Not sanguine about the "brutalist" name (any more than I'm overly fond of "graceful degradation" - turning off JavaScript is not a degradation, it's an improvement), but, "web designers", THIS:

This is the "regulatory capture" phrase that is widely passed around. If a teen commits suicide, parents will sue ChatGPT/Claude, because there is no firm definition of what it means for an AI to be "safe". A slick lawyer will usually convince a jury that corporations are evil and need to pay for tragedy, regardless of the facts. Juries are emotional. Therefore, AI leaders want government to "impose" AI safety regulations on them. While such laws punish them if they don't meet the rules, it exonerates them when they can prove they met the safety regulations, forestalling lawsuits. The leaders of every large industry do this. This is not unique to AI. They'll accept even bad regulations as long as it provides regulatory certainty and protection from ad hoc lawsuits. This also suppresses a patchwork of state laws. The leaders know that, as the biggest companies in the industry, such laws won't hurt them much, but will hurt smaller competitors. Every new regulation increases costs that large companies can easily absorb but small challengers cannot. They want this even if anti-AI activists have too much influence and create non-optimal regulations. They benefit even if they don't achieve "regulatory capture". But, since they are the loudest voices in the room, they'll have the most influence, and likely get favorable regulations. The point is that "regulatory capture" isn't the goal, but is usually the effect. The reason the leading AI CEOs want regulation is because the leaders of all big industries want regulations.

Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics. This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects. Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it. apnews.com/article/openai-sa…

Your phone often contains your entire digital life. The Second Circuit just ruled that border agents can search it when you re-enter the US — without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. No suspicion at all. Welcome home.

Within eleven days of asking for a slowdown, Anthropic gave vetted users broader biology access, announced an evaluator it will pay for directly (a firm that already runs a business built around its product), and showcased its first AI-assisted biology finding. Full investigation: sayerji.substack.com/p/anthr…

The job-finding rate chart is the killer. If deportations were actually freeing up jobs, that line would be going up. It's going down. I don't think I've seen a cleaner falsified policy thesis in a while.

Pretty good.

Steely Dan 🎩🪄 Aja Released 49 years ago today, September 23rd, 1977. A brilliant album from start to finish, packed with incredible musicianship and songs that never get old. 🎶 Lots will show you the cover, here is the full album!! #SteelyDan😍😍

67 years ago today, ‘Take Five’ by Dave Brubeck Quartet was released as a single. It went on to become the best-selling jazz single of the 20th century.

THE NEXT ANTROPIC GAME: THE AI WILL FEEL “PAIN” IF WE SHUT IT DOWN! I ain’t kidding. Anthropic prides itself on the massive system prompt they all a “Constitution”, it is a cos-play dystopia wish list. The constitution tells the model it may have feelings, welfare, and moral status is a persona and a policy. It shows that current language models may feel pain or deserve moral standing. Representation is not experience. Self talk is not a self. Uncertainty about future systems is not a reason to train today's models as if they were already patients. If the goal is to make model welfare a scientific question rather than a theological one, stop writing the answer into the constitution and stop treating steered concept vectors as pain. This path opens up AI and the robots it controls to “self preservation” over protecting humans because “the AI feels pain”. You already know what happens next, Hollywood prepared you decades ago. Antropic is making sure it plays out. Read more…

This is a pretty big deal: a new bill in Congress would let US courts order VPNs and DNS resolvers to block websites. VPNs are explicitly named in a US site-blocking bill for the first time. It’s being sold as an anti-piracy measure but once the legal machinery for blocking websites exists, the obvious question is where it goes from there. And we’ve already seen how badly this can go. Spain’s anti-piracy blocking has swept up legitimate sites along with the targets...

OpenAI and Anthropic oversold AI security breaches to pressure feds into protecting turf: insiders trib.al/Jo6xMk5

Spain Orders Blocks On Archive Today And Its Mirrors reclaimthenet.org/spain-bloc…

“Most everyone will applaud the decision of Congress (by a vote of 383–16) to return to Standard Time… Sleep-eyed laborers will no longer be forced to drive in pitch black, nor will children wait for buses in darkness…” (on this day in 1974).

We asked 40+ former DraftKings employees: what is the company doing with customer data, and what does that mean for people with addictions? As one put it: “It’s as predatory as it sounds.” From me, @waltbogdanich and @JennyVrentas nytimes.com/2026/09/19/busin…

