Comments for a sibilant intake of breath

Comment on Media reports on fossil fuel divestment by Milan

Milan — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 20:32:51 +0000

Princeton’s endowment backs away from fossil fuel divestment. Will others follow?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/princeton-s-endowment-backs-away-from-fossil-fuel-divestment-will-others-follow/ar-AA25ksyV

Princeton University was among the last of the Ivy League schools to divest from publicly traded fossil fuel companies in its endowment.

But earlier this month, Vincent Tuohey, president of Princeton University Investment Co., withdrew that voluntary pledge.

In an update on the endowment’s website, Tuohey, who took on his role in May 2024—after the divestment decision was made—wrote the change allows for “greater flexibility in managing an endowment whose resources are critical for financial aid and scientific research—including climate research—at a time when our sector is under financial strain.”

Princo, as the endowment manager is known, still won’t invest in companies involved in thermal coal and tar sands, as directed by the university’s Board of Trustees.

Comment on Flu vaccine ethics by .

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 16:55:43 +0000

Pentagon restores mandatory flu shots for all recruits as boot camp outbreak sickens nearly 300

https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-flu-shot-requirement-boot-camp-outbreak-4255f063ef99ea2d00cb24fec8793c32

Comment on The environmental movement and young people’s rage by .

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:57:17 +0000

This generation is entering the political fray at a time when the median age of a first-time homebuyer is 40, up from 32 in 2000 and 28 in 1991; the monthly premiums for high-quality health care are surging; and the annual sticker price for undergraduates at top universities is approaching $100,000. It is not surprising, then, that today most young Americans believe that capitalism does not provide fair opportunities to succeed, or that only 16 percent of Americans under 30 believe that democracy is working well for them. Accordingly, they are supporting candidates who speak to these concerns: Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, both of whom campaigned on “affordability agendas,” rode the youth vote to respective victories in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races, and Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, galvanized young voters with a similar message en route to becoming mayor of New York City.

In many advanced countries, much of Generation Z sees its progression into adulthood as a gauntlet of seemingly endless competitions: for admission into selective middle schools, high schools, and universities; for hiring by selective global companies for selective internships; and, finally, for permanent employment by those companies to launch their careers. If AI eliminates too many of these coveted jobs, the sense of betrayal among young, highly educated professionals may closely echo the outrage of older, less educated manufacturing workers during the China shock. As age becomes another fault line in American politics, new battles over Social Security and Medicare could further divide an already polarized country.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/survive-artificial-intelligence-shock-davidson-slaughter

Comment on Open thread: Brexit by .

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 17:40:53 +0000

The decision to leave that arrangement was, as Mark Blyth and I argued in Foreign Affairs two years ago, a colossal economic own goal. The introduction of nontariff barriers raised the cost of trading with Europe by an amount the British government–funded Office for Budget Responsibility now puts at roughly four percent of long-run GDP. This means a permanent reduction in national income to the order of $132 billion a year, just under $4,650 for the average household. British exports of services to the EU, financial services above all, have not recovered their pre-referendum trajectory, and foreign investment has shifted toward Amsterdam, Dublin, Frankfurt, and Paris. As the British physicist Richard Jones has noted, by the end of 2023, British real per capita GDP was roughly 28 percent below what growth trends between 1955 and 2008 predicted. Brexit is not the sole cause—chronically weak productivity, years of underinvestment, and the long shadow of the 2008 financial crisis that was followed by years of austerity all predate the referendum—but it worsened existing trends and foreclosed the easiest routes back to growth. For most of the post-referendum period, these costs were diffuse and easy to dismiss as the special pleading of economists who had opposed Brexit all along. Resilient British employment (much of it low-paid, low-productivity service work) made it possible to claim the doom-mongers had been wrong. They had not been wrong. They had just been early.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-kingdom/new-prime-minister-same-problem

Comment on Some large language model pathologies by .

