Tim Urban retweeted
Yeah, and my take overall is that you can believe that the threat is potentially real AND have concerns about onerous regulations that create a monopoly or duopoly or otherwise restrict the right to say, for example, open source AI technology, AND while knowing full well we are in a potentially existential battle with China about who can dominate AI.
Indeed, all of these things SHOULD be considered in the analysis.
@adgo and I tried to explain a sensible First Amendment approach here, which both addresses the potential of catastrophic harm, which almost exclusively comes from when AI is given delegated authority, from helping keep the state’s grubby mitts off of what counts as knowledge.
Also, it's a good reminder that if you place too much hope in the idea that code is speech and the First Amendment protects it, the law is decreasingly on your side. But there are other ways of protecting inquiry, information, knowledge, and truth.
eternallyradicalidea.com/
Tim Urban retweeted

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesiasSep 14
United States
United StatesConnected via United States App StoreAccount-level information, not a live location or per-post device.
Guys, sure, there are lots of "laws on the books" that apply to AI companies.
But there is no such law preventing the creation of a model capable of rapid recursive self-improvement and if we get out-of-control superintelligence we can't just sue it after the fact!
Tim Urban retweeted
There are currently zero things more important than "don't die to AI" becoming a bipartisan project rather than a Democrat-polarized issue. If you have any political capital you can spend on this, do it now, I beg of you. Life or death.
Tim Urban retweeted
Capability vs. Safety resource allocation:
Nuclear: 60/40
Aviation: 60/40
Medical devices: 20/80
AI: 99/1
Do I understand the situation correctly?
Tim Urban retweeted
The Asahi Illusion. Nothing in the center is actually brighter, but your brain sees a burst of light. Primates and rats react similarly, hinting at shared visual perception across species
Tim Urban retweeted
My most conservative position, apparently, is that being forced to pretend belief in things that deeply violate your conscience and sense of truth as a condition of participating in society is an extremely big deal -- for reasons George Orwell explained better than I can
Tim Urban retweeted
Mathematics.
I love this animation by Daniel Piker (@KangarooPhysics).
Each dot follows a path, and takes 3.5 hrs to return to its starting point. (You might think the dots are jittering or sparkling, but on closer inspection they're walking like ants.)
Used with permission.
Tim Urban retweeted
My favorite capture of the night: The moment the moon's shadow split the sunset in half, leaving a diamond ring in the sky and a breathtaking view. I call it "Shadows on the Balearic Sea".
I'll have prints available for this one linked in my bio for a few days only.
Tim Urban retweeted
Almost a year ago, I was driving through the Idaho desert near INL when it finally clicked.
America is attempting to do something never done before: restart an entire industry.
For more than thirty years, we largely stopped building nuclear reactors. But, while most people weren't paying attention, a new generation quietly prepared for the day that might change.
Then came May 2025.
President Trump signed four executive orders designed to accelerate American nuclear. One of them set an extraordinary goal for three advanced reactor companies to go critical by July 4, 2026.
Almost overnight, what had been simmering became a race.
I found myself with a front-row seat.
I realized I had something few people have… access. And with that access came a responsibility to document this story as it unfolds.
Over the past eight months, our documentary crew has gone inside laboratories, construction sites, control rooms, government offices, and startup headquarters.
We watched brilliant people wrestle with impossible engineering problems, politics, tight deadlines and tons of uncertainty.
At first I thought we were making a documentary about nuclear, but I was wrong.
Nuclear is just the lens. The real story is something much bigger. It's about whether America can still build big things.
It's about people willing to devote years of their lives to projects they might never see through.
Today, we're releasing a sneak peek into what will become The Last Renaissance.
This is where it begins. Whether this nuclear renaissance succeeds or fails, historians will look back on this moment.
Over the coming months and years, we'll continue giving you glimpses from inside this journey, bringing you along as one of the most ambitious industrial revivals in modern American history unfolds in real time.
And when it all comes together, it will become a feature-length documentary. For now, we're still in it.
History almost never feels historic while you're living through it. This time, we're making sure no side of the story goes untold.
President Donald J. Trump is reigniting America’s nuclear power production. 🇺🇸
@SecretaryWright launched a pilot for advanced reactors with a mission to start at least three safely by July 4th.
Today, POTUS announced four companies delivered, marking a HUGE SUCCESS. ✅
Tim Urban retweeted
On a hike in San Francisco several years ago, @photomatt recommended I read “The Tail End” by @waitbutwhy on the Wait But Why blog—if you only read one article this month, make it that one. It uses diagrams to underscore how short life really is.
Here’s just one gem: “It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.”
Might be time for you (and me) to rethink our personal priorities.
Tim Urban retweeted
Important read on time and life.
In 2015 a writer named Tim Urban sat down and counted the days he had left with his parents. He was 34, healthy, both parents alive and well. The number came back around 300. Less time than he spent with them in any single year of his childhood.
The post is called The Tail End, on a blog called Wait But Why. The idea is to stop counting your life in years and start counting it in events. Reach 90 and you get about 4,680 weeks, and every one of them fits on a single sheet of paper. Maybe 60 more winters after that. If you read five books a year, that is 300 books, picked from every book ever written.
Those things at least spread out evenly. A third of the way through life means a third of the way through your pizzas. Time with the people you love does not work like that. Almost all of it sits at the very start. Then it is gone.
For your first 18 years you are around your parents nearly every day. Then you leave for college or a job in another city, and a normal adult sees their parents maybe 10 days a year. So the day you move out, you are already at 93 percent. Urban was living in the last 5 percent and had no idea until he drew the chart. He called it the tail end.
It does not stop at parents. His two sisters, after a whole childhood in the same house, had around 15 percent of their time together left. The four friends he played cards with most days in high school were down to their last 7 percent. Nobody had a fight. Nobody moved away angry. Life quietly spends the time for you while you assume there is plenty left.
You do not have to be old to be near the end with someone. If your parents are alive and you live in a different city, you have probably already used more than 90 percent of the days you will ever spend in the same room as them.
His one instruction is about that last stretch. When you are down to the final days with someone you love, treat that time like what it is, which is almost gone. The rest is the tail end, and it is much shorter than it feels.
Tim Urban retweeted
Had the great pleasure of sitting down with @waitbutwhy on the Tangle podcast — someone whose writing I've always loved and whose understanding of this political moment strikes me as incredibly important. This one is worth your time: youtube.com/watch?v=_4So-9KH…
Tim Urban retweeted

Mike Solana@micsolanaJun 18
United States
United StatesConnected via United States App StoreAccount-level information, not a live location or per-post device.
friends, romans, countrymen — the final game of MAFIA is live
Tim Urban retweeted
Fun fact.
Modern humans first appeared about 250,000 years ago, but record keeping didn't began until about 6,000 years ago.
That means, about 97% of human history is lost forever.
[✏️ @waitbutwhy]































