_5 Claude Tricks That Give You an Unfair Advantage (Most People Still Use the Old Way)_

https://medium.com/ai-engineering-simplified/5-claude-tricks-that-give-you-an-unfair-advantage-most-people-still-use-the-old-way-0385a58057c7

_The Actual Reason Why Google “Fell Out” of the AI Race Changes Everything_

The author's thesis:

FTA: Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis (recently changed roles within Google) doesn’t think that automating AI research with coding agents (AI systems that can program better AI systems) is the correct approach to artificial general intelligence (AGI, the kind of AI that’s as good as humans at everything). Google DeepMind’s leadership sees OpenAI and Anthropic’s bet at best as an off-ramp, and at worst as a dead end.

Hassabis is betting on something else: world models. Models that can understand and simulate the real world, not just predict the next token.

And he’s steering Google accordingly. The AI race is actually a race between two theories of intelligence and also between two kinds of company: startups that need AI to become a business, and an incumbent whose existing business can subsidize AI for years. As we will see, Hassabis’s decision puts Google in a life-or-death situation. He could make Google the absolute leader or an irrelevant laggard.

https://albertoromgar.medium.com/the-actual-reason-why-google-fell-out-of-the-ai-race-changes-everything-d935663a09c3

_Lusaint - Wicked Game (Cover)_

An absolutely phenomenal cover of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDUptOux5v4

Sounds similar to how my family got its milk in Oakland, CA in the early 1960s.

https://fixupx.com/SamaHoole/status/2106979013965054293

From briveal@X (https://fixupx.com/brivael/status/2107397619525763534):

Translated from French by Google

In 50 years, history books will say that Elon Musk won a war that nobody knew we were losing.

A war that began 100 years ago, in an Italian prison cell.

In 1926, Mussolini had a 35-year-old Sardinian intellectual arrested. At the trial, the prosecutor reportedly said: "We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years."

His name was Antonio Gramsci.

His mind never stopped working. In prison, he filled thousands of pages that became one of the most influential political texts of the 20th century. I think we are now witnessing the moment when his theory collapses.

Let me explain.

Gramsci asked himself a simple question: Why did the communist revolution succeed in Russia but fail everywhere else in the West?

His answer: in the West, power is not solely held by the state, the police, and the army. It is held by culture. By what people find normal, obvious, "common sense." He calls this cultural hegemony.

So, to seize power, you mustn't first take the palace. You must first take minds. The schools. The universities. The newspapers. The theater. Publishing. The courts. This is "positional warfare": a slow conquest, institution by institution. When culture has shifted, politics will follow naturally.

Forty years later, the German activist Rudi Dutschke would make it a slogan: the long march through the institutions.

For decades, we lived with an enigma that no one could really explain.

Why are almost all artists left-wing? Actors, singers, teachers, journalists, a good portion of the judiciary. Why could a country vote right-wing election after election and still have its culture speak with one voice?

The response we received was: "It's because educated people are left-wing."

I believe the answer is simpler. Gramsci wrote the recipe, and it was applied. When you control who gets the grant, the position, the good review, the prize, the invitation to appear on the show, you control what becomes "culture".

The same enigma existed on a global scale.

Why did so many developing countries, particularly in Latin America, keep electing socialist or radical left-wing governments? Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Kirchner's Argentina, Petro's Colombia. The economy was collapsing, cartels were thriving, chaos reigned. And yet the same vote kept coming.

My conviction: poverty was not an accident of the system. It was an electorate. And around it, there was a whole ecosystem of NGOs, "independent" media and "civil society" programs, largely financed by Western money.

Then, in early 2025, something happened that no one had ever dared to do.

Elon and Doge opened the books at USAID, an agency virtually untouchable since 1961, with tens of billions of dollars in funding annually. The vast majority of its programs were cut, and the agency was absorbed by the State Department.

The tap has been turned off.

And look what has happened since.

Bolivia: The MAS loses power after almost twenty years. Ecuador: Noboa re-elected. Honduras: The right wing regains control of the country. Chile: Kast elected. Argentina: Milei wins the midterm elections by a wide margin.

And two days ago, Brazil.

Jair Bolsonaro is ineligible, having been sentenced to 27 years in prison. The left thought it had closed the chapter. Lula, 80, was seeking a fourth term against a country that was considered to have his support.

On Sunday, his son Flávio came out on top in the first round. More than 47% compared to nearly 45% for Lula. Lula himself acknowledged the result as "unexpected".

The largest country in Latin America is one step away from a second round of voting.

The biggest right turn on the continent in decades.

Coincidence? I don't think so. When funding disappears, the narrative loses its speakers.

There remains one last true bastion: Europe.