Friday assorted links

1. Space flight during the 21st century.

2. Cato-suggested DOGE reforms.

3. AI progress is massive but increasingly non-legible.

4. One of the biggest benefits of travel: “IMO one of the biggest benefits of travel is just acquiring a scaffold to hang future knowledge on. Places that had similar embeddings in my mind before I saw them (Chongqing vs Chengdu, Abu Dhabi vs Dubai, Wroclaw vs Warsaw, etc.) become extremely distinct, and future facts become much stickier.”

5. Amazing Kreskin, RIP.  Though I feel this NYT obit failed to properly appreciate him?

6. Henry Oliver defends literary criticism.

7. Gemini 2 the streaming API.

8. An innovation agenda for addiction.

9. o1 pro on how USG might be related to the NJ drones.  And Sam Hammond offers a hypothesis.  Here is what a NJ Senator is reporting.  Domestic testing has to be the number one hypothesis at this point.