By Lambert Strether.

Readers, the fundraiser for my very nearly gold retirement watch + all my Water Cooler work done in 2024 is ongoing. The goal is 400 donors; as of this writing, we have 275, or 68% of goal. Good progress! Thank you. I hope we can close this out Friday, tomorrow, my last day. Any amount helps! If you can give a little, give a little. If you can give a lot, give a lot! Thank you all so much! –lambert IMPORTANT Donors who have monthly subscriptions to Water Cooler in PayPal should cancel them next month, so you are not paying me for work I am no longer doing!

Bird Song of the Day

American Robin, 138 Captains Dr, West Babylon, Suffolk, New York, United States. “American Robin singing from the top of a building before dawn.” I’ve always wondered why Babylon and not, say, “Gomorrah.” Here is the story.

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In Case You Might Miss…

1. Executive Order details DOGE’s Bolshevik-style structure and operation.
2. DOGE as class war.
3. Cuomo floats Presidential trial balloon.
4. Employment figures warn of a souring economy.

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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Trump Administration

Caution, supergenius at work:

There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 27, 2025

“Trump administration struggles to rehire fired bird flu employees” [Politico]. “The Trump administration touted a nearly $1 billion plan Wednesday to combat the spread of avian flu and mitigate skyrocketing egg prices as the outbreak rips through poultry flocks across the United States. But the measures come as the Agriculture Department is struggling to rehire key employees working on the virus outbreak who were fired as part of the administration’s sweeping purge of government workers. Roughly a quarter of employees in a critical office testing for the disease were cut, as well as scientists and inspectors. The dismissals have already helped trigger a partial shutdown at one of the department’s research facilities, according to two USDA employees, interrupting some workers’ efforts to fight bird flu and help livestock recover from illness. Now, agency officials are running into logistical challenges in reinstating its bird flu staff — and convincing them to return to jobs while the president repeatedly attempts to squeeze government workers.” • BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!! And now people are responding to high egg prices by raising backyard chickens. Nothing to worry abot there!

“VA pauses billions in cuts lauded by Musk as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care” [Associated Press]. “The Department of Veterans Affairs has temporarily suspended billions of dollars in planned contract cuts following concerns that the move would hurt critical veterans’ health services, lawmakers and veterans service organizations said Wednesday. The pause affects hundreds of VA contracts that Secretary Doug Collins a day earlier described as simply consulting deals, whose cancellation would save $2 billion as the Trump administration works to slash costs across the federal government…. The Associated Press has obtained the full list of 875 affected contracts, which shows the cuts would affect everything from cancer care to the ability to assess toxic exposure. The list underscores how the Trump administration’s approach to broad spending reductions has immediate and potentially unintended consequences, generating significant concern not just among Democrats but also Republican lawmakers.”

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“Top Social Security deputies leave amid rumored staff cuts” [Government Executive]. “Most of the Social Security Administration’s regional commissioners have decided to retire at the end of this week, following mysterious meetings with agency leaders about plans to slash its workforce. At least five of the eight regional commissioners whose offices oversee and support the agency’s frontline offices across the country are leaving, according to a source familiar with the agency and an SSA employee not authorized to speak on the record. The Social Security Administration had largely been spared by the Trump administration’s early efforts to cut staff across government, receiving exemptions for frontline workers from the ‘deferred-resignation’ program, Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, and the purge of workers who had been recently hired or promoted. But that apparently changed this week, triggering the wave of retirement announcements.” And: “Multiple news outlets reported Wednesday that Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek is looking to halve the agency’s staff of about 57,000 employees. But two SSA employees told Government Executive that an executive at the agency said in an internal meeting that Dudek wants to cut the SSA workforce by about 7,000 people. Another person familiar with the situation also confirmed that Dudek’s goal is to get the workforce down to 50,000. It’s not clear whether this includes frontline staff.” • No reason to cut support if you’re not going to cut benefits later. (Speculating freely, there will be a hilarious but doomed effort to prevent AI call centers from hallucinating, that should take three or four years to play out.)

