Linkage
Things Katy is reading.
Meet the anti-progressive think tank pushing Democrats towards Trumpism
in Daily KosIn the wake of the Democratic Partyâs disappointing 2024 election losses, a quiet but seismic shift is underway within its ranks. At the center of this transformation is Third Way, a self-proclaimed âcentristâ think tank that has long positioned itself as the voice of moderation in Democratic politics. But a closer look at its agenda, funding, and recent maneuvers reveals a far more troubling reality: Third Way is spearheading a Project 2025-style assault on progressivism, steering the party toward a conservative, even far-right alignment that echoes the Trumpist playbook.
The latest evidence of this shift came in a five-page memo leaked from a recent Third Way retreat with Democratic staffers and consultants. The document, obtained by journalist Donald Shaw, urges the party to abandon its reliance on small-dollar donors, arguing that their preferences âmay not align with the broader electorate.â While the memo stops short of explicitly naming alternative funding sources, the implication is clear: Democrats should pivot toward the deep pockets of wealthy elites and corporate donors.
Power Cut
Microsoft has, through a combination of canceled leases, pullbacks on Statements of Qualifications, cancellations of land parcels and deliberate expiration of Letters of Intent, effectively abandoned data center expansion equivalent to over 14% of its current capacity.
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The reason I'm writing in such blunt-force terms is that I want to make it clear that Microsoft is effectively cutting its data center expansion by over a gigawatt of capacity, if not more, and itâs impossible to reconcile these cuts with the expectation that generative AI will be a massive, transformative technological phenomenon.
I believe the reason Microsoft is cutting back is that it does not have the appetite to provide further data center expansion for OpenAI, and itâs having doubts about the future of generative AI as a whole. If Microsoft believed there was a massive opportunity in supporting OpenAI's further growth, or that it had "massive demand" for generative AI services, there would be no reason to cancel capacity, let alone cancel such a significant amount.
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Microsoft is cancelling plans to massively expand its data center capacity right at a time when OpenAI just released its most computationally-demanding model ever. How do you reconcile those two things without concluding either that Microsoft expects GPT-4.5 to be a flop, or that itâs simply unwilling to continue bankrolling OpenAIâs continued growth, or that itâs having doubts about the future of generative AI as a whole?
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Generative AI does not have meaningful mass-market use cases, and while ChatGPT may have 400 million weekly active users, as I described last week, there doesnât appear to be meaningful consumer adoption outside of ChatGPT, mostly because almost all AI coverage inevitably ends up marketing one company: OpenAI. Argue with me all you want about your personal experiences with ChatGPT, or how youâve found it personally useful. That doesnât make it a product with mass-market utility, or enterprise utility, or worth the vast sums of money being ploughed into generative AI.
The New McCarthyism: LGBTQ+ Purges In Government Begin
in Erin in the MorningIn the early 1950s, a moral panic over gay people swept across America. LGBTQ+ individuals were cast as threatsâvulnerable to blackmail, labeled âdeviant sex perverts,â and accused of colluding with communist governments. Senator Joseph McCarthy, infamous for the Red Scare, pressured President Eisenhower into signing an executive order purging LGBTQ+ people from government service. With that signature, the campaign escalated rapidlyâup to 10,000 federal employees were fired or forced to resign during what became known as the Lavender Scare, a far less taught but even more devastating purge than the Red Scare. The episode remains a lasting stain on U.S. history. And now, it appears we are witnessing its revival: 100 intelligence officials were just fired for participating in an LGBTQ+ support group chatâan internal network not unlike employee resource groups (ERGs) at most companies.
The firings stem from out-of-context chat logs leaked by far-right commentator Chris Rufo on Monday. Sources tell Erin in the Morning that the chat functioned as an ERG-adjacent LGBTQ+ safe space, where participants discussed topics like gender-affirming surgery, hormone therapy, workplace LGBTQ+ policies, and broader queer issues. Rufo, however, framed these conversations as evidence of misconduct, claiming that âNSA, CIA, and DIA employees discuss genital castrationâ and alleging discussions of âfetishes, kink, and sex.â To Rufo and his audience, merely talking about being transgender and the realities of transition is enough to be labeled âfetishâ content.
Eisenhower and McCarthy would have killed for such an easily accessible list of LGBTQ+ federal employeesâand the flimsy pretext to purge them.
Within a day of the chat logsâ release, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that all participants in the âobscene, pornographic, and sexually explicitâ chatroom would be terminated.
