China is a tale of at least two economies - @ - bit.ly/3Q5VD6p

“No, my son is also named Borts.”

This piece that compares how LLMs impress you to the work of a psychic con artist is somehow just under a year old, yet is arguably one of the more vicious takedowns I've read about AI.
softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llment…

Excellent write-up.

🔓 Using data from over 40,000 urban & rural college students, Huan Wang, Claire Cousineau, Matthew Boswell & Hongbin Li examine rural students’ performance and estimate the impact of rural status on their first job wages compared to their urban peers.
doi.org/10.1017/S03057…

theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

One of the benefits, I think, of being a historian is you come to appreciate the slow processes in a society. Some things take decades, even generations, to accomplish, like building a cathedral, or enacting meaningful social reform, or releasing Hollow Knight: Silksong.

Perfect timing

context for Americans: Coutts is the private bank to the elite and her family still owns it.

A disposable compostable spoon from Cafe de Coral 大家樂, shortly after being exposed to heat and liquid, posted online.

“This kind of cutlery is basically not qualified if it will deform once exposed to heat,” says an associate professor of food science

scmp.com/news/hong-kong…

🔥🔥🔥🔥

Video from this morning’s quake in Hualien, Taiwan.

'The junta has suffered another extraordinary loss in the western state of Rakhine. Its control over the peripheries is slipping, though its grip on the centre appears firm.'

Excellent 🇲🇲update as ever, with some just outstanding visuals to help make the situation clear.

1/ Hong Kong independent bookstore Mount Zero, which has nurtured a community of writers and book lovers over the past six years, permanently closed on Sunday.

I attended a walking tour of Sheung Wan by the streets arts group HKWalls today. What follows is a thread of, uh, walls with art on them.

Silicon Valley has been dragged to the heart of America’s backwards military industrial complex — and Luckey is positioning Anduril as its saviour

Read my feel dive into the AI weapons tech is selling to the military in ⁦⁦⁦⁦⁦FT Weekend Magazine⁩ on.ft.com/3VCdeXb

Interesting that they skew positive/neutral.

Also a nice, pithy summary of the dynamics that serve to stifle so much nascent creativity in China.

NEW: following a contentious period in which sega attempted to lay off 40% of the bargaining unit, sega's union has secured a contract that includes raises, just cause protections, layoff protections, a crediting guarantee, and numerous other improvements

aftermath.site/sega-union-con…