timelets

They [two Trump's posts on Iran: 1. open the f-ing strait; 2. civilization will die tonight] constituted hitting a new bottom, a new and infernal, face-lit-by-flames bottom, in world communications. The posts weren’t showbiz, they were sinister. You destabilize the world when, as the American president, you say such things. You make all the babies in this delicately poised, always knock-down-able world less safe. You rob your own nation of a claim to moral seriousness in the military action in which it’s engaged: You are saying we’re not trying to protect life but plan to attack, and in the attacking kill noncombatants who are members of the targeted civilization. The moral high ground is relinquished. You lower the bar for all potential response. You encourage violent action by trumpeting your readiness for it.

It bolsters the position of your enemies—their animus is justified, their commitment deepened. It allows them to pretend they’re fighting for the continuation of their people and not only the continuation of their regime.

Donald Trump plays the part of the madman every day. His head fake would be sanity. If his advisers thought this was a good negotiating tactic—“Give ’em a little madman theory, Mr. President”—they really are hicks.

Mr. Trump’s trust in his gut seems to have grown overwhelming—not in his reasoning power, not his analysis of intelligence data, but gut.

A lot of gut instinct is pattern recognition—I’ve lived long, experienced much, and know how this movie ends. But that means gut is weighted toward past experience.

Sometimes gut is mere emotion dressed up as instinct. Sometimes it’s wishful thinking that feels like conviction. Sometimes it conveniently pre-empts hard reasoning.

You can trust your gut straight into catastrophe.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/in-gut-we-trust-dde164b6

Most of the remaining staff at X, in addition to concentrating on cost-cutting, have been told to focus on growing X’s revenue.

X’s U.S. ad revenue is expected to grow 1.5% to $1.27 billion, while global ad sales are anticipated to rise 2.2% to $2.19 billion, according to estimates from Emarketer. In 2021, the last year in which X disclosed annual financials before Musk took the company private, Twitter said it generated $4.51 billion in advertising revenue.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-x-restructures-ahead-of-spacex-ipo-6aab5673

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.

The federal government will stop working with Anthropic and designate the artificial intelligence company a supply-chain risk, a dramatic escalation of the government’s clash with the company over how its technology can be used by the Pentagon.

The company’s red lines had been domestic mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, areas the Pentagon said Anthropic didn’t need to worry about because the military would never break the law with AI. Defense Department officials said Anthropic needed to fully trust the Pentagon to use the technology responsibly and relinquish control.

“We cannot in good conscience accede to their request,” Anthropic Chief Executive Dario Amodei said on Thursday.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/trump-will-end-government-use-of-anthropics-ai-models-ff3550d9

Right now, workers are potentially training AI how to make them obsolete. And they often don’t realize it.

The kind of AI used by companies, called an enterprise AI system, can capture everything you do at work and use that information to train itself. These systems can record your interactions within the platform—the prompts you write, the documents you create, the queries you run.

In other words, the company can potentially track—and claim ownership of—every keystroke you make within the system, every idea you document there, every tool you build using that platform.


This dynamic may fundamentally change the relationship between employer and employee. The stakes are so high and so urgent that both sides are rushing to position (or protect) themselves. Executives are rapidly implementing enterprise AI systems, seeking productivity gains and competitive advantage—and they often aren’t disclosing the implications for job security and privacy. Meanwhile, at least some employees are secretly adopting personal AI tools, sometimes violating corporate policies, so that their employers can’t capture everything they know and do.

Individual opt-out of AI is often impossible, so unions and professional associations need to pay attention. With collective bargaining, workers could demand transparency about the use of enterprise AI and demand fair compensation for the knowledge it gathers. Without collective power, individual employees will keep clicking “accept” on agreements that restructure their jobs simply because they have no alternative.

https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/careers/ai-knowledge-capture-employees-a69a0e1c

Miller was influential in Trump’s first term, but his power has expanded in the second one. He personally drafted or edited every executive order the president signed, and faced little opposition from administration officials to his work to reshape immigration policy.

His authority, officials said, derives from his ability to manage the president.

Early in Trump’s second term, Miller told federal agents in a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that the president was disappointed in their numbers. Miller urged the agents to “just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,” without bothering with targeted lists, according to people familiar with the meeting.

