Attention to the Unseen

Trump bows to pressure from Kim Jong Un, scales back military exercises with South Korea

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:40:46 +0000

The Associated Press reports: North Korea on Friday threatened unspecified stern steps against the United States and South Korea ahead of their upcoming military drills, which Pyongyang called a war rehearsal that would be more provocative than last year. The warning is typical of the harsh rhetoric that North Korea often deploys ahead of major U.S.-South Korean military exercises and suggests the country could conduct more missile tests in coming days. Experts say North Korea has often used its rivals’...

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Trump’s Oman bombing threats have a golf course problem

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:40:31 +0000

Russ Choma reports: On Monday morning, President Donald Trump issued a blunt warning to America’s erstwhile ally: “If Oman gets in the way, we’ll bomb the shit out of them.” It was another one of his un-diplomatic jabs at a longtime friend—this time for the possibility that Oman might prove helpful to Iran in ending the war. But if Trump’s aggressive, crude attitude towards an ally isn’t confusing enough, it’s also another example of how Trump’s sprawling efforts at personal...

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Israel’s security minister Ben-Gvir advocates killing ‘30 to 40’ people in Gaza nightly

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:40:15 +0000

The Associated Press reports: An extremist Israeli lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition publicly advocated for killing “30 to 40” people in Gaza each night, comments that surfaced Sunday and were quickly shared by Palestinian media. Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir made the statement while speaking to a former Gaza-held hostage, Rom Braslavski, on Braslavski’s podcast. The two were discussing Israel’s recovery from the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, when Ben-Gvir criticized Israel’s recent drawdown of strikes...

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Trump’s billionaire boy’s club

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:39:55 +0000

Public Citizen: A new investigation by Public Citizen reveals that 57 individuals within the Trump administration, excluding President Trump, are individually worth as much as $100 million, eight of whom are billionaires. The analysis underscores the growing economic divide between the average American worker, who earns $65,000 a year, and the politically-connected individuals who hold the power to address the economic strain facing the general populace. Of the 57 ultra-wealthy individuals identified, 31 have personal assets exceeding $100 million, while the...

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Amazon is destroying rare books to train AI

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:39:27 +0000

Ars Technica reports: For the past year or so, booksellers have suspected that AI firms are buying up huge lots of rare books, then destroying them after scanning them to train AI. But this was hard to prove until now, as 404 Media reports that an Airtag hidden in a rare book shows that at least one tech giant, in the race to advance its frontier models, is behind some of the bulk orders: Amazon. On Monday, 404 Media revealed...

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China wants to shape what the world’s AI knows

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:39:13 +0000

The New York Times reports: When ChatGPT was still a new technology, researchers in Beijing tested how well it handled Chinese-language questions. Their response to its results was telling. The chatbot described the former N.B.A. star Yao Ming as the first Chinese woman to play professional basketball in the United States. It confused two classic works of Chinese literature, “Journey to the West” and “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which were written two centuries apart. The researchers at the Beijing...

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Neuroscience separates logic and language

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:38:56 +0000

MIT News reports: Some people find it useful to talk through their problems — but language isn’t necessary for logical reasoning, cognitive neuroscientists at MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research say. In research published last month in the journal PNAS, researchers led by MIT associate professor of brain and cognitive sciences Evelina Fedorenko have shown that people can perform well on tasks that require logical reasoning even if their language abilities are severely impaired. What’s more, brain imaging shows that...

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Music: DOMi & JD BECK — ‘LOVELY MASQUERADE’

From elsewhere — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 23:38:39 +0000

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‘Godfather of AI,’ Geoffrey Hinton, predicts mass unemployment is on its way

From elsewhere — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 23:01:52 +0000

Fortune reports: The long-term impact of AI is one of the most hotly debated topics in Silicon Valley. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang predicts every job will be transformed—and likely lead to a four-day workweek. Other tech titans go even further: Bill Gates says humans may soon not be needed “for most things,” and Elon Musk believes most humans won’t have to work at all in “less than 20 years.” While those predictions might sound extreme, they’re not just plausible, they’re...

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Ukraine disables 7 of 10 of Russia’s largest logistics centers for Wildberries online retailer

From elsewhere — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 23:01:12 +0000

🔥 The largest Wildberries logistics hub in all of Russia has been finally destroyed.Koledino, Moscow. Wildberries appears to have made a conscious choice not to empty this warehouse despite knowing Ukraine will destroy it like all others.Expect $1.5+ billion in damages. pic.twitter.com/SISsou9uU2 — Igor Sushko (@igorsushko) August 16, 2026 Kyiv Post reports: The Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced on Sunday, Aug. 16, that recent operations have disabled seven of the ten largest logistics centers belonging to the Russian e-commerce company Wildberries....

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