kdrecon

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

UK is a police state

[Tim Miller @Timodc]

Trump's Iran "Deal" Is a Giant Bag of Dog Shit.

It's not a deal. It's a memo of understanding in advance of a surrender of the American-led world order.

https://t.co/ZrTw7MRs6o

[Hoover Institution @HooverInst]

For decades, the story of Mao's rise was wrapped in myth. Historian Frank Dikötter argues the reality was far darker: a marginal movement, Soviet backing, civil war, and a regime built on political paranoia.

Watch a new episode of @UncKnowledge with @P_M_Robinson on X:

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

https://t.co/anK4FdKKdx

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

Profile in cowardice. @RobWittman

[MeidasTouch @MeidasTouch]

Rep. Rob Wittman (R-VA) faked a phone call for roughly 90 seconds after being asked about Speaker Mike Johnson’s comments regarding potential Social Security cuts.

The phone's screen remained visible, with his cheek inadvertently tapping different parts of the display.

[John Scott-Railton @jsrailton]

NEW: malware developers added nuclear & biological weapons text to to their spyware.

Goal? To trigger LLM safety refusals... so that their spyware wouldn't be analyzed by an AI security scanner.

Cleanest practical example I can think of for why over-indexing on first order safety alignment is risky.

When closed (and open) models ship with aggressive refusals, they will be sprinkled with second-order blindspots that attackers will discover...and exploit.

We are only in the earliest days of attackers leveraging these features, and it wouldn't surprise me if users systems that need to handle complex cybersecurity issues demand that models be less safety-blunted.

In the weeds: @SocketSecurity's post also shows why intention matters in how you design a malware analysis pipeline to avoid prompt manipulation.

H/T to colleagues that shared this with me https://t.co/f3Aj9TYxU4

[Rod D. Martin @RodDMartin]

🧵 China’s population collapse is now mathematically irreversible.

There simply aren’t enough women left of childbearing age.

Even if the fertility rate magically returned to replacement level (2.1 children per woman) tomorrow, the country would still lose more than 40% of its population by 2100.

It won't. The real number is 75%. There's nothing like it in history. 🧵

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

Nicole Russell of USA TODAY gives Trump credit for offering media "unprecedented access". But what is that access worth if he fills the time with lies and B.S.? https://t.co/eyLMsJbhKX

[Charly Wargnier @DataChaz]

🚨 ANOTHER MASTERCLASS FROM @3BLUE1BROWN

The compressibility of language isn’t just a math curiosity, it’s the hidden engine behind every LLM you use.

Grant’s new video reframes Shannon’s entropy through one elegant lens:

Prediction IS compression.

→ The better you predict the next word, the fewer bits you need to store it
→ Shannon measured English at ~1 bit per character: astonishingly compressible
→ This is exactly what GPT-style models optimize
→ Intelligence, in this framing, is compression

FUN FACT: Von Neumann told Shannon to name it “entropy” because nobody truly understands it anyway 😄

Decades later, that same concept became the bedrock of modern AI.

Deep-dive resources in the 🧵 ↓

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

@TSloan59 @jimgeraghty Why don't you tell Trump to have some grace?

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

I'm not an advocate for child labor, but I do think some encounter with having to do unskilled labor is useful for teaching young people how lucky they are to have the privilege and opportunity to go to school and actually learn something before being cast into the world of survival.

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

So presidential...

[Aaron Rupar @atrupar]

WOW -- Trump crashes out and cuts his interview with Welker short as she presses him on his lack of evidence for claiming elections are rigged

"You're either crooked or you're stupid. Let's call it quits. Because I've had enough. Thank you darling," he tells her."

"I traveled all the way to Wisconsin for this interview," she pleads.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

This aged unfortunately well.

[UnveiledChina @Unveiled_ChinaX]

A careless code blunder just blew the lid off Beijing’s multi-million dollar AI propaganda operation targeting the West. France's digital interference watchdog, Viginum, has officially exposed "Fawn Mianju," a covert network of 13 multilingual fake news sites running on advanced automation and generative AI. The sophisticated network was completely compromised after a computer engineer working as a Senior Project Manager at China's state-run CGTN Digital accidentally left his login credentials exposed in the code.

This operation, which expanded on findings first uncovered by U.S. cybersecurity firm Graphika in 2025, operated with deep financial backing. The domains were registered in Beijing, hosted on Alibaba Cloud, and utilized expensive infrastructure alongside paid plugins to artificially manipulate search engine rankings. Using digital keys linked directly to AI language models, the network automatically scraped CGTN articles, lightly rewrote them, and republished over 2,300 articles, often within less than an hour of the original state media broadcast.

Sites like the French-language "Actu Méridien" were weaponized to manipulate public opinion across 89 countries, heavily targeting Western audiences and Francophone African youth. The articles aggressively peddled pro-Beijing narratives, painting China as the undisputed leader of the Global South and green energy transition while explicitly telling Western readers that aligning with Chinese interests would bring them massive benefits.

Despite the cutting-edge tech and heavy state funding, the operation was an organic flop. The articles struggled to breach 15,000 views, with nearly 40 percent of its top social media engagement traced back to fake accounts in Burundi whose sole purpose was to artificially inflate the content. While the reach was limited, French authorities warn that the operation exposes Beijing’s rapidly escalating capability to launch fully automated, stealth disinformation campaigns designed to quietly erode Western democratic alignment.

#Disinformation #CyberSecurity #France #China #AIPropaganda #Geopolitics #Viginum #NationalSecurity

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

Hey, look what Saruman is doing at Isengard!

[Glenn Tunes @glenn_tunes]

77 MILLION VOTED FOR THIS 🙄 YOU GUYS MUST BE SO PROUD🤦

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

@TGTM_Official Maybe she was always a plant.

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

One would hope that some of these companies learned something in their margin breaking misadventures in early AI adoption. Errors upgraded into "business insights"?

[Paul Graham @paulg]

If big companies can't make a net return on their LLM token costs, that doesn't mean it's impossible to. In fact this is exactly what you'd expect to happen with a new technology. Incumbents can't use it well, and are replaced by upstarts who can.

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

@nickgillespie @reason This reminds of what Tim Miller has been saying about the Maine US senate race: Platner may have a Nazi tattoo, but Sen. Collins has abided the authoritarianism and brown shirt tactics of the Trump regime. What's really worse?

[kdrecon @kdr_econ]

@Strife212 They can be clever, but I'm still not sure they know anything or care about their actual truthiness.

[Jane Manchun Wong @wongmjane]

DeepSeek V4 “improved” the code and said nothing happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989