Favorites: Watercolor Animation, Waymo Safety
March 30th, 2025 Army clown memes, AI art leaps, and Resist wine moms
This is a modification of the classic 'Army Clown" meme. It’s Pretty clear Gabbard lied to congress about this. Zack Beauchamp points out that normally (cached), she'd be fired for perjuring herself, Hegseth would be out for dumping such ridiculously detailed classified info in an unsecured channel, and Waltz would be out for creating the chat in the first place. (src)(cached)
Ok, to be clear, as far as I can tell the backgrounds that are watercolor. The character animation is still standard cel animation, although it is hand drawn.
I'm happy that Tim Lee does the work to categorize each crash that Waymo reports, and it's great to see that they continue to have such an impressive safety record.
Also, here's another short thread (cached) of image generation prompts that were once difficult for AI image generators but that they now perform well at. Most notable to me was the geometric shapes one, I remember reading about it, and it's amazing to see it so clearly handled perfectly.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– "Canadian arm of China’s largest bank repeatedly broke money-laundering rules despite multiple warnings from regulators" (src)(cached)
– New California bill AB 609: no more CEQA for infill housing. (src)(cached)
– One small example of the waste caused by modern American environmental review processes (src)(cached)
– Joe Wiesenthal reviewed Abundance, and he had a lot to say. TL;DR he says it effectively challenges liberal guilt by urging a renewed commitment to building and technological progress, though it glosses over the harder questions of how deep-rooted economic forces and vested interests hinder real change. (src)(cached)
– Seems real concerning that the Ex-US Attorney who recently died suddenly was last investigating Russia and a CIA leak. (src)(cached)
– Kelsey Piper did some research to find out if the price of used Teslas has fallen significantly. (src)(cached)
– "Egypt's new administrative capital looks straight out of Dune" (src)(cached)
– MAGA folks say liberals simply hate anything Trump does, even if it's good. But that's obviously false, liberals love the COVID vaccines that were fast tracked thanks to Trump's Operation Warp Speed. (src)(cached)
– A follow up on David Shor’s analysis of 2024. He’s not arguing that they should give him more money for message testing. He’s actually arguing against his own monetary interests: he’s saying that there are hard limits on what can be achieved but messaging, at some point you must take different substantive positions on policy. Good ads help you win elections, and Shor sells ads, but he’s fundamentally saying that there’s only so much ads can do if voters don’t like your positions. (src)(cached)
– Jill Filipovic argues in Slate that Resist wine moms had it right last time around, and that to defeat Trump we need to avoid purity tests and use pragmatic/inclusive strategies. (src)(cached)
– Rutger Bergman outlines ways in which he only loudly talks about his popular views. You don't want to raise the salience of your unpopular views. (src)(cached)
– The Trump admin has ended the ban they put in place on solar installations on public land, so that's good at least. (src)(cached)
– Sorta looks like there have been 2x as many protests against trump in his second term so far than his first term. (src)(cached)
– Balaji discusses ways the new more powerful AI image generation could be used in response to a demo of it's ability to dream up premium looking image ads, including text. (src)(cached)
– A short thread of image generation prompts that were once difficult for AI image generators but that they now perform well at. Most notable to me was the geometric shapes one, I remember reading about it, and it's amazing to see it so clearly handled perfectly. (src)(cached)
“Kelsey Piper did some research to find out if the price of used Teslas has fallen significantly.”
I’m so, so, so goddamn tired of the misrepresentations around Tesla cars. You can express many salient points around their limitations, as well as criticisms of how the company gets its funding, runs its business, misrepresents its product, and treats its workers, but performance and price of the vehicle itself (with the subsidies especially) just ain’t it. I could write a novel on how the conservative nature of the auto industry has hamstrung electric car development significantly.
I remind people that it’s the traditional auto industry that insisted on a lack of vertical integration. It’s the traditional auto industry that didn’t want to cannibalize their existing business and relationships with partners. It’s the traditional auto industry that wanted to charge a subscription for Apple CarPlay and ACTIVATING THE INCLUDED HEATED SEATS.
Musk sucks. Tesla sucks. But the competition has been a bad joke until the last few years. No, Kelsey, buying Teslas was not a “vibe.” Key to Tesla’s success is also the story of the auto industry’s utter failures.