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markpalko.bsky.social

@markpalko.bsky.social
220 followers 19 following 2.9K posts

The job description says data scientist, but still just a simple country statistician at heart. Blogging at observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com Andrew Gelman: "There's something wrong with the world that [Palko's] blog doesn't have a million readers."

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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 9h
econjared.substack.com/p/a-budding-...
econjared.substack.com
A Budding Consensus on AI Revenues, and Some Thoughts on the AI Labs IPOs
We recently argued, once again, that AI is a bubble. We’re not alone.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 12h
there's a lot going on right now, but the ability to buy elections in order to stay out of prison is on the ballot whether you realize it or not
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Jesse Felder @jessefelder.com · 06/10/2026
”Pursuing a tech path that can never support the guarantees of safety that we will need when systems become sufficiently capable to be of really high value, it’s a wrong turn that we took, so further investment in these models is throwing good money after bad.” www.theinformation.com/articles/ali...
theinformation.com
Aligning AI With Human Goals Might Be Impossible, Says AI Prof. Stuart Russell
Last week, OpenAI scrapped the model it had slated to release as GPT-6.1 Astra due to test results showing that it was deceptive and otherwise misaligned. “I think it’s about time,” said Stuart Russel...
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Ed Overbeek @edoverbeek.bsky.social · 21h
“I was into that band before they got popular” politics is about one thing and it’s not winning elections.
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 20h
Downside: The US now has government goon squads, and deploys them to try to intimidate voters into voting the way the president wants. Upside: They don’t have nearly enough goons. Not even close. They’re hoping fear will make up for that big shortfall, but it won’t.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
These people first convinced themselves that the second coming was at hand, then went looking for a technology to hang their beliefs on, changing messiahs in mid-stream when LLMs became the next shiny thing, somehow switching from one tech to another without rethinking any assumptions.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
From buttondown.com/apperceptive...
buttondown.com
Tracing the rogue ideology of the frontier labs to their product choices
A drawing of Eliezer Yudkowsky as the Paperclip Maximizer that I commissioned back in 2016 and have had an alarming number of chances to use since This is a...
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Levinson and Link wrote and produced an excellent film about the incident starring Martin Sheen.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
statmodeling.substack.com/p/lebron-jam...
statmodeling.substack.com
LeBron James wants more money and he’s gonna get it by scamming you.
And my best guesses as to why he’s doing it. (Spoiler: it’s not about the money, it’s about being part of the game.)
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
@christhompson.bsky.social
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
defector.com/lebron-james...
defector.com
LeBron James Wants Your Paycheck To Become His Paycheck, By Way Of Polymarket | Defector
The new Polymarket ad spot opens with LeBron James stepping onto an elevator and pushing a button labeled “SPORTS.” This is not some AI-extruded, near-enough visual representation of a generic basketb...
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Memo from the NYT assignment desk: HAVE AN INTERN CHECK LAST MONTH'S DEFECTOR FOR ANYTHING INTERESTING
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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Trump says 'Let them take out Los Angeles.' Recall this map: The *entire states* with population smaller than LA County. Among them they have 80+ US Senators. LA is about 1/3 of Calif's population, which has 2.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Interesting how the long-termists never seem to conclude that the best way of developing technology to secure humanity's future is to tax the rich and use the money on schools and government R&D.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 05/10/2026
I don't know who needs to hear this, but the autonomous vehicle developers who most vocally argued that society must accept a certain number of deaths to enjoy the technology's safety benefits (Tesla & Uber ATG) were the only ones who killed people and never actually delivered on their promises
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
“.. ‘This is a five-alarm fire,” a GOP member of Congress from a state Trump visited recently told CNN .. ‘We always welcome the president, but I don’t know if he’s aware of the feelings out here.’” @jeffzeleny.bsky.social www.cnn.com/2026/10/05/p...
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Gil Durán @gilduran.com · 05/10/2026
“Democracy has been hailed as, like, the holy grail for the last couple hundred years, but democracies are inefficient,” said the crypto billionaire. “If you get a benevolent dictator, it’s actually extremely efficient." Hmm, where have I heard this before? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/b...
nytimes.com
Inside a Billionaire’s Paradise With Crypto’s Most Powerful Ex-Convict (Gift Article)
Changpeng Zhao, jailed in the United States for a financial crime and pardoned by President Trump, is now living a gilded life in the United Arab Emirates.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Cal Newport's op-ed on the related topic of the "rationalists" and the craziness of Silicon Valley culture (emphasis on the first syllable) was good, but with the NYT it's always one step forward, nine steps back.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 05/10/2026
ugh, can't believe the woke bluesky mob is scared of bold political thinking, just because it comes from a money launderer who keeps moving headquarters to stay ahead of basic financial regulations
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
In my salad days, I taught (among other things) HS English. A student once handed in a free writing assignment that he had copied word-for-word from the back cover of a classroom paperback of Shane. Even when I put the two texts side by side, he denied it.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Seems worth noting that it was the 2018 endorsement from Bernie Sanders that launched Fetterman's political career.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
bsky.app/profile/mark...
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The essential context here is that OpenAI is caught between industry leader Anthropic on one side and on the other side nearly as good and far cheaper open-weight models and Altman sees his chances of becoming a centibillionaire slipping away unless he plays his cards just right.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I haven't been back to the Bay Area (never my favorite part of the state) since the pandemic, but based on Leopold Aschenbrenner and countless other examples, I imagine the streets of SF to be filled with clueless 24 yr old tech bros being reversed mugged by VC's forcing them to take huge checks.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
On the Death of Expertise, I'd look more to Andreessen and the Techno-Optimist Manifesto than to Musk, though the latter has certainly taken the ball and run with it.
