Wow, TIL the Iraq AUMF was repealed in Dec 2025.

Honest question, why does NYT keep him on? Is he really driving enough traffic and engagement to justify whatever they pay him? Does he create value some other way? I just don't understand what NYT gets out of the deal.

The JCPOA (2015) did not directly prohibit Iran's missile research and development, but it was accompanied by UN Security Council Resolution 2231. This resolution "called upon" Iran to refrain from activities related to ballistic missiles designed to be nuclear-capable for eight years, a restriction that expired in October 2023. The Washington Institute The Washington Institute +2 No Direct Prohibition: The JCPOA itself was focused exclusively on restricting Iran's nuclear program, not its conventional missile program. UNSCR 2231 Restrictions: Annex B of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the JCPOA, included language restricting ballistic missile activities. "Called Upon" vs. "Prohibited": The phrasing in the resolution ("called upon" rather than "shall not") was interpreted by some as less than a legally binding prohibition. Sunset Clause: The restrictions on ballistic missile activities and related technology transfers, along with conventional arms restrictions, expired in October

Obama's deal (the JCPOA, joint chief's plan of action) didn't block missile R&D. It did block importing missile technology, but we couldn't get them to agree to binding prohibitions of missile R&D.

Oh no, I don't like that. Astral makes great, revolutionary tools, whereas OpenAI makes tools that I only use for simple work when Claude has an Opus outage.

Is there some good synergy that I don't see?

Didn't the metaverse implode shortly after the interest rate ticked up from "money is free" a few years ago?

This is the seed that will bloom into hundreds of delightfully petty suits perfect for mic dicta.

Like, imagine a citizen who hates pedophiles and has no ability to see or process facts. Imagine a race between a prosecutor and Jeffrey Epstein's best friend. Would it be better for this citizen to vote for the pedophile or to not vote?

Is it good for people who don't know anything meaningful or true about any candidate to vote? Like, imagine someone who wanted a better economy and more peace, and 1 candidate aligned perfectly but the other was anti aligned, but the voter had no idea which was which. Shouldn't that person abstain?

Or maybe they were like the majority of Americans who ignore politics and they just remembered the economy being good during Trump's first administration (when Trump's tax cut pumped cash into the hot economy Obama left him).

Why did Trump's performance with Hispanic male voters improve so much from 2020 to 2024 given Trump's promises to indiscriminately harass Hispanic-looking people?

People who pay attention vote. People who can but don't vote aren't really paying attention, and would vote on absurd vibes.

No thank you. Most Americans don't pay attention to National news or politics.

In 2020, everyone knew Trump was the President during COVID and that it was going bad. In 2024, the vibes were different, so low info voters would be voting on those 2024 vibes and the swing would have been even worse.

So if every trump voter didn't vote, they'd all still have voted for trump by not voting?

That's obviously not true.

Would you rather Trump voters vote for Trump or not vote?

And when he realizes he's just gotten stuck, we'll be at "No! More forever wars??"

Perhaps, but that's a factual question and voters vote on some blend of feelings.

Seems perfectly timed to have voters start to feel prices going down right around voting time.

The majority of passport holders are Democrats. I don't know the breakdown by state, but that seems like a bad plan on the whole.

How well did Bill do without Brady?

As a data engineer who learned to code long before AI and uses Claude daily to assist me code and learn new tools, I think AI was designed for autists like me.

I honestly don't know many other good use cases for AI beyond coding, survey-level research, and interrogating specific documents.

After passing the CARES act in March 2020, less than a month later the government started sending out stimulus checks to 100Ms of Americans. How did that happen?

It's so easy to avoid Firefox's AI thing. It has prompted me once ever, I declined, and that's been that.

One and done. See ya tomorrow.

Work's been busy for a few weeks, what did I miss on here?

Most agencies have policies requiring chases to be discontinued if the chase becomes the greater risk to the public.

Some of the 18k law enforcement agencies in The US are backwards on chasing (cough Alabama), but most major agencies are getting this right.

Which of those countries have guns as irresponsibly available as they are here in the US?

How many police deaths would there be without the training? The ~10/yr number of non-vehicular traffic stop police deaths is the number with all of this training. You need an estimate of the number without the training to gauge the effect of the training.

They also don't have any school shootings in the UK. It seems things are much safer when guns are controlled.

The important ratio is the unjustifiable killings of civilians by police to the police killed. We know names like Philando Castile from the unjustifiable cases.

There are about 20 million traffic stops in the US per year and about 100 lead to the killing of a civilian each year (and around 10 lead to the killing of an officer). I would expect a far larger proportion to end in civilian deaths if cops were overly paranoid.

2% of all Americans died in the civil war, so things have to get way worse before Trump catches up with James Buchanan.

And, I mean, all presidents up through Buchanan at least tolerated slavery, with many being personally financially dependent on it. We've had some bad folks behind the wheel.