“50% Cuts at Social Security Administration, According to TAP” [Talking Points Memo]. “I’ve spent the last 24 hours trying to confirm or refute pervasive rumors throughout the Social Security Administration that the agency is about to announce an across-the-board cut of 50% of staff. The decision was purportedly announced at an afternoon meeting yesterday by Acting Commissioner Leland Dudek. He asked for a plan for 50% cuts to be presented to him this afternoon. I have not been able to confirm this. But David Dayen at The American Prospect appears to have found two people who were in the meeting and do confirm it. Here’s David’s report. It’s been hard to imagine that they were actually contemplating this, not because it’s horrible but because it’s likely to have such dramatic (and likely political costly) impacts on tens of millions of Americans. But here we are.”

“As DOGE Attacks Social Security, New Report Shows Elon Is One of the Government’s Biggest Beneficiaries” [Gizmodo]. “In recent weeks, DOGE has been helping to terminate leases for SSA offices across the country, leading to planned closures in locations like Michigan, New York, West Virginia, Ohio, Arkansas, Texas, and others.”

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“Musk’s Ex-Twitter Workers Win Severance Over ‘Fork in the Road’ Email” [Bloomberg]. “Four ex-Twitter workers have prevailed in a recent series of closed-door arbitration proceedings over claims they were illegally denied severance, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. More than two years ago, Musk asked Twitter employees in an email with the subject line ‘A Fork in the Road’ to either commit to an ‘extremely hardcore’ work environment or leave the company. Musk’s cost-cutting strategies have been thrust into the national spotlight with a similar hardline approach to thin out the federal workforce — which included recently sending more than two million federal workers an email with the same “Fork in the Road” subject line. The email gave employees the option to resign but be paid through the end of September, while warning them of upcoming downsizing.

The email was sent as Musk began his new role spearheading a federal cost-cutting effort as a key adviser to the Department of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump. At Twitter, now known as X, the four workers argued successfully that although they didn’t respond to the email, they did not resign and were instead terminated, meaning they were entitled to severance promised by the company before Musk bought it.The victories for the four employees haven’t previously been reported. The similar emails sent to federal workers are now the subject of several lawsuits. Musk and representatives of X didn’t respond to requests for comment.” • No doubt!

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“Conservative commentators seen with ‘Epstein Files’ binders after AG Bondi promises docs release'” [Associated Press]. ” Conservative political commentators were spotted at the White House Thursday holding binders that read ‘The Epstein Files’ hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi promised the release of documents about wealthy financier Jeffrey Epstein, who sexually abused underage girls. It was not immediately clear what was in the binders, which have not been released publicly by the Justice Department. The binders read ‘declassified,’ but it was not immediately clear whether the information contained in the binders ever had been classified. Among those holding the binders was political commentator Rogan O’Handley, also known as DC Draino. Bondi said Wednesday on Fox News that the documents would include flight logs and “a lot of names,” though it was unclear whether there would be details not already publicly known.” • These files are being released so slowly — and I assume selectively, since a simple document dump would be quick — that we might as well be in the molasses-brained Biden administration. And to think I shivered with antici… pation.

DOGE

“IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S “DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY” COST EFFICIENCY INITIATIVE” [The White House].

This is an implementation of the Bolshevik-style party structure parallel to govenment agencies we have previously seen. Nominally, the agency heads are in charge (see the highlights), but in practice that might change, if the “DOGEbag Team Lead” is a slithering weasel named “Big Bag,” whose trump card, at any show of resistance or disagreement, is “Do I need to call Elon?” The structure implies that the DOGE teams are there to help governement function better. That assumes facts not in evidence. And needless to say, this will need to be ripped out by the roots when DOGE’s time is up — if that ever happens — because otherwise we have a permanent change to the constitutiona order that nobody asked for or voted on.

