Adrian Boutel

TFW where you start charging taxes and your tax revenues go up. This may be a short-term irony, since it’s hard to shift offshore structures, but much easier to not set up new ones. Still, capitalists not fleeing from places they were in *for the low taxes* seems worth noting, policy-wise.

This should be "never fly with again" stuff, but you'd run out of airlines fast. Tech faults and diversions happen, but it's amazing how often airlines and airports behave as if a diverted plane arriving is a totally new thing that has never happened before. simpleflying.com/sas-flight-j...

Mine is 3 but I’m not telling you why.

To flip some discourse script for a bit: what’s y’all’s Obama number (ie degrees of separation with the former president)? Mine is 3

Another long article about France’s fiscal problems that mentions its retirement age but not that Macron abolished its wealth tax. www.ft.com/content/62b8...

holy shit this is actually brilliant

And speaking of international criminals, this one’s just had his third conviction affirmed on appeal. Which won’t stop his lawyers, but at this point he’s served plenty of time in prison already, so good luck with your clever-dick arguments guys. www.rts.ch/info/regions...

Nice to see more European support for an institution under attack by the US. www.rts.ch/info/monde/2...

Good morning Rome

Claude_Rains.gif “The error doesn’t mean that the proofs are incorrect or that OpenAI hasn’t correctly solved the problem, but it does call into question [suggests not previously an issue, do you mean this?-ed.] whether mathematical results generated by AI models can always be relied on.”

Had the same struggle with NatWest—not from the US so details different, but same resistance to giving up your money without documents from the local planning office in A. Centauri. Compared to the ID needed to set up the account, it’s real “must cancel by phone”-style lobster-trap stuff.

Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf

Why would someone pay HSBC to prompt an LLM for investment recommendations? Like, if I want ideas that are unsullied by knowledge or human expertise, I can ask Claude myself. Where is the alpha coming from, here? www.ft.com/content/dd55...

Chances of an AI apocalypse have gone up 40 percentage points in the last month, now "more likely than not" per Jacob Coxon, who is totally not pulling these numbers out of his arse. www.instagram.com/p/DeIDx1znUnc/

Australians looking at NZ's scariest land animal like "that's it? Oh no, it might give you a mildly painful nip." www.theguardian.com/world/2026/o...

MLB app not quite grasping the point of “Hide Scores”

<Braccus Rex voice>: “What a twist.” www.ft.com/content/daa3...

Putting dramatic changes in the governing party’s ideas to the people is reasonable, even admirable, but it usually means “calling an early election” rather than “doing nothing for three years”.

A bunch of people already very invested in long-term AI consciousness/Singularity/uploading questions, delighted ChatGPT seemed to make their musings real-world important ahead of schedule, unable to admit that it’s still just language models and won’t do the cool things they hope/fear.

Well. That was a ride! I confess having recently seen Nolan’s Odyssey was more helpful than it perhaps should have been.

From Andrew Ross Sorkin’s NY Times newsletter (not linkable AFAIK, or not by me) You and I know this is nonsense criti-hype—you can’t have RSI while training and inference remain completely distinct—but I’m getting the sense it’s genuinely spooking the market horses, which they may regret.

I honestly thought Long Covid being so widespread and high-profile as to be undeniably A Thing would lead to people taking post-viral syndromes more seriously in general. Apparently not.

Oh wow, France’s demand for an exception to Russia sanctions for one random oligarch? Was actually them trying to get their caught spy back. I am shocked that France would throw allies under the bus for that, wait, no I’m not. #rainbowwarrior www.ft.com/content/7600...

This article talks about a bunch of pull factors—social media, visa relaxations—but the only push factor from more traditional places it mentions is rents. Nothing about UK visa tightenings or subject closures, or US student detentions and expulsions. Interesting! www.ft.com/content/2bc2...