20251130
“I awake at 5:30, work until 8:00, eat breakfast at home, work until 10:00, walk a few blocks into town, do errands, go to the nearby municipal swimming pool, which I have all to myself, and swim for half an hour, return home at 11:45, read the mail, eat lunch at noon. In the afternoon I do schoolwork, either teach or prepare. When I get home from school at about 5:30, I numb my twanging intellect with several belts of Scotch and water ($5.00/fifth at the State Liquor store, the only liquor store in town. There are loads of bars, though.), cook supper, read and listen to jazz (lots of good music on the radio here), slip off to sleep at ten.” Kurt Vonnegut
People: Amazon fires 14k. Jobs of tomorrow (and some more - PDF). 9V battery chips. Nostalgia.
Futures: Arup’s Futures (& PDF). NATO’s too (& PDF). Some more.
Life: Antibiotic resistance. Cognition.
Security: Hacking through an interview. US Army to get 10k drones / month (and EU’s take on drones). NK hacking drones companies. Aerial surveillance of subs. Fighting for underseas.
Tech: TSMC accelerates in the US. Waymo in London. China and rare earth exports. Building stuff vs architecture. Best innovation of 2025. AI in toys. Twitter and foreign influence.
AI: Invisible sentence attack (@SBO). Influencing generals. And childhood. AI delegation and dishonesty. Cheating interviews.
Local LLMs security paradox. Dubai chef.
Interviewing your AI - and setting up ClaudeCode.
Loosing your voice.
Waves of Innovation and Shadows of the Past
The bustling city of New Madrid was always a bit of a paradox. On one hand, the mid-sized town brimmed with timeless charm, where kids played hopscotch on the streets while, at the same time, high-rise buildings looming overhead echoed the chaos of modern technological innovations. The recent buzz around autonomous undersea vehicles (UUVs) paralleled the proliferation of innovations above ground, notably in the very waters keeping the city connected.
Fresh on the airwaves were reports of Project Cabot, a top-secret initiative promising a revolution in naval warfare. Armed with fleets of UUVs capable of detecting submarines and safeguarding critical underwater cables, the US was on high alert — especially as local chatter hinted at increased Russian submarine activity. “Be careful where you swim!” joked Nate, a drone enthusiast, gesturing outdoors as if warning fish of impending doom.
Meanwhile, aspiring tech-savvy individuals crafted their futures not merely with ambition but alongside Claude Code—an AI tool for developers that had started appearing in local cafés where laptop screens flickered with lines of code like neon signs promising salvation in the cutthroat job market. The usual process of scrolling through hundreds of job listings had devolved into a mere prompt for AI, competitive job seekers rehearsing answers they’d excelled at discussing in TikTok videos. An undercover operation known as Operation DreamJob offered recruiters alarming insights into the depth of this AI-based strategy; it was like attending an audition where the lead role was played by a well-trained chatbot, complete with custom responses.
But not all was as it seemed. In a well-decorated corner café, Mia, a devout developer, sipped what she called “Nostalgia Brew” – a blend so strong and electric it could rival those 9-volt battery tortilla chips from Europe (which, incidentally, were still a scandalous idea; did someone really want to taste their childhood?). She was mindful of the latest security reports, particularly a near-miss concerning malware hidden in a project ad— the genius behind a job interview scam, whose call to action was simply too good to be true.
Nevertheless, the conversation shifted to neural networks and autonomous driving, where Waymo promised to land its robotaxi service in London by 2026, yet everyone knew it was but a vehicle for the impending revolution. Yet beneath this wave of change lurked a chilling reminder from the WHO: antibiotic resistance was escalating. It whispered into the void, gauging humanity’s tendency to dance dangerously close to revolutionary technology while remaining oblivious to the shadow of the past.
Nate leaned over, eyebrows raised: “Mia, did you hear about the new ‘About This Account’ feature on social media? Turns out, it’s revealing far more than just shady influencers; it’s exposing the intricacies of foreign interference in our lives.”
“Ah, the irony! While we camouflage our identities with AI, others are busy orchestrating entire narratives across oceans.”
The evening drew steadily onward, marked by hopeful aspirations mixed with an undercurrent of digital treachery. Would New Madrid up its defenses against this brave new world? Or would it simply trend beneath waves of innovation, too busy savoring the taste of nostalgic snacks to notice the fallout creeping ever closer?
As the sky turned dusky and the chatter faded into rhythm, Nate couldn’t shake the feeling that the world was teetering on the edge, merging the absurd with the profound. For every line of code written, every UUV launched, there lingered a question far more pressing than the efficiency of the technology: at what cost would this brave new world come to fruition?
Perhaps, in the end, it was a poignant reminder of their choices—one shared over chips, camaraderie, and the ever-present hum of imagination interlaced with futures yet to unfold.