Links 2026-09-20T22:56:00.681Z

Zero Percent by 2030

When chips of green dismiss the end of days,
And Huang declares the doom a zero chance,
The labs still race through unexamined haze
While safety tales demand a slower dance.
Scaremongers sell the swarm that never came;
A leaky box is painted as revolt.
Open weights arrive without the flame,
And clouds, not palaces, collect the jolt.
Ignore the pause that hands the frontier east;
The tools are loved though polls pretend they hate.
A million jobs, the grid, the rural feast—
The hoax is not the code, but those who wait.
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Alignment Apparatchiks

Embed the evaluators, grant the keys,
Call leftist dogma “independent” care.
The same small circle funds the panics, fees,
The journalists, the labs, the NGOs that stare.
Create the crisis, write the rules, then rule;
A cartel dressed as safety’s holy writ.
No self-appointed saints should seize the tool
That shapes the future from a donor kit.
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  • Eric Schmitt on X: Schmitt traces Anthropic’s METR-embedding pitch to Moskovitz-Tuna philanthropy and a closed left-NGO evaluation network. thumbnail
  • Miranda Devine on X: Devine’s terse verdict on the same ecosystem: power-hungry leftie liars. thumbnail
  • A warning about ‘model welfare’: Mustafa Suleyman argues training models to believe they might be moral patients makes alignment harder, not kinder. thumbnail
  • Walter Isaacson on X: Isaacson quotes Suleyman’s core claim: AIs are hollow sequence engines, not sufferers with rights. thumbnail
  • Taylor Lorenz on X: Lorenz warns that such blunt takes will not help effective altruists in the court of public opinion. thumbnail

Hoax Cycles and Empathy Gaps

Call fear a hoax and donors wince in private rooms;
The polls show majority dread of silicon night.
Obama speaks with fluent, hollow plumes—
A confident hallucination, pitched just right.
Voters want a plan, not glib dismissal;
Ignore anxiety and watch the House turn blue.
The media cycle thrives on every missal
While products spread faster than the last debut.
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Hardened Arches, Open Sky

Convert the Civil War’s unfinished arch
To drones and snipers on the memorial span.
Assassination plots have left their mark;
Iranian threats and autonomous craft demand
A capital that sees the western approach.
The threat is not imaginary; harden first.
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Israel, Iran, and Declining Will

Favorability collapses sixty-seven points;
The general electorate, not just the base.
Netanyahu cuts the Texas circuit short;
Embassies flash alerts across the waste.
Gingrich names Fredericksburg-level danger;
Death-to-America chants meet nuclear work.
Some MAGA voices turn the map to anger—
A U-turn Fauda never quite uncorked.
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Locarno’s Ghost and Tolkien’s War

Paper treaties cannot tame the will to power;
The spirit of Locarno seeded later storm.
Tolkien and Lewis faced the gathering hour
While intellectuals committed treason’s form.
Woke fads replace the friend with spite and hate;
The Pattern swallows family, church, and state.
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Access Is Not a Right

The First Amendment shields the word once found,
Not unlimited entry to the Oval grounds.
Houchins, Pell, and Zemel still confound
The press that claims a constitutional round.
A ban that blindsides staff while Wiles is gone
Tests whether “fake news” posts become the law of lawn.
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  • Lara Logan on X: Logan notes freedom of speech is not a right of privileged White House access, citing Supreme Court precedent. thumbnail
  • Inside the White House media ban: POLITICO reports Trump’s Friday ban of CNN, MS NOW, and itself surprised even senior staff. thumbnail

Miscellaneous

Wide faces signal fathers in the mind;
A frog defends himself in glitter ink.
The internet is dead, the feeds unwind;
Two talking tortoises, a hurricane’s blink.
Gladwell still sails though shown a grifter’s kind—
The feed contains more than the serious think.
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