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:56:27 +0000

Why, he wonders, are capital allocators allocating so much capital to this? It’s because of a promise as old as the loom: that bosses will be able to replace their workers with machines. This isn’t just about money – often, when the machine is ultimately not as good as a human, or needs so much supervision from a human that it becomes more expensive, there’s still tremendous appetite for automation.

“The one thing a boss does not want is co-determination. Bosses are haunted by the knowledge that even though they fancy that they’re driving the car, if they don’t show up, everything continues to work. Whereas if the workers don’t show up, everything shuts down. And so perhaps they’re in the back seat with a toy steering wheel. AI is the promise of wiring that toy steering wheel directly into the drivetrain of the car. It’s products without product designers. Workplaces without workers, screenplays without screenwriters, movies without actors, hospitals without doctors and nurses. This is the promise.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/24/cory-doctorow-on-elon-musk-ai-bubble-bosses-cruel-fantasies

Comment on Automation and labour by .

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:41:48 +0000

“centaur”, in automation theory, is a person assisted by a machine, and a “reverse centaur”, hero of Cory Doctorow’s new book, The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI, is a “human who is conscripted into acting as an assistant to a machine”. Every warehouse worker who ever had to urinate in a water bottle because they couldn’t otherwise meet the fulfilment targets set by an algorithm is a reverse centaur. Reaching into the future, everyone who has to sit in a self-driving truck to make sure it doesn’t crash, presumably on minimum rather than truck-driver wages, is a reverse centaur; as is every lawyer no longer on lawyer’s money checking Gemini’s command of precedent, every indie band scraping a living doing covers of AI-generated hits, and so on. That, anyway, is the promise: AI is coming for your job, and it is coming for your kids’ jobs, and there is no point fighting it because the future’s already here.

Wiping out the world of work, and with it our ability to sustain ourselves and live autonomous lives, is only the beginning, if you listen to AI’s architects. Elon Musk has called it the single greatest threat to human civilisation, Sam Altman has said it will “most likely lead to the end of the world” and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, memorably forecast that AI would come to see us the way we see animals: cute to have around but ultimately a resource to be exploited. “AI people claim they’re about to create God, by teaching words to a word-guessing programme,” Doctorow says. “It’s grandiose.”

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jun/24/cory-doctorow-on-elon-musk-ai-bubble-bosses-cruel-fantasies

Comment on Working on managing hatred toward drivers by .

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 16:20:31 +0000

Speeding in Toronto spiked after speed camera removal, city report finds

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/speeding-in-toronto-spiked-after-speed-camera-removal-city-report-finds/article_fc1fb4c7-750b-4de3-985f-ce6a133185d3.html

Comment on Will China invade Taiwan? by .

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:04:58 +0000

On the whole, China’s military buildup is not as dazzling as it may appear. The People’s Liberation Army in 1990 had virtually no maritime power-projection capability, so although it is advancing at a rapid pace, in absolute terms it is now roughly comparable to those of France, Japan, or the United Kingdom. And despite the recent emphasis on maritime capabilities, the PLA is still dominated by the army and led by officers with education and experience in ground operations. In my conversations with Chinese army generals since 1999, many have shown breathtaking ignorance of the basics of maritime warfare. Long-range antiship missile systems are not even operated by the navy or integrated with other naval forces, which will hamper their effectiveness in combat. Meanwhile, massive corruption has not only wasted some of China’s military investment but also undermined the combat leadership skills of senior PLA figures. An aptitude for bribery and displays of personal loyalty do not transfer to mastery of maritime operations. Finally, and most important, China’s military buildup alarmed Taiwan, the United States, Japan, and the Philippines. All four have responded with military buildups and tighter cooperation.