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“GOP senators vent Musk frustrations at closed-door meeting” [The Hill]. “Republican senators vented their concerns about tech billionaire Elon Musk’s aggressive approach to freezing federal spending and cutting government jobs during a private meeting with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles on Wednesday…. Every day’s another surprise,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said of the daily bombshells from Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). ‘It would be better to allow Cabinet secretaries to carefully review their departments and then make surgical, strategic decisions on what programs and people should be cut and then come back to Congress for approval,’ she said.” As Clinton/Gore did. More: “Wiles acknowledged the GOP senators’ concerns and urged them to contact her directly if they have any problems as a result of Musk’s blitz through the federal workforce.” And this is actually sane: “[Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)] said Musk and DOGE should serve as advisers to Trump’s Cabinet officials instead of taking the lead on major policy decisions themselves. ‘We’re talking about governmental entities, a lot of complexity. That’s why I believe that DOGE will most likely morph into being an adviser to these Senate-confirmed heads of agencies fairly soon,’ he said.” Note the EO above; nominally, that is the structure. And: “‘Otherwise, I just have a real problem. If I get confirmed as the head of an agency, a Cabinet-level position, [and] I’ve got somebody else that is pretending — or that is acting as my boss, that’s a real problem,’ he added. ‘At the end of the day, you’ve got to have all those employees thinking that you’re looking out for the agencies and their best interests.'” • So let’s see how Wiles copes. Maybe there will be an interview with Elon’s ketamine supplier in the Daily Mail….

Democrats en déshabillé

“Andrew Cuomo seen as possible White House candidate by some Democrats” [The Hill]. “Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) is days away from potentially entering the New York City mayor’s race. But even before Cuomo is set to make that announcement, some Democrats are already tossing around his name for a bigger race: the 2028 presidential campaign. Since their loss in November, Democrats have been anxious to find a voice not only to lead them out of the wilderness but also to stand up to President Trump and the slew of actions he’s taken in his second term. Cuomo, with his brash, in-your-face style, they say, could shape up to be a dark horse candidate in what is set to be a wide-open race.” • Cuomo never was held responsible for slaughtering thousands of elders in nursing homes during the first wave of Covid, so the only remaining problem is the sex scandal!

“Sanders reintroducing measure increasing Social Security benefits” [The Hill]. “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is reintroducing a measure that would increase Social Security benefits. Sanders is joined by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) on the bill, titled the Social Security Expansion Act. It would expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and ensure the federal program is funded for the next 75 years through a tax on households making more than $250,000 a year, according to Sanders’s news release. The lawmakers noted that it would not raise taxes at all for households that make less than $250,000 annually, which is more than 90 percent of Americans. ‘At a time when nearly half of older Americans have no retirement savings and over 26 percent of seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $17,500 a year, our job is not to cut Social Security as many of our Republican colleagues want to do,’ Sanders said in a statement.” • Where are Schumer and Jeffries on this? In fact, where are Schumer and Jeffries?

Realignment and Legitimacy

“DOGE is waging a class war on America’s new clerisy” [Spiked]. “The class dynamics at play in DOGE are not as straightforward as some would have it. It’s not simply a case of Musk, the billionaire oligarch, ruthlessly attacking the lowly administrator. The impetus for DOGE is primarily driven by a conflict within the middle class. On one side are public workers whose pay, and pensions, well exceed those in the private sector. On the other, there are millions who pay tax and feel harassed by regulations, particularly among Trump’s base of small business owners. Millions of middle- and working-class families not sucking the federal teat are falling ever behind the affluent elites, who seem to control the state whichever party is in power. Throughout the Biden years, government employment and related sectors, notably in health services, have emerged as the only consistently growing high-wage sectors, a pattern evident both in the last month of his administration and Trump’s first. In contrast, material sectors, like manufacturing and mining, have slumped. In the first three years of Biden’s presidency, the ranks of government workers, at all levels, expanded by 1.5million. In 2024, the federal government reached its highest worker count in two decades. President Biden’s budget for 2025, signed in March last year, envisaged total spending to be more than 60 per cent higher than it was in 2019.” • Anecdotally:

I was in Georgetown today driving through the nicest parts of DC

The amount of wealth there is staggering. The private high schools look like Ivy League campuses.

