fork in the road (12. 192)

Trump, through the Office of Personnel Management, extended an invitation to the two-million strong US federal workforce for a deferred resignation with retention of pay and benefits, by hitting reply (or reply-all) to the email with the text “resign,” through the end of September, the fiscal year, by next Thursday. The offer for essentially seven months of paid administrative leave is in align with the DOGE agenda to reduce the number of government employees (one virtually unchanged since the 1980s but supplemented through contracted jobs) and push out those disloyal to Trump’s politics. The email goes on to detail the pillars of reform, as outlined in the flurry of executive orders issued on day one of the administration as promoting a return to one’s physical office and ending telework—though many remote workers have no office to return to and there’s an economic argument to be made for home-office since utilities are borne by the employee and not the government—a culture of performance, a more streamlined and flexible manpower—which seems to run counter to the first pillar—and enhanced standards of conduct. For those who wish to remain, OPM extended its gratitude for renewed focused on serving the American people but could not give full assurance regarding the future of their positions or agency, with plans of restructuring, realignment and relocation as well as the reclassification of civil servants to strip some labour protections. The mass-email shares the same subject line as the ultimatum that Musk gave to Twitter staff after buying the social media platform, hoping force out those who didn’t share his mission, vision and goals, and offered a parachute of three months of severance pay—numerous workers quitting in droves and never receiving the promised pay package. Many federal workers, congressional opposition and unions were sceptical of this offer—noting the real estate developer’s penchant to stiff contractors and renege on deals after work was completed and questioning the legality of such a proposition, coming hours after Trump wrested the power of the purse away from congress by ordering the impoundment of grant and loan programmes, domestically and abroad (see above), pending a compliance review. Such a coerced purging of the “deep state” (see below) would potentially gut many agencies which the public depends on for safety and services—“national security” positions are exempt but not well defined.

  synchronoptica

one year ago: Desert Island Discs (with synchronoptica) plus Plato’s Gorgias

seven years ago: reforesting Iceland, artist Alexandra Dillon, illustrator Gary Taxali plus IKEA founder passes away

eight years ago: a US government hiring freeze, ransomware plus purges at the US state department

nine years ago: assorted links to revisit, forty things turning forty plus the human chin

ten years ago: EU disunity plus early photoshopping

10x10 (12. 191)

i saw, i cut, i applied: a retrospective of the textile art of Ayako Miyawaki (宮脇綾子) at the Tokyo Station Gallery 

hadron therapy: researchers at CERN are collaborating with oncologists to develop precision treatment that last a fraction of a second—via the new Shelton wet/dry 

drag and drop: the development of tools that easily move data around with confidence it would not be lost

shǒusuì: an exhibition on community resilience through helps gird one for the trying year ahead 

two-minute warning: the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences (see previously) advance the second hand once again as a warning to world leaders  

oreoboros: a round-up of recently introduced snacks and treats—via MetaFilter 

comparative entomology: an 1879 study in the colour patterns in moths and butterflies 

object impermanence: a glitchy and broken AI knock-off of Minecraft makes for a strangely compelling experience  

experiment advanced superconducting tokamak: an artificial sun burned for nearly eighteen minutes at the EAST plasma physics lab in Hefei—a significant milestone for sustainable fusion reactions—via Boing Boing 

the little loomhouse: the history and evolution of an ensemble of Kentucky cabins to a thriving arts community

be my valentine, charlie brown (12. 190)

Premiering on this day in 1975 on the CBS television network, the thirteenth prime-time animated special based on the Peanuts comic strip, deals with the subject of rejection and heartbreak when Sally first misinterprets Linus’ heart-shaped box of chocolates for his teacher as an overture for her non-requited affection and our protagonist receiving only one treat, a chalky candy heart with the message “FORGET IT KID!” during the class party—the teacher departing early with her boyfriend. A belated greeting arrives from the Little Red Haired Girl and Charlie Brown gets a regifted card from Violet. Optimistic that these pity Valentines might sustain a trend and he’ll get more next year, but Linus warns his friend not to get his hopes up. The score with the opening theme “Heartburn Waltz” was recorded by Vince Guaraldi’s Orchestra. The card which Sally reads and acted out by Snoopy is the entirety (see also) of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (№ 43), which opens with “How do I love thee? Let me me count the ways.”

synchronoptica

one year ago: USA for Africa’s We are the World (with synchronoptica) plus the zombification of the abandoned internet

seven years ago: pedometers and privacy, Thamesmead Housing Estate plus Aloha Wanderwell

eight years ago: governance per Tweet, assorted links worth revisiting plus Little Englanders

nine years ago: a time-capsule apartment in Chicago, ranking passports plus the game Go

ten years ago: hydrophobic materials plus a superb cartographical collection

deepseek (12. 189)

A scrappy, lean and open-source AI developed on a budget of just six million dollars has punched a hole of over a trillion dollars in global technology markets, raising doubts about the sustainability and infiltration in the boom led by the same cadre of grifters who upsold crypto and NTFs (and still trying to make fetch happen) cum beneficiaries of the tech-feudalism panopticon, bowdlerising and exploiting one’s sentiments and information as much as any accusations lobbed outside, that demonstrates that benchmarks in artificial intelligence utility can be set and surpassed without premium micro-processors (Nvidia chips, considered state-of-the-art, were subject to an export embargo in China since 2022) and without extensive infrastructure for computing power, spurring American companies to invest in server farms and nuclear plants to fuel their resource-hungry models—prompting a sober reevaluation of enthusiasm and underwriting and tuition for training. Liang Wenfeng, entrepreneur and hedge-fund manager, developed the model as a hobby to identify patterns in stock prices, and while remaining focused on research rather than commercial products has released a personal assistant as a free download to showcase its potential and make AI transparent and universally accessible (the algorithms can be adapted by anyone)—and the app is the most popular in its category, really handicapping the present US broligarchy (a real fail-whale) the declared American national emergency over energy.

