Author name: DJ Henderson

“NokiApple LumiPhone 1020 SE” merges Windows Phone body with budget iPhone guts

Apple, hackintosh, iphone se 3, Lumia 1020, Tech, windows phone / DJ Henderson / February 18, 2025

Remember the Lumia 1020? It’s back—in iPhone SE form.

The Lumia 1020 was a lot of smartphone in July 2013. It debuted with a focus “almost entirely on the phone’s massive camera,” Ars wrote at the time. That big 41-megapixel sensor jutted forth from the phone body, and Nokia reps showed off its low-light, rapid-motion camera abilities by shooting pictures of breakdancers in a dark demonstration room. The company also offered an optional camera grip—one that made it feel a lot more like a point-and-shoot camera. In a more robust review, Ars suggested the Lumia 1020 might actually make the point-and-shoot obsolete.

Front of the Lumia 1020, showing a bit of Windows Phone square grid flair. Casey Johnston

The Lumia 1020 contained yet another cutting edge concept of the day: Windows Phone, Microsoft’s color-coded, square-shaped companion to its mobile-forward Windows 8. The mobile OS never got over the users/apps, chicken/egg conundrum, and called it quits in October 2017. The end of that distant-third-place mobile OS would normally signal the end of the Lumia 1020 as a usable phone.

But there was a person named /u/OceanDepth95028 who saw beyond, and where others thought, “LOL,” this person thought, “Why not?” And this person looked at the Lumia 1020 and saw a third-generation iPhone SE inside of it. And then this person made that phone, and it booted. And the person saw that it was good, and they posted the tale to Reddit’s r/hackintosh.

“NokiApple LumiPhone 1020 SE” merges Windows Phone body with budget iPhone guts Read More »

Despite court orders, climate and energy programs stalled by Trump freeze

climate change, environmental justice, EPA, Policy, Science, syndication, trump administration / DJ Henderson / February 18, 2025

Chief of the EPA is also trying to claw back $20 billion, citing alleged wrongdoing.

President Donald Trump’s freeze on federal funding shows little sign of thawing for climate, energy and environmental justice programs.

Despite two federal court orders directing the administration to resume distributing federal grants and loans, at least $19 billion in Environmental Protection Agency funding to thousands of state and local governments and nonprofits remained on hold as of Feb. 14, said environmental and legal advocates who are tracking the issue.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has vowed to seek return of an additional $20 billion the agency invested last year in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program, calling for a Department of Justice investigation into what he characterized as a “scheme… purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight.”

Environmental advocates said Zeldin was unfairly smearing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or “green bank,” program, on which EPA worked for more than a year with the Treasury Department to design a standard financial agent arrangement—the kind the government has used many times before to collect and distribute funds.

Critics believe the Trump administration, thwarted last week in its effort to get an appeals court to reinstate its sweeping government-wide freeze on federal funding, is resorting to a new tactic—labeling individual programs as nefarious or fraudulent. Although that approach has met with some success—a federal judge last week allowed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to freeze $80 million in funding from a migrant shelter program in New York—legal experts said courts will be looking for specifics and evidence, not broad assertions that programs are improper.

“They cannot challenge an entire program based on charges of fraud and waste,” said Jillian Blanchard, a vice president of the nonprofit Lawyers for Good Government. “If they had actual concerns about fraud or waste, they would need to follow clear procedures and protocols in the regulations, going grant by grant to address this, but that’s not what’s happening here. They are challenging entire programs whole cloth without evidence.

“The executive does not have the authority to change policies simply because they don’t like them,” Blanchard said at a virtual briefing for reporters on Friday. “Congress makes the law, not the president and certainly not Elon Musk,” she said, referring to the billionaire donor whom Trump has deputized to cut government spending.

Feeling the freeze

Across the country, the spending freeze has thrown into chaos the environmental, resilience and community improvement programs that Congress authorized in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Among the efforts on hold: clean drinking water, air monitoring, hurricane recovery and electric school buses.

“Real people on the ground are being hurt by the stop-start situation,” said Blanchard, whose group is working with the Natural Resources Defense Council on the cases of 230 grantees in 44 states.

Grantees are in a state of confusion because they have not heard directly from EPA, she said.

Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a coalition of former EPA employees that is also working with Lawyers for Good Government, said many grantees are not sure what is happening because the agency’s employees have been forbidden to talk to people outside of the agency.

Several grantees reached by Inside Climate News said that they were not talking to the press, or did not want to say whether or not they could access their funding.

MDC, a nonprofit in Durham, North Carolina, along with the Hispanic Federation, was supposed to receive a $3 million environmental justice community change grant for disaster recovery and resilience programs in Latino areas of eastern North Carolina.

“We were thrilled to receive federal support to do this work, but unfortunately, like many others, we have experienced an interruption in accessing this funding,” said Clarissa Goodlett, MDC’s director of communications.

Many neighborhoods, especially those that are home to low-income, Black and Latino residents, are still rebuilding from hurricanes that hit in 2016 and 2018.

During the storms, rural counties in eastern North Carolina did not provide real-time emergency alerts or evacuation orders in Spanish, according to Enlace Latino NC, a Spanish-language digital news outlet.

The MDC grant would help Latinos connect with local governments to ensure their communities are included in discussions and decisions about the impact of climate disasters.

“We are investigating and pursuing whatever options and channels are available to us to ensure we can follow through on our commitment to communities in eastern North Carolina,” Goodlett said.

Dorothy Darr, executive director of the Southwest Renewal Foundation in High Point, near Greensboro, North Carolina, said she doesn’t know if the group’s $18.4 million grant is frozen. Southwest Renewal is teaming up with eight partners to support not only environmental projects—tree planting, water testing and building an urban greenway—but also workforce training and infrastructure improvements. These include upgrades to old, leaking sewer lines and inefficient HVAC systems and a new energy-efficient “cool” roof at a Guilford County school.

The money would also pay for nine new public electric vehicle charging stations, anti-littering campaigns and other improvements in historically Black and low-income neighborhoods in the southwest part of the city.

Darr said the foundation only recently received an account number from the EPA, and she plans to try to access the funds Monday.

“The grant title”—Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grants—”has the words ‘environment’ and ‘justice’ in it,” Darr said. “If you’re just slashing programs based on words, then we’re a sitting duck.”

In Texas, the nonprofit group Downwiders at Risk received word in a Feb. 4 letter that it had received a $500,000 EPA environmental justice “collaborative problem-solving” grant it had applied for last year. The money was to be used to install community air monitors in neighborhoods near Dallas. But the notification didn’t provide instructions on how to access the money, and no followup ever came.

Executive Director Caleb Roberts called around his local EPA office, but no one could give answers.

“People are still unsure. Our project officer at the EPA has no idea. I’ve emailed people higher up,” Roberts said. “They have no idea if things are funded or not. They are just as in the dark as we are.”

Downwinders’ award letter said they had 21 days to pull their first block of funding. If no instructions to access the money arrive before then, Robert worries they may lose it.

The city of New Haven, Connecticut, only received word on Jan. 21—the day after Trump’s inauguration—that it and its local nonprofit partners had received a $20 million environmental justice community change grant, according to Steve Winter, who heads up the city’s Office of Climate and Sustainability. But he had never been able to access the funds; the online system originally said “unavailable for payment;” that changed on Feb. 10 to “suspended.”

The money was supposed to help fund whole-home energy efficiency retrofits in a city where one-quarter of the population lives in poverty and where energy costs have skyrocketed since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Winter said. Connecticut, like much of New England, relies heavily on heating oil in winter—not only the most expensive home heating fuel, but the most polluting. The grants also would have helped with asbestos and mold remediation in the homes, which are necessary before energy efficiency upgrades can be done.

Winter said the city has warned its partners that they now may need to lay off staff that they’ve hired for outreach for energy efficiency programs, and the future of a community geothermal project is at risk. Also up in the air: a local food rescue organization’s plans to increase staff and food storage capacity.

“People might say, oh this environmental justice grant is some frivolous thing, but it’s about helping people with quality affordable housing, with lowering their energy bills, alleviating hunger in the community, providing affordable transportation options,” Winter said. “These are all trying to meet basic needs that also have an environmental impact.”

A “rush job” accusation

The Trump administration’s drive to root out “diversity, equity and inclusion,” or DEI programs, throughout the government has swept up environmental justice programs at EPA, even though the two are distinct policy initiatives similar only in that they often involve people of color. After taking office two weeks ago, the first employees that Zeldin announced he was eliminating from the agency were those in DEI and environmental justice programs.

“The previous Administration used DEI and Environmental Justice to advance ideological priorities, distributing billions of dollars to organizations in the name of climate equity,” Zeldin said in a statement. “This ends now. We will be good stewards of tax dollars and do everything in our power to deliver clean air, land, and water to every American, regardless of race, religion, background, and creed.”

Last week, as thousands more employees at EPA and other federal agencies were placed on administrative leave or accepted the deferred retirement offer, Zeldin escalated his critiques on environmental justice and climate programs.

In a video first posted on X, Musk’s social media platform, on Wednesday night,

Zeldin called out $20 billion for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that he said had been “parked at an outside financial institution,” suggesting that the money was given away in a “rush job” in the waning days of the Biden administration. In fact, the money in question was awarded to eight recipients in August, well before the election. The program’s defenders say it went through a rigorous selection process that began more than a year before the awards were announced.

The $20 billion falls under two programs within the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and is intended to support nonprofits and financial institutions to serve as green banks. The eight recipients, which received between $400,000 and $7 billion, are supposed to use that money to finance projects by businesses and nonprofits around the country that would cut climate pollution. Much of the money is dedicated to low-income communities, where it is often harder for businesses to raise private financing.

The recipients have already begun using the funding to support businesses, including $250 million for an electric truck financing program beginning at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, $31.8 million in financing for a solar project for the University of Arkansas System and $10.8 million for solar projects on Tribal lands in Oregon and Idaho.

Unlike most of the grant recipients under the IRA, who draw down their money over time as work is completed, the green banks already received their money. Zealan Hoover, who administered IRA programs at EPA during the Biden administration, said the money was placed into bank accounts at Citibank under terms of financial agreements worked out with the Treasury Department.

Although EPA had never used such an outside financial agent before, the Treasury Department had made such agreements with outside institutions many times in the past to distribute or collect money. The system used for electronic federal tax payments, for expanding access to retirement savings and for getting money to assist businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic are just a few of the examples he cited.

“What is underway is not a good-faith effort to fight fraud,” Hoover said. “If it was, federal agencies would not be firing thousands of employees who are hired to conduct robust management and oversight of these programs.”

Zeldin said he was calling for termination of the financial agent agreement for the green bank program, and for the immediate return of the entire fund balance to the United States Treasury. He also said he was referring the issue to the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General and Congress and would “work with the U.S. Department of Justice.” In fact, EPA’s inspector general was dismissed in the early days of the Trump administration along with those at 16 other agencies. EPA’s press office said the agency currently has an acting inspector general but when asked, did not respond with that person’s name. EPA did not answer further questions on the financial agent program, referring only to Zeldin’s video post.

“The American public deserves a more transparent and accountable government than what transpired the past four years,” Zeldin said in the post. “We take our obligations under the law as seriously as it gets. I’ve directed my team to find your ‘gold bars’ and they found them. Now we will get them back inside of control of government as we pursue next steps.”

Citibank declined to comment. Each of the eight recipients of the green bank funds either declined to comment or did not reply to requests for comment.

“Hard for courts to catch up”

What happens next for the grant recipients is not entirely clear. Courts have issued temporary restraining orders to halt the funding freeze until the issue can be argued on its merits. In a five-page order issued Feb. 10, U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island said that it was clear that the administration had in some instances continued “to improperly freeze federal funds.”

McConnell ordered the administration to “immediately end any funding pause,” but EPA and other agencies that are administering IRA climate programs, like the Department of Energy, are continuing to hold back funds.

“We’re talking about funding for families to make upgrades that help them save on their monthly energy bill, funding for people to buy energy efficient appliances and to retrofit their home so that cold air stays out in the winter and hot air stays out in the summer,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in a briefing with reporters on Thursday. “Those programs aren’t just important to tackling the climate crisis. They are saving our families money.”

“What is painfully clear is that Trump’s illegal funding freeze is causing chaos and confusion,” Murray said.

But Murray and other Democrats, who helped shepherd the IRA to passage in 2022 with no Republican votes, now have little power to force a showdown in a Congress controlled by Republicans. And although multiple studies have shown that most of the $379 billion Congress devoted to funding the clean energy transition in that legislation has flowed to Republican districts, there has been little sign so far that GOP leaders are inclined to clash with the administration. In a few instances, Republicans have sought protection for individual programs that affect their own states.

Blanchard and other legal experts said the courts will have the final say on whether the Trump administration can continue to selectively freeze federal funds. But the decisions may not come soon enough for the programs that are relying on the money they were promised.

“The problem is, as a practical matter, it’s very hard for the courts to catch up,” said Richard Lazarus, an environmental law professor at Harvard Law School. “And the impact on these communities is immediate. The place is closed down, the services aren’t provided for these communities. So the impact can be immediate and devastating, and the practical remedy may be illusory.”

Lazarus was one of the legal scholars writing about environmental justice in the 1990s, before President Bill Clinton signed the first executive order to address communities that suffer a disproportionate burden of pollution. He said that although these communities now “have a fight on their hands,” it is not a new situation for them.

“It’s not as though the government turning against their hardship is something the EJ communities don’t know,” he said. “They don’t welcome it, but they know what this is. It’s how they’ve lived their lives for decades. They fought, and they’ll continue to fight. And that’ll be fighting in cases and lawsuits, and it’ll be fighting politically.”

This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.

Despite court orders, climate and energy programs stalled by Trump freeze Read More »

X is reportedly blocking links to secure Signal contact pages

Security, signa, Tech, Twitter, X / DJ Henderson / February 18, 2025

X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, is seemingly blocking links to Signal, the encrypted messaging platform, according to journalist Matt Binder and other firsthand accounts.