Beautiful homes and cars.

It’s a beautiful life. No wonder they all hate Trump.

No one wants it to end.

— QE Infinity (@StealthQE4) February 26, 2025

Not sure why the dude was even in Georgetown. His bio reads: “Healthcare sales, Investor and son of a credit trader,” so presumably some grift lol.

Analytically:

For new followers, here is a diagram illustrating how core NGOs collaborate to create a global soft power structure that shapes elections, public policy, economic policy, and media influence.

Again, many **current** members of Congress hold positions within these taxpayer-funded… pic.twitter.com/7wLsotSbTg

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) February 25, 2025

Data Republican is a super-interesting account (slowly emergent, not at all sure spontaneously). Worth a follow:

For new followers, here is a diagram illustrating how core NGOs collaborate to create a global soft power structure that shapes elections, public policy, economic policy, and media influence.

Again, many **current** members of Congress hold positions within these taxpayer-funded… pic.twitter.com/7wLsotSbTg

— DataRepublican (small r) (@DataRepublican) February 25, 2025

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Airborne Transmission

“An integrated airborne transmission risk assessment model for respiratory viruses: short- and long-range contributions” [Journal of the Royal Society]. From the Abstract: “This study presents an advanced airborne transmission risk assessment model that integrates both short- and long-range routes in the spread of respiratory viruses, building upon the CERN Airborne Model for Indoor Risk Assessment (CAiMIRA) and aligned with the new World Health Organization (WHO) terminology. Thanks to a two-stage exhaled jet approach, the model accurately simulates short-range exposures, thereby improving infection risk predictions across diverse indoor settings. Key findings reveal that in patient wards, the short-range viral dose is 10-fold higher than the long-range component, highlighting the critical role of close proximity interactions. Implementation of FFP2 respirators resulted in a remarkable 13-fold reduction in viral dose, underscoring the effectiveness of personal protective equipment (PPE). Additionally, the model demonstrated that an 8 h exposure in a poorly ventilated office can equate to the risk of a 15 min face-to-face, mask-less interaction, emphasizing the importance of physical distancing and source control.” • Worth a careful read. Commentary:

What this means, is that airborne disease transmission is exceedingly more complicated than what we can predict based solely on the Wells-Riley model. What is clever in the current work is that they are differentiating between short and long distance transmission.

This is key

— Al Haddrell (@ukhadds) February 26, 2025

In the Wells-Riley model, the main assumption was that the air within the room was well mixed. Obviously not so.

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TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC February 17	Last week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC February 15	Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 15
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data February 25:	National [6] CDC February 20:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens February 24:	Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 15:
Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC February 3:	Variants[10] CDC February 3
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25:

LEGEND

1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.

2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”

NOTES

[1] (CDC) Down, nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Weird plateau without exponential growrht

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland)

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Uptick.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Don’t know what the dominance of XEC is all about,

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US soared by 22,000 from the previous week to 242,000 on the third week of February, the most in over two months and well above market expectations that they would remain stable at 221,000.” • I wonder why. ‘Tis a mystery!

GDP: “United States GDP Growth Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The US economy expanded an annualized 2.3% in Q4 2024, the slowest growth in three quarters, down from 3.1% in Q3 and in line with the advance estimate.”

Manufacturing: “United States Durable Goods Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for manufactured durable goods in the US rose 3.1% month-over-month to $282.3 billion in January 2025, the most in six months and above market expectations of a 2% increase. It follows a downwardly revised 1.8% drop in December. The rebound was driven by transportation equipment, which surged 9.8%, particularly nondefense aircraft and parts (93.9%).”

Manufacturing: “United States Kansas Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Kansas City Fed’s Manufacturing Production Index fell to -13 in February 2025, the lowest in five months. The declines were driven more by nondurable manufacturing, particularly food, chemical, and paper manufacturing.”

