高大伟 David Cowhig

Retired US diplomat. My personal views. Resemblance to US policy entirely coincidental. Ham call WA1LBP. Also on Bluesky @gaodawei.bsky.social

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

Beijing October 2005 near the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing. Taken from a taxi. One of my best photos. The composition turned out well by accident! I'm more of a snapshotist than a photographer.

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

The shoes that don't fit https://t.co/V6pQF3k8oq

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

Generative AI use and misuse call for assessment reform in higher education | Science https://t.co/ZU8dRoUn1c

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

A student takes on Stanford (and the world) | Science https://t.co/vw6oc8HVAE

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. https://t.co/9OEk8Ap0yV

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

But @ejeancarroll remembered telling her friends about Trump's sexual assault of her right after it happened; her friends remembered her telling them about it; and they testified under oath about that. And a witness who worked at Bergdorf's confirmed E. Jean's recollection of the floor at the time. Not to mention the testimony of women who explained how Trump had similarly tried to sexually assault them. Or the videographic evidence of Trump bragging about how he liked to grab women "by the pussy," which is what the jury ultimately and unanimously found Trump had done to E. Jean. And there was much, much more.

As for @realDonaldTrump? Well, he testified that— ... oh, wait, he didn't testify at all at the trial because he was too afraid to face cross-examination in front of the jury.

So Byron, do you ever grow tired or ashamed of carrying water for a corrupt, psychopathic convicted felon and sexual predator? Or has your moral and intellectual compass degraded so much that you no longer care?

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. https://t.co/6LnsLxJGgM

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

2013: Chinese Culture's Century-Long Course and Modern Value 英文翻译： 潘建雷著《中国传统文化：百年历程与现代价值》
https://t.co/UiMP7brebi

[toomas hendrik ilves @IlvesToomas]

Enough, already.

Ireland doesn’t want to discuss EU common defence clause article 42.7 during its presidency

Lies about its alumina plant supplying Russian drone manufacture.

All in the same week.

But did enjoy getting EU bailout during the financial crisis.

Solidarity for me but not for thee

[Boston Smalls @smalls2672]

This needs to be played everywhere 24/7

[Caolan @CaolanReports]

Every day, ships leave this russian owned factory in Ireland straight for St Petersburg carrying thousands of tonnes of raw alumina for the war machine.

There’s corruption everywhere. Locals tell me politicians are bought by oligarchs.

Ireland is no longer militarily neutral.

[CONSEQUENCE @consequence]

Ronny Chieng had one message for Harvard grads during his commencement speech: destroy AI.

"Look, a lot of other respected graduation speakers in colleges around America are talking about you guys needing to master AI for the future. I'm here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy AI...

"And I know, I know there's someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, 'Well, you know, what about the use of AI to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?' Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I'm not talking about that. Obviously, if you're using it for that purpose, you're not the problem.

"I'm talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025. That's right, MIT. MIT did that study. I guess you guys were too busy giving each other A's. Feel free to boo MIT, by the way, and AI, and yourselves, I guess.

"Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn't be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They're always like, 'Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?' Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can't do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me? I'm a dumb*ss who couldn't get into Harvard.

"From what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I'm assuming you guys from Harvard have. Everyone else who can't match that is just going to get dumber, and that's when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course.

"But to run up the score, you’re going to have to master your craft. And AI can be the fuel, but fuel is useless if you can't kindle the fire. For example, I recently used AI to use regression analysis to prove that a certain race of people are mathematically terrible at sports. I won't say which race, but thank you for not inviting Hasan Minhaj to Harvard. My point is, learning the fundamentals still matter. If I didn't know what a regression analysis was, and if I wasn't fundamentally racist, would I have been able to do any of that? No.

"Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House, which to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI. But what they're missing is this: the creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?

"You know what problem I want AI to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like sh*t. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that?

"Or how about, can AI take away the part of comedy writing where my TV pilot gets passed on and when I ask if I can pitch it to someone else, the network says, 'We don't want it, but we also don't want anyone else to have it. We just want you to be sad.' Can AI solve that?

"I recently tried to introduce my friend to Buddhism through a book called Buddhism Made Simple. It was literally a book about Buddhism made simple. And instead of reading it, he used AI to summarize it in 10 seconds. Believe it or not, he didn't reach enlightenment. It turns out speed running Buddhism is completely missing the point.

"And I know this platitude is almost worthy of AI, but the reason shortcuts to skip to the end aren't always good is because the journey isn't just how we acquire skills. The journey is the point of all this. It is! It turns out maybe the real Harvard was the friends we made along the way.

"Look, I know this won't apply to everyone's industry, but I'm just saying whatever your chosen profession is, please don't let AI rob you of the fun part of it.

"I think your generation's upcoming battle won't be humans against AI. That's at least two months away. It's going to be people with substance versus people with shallow knowledge. It’s going to be mastery versus faking it. It's going to be people with good taste versus tacky. I trust you will put in the work necessary to be on the right side of those battles."

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

No Palantir in Sweden? Op-ed letter to the editor published in Dagens Nyheter, Sweden's leading newspaper. DeepL machine translation from Swedish.

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

@guyfelicella Just imagine the GOP is very nearly all Trump zombies.

[George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway3d]

Thoroughly agree with Mike here. We need a strict code of ethics—frankly, the strictest—for the highest court in the land.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

BREAKING: A federal judge is now signaling the Trump administration’s so-called “weaponization fund” may have emerged from collusive litigation and could potentially amount to fraud on the court.

That is nuclear-level language from a judge.

“Fraud on the court” is not normal criticism.
It is reserved for situations where a court believes it may have been manipulated, misled, or used as part of a coordinated scheme.

And the judge reportedly pointed to two giant red flags:
- the massive $1.8 billion settlement amount
- and concerns the opposing sides may not have actually been acting as true adversaries

Translation?

The court is openly questioning whether this lawsuit was partially engineered to create a taxpayer-funded political compensation machine.

That is an absolutely extraordinary development.

[Peter Mattis @PLMattis]

A narrowly reciprocal 1-to-1 response.

A proportional response would have been to remove a corresponding percentage of state "journalists" from US.

After China Orders a Times Reporter to Leave the Country, the U.S. Reciprocates https://t.co/ZVvvlWmv4M

[The Great Translation Movement 大翻译运动 @TGTM_Official]

Before we start a new week, let’s start with something wholesome and inspiring.

A African student from Tanzania recount his story from young till middle school, ultimately landing a scholarship and assimilate into Taiwanese culture.

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

This:

[高大伟 David Cowhig @gaodawei]

@McFaul With all these fake AI pictures I wonder if someone with such problem can be doing this himself. What kind of cabal could be helping him with this stuff? Or is he just recycling stuff on some far right feeds?

[Michael McFaul @McFaul]

Wow. As an American, I find this embarrassing.

As an American, I also worry that other Americans find this kind of behavior by our president normal or not newsworthy. We’ve become numb.