Politics, Not Biology, Is Driving Legal Efforts to Classify Sex
in Scientific AmericanA useful explainer for bewildered relatives, etc.:
Clear definitions of categories matter in the law. The use of two sex categories to talk about a species is standard in biology. In many animal species, including people, however, there are individuals who are neither male nor female or who are sometimes both. In other species, there are two sexes, but they arenât male and female (usually these are intersex and male). And a few species have only one sex (usually female). The biological reality is that âmaleâ and âfemaleâ are not universal immutable biological classifications but rather descriptions of typical patterns in reproductive biology. These categories, male and female, are used by biologists who fully understand that they rarely represent all the relevant biological variation in any given species or identical sets of variation across different species.
Sex is not one single, simple, uniform biological reality. Thus, biology cannot be invoked as a basis for such in legal terms. Thatâs the bottom line.
Of course, men and women are not the same, and reproductive biology does structure important aspects of human bodies and lives. But none of the key biological systems associated with sex in humans (chromosomes, gonads, genetics, hormones, and so on) come exclusively in two âimmutableâ categories. Yes, most humans have either XX or XY chromosomes, but as Judge Reyes noted, some donât. People with either testes or ovaries are most common, but some people have both, and a few have ovotestes. Usually those with testes can produce sperm, and those with ovaries produce ovaâbut not always. The chromosomes one has do not always predict oneâs gonads or oneâs genitals or even all the elements of oneâs reproductive tract. It is true that most people have the âtypicalâ combo of chromosomes, gonad and genitals, yet there are tens of millions of people alive right now who donât. These people are not errors, aberrations or problems; they are a part of the range of variation in our species. They are all real people. In fact, many who have these variations donât even know it. You might be one of them.
In making laws, then, we need to recognize what the actual range of variation in sex-related biology is and how it maps across everyone.
Washington Post opinion editor departs as Bezos pushes to promote âpersonal liberties and free marketsâ
in The GuardianShameless.
Jeff Bezos, the self-proclaimed âhands-offâ owner of the Washington Post, emailed staffers on Wednesday morning about a change he is applying to the paperâs opinion section that appears to align the newspaper more closely with the political right.
âIâm writing to let you know about a change coming to our opinion pages. We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,â Bezos said.
âWeâll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others. There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the readerâs doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.â
Transgender Health Data Wiped from CDC Records by Trump Order
in TransVitaeThe CDCâs move to comply with Trumpâs executive order is not just an attack on transgender inclusionâit is a fundamental assault on evidence-based policymaking. Public health data drives funding allocations, legislative protections, and medical advancements. Without accurate data on transgender individuals, lawmakers and health officials will be unable to craft policies that address the unique challenges faced by the trans community.
For transgender individuals, this erasure from federal data is more than an administrative slightâit is a direct threat to their health, safety, and survival. Without demographic representation, there will be fewer initiatives tailored to trans healthcare needs, fewer resources allocated for trans youth mental health programs, and fewer protections against discrimination in medical settings.
âThis is an attempt to legislate us out of existence,â said a transgender activist who wished to remain anonymous. âThey are trying to make it so that we donât âexistâ in public data, and if we donât exist in the data, we donât exist in policy. If we donât exist in policy, we donât get protections. And if we donât get protections, they are making us more vulnerable.â
Writing is hard; publishing is harder
Sage advice:
I once pulled out a ten-year old unsubmitted and unfinished piece of writing, revised it, and submitted itâit was published, and won an award. It took ten years for me to understand what that argument was really about, so leaving it unfinished for that long wasnât a bad choice at all. There are others that will remain forever unfinishedâalso not a bad choice.
But there are times when one should just hit submit. The dreams may not come true, but there will be other pieces of writing about which we can dream.
Iâm saying all this because I hope people who might be stuck in their writing will find it hopeful. Just hit submit.
Botanists Say There's No Such Thing As Vegetables, And We're Shook
in HuffPostIn the broadest sense, according to the dictionary, the term vegetable is used to define anything living that isnât animal or mineral â think the vegetable kingdom (which is another term for plant kingdom).
If you ask a cook, a vegetable is also a term used to define the parts of the plant that we eatâ the plant matter on our plates such as salad, braised greens, carrots or potatoes.
But if you ask a botanist, theyâll tell you thereâs no such thing as a vegetable. âThe term vegetable has no meaning in botany,â Amy Litt, director of plant genomics and Cullman curator at The New York Botanical Garden explained to LiveScience.
Why? Because from a biological standpoint, what we call vegetables are really just parts of plants. So botanists just call them by their parts. Asparagus is the stalk of a plant. Broccoli is the flower of a plant. Kale is the leaves of a plant. Onions are the bulb of a plant. Carrots are the root of a plant. Tomatoes are the fruit of a plant.
World Bank Open Data
for World BankThis site is designed to make World Bank data easy to find, download, and use. All of the data found here can be used free of charge with minimal restrictions.