Andrew Platzer

My pal Danielle Koenig shared that her father Walter Koenig passed away last night at age 90. A performer whose kindness and warmth shone through the screen. He will be well remembered.

Amara’s Law: "We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run."

AI coworker put on 90-day Performance Improvement Plan

I don’t have a tattoo but if I did I think I would get a traditional one of my tribe: 𝟷𝟶 𝙿𝚁𝙸𝙽𝚃 "𝙷𝙴𝙻𝙻𝙾" 𝟸𝟶 𝙶𝙾𝚃𝙾 𝟷𝟶

Visitors to the US are on track to drop by almost two million year-on-year. “We’re the only major country in the world losing visitation,” the head of the US Travel Association said. “It’s mind-boggling.” www.semafor.com/article/09/2...

Ladies & gentlemen: the first ever mention of potato crisps! From 'Apicius redivivus; or The cook's oracle', (1817) by celebrity chef William Kitchiner. archive.org/details/b215...

This year's El Niño event is moving into record territory, with the daily Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) tying the record previously set during the 2015/2016 super-El Niño. My latest over at Carbon Brief: www.carbonbrief.org/...

one does not simply reveal a password 👁️

325 #kakapo! The chicks from this year's record breeding season are now juveniles and so have been added to the population. In 1995 there were just 51 kākāpō left. Recovery of critically endangered species _is_ possible with sustained effort. #kakapo2026 #conservation #parrots

Canadians just so goddamn tired of this bullshit

Wrote about the crazy revelations in the METR report on Hugging Face (including one that corrected something I'd been getting wrong), and the growing industry push for a slowdown www.platformer.news/openai-huggi...

In the future, everyone will have their own personal AI. Not as a servant but a sentry to protect against other hostile AIs.

This was accidental. Imagine if someone was doing this sort of thing intentionally — if they aren’t already. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...

The crank doesn't actually do anything, but it makes the humans happy. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/crank PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

I’m constantly reminded of this quote from the early 1900s (source unknown) — "News Is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest Is advertising”.

What can you find on the new Climate.us? Information about El Niño impacts! (1/6)

My office 26 years ago.

California is about to hit licence plate 9ZZZ999. I’ve already seen 9ZR____. The DMV announced the new format well be simply reversed — 000AAA1. That means the first 3 characters increment the fastest. Yuck. I would have gone with 11AAA00.

thegrimhistorian.substack.com/p/has-americ...

New distance measurements for our galaxy 📏 ESA's XMM-Newton & NASA's Chandra have measured the distance to three bright explosions echoing through the outer spiral arms of our galaxy. In doing so, they found the arms to be up to 10% further away than we thought 👉 www.esa.int/Science_Expl... 🔭 🧪 ☄️

We bought a small cactus (apparently a rainbow hedgehog cactus) and after less than a year, it has an amazing set of flowers.

Barack Obama — an elegant president for a more civilized age.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist.com

One thing I mentioned in passing in my Fable post is that, for long running tasks, Fable starts to develop its own dialect as its many agents and tasks reinforce themselves and make Claudish language ever more Claudish. You need to ask it to report out in plain English or this happens after 9 hours

Looks like 'spark' is the latest trendy word in AI. There's Meta's "Muse Spark", Google's "Gemini Spark", and Nvidia's "Nvidia RTX Spark".

hero

Here is the evolution of the projected El Nino event by month in the latest CFSv2 model runs (last 8 days):

sorry Allen Ginsberg, sorry, i'm trying to delete it www.qwantz.com/index.php?co...

A bit of a read, but worth it.

“A republic, if you can keep it.” Spoiler alert: you can’t.

I found this experiment fascinating arman-bd.hashnode.dev/i-left-port-...

🦅🇺🇦 Ministry of Defense announced the introduction of a new model of warfare - drone assault units, which combine drones and infantry into a single system. This approach has already shown results in the south, where a large amount of territory has been liberated since February.

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

Apropos today. www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-0...

I’m getting somewhat exasperated by people using the phrase “war crimes” as though it’s actionable. Unless the perpetrators are arrested by the war police, tried in a war court by a war judge, found guilty by a war jury, and sent to war prison, it’s just propaganda.

He is risen

Thought of the day — I may be the last human to ever look at some of the code I’ve written.

My president told me Iranians keep shooting down his planes so I asked how many planes he has and he said he just goes to the airbase and gets a new one so I said it sounds like he’s just serving up planes to the Iranians and then his vice president started crying.

When the president says Iran’s forces are decimated I can only assume he’s using the word’s original meaning of reducing by 1/10th.

There are now 10 toilets in Space International Space Station: 4 Crew Dragon Docked at ISS: 1 Soyuz Docked at ISS: 1 Tiangong Space Station: 2 Shenzhou Docked at TSS: 1 Artemis II on way around Moon: 1 This will be the first time a toilet has left low earth orbit!

Hospital Decides Cancer-Sniffing Leopard More Trouble Than It’s Worth https://theonion.com/hospital-decides-cancer-sniffing-leopard-more-trouble-than-its-worth/

My secret hope is that AI companies spend prodigious amounts of money on renewables over the next couple of years to sate their energy demands but then go bankrupt leaving the world a better place with excess clean power.