Derek Thorn

@lauriem01049490 @JenTusch @jdawsey1 Look I found a bot

@DerekThorn @JenTusch @jdawsey1 The costume wearers support the pope.

Lindsey Graham once told me that Trump would praise anyone who praised him, and would attack anyone who attacked him, “even if it’s the pope.” Tonight, Trump went after the pope.

@JenTusch @jdawsey1 Will help separate the actual Catholics from the ones who wear it like a costume

@jdawsey1 I wonder how his Catholic supporters will feel about that.

@jasonconsorti @sciam What could be the difference between the laws of physics revealing a lie and a design choice by an enemy being exploited?

@sciam Maybe not best to publish articles like this: x.com/rothmus/status…

Ghost Murmur was described as a futuristic CIA tool that could detect a heartbeat from vast distances. Physicists say the public story clashes with the basic limits of magnetic sensing spklr.io/6015EJP6J

@TreeHouseBrewCo A long hiatus of…less than three months?

All hail the mighty Big Blue! 💙😮‍💨💙😮‍💨💙😮‍💨 This massively dry-hopped Double IPA returns after a long hiatus, featuring a mostly pale grist with a kiss of honey malt and an onslaught of Mosaic. We taste and smell ripe clementine, dank blueberry, juicy apricot, and pineapple cream!

@ditzkoff Try making omelettes, now, Denver

The quality of photos we’re already getting from the moon is incredible

@briangaar No love for S Town?

Serial had one good season now it’s just someone’s fuckup cousin

@CurtisHouck What part do you think is unrealistic? Did you expect the doctors to start clapping in solidarity with ICE?

Wtf is this woke fan fiction

@daveweigel Can’t believe the snub for 28 Years Later, maybe for The Bone Temple?

Unlike Peter O’Toole, the patron saint of actors who missed their window, Fiennes lives clean and keeps getting cast in Oscar-tier stuff. Weird luck though. Not even nominated for The Grand Budapest Hotel (lost out to Steve Carrell’s fake nose in Foxcatcher)

@DKThomp The AI doesn’t have any understanding because it doesn’t think, it’s just getting better at presenting the most common answer. It seems obvious that the law of diminishing returns will apply, and that overestimations of its capacity were/are based on straight-line extrapolation

@DKThomp It’s still a flawed analogy because the AI isn’t like an actor in that it can’t learn; your analogy holds on being better director, but it’s more like becoming a better cinematographer: you’re learning what lenses to choose and how to position the lights and what f-stop to choose

One summary of this finding might be that METR’s famously aggressive AI evals are wildly over-optimistic about how good AI is, even in software engineering. Maybe that’s right. I think the interpretation I like better is that AI is v good at doing plausible work in jobs that involve understanding, producing, manipulating, or summarizing information—but in many cases it’s best at producing *candidate solutions* that require the human worker to constantly check, debug, reframe, or reject … and that checking/debugging/reframing task effectively becomes its own job. Sometimes when I’m using Claude Code to do little projects like govt data analysis, I feel like a casting director for a film or play, working w a promising but flawed younger actor who cheerily takes direction but often doesn’t nail it in the first or fifth try. That experience is already teaching me about the promise and limitations of agents … AND the degree to which I need to become a better director whose instructions provide the right shape and context. I think getting this right is going to take a long time to diffuse thru the economy, which is one reason why I don’t think predictions of imminent mass job replacement are v likely.

@KevinOConnor @thecyberfam Definitely want someone who shouldn’t be driving driving a massive truck around. What could possibly go wrong

@thecyberfam Awesome. Makes me wish my grandparents and my dad were still around to show them this tech.

My 87 year old Mother-in-law decided she wanted to "drive" the Cybertruck today so we went for a quick spin on FSD 14.2.2.5 She hasn't driven a car for 5 years so she was stoked. "It's amazing!" 😁

@DKThomp 4. You should take Marc Andreessen’s word for exactly 0% of it. My god man, do you possess the capacity for incredulity in the slightest?

Three things that can be true at the same time 1. That this WH has a commendable talent for turning public opinion against its actions. 2. That govt regulation of AI was always going to be a very tricky multi-stage muddle no matter who the president was in 2026. 3. That Pete Hegseth really sucks at many aspects of his job

@DannyHulse3 @ChrisCillizza @JasmineForUS So you’re in favor of the president treating people this way?

@ChrisCillizza @JasmineForUS How so?! The President treats people like this hourly. Cut the crap Cillizza.

This is so bad by @JasmineForUS. Not ready for primetime sort of stuff.

@guillermomena @brianbeutler All of them at this point

@brianbeutler All the seats she got are middle seats. How does that happen? When I buy a ticket, all the seats in the class (or subclass) are usually available to pick from. I’ve never paid extra for a window seat or aisle seat. What airline does that?

