The fact that Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine bottoms out FT's new geopolitical mood index really shows how "not with the times" Russia's hostility has been, even amidst the general bleakness of the past decade; worse than 9/11, worse than Gulf War, etc.

www.ft.com/content/db32...

So much winning…

www.economist.com/interactive/...

If you want to learn more about how programming languages work under the hood, can't recommend Crafting Interpreters by Robert Nystrom enough. Absolutely stunning and well-done book, and available for free (by the author) online. I just finished the first part on a Java-based tree-walk interpreter.

I'm not a LLM expert, but that seems like a simple and compelling point to me.

What I'm less sure about is how much of hallucination is simply due to that. In the blog post they have some metrics, and 25% correct vs 25% wrong vs 50% "I don't know" seems like a stark tradeoff. (2/3)

And A Different Democracy, which examines US institutions through comparison with other wealthy democracies, illustrating the many ways in which US democracy (such as it is these days) is weird. E.g. the Founding Fathers (TM) were totally wrong on parties, and the US has _a lot_ of veto points.

I haven't read this book, but two others I can recommend on the same topic:

Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop, which argues for multi-seat districts + a proportional voting method (e.g. ranked choice or open list PR); notably in the House could be done without changing the Constitution

Trump 2025 is crashing the economy like no one since Trump 2017. How on Earth it's possible that business thinks Republicans are good for them is beyond me.

From github.com/jhelvy/chart...

Fantastic short article on Germany’s WW2 guilt and support for Ukraine—the debt is not to Moscow, it is to those who are now victimized by Russia

Germany, Russia and my grandmother on.ft.com/3XoqCPB

Looks like Ukraine now has an attack drone (BULAVA) that can use computer vision / AI for terminal guidance, when the signal to the operator otherwise degrades.

From the other place: x.com/wilendhornet...

"Russia would see a victory in Ukraine as a green light to reshape the European security environment and as part of a broader challenge to Western rules- and value-based principles and order."

"The sanctions imposed on Russia in connection with the war in Ukraine are inflicting significant damage on the Russian economy. Perhaps the most effective is Russia’s exclusion from international financial markets, which significantly limits its ability to finance its budget expenditures."

Defense expenditures will reach 6% of GDP for 2024, at the expense of social spending. Optimistic budget forecasts, so probably cuts will be more extensive. Inflation is a problem.

Predict Russia will have 4.5 million artillery shells for 2024

One paragraph that stood out, nice way to view the relationship between "black box" models and prediction on one hand, and generalizable theory or basic principles on the other

Really cool and accessible article on Google Deep Mind's AlphaFold and protein folding, explaining what the problem is and why recent advances are important and impressive. Something I otherwise know nothing about.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...