Binder wrote in his Disruptionist newsletter Sunday that links to Signal.me, a domain that offers a way to connect directly to Signal users, are blocked on public posts, direct messages, and profile pages. Error messages—including “Message not sent,” “Something went wrong,” and profiles tagged as “considered malware” or “potentially harmful”—give no direct suggestion of a block. But posts on X, reporting at The Verge, and other sources suggest that Signal.me links are broadly banned.

Signal.me links that were already posted on X prior to the recent change now show a “Warning: this link may be unsafe” interstitial page rather than opening the link directly. Links to Signal handles and the Signal homepage are still functioning on X.

Binder, a former Mashable reporter who was once blocked by X (then Twitter) for reporting on owner Elon Musk and accounts related to his private jet travel, credited the first reports to an X post by security research firm Mysk.

X is reportedly blocking links to secure Signal contact pages Read More »

NASA nominee previews his vision for the agency: Mars, hard work, inspiration

jared isaacman, NASA, Space / DJ Henderson / February 18, 2025

“When I see a picture like this, it is impossible not to feel energized about the future,” he wrote. “I think it is so important for people to understand the profound implications of sending humans to another planet.”

Among these, Isaacman cited the benefits of advancing state-of-the-art technologies including propulsion, habitability, power generation, in-situ resource utilization, and manufacturing.

“We will create systems, countermeasures, and pharmaceuticals to sustain human life in extreme conditions, addressing challenges like radiation and microgravity over extended durations,” he said. “These advancements will form the foundation for lower-cost, more frequent crewed and robotic missions across the solar system, creating a flywheel effect to accelerate world-changing discoveries.”

Additionally, Isaacman said taking the first steps toward humanity living beyond Earth was critical to the long-term survival of the species, and that such an achievement would inspire a new generation of scientific and technological leaders.

“Achieving such an outrageous endeavor—like landing American astronauts on another planet—will inspire generations of dreamers to build upon these accomplishments, set even bolder goals, and drive humankind’s greatest adventure forward,” he wrote.

Upon being asked about his thoughts about sending humans to Mars during the launch window in late 2028 or early 2029, Isaacman said he remains on the outside of NASA’s planning process for now. But he did say the United States should start to put serious effort toward sending humans to Mars.

“We should invest a reasonable amount of resources coupled with extreme work intensity and then make them a reality,” he wrote. “Even getting 90% there in the near term would set humankind on an incredible trajectory for the long term.”

NASA nominee previews his vision for the agency: Mars, hard work, inspiration Read More »

Monthly Roundup #27: February 2025

Monthly / DJ Henderson / February 18, 2025

I have been debating how to cover the non-AI aspects of the Trump administration, including the various machinations of DOGE. I felt it necessary to have an associated section this month, but I have attempted to keep such coverage to a minimum, and will continue to do so. There are too many other things going on, and plenty of others are covering the situation.

Don’t ignore bad vibes you get from people, excellent advice from Kaj Sotara. This matches my experience as well, if your instincts say there’s something off, chances are very high that you are right. Doesn’t mean don’t be polite or anything, but be wary even if you can’t identify exactly where it’s coming from. In my experience, it’s scary how often such vibes prove correct in the end. If you identify the reason why and you don’t endorse it (e.g. prejudice) of course that’s different.

The art of the French dinner party: It seems you must have an opinion on everything, no matter the topic, and argue for it. Only a boring guest would have no opinion. Heaven forbid you are curious and want to explore with an open mind. This explains a lot.

The full bad news is that the American rate of going to dinner parties has fallen dramatically, on the order of 90%, as Sulla points out you can just invite your friends to dinner and I can verify they often say yes. But of course we don’t, and also we largely don’t have friends.

It seems 75% of restaurant traffic is now takeout and delivery? I’m not against either of these things but whenever possible eat at the restaurant.

You love to see it? Apple Blasts EU Laws After First Porn App Comes to iPhones, via state-mandated third-party software marketplace AltStore PAL, falsely claiming that Apple meaningfully approved it, which they very obviously didn’t. I do not believe Apple should be banning porn, but the EU has zero business mandating that they allow porn. Apple is offering a curated ecosystem for a reason, it’s their call.

TikTok as intermittent reinforcement, a slot machine for children. This model seems right to me, and explains why something can be so addictive despite the vast majority of content shown being utter junk in the eyes of the user it is shown to (based on my experience watching people use TikTok on trains).

In the future people might like you more!

Aella: i’ve heard ppl who lost a lot of weight talk about some angry cynicism when people start treating them better, even ppl they’ve known for a long time. I’m having a bit of that now that twitter seems to like me. i’ve been consistently myself this entire time, what’s happening.

literally last weekend i had multiple ppl come up to me at a party and go ‘oh are you aella? i see you on twitter cause everyone hates you’.

if the thing that causes ppl to like me is that i just publicly was patient and knowledgeable with a doofus then this feels kind of shallow and fickle and bad incentives for me. Like what, i win the tribal allegiance game by doing very easy, low-brow things? oh no

it just seems exceedingly clear that public opinion is based on kinda trivial, salient, emotional stuff and not actual work. I’ve been putting out consistent good-faith attempts to do science and been patient with people who were mean to me for YEARS but nobody cared until now

I’m suspicious about how good it feels for people to like me. I’m suspicious about my own motivations now. I’m suspicious that i feel *moremotivated? I’m wondering how much of my past fatigue has been just the difficulty of keeping going in a world where you’re widely hated

i’m kinda angry that it seems like I’m responsive to the opinion of the masses, and also that the thing that shifts the masses is so trivial.

The moment itself might seem trivial, but a lot goes into that moment happening. It’s about consistently being the type of person who gets and executes on opportunities like that, puts themselves in spots where good things can happen, or vice versa. The system is not as dumb as it might seem, especially in terms of the sign of the reaction. There are also various ways to go more viral, that encourage very bad habits and patterns, and that you need to fight against using.

My experience has been different, largely because Substack is far more linear and gradual, whereas Twitter and true social media are all about power laws. I’ve had the ‘big hits’ but they are not that much bigger than my usual hits. Recently I got quoted by Cremieux, and that post has 6.4 million views, so the majority of people who have been exposed to anything I’ve said in the past year online probably saw that alone.

In terms of the weight loss thing, as someone who has made that transition, this… simply never bothered me? It seemed like an entirely expected and reasonable thing for people to do? But also I got a lot less of it, because I had friends largely from the Magic: the Gathering community at the time, whose reactions changed an order of magnitude less than most others do, and I’d previously never attempted to date anyway so there was nothing to contrast to there.

Scott Alexander tries to make the argument that if you care about the grooming gangs in England, then you care about people you don’t know who are far away, and so ‘gotcha’ and now you have to either admit your preferences make no sense or else be an effective altruist who goes around helping people you don’t know who are far away.

I believe that this was a highly counterproductive argument. Scott was so busy saying this was a contradiction that he never asked why people could be outraged and say things like ‘maybe we should invade the UK’ even in jest, in response to this particular outrageous situation, but not care about (his example) preventing third world domestic abuse. And he all but asserts that his philosophy is right and theirs is wrong, and they would agree with him if they Did Philosophy to It and ‘realized they were a good person.’

Whereas I think there is are several perfectly coherent and reasonable positions that explains why one might care a lot about this particular scandal, without caring about the causes Scott implores people to embrace.

And what do these people constantly yell at us, if we have ears to hear?

That they, their preferences and causes get no respect. That they are constantly being gaslit and lied to and no one cares, that they are told they are bad people, told they are racists, told other people should get preference over them because they are ‘privileged’, told that other people should get what they think is rightfully theirs. They are sick and tired of exactly this kind of treatment, only this is if anything worse.

I have a hard time believing they wouldn’t respond with a very clear ‘fyou.’

Indeed, this seems like an excellent way to make those people hate Effective Altruism.

Have I fallen into a similar trap in the past, to varying degrees, at various times, on other issues? Oh, absolutely. And that was stupid, and counterproductive, and also wrong, no matter what I think of the opposing positions involved. I am sorry about that and strive to not do it, or at least do as little of it as possible.

Scott Alexander seems like he’s been on tilt lately dealing with all the people coming out and saying ‘effective altruism is bad’ or ‘altruism is bad’ or ‘helping other people is bad’ and then those people respond yes, they actually think you should let a child drown in the river in front of you, stop being such a cuck.

Scott Alexander: I went on a walk and saw a child drowning in the river. I was going to jump in and save him, when someone reminded me that I should care about family members more than strangers. So I continued on my way and let him drown.

Marc Andreessen (QTing OP):

Carl of Claws: Lots of people drown pointlessly trying to help others who are drowning. He couldn’t have picked a worse example.

Scott Alexander: Hi Marc. I know the heatmap meme, but I think the study it comes from is saying something really interestingly different from the meme version. [goes on from there, for really a long time, in great detail]

Also Scott Alexander: [Another very long Twitter post about exactly what moral obligations he does and doesn’t believe in, in which he is Being Scott Alexander.]

I (uncharitably, but I think accurately) interpret Marc Andreessen as saying either or both of:

You shouldn’t save a child drowning in a river, because that means you don’t care enough about yourself and your family (or others closer to you).
America should spend no dollars on even existing super efficient lifesaving foreign aid like PEPFAR, even though the price is absurdly low and it pays for itself many times over in goodwill alone.

I’ve always hated the ‘drowning child in a river’ argument, because it was trying to equate that scenario with giving away all your money and not caring about your family more than other people. That’s a magician’s trick, hopefully people can see why.

But I never thought I’d see the response be ‘actually, that argument is wrong because you shouldn’t save the child.’

Bob’s Burgers Urbanist: The discourse surrounding PEPFAR in a nutshell

Roon: if you read between the lines it’s implied the foreigners are actually of negative value, worried about their population size, etc

Kaledic Riot: Made a very similar meme after some similar discourse a while ago.

This is, in general, an equal opportunity motte-and-bailey situation. There are also those who occupy the equal and opposite bailey, and assert that you do not have special obligations to those close to you, there is no distinction. Those people can be quite assertive and obnoxious about this. Now we deal with the new version instead.

Benjamin Hoffman offers arguments for why ethical veganism is wrong.

If you run a charity and you want to raise money, but I repeat myself, you need to convince people their contribution is making a tangible marginal difference. This is most extreme in Effective Altruist circles, where the thought is fully explicit, but it’s also true everywhere else. The goal must be at risk, the project must be in danger, and the best goal at risk of all, by far, is for you to be on the verge of shutting down.

Ben Landau-Taylor: Lightcone’s monthslong fundraiser meeting its $2m goal in the last 6 hours is the clearest illustration I’ve seen yet of the “by default, people give money to nonprofits if and only if the alternative is that the nonprofit will literally die” thesis.

And yes, it’s not coincidence, it’s explicitly because of multiple people calibrating their donations to make sure Lightcone reaches the “don’t die” threshold.

The silver lining is, “Our nonprofit is running out of money and will die without a big donation push” is less scary than it sounds, probably you’ll run around frantically and experience a ton of stress, then successfully raise barely enough to keep going.

The most common way out is selling prestige—naming buildings, listing donors in the program, plaques on the wall or on benches, etc.

Samo Burja: This is completely true. A little over one year ago @palladiummag nearly shut down. When I stepped in to save it I thought I should just quietly work very hard and have positive messaging only.

That worked OK, but I was wrong to not appeal to donors [donation link here].

…

I made the mistake of focusing on optimistic messaging because of my experience as a business exec

There you’re never losing even when you are.

Totally different motivations from people buying a product vs. people donating to a cause or project.

Patrick McKenzie: There are different parts of the curve. A lot of donations are to non-profits whose brand doth exceed their deployment ability, and who will basically drown in money given reasonable execution on the usual playbook. In other parts of curve: unceasing precarity.

Ben Landau-Taylor: My favorite case of that was when the Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (March of Dimes) was founded to fund polio treatments, raised like 10x more money than they could spend on treatment, went “idk I guess let’s fund research too”, and a couple decades later had a cure.

Oliver Habryka: It is really extremely frustrating.

It creates really weird brinksmanship dynamics where to successfully fundraise you have to decide how much you are willing to explode the organization if you don’t fundraise enough to make it worth running it.

I really wish people would give projects money proportional to how much good they think they do.

I have been surprised by how many people in grantmaking do not understand the considerations here. It caused me to update on bad faith and people being actively adversarial/CDT-ish for a while, but then I realized that people really haven’t thought about the consequences of this.

I endorse essentially all of this. I do think there are some circles that have people more explicitly and intentionally ‘playing chicken’ or other adversarial CDT-agent games with each other.

The times I was at SFF, I tried my best to mostly not do this, and instead mostly do what Oliver suggests – allocate the money where I thought organizations were doing the best work and not only funding on pain of death, although ‘you already have enough’ as to be a factor at some point.

If you’re not wondering what was up with that shootout with the border patrol in Vermont or a landlord in Vallejo, as reported in places like this, skip this section.

If you are wondering, probably skip it anyway.

If you didn’t do that, well, here are some links with information.

Aella offers us a ‘Zizian Murdercult summary, for those out of the loop.’ It has a timeline with some basic facts.

Here is a color-coded Zizian fact sheet, with links to additional resources.

This article was widely endorsed except for its sentence on decision theory, and provides facts: Suspects in killings of Vallejo witness, Vermont border patrol agent connected by marriage license, extreme ideology.

Here is a thread of people trying to address the decision theory issue, which is totally not ‘journalist from local paper has any chance of nailing this on the first try’ territory, best suggestion seems to be this one. If you want an in-this-context longer explanation, Eliezer has one. Or if the journalist has much longer, Eliezer wrote a guide to decision theory for ‘everyone else’ a while ago.

Here is another news article.

Here is a longread community alter about Ziz from 2023.

Here is Jessica Taylor offering some basic info and links.

