Headlines

What Number Was Stephen Colbert Thinking Of?

One of the questions on The Colbert Questionert that Stephen Colbert would administer to his celebrity guests was “What number am I thinking of?” As you can see from this compilation, his answer was often, but not always, “no”. A few of the guests said “42” but none ever said

Trump Destroyed USAID. Now People Are Dying....

Trump Destroyed USAID. Now People Are Dying. “Everyone, especially in South Sudan, wanted to know if the US really had cut off aid. It was easier for them to believe that the aid organizations were lying to them than to think that the US would do this.”

At Long Last, I Have Maxximized My Looks ....

At Long Last, I Have Maxximized My Looks . “Apparently, eating a fistful of iguana tranquilizers for breakfast every morning has turned me cold-blooded, and I am no longer appropriately adapted for life on the Earth’s surface.”

Aloha ʻāina

It’s marketed as a holiday destination, but the true meaning of Hawai’i lies in the connections between land and people - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon

Make immigration boring

The fiercest political battle of our age needs less moral drama and more hard thinking about numbers and fair tradeoffs - by Alan Manning Read on Aeon

Value creation, bullshit jobs and the future of work

We create a job whenever someone with the authority to hire decides the value created is greater than the wages paid. In my lifetime, we’ve invented 7 billion or more jobs, which is great news. Great for the people who were able to earn a living, and productive for everyone who

What If Lock-In Doesn’t Matter So Much Anymore?

Interesting observation by Mitchell Hashimoto (creator of Vagrant and Ghostty ) on how a company’s or product’s choice of programming language matters less in the age of agentic programming: On the interesting side is how fungible programming languages are nowadays.

All the Star Wars Lightsaber Designs

This scan isn’t very good (best I could find), but these are all the lightsabers used by Jedi and Sith in the various Star Wars shows and movies. I think this is from a few years ago, so I’m not sure how up to date it is. In the SW universe, making your own saber is a Jedi and