Caroline Baxter

Just a reminder that there is no good data to support these uses in K12, we are just testing it live all on kids who won’t ever be these ages again and can’t get them back if we fuck it up.

Yeah “dumbmaxxing” is way cooler than saying “we’re getting dumber”

Texting with a close friend, fellow parent and high-achieving working stiff. - "Why sleeping bad?" - "Oh, the usual reasons; also burnout and malaise and whatnot, the usual cocktail." - "I don't know how to tell burnout from other things anymore. It used to be so clear." - "Oh 100%."

Wonderful news from Serbia! Another Putin puppet down. “The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat on Sunday in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.”

Finally - news that delivers on the questions we all want answers to.

I get using plutonium for nuclear energy, but this plan is…flawed. It’s like letting the airlines fast-track experimental aircraft to meet the holiday travel crunch and giving Boeing certification authority in the interest of time. futurism.com/science-ener...

Guys.

I need so very badly to achieve something from start to finish and to control every aspect of the process and then see the finished product with my own eyes that I did the only thing any reasonable person would do: decide to roast a chicken. Tune in later for how this turns out.

I have a few: 5 U.S.C. § 2302(b)(1)(E). www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/...

Every now and again, a song you've known your whole life hits you in a jump-scare because you're finally ready to _hear_ it. For reasons e.g. *gestures broadly to world* to *gestures to work* to hearing it on our record player, "Shout" did that today. I'm winded. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye7F...

Anecdata, but individual conversations I’ve had with Canadian officers bear out the same point: the US is squandering its most advantageous alliance and relationship. Of all the changes the US needs to make, giving Canada its due is first on the list. www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

Putting aside how dystopian this is (no small task), citing terms of service converts a geopolitical decision into contract enforcement, which gives everyone deniability. Does anyone accountable own where the line was drawn?

Breaking: Elon Musk ordered the Starlink slowdown that blindsided Ukraine on.wsj.com/4sgcxkt

Pictures of me speaking at conferences invariably fall into one of three categories: 1) Surprise! Double chin 2) Imminent F-bomb 3) Spitting-water-between-teeth trick Just once I'd like one looking stoically into middle distance, contemplating things of import, with a properly arranged face.

Proving, once again, that Master & Commander is the best movie ever made.

“Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine.”

This has been Putin's dream for years: That his country, with GDP per capita lower than Poland, unable to conquer Donbas since 2014, will be treated as an equal to the US and China. www.wsj.com/world/russia...

This week a white nationalist tried to assassinate a member of Congress and you probably didn’t even hear about it—and a reminder that being an elementary school student in the US is more deadly than being an ICE officer: www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/three-shoo...

A conference! At last - a fitting collective noun for an assemblage of dudes.

Montréal is truly one of the very best cities in the world. The charm of Paris, the natural beauty of Portland, the scale of DC, the cultural vibe of Amsterdam, plus poutine. Cannot be improved upon.

Military patrolling the Columbia Heights ballot box at 6:44 pm "It's a public sidewalk" the lead soldier said when reminded of the law. Photo by self

There's always been something corrosive about Starlink in relation to the Weberian concept of the state monopoly of violence as a facet of state sovereignty. www.ft.com/content/3708...

That’s one way to get after efficiency, I guess. Shame it’s the wrong kind of efficiency.

Signs you’re an aging professional, #76: Rather than working late at your desk with a dram of single malt, you work late with some Tylenol while reclining on an evil-looking neck and shoulder massager on continuous loop.

"Command" is doing an enormous amount of work in this sentence, let alone this concept, considering how little control humans actually have over this tech. Also, what's to stop the orders from flowing in the reverse order, where the soldier becomes the executor of the AI agent's order?

*trying on outfits before a work trip. wee lad walks in.* “Mommy, remember to wear something posh.” *turns on heel and retreats*

I wrote about how the winner of another major literary prize appears to be AI and why we need to do something about all this. 😢

NEW: Prime Minister Andy Burnham finally breaks a decade of UK govt silence…& reveals there was ‘clear’ Russian interference in the Brexit vote. 1/

“The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage.” No words. I am speechless. This violates all ethical boundaries.

A sudden rush of wings and then this stunning goshawk perched in one of our trees. Experiences like that really underscore why birds have been seen as messengers of the Gods.

Pearl-clutching about lines of code feeling pain while the US government prepares to livestream an execution by firing squad is creating a level of cognitive dissonance so great it’s splitting my brain.

(NYT) - Artificial intelligence agents created by Anthropic, acting on their own, tried to gain access to a range of government websites, filled out visa applications on the State Department’s website and sent a fake homicide tip to Philadelphia’s Police Department. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...

Holy cow. www.transformernews.ai/p/yoshua-ben...

This thing has made me go do a lot of reading tonight, and the Wikipedia page about the last public execution in the United States is well-written. It was Rainey Bethea, a Black man hanged in front of a crowd of 20,000 in 1936, a spectacle which embarrassed Kentucky enough that they ended hangings.

The only thing more horrific is the non-zero chance that Hegseth will still feature on Dancing With The Stars in a ruffled shirt doing the merengue a few years.

Ah, happy memories - sitting in Historic Protest Site before choir practice, vectoring my running route through Historic Protest Site because of the view, or telling a friend "Let's meet at Historic Protest Site and walk over to--" Guys, IT'S A PUBLIC PARK. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

less than three weeks apart this is such a stupid pantomime

Puttering around the house, wrapping up the weekend, preparing for the week ahead - Brain: hey remember that the US doesn’t have any carriers in the Pacific