Radiologist's AI Nightmares

"Why Everyone is Having the Wrong Nightmares About AI"

Local AI On Laptop

IEEE: "Your Laptop Isn't Ready for LLMs. That's About to Change"

Hurricanes And AI

"As the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season ends, the future of forecasting is AI"

Tokenization And Finance

"Larry Fink and Rob Goldstein on how tokenisation could transform finance". Non-paywall link.

Neurosurgeon On Benefits Of Self-Driving Cars

NYT: "The Data on Self-Driving Cars Is Clear. We Have to Change Course."

Fusaka Is Coming

"What Is the Fusaka Upgrade: Ethereum's Next Hard Fork"

Bifurcated Economy

Amit Kukreja: "We Are Living In A Bifurcated Economy".  

Key take-home point, especially if you think traditional wage labor won't last much longer in the coming AI-driven economy:

In the midst of all these concerns, the one core truth behind wealth is that it comes from owning, not consuming. 

The timing of that ownership may be different based on an individual investor’s preference on when to buy an asset or not, but if you don't own assets, you will get left behind. Quite frankly, after looking through all this data, it only further motivates me to get every single extra dollar I have invested. The people that have benefited over the past 5 years are those that owned assets. Even if they didn't own the best one or their timing was off, they benefited. The mentality of owning assets itself has likely led to more happiness and autonomy (along with stress) as those who participated in Google's success or Palantir's success have felt what it means to be along side a company on its journey.

Police Robodogs

"A $100,000 Robot Dog Is Becoming Standard in Policing -- and Raising Ethical Alarms". (Non-paywall link.)

Five years after its commercial debut, the 75-pound, German Shepherd-sized robot is increasingly being deployed by local law enforcement to handle armed standoffs, hostage rescues and hazardous materials incidents -- situations where sending in a human or a real dog could be life-threatening.

Hidden Figures In Swiss Maps

"For Decades, Cartographers Have Been Hiding Covert Illustrations Inside of Switzerland's Official Maps"

No cartographer has been fired over these drawings, but then again, most were only discovered once their author had already left. (Many mapmakers timed the publication of their drawing to coincide with their retirement.) Over half of the known illustrations have been removed.

 

Holiday Hiatus

Admin note: Posting will be light the rest of this week due to the US Thanksgiving holiday!

AI And Radiology Misconceptions

Dr. Ben White: "Hallucinating about AI"

McArdle On Education Decline

"The signs of educational decline are now impossible to ignore".  (If that link doesn't work, try this version.)

The results of this thinking can be seen in a recent report from the University of California at San Diego, which like the rest of the UC system stopped accepting standardized test scores in 2020. In 2024 the school had to redesign its remedial math program to create a class that focused entirely on remediating elementary school and middle school math. In 2025, more than 8 percent of entering students needed that class. These are college students who chose to enroll in a major with a math requirement yet struggle to round numbers to the nearest hundred, add or divide fractions, or work with negative numbers... 

That’s what happens when you silence the alarm instead of responding to it: The fire burns out of control. It should be a warning to the growing number of politicians who think they can fix other problems — like soaring rents or rising electricity costs — by simply freezing prices. The prices are telling us that there’s too little supply to meet demand, or that something (such as renewables mandates or too few natural gas pipelines) is driving up supply costs. Freezing prices doesn’t fix that any more than a courtesy A gives students what they actually need to succeed in college.

Inside The Wayback Machine

"Inside the old church where one trillion webpages are being saved"

Superman Comic Found

Kids clean out attic of their deceased mother's house and find a nearly-pristine copy of first "Superman" comic book from 1939. Sells for record $9 million at auction. 

For years, mom had mentioned once owning some "old comics", but everyone thought it was just a family legend. #GreatScott

More AI Math

"Google's Nano Banana Pro is by far the best image generation AI out there. I gave it a picture of a question and it solved it correctly in my actual handwriting. Students are going to love this. 😂"

Google’s Nano Banana Pro is by far the best image generation AI out there.

I gave it a picture of a question and it solved it correctly in my actual handwriting.

Students are going to love this. 😂 pic.twitter.com/GXd6PbZYxn

— sid (@immasiddx) November 21, 2025