And such

@kph3k @nytimesbooks @grok please write out the article text from the photo

A fantastic review of ORIGINAL SIN in @nytimesbooks! "Not a dry, restrained, contained scientific inquiry, but a daring, complex, sometimes confounding and ultimately powerful tapestry of a book."

President Trump said Monday that he spoke to a former president about bombing Iran. • An aide for George W. Bush says that “they haven’t been in touch." • An aide to Bill Clinton says that whoever Trump was referring to was not Clinton. • An Obama aide says “no recent conversations” have taken place between Barack Obama and Trump. • A source familiar with the matter said the former president Trump was referring to was not Joe Biden. nbcnews.com/politics/donal…

@nixonfoundation @threadreaderapp unroll

"A bearded fellow from Detroit was taking a picture as I began to get in the car. I asked him if he wouldn’t like to get in the picture. He stepped over with me and I said, Look, I’ll have the President’s doctor take the picture, and Tkach took the picture. He seemed to be quite delighted—it was, in fact, the broadest smile that I saw on the entire visit. As I left him I said . . . that I knew he had come a long way for this event and I knew, too, that he and his colleagues were terribly frustrated and angry about our policy and opposed to it. I said, I just hope your opposition doesn’t turn into a blind hatred of the country, but remember this is a great country, with all of its faults. I said, If you have any doubt about it, go down to the passport office. You won’t see many people lining up to get out of the country. Abroad, you will see a number lining up to get in. He smiled and took it all in good humor. We shook hands, and I got into the car and drove away."

President Nixon dictated a long diary-like memorandum describing the visit to the Lincoln Memorial because he wanted to make a record of what was for him a memorable event: "Manolo and I got out of the car at approximately 4:40 and walked up the steps to the Lincoln statue. . . . By this time a few small groups of students had begun to congregate in the rotunda of the Memorial. I walked over to a group of them . . . and shook hands. They were not unfriendly. As a matter of fact, they seemed somewhat overawed, and, of course, quite surprised. When I first started to speak to the group there were approximately eight in it. I asked each of them where they were from and found that over half were from upper New York State. At this point, all of them were men. There were no women. To get the conversation going I asked them how old they were, what they were studying, the usual questions. . . . Two or three of them volunteered that they had not been able to hear the press conference because they had been driving all night in order to get here. I said I was sorry they had missed it because I had tried to explain in the press conference that my goals in Vietnam were the same as theirs—to stop the killing and end the war—to bring peace. Our goal was not to get into Cambodia by what we were doing, but to get out of Vietnam. They did not respond, so I took it from there by saying that I realized that most of them would not agree with my position, but I hoped that they would not allow their disagreement on this issue to lead them to fail to give us a hearing on some other issues where we might agree. And also particularly I hoped that their hatred of the war, which I could well understand, would not turn into a bitter hatred of our whole system, our country, and everything that it stood for. I said, I know that probably most of you think I’m an SOB, but I want you to know that I understand just how you feel. I recall that when I was just a little older than you, right out of law school and ready to get married, how excited I was when Chamberlain came home from Munich and made his famous statement about peace in our time. I had heard it on the radio. I had so little in those days that the prospect of going into the service was almost unbearable and I felt that the United States staying out of any kind of conflict was worth paying any price whatever. I pointed out, too, the fact that I came from a Quaker background. I was as close to being a pacifist as anybody could be in those times. As a result I thought at that time, that Chamberlain was the greatest man alive, and when I read Churchill’s all-out criticism of Chamberlain I thought Churchill was a madman." (Continued)

@NickFreiling @tedfrank Did SBF come off poorly?

@tedfrank Example?

Every once in a while a few times a year, Tyler Cowen interviews a top-ten expert who hasn’t thought about his topic anywhere nearly as deeply as Tyler Cowen, and, even on a car sound system, you can see the subsonic waves of panic emanating from the guest.

@DavidPhelan3 @_AashishReddy @tedfrank Her Cowen podcast performance was not flattering

@_AashishReddy @tedfrank is she overrated?

@tedfrank @grok which guests does this likely reference from Cowen podcasts (besides Gopnik)? Anyone recent?

@venom1s @grok how common is infidelity by French women vs women in other countries?

French women cheat at such a level that paternity tests are illegal because of how it would destroy French society if their women were held accountable for their actions. French men can't paternity test their children without their wife's consent. Some tough estimates say that 20 percent of men are raising kids not biologically theirs.

@William74424982 @MrBusby4o8 @JCup2013 Natural causes

@MrBusby4o8 @JCup2013 What day exactly?

The day that big nosed fuck loses his job…I hope it’s warm and I’m outside. Sun shining. Beer in hand. Someone looking at their phone suddenly shouts, “IT’S HAPPENED!”

@DanFriedman81 @JustinMoretti2 Yes. Being read the books as a kid, I just kept asking when he was going to come back until we got to that scene with Gandalf lol

@JustinMoretti2 Yes, Peter Jackson left him out because he knew that if Bombadil was established, the audience would expect him to come back. Even Tolkien understood this enough to have a scene where Gandalf basically tells everybody that Bombadil isn’t going to show up again.

