activescott's Notes

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee released on Wednesday a transcript and video of a closed-door interview Smith gave about two investigations of Trump. The document shows how Smith during the course of a daylong deposition repeatedly defended the basis for pursuing indictments against Trump and vigorously rejected Republican suggestions that his investigations were politically motivated.

“The evidence here made clear that President Trump was by a large measure the most culpable and most responsible person in this conspiracy. These crimes were committed for his benefit. The attack that happened at the Capitol, part of this case, does not happen without him. The other co-conspirators were doing this for his benefit,” Smith said, bristling at a question about whether his investigations were meant to prevent Trump from reclaiming the presidency in 2024.

Mamdani, a Democrat, was sworn in as the first Muslim leader of America’s biggest city, placing his hand on a Quran as he took his oath.

In August 2024, it was reported that the Sheikh Radwan Lagoon had become polluted by sewage and stagnant rainwater as the result of the area's sanitation systems being damaged by the Gaza war. The lack of infrastructure had led to increase in water-born disease, including polio, hepatitis A, and cholera, and skin infections.[27][28][29] The United Nations established vaccination clinic in Sheikh Radwan in November 2024 to distribute the polio vaccine to Palestinian children. The clinic was bombed a few hours after opening, injuring two adults and four children.

Although the Supreme Court hasn't weighed in on the issue, seven federal circuit courts have, and they all upheld the First Amendment right to record the police. Likewise, federal circuits have upheld the right to use vulgar language to oppose police without fear of retaliation, and to warn others of nearby police checkpoints or speed traps.

Kind of a shitty, misrepresented framing for this article, but those that bother to read may see that his positions are more nuanced and dare we say open-minded than the title might lead one to believe. Just like any media coverage of a politician, the media reports on the most extreme things you can probably find an inflates them. Yet if you see the guy speak in an interview or even bother to read beyond the sound bite you see he’s quite well informed.

During a lengthy interview on the Odd Lots podcast, Mamdani went into more detail about the kinds of deregulation he supported to enable more housing construction, such as ending parking minimums and two-stair requirements. He also criticized the New York City Council's practice of "member deference," whereby the Council will reject housing projects that are opposed by the councilmember whose district they'd be built in.

It would go much too far to say that Mamdani has had a deeper ideological shift to a more market-oriented perspective. He has continued to insist that rent freezes and faster permitting of new housing can coexist as complementary policies.

Using rules that exempt certain bills from the filibuster, Congress passed (and President Trump signed into law) the 330-page "reconciliation" bill which included tax breaks adding $500 billion to the deficit; new limits on Medicaid, SNAP, federal student loads, and green energy; and $171 billion for immigration enforcement, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the United States.

Those were perhaps the most controversial bills ever enacted, with senators voting yes on the reconciliation bill representing just 44% of the country's population. I don't think that's ever happened before and really captures the political climate. (For comparison, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, passed the Senate with the yea votes representing 62% of the country’s population.)

relying solely on accuracy can be misleading, especially with imbalanced datasets. Understanding and utilizing a variety of accuracy metrics is essential for building models that perform well not just in theory but also in practice.

If you find yourself writing a prompt for something repetitively and instructions can be static/precise, it's a good idea to make a custom command. You can tell Claude to make custom commands. It knows how (or it will search the web and figure it out via claude-code-guide.md) and then it will make it for you.

The Explore agent is a read-only file search specialist. It can use Glob, Grep, Read, and limited Bash commands to navigate codebases but is strictly prohibited from creating or modifying files.

You will notice how thorough the prompt is in terms of specifying when to use what tool call. Well, most people underestimate how hard it's to make tool calling work accurately.

Context engineering is about answering "what configuration of context is most likely to generate our model's desired behavior?"

Seems about right.

Instead of typing syntax, we're reviewing implementations, catching edge cases, and shipping features in hours that used to take days. That's genuinely exciting.

Yes, there's a learning curve. Understanding how to provide context, iterate on plans, and review AI-generated code quickly takes practice. But this is learnable through doing - build small tools, review everything, develop intuition through repetition.

The multiplier potential is real when you combine AI speed with engineering judgment. We're not replacing coding skills but we're finally able to focus them on the interesting problems while delegating the tedious parts.

The ceasefire agreement was announced on Oct. 10, two years after Hamas militants killed 1,200 and took 251 hostage in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, most of whom were returned in previous negotiations. Since then, Israeli troops have killed more than 70,700 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them women and children, and have displaced most of the enclave’s population. Health authorities in Palestine say Israel has violated the ceasefire multiple times, even daily, and at least 386 people have been killed in strikes by its military since Oct. 10. Israel, meanwhile, says three of its soldiers have died since the ceasefire began, and that it is responding to ceasefire violations by Hamas.

The year 2025 has been marked by three very different wars. There is Ukraine of course, where the UN says 14,000 civilians have died. In Gaza, where Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu promised "mighty vengeance" after about 1,200 people were killed when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023 and 251 people were taken hostage. Since then, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action, including more than 30,000 women and children according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry – figures the UN considers reliable. Meanwhile there has been a ferocious civil war between two military factions in Sudan. More than 150,000 people have been killed there over the past couple of years; around 12 million have been forced out of their homes. Maybe, if this had been the only war in 2025, the outside world would have done more to stop it; but it wasn't. "I'm good at solving wars," said US President Donald Trump, as his aircraft flew him to Israel after he had negotiated a ceasefire in the Gaza fighting. It's true that fewer people are dying in Gaza now. Despite the ceasefire, the Gaza war certainly doesn't feel as though it's been solved. Given the appalling suffering in the Middle East it may sound strange to say the war in Ukraine is on a completely different level to this. But it is.

A true advocate for informed exploration, Kris empowers travelers with the knowledge and tools to navigate the world with curiosity and confidence. Through Alpine Lakes Travel, she inspires and educates, cultivating a new generation of enlightened globetrotters.

A 1876 article from the Washington Standard introducing the Skagit River to the rest of the state noted that, “The peculiar nature of the river is the Jam, about two miles above Skagit City.”  This snippet understates the obstructions and impact they had on life in town.  There were actually two immense log jams that meant, Jo says, “life and death” to the community.  The older of the two, just below present-day Mount Vernon, was roughly a half mile long, and so dense it had trees 10- to 12-inches in diameter growing out of it.  Reliable estimates pegged its age at around 100 years old.  The second jam, about a half mile upriver from the first, was even larger.  Both jams consisted of several layers of driftwood and debris 30-40 feet deep.

Directions

Set the Egg for indirect cooking with a convEGGtor at 250°F/121°C Bring the ribeyes to room temperature and season all sides liberally with Big Green Egg Classic Steakhouse Seasoning or salt and pepper. Cook indirectly until internal temperature is 120°F/49°C. Set the Egg for direct cooking without a convEGGtor at 550°F/288°C. Sear each side of the steak for 1 minute. Remove the steak from the Egg when the internal temperature reaches 135°F. Smear the steak with herb butter (we used Roasted Garlic, Basil & Parsley Banner Butter) and let rest for 10 minutes. Slice and enjoy.

The consequences of getting caught in this expanding digital cage can be dire. In rural China, a family’s home is ringed by security cameras that alert authorities whenever they try to go to Beijing to complain about local officials. Near San Antonio, a driver is stopped as part of a secretive U.S. Border Patrol program that uses license plate readers to monitor millions of drivers and detain those whose travel patterns are deemed suspicious. In Gaza, AI-powered technology helps the Israeli military decide who to kill.