senate select committee (12. 188)

Created on this day fifty years ago by a vote of eighty-two to four in the US upper house of congress, sponsored and chaired by namesake, Democrat senator Frank Church of Idaho, the bipartisan group charged with investigating various allegations of abuse and overreach of the CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the Internal Revenue Service as the opening of a series of such inquiries earning the monicker for 1975 as the “Year of Intelligence,” whose findings resulted in the establishment of a permanent panel on espionage and reconnaissance. Among the more shocking revelations were of the existence of MKULTRA, involving unwitting citizens in mind control experiments, operations that infiltrated political, pacifist and civil-rights organisations, dragnet domestic spying abetted by telecommunication providers and Family Jewels, a covert programme that targeted foreign leaders for assassination, many of these projects uncovered by the press though the government agencies maintained plausible deniability and the the public was unaware of the full scope of them.

Published in six volumes the following April, the recom-mendations led to a presidential executive order banning the killing of foreign leaders (like with pictured dart gun loaded with shellfish toxin, as an untraceable and lethal weapon) issued by Ford and reaffirmed by Carter and Reagan (watch the numbering—they are sequential and skipping a few means it is classified, starting with EO 14147) and the publication of an NSA watch list that included activists, journalists, actor and Church himself. After briefing before congress (testimony was not unauthorised by the Ford administration’s advisors), Senator Church appeared on the news programme Meet the Press (previously)—discussing No Such Agency without mentioning it by name, warned:

In the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected a technological capability that enables us to monitor the messages that go through the air… Now, that is necessary and important to the United States as we look abroad at enemies or potential enemies. We must know, at the same time, that capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left: such is the capability to monitor everything—telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.

If this government ever became a tyranny, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government—no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of this technology…

I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

there a hole in me pocket (12. 187)

Classic clog manufacturer and popular item in this household has announced a new two-pair tribute to the Beatles’ animated feature Yellow Submarine. The dog has gotten much better about not gnawing on footwear but still goes after our Crocs and would have to have such a fancy pair of house shoes chewed up, but these look pretty fun and the contour is a perfect fit for the underwater vessel—though like with Crocs’ other brand collaborations, not sure about the accessories, the periscope and propeller and the other bedazzlers however and they’d surely prove too tempting for a little dog.

synchronoptica

one year ago: ancient piggy-banks (with synchronoptica), St Devota, a past prediction from Star Trek: TNG, a hybrid horseless carriage plus more moons of Jupiter

seven years ago: assorted links to revisit 

eight years ago: omnipresent and omnipotent AI, parasitism and toxoplasm gondii plus the White House turns off its switchboard

nine years ago: more links to enjoy 

ten years ago: the national assemblies of Europe, the fantastic art of Dan McPharlin plus AI and middle-management

humanity’s last exam (12. 186)

Like the Voight-Kampff test, this standardised benchmark, created by some of the most astute philosophers is an escalating fight to stay ahead of AI to afford proctors a purchase on some sort of vanishing Turing test—especially against a backdrop of artificial intelligence making advances on graduate-level, multidisciplinary questions, raising the prospect that the machines are quickly approaching the limits of humanity’s ability to gauge and compare its progress and ability. The resulting quiz, with samples that not only imply to a degree teaching to the test and priming answers that people want to hear, has some three thousand questions, vetted and juried by academic panels, and whilst not timed, is completed in seconds by the world’s most powerful models. The battery of questions have correct answers—and perhaps it might be more interesting to pose the unknown or drill into what they get wrong in over-confident albeit novel ways, mindful of the risk of our own gullibility and misdirection which is certainly baked into solutions—and underscores the problem of jaggedness, inconsistency in AI’s abilities to tackle basic questions and the flowchart of prompts for better or worse outcomes and the difference between acing an exam and being a practising professional doing maths, physics, medicine or governance.

13x13 (12. 185)

embossed: turn of the century tactile teaching aids for the visually impaired for lessons on nature and geography  

lab-leak theory: US Central Intelligence Agency embraces controversial vector for COVID-19 pandemic, discounting zoonosis factors 

ghostwatch: the supernatural horror BBC mockumentary broadcast on Halloween (see also) 1992 and never shown again due to the panic it elicited  

sb593: Oklahoma legislature introduces bill to “restore moral sanity” and criminalise production, distribution and possession of adult material—see previously 

minimoog: a fully-functional analogue synthesiser in LEGO  

haptics and macros: an idea to add gait gestures to one’s smart phone—we can hardly do the right kind of fake kick to open the rear hatch on our car 

mox nix: language borrowings from German propagated by US and UK soldiers stationed there post WWII  

electric garden: a run-down lodge transformed into a living museum mapchat: interact with AI shopkeepers for local businesses—results may vary 

wassergöttin: prehistoric figurine from the Hallstadt culture found in 2022 in Lower Franconia goes on display at the Bavarian State Archaeological Museum in München  

walk without rhythm and you won’t attract the worm: graboids—see also—the other in-jokes that Tremors leans into  

underrepresentation: as part of order to eliminate DEI programmes, US Food and Drug Administration curbs clinical trials aimed at diverse populations for cancer research 

 switchmen: the sign language of railroad workers