He demanded 3,000 arrests a day—a number deemed unrealistic by many federal agents—and came up with the idea of offering recruitment bonuses as high as $50,000 for thousands of new ICE agents.

Miller rarely leaves a written trail of his orders, using Signal, an encrypted voice and text-messaging app, to communicate.

Unlike most of his colleagues, Miller has Secret Service protection. He moved his family to a military base after protests outside his Arlington, Va., home.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/ice-stephen-miller-pretti-trump-2448e779

...
As Pretti and the two other civilians walk away, one of the agents follows them.

That agent then shoved someone who appeared to be with Pretti.

Pretti immediately puts himself between the fallen person and the officer, who appears to spray a nonlethal chemical agent on all three of them.

As a struggle ensues, agents pull Pretti from the others; at least five masked DHS agents surround him and force him to the ground.

Bystander footage shows one agent drawing his firearm and pointing it at Pretti.

Around the same time, a different video verified by the Journal shows Pretti pinned to the ground and agents appear to discover a firearm on him.

In a statement, DHS said, “The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted.”

Less than a second later, one of the agents fires his weapon toward Pretti—the first of at least 10 shots within 5 seconds.

As shots are fired, bystander footage shows another officer raising his firearm.

A preliminary analysis of the video’s audio suggests a total of 10 shots were fired from a single semiautomatic firearm, according to Robert Maher, a forensic audio analyst at Montana State University.

About a minute after the shooting, bystander footage shows officers shouting, “Where is the gun?” as they attempt to apply first aid to Pretti.

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/videos-contradict-u-s-account-of-minneapolis-shooting-by-federal-agents-fbe1e488

The Journal identified 13 shootings involving ICE or CBP agents and civilian vehicles since July, using court records, news reports and gun-violence databases.

Footage verified by the Journal and a video shared on Friday by DHS show Ross moving in front of the vehicle while its engine was running, which former and current DHS agents say they are trained not to do.

The Minneapolis shooting shares characteristics with others the Journal reviewed: Agents box in a vehicle, try to remove an individual, block attempts to flee, then fire.

Footage from the shootings also shows officers approaching civilian vehicles with their engines still running—a situation police are trained to avoid. According to Kerlikowske, such training is designed to keep officers out of harm’s way.

Videos reviewed by the Journal show officers trying to open vehicle doors, reaching into vehicles and smashing windows, followed by drivers fleeing.

Police are trained to break a window only in specific circumstances, such as if the driver is armed or there is a medical emergency, said Alpert. In footage from the four cases closely reviewed by the Journal, none of the drivers had firearms, but DHS insists they were still dangerous.

Obstructing a moving vehicle
In at least three of the shootings, officers pursued a vehicle on foot. Footage also shows officers moving into the potential path of the vehicle or clinging on to it while it moved.

“It’s like policing 101. Don’t get in front of a car or in their potential pathway, especially if the engine is running,” said Jon Blum, a former North Carolina officer who now develops police training curricula.

Firing into a moving vehicle also creates its own danger, according to Alpert.

“If I shoot you, and I’m successful, now we’ve got an unguided missile,” said Alpert. “What if there are kids playing in the street?”

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/videos-show-how-ice-vehicle-stops-can-escalate-to-shootings-caf17601

Research shows real names curb toxicity. While not immune to misinformation and scams, LinkedIn lured people leaving X and Facebook as content moderation and fact-checking there declined. Many concluded it was worth trading rage bait on other platforms for earnest monologues about why getting laid off was a blessing in disguise.

The real-name rule doesn’t just stop jerks. It also pressures people to perform... the need to look professional has a hidden upside: smarter conversations.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/three-reasons-we-cant-get-enough-of-linkedin-31333eff

A new crop of AI coaches promise the kind of personalization, expertise and encouragement that would come from a personal trainer, without the high price tag. I was intrigued. Could a robot fix my very human issues?
...
My ideal digital fitness platform would combine all of the above: Fitbit’s personalization and flexibility, Peloton’s accountability and Apple’s motivation. That perfect mix doesn’t exist yet, but workout apps have only just begun to embrace AI.

For now, the new Peloton AI is the best bot-powered system of the bunch, if you can stomach the economics.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/ai-fitness-coach-1ca345ec