There’s a trope in fiction where there is a character who is extremely competent and dangerous, but is peaceful and just wants to mind his own business. It is a mistake to fuck with this guy. But, just as Chekov’s gun must inevitably be fired, the guy who should not be fucked with must be fucked with. He must be forced to put his skills to work. I can only think of one story where there is a guy who should not be fucked with and everyone has the good sense not to fuck with him, and it’s Tom Bombadil in “Lord of the Rings.” Tom Bombadil is an incredible thing to have in the story, because his existence dwarfs the conflict and all the stakes. The Ring is the most powerful magical object in the world… except for Tom Bombadil, to whom it is a trinket that he can’t be bothered to care about. Sauron is an existential threat to everything and everyone, except for Tom Bombadil who could put the Dark Lord in the dirt before breakfast without breaking a sweat if he could be made to notice what is going on. The epic scale of the story is a triviality to Tom Bombadil. No matter what malign force sweeps across the world, it would never be stupid enough to show up on Tom’s doorstep. He’s just there, a monstrous leviathan with inconceivable power he never demonstrates, existing beyond the scope of everything else, sitting by the river, singing silly songs while the other characters go on heroic journeys he couldn’t even begin to care about.

@cblatts @anup_malani @threadreaderapp unroll

Big thanks to @anup_malani who got me rolling. His 30 mins of tips was what got this rolling. Claude Blattman is paying it forward.

4w ago I was a Claude Code skeptic. I'm not a coder. None of the use cases were relevant. I managed teams & projects, drowning in email & overdue reminders. So I tried creating tools that would help me and... holy crap. Now I'm sharing the tools I built: claudeblattman.com

@gmiller @DarioAmodei If the Trump Administration is forcing Anthropic to apply AI to killerbots and mass surveillance, it would seem like the Trump Administration is also a villain. Will we see a post from you condemning the Trump Admin doing this even though you often post favorably about it?

Standard plot of every science fiction movie about AI in the last 70 years: 'Some 'well-intentioned' computer scientists build an advanced AI, but then the government forces them to apply the AI in killerbots and mass surveillance, with dire consequences.' @DarioAmodei and @AnthropicAI this week: 'OMG we were just well-intentioned computer scientists building advanced AIs, but now the government is forcing us to apply our AI in killerbots and mass surveillance. HOW COULD WE POSSIBLY HAVE ANTICIPATED THIS???'

@robinhanson Future risks/benefits to both small and established players should already be factored into price

If AI will hurt established players more than new small players, sell S&P500 and buy Wilshire5000?

@jkirchick @TuckerCarlson @RonPaul I always wondered: you didn't have yo physically travel to Kansas to read the newsletters, did you?

I’m honored @TuckerCarlson is drawing attention to my near two-decade old exposé of @RonPaul’s crackpot newsletters. Read some of their contents for yourself and decide whether Tucker’s characterization is fair: newrepublic.com/article/61771/…

@michelletandler @NYCMayor What's the Orwellian aspect?

@NYCMayor This is starting to feel Orwellian.

Summer might be a few months away, but we're already looking for lifeguards to keep our pools and beaches safe for all New Yorkers. 

You have until February 28th to sign up to become a city lifeguard for this summer. Go to nyc.gov/parks/lifeguard for more info.

@DanCanobbio @Rafeboogs

Max Kellerman says he’s been waiting for this day his entire life, since he was a kid

@ArmandDoma _He's running_

AL GORE heckled Trump’s Commerce Secretary at Davos lmao

@RichardHanania @threadreaderapp unroll

One reason I hesitated to come out of the closet as a pro-natalist is that the worst people have such views. But humanity should survive and prosper regardless.

I finally come out of the closet. I am a pro-natalist. I think brith rates need to be increased, that we should use economic and social pressures to make this happen, and it should be one of humanity's highest priorities. I am not ashamed of this. richardhanania.com/p/i-am-a-pro-n…

@michaeldweiss @threadreaderapp unroll

Finally, here is another oft-heard observation about Rubio. Some of the worst decisions made in his ever-expanding fiefdoms (hiring a racist lunatic Duginist to gut the Global Engagement Center, sanctioning former EU officials and disinformation experts, possibly granting visas to Duma deputies to make Rep. Ana Paulina Luna look even more of a twit than she already does) are said to be compromises he has had to make to remain within the good graces of the MAGA ideologues and to keep his own preferred functionaries from being ousted. Rubio's relationship with Susie Wiles here is key. And it's no coincidence he was one of the few figures she didn't disparage in that Vanity Fair piece.

I read everything Dexter Filkins writes and so should you. His profile of Marco Rubio is no exception. I'll share a few highlights in this thread:

@RexBorck @JackMac Are these screenshots accurate? @grok

@JackMac I think the biggest factor is that Cig went out and got players with lots of experience. It’s essentially men vs boys out there.

There's really no comparison to what Indiana is doing. It defies everything we've known about CFB. Their roster ranks 48th in talent! 45th in blue chip ratio! Not even close to the 50% ratio that has defined every champion in the 21st century. TCU's blue-chip ratio in 2022 was 21%....Indiana's is 8%! And they're DESTROYING everyone in their path (outside of tOSU).

@charlesmurray @grok how probable is this?

Early in our courtship, my wife mentioned that she had gotten 811 in the GRE (in a conversation about the GRE I had started, not her). When I pointed out that the maximum score is 800, she said "They send you a special letter." Mic drop. Pre 2012? Try pre 1973.