Does Gemini Show That Scaling Still Works? No. “The data show the opposite: scaling works only in a diminishing sense, with each gain costing non-linearly far more than the last.” Google’s Gemini 3 is a testament to brute-force computation yielding […]
Redesigning government websites for the better. This is what happens when Airbnb’s cofounder joins the government. “Work is super high impact, redesigning government interfaces that suck.” National Design Studio is on a mission to modernize user experiences in government systems, […]
CTU’s financial scandal deepens. “Teachers are fighting their own leadership for the right to know where their money went. And that fight has finally reached Congress.” The Chicago Teachers Union is facing federal scrutiny over missing financial audits, with five […]
Cook County’s shifting tax burden. I have a property in Wicker Park that I finally got the tax bill for, and my taxes are up 50%. Reading about the issue, I discovered I have much to be thankful for. As […]
Pennies Are Trash Now “There is no plan.” The U.S. Mint has abruptly stopped minting pennies, leaving 300 billion of them in circulation without any strategy for their future. Unlike Canada’s organized withdrawal, the U.S. seems to have given up […]
First kiss was 21 million years ago. Researchers found that the mouth-on-mouth kiss dates back to our common ancestor with great apes. “We think kissing probably evolved around 21.5 million years ago in the large apes,” says Dr. Matilda Brindle. […]
Can you walk Wisconsin’s shorelines? Shorewood resident Paul Florsheim takes a stand after receiving a trespassing ticket for walking along Lake Michigan’s shoreline. “I really actually want to go to court because I don’t think I was trespassing,” he argues, […]
Academic papers need not suck. “Sometimes you just kinda phone it in for a year, you know? I didn’t do a whole lot of research this year. Spent a lot of time on Twitter. Played around with GANs a little. […]
Kalshi’s bold move. Kalshi, a prediction-market platform, is gearing up to compete directly with the U.S. stock market. “This is starting to look like a trillion-dollar market,” says CEO Tarek Mansour. ~ learn more
Shooting things to space. Longshot Space has an audacious plan: build a 6-mile-long space cannon to shoot objects into low Earth orbit. “If you want to send a 1,000 lb object into space at Mach 23, put 3,000 lb of […]