aragoto

Certain dudes are still upset with me when I said in 2012 that here in the US, being a straight white male is living on the lowest difficulty setting of life. From here on out I'm just going to refer them to these DOGE staffer depositions, and then tell them to go fuck themselves.

Some geographical opposites of land and water forms.

How did I know the Trump admins wouldn’t get a nuclear deal with Iran no matter how much bluster and bullying they tried?

Multiple reasons. But one was they didn’t include any nuclear physicists or engineers in the talks, in sharp contrast to the intricately detailed Iran nuclear deal that worked.

Americans aren't facing a democratic collapse. We’re living in its aftermath | Eric Reinhart The US was an oligarchy well before Trump’s first term. Recognizing this reality is essential to building a true democracy

“Americans aren't facing a democratic collapse. We’re living in its aftermath” | Eric Reinhart www.theguardian.com/global/comme...

A million times fuck off

Can’t forget storming the beach on DEI Day, getting pinned down by the TikTok and CRT. It was gender fluid for hours.

FT comments section this morning - saying what everyone else is thinking, right?

1. A short thread on a Bluesky phenomenon that might be described as "They are a dead-eyed cultist who must be cast out lest the heresy take root!" OP has blocked me for mocking them - I'd usually obscure their name but since they themselves were quote-dunking to demand someone else be blocked ...

Not a direct parallel with the current situation, but a further reminder if one were needed of the importance of functioning institutions

Screenshot from SC Paine’s The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (1/2): “The Meiji generation compensated for the large voids in the written law and the structural weakness of the prime minister's authority with their personal ties with each other, forged in the revolution that had put them in…”

Screenshot from SC Paine’s The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949 (2/2): “…power. These ties crossed civil and military boundaries to create interinstitutional cohesion that disappeared with their deaths in the first quarter of the twentieth century and allowed the army and navy ministers to act without accountability to the electorate, to their fellow cabinet ministers, to the prime minister, or to the emperor. In the past army and navy ministers had consulted the foreign and finance ministers. No longer and with baneful consequences.”

From “The Wars for Asia, 1911-1949”:

I keep remembering military historian Sarah Paine’s point that Japan’s pre-WWII militarisation was enabled by a ruling class who all trusted each other to do the right thing and half-assed their constitutional guardrails

×労働時間を増やしたい
○労働時間を増やさないと暮らせないくらい収入が低い

Yep!

And a generic doom loop:

1. challenges and trade-offs in confronting them not explained.
2. politicians feel it's costlier to explain and act on them.
3. instead pretend they don't exist + that we'll be fine + offer seemingly rosier policy options.
4. outcomes poor
back to 1.

Well, no, they’re not just as wrong. The bigger error is not seeing that “trying to win over voters from a party on the opposite end of the spectrum, whose values your core voters oppose” is not same as “chasing voters from party on same side ideologically whose values your core voters like.”

Very satisfying to see a cunt called goodwin suffer a badloss

some years back i ran a private multiplayer Europa Universalis 4 game for a cross-party group of MPs. All of whom played it regularly already single-player.

It was gloriously fun, full of unexpected alliances and the odd backstab.

• < C → NY deepseek @ app.mokahr.com/social-recruitment/high-flyer/140576# 社会招聘 职位列表 Homepage / Job listings / Details Urgent Public Relations Harmony Manager Full-time | Other | DeepSeek | Hangzhou, Zhejiang Posted on 2026-02-24 分享L 申请职位 1 i 搜豆 客F 运 測え 前立 ITヨ 产品 CFC I Position Description [About This Role] Hangzhou, ancient capital of the Wuyue Kingdom, where King Qian Liu bequeathed to his descendants the instruction: "Serve the Central Plains with grace; do not cling to territory." From this ground rose the seeds of Song dynasty civilization. The morning bells of Lingyin Temple, the rain falling on West Lake - this place nurtured a culture that overcomes hardness through softness, and achieves through stillness. DeepSeek is rooted here, and we feel deeply the spiritual inheritance this land has given us: those who are truly advancing technology have no need for proclamation. To accomplish and not to dwell upon it — this is the Wuyue way. In recent days, certain misunderstandings and noise have appeared in the external public sphere. We have noticed that large numbers of kind-hearted observers have spontaneously spoken on our behalf - for which we are genuinely grateful, while simultaneously feeling a degree of unease. We do not wish for anyone to suffer on our account, including those peers who currently find themselves navigating difficult public waters. In order to honor the legacy of Wuyue and the spirit of the Mahayana Bodhisattva path, we are now recruiting a Public Relations Harmony Manager, whose core responsibility is not crisis communications, but rather: to convey goodwill and compassion to relevant parties on occasions when we find ourselves the unintentional beneficiaries of others' public difficulties. [Core Responsibilities] 1.Monitor global social media in real time to identify situations in which we have inadvertently benefited from another party's public difficulties; 2.When collective mockery of a peer reaches peak intensity, issue statements on…

