mitchbob

> New research sheds light on how mediocre employees help would-be authoritarians maintain power.

https://archive.ph/2026.05.18-091508/https://www.nytimes.com...

> “There’s no limit on the impact that a small team can have if they don’t care who gets credit,” said Patrick Lincoln, the office director of Darpa’s Information Innovation Office, who described Dr. Neumann as routinely working behind the scenes without credit. “The world is just so much a better place for having had Peter.”

> Months into the ceasefire, Israeli officials barred thirty-seven international N.G.O.s. A Doctors Without Borders clinic is carrying on without antibiotics, or even chairs for patients.

https://archive.ph/2026.05.17-112412/https://www.newyorker.c...

> 'If it were an industry, money laundering would be the third biggest business in the world, behind commercial property and ahead of pensions. How did we end up knowing so little about something so big?...Money laundering is a little like drug cheating in sport, where the current state of legal enforcement always lags behind the current state of malfeasance. We don’t know what successful money launderers are doing in the present moment. All we do know is what unsuccessful ones have been caught doing in the past. We are drunks looking for our keys in a big empty space with a single torch, and all we can find is evidence of the rare occasions when other people lost their keys.'

https://archive.ph/Tl5ci

Dupe of

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48066592 (43 comments)

Yet another restatement of the Quality vs. Quantity principle:

https://www.thehuntingphotographer.com/blog/qualityvsquantit...

> Alex Bores wanted to regulate the technology. His race has pitted OpenAI's influence against Anthropic's.

https://archive.ph/pkxF7

Discussed in 2023 (296 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34958153

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48023079

Thanks for the Matt Levine link! Archived version:

https://archive.ph/2026.05.02-224747/https://www.bloomberg.c...

> Every low-resolution frame of Alexandre Koberidze's Dry Leaf, shot on a nearly twenty-year-old mobile phone, enacts a drama of form.

https://archive.ph/4d1Va

> The world’s salt lakes are the canary in the coal mine for the climate crisis, and they are shrinking at a drastic rate.

https://archive.ph/RcMd6

Previous discussion (488 comments):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835635

This is a summary of an interview with Kerr in The New Yorker. The full article is archived at

https://archive.ph/uaOZ7