timelets

In court on Wednesday, a Justice Department lawyer asked for Eaton to pause his order while the government appeals, but the judge denied that request.

The judge said the repayment process should be straightforward and grew impatient when a Justice Department lawyer said the government hadn’t yet formalized its position on refunding the tariffs, which President Trump imposed by citing a decades-old law. “Your position is clear,” the judge said. “The Supreme Court told you what your position is.”

The Justice Department lawyer, Claudia Burke, said that any refund process would be time-consuming for the tariff collector, CBP. The government agency would have to manually go through millions of import entries, she added.

“We live in the age of computers,” Eaton said. “It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn’t need a manual review."

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-orders-government-to-begin-refunding-more-than-130-billion-in-tariffs-fdc1e62c.

First lady Melania Trump expressed condolences to families who have lost loved ones to death and injury during an address to the United Nations on Monday that described “these challenging times.”

In an unprecedented role for a first lady, she opened a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on behalf of the U.S. as the country assumed the rotating presidency of the council. “I extend my earnest wishes for a swift and smooth recovery to all those who have been injured. You are in my thoughts and prayers during these challenging times,” Trump said, without mentioning any particular conflict.

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-israel-us-strikes-2026/card/speaking-at-un-melania-trump-expresses-condolences-for-the-dead-4oUsYCq5A2LzcAeEHn9Z

An even more bewildering use of drones took place in the early days of the Shanghai lockdown. The city’s top mental health official introduced an unexpectedly sparky phrase in an otherwise drab press conference on the course of the virus, demanding that Shanghainese “repress your soul’s yearning for freedom.”

“One night in April, as the lockdown swung into high gear, a drone carrying a megaphone began blasting that message into apartments full of huddling residents: “Repress your soul’s yearning for freedom,” with a woman’s voice played on loop while a light blinked from the drone. “Do not open your windows to sing, which can spread the virus.”

-- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.”

We asked Amodei and four other leaders in AI how they think about their own children’s futures and what advice they give them.
...
--There are two areas that I think will be vibrant in the short to medium term. One is energy. The other is healthcare.

-- In terms of what he should study in college... I’d rather it be something in the space of mathematics because logical thinking is something that will be required in any future role because of how AI works.

-- My kids are interested in broad careers like law and medicine, so I’m less worried. I think generalist jobs, where there are many different skills bundled together, are good jobs in an AI world. .. A liberal-arts education matters more than ever.

-- Metacognitive skills will be very important—flexibility, adaptability, experimentation, thinking critically, being able to challenge things. Developing critical-thinking skills requires friction, doing things that are hard, doing deep thinking.

For that, a traditional liberal-arts education is really important.

-- So, if anything—and this sounds funny to say about future teenagers—I might orient my kids toward more socializing and understanding how they relate to people in their own unique way.


https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/what-ai-executives-tell-their-own-kids-about-the-jobs-of-the-future-1ba43f65

In the heavily censored realm of the Chinese internet, where no group is allowed to be very organized, one set of intellectuals has made themselves heard. They are loosely affiliated writers who refer to themselves as the Industrial Party. Their views are simple to summarize: that nation-states ruthlessly compete with each other; that science and technology are the decisive forces in this Darwinian competition; and that therefore the state must be organized around the pursuit of science and technology. They patriotically view the Communist Party as the world’s most capable political organization for this pursuit.

The Industrial Party tends not to cite a broad range of thinkers, only forceful leaders like Mao or Stalin who repelled invaders and established an industrial base. It is a worship of strength through technology.

--- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.”

“a collection of essays called The Hall of Uselessness by the Belgian sinologist Simon Leys. In one of these essays, “The Chinese Attitude Towards the Past,” Leys considers the construction techniques of Chinese builders.

Builders everywhere have attempted to overcome the erosion of time. Ancient Egypt and medieval Europe built great pyramids and cathedrals out of stone. The approach in China, as Leys points out, is for builders to yield to the onrush of time by using eminently perishable, and indeed fragile, materials. By building temples out of wood with paneling sometimes made of paper, Chinese architecture has built-in obsolescence, demanding frequent renewal. “Eternity should not inhabit the building,” Leys writes. “It should inhabit the builder.” Rather than using the strongest materials, Chinese builders have embraced transience to ensure the eternity of spiritual designs.

--- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.”

“I came to realize the inadequacy of twentieth-century labels like capitalist, socialist, or, worst of all, neoliberal. They are no longer up to the task of helping us understand the world, if they ever were. Capitalist America intrudes upon the free market with a dense program of regulation and taxation while providing substantial (albeit imperfect) redistributive policies.

Socialist China detains union organizers, levies light taxes, and provides a threadbare social safety net. The greatest trick that the Communist Party ever pulled off is masquerading as leftist. While Xi Jinping and the rest of the Politburo mouth Marxist pieties, the state is enacting a right-wing agenda that Western conservatives would salivate over: administering limited welfare, erecting enormous barriers to immigration, and enforcing traditional gender roles—where men have to be macho and women have to bear their children.”

-- Daniel Wang. “Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.”