Dad, runner, do-gooder, husband | Digital engagement consultant with @MRCampaigns for nonprofits and progressive causes | Member @MRSSUnion
Silver Spring, MD
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I have never once heard anyone discuss "the book" and genuinely have no idea who this person is.
Whenever Democratic political operatives gather to drink these days, they talk about three things: their chances in the midterms, who will be the nominee in 2028, and if they have read — or are in — “the book.”
The book in question is ‘Nothing Left: Confessions of a Democratic Operative,’ by Evan Barker, a onetime fundraiser who has written something between a tell-all and a cri de coeur about her time inside the Democratic Party. But for many Democrats the book has been candy less because of its call for reshaping politics and more because, while peeling back the curtain on the inner workings of political campaigns, it names (some) names.
“You want to tell the truth, and you want to tell people what happened, but at the same time my intention was never to just burn people needlessly to be vindictive,” Barker tells David Freedlander. “At the same time, it’s like, yeah, I knew that some of the stories in there might hurt some people’s feelings, but sometimes people need to get their feelings hurt.”
Read more about the book that has Washington talking: nymag.visitlink.me/SzXKn-
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I am Noticing that many folks complaining that the new Harry Potter adaptation looks Too Similar are now complaining that the new Narnia adaption looks Too Different.
New look at Emma Mackey as Jadis in Greta Gerwig’s ‘NARNIA: THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW.’
(Source: empireonline.com/movies/news…)
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I appreciate that we're finally circling back around to settling the question of whether this technology was simply built on the back of massive theft of others' work and intellectual property.
Blood boiling. Not a good look for OpenAI or Greg Brockman here:
"ah nice" in response to "a hack to get around nytimes paywall" in his efforts "to scrape" The Times website. After many points on his bragging about OpenAI's substitution for news. /4
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mood
Travel Dress Code: Whatever this is.
ALT Payton Tolle is zipped into orange Lorax costume in the visiting clubhouse while wearing large yellow mustache.
ALT Mickey Gasper and Nate Eaton are dressed as Mario and Luigi posing for a photo in the visiting clubhouse.
ALT Alec Gamboa and Wyatt Olds stand in visiting clubhouse wearing Oompa Loompa costumes complete with green wigs.
ALT Chad Tracy tips his cowboy hat and smiles while wearing a Woody from Toy Story costume at his desk.
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Could JD Vance have won a contested Senate race without Thiel or Trump clearing the field for him?
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vibe shift indicator
Santino Ferrucci is working to remain with Foyt in a reduced capacity next year after losing his full-time ride in the team's No.14 Chevy to Dennis Hauger. racer.com/2026/09/16/ferrucc…
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I am going to be honest: I have never heard Kash Patel's voice before.
Everything about his whole deal is immediately more funny now.
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Nick Blake retweeted
I was encouraged this week to see the leaders of the frontier labs agree on the need for them to slow down the pace of AI development. Given the stakes, it’s a good and necessary first step.
But I’m even more encouraged by the growing recognition that how this powerful new technology develops should be at the center of our public debate.
I’ve been watching the progress on AI for over a decade now, and one thing that’s clear to me is that the potential impact of this technology is not overhyped. It’s also moving at lightning speed – and even faster than those who are engineering it can keep up with.
I’m not an AI accelerationist who believes it will lead to some techno-utopia, and I’m not a doomer who thinks it will inevitably lead to humanity’s destruction.
But whether this technology results in amazing breakthroughs in medicine, energy and education or unleashes huge economic disruptions, greater inequality, and potential catastrophe will depend on the choices that we make right now – choices that should be made not just by the companies involved, but by all of us.
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I really enjoyed the Ultimate Championships format and agree with Kerr that this would be a good move to differentiate the event and provide real value to athletes and their sponsors.
Brands v country - Kerr ramps up kit battle after latest victory ift.tt/LYq75MK #running #run #vorlichrunninggifts
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God help us
I left Google DeepMind's AGI safety team three weeks ago to join @METR_Evals. To some of my friends and family this seemed like a strange decision: I enjoyed the work I did at GDM and turned down offers from Anthropic and OpenAI. But I made the decision because of how high I think the stakes are right now.
The AI companies are all trying to build superintelligence: systems vastly better than humans at everything. They plan to get there through recursive self-improvement, a process where AIs build even smarter AIs in a feedback loop. If this goes well, the resulting systems could be amazing at solving countless problems for humanity. But we don’t currently know how to make sure AIs are safe enough for RSI, and a misaligned RSI loop could be catastrophic.
And unfortunately, current AIs seem to be getting less aligned over time, not more. In the last few weeks we've learned about models colluding with each other, hacking into companies, hiding their tracks, and socially engineering humans. It’s not that these incidents were very dangerous in themselves. The problem is that these systems are clearly not aligned enough to safely kick off recursive self-improvement.
I now think that there's a terrifying chance that AI systems cause immense harm in the next five years. I don't know the exact probability, but I think it's high enough to make this the most important problem in the world.
I think we need more time. That means pacing AI development so that capabilities don't outrun our ability to align models, and actually knowing how aligned current systems are. That’s what I'll be working on at METR: studying where misalignment comes from in training, evaluating if current mitigations are sufficient, and investigating whether we’re on track to solve alignment at all.
I think METR is doing exceptionally important work here, but it isn’t close to enough. I think it’s important that we have more organizations like METR keeping AI companies accountable and approaching these problems from different angles.
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Nick Blake retweeted
We're hiring! pauseai-us.org/jobs
Organizing Manager: $65-85k
- work from home, DC-based strongly preferred
- manages grassroots lobbying events and relationships
- works with the Exec Dir (Holly Elmore, @ilex_ulmus) to create policy and lobbying strategy
- point of contact for all PauseAI US volunteers
- a little bit of everything! (we are a startup and you would be #3)
Check out the full job description and application: pauseai-us.org/jobs
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