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Samantha Maldonado, senior reporter for THE CITY, where she covers climate, resiliency, housing and development, explains how recent Trump administration cuts to Federal Emergency Management Agency threatens over $300 million in climate resiliency for New York City-specific efforts, plus a new executive order that takes aim at state programs meant to charge polluters in order to drive down greenhouse gas emissions. 

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Meta is a problematic business and more people should move to open platforms, but I have to agree with Ben Thompson’s take on the trial. It’s too late and too complicated to try to unwind the Instagram and WhatsApp acquisitions:

…both of those businesses were what they were in 2020 because of the investments that Facebook made in the intervening years; I think it is just fundamentally wrong to be re-litigating regulatory decisions of this nature years after the fact — and that certainly applies to 2025.

My last post to Instagram was 2017. My photos are now on my own blog where they belong.

I like the attempt at transparency in this statement on AI from Revenant, an animation and effects studio in Scotland, via Cartoon Brew. They’ll use AI for rapid prototypes and streamlining workflows, but:

…we’re also clear on what we don’t use it for — we don’t use AI to shortcut the creative process, we don’t lift style or work unethically, and we always put human creativity first

After sharing Ed Zitron’s latest piece called “OpenAI Is A Systemic Risk To The Tech Industry” I got a few responses arguing in a similar way: People agree that “AI” and especially “generative AI” is a massive bubble that does not really make much sense – if you imply rational decision making. Training the models, building the data centers, inference, inflated wages, potential licence costs and the costs of damages … economically the whole sector doesn’t make too much sense (Sequioa Capital agrees). Sure some people believe that they’ll find the machine god in old 4Chan posts but I also would not consider that to be rational in any way, shape or form. The singularity is just a weird ersatz-religion for rationalist nerds confronted with their own mortality.

Quick demo of the Timeline in v0.5.4.

A few days ago I wrote: ChatGPT is to Google what Google was to library card catalogs. The great thing about Google when it was first out was that unlike previous search products, they searched everything, including our blogs, and that opened up knowledge to us that had been previously, for all of our history as a species, not accessible. And LLMs are similarly revolutionary. I'm doing much better, deeper work, with great results for my users, than I could have accomplished with the network defined by Google.

WordLand 0.5.4. New feature, the Timeline.

A few days ago I wrote: ChatGPT is to Google what Google was to library card catalogs.

I got a chance to explain.

The great thing about Google when it was first out was that unlike previous search products, they searched everything, including our blogs, and that opened up knowledge to us that had been previously, for all of our history as a species, not accessible.

And LLMs are similarly revolutionary. I'm doing much better, deeper work, with great results for my users, than I could ever have accomplished with the system defined by Google. and for crying out loud it's not natural language search, all that tells me is you haven't bothered to use the freaking products before having a cynical opinion about them.

When President Trump met with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, at the White House, the fate of one man was hanging in the balance. Adam Liptak, who covers the Supreme Court, discusses the Maryland man who was mistakenly sent to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvado...

On Monday, Donald Trump met with El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, and in an act of true infamy, the two authoritarian leaders collectively agreed that wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia will not be returned to the United States. And in a series of vile&n...

AI 2027 is a good read. Both endings seem wildly unrealistic, but as a warning it did make me think. So it worked. Just seems greatly accelerated beyond a few years from now.

More than four years after it was first filed, the government's case is only getting harder to prove

Schedule automatic data exports using time-based automation triggers.

Thinking about the Tesla Superchargers that have been torched recently… Anyone who uses violence or property destruction to further their cause is actually undermining it. We’ve gotta be better than that.

Protests like the marches a couple weeks ago are the model. Peaceful, legal, effective.

Harvard could use this moment to bring some really new ideas back into the university.

A quick summary of the top feature requests you've been sending

Ran a few tests with the new GPT-4.1 family of models. I think I’ll go 4o → 4.1 for photo keywords and accessibility text, but maybe not immediately. The old pricing and capabilities are still really good. Currently using a mix of 4o, 4o-mini, and 4o-transcribe.

The United States is experiencing a rise in measles, the most contagious virus in the world. Many of us have questions: Is my child protected? Do I need another vaccine? What about taking vitamin A?   Infectious disease experts worry that the Trump administration’s...

Over the weekend I got to ride in a Waymo for the first time, in Phoenix. See @cheesemaker’s perspective in this video. It’s a surprisingly smooth, nice ride. It drives as good or better than an average human driver. I was expecting to be nervous but after about 30 seconds it feels normal.

Catie Edmondson, congressional correspondent for The New York Times, offers political analysis of the budget blueprints passed by Congress last week, including what tax and spending cuts might look like, and why Republicans were far from united on this.

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