If you weren’t such a resentful person, you could’ve helped solve this problem, but instead you supported the greedy, bigoted people who canceled the exact policy you claim to want as soon as they took power. reuters.com/business/aeros…

@Chris_arnade I don’t really have to concern myself with the issues of buses or city streets or subways or even downtown if I live primarily in suburbia and strip malls and my occasional visit to those other places is to go to one place and then drive home

@Chris_arnade I agree, but also: it seems obvious to me that part of that respect and trust comes from being in close proximity, and the political will to do something about those people who need help comes at least in part from being forced to be in regular close proximity

You can't have dense walkable cities if people don't respect, trust, and want to be around other random citizens. As I wrote years ago, the reason why Japanese/European style urbanism (density, fantastic public transport, mixed-use zoning, that so many American tourist admire) can't happen here is because there is a fine line (public trust) between vibrant alive streets, and squalid, fetid, and lurid ones, and US is on the wrong side of that line. This isn't just a dense big city issue though -- the acceptance of disorder has made most downtowns, various neighborhoods, and public transit, of every US city (mid-sized and small), a scene that would shock Europeans/Asian visitors and should shock Americans. Simply put, nobody wants to be accosted by a stranger -- no matter how infrequent -- and policy makers simply shouldn't tolerate it.

@CastleHillCap3 @grahamformaine They don’t, but fortunately, that’s just something you made up and not anything anyone needs to concern themselves with

@grahamformaine How does an actual Nazi, tattooed to prove it, win a primary regardless of political party? Pathetic and spineless.

NEW POLL from the University of New Hampshire's Pine Tree Poll. It's... Democratic Primary: 🔵 Platner: 64% 🔵 Mills: 26% General Election: 🔵 Platner: 49% 🔴 Collins: 38% 🔵 Mills: 41% 🔴 Collins: 40%

@as_per_ushe @Chris_arnade I’m not getting mad at them, and it’s harm increase, not harm reduction. I do appreciate that they see it differently and are trying with good intentions. And I realize my wishing they would put that desperately needed effort into something helpful isn’t helpful itself.

@DerekThorn @Chris_arnade Change is possible, it's that I think changes require real resources and effort that we are not using right now, and that is the main problem. Getting mad at powerless lefties who are desperately trying to do harm reduction in the face of that fact is ridiculous.

This peeing on subway debate is absurd, but also depressing and frustrating. Public disorder and homelessness are huge problems in the U.S. that are especially striking when you spend any time overseas and see what an aberration it is. We are the world's richest country, and yet we have public spaces that rank in the bottom half—dirty, chaotic, and threatening. Disorder in subways should be nonexistent, not rare, and certainly not periodic. It really doesn't have to be that way. It's a choice we've made that isn't about money, but policy. NYC spends $4 billion on homeless services, and the very few people who are causing the majority of problems (they are a small percent of those who qualify for help) have options that they refuse because of mental problems, addiction, and/or both. Someone peeing on the subway is not in a right frame of mind, and isn't normal behavior, even for this population. It's a sign of distress that should cause an intervention—by police, social workers, whoever—that mandates them into an institution for a period of time, until they regain sanity. Hospital, mental ward, detox, prison, you choose, but they should not be allowed to do whatever they want. They are not sound enough to have the freedom. Someone shouting at strangers, someone shitting themselves, someone punching at the air, is also not in their right frame of mind and shouldn't—for their own safety and others—be out roaming the streets. It isn't fair to the public, especially the working people who have to deal with them on a daily basis. It isn't fair to the person themselves. The idea that it is empathetic to allow someone to roam the streets tortured by their inner demons, covered in filth, high as a kite, is so backwards and immoral that I cannot believe the activists who support it have spent any time around these people.

@boyuan_chen @matthewstoller So my car keys can act independently on my behalf?

i run an AI agent with access to my email, browser, calendar, and social accounts daily. calling it "extremely insecure" is like calling car keys insecure because someone could drive your car. the real question is whether permissioning is granular enough, and honestly it's getting there

For those of you who don’t know, Clawdbot is an AI agent tool that is extremely insecure. It’s basically like the ability to tell OpenAI ‘hey go do a bunch of stuff’ and it can use any account you give it, from email to banking to development environment, and act independently. Techies are obsessed because it’s very cool, but it will often do things like delete your entire gmail or publish confidential information, even if you tell it not to do that. And people in very important security and safety positions in technology firms are more likely to be careless with Clawdbot because they love tinkering and are reckless rich idiots.

@as_per_ushe @Chris_arnade I’m just not sure what the “nothing can change” perspective brings to a conversation, it’s obviously false, things are changing all the time, and the world you think is changing for the worse is being changed for the better from the perspective of others. Give up the helplessness

@as_per_ushe @Chris_arnade To return to Chris’s point, and yours: I agree that’s the calculus ppl are making, I think its a dumb one because it embeds hopeless cynicism as foundation for its logic, and asks everyone involved (the homeless person themself an all who encounter) to suffer.