Favorites February 21 2023

November 2021, Birthday Berries

SwiftInSecurity @SwiftOnSecurity

Asking Microsoft for comment, and when they wouldn't reply, you just interview the chatbot. Absolute rubicon stuff. apnews.com/article/techno…

One of the issues with these systems is that if the content truly is original, rather than rehosted, then section 230 doesn't apply, and tech companies can theoretically be liable for libel. In this case Bing is saying bad stuff about Microsoft though, so it's simply funny.

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

So we're getting the usual suspects showing up to say that Medicare and Social Security can't possibly remain as they are. I should have a newsletter about all this later today; but here's the key chart from CBO 1/

Paul Krugman @paulkrugman

Projections of rising costs depend in large part not on hard truths about demography but on *assumed* increases in health spending. Recent history doesn't support that pessimism on health costs; in fact, CBO has drastically reduced its own projections 2/

The key thing to do, Krugman argues, is to find ways to provide the same services for less money, not to provide fewer services.

sam @sam_d_1995

it's pretty remarkable that in the middle of a war where railroads are constantly targeted by missile strikes (and when having to transport @POTUS through the warzone) Ukraine's railroad still manages to have a better on-time performance than @Amtrak

Alexander Kamyshin @AKamyshin

I also want to apologize for breaking our OTP (On Time Performance) yesterday. We had to delay some of our trains to give a way to #RailForceOne. It was painful for me and my team, but I had to do that. So only 90% of our trains arrived on time yesterday. I apologize. https://t.co/cU66V7GQ82

If you're wondering, Amtrak's on time performance appears to hover around 80 percent. Relatedly, this was the closest an American president has come to the front lines of a war since Lincoln

From Ian Bremmer on twitter, “Biden the Grey”

Threads

• Thread summarizing an article about the lack of after school care for kids since the pandemic. The good news, as detailed in the article, is that California has made some progress by prioritizing it.

• Very long thread describing a technology I had no idea ever existed: trackless trams. TL;DR: Surprise, they're worse than buses in almost every way, which is why the last one is going to be shut down.