Here is an interview from Curt Lind, the landlord the Zizians are accused of killing, months before his death.

Here is a thread where a vegan responds to these events by saying most people commit murder, calls those who disagree ‘speciesist’ and asks how they can ‘be so concerned about murder now?’ And being glad that the murder victim is dead, and several others essentially back this up, illustrating that the philosophical positions involved justify murder. And Tracing Woods explains that he does not feel especially confident in the amount of moral prohibition against murder involved in those who generate or defend such statements.

Here is an NBC news piece on Ophelia and Ziz and all of this.

Some reporters reached out to me to discuss this because I am on the board of CFAR. So I’m going to take this opportunity to tell everyone that I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of the events in question whatsoever.

Yes, it is on net a very good development is that you became able to say ‘that’s not very nice’ and be taken seriously, even if some people weaponized this previous ‘vibe shift’ in rather absurd ways. The bad news is that part of the latest ‘vibe shift’ is people trying to assert once again that ‘vibe makes right’ and you have to do what vibes say, except this time in the opposite direction. I’m probably going to say this again, but regardless: Fthat s.

Sarah Constantin: In the 2010s it began to seem more feasible to say “that’s not very nice” and be taken seriously.

I didn’t like every cultural trend of that era, but this one was positive.

In my experience this began to reverse around 2018/2019: a few years before everyone else noticed what we now call the “vibe shift.”

More people deciding “softness” was inadequate or unsatisfactory or dated.

Now, once again, we have to frame things from a position of strength. We have to game out what would make us look like losers or winners.

I’ve gone back and forth on how much to adapt to “playing the new game” vs refusing to succumb.

Zac Hill: I agree that this was a huge positive development. The people who dislike it because it ‘fails to signal strength’ or whatever are revealing their brazen insecurity, which is just a loud signal to the actually-strong people about who is exploitable.

Mostly I’m sick of people trying to use ‘vibe shifts’ to attack me with paradox spirits.

Money without talent and drive ends up not going much.

Misha: I’ve asked this before but what are all the bitcoin millionaires doing with their gainz? It seems like distributing lottery payouts to a bunch of weird nerds should result in more wacky ambitious megaprojects and stuff but afaict it hasn’t

Ben Landau-Taylor: Bitcoin wealth is the ultimate proof that talent is far more of a bottleneck than money. Even among people who do something interesting with crypto money, it’s all people like Buterin and Tallinn who were building cool projects *beforetheir windfall from magic internet money.

Misha: Also heir wealth is huge in this world.

Roko: I disagree, lack of money is a severe shit show.

Roko is correct as well, but the point stands. If you’re given a pile of money, and you are most people, you might live comfortably and enjoy nice things and raise a family. But if you lack talent and ambition, then no one will remember your name and you won’t change things. You will not do much of anything with the opportunity.

Which has opportunity cost, but is also pretty much fine, it’s just a missed opportunity to do better? If you come into a billion dollars via crypto, and you invest in the stock market and enjoy life, that’s not the worst way to invest it and move around real resources.

More people like Vitalik Buterin and Jaan Tallinn would be better, of course, but you don’t want to force it if it isn’t there, or the money will effectively get wasted or stolen.

If you want to do better, and you should, you will need to seek more agency.

Warning: Requires sufficient agency to bootstrap. But if you’ve got even a little…

Nick Cammarata: I hate how well asking myself ‘If I had 10x the agency I have what would I’ works.

Paul Graham: This may be the most inspiring sentence I’ve ever read. Which is interesting because it’s not phrased in the way things meant to be inspiring usually are.

Nick Cammarata: oh wow thanks paul. I accidentally learned it from sam at openai who presumably partially learned it from you. he’d just assume I have 10x the agency I do, and I’m like okay well he’s wrong but if he were right what would I do, and every time I tried that my agency went up.

Amjad Masad: What’s agency in this context? Is it like discipline and ambition?

Nick Cammarata: it was mostly creativity for me. Like instead of “I have a fear of X” being treated as a constant it’s how do you plan to work on that, what have you tried, and a strong belief it’s fixable. It involves discipline and ambition too, but in my case that wasn’t the bottleneck.

Sam Altman: Why not 100x?

Zvi Mowshowitz: Unneeded, it’s implied. Obviously a 10x more agentic person would ask themselves about a person 10x more agentic than they are, and then…

File this one under More Dakka. The trick works, because:

Figuring out what the high agency person would do requires a lot less agency than being that person or actually doing it.
Once you know what it is you would do, and you have a procedure that implies you need to do it, that greatly reduces the agency required to do it.

That’s not the only trick to having more agency. But it’s a big help.

I probably shouldn’t have written this section at all, but here we are.

A thread of Trump day one executive orders.

A theory from Benjamin Hoffman on various Trump executive order fiascos: That the administrative class feels compelled to do perverse interpretations of the (usually very poorly drafted) EOs. It also seems plausible that they felt the credible threat of being fired if they failed to interpret the EOs perversely or maximally expansively, leading to things like NIH scientists being unable to purchase supplies for studies and the pausing of PEPFAR, which looked like it was going to get unpaused but then it wasn’t, and people are dying and children are being infected with AIDS and even if you don’t care about that (you monster) we’re burning insane amounts of goodwill here and with USAID overall, and getting very little in return.

There is an endless stream of what sure look like ‘Control + F’ mistakes, where they fire people or cancel projects for containing a particular word or phrase, when in context the decision makes no sense. If they were to, let’s say, feed the relevant text into Grok 3, presumably it would have known better?

They talk about the need for more power and say it’s time to build then shut down solar and wind projects on government land.

Scott Alexander uses way too many words to support his obviously correct title that ‘Money Saved By Canceling Programs Does Not Immediately Flow To The Best Possible Alternative.’ I would assume at current margins you should presume money saved by the government goes unspent, slowing increase in the debt. Which isn’t the best use of funds, but isn’t the worst either, especially if AI isn’t transformational soon.

Remember that time JD Vance complained about Canada and the flow of drugs into this country and said he was ‘sick of being taken advantage of’? No, I do not think this and related tactics are, as Tyler Cowen put it, a strategy to shift our culture to be better by being more assertive and sending the right message, and I don’t think it is in the slightest way defensible in either case. Anyone who did try to defend them was being bad, and they should feel bad.

Meanwhile, I have to listen to Odd Lots podcasts where they’re worried DOGE will break our government’s payment systems, and watch various people proclaim they are going to ignore court orders or imply that they should, or that any judge who defies them should be removed from their post. Dilan Esper says no chance they can actually ignore court orders, Volokh Conspiracy’s Ilya Somin is more worried, others seem to be all over the map on this. Trump says he will obey court orders, which is evidence but doesn’t confidently mean he actually will. They’re speedrunning the faround section, straight to finding out.

Oh, and quoting (1970 movie version from Waterloo, although it’s in an 1838 book ascribing it to him too but whether it’s a real quote is beside the point) Napoleon Bonaparte’s justification for why he overthrew the French Republic (‘He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.’) and installed himself as Emperor. He seems to be saying he should be free to violate the law, very cool.

I very much do not like where any of this is going.

There’s at least some good news:

Election Wizard: NEW: President Trump has issued an executive order that eliminates government requirements for low-pressure showerheads and low-flow toilets.

Another piece of good news:

Dylan Matthews: My favorite part of the list of frozen programs OMB sent with their memo is that they just included every single tax expenditure.

Guys, we won, tax expenditures are officially spending now, everyone agrees.

Nobody:

OMB: There shall be NO MORE EXCLUSION FOR IMPUTED RENT

Well I didn’t say anything before, I’ve been busy, but now that you mention it…

Trump (and others in his administration, including Musk) are doing a lot of things. Most of them I won’t be covering. It’s not my department and it doesn’t fit my OODA loops and I don’t have the bandwidth. It probably would have been better to not mention any of this at all, really.

Again, that doesn’t mean the other things happening are not important, or not awful, or even that they are less important or less awful (or that everything else is awful). Even with the stuff I did mention here, I’m only scratching the surface.

Again, as the Daily Show used to put it, do not rely on us as your only source of news.

A fun ongoing New York City story is that yellow taxis have long gotten insurance from a boutique insurance company with very low rates. The problem is that the low rates aren’t enough to pay the insurance claims, so the insurer is insolvent. When NYC said actually you need to buy insurance from a company that is solvent, drivers panicked, and the city said fine, you can all keep buying ‘insurance’ below cost, from the company that can’t pay claims. Which presumably means the taxpayer is going to end up on the hook for the difference.

The government argues that seizing $50,000 from a small business doesn’t violate property rights because property isn’t money ‘for constitutional purposes’? What the hell?

UK tells Apple it has to create a backdoor in all its encryption on all customers, around the world, for use by the UK at any time, and it isn’t allowed to tell anyone. The UK seems to think that merely not offering encryption in the UK is insufficient – Apple must still put a global backdoor into all encryption so the UK can use it. Apple has said they will refuse. Google didn’t say whether it had received a similar order, but denied that they had put in any backdoor.

Something can be overwhelmingly popular in a Democracy, be very simple to implement, be endorsed by 100% of experts, and yet continue not to happen anyway.

Polling Canada: “Canada should quickly work to eliminate interprovincial trade barriers”

All:

Agree: 95%

Disagree: 5%

Agree Among (X) 2021 Voters:

BQ: 99%

LPC: 98%

NDP: 97%

CPC: 95%

Angus Reid / Feb 3, 2025 / n=1811 / Online

It’s so absurd. The Prime Minister wants them gone too. Of course, these trade barriers don’t actually make any more or less sense than trade barriers between the USA and Canada, but here it’s that much harder be confused about it.

There is a general tendency, closely related to people’s failure to understand Levels of Friction, to assume that all things must be either Allowed or Not Allowed. The instinct tells us that not only All Slopes are Slippery and that people eventually can Solve For the Equilibrium, which are approximately true, but that you will always very quickly end up at the bottom of them, which is usually false.

Thus a certain class of person keeps making the mistake illustrated here:

Mike Solana: Either the preemptive pardons are struck down, or we have just begun a new tradition in which every president, upon leaving office, preemptively pardons himself, his family, and everyone he has ever worked with. This creates a new class of Americans officially immune from the law.

That is certainly one way it could go, but it probably won’t. There’s lots of unprincipled situations like this where such behavior does not escalate. Civilization would not survive if every time someone successfully violated a norm or got away with something, the norm or law involved de facto went away.

Also, in this particular case, Biden paid a steep price to his reputation. History, assuming we are around to tell it, will remember him in large part for the way he chose to leave, and this will for a while be a headwind for Democrats at the ballot box, and state law still exists.

Similarly, there’s no reason that a certain amount of ignoring court orders has to mean that all court orders are meaningless, or various other ‘end of democracy’ scenarios. It can escalate very quickly, and may yet do so. Or it might not.

The broader point is more important, though, which is that an exception weakens a rule but in no way must break it. It can lead to that, but often it doesn’t, without any ‘good reason’ why.

The reasons people give you for things are often fake, in the sense of not being a True Objection. Needless to say, I deal with this a lot.

Emmett Shear: This is a good thread on noticing what is happening when people’s reasons do not seem internally consistent, and how to handle the situation.

Maeбичка (detail edited for readability): It took me a long time to realize that people simply make up false reasons and justifications for things that may or may not be true, entirely independent of those reasons.

I hate this but also have begun to understand why people (probably including me?) do it, and I am learning how to navigate it.

First, I want to note something crucial: the people giving false reasons, whether they are intelligent or not, often do not even realize the reasons are false. They are not “lying.” Half the time, or perhaps even more, the reasons are there to convince themselves just as much as other people.

A second crucial thing: “False” does not mean untrue. It could even be a valid logical reason for the thing. But it is not the instinctive reason you believe in or want the thing. It is divorced from your needs and reality. So here is what false reason-giving looks like:

>I cannot do A, because B.

>Oh, good news, B is not true! So you should be able to do A, right?

>Well… but also C and D. And also B is true because E and [blah blah blah].

It took me a long time, both with clever and unintelligent versions of this, to realize this person simply does not want to do A, period.

The unintelligent version of false reasons, where their logic does not make sense, is quite obvious, and it is how I discovered the phenomenon in the first place (recently!).

But false reason-giving can be very subtle.

In the sophisticated version, the words are logical!

but the emotions might not match, or seem disproportionate. If you are sensitive, you will notice something is off, or their words are not grounded.

This is extremely common. I would perhaps even claim 90% of modern communication is this type of nonsense.

People do not mean what they say, and do not say what they mean. Instead, they say whatever is strategically optimized to achieve the outcomes they want.

And of course they would! This is a reasonable strategy in a world where boundaries are disrespected and people are alienated from their desires!

If “I do not want to do A” is not respected on its own (by others or your own inner critic), of course you are going to come up with whatever reasons you can think of to justify it to other people or to yourself!

By alienated from desires I mean:

People especially do not respect the boundaries/desires of children—who then become uncertain of their own boundaries/desires, and then grow up having to justify them not only to others but also to themselves.

This is how someone would come to habitually give reasons they do not realize are divorced from their own truth.

Rationalists have noticed this tendency too, but they usually come to the wrong conclusion: “If there is no clear reason not to do A, then as a rational person, I should be fine with A.”

No! If you do not want to do A, that is important to account for, even if you do not know the reason.

Speaking of rationalists, a key thing about false reason-giving is that intelligent people are not immune. They are simply good enough to fool each other. Both unintelligent and intelligent people do it, but the latter may never be detected.

Likely entire civilizations have been built on the false reasons of intelligent people.

As an autist-adjacent, it’s hard for me not to get caught up in the logic games when talking to ppl putting up an obfuscating fog of fake logic.

I chase around people’s Bs and Cs and Ds, without taking a step back to realize…oh. All they want is for me to accept their A.

I love a tight rationale and can play ball that way, but I also have a deep respect for the secret emotional currents and needs that actually impel people. So it’s frustrating to me when people think they need to come up with bad fake bullshit logic to convince me!

