Alex Putman

I like hiking, taking photos but not posting them, and saving money, but one trumps the others. Work: @VeggiePathUCR

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

The Raft of the Medusa, by Théodore Géricault (French), 1819, 📸 by Joe Murphy

[ArtButMakeItSports @ArtButSports]

Cast of Laocoön and his Sons (Roman version of a lost Greek original), 100BC-50AD

[Aria Westcott @AriaWestcott]

Breaking: Your smart TV takes a screenshot of your screen twice every second and sells what it sees.

It is called ACR, and it has been running since you set the TV up.

Texas already sued over it. Here is how to turn it off in under 2 minutes:

[Séb Krier @sebkrier]

Techno-anxiety is a remarkably consistent and repetitive pattern:

1482 book by Johannes Trithemius: "In Praise of Scribes: De Laude Scriptorum": https://t.co/zHuUK9STW3

1858 New York Times editorial on the epistemic risks of the telegraph: https://t.co/tdzoaLT3mH

1986 WaPo article on the use of calculators in school: https://t.co/QxMwq0dK2b

2008 Atlantic piece on whether 'Google is making us stupid': https://t.co/UUkrnOF699

[Marques Brownlee @MKBHD]

Ok last one: the rarest solar eclipse of all time. Only 4 people have seen this with their naked eyes. The sun is fully behind the moon. The only faint light hitting the near side is reflecting off of earth, 250,000 miles away. And the stars and galaxies in the background, sheesh

Nikon Z9
f/2.0
2 second exposure
ISO 1600

@NASA: https://t.co/twBqbUEDs2

[Alex Boge @alexboge]

Last night’s SpaceX Falcon 9 launch over Florida produced one of the most spectacular twilight plumes you’ll ever see.

As the rocket climbs into the thin upper atmosphere, its exhaust expands into a massive glowing cloud, illuminated by sunlight long after the ground below is in darkness. The result looks almost alien - a luminous spiral and plume stretching hundreds of kilometers across the sky.

Just another Falcon 9 punching holes in the fantasy “firmament”, flying straight past the mythical dome, and placing more satellites into orbit around the very real globe.

Physics works.
Rockets work.
Orbit works.

The dome? Still missing. 🚀🌍

[David Weigel @daveweigel]

The new @zengerle book about Tucker Carlson's career reminded me of the post-2012 election window when Murdoch/Fox were convinced that the GOP needed to pivot to immigration reform.

This Trump interview from that period reads like sci-fi today. https://t.co/nuSn9ONfkR

[Alex Putman @ThePutMan]

@MattZeitlin https://t.co/kUynL5Eb8L

[USS Arizona @USSArizona]

Sadly, this is the first year at the commemoration ceremony at Pearl Harbor that no Pearl Harbor survivor has attended. We have lost so many over the past few years and as few as 12 remain living today. From one generation to the next. Remember Pearl Harbor. Remember those lost. Remember those who survived. #PearlHarbor84

[Rob Perez @WorldWideWob]

Progress, but this a very precious asset that’s presentation needs to be executed more meticulously.

1) We cannot come straight out of commercial into Roundball Rock. There needs to be the anticipation of the laser peacock intro first, or, a full matchup graphic overlay + swipe on top of the aerial city wide view.

2) The crescendo of the opening beat drop cannot be obstructed. Broadcasters need to let it breathe before welcoming us.

3) There are two different choruses during Roundball Rock, and the latter of which is meant to be played when the broadcast camera shifts inside and shows players running out-of-the-tunnel, naturally segueing into the courtside broadcast team’s pregame show as the music slowly fades. This second beat is essential to setting the tone, building drama, and injecting the proper dose of nostalgia. It has to run for 2-3 seconds.

[ChrisO_wiki @ChrisO_wiki]

1/ This graph from @JonBruner tells an important story: America's current dominance in science only began after the mid-1930s, when persecuted scientists began fleeing universities in Germany and then elsewhere in occupied Europe.

[Joe Binder @JoeBinder]

Pope Leo XIV made the broadcast while at Game 1 of the 2005 World Series

[Siddharth Khurana @SidKhurana3607]

Top major cities (min. 100K) by % of workers leaving for work before 5 AM:

Many Inland Empire cities on the list (early commutes to LA?)

[Cullen Roche @cullenroche]

Just to summarize what’s happened in the last few weeks:

They concocted this whole thing based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the global economy. They think manufacturing jobs will come back (they won’t). They think free trade made us poor, when it actually made us rich. They think the current account deficit is unsustainable when it’s a rounding error in our aggregate net worth and also accretive to our net worth. They think being the reserve currency is bad when it’s a sign that everyone wants to do business with us. And they think poor foreigners were taking advantage of us when we’re the richest economy in human history.

And to "fix" all of these "problems" they implemented the one policy idea that almost every economist alive says is bad.

And then when they implemented that idea they misunderstood the math behind the rationale and came up with numbers that were irrationally huge. So they had to backpedal.

And when bond yields moved a tiny bit higher they panicked and "fixed" all of this by making the numbers slightly smaller, but they clearly hadn't done the math again because the numbers are still way bigger than any economist would ever recommend they be. Then they patted themselves on the back because of intraday moves in stocks while an economic hurricane continues to barrel towards us because they have no idea what they’re doing.

Amazing stuff.

[Ryan Petersen @typesfast]

One shipyard in China made more commercial ships last year than the total number the U.S. has produced since World War Two. 8/

[Alex Putman @ThePutMan]

@matt_beard_ They do at the Arboretum
https://t.co/tLlQ24oTzZ

[Agricultural Research Service @USDA_ARS]

There’s plenty of time to visit the Arboretum’s cherry trees! Unlike the Tidal Basin, featuring a highly publicized and much-anticipated “peak bloom” over a few days, at the Arboretum, flowering cherries bloom continuously for many weeks. https://t.co/GULNm7FRLi #CherryBlossoms🌸

[Prodan @ProdanStatev]

@nabeelqu @tylercowen For reference, here is Claude 3.7 Sonnet extended