Reading

Created
Fri, 10/10/2025 - 04:00

I’m a proud mother of five who is obsessed with keeping her monkeys healthy. Some people think it’s crazy how much time I spend making sure everything in their environment is safe, nutritious, and natural. Those same people probably think I’m a bad mom for letting my little monkeys jump on the bed just because they keep falling off and hitting their heads every time. But this is a choice we have made as a family, and I will not let a bunch of judgmental strangers or any of the many doctors I have called shame me into changing my mind.

I’ll admit, when my first monkey fell off the bed and bumped her head, I was concerned. I immediately called the doctor, and the doctor said—and this is a direct quote—“No more monkeys jumping on the bed.”

I couldn’t believe it. “But this is our choice,” I told him. “And by the way, monkeys have been jumping on the bed for millennia. Even before there were beds. In the Paleolithic era, they would jump on rock slabs jutting out from the walls of their caves.”

“That sounds really dangerous,” he replied. Furious, I hung up.

Created
Fri, 10/10/2025 - 01:14
In the economics of information, Hayek’s ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’ (American Economic Review, 1945) and Grossman & Stiglitz’s ‘On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets’ (American Economic Review, 1980) are two classics. However, while Hayek’s article is often cited by economists influenced by the Neo-Austrian school, mainstream economists rarely have anything to say […]
Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 23:00

Jacket? Check. Wallet? Check. Keys? Well, obviously, you’re driving, you big gavone. Okay, Danny, this is gonna be your night. They’re gonna be shocked to see you. The guy every girl wanted and every guy wanted to be. The capital-C Cool Cat who flew into the clouds in a 1948 Ford Convertible and then inexplicably vanished, disappearing for three decades.

Man, heads are gonna snap when you walk in. Can hear those dorks now: “Whoa. Dan Zuko? That’s impossible…”

They’re gonna be shocked to see how cool I still am, like “Holy shit. Nobody’s seen you in thirty years! Are you okay?” Ha. Thirty years. That’s still so weird to say.

I’m getting chills, and they’re multiplying just thinking about those jaws hitting the floor when they see I look exactly the same, going, “Like for real, man, this is freaking me out, what the hell is going on with you?”

Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 22:00


Art by Matt Smith

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Now, evuhryone knows that the Vikings were some sehriously hahdco’ah fuckin’ fightahs. ’Cept most’ah ’em actually didn’t go a-viking as they just stayed there in their frigid fuckin’ homelands fahmin’ n’ fishin’ n’ shit. But those that did go a-viking, they were some hahdco’ah fuckin’ fightahs… when they weren’t too busy tradin’ tah be supah fuckin’ violent that is. I guess accumulatin’ material wealth has always been a top human priahrity regahdless’ah race, gender, creed, ah innate inclination towahds extreme violence.

Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 20:27
A European justice minister who does have principles! The EU “chat control” proposal I wrote about the other day has been scuppered by Germany’s justice ministry saying forcefully that it will never support this particular form of mass surveillance. Here’s what their minister, Dr. Stefanie Hubig, had to say: “Chat control without cause must be […]
Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 19:57
Whilst monetarists continually emphasize that the Central Bank can or should directly determine the quantity of money, or at least the ‘base stock’ of money, consisting of banknotes and bankers’ reserves (or balances) with the Central Bank, in fact they can do no such thing.
Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 19:33

The last two weeks have had a huge focus on stabilizing the coming AI and AI Agents 1.2.0 releases, meaning that not that many features have been added, but a lot of bug fixing. There are still some nice things that can be mentioned as visible progress.

AI Observability

The biggest release of the last two weeks is a new module called AI Observability that will ship with the AI module in 1.2.0 release! 

We have had something called AI Logging in the AI Core module for a long time, and while that has been good for development purposes, when you want to use real observability of things like usage, tokens, errors etc, in enterprise production environments the normal flexible logging system is unbeatable.

This opens up using anything you can use the normal PSR Logger for and the idea is later to make it possible to support external observation tools like OpenTelemetry for instance.

Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 19:00
David Rule Digital currencies and stablecoins have increased interest in how new forms of money are adopted. Looking to three episodes from the 1690s to the First World War, this post considers how paper currency replaced coin in Britain, an historical example of adoption of new money. The underlying drivers were not technological changes but … Continue reading War and payment innovation: the adoption of paper currency in Britain
Created
Thu, 09/10/2025 - 18:26
Sounds on good on screen: Hamas & Palestinian factions agree to Gaza ceasefire plan. A formal agreement is set to be signed today, Thursday, in Egypt, with Hamas officially approving the deal. The agreement includes the immediate opening of five crossings to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza, adjustments to the Gaza withdrawal map, and the […]