An example of this btw is “I can’t come to your party bc I have to grocery shop” instead of “I find it weird you invited me but not my husband so I don’t wanna come.” Our culture all but requires people to bullshit one another this way

I REALLY appreciate it when people play it straight and put on the table how they actually feel!

I trust and respect it MORE if you say “I don’t have a reason, I just want to/it just feels right to me”!

I am still learning to step back from my annoyance that ppl feel the need to do this, and recognize why they are this way:

1) there are pushy boundary disrespecters (ESP if ur a kid) who wont leave u alone or respect your preferences unless u put up a big defensive bullshit wall

(“you HAVE to go kiss Aunt Susie, she gave you a present” => “I am Bad if I don’t do things including physical favors for ppl who give me things” => “if I say I have a cold, I can Not kiss her and still be Good”)

2) The dominant cosmology of our whole modern world IS Reasons and Logic, undergirded by the church Systems and Bureaucracy. So of COURSE people feel they need to provide Reasons and Logic when challenged.

[thread continues at length]

Yep, fake reasons are all over the place, including reasons we give to ourselves. They can be ‘good’ fake reasons, or even true partial reasons, that could plausibly have been the real reason or that even are real reasons but not full or sufficient explanations and thus not true objections and not cruxes. Or they can be ‘bad’ fake reasons, that are Obvious Nonsense or are straight up lies. Or anything in between.

Here are the most important notes that come to mind on what to do about this:

If you do not want to do [A], and cannot come up with a legible reason not to do [A], then that is indeed a rather strong reason to consider doing [A], but I agree it is not conclusive. You should look for illegible reasons, the real reasons you don’t want to do [A], and see if there’s something important there. Once you know why you have the desire not to do [A], then you can decide to ignore it if the reason is dumb.
If someone says [B], [C], [D] in turn, the conclusion is not always that they want [~A] period. It means that there is some unknown [X] that is the actual reason. Sometimes [X] could be overcome. Sometimes it couldn’t.
Sometimes they don’t know what [X] is and you have to figure it out.
Sometimes they do know what [X] is, but for social reasons they can’t tell you.
1. Sometimes they want you to figure it out but not tell them, and they will sometimes be dropping rather aggressive hints to tell you this. This can involve things you can’t say out loud, secret information, and so on.
2. Sometimes they want you to figure it out and maybe tell them, but they can’t tell you first, whereas if you go first it makes it okay.
3. Sometimes they want to essentially tell you ‘because of reasons’ and do not want you to figure it out.
4. Sometimes they simply can’t even and don’t have the time to explain, or even to figure out what they’re thinking in the first place. Can be highly valid.
5. They may also be trying to fool you, or they might not.
We’d indeed all be better off if we just said the real reason more often, people are way too afraid to do this.
“I don’t want to do that” is, in my book, a highly valid reason.
1. You can (literally!) say “I don’t want to do that because of reasons” to indicate that you do indeed have legible-to-you reasons to not do this, but that you are choosing not to share them for whatever reason.
2. You can also (literally!) say “I just don’t want to do that,” or “I’m not feeling that” or if you’re among true friends “I don’t want to do that not because of reasons.”
It’s important to tell kids real reasons whenever possible, and when it’s not possible to give them minimally fake reasons, even if that means being vague AF.
There are certain classes of reasons that are almost always fake. For example, when a VC says they won’t fund you, or a company does not hire you, unless they point to an actual obvious dealbreaker you should assume the reason is fake.

There were recently some rather epic fires in Los Angeles.

Many aspects of those fires don’t fall under this blog’s perview.

Others do.

So while these may not be the most important aspect of the fires, that’s also why the wise man does not rely on us as your only source of news.

One fun aspect of these fires is that State Farm specifically declined to renew fire insurance coverage in exactly the most impacted areas, because the insurance company thought there was too much fire risk and they weren’t allowed to raise prices.

That is some killer risk management, by a mutual insurance company that doesn’t have shareholders. For which of course various people are mad at State Farm rather than suddenly being very curious about the other areas where State Farm wasn’t interested in renewing coverage.

Unusual Whales: BREAKING: State Farm, one of the biggest insurers in California, canceled hundreds of homeowners’ policies last summer in Pacific Palisades—the same area which is now being ravaged by a devastating wildfire, per Newsweek.

Or (via Unfinished Owl):

Jakeup: translation: the state of California got 6 month’s advance warning from the best risk-assessment professionals that the risk of fire in this specific area is too high and proceeded to do nothing at all with this information

insurers want you to know this one weird trick to keeping people insured without raising premiums: mitigate the actual fucking risk

Kelsey Piper: Okay so the Eaton fire and Palisades fires were in areas where State Farm declined to review fire coverage. …what are the other areas in California where State Farm declined to renew fire coverage?

They did all of this fire risk prediction work for us, let’s use it!

By far the most realistic part of ancient Greek myths is the part where the prophets tell them exactly what’s going to happen, and they get really angry at them and ignore them, and then it comes true, and they get even madder and ignore them harder.

Ezra Klein: This seems like a good question to ask. If insurers are good at doing anything it’s modeling risk so they don’t lose too much money. We should take those models seriously.

Patrick McKenzie: You’ll notice that in society we have many competing classes of prophets. The ones who actually have to be right about the future are despised, while the ones who are never scored on that continue being invited to the nicest parties.

Not at the nicest parties: insurance underwriters, prediction market users, conversion optimization specialists.

At the nicest parties: politicians, journalists, and people who publish in fields where replication is a thing you ask only of your enemies.

“Really we seem to like science and scientists. Isn’t the plucky hero in a movie likely to be a scientist? Didn’t Einstein attend lots of parties?”

Power likes science to precisely the extent that science supports power. When it doesn’t, science is replaced with Science (TM).

It is a good thing that I actively prefer not to be at the nicest parties. Please don’t make me go to those parties.

Here’s why State Farm had to stop writing policies, because it turns out ‘because prices were capped and the expected value of the policies was negative’ isn’t quite a full explanation.

Or rather, that was the short version, here’s the long one.

Ian Gutterman: I see a lot of people reacting to State Farm’s decision to stop writing new home insurance in California.

But there seems to be a lot of confusion about their motives.

The last thing State Farm wants to do is give up business.

Here’s why State Farm felt they had to act.

State Farm is a mutual insurer which means it’s owned by its policyholders.

Mutuals do not prioritize profit. They make much lower returns than public insurers.

What do mutuals care about?

Maximizing customer count.

Keeping their agents happy.

Turning off new business upsets both groups. It creates a lot of problems.

Agents make more $ off new clients than renewals. They are angry at State Farm.

Market share is how corporate keeps score. Sacrificing it is bad for morale.

So why would they do it?

Because it would be financially reckless to keep growing given the CA regulatory problems.

CA is a very difficult place for insurers. It limits price increases to <7%/year and makes it difficult to drop customers who require more than that.

These restrictions are tolerable most of the time.

But in high inflation environments these limits quickly become unbearable.

If claims inflation grows 10%/yr, a 6.9% price cap means results get worse each year so a new customer will lose SF more and more money every year.

This is why State Farm had to walk away. It is not a flex or game of chicken. It’s a capitulation.

If they are already 25% below the needed price, then even 3 years of flat costs won’t let rates catch up.How did things get so bad? Higher construction costs (materials and labor shortages) and climate change (e.g. wildfires) in recent years made claims worse than expected.

At the same time, the Insurance Commissioner stopped approving any rate increases.

Why weren’t normal rate increases approved? 2022 was an election year and the Insurance Commissioner is elected in CA.

It’s easier to get re-elected campaigning on no price increases! Who would have imagined there would be future consequences?

Meanwhile State Farm recently reported first quarter results and they were likely the worst in company history. They paid out $1.30 on every $1 of insurance they sold nationwide!

That’s why you’re not seeing as many insurance commercials.

John Arnold: CA politicians wanted to keep the cost of homeownership from rising so they limited property insurance rate increases, driving private insurers out of the market and homeowners to the state’s insurer of last resort, which itself was not allowed to charge actuarially sound rates.

This sounds like State Farm got pushed well past what would be my breaking point. It was willing to write losing (minus expected value, or -EV) policies for a while, but when you’re already underwater and they say no rate increases at all? Okay. Bye.

And yes, if you have a state ‘insurer of last resort’ that moves in and charges artificially low rates in exactly the places private insurance won’t touch, I hope that you know what will happen after that, rather than this being me having some news. As in this 2024 post calling this a ‘ticking time bomb.’ Boom.

So what does the state plan to do about the fires? Why, of course.

Eytan Wallace: BREAKING: California Insurance Commissioner @RicardoLara4CA has issued a mandatory one-year moratorium that will prohibit insurance companies from enacting non-renewals and cancellations of coverage for home owners within the perimeters or adjoining ZIP Codes of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles County regardless of whether they suffered a loss. The moratorium will expire on Jan. 7, 2026.

The CA Dept. of Insurance may issue a supplemental bulletin if additional ZIP Codes are determined to be within or adjacent to a fire perimeter subject to this declared state of emergency for Los Angeles and Ventura counties.

Miles Jennings: In my 20’s, I ridiculed friends for liking Atlas Shrugged – any political philosophy can be justified if you use ridiculous characterizations of government actors with absurd approaches to problem solving.

In my 40’s, I’m going to spend a lot of time apologizing.

What will happen now after the fires?

Biden decided to send everyone involved a one-time $770 payment. We’re sorry we burned down your village? Yishan says this reflect the government being unable to provide basic relief supplies and imagining private entities doing it, but that seems fine? As long as you don’t then ‘ban price gouging.’

People will try to rebuild their homes.

I say try, not because they won’t have the money, or because we don’t know how to do that. I say try because there will be a shortage of Officially Approved Labor to rebuild with especially with crackdowns on immigration, and because building houses is not something taken kindly to in Los Angeles.

I also say try because:

Gavin Newsom (Governor of California): NEW: Just issued an Executive Order that will allow victims of the SoCal fires to not get caught up in bureaucratic red tape and quickly rebuild their homes.

We are also extending key price gouging protections to help make rebuilding more affordable.

Oh, price gouging protections. So much for supply.

Samuel Hammond: “Extend protections against price gouging on building materials, storage services, construction, and other essential goods and services to January 7, 2026, in Los Angeles County.”

i.e. create an artificial shortage

Well, at least we get rid of some of the extra stupid rules, that part will help. In other cases, of course, they’re still effectively blocking almost all home construction with that same ‘bureaucratic red tape’ that he seemingly can suspend at any time.

Eli Dourado: Putting aside the urge to dunk on Newsom, I do think this is a great precedent.

Any time we want to do anything with any urgency, whether it is rebuilding from fires or building a border wall, we waive a bunch of laws and regulations.

Well hang on, those laws and regulations must not actually be that important, right? And they slow everything down? So can get rid of them and replace them with rules that don’t slow things down?

Many people are asking these questions, love to see it.

Kelsey Piper: Wait a second, could he suspend all CEQA and permit requirements by executive order at any time (after declaring emergency)? I’m not totally sure the governor should have that power but if he does – set the state free, Governor!

Declare a cost of living emergency or a wildfire vulnerability emergency or whatever and make it legal to build any density with streamlined permits in every urban low-risk area! Be remembered as the governor who saved California with a one page EO!!

Would it hold up in court? Maybe not, but you have to try.

Alternative suggestions anyone? How’s it look?

Nah.

And because, if your home is no longer ‘conforming to applicable zoning’ you will need to fix that and then go through the entire permit process over again:

This is of course a great opportunity to upzone that area and build more. Not that they have any intention of taking advantage of that.

Gavin Newsom: This [claim that they are working with developers to change zoning in burn areas to allow pass apartments] is not true.

Alex Tabarrok: Of course it is not true because upzoning would be a smart thing to do. The increased wealth would help to pay for rebuilding.

I did a fact check of Scott Adams claims here, and so many of them were false or unsupported I deleted the analysis – no, it doesn’t cost more to build a new house than it is worth, especially when you have to work so hard to get permission to build it. But yes, we should expect a labor shortage, and for permitting to delay things by 2+ years when you can’t rebuild exactly the same house within code and get a waiver, and 5+ years in at least 10% of cases. And the property tax resets could get ugly due to previous abuse of Proposition 13, although I won’t shed a tear there.

StewMama: Only 25% of the houses burned in Malibu in 2018 Woolsey fire have been rebuilt [as of 2023].

Elon Musk speculates that this ‘might finally spell doom for the Coastal Commission,’ haha no that is not how any of this works, this is California.

If you’d rather sell your home for what the market will bear right now?

Oh, we cannot have that.

Governor Newsom: Today, I signed an executive order prohibiting greedy land developers from ripping off LA wildfire victims with unsolicited, undervalued offers to buy their destroyed property.

Make no mistake — this is a prosecutable crime.

Aella: This is really jaw dropping stupidity.

Ronny Fernandez: I am genuinely interested in breaking this law. If you or anybody you know would be interested in selling me any parcel that burned down in LA for $500, please let me know.

Emmett Shear: This order is insanity. The LA fires and our governments response has radicalized me against our current government in CA in a whole new way.

Kendric Tonn: “Below market value” seems like such a weird guideline when regarding land in neighborhoods the character of which has been permanently altered located in political environments about which new information and circumstances have recently arisen.

I mean, I get two or three calls every day from subcontinental call centers from people, I suspect, mostly hoping I’m senile or desperate enough to sell below market value, and I want them all drone struck, I get it.

But IDK man, you gotta find that market value somewhere, and I kind of suspect there’s a whole lot of finding out that has to happen in some of these places.

Bitzuist: It’s a scene from atlas shrugged. Gov officials virtue signaling but not actually helping anyone.

Emmett Shear: Ayn Rand is, tragically, wrong about her heroes but totally on point about her villains.

Dale Cloudman: Atlas Shrugged was not hyperbole.

