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Miriam Pawel, in an op-ed in The New York Times arguing that the University of California should not bring back the SAT requirement for admission:

What has made the University of California exceptional is its commitment to increase access without sacrificing excellence. [...] Students on University of California campuses may struggle with basic math, but they are graduating at record rates.

A success story would be increasing the number of people with solid math skills. Printing degrees for students who struggle with basic math is not a success story, and sounds like the antithesis of “academic excellence”.

Link: nytimes.com/2026/09/16/opinion/university-of-california-sat…

New novel from Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven): Exit Party. “Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted.”

Will Oremus, writing for The Atlantic last week, “Okay, Sure, a Folding iPhone” (gift link): Apple’s next big invention, the company revealed at a launch event in Cupertino, is a $2,000 iPhone that sports — get ready — a “remarkable hinge.” Is it not possible for a hin...

Being a computer scientist who refuses to find anything about LLMs interesting right now is a bit like being a geneticist who refuses to find anything interesting about the recently opened Jurassic Park.

Tags: llms, ai, generative-ai

We're adding support for AGENTS.md to Claude Code.

Starting today in version 2.1.277, if there is no CLAUDE.md in a folder, Claude will check for and use AGENTS.md.

AGENTS.md support is built off of Claude Code mods, our upcoming way to customize the Claude Code harness.

This is a built-in mod, but you’ll be able to build custom versions of project instructions yourself as you’d like too.

You can see the source for the mod here!

— Thariq Shihipar, there are more mods here

Tags: thariq-shihipar, coding-agents, anthropic, claude-code, generative-ai, ai, llms

An exploration of the human figure, use of architectural materials, and the perception of space.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Across Two Exhibitions, Jaume Plensa’s Monumental Sculptures Unite Scale and Material appeared first on Colossal.

Wes Anderson steps into the mobile Criterion Closet to select some films that he enjoys. One unsurprising thing about this video: Anderson says he has his own Criterion closet at home with all of the Criterion films. That’s maybe a $40-50K investment? (He probably gets th...

In addition to the Duo-specific 27.1 SDK, which allows third-party developers to get started adapting apps to the Duo’s new screen sizes and layouts, Apple’s developer site also has Figma and Sketch design kits.

Link: developer.apple.com/news/?id=nyuppv9r

Warren Buffett, in a letter to Berkshire shareholders:

Recently, I celebrated my 96th birthday with family and friends, including one of my great-grandchildren, who had just turned one. He’s moving a bit faster than I am these days. [...]

So the timing is right to complete the transition. I will become Chairman Emeritus and remain a Director. My son, Howard, will succeed me as Chairman.

Howard has been a Berkshire Director for 33 years. That is a longer apprenticeship than I served before taking the reins at the age of 34. Greg runs the company; Howard will guard its culture and values — both worth more than anything on our balance sheet. Think of Howard as a policy the shareholders own and hope never to claim against.

Not many 71-year-olds rise to the position of chairman at leading corporations.

Link: berkshirehathaway.com/news/sep1826.pdf

Let’s check in on the president of the United States, having a normal one on his blog: I am proud to announce that, effective immediately, I am banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW (who recently changed their name from MSNBC due to lack of viewership and credibility!), and Polit...

“The clan of predators currently in charge of the U.S. federal government” are striving to make the world safe for grift, corruption, and theft, with their mob boss president leading the way.

Artist Maya Barkai assembled a collection of pedestrian traffic signals from around the world: Walking Men Worldwide. I love all of these little people. The Warsaw one reminds me somewhat of Rocky from Project Hail Mary. Some of the ones from smaller places have more personality, but I feel like the New York and Boston ones are my favorites aesthetically. Weirdly, the iconic German Ampelmännchen isn’t among the crowd here. A screenprint of the collected pedestrian people is available on the Walking Men Worldwide website. (via @jessicabrillhart) Tags: art · cities · design · Maya Barkai · walking

Page Six Hollywood:

Ternus attended an intimate Apple party the night before the Emmys, filled with stars and powerbrokers, where some talent brazenly hit him up for the phone.

“The new phone is big news,” said one top Hollywood exec, who added that they heard of at least one star, “asking [Ternus] to get him on the list” for a phone. Joked the source about who gets the phones: “It’s like CEOs. That’s like the ‘Eddy Cue list of illuminati.’” (Cue is Apple’s senior vice president of services and health.)

Link: pagesix.com/2026/09/16/hollywood/mysterious-apple-ceo…

Instant click for me: how NYC street signs are made. “The sign shop…has a staff of 46 workers, including seven letterers who lay out signs by hand and a blacksmith who makes custom brackets to securely attach signs to traffic poles.”

Max Roberts, after looking at the list of MKBHD’s all-time most popular videos, and noting that his Duo first-look is #3, and a Duo follow-up is already at #36: Apple enters the category and in a week it blows past every other folding video. Now, this doesn’t translate ...

Cleaning up my notes this morning, I realized I forgot to write about the new under-display Face ID sensor in the iPhones 18 Pro, and the corresponding change to the Dynamic Island. I just added it to my review. For those of you who’ve already read the review, here’s the new...

YouTube Help: Last year, we updated how we count public views for Shorts to better capture how viewers watch on YouTube. Now, we’re aligning all other video formats to this same standard for consistency across the platform. Beginning on 8/24/2026, a view will be counted ...

The Creative Spirit of Who Framed Roger Rabbit

I love Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the 1988 movie by Robert Zemeckis. I haven't watched it in quite a few years, and Cypress Frankenfeld just pointed out this sequence from early in the movie:

It's a pelican riding a bicycle!

Look closely and you'll note that the pelican is animated while the bicycle is a real bicycle. Apparently they filled the wheels with water to add stability, then set it running and guided it with a cable.

Cypress gathered more details on the scene. What a delight.

Via @cypressf.bsky.social

Tags: animation, movies, pelican-riding-a-bicycle

The History of Concrete, a new documentary film by John Wilson, who one review called “the Werner Herzog of the mundane”. This looks great!

Review of a new book on Stephen Hawking. “The uncomfortable truth is that Hawking’s overweening ambition and self-promotion, his repeated failure to acknowledge the work of others, his sexism and controlling behaviour were largely ignored…”