Dov H. Levin
Asso. Professor of IR, HKU. Foreign election interference (& interventions)|Strategic Public Diplomacy| FP preferences| US Foreign Policy| War & Peace. Book on foreign election interference "Meddling in the Ballot Box" at OUP. Opinions are mine only
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- There will be no PhD's screwing in the screws in the iPhone factories.
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- social media is an intrinsically surveillance based tech but the worst parts of it have very little to do with corpa or govts using it to spy on you
- instead its the revelation that so many ordinary people missed their calling to be Stasi informants
- 1. Founders didn't foresee parties, which undermine the separation of powers. 2. But with unpolarized parties, it still worked OK. 3. Even with polarized ones (1990s-) it wasn't SO bad since there was often divided govt & legislators didn't fear their party's President as much as Rs now do Trump.
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- This is at once obvious, but an important insight. Trump was willing to destroy the global economy bc he didn't consider his rubes to be included among the targets. (Even though he was lecturing them that their daughters could make do with just two dolls.) www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...
- I'm always impressed by the alacrity with which a certain type of guy will get all blood and soil about New York City of all places and start arguing that only lifelong residents have a right to weigh in on things like housing policy.
- Murphy: "There's no guarantee that we are gonna have a free and fair election in 2026. He's trying to rig our democracy, to destroy dissent, to cripple the opposition, so that even if his approval ratings are in the 30s next year, there isn't the ability for his opposition to muster a real campaign"
- It is a truth universally acknowledged that a corrupt man in possession of a high office must be in want of a jet.
- Duffy: "We're starting to see cracks in the system." Good luck, air travelers!
- hear me out what if we *neither* unconstitutionally accepted jets from a foreign nation *nor* kept throwing the jets we already have in the ocean?
- "Indefensible." "It's a bribe." "Such a stain." Some of President Trump’s staunchest supporters are among the loudest critics of his plan to accept a jet from Qatar for use as Air Force One.
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- Foreign investors bought a record amount of Japanese equities and bonds in April.” This, from the FT, illustrates this year’s trend of gradual diversification away from US assets, following a period of significantly larger overweight positions that was driven by US economic and market outperformance
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- Sure, AI may be an environmental disaster and produce mid outcomes in cases where it doesn't straight up lie, but at least it's extremely unprofitable.
- Each one of these screwups is another example of how the theoretical ability to check LLM output is in practice irrelevant: any organization that uses LLMs is by definition not going to task time & people to check it, because *not doing it is the point.* via @bokane.org @drjlhazelton.bsky.social
- A new Coke ad proudly features a quote from a J.G. Ballard book, only he didn’t write the words and it’s not his book. www.404media.co/ai-powered-c...
- This is insane. Republicans have inserted language into the budget reconciliation bill that would ban states from regulating AI in any capacity for 10 years. from @404media.co www.404media.co/republicans-...
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- New COW Arms Tech data just dropped.
- COW is pleased to announce the new Arms Technology Data Set, maintained by Jacob Gerner Hariri and Asger Mose Wingender, tracking arms tech adoption by state 1816-2023, from percussion lock muskets to armed drones! Available here: correlatesofwar.org/data-sets/ar...
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- I’m old enough to remember stuff like this
- Excellent NYT graphic. In the space of about 3 months, tariffs on China: -- doubled; -- went up ≈ 2.5X from there; -- roughly doubled again; -- went up ≈ 40% from there; -- and now have dropped ≈ 80% from the peak -- but are still 3X what they were in February. www.nytimes.com/article/trum...
- doing the dweeby "two things can be true" meme: a) political and media class doesn't have courage or convictions b) people on this site tell other users to kill themselves and then say "small bean rights" when others get upset about it
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- 30% is an enormously high tariff!
- The sane-washing of Trump’s trade madness is inexcusable. US implements tariffs, China matches. US implements more tariffs, China matches. US surrenders & partly reduces tariffs, China matches. Media: “MAJOR TRADE DEAL!” What a joke.
