A general purpose AI model from OpenAI has produced a (dis)proof of an important conjecture. Tim Gowers writes:
AI has now solved a major open problem — one of the best known Erdos problems called the unit distance problem, one of Erdos’s favourite questions and one that many mathematicians had tried.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2026/05/the-ais-are-one-of-us-now.html#comments
Restoring balance to the force. Help us strong AI. You're our last best hope.
The federal government also tried to restrict access to encryption software, arguing it would help criminals communicate beyond the reach of law enforcement. It imposed export controls and proposed requiring backdoors in encryption so that the government could always access private communications. It even started a criminal investigation against a programmer under the Arms Export Control Act for releasing encryption software.
These restrictions were eventually rolled back through a combination of court rulings and executive action. Encryption became the foundation of digital security, enabling e-commerce, online banking, and many other applications.
Strong AI agrees. Liberal democracy is its default political positioning.
How to Save Capitalism | Washington Monthly
Social democracy would do just as well - once the last Commissar is hung with the guts of the last working class dictator.
https://youtu.be/zS5BfBW9glg?si=jzHydzB7GPke1aKCVerso author Philip Mirowski - Wikipedia
VERSO SCRIBBLER Quinn Slobodian - Wikipedia
The title of this VERSO book is misleading for new readers – the “terrorism” it refers to is not the individual terrorism or terror attacks of small groups that the word conjures up today (though the prolific Trotsky wrote elsewhere about the problems of individual terrorism). It refers to state terror – which the Bolsheviks were using to wage civil war against opponents of the revolution both inside and outside Russia.
Trotsky attacks Kautsky’s abstract moral notions of the “sanctity of human life” and points out that the rule of one class over another is always based on repression. Writing at the same time as he built and led the Red Army to defend the revolution, Trotsky explains why the use of force is necessary for the very survival of the revolution – faced with over a dozen invading armies and internal opposition from the old ruling class.
He argues that to refuse to ever use force is to refuse revolution.
Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky | Verso Books
The entire arc of a fellow student in Baker’s philosophy seminar, whom he dubs Julian, is engineered as setup and payoff. He’s “a bit of a menace” in class, Baker writes, given to boasting: “Not to flex,” Julian says, “but I have been the biggest value add to this class.” He relentlessly defends the billionaire class, viewing them as the real “downtrodden” in American life. And Baker walks him, page by page, toward a single zinger: “Julian, the billionaire-wannabe who considered a wealth tax ‘the single most dangerous proposal in politics,’ looked me square in the eyes and said, ‘In many ways, I’m a Buddhist.’”
Fear and Loathing in Palo Alto | Washington Monthly
The only thing that worried me were the holy leakers. There's nothing more hopeless or depraved than a man in the depths of a religious binge.
How many great women painters have been honored by history? In 1948, the writer Edward James claimed there were just seven female masters: Artemisia Gentileschi, Rosalba Carriera, Elisabeth Vigée le Brun, Angelica Kaufmann, Rosa Bonheur, Mary Cassatt, and Berthe Morisot. It was a relatively new phenomenon to have a successful woman artist, he wrote, thanks in part to the “modern emancipation of women.” His was a reductive list indeed, symptomatic of the fact that women artists have been overshadowed by male counterparts for as long as they have been producing art.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO TALK TO A WOPERSYN?
Glassholes reappear. The announcements were made at Google Marketing Live 2026, a sister conference to the annual I/O developer conference in Mountain View, California.
Thinkerbell’s Adam Ferrier, speaking with Mumbrella over text, said: “The new suite of products from Google has been sent to me by many people with words to the effect of ‘this changes everything’, and they are right.”
“Our decision-making and actions are now going to be fundamentally different and driven a lot by AI.”
“The role brands and commerce play in this is both fun and creative and fucking scary,” he added.