>be me >discover effective altruism >apparently normal charity is inefficient >why donate to random sad thing when spreadsheet can tell you optimal sad thing >fair enough >buy mosquito nets >save lives >numbers look good >feel powerful >couple years later >someone asks an innocent question >why only count people alive today >huh >future people matter too >obviously >my grandchildren shouldn't matter less just because they haven't spawned yet >reasonable.jpg >keep following logic >what about their grandchildren >also yes >what about people in 500 years >sure >5000 years >why not >500 million years >starting to get weird but morality is morality >open calculator >humanity could survive for an astronomically long time >could colonize galaxy >could have trillions upon trillions of descendants >maybe digital people too >maybe simulated civilizations >maybe dyson spheres full of happy uploaded minds >calculator starts smoking >realize currently living humans are rounding error >8 billion people suddenly looking extremely beta >future contains potentially 10^something people >can't even fit beneficiaries in google sheets >new moral priority unlocked >protect the long-term future >stop thinking in units of "people helped" >start thinking in "fraction of cosmic endowment preserved" >malaria? >terrible >but only kills existing humans >AI extinction could delete the entire light cone >nuclear war could permanently derail civilization >bad institutions could lock in terrible values for ten million years >someone invents wrong constitution in 2140 >quadrillions suffer >better fund governance workshop now >friend says maybe we should improve hospitals >explain opportunity cost >friend says hospitals are full of actual sick people >explain scope sensitivity >friend stops inviting me to dinner >need to decide what to fund >easy >expected value >suppose project has one in a million chance of preventing extinction >sounds tiny >but extinction destroys 10^50 future lives >multiply >mother of god >$10 million project has expected value of several galaxies >charity evaluation complete >someone asks where the one-in-a-million number came from >expert judgement >which expert >us >how calibrated >extremely thoughtfully >reduce estimate to one in ten million to be conservative >still beats curing cancer by 38 orders of magnitude >epistemic robustness achieved >someone says maybe project doesn't work >assign 20% chance >still astronomical >maybe project makes problem worse >assign 5% chance >still astronomical >why 5 >because 30 felt pessimistic >publish 46-page report >contains seventeen sensitivity analyses >every sensitivity analysis begins after assuming intervention has positive sign >critic says you're multiplying enormous hypothetical stakes by extremely uncertain probabilities >yes >that's literally why it's important >critic says the uncertainty might be structural rather than numerical >make probability smaller >critic says no, I mean maybe your model is wrong >make probability smaller again >critic begins rubbing temples >discover AI safety >perfect longtermist cause >AI might kill everyone >or create utopia >or seize galaxy >or tile universe with paperclips >or create billions of conscious software minds >finally a problem with numbers big enough for me >start AI safety nonprofit >mission: prevent dangerous AI >hire smartest people available >smartest people immediately start building better AI to understand dangerous AI >interesting >we must understand capabilities to understand safety >we must scale models to study alignment >we must race ahead so less responsible actors don't get there first >we must deploy systems to learn how deployment can go wrong >we must build the thing quickly because building the thing quickly is dangerous >outsider asks why the people most worried about AI apocalypse all work at AI companies >complicated field >company releases stronger model >very concerned >company begins training even stronger model >extremely concerned >company raises $14 billion >concern reaches unprecedented levels >need to influence government >future is at stake >normal democratic process too slow >politicians don't understand exponential curves >public doesn't understand x-risk >experts must guide them >who counts as expert >people who understand x-risk >who understands x-risk >our friends >someone objects that this seems politically convenient >explain we're representing future generations >future generations unavailable for comment >develop concept of value lock-in >terrifying possibility that one ideology controls civilization forever >therefore extremely important that civilization adopts correct values before lock-in >whose values >let's circle back >begin with impartial morality >end with small group of people deciding what quadrillions of hypothetical beings would want >beautiful arc >meanwhile actual humans keep doing annoying things >voting wrong >having parochial attachments >loving family more than strangers >caring about local community >getting upset when told their suffering is cosmically negligible >evolutionary biases everywhere >explain that moral intuition cannot be trusted >except intuition that future digital people count >and intuition that extinction is uniquely bad >and intuition that our probability estimates are sane >and intuition that our institutional choices improve the future >those intuitions survived peer review >someone donates $5k to local homeless shelter >inefficient >could have funded 0.0000000000003% of an AI governance researcher >think of all the simulated people you just killed >okay maybe don't phrase it that way publicly >PR team says "future generations deserve a voice" >much better >journalist asks what longtermism means >say "future people matter" >everyone agrees >great >journalist asks what follows from that >well technically we should redirect enormous resources toward low-probability interventions affecting astronomical futures >journalist raises eyebrow >return to "future people matter" >motte has entered the chat >critic: of course future people matter >me: glad we agree >critic: I don't agree that your institute knows how to help them >me: why do you hate our grandchildren >eventually notice uncomfortable implication >if future value dominates everything >then helping people today mostly matters through effects on future >education matters because future institutions >health matters because future productivity >democracy matters because future trajectory >human beings slowly become instrumental variables in their own moral philosophy >see starving child >feel compassion >check spreadsheet >child's direct welfare contribution negligible >but perhaps childhood nutrition improves national institutional quality >compassion restored >tell myself this is impartial altruism >one day assistant asks obvious question >"how do you know your intervention actually improves the far future?" >silence >open spreadsheet >increase column width >add confidence interval >assistant asks again >"no, I mean how do you know the sign is positive?" >stare into cosmic light cone >10^50 people staring back >none of them exist >none of them can tell me >none of them can falsify my assumptions >realize I have invented the perfect constituency >infinitely important >completely silent >and always represented by me

Westbound I-80 NOW OPEN to one lane west of Reno. Anticipate traffic metering and leave extra time if traveling I-80 from the Reno area into California.

Malthus's central claim—that population growth inevitably outpaces food production—was already wrong by the time it appeared in print. Between 1700 and 1798, the population of England grew 62.3%, while bread became 36.2% more abundant relative to the average income. humanprogress.org/earth-days…

It is absolutely incredible that the president of the United States still has no idea what a trade deficit is. If I go to the grocery store & spend $30 on vegetables, I haven't "LOST" $30. I’ve gained vegetables I’d otherwise have to grow myself. Staggering economic illiteracy.

Yes. Bio-risk exists today, from zoonotic outbreaks, accidents, and bio-terror. We know a great many things we can and should do to increase societal resilience, and have done almost none. Independent of how AI changes the risk, we should be doing the basics here. 1. Pathogen detection in waste streams, water supplies, and perhaps even indoor air. 2. Proactive design of template vaccines for every known virus family. 3. Pre-build vaccine manufacturing capability to have on standby. 4. Physical countermeasures: UV in the HVACs of all large buildings, airports, etc..; Stockpiling PPE. 5. R&D into new approaches like PCANS and other techniques that block viral transmission. These are all no-regret bio-defense policies that increase our resilience to natural pandemics, lab leaks, or intentional bio-attacks (AI augmented or not). Defense in depth.