CA: made it illegal to raise fire insurance rates. Insurers pulled out. CA offers their own but it is mismanaged and can’t cover the risk.

After a huge fire (caused by ca making it illegal to properly manage their forests), they made it illegal for insurers to pull out, insurers have to renew policies at old (unprofitable) rates for a year

Now with your home burnt down and no money to rebuild it, CA has made it illegal to sell your land for a price they deem is too low. Incredible.

I believe that technically, what you can’t do is make an offer that is too low. You can accept whatever offer you want? So the market can still function, it’s just weird.

And indeed, I think it would be fine to say that you need to first get an IoI (indicator of interest) from the potential seller fully unprompted, to avoid what Kendric describes above. It’s somewhat tricky to get it right, but seems doable.

Noah Smith suggests less deciding which particular carbon emissions or other scapegoats to try and blame this on and more preparing for future fires, pointing out some of the lowest hanging of fruit on that.

If we are playing the blame game, one thing to blame is that under CEQA, the California Bonus Double NEPA, wildfire mitigation projects must undergo years-long environmental reviews, often involving litigation.

Forester Mike: I have done CEQA reviews for forest management projects in CA. They are completely insane.

One time we had a simple fuels reduction project that we started review for in 2022. Goal was to begin logging in summer 2023. Permit rejections and re-reviews led us to need to cut the project area in IN HALF. Last i checked in mid-2024 not a single acre had been worked.

It should be mind numbingly obvious that wildfire mitigation projects should be immune from CEQA and NEPA review. But forget it, kid. It’s California.

And we’ve saved the stupidest executive order for last.

Chris Elmendorf: Kudos to @dillonliam for covering the unintended but entirely foreseeable consequences of CA’s anti-price-gouging law for L.A. fire victims.

Liam Dillon:

Property owners are making fewer properties available for rent because of a state law barring new listings from charging more than $10,000 a month during the state of emergency, real estate agents and brokers say.

The price cap is below what L.A.’s pre-wildfire market would bear in many expensive neighborhoods where wealthy displaced residents may be willing to relocate.

The circumstances may be adding to the squeeze wildfire victims are facing while searching for replacement housing.

Josh Barro: Simply banning rental listings in LA for over $10,000 a month is an insane policy. There are a lot of rich people whose houses burned down for whom that would be a normal rental price, even before price effects from a shortage.

Jeff: A mortgage at today’s rates for the median valued home in Pacific Palisades would run at almost exactly double that cap, or just over $20k, assuming 20% down payment and 7% interest rates.

Well, yes, obviously. There will be a non-zero number of places that are slightly above $10k, that will now rent for $10k plus bribes or similar. But then there are lots of places that were already well over $10k, which will sit idle during the emergency, which in turn drives up the prices of everything else during that time, and means a lot of people are forced out entirely. Oh well. Who could have seen that coming?

Finally, here’s the ultimate Gavin Newsom Tweet, except for its lack of restrictions on prices.

Gavin Newsom: I remember the guy who called me Newscum in 7th grade. I can handle that. This isn’t about me. It’s about the people we represent — and the aid they deserve.

Andrew Critch: Respectfully, Governor Newsom, if you say “I/me” four times in a tweet, you are not helping your case that “this” isn’t about you. I’m sure you are working very hard right now to protect Californians, but want to share that your messaging about yourself is not landing well.

(This message is about me, and how your message landed, with me.)

Vitalik Buterin is right. You can just go back to 2013-era morality where free speech, starting companies and making good products, democracy and cosmopolitan humanitarian values are good, and monopolies, vendor lock-in, greed and oppressing people are bad.

Eric Wall: Human morality peaked in the late 1980s as represented by Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation.

All the evolutions of morality since then, on all topics from inclusivity to tolerance, gender, right-leaning/left-leaning have been degradations since that perfection.

There are obvious issues with Picardian morality, for example it thinks it’s good that we age and die, it has big scope sensitivity issues and it doesn’t know how to handle realistic AGI or various other utility monsters or other inconvenient scenarios (obvious examples: The Borg, if you don’t have Q or plot armor on your side, but it’s a very broad category, and if they’d successfully figured out how to mass produce Data all philosophical and practical hell would have broken loose). One could say it doesn’t work out of distribution, and it also isn’t that competitive in a future universe where the Federation keeps getting almost wiped out, which doesn’t seem great. But yeah, pretty great.

Important words of wisdom:

Paul Graham: When you have good friends over for dinner, you can just eat what and where you normally do. You don’t have to shave or change your clothes or cook different food, or eat in the dining room.

The more laborious way we entertain people we don’t know as well is not for their sake. It’s because we worry they’d be shocked if they saw how we actually live. But only 1% of them would be; 99% of them live the same way, when no one’s looking.

Maybe the reason you have to be formal when entertaining strangers is that you know they assume any such dinner is much more formal than everyday life. So if you just gave them everyday life, they’d assume in actual everyday life you ate dinner out of a trough.

That’s exactly right. You present a better face partly because it’s nice, partly because people adjust expectations for the fact that you are likely putting on a better face.

The worst part about this is it leads to far too few gatherings. If you were to have friends over and act otherwise almost totally normally, that would be a clear win. But you think ‘if I did that I’d have to do all this work and clean up and so on.’ So you don’t invite them, and everyone loses.

You can have a fast food burger meal for the low, low cost of 20 minutes of your life, says Bryan Johnson. The obvious clarification question is ‘relative to what other choice?’

Let’s say it is true. If that’s the price of eating unhealthy, I expect most people would say screw it, that’s really not very much time. If people thought like this, I bet they’d eat a lot more fast food burgers, not less. The reason that’s a mistake isn’t that people care that much about the 20 minutes. It’s that they also spend what time they still have in worse shape and feeling worse. That’s the pitch that will far more often work.

On regret, I’ve found my instincts on ‘will I inherently regret not doing this’ are spot on and most people’s seem to be as well:

David Holz: We tend to regret the things we don’t do *muchmore than the things we actually end up doing – so you should always lean towards doing slightly more “regrettable things.”

That’s distinct from predicting a good result or knowing what we will regret if we actually do it, which we are far less good at doing. But we’re very good at knowing when we’re in a ‘if I don’t try I’ll regret it’ situation, especially in scenarios where if you don’t do it, you never know how it would have gone.

I do think you should give this a lot of weight when you get a strong ‘I will regret [X] or ~[X] but not the other one’ instinct, especially if you’ve trained your predictions of this on results.

A similar lesson is to put substantial weight on ‘story value.’

The classic form of this mistake is to avoid taking a risk, but to actually then feel worse than if you’d taken the risk and failed. The fully classic version, of course, is asking someone out or saying yes to someone else, or applying for a job, where even if you get rejected it’s better than always wondering. And you never know.

Old popular Neel Nanda post on making close friends. It’s full of obvious things like actually talking to people about things you both find exciting, filtering quickly, asking what you want, following up and so on, that are obvious when you say them but that you definitely weren’t doing, or weren’t doing enough (see More Dakka). Consciously having Friendship Building Questions in your queue is the most non-obvious thing here, and seems wise, but am I going to actually do it?

If you pay attention to details, it’s easy to sense which people are happy to be there. I think this is true when no one is working hard to fool you. But then Defender further claims it’s ‘near impossible to fake being genuine,’ and points to the fact that great actors try to really believe they are a given role. But people can do that performatively in real life too, to act as if, and yes I think it often remains fake.

A very good theory of different types of exhaustion needing different types of rest.

Bayesian Asian: I was confused how to ‘rest’ in a way that seems distinct from vegetating (TV, games, scrolling) or working (art, code).

I grilled my friends about how they rest, and came up with a tentative list of different *typesof exhaustion, which need separate solutions.

Procrastination-guilt => work

Choice exhaustion => TV marathon, social event, flow state (gaming, coding, or art)

Loneliness => socialize, LLMs, metta meditation

Physically tense/inert => exercise, bath

Thoughts racing => TV, scroll, concentration meditation

(2 miiight be the same as 5?)

usually my problem is 1, so I feel more rested the more I work

one Classically Restful Activity that usually feels anti-restful for me is going on a walk. it works when my issue is 4, but usually 4 is far behind 1 and 5, which walking exacerbates

I didn’t list reading anywhere above because it’s too intellectually and emotionally varied

challenging but worthwhile material addresses guilt-of-not-doing, and maybe thoughts-racing. Reading certain authors addresses loneliness-tired. Absorbing books address choice-exhaustion

I’m usually ‘tired’ because I’m fighting myself all the time over my todo list. so I’ve always associated ‘rest’ with ‘flow state’. it feels good, and when I exit it, the “you never do anything” guilt-buzz is gone. yay! rested!

…but I’m 4 or 5 tired, which idk how to deal with

because I just HAD a restful 5 hour coding or painting session. what do you mean you need more, different rest

(I mean, in practice I scroll social media uncontrollably for an hour. so my routine works. but I didn’t have an underlying model of what problem this was solving)

after work I’m out of energy (I’m going to mess up the painting/code if I try to do more) but I’m still keyed up and my thoughts are racing, so I need to turn off my brain and make something else be in control of my mental narration for a while

The principle seems strongly correct. You don’t need generic ‘rest’ or ‘to relax’ or ‘a vacation.’ You need to address whatever your particular issue is, however you in particular address it. I don’t match up with every solution proposed here, but most of them make sense.

Also, there’s a type #6, which is actual physical exhaustion? Where the solution is, as you would expect physical rest.

And I think type #7 also exists, a mental exhaustion where you’re just out of thoughts. Your thoughts aren’t racing, the issue isn’t choices, it’s just you’re out of compute. For me #4 solutions or a walk work reasonably here, but so does TV or a movie.

Walking in particular works well for me in many cases. It can help with #4, but I actually really like it for #2 or #5 or #7 too, you pick some music (or a podcast if you have a relaxing one available in context) and you go. And if it’s choice exhaustion or being out of thoughts, I have a standard ‘The Hits’ list of 400+ songs and I just randomly spin to some position in it.

I have other random notes, but I’ll wrap up there.

Bryan Johnson, whose plan is Don’t Die, is hiring for Blueprint, or at least he was, and offers an update.

The ‘five-star controversy for the three-star film’ that is Emilia Perez. The real problem with Emilia Perez is that it simply is not very good, as audiences agreed. They made an awards show darling of it anyway for obvious cultural reasons, but now even those cultural reasons have turned against it, it’s on the ‘wrong side of history.’ The best part is remembering that we used to have to care about such things, and now we get to sit back and laugh at them, and hopefully have a better film win the Oscars.

My other observation for the month is that I clearly don’t rewatch movies often enough versus seeing new ones – when I do revisit the average experience is miles better. Thus there’s more 5-star ratings on my Letterboxd than the bell curve would suggest, but it’s all selection effects. That has diminishing returns, but I’m nowhere near them. Consider whether you are making the same mistake.

Good news, we also have at least a test flight of a supersonic jet!

The press was absurdly uninterested in the flying of a supersonic jet. NYT and WaPo both reportedly told Boom to come back when they were actually flying passengers. This seems like rather bigger news than that?

Paul Graham: What most people don’t realize about Boom is that if they ship an airliner at all, every airline that flies internationally will have to buy it or be converted against their will into a discount airline, flying tourists subsonically.

Ticket prices will be about the same as current business class prices on international flights. How can this be? Because the flights are so much shorter that you don’t need lay-flat beds. You can use the seat pitch of domestic first class.

If business class travelers have a choice of a 10 hour subsonic flight from Seattle to Tokyo or a 5 hour supersonic one at the same price, they’re all going to take the 5 hour one. Which means all the business class travelers switch to supersonic.

Patrick McKenzie: Also think that many business travelers would switch loyalty programs over it, which is a threat out of proportion to the number of transoceanic flights. It might be the only product innovation in decades that has threatened that.

That same price, from the business flyer’s perspective, is of course $0. And in a world where many people charge hundreds to thousands of dollars an hour for their time, if you can cut 5 hours off a flight, ‘the sky’s the limit’ is a reasonable description of the ticket prices you can charge for business flights booked on short notice.

Supersonic travel would also highlight the need to lighten airport security and on-ground transit times, as the flight itself would be a much smaller portion of time spent.

The only problem? We banned supersonic flight. We have to make it legal. Elon Musk has promised to fix it. Manifold says 26% chance this gets done within the year.

Michelle Fang: I know a Waymo hate to see this one coming.

And here’s a report on Waymo in Phoenix, with many starting to use it as their go-to taxi service, with the biggest barrier that Waymos obey the law and thus are modestly slower than Ubers. And the most killer app of all is perhaps that society will let children take a Waymo alone?

Ryan Johnson: Parents now comfortable sending their kids to school and elsewhere. This is a major vibe shift. Early on, women solo riders were the loudest champions. But parents are overtaking that. Effusive praise e.g. “I have my freedom back!”

This is huge. Many parents have to effectively structure their entire non-work lives around providing transportation to children, because our society has gone completely bonkers and if you let children do on their own what they used to do all the time, the cops might get called. This fixes some of that.

In the medium-term this will be highly pro-natalist, especially if the threshold age becomes relatively young.

My understanding is that the current limiting factor on Waymo is purely their ability to manufacture the cars. Right now all of this is coming from only about 700 cars. Alas, they seem uninterested in providing details to allow us to chart their growth.

The ACC is considering engaging in hardcore shenanigans with its title game to try and secure more spots in the College Football Playoff. Possibilities include having the regular season winner skip the game since they’d probably be in anyway, to try and secure a second slot. That would be an overtly hostile act and also ruin the actual conference season and championship, and I would presume the committee and also everyone else would do its best to retaliate.

Their other suggestion, however, is to have a semifinal the week before the championship game. That isn’t only not shenanigans, that’s awesome, and we should be all for it. Conference semifinals seem great, especially now that fully deserving teams who lost in the semis could be in the playoff anyway.