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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 04/10/2026
Got interviewed by one of the largest Swedish newspapers and they led with the best headline/photo (translates to “it’s easier to see an angry man than the truth”) www.svd.se/a/pB7E0G/ed-...
svd.se
”Lättare att se en arg man än sanningen”
Han har kallats galen, bett en AI-vd att hålla käften – och i åratal varnat för en börskrasch. Nu har den högljudda outsidern tagit klivet in i finrummen. Ändå känner sig Ed Zitron fortfarande behandl...
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
RHG and his ilk's response will be to do some racecraft, insisting that these are Berbers and thus not really racially Black (while ignoring the ample evidence for dark-skinned Romans) and/or to just botch the chronology and claim that this was part of Roman decline.
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 04/10/2026
If Anyone Shoves Me In A Locker Again We All Die
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Jesse Felder @jessefelder.com · 04/10/2026
‘Frakes said his Muse agent did a fine job fielding questions for a couple of days. Then, on Monday, he woke up to: “Something went wrong overnight.” The agent messaged a dozen buyers “$1” for properties typically ranging from $20,000 to $100,000.’ www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-a...
wsj.com
AI Agents Are Offering to Run Your Life. Should You Let Them?
Personal bots, such as Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, and Instinct, can now take on your to-do list. Should you let them?
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Coach Finstock @coachfinstock.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Exactly. This is such a lie. Email had a purpose. The internet had a purpose. Search had a purpose. Everybody loved Silicon Valley in the 90s because they made shit that did what it promised. Now 3 guys who never made SHIT have ALL the money in SV. They're scam artists. Not engineers.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Got around to the 4th season of Reacher. A bit of a mixed bag -- someone needs to tell the directors' it is possible to have too many drone shots -- but the closing scene scene with the homeless woman nails it.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Currently burning through the great HBO Max library so I can cancel as soon as the nepo baby officially takes over.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I recall Altman saying that he made more money off Popeye than any of his other movies. The explosion in home video created a huge market for kid-friendly movies.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I'm not sure there's enough cocaine in the industry to make another POPEYE.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
“.. The cost to insure the debt of both companies against default .. is increasingly moving in lock-step, a sign investors are beginning to treat the two credits as intertwined. “.. You have to consider your total Larry Ellison risk,” Goodman said. $ORCL $PSKY www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
observationalepidemiology.blogspot.com/2026/09/can-...
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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A clear example of bad faith, and why it’s a mistake to indulge bad faith. “Weaponization of DOJ” was always a blatant lie, a made up accusation from people who were eager to do the very thing they were pretending to oppose. Indulging that helped the liars, and empowered them to end rule of law.
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The reason I'm so skeptical of the AI industry's latest breakthroughs is they are operating with infinite money and pretending that doesn't matter. So many things become easier when you have infinite money to throw at a problem. The Infinite Money Trick davekarpf.beehiiv.com/p/the-infini...
davekarpf.beehiiv.com
The Infinite Money Trick
Guarded skepticism about AI product releases
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Does it seem to anyone else that Dario Amodei's safety slowdown doesn't include actually slowing down any potentially unsafe things? techcrunch.com/2026/09/18/a...
techcrunch.com
Anthropic is operating a lab that conducts biology experiments | TechCrunch
AI leaders have been promising that AI is the key to curing human disease. Anthropic researchers have also been warning that AI might kill us all.
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Tales From The Future @talesftf.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Source for quote: $TSLAQ electrek.co/2026/10/03/t...
electrek.co
Musk explains why Tesla Robotaxi is not running at night, and lidar is the answer
Elon Musk says Tesla Robotaxi is limited at night by pets that are hard to see. Lidar and radar handle that, and Tesla removed its radar in 2021.
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Reuters Legal @legal.reuters.com · 02/10/2026
Elon Musk's xAI on Friday persuaded a US federal appeals court to halt Minnesota's first-in-the-nation ban on AI-generated fake nude images as the technology and social media company pursues a lawsuit alleging that the law is unconstitutional.
reut.rs
US appeals court blocks Minnesota's AI 'nudification' law for now in XAI lawsuit
Elon Musk's xAI on Friday ​persuaded a US ‌federal appeals court to halt Minnesota's first-in-the-nation ​ban on AI-generated ​fake nude images as ⁠the technology and ​social media company pursues ​a lawsuit alleging that the law is unconstitutional.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
gift link www.theverge.com/cs/features/...
theverge.com
The People of Utah vs. Kevin O’Leary
Mr. Wonderful wanted to build the world’s largest data center. The neighbors had other ideas.
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
“.. The layoffs — occurring just three days before President Donald Trump’s rally on Saturday at a nearby high school — were large enough to basically erase an entire year of job growth in the greater Dayton, Ohio, area.” @apnews.com apnews.com/article/trum...
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 03/10/2026
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from criminal negligence
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
bsky.app/profile/mark...
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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
“I am the house.” - Sept 8 “I can’t control the bond market.” - Oct 3 @bloomberg.com www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Rule of thumb, if you're not going to mention the elephant in the room, don't start your ad with the literal phrase "elephant in the room."
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/candi...
talkingpointsmemo.com
Candidate Quality
The New York Times and Siena released another batch of polls this...
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Opening with "elephant in the room" then completely ignoring the elephant (she never even mentions her husband in the ad) only makes things worse. It drives home just how indefensible Paxton is.
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markpalko.bsky.social @markpalko.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Terrible ad from a marketing standpoint. Under the best of circumstances, vote for the party despite the candidate is a tough sell, particularly coming from a walking, talking reminder of what a horrible human being Ken Paxton is.
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