Tif

Probabilities of probabilities

[Tif @greenvisor11]

gm gm

[Joseph Miscimarra 🇺🇸 @jmisci]

This week I came across the obituary of a photographer named David Plowden. I was unfamiliar with his work, but decided to browse his website after reading that he specialized in photos of trains and industry.

I’m not much of an art guy, but these photos are astonishing. (1/4)

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

The house centipede in your bathroom is the reason you don't have cockroaches.

That fast, leggy, kinda creepy looking thing you just saw scurry under the door is a Scutigera coleoptrata. It eats silverfish, cockroaches, spiders, ants, termites, and bed bug nymphs. The University of Georgia Extension calls house centipedes "allies in home pest control."

One house centipede can eat its body weight in pests every few days, hunting at night while you sleep. They don't damage your house, don't eat your food, don't carry disease, and don't bite unless you grab one.

Best of all: they're self limiting. When they run out of pests, they begin to hunt each other.

If you kill the centipedes, the pests they were eating multiply. Homes that exterminate house centipedes typically see cockroach, silverfish, and spider populations rise.

The bug that looks like a horror movie prop is doing the work of an exterminator for free. The bug it eats is the one that would actually wreck your stuff.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

Moths are declining faster than butterflies, and almost no one is planting for them. A third of all pollinator visits to flowers happen at night. Here's what to plant to help out the night shift:

Evening primrose (Oenothera biennis): native across eastern and central North America. A staple for sphinx moths.

Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa): native across most of the US. Fragrant through the evening, supports both day and night pollinators.

White phlox (Phlox paniculata): native to eastern and central North America. Fragrant late into the night, sphinx moth favorite.

Yucca (Yucca filamentosa): native to the southeastern US, with an obligate mutualism with the yucca moth. Neither species can reproduce without the other.

Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca): moths visit at night, the plant also hosts monarch caterpillars by day.

American boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum): native to eastern North America. Late-season nectar for migrating moths.

Skip the moonflower, jasmine, and four o'clocks. They're imported aesthetics. Plant the natives the moths actually evolved with.

[Capital Flows @Globalflows]

I will be sending out the actual code for the Hyperliquid dashboard I have built, mapping funding rates across all HIP-3 assets

You will be able to just plug and play this into an AI, and it will autopopulate the dashboard seamlessly.

If you want this dashboard, like and retweet this, and then become a subscriber here (it's free): https://t.co/rpJr1XL6FO

I will be sending it out momentarily

HYPERLIQUID

[Evis Drenova @evisdrenova]

29 years in the US today.

In 1996, my parents won plane tickets in a literal lottery to leave Albania for the US.

They took my brother and I and with a thousand dollars that they had saved up, left behind their jobs, families, friends and everything they knew for the hope of a better life.

We didn’t know anyone and our only was option was to move into a hotel room. After a few weeks, we finally found an apartment for the four of us.

My mom, a former Architect, worked in a factory while going to night school to learn how to use a computer.

My dad, a former banker, worked at Logan airport returning luggage trollies.

After 3 years, my dad passed away, leaving my mom to raise my brother and I. She barely knew English, didn’t know how to drive, and worked 2 jobs while finishing night school.

Fast forward 25 years.

She’s worked as an architect for 25 years and has her own business.

My brother and I both got multiple degrees. He’s been a CFO and SVP for multiple public companies.

I went through YC, raised millions from investors and started and sold a startup and have angel invested in others.

America gave us the opportunity for a better life.

All we had to do was work for it.

Feel grateful everyday to be a part of the country in the world.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

If you're worried about ticks, put up an owl box.

The animal driving most Lyme disease in the eastern US is the white-footed mouse. Ticks that feed on them are far more likely to come away infected than ticks that feed on other animals. The bigger the local mouse population, the worse the next year's tick year.

A single barred owl pair raising chicks can take hundreds of rodents in a breeding season. Owls also don't carry Lyme. The bacterium can't survive their digestive tract, so an owl that eats an infected mouse is a dead end for the disease.

Researchers at the Cary Institute, the leading lab on Lyme ecology, have been explicit about this: "Landscapes that support predators have reduced Lyme disease risk."

One owl box on its own isn't going to fix a tick year. But a yard with owls, foxes, bobcats, and weasels in it has fewer mice, and a yard with fewer mice has fewer infected ticks.

If you have woods or fields nearby, a properly sized barn owl or screech owl box (different species, different boxes) is one of the most useful single things you can do for tick exposure at the landscape scale. Match the box to the owl that lives near you.

The mouse is the problem, owls are the solution.

[Old Hollow Tree @OldHollowTree]

I do so love the forest.

The abundance of life.

The concealing green.

The canopy and bough-dappled light.

[StripMallGuy @realEstateTrent]

Been living in New York City for around five years now.

Yes, it’s expensive, taxes are high, and there are some interesting characters walking around. Those are some of the costs.

Here’s what we get:

Access to the best restaurants in America, no matter what type of food you’re in the mood for.

Everything our family needs is just a short walk away.

You constantly get to see friends in person, as they’re always passing through.

Some of the best public and private schools in America.

The network you build here, just by going about your day-to-day life, is incredible. You run into some of the most interesting people doing the most amazing things at the highest level.

Access to the best doctors in the world.

The career opportunities here are immense, no matter what you do.

Central Park – my go-to spot – never gets old.

If you’re a shopper, there’s nowhere better in America.

If you’re an entrepreneur, this city forces you to think bigger on a daily basis.

Broadway, sports, concerts, comedy – the highest level of entertainment, right in your backyard.

The subway. Yes, the subway – and yes, millions of normal people take it every day – gets you around this place like a time machine.