It’s weird to see a football player get a tattoo of Matthew 23: 12 (Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted) and then point to it after a touchdown on national television. What are you trying to say?

The Mets seem to have won the hot stove league, as they resign Pete Alonso to a two-year, $54 million deal. We were always talking price, and we successfully held out for the right one. OMG, LFGM. Nixon says we’re still one bat and two relievers short.

Meanwhile, Juan Soto has the goal of ‘stay exactly the same,’ sounds good to me.

So yeah, what the hell was up with that Doncic trade to the Lakers for Davis? Nate Silver treats it as an example of a lemon market, where there’s clearly something wrong with Doncic, and the Mavericks had a reason they didn’t want to keep him on a ax contract.

Tyler Cowen instead treats this as evidence the economics of basketball have changed, noting that Doncic was causing trouble and not fun to be around, and the whole point of choosing to own an NBA team is that it is fun. There is something to that, but you know what else isn’t fun? When the entire fanbase predictably turns against you, the owner.

Seth Burn has a different proposal. Texas isn’t playing ball with the Mavericks. Perhaps this was a bribe to the Lakers and the NBA so they would greenlight a move to Las Vegas? Thus the word coming down to focus all talk on the Lakers. Seth also notes that this makes Luka ineligible for a Supermax contract, which costs him $116 million dollars, which goes right into cap space. As Seth says, given that incentive, you’d think every otherwise supermax-eligible player would get traded – if everyone knows that’s why you’re doing it, you should be able to put together a win-win deal. However, this very obviously wasn’t that, and ownership signed off for some reason.

Ondrej Strasky concludes from Artifact’s failure that if you can’t teach the game in five minutes, you’re doomed. [Edit: I don’t think this is the primary reason Artifact failed, and I think Brandon in the comments, who was the lead on the game, is much closer to what actually happened, which was that there were insufficient Outer Loops.]

I asked about DoTA and LoL, and was told that people consider the ‘click random buttons’ version to be ‘learned the game’ so it’s fine, and the other argument was path dependence, if you have existing buy-in you can push through it. Whereas I didn’t feel like the five minute explanation let me have fun or meaningfully play.

I think there’s certainly a big weight on ‘you’re having fun within five minutes’ but clearly it’s not strictly necessary, given Magic: The Gathering, and also many single player games. Anyone remember Final Fantasy X? Great game once you get into it but you literally don’t make a decision for the first 40 minutes. Many such cases. But I suppose during those 40 minutes you aren’t overwhelmed or confused either. Maybe that’s the actual lesson, that you can’t have people confronting the complexity for more than five minutes in a way they notice? And people who don’t want it can just durdle in the dark for a while and maybe restart later.

Elon Musk has now formally confessed to cheating in Path of Exile 2. And then he bragged about the character he was cheating with anyway. Pathetic.

My journey with Path of Exile 2 is that it’s been some relaxing ‘more Path of Exile’ but that it has also been frustrating. The boss fights are not easy, and they often take a long time, and several feel like DPS checks. And the grinds in areas are very large, even relatively early. So overall, it’s… fine, I guess.

Original Final Fantasy programmer Nasir Gebelli says writing his legendary code “was pretty simple” and it could even be better. Good times, man.

It seems only 40% of players of Civilization VI ever finished even one game, hence the emphasis in Civilization VII on individual ages. They are talking as if it involves catch-up mechanics, which I’m mostly not a fan of in these contexts. Let it snowball, start another game and so on.

I also agree that the threshold win conditions tend to take the fun out of the endgame. You’re building a civilization, and then you steadily pivot into sacrificing everything in pursuit of some specific goal, everything else doesn’t matter. Or you’re going about your business and suddenly ‘oh Babylon got X culture points, game’s over, you lose.’

While this is looking to be in some senses highly realistic as we speedrun in real life towards the real scientific victory condition of AGI (well probably everyone-loses condition, given how we’re going about it) and most board games have the same issue, I’d like to minimize this and keep everything mattering as long as possible, and also avoid invisible-to-you events you don’t interact with like ‘Babylon got X culture points’ effectively being like someone else built ASI and converted you with nanobots.

Steam emphasizes its ban on in-game ads, including optional ads that provide rewards. You can still have in-universe ads and such. Good for Valve.

You’re ngmi if you don’t realize that this is indeed hilarious:

Would it have better historic event if the vote said yes, or if it said no?

The vote said yes, with a 10% gap in value for approval. This likely highlights an issue with Futarchy: It’s using Evidential Decision Theory (EDT). The 10% gap is mostly because the DAO that approves this is the superior DAO.

Oh, sure they can. Try them.

We have an announcement.

Bernard Van Dyke: i fw all types of music, they callin me polyjammerous

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Monthly Roundup #27: February 2025 Read More »

Moon rocks reveal hidden lunar history

lunar exploration, moon rocks, Science, syndication, the Moon / DJ Henderson / February 17, 2025

That mission, and the 2020 Chang’e-5 robotic mission before it, are the first to return lunar rocks to Earth since the 1970s. Together they are building on what scientists learned from Apollo-era missions, helping to unravel mysteries about how the Moon was formed and why it looks the way it does today, and providing clues about our solar system’s history.

But big puzzles remain, such as why the far side of the Moon—the half that always faces away from Earth—is so radically different from the near side. And what is behind the surprising finding that lunar volcanoes may have been active much more recently than previously thought? “The more we look at the Moon, the more we’ve discovered—and the more we realize how little we know,” says Clive R. Neal, a geologist at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in lunar exploration.

China’s 2024 Chang’e-6 robotic lander mission brought more than four pounds of rocks from the far side of the Moon back to Earth. Credit: CNSA / CAS

With NASA planning to send astronauts back to the Moon’s surface in 2027 for the first time since 1972, geologists are excited about what rocks they might find there and the scientific secrets those samples could reveal—along with what resources could be mined for a future Moon base, or for renewable energy back home on Earth.

Origin story

The samples brought home from the Moon in the 1970s by the Apollo missions and the Soviet Union’s Luna missions cleared up quite a lot about the Moon’s history. Because the lunar samples shared strong similarities with Earth rocks, this added weight to the idea that the Moon was formed when a Mars-sized object called Theia collided with the proto-Earth roughly 4.5 billion years ago.

Debris from the impact was thrown into orbit around Earth and eventually coalesced into the Moon. In its early days, the Moon was entirely molten. As the magma ocean cooled over hundreds of millions of years, the Moon formed a crust and a mantle below. Giant pools of lava filled impact craters and settled into the lunar lowlands, or maria (Latin for “seas”), while highlands and volcanic domes loomed above them. Eventually, the volcanism died out.

Without plate tectonics or weather, the only things left to alter the Moon’s cold, dead surface were meteorites. A lot of the Apollo-era samples were found to have formed from the heat and pressure of impacts around 3.9 billion years ago, suggesting that they were the result of a short period of intense pummeling by space rocks called the Late Heavy Bombardment.

But research since the 1970s has refined or changed this picture. Higher-resolution orbital images have revealed plenty of large impact craters that seem far older than 3.9 billion years, for example. And meteorites found on Earth, thought to have been ejected from various areas of the Moon during big impacts, have been found to span a huge range of ages.

All this work together suggests that the asteroid bombardment didn’t happen in one dramatic spike but rather over an extended period lasting from perhaps 4.2 billion to 3.4 billion years ago. In this scenario, the Apollo samples dated to 3.9 billion years likely all came from just one huge impact that spewed rock over a very wide area that happened to include the Apollo-era landing sites.

The Moon: Dead or alive

Greater mysteries surround volcanism on the Moon. “The canonical thing I learned in school was that the Moon had been geologically dead for billions of years,” says Samuel Lawrence, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The long-held theory was that a small body like the Moon should have lost its heat to space relatively quickly—and a frigid, extinguished Moon shouldn’t have widespread volcanic activity. Apollo-era samples suggested that most of this volcanism stopped 3 billion years ago or earlier, supporting the theory. But research over the past two decades has overturned that view.

This geologic map of the Moon released in 2022 by China is the most detailed global map yet published and includes information gleaned from the 2020 Chang’e-5 mission. Credit: J. JI ET AL / THE 1:2,500,000-SCALE GEOLOGIC MAP OF THE GLOBAL MOON 2022.

In 2014, Lawrence and colleagues posited that some patches of irregular terrain in the middle of the dark plains, or mare, spotted by the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter were the result of volcanism that kept going until less than 100 million years ago. “That is totally, totally surprising,” says cosmochemist Qing-Zhu Yin of the University of California, Davis.

The latest sample-return missions added more concrete evidence for recent volcanism. In 2020, the Chang’e-5 robotic mission landed in Oceanus Procellarum (the Ocean of Storms) — a spot picked in part because it looked geologically young given how few craters had accumulated there. Sure enough, the volcanic rocks brought home by that mission were found to be 2 billion years old, the youngest ever retrieved from the Moon. “That was big news,” says planetary geoscientist Jim Head of Brown University, who worked on NASA’s Apollo missions.

On top of this, when researchers trawled through thousands of glass beads found in the Chang’e-5 soil samples, most of which are thought to have been created by impacts, they identified three that were volcanic—and only 120 million years old. This finding was published just last year and still needs to be verified, but if such recent dates hold up, they suggest that the Moon might still be capable of producing deep magma even today, Yin says.

All this indicates that the Moon might not have cooled as fast as everyone thought it did. It’s also possible that some of the younger volcanism could have been powered by radioactive elements underground, which can generate enough heat to form magma and are known to be prevalent in certain patches of the Moon. This could explain the 120-million-year-old volcanic glass beads, for example. But not all the early volcanism can be explained this way: The Chang’e-5 volcanic rocks, along with some 2.8-billion-year-old volcanic rock brought back from the far side by Chang’e-6, came from source rocks not enriched with these elements.

“It throws up more questions than it answers,” Neal says. “It’s job security for people like me — we now have new questions to address.”

Lunar exploration ahead

Untangling these mysteries is challenging with so much of the Moon unexplored: While about 850 pounds of Moon rock and soil have now been brought back to Earth, it has all been from just a handful of sites.

Chang’e-6 expanded this picture by bringing back the first samples from the Moon’s far side, taken from the South Pole-Aitken Basin, the satellite’s largest, deepest and oldest impact crater. Researchers are keen to use these samples to start determining why the far side is so dramatically different from the near side. The questions that remain unanswered are why the far side has a thicker crust and is nearly devoid of mare from ancient lava oceans when compared with the near side.

NASA’s Artemis III mission, planned for 2027 (though that could change), aims to break more new ground by landing astronauts near the Moon’s south pole—in a spot that is more representative of the Moon’s typical geology than the Apollo sites—and bring home a bonanza of 150 to 180 pounds of samples.

This site should provide fresh geological insights, along with more information about lunar water. In 2018, scientists analyzing orbital mapping data confirmed that there is water ice at the poles—but in what form no one yet knows. “Is it frost on the surface? Is it discrete patches underneath the surface? Is it absorbed onto mineral grains? Is it baked into the regolith like cement?” says NASA’s Juliane Gross, who is helping to develop the plans for lunar sample collection and curation for the Artemis science team. “We don’t know.”

What the Artemis astronauts find could inform ongoing projects spearheaded by China and the United States to establish permanent bases on the Moon, which could benefit from the south pole’s water. “That’s stuff you can breathe, that’s stuff you can drink, it’s rocket fuel,” Lawrence says.

Lunar quarry

In addition to water ice, other potentially mineable resources on the Moon have garnered attention, particularly helium-3. This stable isotope of helium is far more plentiful on the Moon than on Earth and could be an ideal fuel for nuclear fusion (if physicists can get that process to work). Commercial enterprises seeking to mine the Moon have popped up, including Seattle-based Interlune, which plans to bring helium-3 back to Earth in the 2030s, followed by other resources such as rare earth elements needed for technologies like batteries. But when lunar mining will be a reality—considering the logistics, the economics and the legal concerns—is an open question, Lawrence says.

While some people find the idea of mining the pristine Moon distasteful, there could be side benefits for mining on Earth, Neal says. With polar temperatures around -230° C (-380° F), lunar mining would have to be done without fluids. Developing the technologies needed for fluid-free mining could mitigate environmental concerns about wastewater and tailing fluids from mining on Earth. “Just think how you could revolutionize mining on this planet,” he says.

But first, researchers need to simply find out more about the Moon, its history, its geology and the possibility of extracting resources—and that requires up-close exploration, which is sure to bring more surprises. “Once you’re on the ground, you’re like, oh … what’s this?” Gross says. She’s hoping the astronauts can bring home a large haul. “The more they return, the more we can do.”

This article originally appeared in Knowable Magazine, a nonprofit publication dedicated to making scientific knowledge accessible to all. Sign up for Knowable Magazine’s newsletter.

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After 20% range reduction, I’m waiting for Jaguar to buy my car back

BEV, Cars, EV, I-Pace, jaguar, Jaguar I-Pace, recall / DJ Henderson / February 16, 2025

The waiting is the hardest part

Given that we know our I-Paces are doomed, owners really want to put this episode behind us and move on to new cars. But Jaguar has us in an indefinite holding pattern, and it’s frustrating.

In December, a Jaguar representative told me that a process specialist would reach out “within in the next few weeks to come to a final resolution.”

“Welp, here we are… Jan 2nd, and nothing from JLR on the buyback process or timeline,” wrote user copyNothing on the I-Pace Forum. “I hope this isn’t indicative of how things will proceed, but I’m not holding my breath that things will be easy.”

I’m not holding my breath, either. My last four emails to Jaguar—December 16, January 7, January 23, and February 12—all got the same reply: hang tight. “We do not have a current time frame for when a process specialist will reach out to you, but rest assured one will be following up with you shortly,” a Jaguar Land Rover case manager told me in an email.

A few I-Pace owners in California, which has the nation’s toughest lemon law, have reported progress with the repurchase. In the middle of January, I-Pace Forum user pan+kro posted that their buyback had been approved by JLR, and they expected to get around $38,000 for the car. This leads to another burning question.