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The Economy: “Economists are starting to worry about a serious Trump recession” [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph]. “Donald Trump’s assault on the US federal government and the world’s interlinked manufacturing system have together reached an economic tipping point. ‘It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession,” said Jesse Rothstein, Berkeley professor and former chief economist at the US labour department. Once the pace of job losses crosses a critical line, the multiplier effects can snowball suddenly. Prof Rothstein said monthly non-farm payrolls – the barometer of US economic health watched closely by markets – could turn viciously negative by late spring, contracting at rates surpassed only during the worst months of Covid and the Lehman crisis in 2008. ‘I think we’re going to see historically large drops. Losses of 400,000 a month are not implausible because people are getting nervous out there. It is not just the federal employees being fired: it’s all the other people worried they could be next, so they are cutting back too,’ he told The Telegraph. Torsten Slok, of Apollo Global, said layoffs could approach 1m after factoring in the likely chain reaction through contractors. ‘We are starting to worry about the downside risks to the economy and markets,’ he said. Mr Slok said it is a mystery as to why credit spreads and equities are still so well-behaved when the US Economic Policy Uncertainty Index was now higher than at any time during the great recession. Prof Rothstein said the damage would not show up immediately due to lag effects. The ugly months will be in April and May, but by then secondary shocks will have spread far and wide.”

Manufacturing: “Airbus has not taken full advantage of Boeing’s weakness” [The Economist]. “Even if Boeing can restore its reputation and ramp up production, Airbus will maintain its lead in narrow-body jets for some time. The American firm hopes to raise the rate of 737 max production to around 38 planes a month later this year. Airbus already makes around 50 a month of its competing a320 family, and hopes to increase that to around 75 by 2027. Yet both firms are weighed down by supply chains struggling to recover after severe cutbacks during the pandemic. And Airbus’s lead in narrow-body jets is not mirrored in wide-body ones. In 2024 Boeing delivered 83 twin-aisle planes, only six fewer than Airbus. The A220, a smaller passenger jet, remains unprofitable and A320 production hardly grew at all in 2024. Both firms may also be distracted by difficulties in other divisions. Boeing’s defence-and-space arm has lost money for three years. Airbus’s space business took charges of €1.3bn last year amid troubles at its satellite unit.

With the duopoly’s combined backlog now up to 14,000 orders, would-be competitors are looking to cut in. One is COMAC, China’s state-owned planemaker. Its C919 narrow-body jet will not constitute much of a threat for some time—just 30 deliveries are planned for 2025—but could eventually take market share in China and elsewhere. Rumours that Embraer, a Brazilian maker of smaller regional jets, is considering taking on the Airbus-Boeing duopoly are growing louder.” • Assuming the upper atmosphere remains stable, of course.

Tech: “On the consistent reasoning paradox of intelligence and optimal trust in AI: The power of ‘I don’t know'” [arXiv]. From the Abstract: “We introduce the Consistent Reasoning Paradox (CRP). Consistent reasoning, which lies at the core of human intelligence, is the ability to handle tasks that are equivalent, yet described by different sentences (‘Tell me the time!’ and ‘What is the time?’). The CRP asserts that consistent reasoning implies fallibility — in particular, human-like intelligence in AI necessarily comes with human-like fallibility. Specifically, it states that there are problems, e.g. in basic arithmetic, where any AI that always answers and strives to mimic human intelligence by reasoning consistently will hallucinate (produce wrong, yet plausible answers) infinitely often. The paradox is that there exists a non-consistently reasoning AI (which therefore cannot be on the level of human intelligence) that will be correct on the same set of problems. The CRP also shows that detecting these hallucinations, even in a probabilistic sense, is strictly harder than solving the original problems, and that there are problems that an AI may answer correctly, but it cannot provide a correct logical explanation for how it arrived at the answer. Therefore, the CRP implies that any trustworthy AI (i.e., an AI that never answers incorrectly) that also reasons consistently must be able to say ‘I don’t know’. Moreover, this can only be done by implicitly computing a new concept that we introduce, termed the ‘I don’t know’ function — something currently lacking in modern AI. In view of these insights, the CRP also provides a glimpse into the behaviour of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). An AGI cannot be ‘almost sure’, nor can it always explain itself, and therefore to be trustworthy it must be able to say ‘I don’t know’.” • AI = BS, as I said when the bubble began to inflate. Imagine a bullshitter who can’t put a bridle on this mouth! Commentary:

Why 'I don’t know' is the true test for AGI—it’s a strictly harder problem than text generation!

This magnificent 62-page paper (https://t.co/MJXpVF4qv9) formally proves AGI hallucinations are inevitable, with 50 pages (!!) of supplementary proofs. pic.twitter.com/0dLZ49LHtd

— Miles Cranmer (@MilesCranmer) February 26, 2025

Tech: Let no one else’s work evade your eyes:

Remember this study about how LLM generated research ideas were rated to be more novel than expert-written ones?

We find a large fraction of such LLM generated proposals (≥ 24%) to be skillfully plagiarized, bypassing inbuilt plagiarism checks and unsuspecting experts. A ? https://t.co/u1C9yN2KvD

— Danish Pruthi (@danish037) February 25, 2025

Tech: “Tracking You from a Thousand Miles Away! Turning a Bluetooth Device into an Apple AirTag Without Root Privileges” [nroottag]. “Apple’s Find My network, leveraging over a billion active Apple devices, is the world’s largest device-locating network. We investigate the potential misuse of this network to maliciously track Bluetooth devices. We present nRootTag, a novel attack method that transforms computers into trackable “AirTags” without requiring root privileges. The attack achieves a success rate of over 90% within minutes at a cost of only a few US dollars. Or, a rainbow table can be built to search keys instantly. Subsequently, it can locate a computer in minutes, posing a substantial risk to user privacy and safety. The attack is effective on Linux, Windows, and Android systems, and can be employed to track desktops, laptops, smartphones, and IoT devices. Our comprehensive evaluation demonstrates nRootTag’s effectiveness and efficiency across various scenarios.” • Yikes!

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 23 Extreme Fear (previous close: 22 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 26 at 1:44:02 PM ET.

Musical Interlude

One reader asked for a railroad tune:

“I’d probably move it just a little farther down the line.”

Gallery

I wanted to make a joke about aptronyms and “Whistler,” but unfortunately this painting turns out to be by Turner:

William Turner : Rain, Steam and Speed (detail) pic.twitter.com/5ouX1rmNBr

— Olga Tuleninova ? (@olgatuleninova) May 29, 2019

Class Warfare

“ILA Members Ratify 6-Year Contract with Accommodations for Technology” [Maritime Executive]. “The membership of the International Longshoremen’s’ Association officially ratified the new 6-year contract on Tuesday, February 25, bringing to close one of the most contentious contract negotiations in decades. The ILA is calling the new contract the ‘gold standard’ for dockworker unions globally while saying with the ratification there would be ‘labor peace’ and that the ILA would be working in partnership with USMX to help all ILA ports grow and flourish…. [ILA President Harold Daggett] is publicly declaring a key win saying it is the greatest contract in ILA history. He reports it provides ‘full protections against automation,’ without providing details on the contract terms. The ILA had firmly declared it would not accept automation or semi-automation for any port operations. In December 2024, then President-elect Donald Trump met with the union leaders. He also issued a strong statement against port automation.” • Hmm.

News of the Wired

“Winners of the $10,000 ISBN visualization bounty” [Anna’s Blog]. “Ultimately we wanted to answer the following questions: which books exist in the world, how many have we archived already, and which books should we focus on next? It’s great to see so many people care about these questions.” • Very neat, and also… books! On Anna’s Archive.

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From AM:

AM writes: “Roses in July 2021 at a rental house in Devon, England.”

* * *

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