This is not to say China’s military buildup has not produced weapons systems that would eventually be valuable in conquering Taiwan; it has. And in the meantime, it has deterred the Taiwanese government from declaring independence and raised the military cost of U.S. intervention on Taiwan’s behalf, thereby undermining Taiwanese confidence in the likelihood of American support in the event of conflict. But China’s large submarine and surface combatant fleet, modest numbers of amphibious ships and aircraft carriers, arsenal of medium- and long-range missiles, dense air and missile defenses, and worldwide surveillance and electronic warfare systems do not add up to the capability to take and hold Taiwan. The most important shortfall, as a December 2025 Pentagon report highlighted, is amphibious lift—the ships and aircraft needed to transport vehicles and troops in sufficient quantities to invade the main island. China’s navy does not have enough guns to soften up landing areas and neutralize defending support forces ashore, either. Its air force cannot fill the gap with precision airstrikes. And the PLA’s large-scale exercises do not emphasize improvisational skills among lower-level commanders; the ability to take initiative is often decisive in amphibious assaults that never go according to plan.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/mirage-chinas-military-edge-dennis-blair

Comment on Trump ending the postwar security order by .

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:21:23 +0000

The consequences of a reduction in U.S. support for Taiwan will not stop there. U.S. policy toward Taiwan is seen throughout the Indo-Pacific as a critical indicator of the strength of U.S. commitments. If Washington is willing to negotiate away its support for Taipei, other countries in the region will conclude that they can no longer count on the United States to ensure their security. Countries such as Japan and South Korea might embark on larger military buildups, contemplate acquiring nuclear weapons, and pursue a more autonomous foreign policy that does not necessarily align with U.S. interests. Most countries, however, would conclude that they had little choice but to accommodate Beijing’s preferences.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/china-could-win-taiwan-without-fighting

Comment on Will China invade Taiwan? by .

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:16:16 +0000

China is attempting to set new norms around how the United States handles Taiwan. By drawing Trump into making statements and taking actions that his predecessors have not, Xi is establishing a new baseline to which he will hold Trump and his successors if they want to have productive relations with Beijing in other areas. China could demand that future U.S. presidents issue similar warnings to Taiwanese leaders about independence and consult Beijing on arms sales as a cost of doing business. If future administrations decline to do so, China could use their refusal as a pretext for increasing its coercion of Taiwan and taking punitive actions against the United States. Call it linkage, Chinese-style.

In the meantime, Beijing is increasing its pressure on Taiwan. A few weeks after Xi’s summit with Trump, China launched what it called a “special maritime law enforcement operation” off Taiwan’s east coast in which its coast guard interfered with commercial shipping. The Chinese coast guard also entered prohibited waters near an island Taiwan controls in the South China Sea. With these two unprecedented actions, Beijing is aiming to assert its jurisdiction over Taiwan’s waters and set the foundation for a future quarantine of the island.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/china-could-win-taiwan-without-fighting

Comment on Talking with Claude by Milan

Milan — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 18:03:06 +0000

I cancelled Claude today. It is so error-prone and unreliable that it doesn’t help with or speed up anything. Checking its work takes longer than just doing the work with my comparatively very reliable brain.

Comment on Alcohol’s societal role by .

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:18:51 +0000

In The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer by Tom Dardis, the author says: “Over the years, many of our best artists have accepted the connection [between art and alcohol]. In fact, several have claimed they had little choice but to drink, and heavily at that, if they were to perform at their creative peak.” This is the most astonishing part: even if they were well aware of the carnage that drink was wreaking on their lives, many of them did not realize that, as their addiction progressed, their work actually became worse and worse, sometimes even to the point of rendering them completely silent. I understand what led them to alcohol. It’s as we said at the beginning: to heighten the emotions, enhance disinhibition, quell the controlling self. Neither Hemingway nor Fitzgerald could write without being drunk, for example. But booze is a malicious, treacherous muse—an assassin who, before killing you, brutalizes you, humiliates you, and robs you of your words. As Charles Bukowski said, with chastened experience, “To get through this game drinking helps a great deal, although I don’t recommend it to many.”

https://lithub.com/are-writers-intrinsically-vulnerable-to-alcohol-and-drugs/