How much for this gently used I-Pace?

The process would be less nerve-wracking if we had an idea of what Jaguar would offer to buy the cars back. As with every car, each day makes the I-Pace worth a fraction less than it was the day before—after all, each time you drive your car, it depreciates in value. But mileage isn’t the only factor in determining the value of a used car.

I headed over to Edmunds.com and discovered that my I-Pace would fetch $24,428 in a private sale. Ouch.

To determine a used car’s value, Edmunds takes historical data, dealer transactions, consumer feedback, and depreciation trends into account, along with mileage. Unfortunately for me, none of those data points work in the favor of I-Pace owners. Indeed, the battery defect is a major culprit in depressing the value of 2019 I-Paces. I asked Edmunds how Jaguar might come up with a fair valuation for the buybacks, especially as its actions are responsible for helping to depress prices.

After 20% range reduction, I’m waiting for Jaguar to buy my car back Read More »

Hyundai’s NACS adapter for EVs will be free to all existing owners

Cars, hyundai, NACS / DJ Henderson / February 15, 2025

Hyundai Ioniq 5s with NACS (J3400) ports, as opposed to the CCS1 style, are starting to roll out of its factory in Savannah, Georgia. It’s the first manufacturer to sell electric vehicles with native NACS ports—other than Tesla, that is, and you’ll be able to read about our first drive in the model year 2025 Ioniq 5, as well as the new, off-roady Ioniq 5 XRT next week. But we’ve got some good news for owners of any existing Hyundai EVs out there—if your car has a CCS1 port, then next month, you’re eligible for a free CCS1-NACS adapter.

Hyundai wasn’t the first OEM to ink a deal with Tesla to gain access to the Supercharger network, but it is ahead of Ford, General Motors, and Rivian in swapping to the Tesla-style charge ports. Existing owners get access to the large charging network, too, but they’ll need an adapter to make use of the smaller NACS plugs.

And those will be available next month, Hyundai told us. What’s more, they’re going to be gratis, or free as in beer. As long as you have a VIN, the automaker will send you the adapter, which you’ll be able to order once the website goes live in March.

Ford briefly showed similar generosity to its EV owners last year, offering its NACS adapters for free—at least until late June, at which point it started charging $200 for them. GM never even bothered with the free giveaway; instead it asks $225 for the NACS adapter.

Hyundai’s NACS adapter for EVs will be free to all existing owners Read More »

Asahi Linux lead resigns from Mac-based distro after tumultuous kernel debate

Apple silicon, asahi linux, hector martin, Linus Torvalds, Linux, Linux kernel, linux kernel mailing list, rust, rust for linux, Tech / DJ Henderson / February 15, 2025

Working at the intersection of Apple’s newest hardware and Linux kernel development, for the benefit of a free distribution, was never going to be easy. But it’s been an especially hard couple of weeks for Hector Martin, project lead for Asahi Linux, capping off years of what he describes as burnout, user entitlement, and political battles within the Linux kernel community about Rust code.

In a post on his site, “Resigning as Asahi Linux project lead,” Martin summarizes his history with hardware hacking projects, including his time with the Wii homebrew scene (Team Twiizers/fail0verflow), which had its share of insistent users desperate to play pirated games. Martin shifted his focus, and when Apple unveiled its own silicon with the M1 series, Martin writes, “I realized that making it run Linux was my dream project.” This time, there was no jailbreaking and a relatively open, if tricky, platform.

Support and donations came quickly. The first two years saw rapid advancement of a platform built “from scratch, with zero vendor support or documentation.” Upstreaming code to the Linux kernel, across “practically every Linux subsystem,” was an “incredibly frustrating experience” (emphasis Martin’s).

Then came the users demanding to know when Thunderbolt, monitors over USB-C, M3/M4 support, and even CPU temperature checking would appear. Donations and pledges slowly decreased while demands increased. “It seemed the more things we accomplished, the less support we had,” Martin writes.

Martin cites personal complications, along with stalking and harassment, as slowing down work through 2024, while Vulkan drivers and an emulation stack still shipped. Simultaneously, issues with pushing Rust code into the Linux kernel were brewing. Rust was “the entire reason our GPU driver was able to succeed in the time it did,” Martin writes. Citing the Nova driver for Nvidia GPUs as an example, Martin writes that “More modern programming languages are better suited to writing drivers for more modern hardware with more complexity and novel challenges, unsurprisingly.”

Asahi Linux lead resigns from Mac-based distro after tumultuous kernel debate Read More »

After 50 years, Ars staffers pick their favorite Saturday Night Live sketches

culture, Features, Saturday Night Live / DJ Henderson / February 15, 2025

“Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.”

American musician Stevie Wonder (left) appears on an episode of ‘Saturday Night Live’ with comedian and actor Eddie Murphy, New York, New York, May 6, 1983. Credit: Anthony Barboza/Getty Images

The venerable late-night sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live is celebrating its 50th anniversary season this year. NBC will air a special on Sunday evening featuring current and former cast members.

I’ve long been a big fan of the show, since I was a kid in the late 1980s watching cast members such as Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, and Jan Hooks. By then, the show was more than a decade old. It had already spawned huge Hollywood stars like Chevy Chase and Eddie Murphy and had gone through some near-death experiences as it struggled to find its footing.

The show most definitely does not appeal to some people. When I asked the Ars editorial team to share their favorite sketches, a few writers told me they had never found Saturday Night Live funny, hadn’t watched it in decades, or just did not get the premise of the show. Others, of course, love the show’s ability to poke fun at the cultural and political zeitgeist of the moment.

With the rise of the Internet, Saturday Night Live has become much more accessible. If you don’t care to watch live on Saturday night or record the show, its sketches are available on YouTube within a day or two. Not all of the show’s 10,000-odd sketches from the last five decades are available online, but many of them are.

With that said, here are some of our favorites!

Celebrity Hot Tub Party (Season 9)

Saturday Night Live has a thing for hot tubs, and it starts here, with the greatest of all hot tub parties.

Should you get in the water? Will it make you sweat?

Good god!

Celebrity Hot Tub.

—Ken Fisher

Papyrus (Season 43)

Some of SNL’s best skits satirize cultural touchstones that seem like they’d be way too niche but actually resonate broadly with its audience—like Font Snobs, i.e., those people who sneer at fonts like Comic-Sans (you know who you are) in favor of more serious options like the all-time favorite Helvetica. (Seriously, Helvetica has its own documentary.)

In “Papyrus,” host Ryan Gosling played Steven, a man who becomes obsessed with the fact that the person who designed the Avatar logo chose to use Papyrus. “Was it laziness? Was it cruelty?” Why would any self-respecting graphic designer select the same font one sees all over in “hookah bars, Shakira merch, [and] off-brand teas”? The skit is played straight as a tense psychological thriller and ends with a frustrated Steven screaming, “I know what you did!” in front of the graphic designer’s house while the designer smirks in triumph.

There was even a sequel last year in which Gosling’s Steven is in a support group and seems to have recovered from the trauma of seeing the hated font everywhere—as long as he avoids triggers. Then he learns that the font for Avatar: The Way of Water is just Papyrus in bold.

So begins an elaborate plot to infiltrate a graphic designer awards event to confront his tormentor head-on. The twist: Steven achieves a personal epiphany instead and confronts the root of his trauma: the fact that he was never able to understand his father, Jonathan WingDings. “My dad was so hard to read,” a weeping Steven laments as he finally gets some much-needed closure. Like most sequels, it doesn’t quite capture the magic of the original, but it’s still a charming addition to the archive.

Papyrus.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Washington’s Dream (Season 49)

The only SNL skit known and loved by all my kids. Nate Bargatze is George Washington, who explains his dream of “liberty” to soldiers in his revolutionary army. Washington’s future America is heavy on bizarre weights, measures, and rules, though not quite so concerned about things like slavery.

Washington’s Dream.

—Nate Anderson

Commercial parodies

I’ve always been partial to SNL‘s commercial parodies, probably because I saw way too many similar (but earnest) commercials while watching terrestrial TV growing up.

The other good thing about the commercial format is that it’s hard to make them longer than about two minutes, so they don’t outstay their welcome like some other SNL sketches

It’s hard to pick just one, so I’ll give a trio, along with the bits I think about and/or quote regularly.

Old Glory Insurance: “I don’t even know why the scientists make them!” (Season 21)

Old Glory Insurance.

First Citywide Change Bank: “All the time, our customers ask us, ‘How do you make money doing this?’ The answer is simple: volume.” (Season 14)

First CityWide Change Bank.

Happy Fun Ball: “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball” (Season 16)

Happy Fun Ball.

—Kyle Orland

Anything with Phil Hartman (Seasons 12 to 20)

Phil Hartman was a regular on Saturday Night Live throughout my high school and college years, and it was nice to know that on the rare Saturday night when I did not have a date or plans, he and the cast would be on television to provide entertainment. He was the “glue” guy during his time on the show, playing a variety of roles and holding the show together.

Here are some of his most memorable sketches, at least to me.

Anal Retentive Chef. Hartman acts as Gene, who is… well, anal retentive. He appeared in five different skits over the years. This is the first one. (Season 14)

The Anal Retentive Chef.

Hartman had incredible range. During his first year on the show, he played President Reagan, who at the time had acquired the reputation of becoming doddering and forgetful. However, as Hartman clearly shows us in this sketch, that is far from reality. (Season 12)

President Reagan, Mastermind.

And here he is a few years later, during the first year of President Clinton’s term in office. This skit also features Chris Farley, who was memorable in almost everything he appeared in. “Do you mind if I wash it down?” (Season 18)

President Bill Clinton at McDonald’s.

Kyle has noted commercial parodies above, and there are many good ones. Hartman often appeared in these because he did such a good job of playing the “straight man” character in comedy, the generally normal person in contrast to all of the wackiness happening in a scene. One of Hartman’s most famous commercials is for Colon Blow cereal. However, my favorite is this zany commercial for Jiffy Pop… Airbags. (Season 17)

Jiffy Pop Airbag.

—Eric Berger

Motherlover (Season 34)

The Lonely Island (an American comedy trio, formed by Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, and Akiva Schaffer, which wrote comedy music videos) had bigger, more viral hits, but nothing surpasses the subversiveness of “to me, you’re like a brother, so be my motherlover.”

Motherlover.

—Jacob May

More Cowbell (Season 25)

This classic sketch gets featured on almost all SNL “best of” lists; “more cowbell” even made it into the dictionary. It’s a sendup of VH1’s “Behind the Music,” focused on the recording of Blue Oyster Cult’s 1975 hit “Don’t Fear the Reaper,” which features a distinctive percussive cowbell in the background. Will Ferrell is perfection as fictional cowbell player Gene Frenkel, whose overly enthusiastic playing is a distraction to his bandmates. But Christopher Walken’s “legendary” (and fictional) producer Bruce Dickinson loves the cowbell, encouraging Gene to “really explore the studio space” with each successive take. “I gotta have more cowbell, baby!”

Things escalate as Gene’s playing first becomes too flamboyant, and then passive-aggressive, until the band works through its tensions and decides to embrace the cowbell after all. The comic timing is spot on, and the cast doesn’t let the joke run too long (a common flaw in lesser SNL skits). Ferrell’s physical antics and Walken’s brilliantly deadpan delivery—”I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell!”—has the cast on the verge of breaking character throughout. It deserves its place in the pantheon of SNL‘s best.

More Cowbell.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Californians (Season 37-present day)

I was going to go with Old Glory Insurance as my favorite SNL skit, but since Kyle already grabbed that one, I have to fall back on some of my runners-up. And although the Microsoft Robots and Career Day and even good ol’ Jingleheimer Junction almost topped my list, ultimately, I have to give it up to the recurring SNL skit that has probably given me more joy than anything the show has done since John Belushi’s samurai librarian. I am speaking of The Californians.

This fake soap opera, featuring a cast of perpetually blonde, perpetually unfaithful, perpetually directions-obsessed California stereotypes hits me just right. The elements that get repeated in every skit (including and especially Fred Armisen’s inevitable “WHATAREYUUUUDUUUUUUUINGHERE” or the locally produced furniture that everyone makes a point of using in the second act) are the kind of absurdities that get funnier over time, and it’s awesome to see guest stars try on the hyper-SoCal accent that is mandatory for all characters in the Californians’ universe.

Special props to Kristen Wiig, too—she’s inevitably hilarious, but her incredulous line reading when Mick Jagger shows up as Stuart’s long-absent father (“STUART! You never told me you had a dad!”) can and will fully send me into doubled-over hysterics every single time.

The Californians.

—Lee Hutchinson

What’s the fuss about?

In more than 20 years of living in the United States, few things still remain as far outside my cultural frame of reference as SNL. Whenever someone makes an unintelligible joke in Slack (or IRC before it) and everyone laughs, it invariably turns out to be some SNL thing that anyone who grew up here instinctively understands.

To me, it was always just *crickets*.

—Jonathan Gitlin

Black Jeopardy (Season 42)

Kenan Thompson was the show’s first cast member born after SNL‘s premiere in 1975, and after joining the show in 2003, he has become its longest-running cast member. Whenever he is on screen, you know you’re about to see something hilarious. One of his best roles on SNL has become the “game show host,” with long-running bits on Family Feud and the absurdly hilarious Black Jeopardy. The most famous of these latter skits occurred in 2016, when Tom Hanks appeared. If you haven’t watched it, you really must.

Black Jeopardy.

—Eric Berger

Josh Acid (Season 15)

One of my favorite SNL sketches (and perhaps one of the most underrated) is an Old West send-up featuring a sheriff named “Josh Acid” (played by Mel Gibson during his hosting appearance in 1989), who keeps two bottles of acid in holsters instead of the standard six-shooter revolvers.

