Casebash @casebash

Did you know that one of the greatest practical jokes ever pulled beyond Earth belongs to astronaut Owen Garriott. In 1973, Garriott was part of the crew aboard Skylab, America’s first space station. The prank he played on Mission Control officer Robert Crippen earned a permanent place in astronaut humor. Before the mission, Garriott brought a tape recorder into space. On it, his wife had recorded several short lines. One day, when Robert Crippen made radio contact with Skylab from Houston, Garriott was ready with the recording. The exchange went something like this: “Skylab, this is Houston. Please respond.” A cheerful woman’s voice came over the line. “Good morning, Houston. This is Skylab.” After a brief pause, Mission Control asked carefully: “Who is speaking?” “Hi, Robert,” the voice replied. “This is Helen, Owen’s wife.” For a few seconds, Crippen tried to process what he had just heard. Then he finally managed to ask: “What are you doing up there?” “I just thought I’d bring the boys something to eat,” the voice answered from orbit. “Everything is fresh.” Mission Control fell silent for nearly a full minute. Then the connection was cut. Apparently, even a trained flight controller needed a moment to recover from that one. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

something that i find frustrating in historical discussions is that historians often sneak in enormous biases by what they semi-arbitrarily decide is the null hypothesis. it's super common to present arguments that boil down to "there's no evidence for A, therefore we have to accept it was B instead." but there's also no evidence for B, it's just been coded as the null hypothesis.

there is a pretty (in?)famous story here from harvey friedman on ultrafinitism friedman goes up to esenin-volpin, a hardline ultrafinitist, after one of his lectures and then posits to him that if the number 2^100 doesn't exist, then surely he believes that somewhere on the line from 2^1, 2^2, ..., 2^100 the numbers stop being real esenin-volpin asks him to be more specific and so friedman begins: does 2 exist? "yes" does 4 exist? (waits a second) "yes" does 8 exist (waits even longer) "... yes" friedman doesn't get to 32 by the time that he runs out of patience, but the point was made

eigenrobot @eigenrobot

5 days ago

nice attempt but this inductive method fails when you get to the largest number

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I love this.

Eight years ago this month, a defining brouhaha of the Great Awokening broke out: An 18-year-old high school senior posted her prom pictures, in which she wore a qipao, a type of Chinese dress. Thousands of Twitter users attacked and condemned her for "cultural appropriation."

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My hope is to write essays which cannot be reduced. Every sentence in it contains useful information.

dylan matthews 🔸 @dylanmatt

7 days ago

Have a feeling I've going to be using this prompt a lot

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If you want people to believe in the public sector, the public sector simply *cannot* be this wildly profligate with taxpayers’ money.

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

6 days ago

Insane story from NYC:

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What a time to be alive

Atheists are okay with lawyer-client privilege, therapist-client privilege and doctor-patient privilege. But as soon as you mention priest-penitent privilege, it’s suddenly deemed intolerable and backwards, and needs to be undermined. I have faith that our priests will stand their ground and refuse any orders to rat Christians out to the secular government.

Frontières @Frontieresmedia

6 days ago

🚨 L’Église de France tire la sonnette d’alarme contre une proposition de loi examinée lundi à l’Assemblée nationale, qui prévoit la suppression du secret de la confession. Le texte est porté par Ensemble pour la République (EPR), le groupe de Gabriel Attal. (Le Figaro)

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The Henry Nowak murder case is one of the most shocking cases I have ever seen. It now seems extremely credible that two police officers took an allegation of racism more seriously than a member of the public reporting a fatal knife injury - handcuffing him on the ground and letting him choke to death on his own blood. That an investigation has now been opened is standard, but the authorities must go a step further. Body cam footage, 999 transcripts and the policies these officers were presumably operating under must be made public. If any evidence of wrongdoing is found - and it seems very likely that it will be - then prosecutions and resignations must follow.

cute young couple standing awkwardly to the side in the lobby of the hotel I'm staying at, nervously pacing around and making out with each other. They approach me "H-hey, um, can you... well, I'm 20, and she's 19. But you have to be 21 to check in" They're obviously sneaking around on their parents. The hotel has happily taken his money for the reservation under his ID and credit card. But now they won't let him check in without someone 21+ to guarantee the room Of course, one sensitive young man to another, I agree without hesitation Unfortunately, the harpies behind the checkout counter, clearly vile haters of all young men with a dream, have sniffed out his rather hare-brained scheme quite easily Just as I'm about to put pen to paper with my signature and allow these young absconded lovers to consummate their lascivious weekend, a third managerial harpy-type appears from behind some invisible door and marches sternly toward me "Sir, I know you think you're doing something nice, but I cannot allow you to do this. They've already told me they had no one to guarantee. Really, it's a matter where the police could get involved" My god, woman. The police? These lost souls could walk into an army recruiting office this afternoon and be fighting in a war tomorrow, but they can't check in to a hotel for a surreptitious romantic weekend a city over? Anyway, this is why American TFR is in the toilet. I guarantee you an accidental baby would have been made this weekend. Oh and they kept his money too. Poor kid

Lee Kuan Yew abolished trial by jury in Singapore after determining that it was too easy for defence lawyers to appeal to racial and religious biases of juries in multicultural Singapore. He writes in his memoirs how as a young lawyer he was able to get three clients acquitted who he was sure did commit murder. LKY writes that he "worked on the weaknesses of the jury -- their biases, their prejudices, their reluctance really to find four Muslims guilty of killing in cold blood or in a heat of great passion, religious passion, an RAF officer, his wife and child." He writes "The judge was thoroughly disgusted. I went home feeling quite sick because I knew I'd discharged my duty as required of me, but I knew I had done wrong.” Study after study shows that in multi ethnic societies, there is significant in-group bias on juries.

