A short yet broad-ranging talk with @KrisAbdelmessih on @Panoptica_ai for his @EpsilonTheory: Unplugged essay, "After this post you will be sizing bets in your head" Kelly bets, using AI to learn math, creativity... NEW Notes on Notes!

No, but listen, you know this "put the fries in the bag, Terence Tao"'--*sniff, sniff*--already the usual replies concede too much. "If Tao is serving fries, YOU will be in the lithium mines." My God! This is our defense of human dignity? Don’t worry, the correct people will get the terrible jobs! *Pulls at shirt* You see, everything is up for radical transformation, human intelligence, consciousness, and so on and so on--except that somebody must still have a shitty afternoon so I can enjoy my lunch. But to say "these people are envious", this is too easy. It allows us, "the educated ones," our own little fantasy: we are disliked only because we are so wonderful. You know, the more interesting thing is this *sniff* peculiar identification with the machine. When the mathematician discovers something, apparently this was HIS achievement, his privilege, his little secret. When the machine discovers something, suddenly it's "Look what WE can do!" The achievement has become collective precisely at the moment when no human being can claim credit. See how this "we" functions. For the achievement, I identify with the machine. For the consequences, I identify YOU with the human. "We have surpassed you." Who are we? Well, myself and the thing that has also surpassed me. There is something almost touching here, really. To escape the humiliation of somebody absorbed in something opaque to you, you appeal to something which knows incomparably more than either of you. And this is supposed to settle the matter in YOUR favor. You know the old example of canned laughter. Here we have a similar arrangement. The machine achieves something on my behalf. The mathematician suffers the loss of human significance on my behalf. Somebody to be brilliant for me and somebody to be obsolete for me, without me having to be either, so I can remain as I was. But *pulls on shirt* there is this little difficulty that hides the essential thing: you still need a response from Tao! A correct proof, this Lean slop and so on, is not enough. You need him to certify his own defeat. You need him to say "By god, this is extraordinary! Yes, this is correct, but also this is interesting." Which means--and here comes Hegel--the person you are reducing to an obedient instrument must remain more than an obedient instrument. You need recognition from someone whose authority you are abolishing. "Your so-called expertise is worthless. Now tell me, in your expert opinion, that I, qua machine representative, was right." *Touches nose* But I would go a step further. What does this math person actually do to provoke you? In the fantasy, I mean. He need not insult you. He can be generous, mild-mannered, whatever. Something remains irritating: there is something over there which occupies him, which matters to him, and your opinion does not settle what it is worth. Perhaps he is not even looking down on you. This is the really intolerable possibility. This, you see, is closer to the Lacanian problem of the Other's desire. Not simply "What does he have that I don't?" but "What the hell is going on with him?" Perhaps the answer is: he is thinking about something else. The fries solve this beautifully. Now you know what you are for him. He needs the money. Your presence creates an obligation. And this, at last, also explains why the machine can be less threatening than the mathematician. The machine's intelligence may exceed yours unimaginably, but you imagine it arrives in response to your prompt. You can complain about the tone. You have the privileges of an angry customer and so on and so on. The human has this irritating possibility of being interested in something you did not request and cannot order. And please, this includes the person already serving the fries! *Pulls at shirt* I am almost tempted to say: the dream of unlimited intelligence conceals just this: a the wish that nobody should be doing anything you cannot immediately understand as a service.

This Kalshi ad is among the most dystopian ones I’ve seen from any betting app

The billionaire Texan whose family once controlled the Galveston mafia and ran underground casinos is about to take over half of the Vegas Strip. Caesars Entertainment shareholders approved Tilman Fertitta's $17.6 billion buyout yesterday. He gets Caesars Palace, Paris, Flamingo, Horseshoe, Harrah's, Planet Hollywood and The Linq. Add his Golden Nuggets and he'll control about 60 casinos nationwide. Rumors that Fertitta plans to bring back 50-cent shrimp cocktails, free parking, and holes in the desert remain unconfirmed.

From 16,000 to 185 to Zero: Trump’s Claims of Illegal Voting in Nevada Fizzle. "The state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen." nytimes.com/2026/09/24/us/po…

Researchers built an AI that doxes any "anonymous" reddit account in under a minutes for $2. eth zurich and anthropic published a terrifying paper proving that "practical anonymity" on the internet is officially dead. they built a fully autonomous ai pipeline that takes your pseudonymous posts, extracts your identity signals, searches the web, and figures out exactly who you are. no human investigator needed. the numbers are actually mindblowing.. - 67% of hacker news users identified correctly - when the system makes a guess, it is right 90% of the time - it even unmasked scientists whose interview transcripts were explicitly redacted for privacy the scariest part? even time doesn't protect you.. they tested users who took a full year break and changed their interests. the ai still matched their old and new profiles with 90% precision. it sees through your persona changes like they aren't even there. there is no defense against this. the agent splits the work into tiny, benign tasks like "summarizing a profile" or "ranking candidates." no api safety guardrail is going to flag it because no single step looks malicious.. every throwaway account. every "nobody will connect this to me" comment. it’s all just searchable micro-data now.

The complete lack of vol in nat gas over the past 8 months is interesting to me, and if that were to change (for whatever reason) then things would get even more squirrelly on so many dimensions.

Last Thursday, we welcomed Logan and Jake Paul to the Pentagon to meet with our warriors.

US Treasury Secretary @SecScottBessent claims that J Robert “Oppenheimer was not a physicist” in response to questions regarding why key US government positions are being staffed by seemingly unqualified ideologues. Astounding ignorance. Link: piped.video/PIwWsHy9RfE?is=S08S… 🧐🙄🥴

Fall of the Rebel Angels, by Charles Le Brun, before 1685