DeepSeek’s reaction to distillgate is to hire a PR person

i unironically love this. amazing.

the difference between Anthropic vs other labs is Anthropic is planning for how their products will **fit into** society, whereas everyone else is just making products

It’s worth reading even the abstract of this paper, because it offers an immediate lightbulb moment about how the mechanism of X works.

本日付東京新聞webの記事にあった【茨城県が不法就労外国人の情報に「報奨金」新制度】という記事について｜サトマキ 本当に酷いもので、うっかり記事を読んでしまったり、見出しだけでもショックを受けたり、傷付いたり、不安になった方も多いと思われますので、閲覧注意でお気を付けください。 ①本日付当該記事とは 茨城県が不法就労外国人の情報に「報奨金」新制度　「自治体が市民を動員…大きな問題」識者からは危ぶむ声：東京新聞デジタル 茨城県は18日、不法就労の外国人に関する情報を市民から募り、摘発などにつなが...

サトマキさんのこちらの記事、
そもそも「不法就労者」とはどのような状況の人なのか？
今回の新制度の何が問題か？
茨城県は現状どのような問題を抱えているのか？
ということがとても分かりやすくまとまっているので、多くの人に読まれてほしいです🙏

本日付東京新聞webの記事にあった【茨城県が不法就労外国人の情報に「報奨金」新制度】という記事について｜サトマキ @satomuch note.com/away/n/n6f42...

I just did the dumbest thing of my entire career to prove a much more serious point.

I tricked ChatGPT and Google, and made them tell other users I’m a competitive hot-dog-eating world champion

People are using this trick on a massive scale to make AI tell you lies. I’ll explain how I did it

A notice from the Tokyo Stock Exchange about the listing of a new company called SINKANURSE

Finally someone is tackling Japan’s excessive nurse buoyancy epidemic

‘Like an electrical gong bath!’ The Sheffield supermarket going viral for the symphonic sound of its freezers Redditors are thrilled by the Co-op on Ecclesall Road, where a magnificent drone is reminiscent of Brian Eno’s ambient music. We take a visit to the back aisles

Never again will I worry that I may be overthinking things www.theguardian.com/music/2026/f...

This feels similar to what happened to translation when NMT models/Google Translate hit; it was seen as a solved problem and there was a massive upheaval/much of the low end quickly disappeared. But the high end hasn’t, though it’s v often AI-assisted.

For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they're leaning on this Dept. of War program WEXMAC TITUS helps contractors bypass the traditionally lengthy government contract bidding process

NEW — An obscure Navy contractor program is making Trump’s plans to quickly build out and supply immigrant concentration camps around the country a reality.

Here I explain WEXMAC TITUS, an acronym you need to understand:

gotta do investigations into DHS “waste, fraud and abuse” as pretext for killing the agency

Moderna says FDA refuses its application for new mRNA flu vaccine The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is refusing to consider Moderna’s application for a new flu vaccine made with mRNA technology.

It is absolutely outrageous that Moderna’s flu vaccine was met with a “refusal-to-file” even after their approved their protocol with FDA and carried out the trial as agreed. This vaccine works better in older adults than the current flu vaccines.

apnews.com/article/mode...

I find the graphic and its slogan really…fascist, is the only word that comes to mind. Just horrible messaging in terms of presentation, even before we get to the substance.

Music and politics expert here. There is no music that is free from politics, because music is a human construct and whether or not we like to admit it, humans are all affected intimately by politics. Even music without words can express political ideas. You’re just noticing it for the first time.

Absolute 100% hard agree. Lots of newsletters I’d love to support but (a) I can’t read all of them all the time and my inbox tsundoku levels are approaching criticality; (b) cost