who already have enormous standing (Martel,Clovis,Eisenhower,Aurelius, etc). The q was about those who are overlooked… Marlborough? Montgomery? Shaka(T’chaka)? Sherman? Henry Lee? Horatio Gates?

What historical figure deserves more respect?

@xmuse_ Stations of the cross. Barnett Newman

What is one painting that you could get lost in looking at for hours?

@NateSilver538 His record. His record. His record. Come on, Nate; stop shilling. All administrations are a reflection of thwir choices for key staff. Just quiet down for a while and go back to what you are (inarguably) good at.

The emerging portrait from these Biden postmortems is of a president who didn't have a typical POTUS level of command due to age-related decline. And who therefore was serving as a sort of proxy president for his staff, "the groups" or whomever had his ear.

@NateSilver538 Asinine. Never has there been a global tipping-point crisis which humans caused & was in the power of humans to avert. Plagues (writ large) were not caused by human action (or inaction). Closest is nukes & jury is still out. History is not kind to apologists, @NateSilver538.

It's fine to acknowledge it, but polycrisis is the default state of human history, and humanity has progressed to an inordinate degree despite it.

@Incensum_CCC Francis

Picked this guy up today. He’s an all black German Shepherd. What’s a good Catholic dog name? 🤔

@DudespostingWs Cromwell

Dudes yearn for this Wikipedia page Bonus points if you can guess who this is

Please check my math but did 2 of the 3 Kamala voters (who tied the 3 Straight ticket Republican/Trump voters) in Dixville Notch split their ballots?

@swimmerbr78 @theliamnissan Game camera

@historyinmemes Pheidippides

Male or female, who is the single greatest athlete of all time?

@CoffeewClassics King Solomon’s mines. Allan quatermain The black stallion The merry adventures of Robin Hood

Quick. Tell me. What was your favorite book when you were ~12 years old? Going to compile a reading list to share.