The character is a hero in his town, but when he throws acid on people, their skin melts, and they die a horrible, gruesome death. The townspeople witness one such death and say it’s “gross.” In response, the main character cites Jim Bowie using a Bowie knife and says, “I use acid because that’s my name.” At one point, Kevin Nealon, as the bartender, says the town is grateful he’s cleaned up the place, but “it’s just that we’re not sure which is worse: lawlessness, or having to watch people die horribly from acid.”

Later, when a woman asks Josh to choose between her or acid, he says, “Frida, I took a job, and that job’s not done until every criminal in this territory is either behind bars or melted down.”

The sketch is just absurdly ridiculous in a delightful way, and it gleefully subverts the stoic nobility of the stereotypical Western hero, which is a trope baby boomers grew up with on TV. If I were to stretch, I’d also say it works because it lampoons the idea that some methods of legally or rightfully killing someone are more honorable and socially acceptable than others.

It’s not on YouTube that I can find, but I found a copy on TikTok.

—Benj Edwards

Hidden Camera Commercials (Season 17)

For me—and, I suspect, most people—there are several “golden ages” of SNL. But if I had to pick just one, it would be the Chris Farley era. The crown jewel of Farley’s SNL tenure was certainly the Bob Odenkirk- penned “Van Down by the River.” Today, though, I’d like to highlight a deeper cut: a coffee commercial in which Farley’s character is told he is drinking decaf coffee instead of regular. Instead of being delighted that he can’t tell the difference in taste, he gets… ANGRY.

Farley’s incredulous “what?” and dawning rage at being deceived never fail to make me laugh.

Hidden Camera Commercials.

—Aaron Zimmerman

Wake Up and Smile (Season 21)

SNL loves to take a simple idea and repeat it—sometimes without enough progression. But “Wake Up and Smile” stands out by following its simple idea (perky morning show hosts are lost without their teleprompters) into an incredibly dark place. In six minutes, you can watch the polished veneer of civilization collapse into tribal violence, all within the absurdist confines of a vapid TV show. In the end, everyone wakes from their temporary dystopian dreamland. Well, except for the weatherman.

Wake Up and Smile

—Nate Anderson

Thanks, Nate, and everyone who contributed. Indeed, one of the joys of watching the show live is you never know when a sketch is going to dark or very, very dark.

Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

After 50 years, Ars staffers pick their favorite Saturday Night Live sketches Read More »

Streaming used to make stuff networks wouldn’t. Now it wants safer bets.

amazon prime video, culture, Disney Plus, netflix, peacock, streaming, Tech / DJ Henderson / February 14, 2025

Opinion: Streaming gets more cable-like with new focus on live events, mainstream content.

A scene from The OA. Credit: Netflix

There was a time when it felt like you needed a streaming subscription in order to contribute to watercooler conversations. Without Netflix, you couldn’t react to House of Cards’ latest twist. Without Hulu, you couldn’t comment on how realistic The Handmaid’s Tale felt, and you needed Prime Video to prefer The Boys over the latest Marvel movies. In the earlier days of streaming, when streaming providers were still tasked with convincing customers that streaming was viable, streaming companies strived to deliver original content that lured customers.

But today, the majority of streaming services are struggling with profitability, and the Peak TV era, a time when TV programming budgets kept exploding and led to iconic original series like Game of Thrones, is over. This year, streaming companies are pinching pennies. This means they’re trying harder to extract more money from current subscribers through ads and changes to programming strategies that put less emphasis on original content.

What does that mean for streaming subscribers, who are increasingly paying more? And what does it mean for watercooler chat and media culture when the future of TV increasingly looks like TV’s past, with a heightened focus on live events, mainstream content, and commercials?

Streaming offered new types of shows and movies—from the wonderfully weird to uniquely diverse stories—to anyone with a web connection and a few dollars a month. However, more conservative approaches to original content may cause subscribers to miss out on more unique, niche programs that speak to diverse audiences and broader viewers’ quirkier interests.

Streaming companies are getting more stingy

To be clear, streaming services are expected to spend more on content this year than last year. Ampere Analysis predicted in January that streaming services’ programming budgets will increase by 0.4 percent in 2025 to $248 billion. That’s slower growth than what occurred in 2024 (2 percent), which was fueled by major events, including the 2024 Summer Olympics and US presidential election. Ampere also expects streaming providers to spend more than linear TV channels will on content for the first time ever this year. But streaming firms are expected to change how they distribute their content budgets, too.

Peter Ingram, research manager at Ampere Analysis, expects that streaming services will spend about 35 percent on original scripted programming in 2025, down from 45 percent in 2022, per Ampere’s calculations.

Amazon Prime Video is reportedly “buying fewer film and TV projects than they have in the past,” according to a January report from The Information citing eight unnamed producers who are either working with or have worked with Amazon in the last two years. The streaming service has made some of the most expensive original series ever and is reportedly under pressure from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy to reach profitability by the end of 2025, The Information said, citing two unnamed sources. Prime Video will reportedly focus more on live sports events, which brings revenue from massive viewership and ads (that even subscribers to Prime Video’s ad-free tier will see).

Amazon has denied The Information’s reporting, with a spokesperson claiming that the number of Prime Video projects “grew from 2023 to 2024” and that Prime Video expects “the same level of growth” in 2025. But after expensive moves, like Amazon’s $8.5 billion MGM acquisition and projects with disproportionate initial returns, like Citadel, it’s not hard to see why Prime Video might want to reduce content spending, at least temporarily.

Prime Video joins other streaming services in the push for live sports to reach or improve profitability. Sports rights accounted for 4 percent of streaming services’ content spending in 2021, and Ampere expects that to reach 11 percent in 2025, Ingram told Ars:

These events offer services new sources of content that have pre-built fan followings, (helping to bring in new users to a platform) while also providing existing audiences with a steady stream of weekly content installments to help them remain engaged long-term.

Similarly, Disney, whose content budget includes theatrical releases and content for networks like The Disney Channel in addition to what’s on Disney+, has been decreasing content spending since 2022, when it spent $33 billion. In 2025, Disney plans to spend about $23 billion on content. Discussing the budget cut with investors earlier this month, CFO Hugh Johnston said Disney’s focused “on identifying opportunities where we’re spending money perhaps less efficiently and looking for opportunities to do it more efficiently.”

Further heightening the importance of strategic content spending for streaming businesses is the growing number of services competing for subscription dollars.

“There has been an overall contraction within the industry, including layoffs,” Dan Green, director of the Master of Entertainment Industry Management program at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College & College of Fine Arts, told Ars. “Budgets are looked at more closely and have been reined in.”

Peacock, for example, has seen its biggest differentiator come not from original series (pop quiz: what’s your favorite Peacock original?) but from the Summer Olympics. A smaller streaming service compared to Netflix or Prime Video, Peacock’s spending on content went from tripling from 2021 to 2023 to an expected 12 percent growth rate this year and 3 percent next year, per S&P Global Market Intelligence. The research firm estimated last year that original content will represent less than 25 percent of Peacock’s programming budget over the next five years.

Tyler Aquilina, a media analyst at the Variety Intelligence Platform (VIP+) research firm, told me that smaller services are more likely to reduce original content spending but added:

Legacy media companies like Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery are, to a certain degree, in the same boat as Netflix: the costs of sports rights keep rising, so they will need to spend less on other content in order to keep their content budgets flat or trim them.

Streaming services are getting less original

Data from entertainment research firm Luminate’s 2024 Year-End Film & TV Report found a general decline in the number of drama series ordered by streaming services and linear channels between 2019 (304) and 2024 (285). The report also noted a 27 percent drop in the number of drama series episodes ordered from 2019 (3,393) to 2024 (2,492).

Beyond dramas, comedy series orders have been declining the past two years, per Luminate’s data. From 2019 to 2024, “the number of total series has declined by 39 percent, while the number of episodes/hours is down by 47 percent,” Luminate’s report says.

And animated series “have been pummeled over the past few years to an all-time low” with the volume of cartoons down 31 percent in 2024 compared to 2023, per the report.

The expected number of new series releases this year, per Luminate. Credit: Luminate Film & TV

Aquilina at VIP+, a Luminate sister company, said: “As far as appealing to customers, the reality is that the enormous output of the Peak TV era was not a successful business strategy; Luminate data has shown original series viewership on most platforms (other than Netflix) is often concentrated among a small handful of shows.” While Netflix is slightly increasing content spending from 2024 to 2025, it’s expected that “less money will be going toward scripted originals as the company spends more on sports rights and other live events,” the analyst said.

Streaming services struggle to make money with original content

The streaming industry is still young, meaning companies are still determining the best way to turn streaming subscriptions into successful businesses. The obvious formula of providing great content so that streamers get more subscribers and make more money isn’t as direct as it seems. One need only look at Apple TV+’s critically acclaimed $20 billion library that only earned 0.3 percent of US TV screen viewing time in June 2024, per Nielsen, to understand the complexities of making money off of quality content.

When it comes to what is being viewed on streaming services, the top hits are often things that came out years ago or are old network hits, such as Suits, a USA Network original series that ended in 2019 and was the most-streamed show in 2023, per Nielsen, or The Big Bang Theory, a CBS show that ended in 2019 and was the most binged show in 2024, per Nielsen, or Little House on the Prairie, which ended in 1983 and Nielsen said was streamed for 13.25 billion minutes on Peacock last year.

There’s also an argument for streaming services to make money off low-budget (often old) content streamed idly in the background. Perceived demand for background content is considered a driver for growing adoption of free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channels like Tubi and the generative AI movies that TCL’s pushing on its FAST channels.

Meanwhile, TVs aren’t watched the way they used to be. Social media and YouTube have gotten younger audiences accustomed to low-budget, short videos, including videos summarizing events from full-length original series and movies. Viral video culture has impacted streaming and TV viewing, with YouTube consistently dominating streaming viewing time in the US and revealing this week that TVs are the primary device used to watch YouTube. Companies looking to capitalize on these trends may find less interest in original, high-budget scripted productions.

The wonderfully weird at risk

Streaming opened the door for many shows and movies to thrive that would likely not have been made or had much visibility through traditional distribution means. From the wonderfully weird like The OA and Big Mouth, to experimental projects like Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, to shows from overseas, like Squid Game, and programs that didn’t survive on network TV, like Futurama, streaming led to more diverse content availability and surprise hits than what many found on broadcast TV.

If streaming services are more particular about original content, the result could be that subscribers miss out on more of the artistic, unique, and outlandish projects that helped make streaming feel so exciting at first. Paramount, for example, said in 2024 that a reduced programming budget would mean less local-language content in foreign markets and more focus on domestic hits with global appeal.

Carnegie Mellon University’s Green agreed that tighter budgets could potentially lead to “less diverse storytelling being available.”

“What will it take for a new, unproven storyteller (writer) to break through without as many opportunities available? Instead, there may be more emphasis on outside licensed content, and perhaps some creators will be drawn to bigger checks from some of the larger streamers,” he added.

Elizabeth Parks, president and CMO at Parks Associates, a research firm focused on IoT, consumer electronics, and entertainment, noted that “many platforms are shifting focus toward content creation rather than new curated, must-watch originals,” which could create a”more fragmented, less compelling viewer experience with diminishing differentiation between platforms.”

As streaming services more aggressively seek live events, like award shows and sporting events, and scripted content with broader appeal, they may increasingly mirror broadcast TV.

“The decision by studios to distribute their own content to competitors… shows how content is being monetized beyond just driving direct subscriptions,” Parks said. “This approach borrows from traditional TV syndication models and signals a shift toward maximizing content value over time, instead of exclusive content.”

Over the next couple of years, we can expect streaming services to be more cautious about content investments. Services will be less interested in providing a bounty of original exclusives and more focused on bottom lines. They will need “to ensure that spend does not outpace revenues, and platforms can maintain attractive profit margins,” Ampere’s Ingram explained. Original hit shows will still be important, but we’ll likely see fewer gambles and more concerted efforts toward safer bets at mainstream appeal.

For streaming customers who are fatigued with the number of services available and dissatisfied with content quality, it’s a critical time for streaming services to prove that they’re an improvement over other traditional TV and not just giving us the same ol’, same ol’.

“The streaming services that most appeal to customers host robust libraries of content that people want to watch, and as long as that’s the case, they’ll continue to do so. That’s why Netflix and Disney are still the top streamers,” Ingram said.

Scharon is a Senior Technology Reporter at Ars Technica writing news, reviews, and analysis on consumer gadgets and services. She’s been reporting on technology for over 10 years, with bylines at Tom’s Hardware, Channelnomics, and CRN UK.

Streaming used to make stuff networks wouldn’t. Now it wants safer bets. Read More »

Wheel of Time S3 trailer tees us up for Last Battle

culture, Entertainment, prime video, streaming television, Trailers, TV trailers, wheel of time / DJ Henderson / February 14, 2025

After defeating Ishamael, one of the most powerful of the Forsaken, at the end of Season Two, Rand reunites with his friends in the city of Falme and is declared the Dragon Reborn. But in Season Three, the threats against the Light are multiplying: the White Tower stands divided, the Black Ajah run free, old enemies return to the Two Rivers, and the remaining Forsaken are in hot pursuit of the Dragon… including Lanfear, whose relationship with Rand will mark a crucial choice between Light and Dark for them both.

Prime Video released a one-minute teaser for The Wheel of Time at CCXP24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in December. That teaser was notable for Moraine’s prediction concerning her and Rand’s intertwined fates: “In every future where I lived, Rand dies. And the only way he lives is if I don’t.”

The full trailer reiterates that prediction and gives us glimpses of a battle breaking out in the White Tower, the port city of Tanchico, and growing tension between Rand and Egwene (Madeleine Madden), who is troubled by Rand’s romantic entanglement with Lanfear (Natasha O’Keeffe), a powerful member of the Forsaken who hopes to seduce Rand to the Shadow. It’s all gearing up for Rand’s destiny to fight in the Last Battle.

The first three episodes of the third season of The Wheel of Time premiere on March 13, 2025, with episodes airing weekly after that through April 17.

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