It’s a wonderful place to raise kids. Every kids' activity you can think of is just blocks away. Our son loves the Natural History Museum, and endless playdates are available either in our building or within a three-minute walk.

Maybe all those folks who can afford to live anywhere in the world but choose to raise their families here aren’t so crazy after all.

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

In 2026, residents of every major city should understand this simple truth:

Crime and squalor are choices.

Policies exist that can both be compassionate but put the rights and quality of life of the tax paying and law abiding above everything and everyone else.

It’s not as crazy as it sounds.

[Dotan @PianoAround]

This is why I love NYC! If you stop rushing to get everywhere you will find raw moments like this: a guy in timbs pouring his soul into a Bach cello sonata.

He made the subway sound like a cathedral. Pure joy!

[EconstratPB @EconstratPB]

Go down the rabbit hole of bond pricing, inflation, and term premiums. We get it right.

Also, opening up two prior posts on this subject, which have been documented over the past three years.

[Old Hollow Tree @OldHollowTree]

Happy World Bee Day! Here is a video showing how clumsy and cute they are in slow motion.

[RedWave Press @RedWavePress]

NAILED IT: Jeff Bezos: “A nurse in Queens who makes $75K a year pays more than $12K a year in taxes. Does that really make sense?”

“So people talk about making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens NOT pay taxes? At all!”

“Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75K a year paying more than $1K a month in taxes?”

“That’s $1K a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything.”

“And by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3% of the taxes. It’s only 3%.”

“We can find 3%. So we don’t have... it’s a small amount of money for the government. You know that. And the more I thought about it, to me, it’s kind of absurd that we’re doing this.”

“We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington — they should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.”

Exactly!

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Michael Mann couldn't shoot Collateral on film. The cameras couldn't see Los Angeles at night the way he wanted. So he picked a digital camera no other major Hollywood movie had used. The crew was still building parts for it during the shoot.

Mann was chasing a specific look. Around 10 or 11pm in LA winters, a low cloud bank drifts in off the ocean and settles about 1,200 feet up. The orange sodium streetlamps below light up the bottom of those clouds and turn the whole sky into a soft, hazy glow. Mann said it looked like winter in England.

Movie film couldn't see that. To shoot a single downtown block clearly, the crew would have had to bring in massive lights and brighten up entire streets just to make the buildings visible. Even with the lens open as wide as it goes to pull in any available light, almost nothing outside the foreground would stay in focus.

The camera Mann picked was the Thomson Viper, brand new and not really ready for production. There was no memory card or storage inside the body. It had to be plugged into a separate hard drive with a cable.

About 80% of Collateral was shot digital. The other 20% on regular film was mostly the Korean nightclub shootout, where the bright club lighting gave the crew plenty to work with.

The coyote scene only exists because of the digital camera. Mann didn't plan it. A small pack of coyotes wandered across an empty street between takes, and because the camera could see in near-darkness, the crew just rolled. On film, that shot would have required lighting up the whole intersection first.

The helicopter shots over the city work the same way. Palm trees against the night sky, the downtown skyline lit only by the city's own light. On 35mm film, none of that would have shown up.

The movie cost $65 million to make and earned $220 million worldwide. It won Best Cinematography at the BAFTAs, the British version of the Oscars, and helped push Hollywood toward digital cameras for night shoots.

One catch. That orange light Mann chased is mostly gone now. Starting in 2009, LA began replacing its sodium vapor streetlamps with white LEDs. By 2013 the city had swapped out 141,000 of them. Today the lighting system is 98% LED. The Los Angeles you see in Collateral doesn't exist anymore.

[Smirkley @Smirkley]

A 5-gallon water cooler jug of water produces about $132 in economic output from data centers, but only about 2 cents from almonds.

[Eric Adams @ericadamsfornyc]

The comments by reporters endorsing the cold-blooded murder of a husband and father are absolutely reprehensible. No decent human being should be celebrating or justifying the execution of another person because they disagree with his business practices or politics. The normalization of this kind of rhetoric is dangerous and morally bankrupt.

What makes this even more disturbing is that some of the individuals making these statements hold official NYC press credentials. Press passes exist to provide legitimate journalists access to scenes, events, and restricted areas so they can inform the public, not so radical activists can masquerade as members of the media while promoting extremism and political violence.

Over the past several years, we have repeatedly seen individuals carrying press credentials using them during demonstrations and events to harass police officers, intimidate members of the public, interfere with law enforcement operations, and shield activist behavior behind the label of “journalism.” That undermines the credibility of legitimate reporters and creates serious public safety concerns.

After hearing from multiple reporters with decades of experience reporting in NYC, before I left office, my administration was going through the process of rewriting the rules governing NYC press credentials to strengthen standards, protect the integrity of the press corps, and prevent political activists posing as journalists from obtaining official credentials and the access that comes with them. As your own publication reported, those proposed reforms were going through the rule-making process before being scrapped by the current administration:

https://t.co/kxKKHILg4G

That decision was reckless. Official press credentials should not be handed out in a way that allows extremists to abuse them while hiding behind the credibility and protections afforded to legitimate journalism.

This needs to change, and it needs to change now.

[Russell 🐟 @russ_owl]

So glad that NYC Parks fought tooth and nail to evict a non-profit sailing program that taught middle school kids in Inwood maritime skills and suspend all community access to the river so they could use the marina to *checks notes* do nothing!

[Dr. James Schultz @jschultzf3]

There are three primary ways to make money with options:

Direction (Delta)

Time (Theta)

Volatility (Vega)

Let's break each one down for a little Saturday 🧵

1/11

[Michael Warburton @For_Film_Fans]

Such a beautiful New Yorker cover.

‘Time Tunnel’ by Eric Drooker (1995)