Politics UK @PolitlcsUK

6 days ago

🚨 NEW: Mohammed Fahir Amaaz and Muhammad Amaad have been cleared over the alleged assault of a male police officer at Manchester Airport Two juries failed to reach a verdict and no further trial will take place

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A lot of misunderstanding about this video. He *has* been convicted of assaulting the two female police officers, and another member of the public, but the prosecution has now dropped the charge of assaulting the male police officer. He'll receive his sentence for the assaults on 26th June (he has been in custody for 10 months now).

Politics UK @PolitlcsUK

6 days ago

🚨 NEW: Mohammed Fahir Amaaz and Muhammad Amaad have been cleared over the alleged assault of a male police officer at Manchester Airport Two juries failed to reach a verdict and no further trial will take place

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Elon Musk cried on national television when his childhood heroes called him a fraud. Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, the first and last men to walk on the moon, publicly testified against SpaceX. They said Musk was reckless. That private spaceflight was dangerous. That he was going to get people killed. They asked Congress to shut him down. These were the men Musk grew up worshipping. The posters on his wall. The reason he built rockets in the first place. And they went on television and said he was a disgrace to space exploration. In a 60 Minutes interview shortly after, Musk was asked about it. He started speaking and his voice broke. His eyes filled. He couldn't finish the sentence. The richest man in tech, the guy who argues with regulators and fires engineers mid-meeting, sat on camera and cried because his heroes rejected him. He didn't stop building. He didn't change direction. He didn't even respond to them publicly. He just kept launching rockets until the rockets proved him right. Armstrong never lived to see SpaceX land a booster. Cernan never saw Starship. The men who said it couldn't be done died before the man they doubted did it. Most people need approval from the people they admire before they act. Musk got the opposite of approval and acted anyway. That's the gap. Not talent. Not money. The willingness to keep building while the people you love most tell you to stop.

A Reddit user found out that Motorola phones have started hijacking the Amazon app to insert affiliate codes - on a phone that cost $1,900 - talk about greed..

Pope Leo chose his name because the last Pope Leo oversaw the industrial revolution; this name shows his perspective. This is a standard practice for popes. Imagine if we adopted this more broadly: when you start a new job, you pick a name for yourself to show your intention.

One of the most instructive lessons I ever had at school, one that really stuck with me, was the time a teacher placed a thermometer on her desk at the start of class and informed us that she was intending to walk out as soon as the temperature went above the union's agreed max.

Further to Blair. Literally every honest sensible person in all the main parties privately agrees with all these propositions: - welfare spending is too high and is throwing good people on the scrapheap - defence spending is too low - the triple lock is unsustainable - without cheap energy we cannot exploit the AI revolution - we should be investing in EVERY form of energy: renewables, nuclear and the North Sea - migration needs to be controlled to boost social cohesion and because the boats look like a huge failure of the state - any new relationship with the EU will be imposed on us until we are stronger and cannot involve the closeness some desire without freedom of movement - we are deeply embedded with America in ways which the public does not understand and cannot be told and however joyous it makes us feel to hate Trump, disengagement at the deep state level is not only wholly unrealistic but also undesirable - Whitehall needs a total overhaul so specific project expertise and political appointees can be brought in quickly Blair basically says all that. The one thing he doesn’t say and which the same group of people agree on is this and it’s something Blair left behind: - judges and quangos have too much power, are unaccountable and without redressing the balance in favour of parliament it is very difficult to do anything big fast - the bare minimum that needs to change in this regard is to reform judicial review and planning law so we can put building and economic growth ahead of newts and NIMBYs None of that above really ought to be up for discussion. It is all common sense but not one of our politicians will publicly say all of it Whatever you think of Blair, engage with what he’s saying not how he makes you feel. The bare minimum we should expect from any leader is that they have an analysis of the current situation and a plan to deal with it which is as coherent and realistic as his intervention. Pretty well every critique I’ve read so far has failed to meet this requirement. Over to Andy and Keir and Kemi and Nigel and Zack and all the others

I always think of this quote on memorial weekend.

Anthropic just had a profitable quarter at a $44 billion annual run rate with a fairly enormous compute shortage that's forced them to ration service and pushed some customers (perhaps just in the short term) into the arms of competitors. I don't think it's crazy to think their annual revenue would be $100b or more with sufficient compute for inference.