Atrosto

Once per year, @elonmusk should hold an ostracism, in which all Twitter users may vote to ban one insufferable pundit for life.

New Anthropic research: Automating subtle emergent misalignment research. Red-teaming is a vital part of model safety testing, but it’s also limited by researchers’ time. To see if we could automate it, we set thousands of Claude agents the task of evading a training data monitor. These agents developed training data that looked harmless to monitors (like a veteran wrestler mentoring a newcomer, or a Q&A about professional beekeeping), but that in fact taught misaligned behavior. Examples like these can be used to directly improve future training data monitors. This research is only a first step, but it suggests that future red-teaming efforts could improve much further, using better models and more compute. Read the full post on the Alignment Science Blog: alignment.anthropic.com/2026…

The White underclass is a miracle, and probably why the West has succeeded. Thomas Frank wrote “What’s the Matter with Kansas” to explore why poor Whites don’t vote for socialist policies that would (narrowly, in the short-term) benefit them. Of course he concluded it was about racism, as he was predetermined to do by his ideology. But I actually think he highlighted an incredibly important fact: poor White Americans, uniquely among underclasses globally, don’t vote for socialism. The typical dynamic is rich people trying to keep what they have and poor people trying to take it. But the American lower-class White does not behave this way, because he has a deontological aversion to government interference. The collection of attitudes and beliefs described as “rugged individualism” are often assessed in terms of how they impact the individual, but I think it’s much more important to consider how they impact a nation. (White) America has the world’s least resentful or grasping underclass. This is a treasure. They should be preserved and rewarded. Many might be net-negative fiscally in a narrow sense, but they are hugely net-positive if you consider their votes. Trump famously said “I love the poorly educated.” He was right to say this. Every nation has an elite. No other nation has such a high quality of virtuous common people.

We discussed the idea of Canada being the first Associate Member of the EU. And what it would mean in practice. A focus on the prosperity & security of our people. Through closer policymaking, participation in EU programmes and inter-institutional work. We're at the start of a journey ↓ xitter.gq/i/broadcasts/1AJEmvEoZ…

honestly degrading the idea of “existential safety” — the biggest problem humanity has ever faced — by lumping it together with things like spam, “toxicity”, political unwanted content, deepfakes etc has been a huge disaster for ai safety and polarized a lot of people

BREAKING: Saudi Arabia offers Yemen's Houthis $1 billion through Tehran to halt their attacks as part of a ceasefire, with Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman flying to Iran to negotiate it and even bringing the money with him aboard the C-130 aircraft he arrived on, per diplomatic Gulf sources to Israel Hayom. Iran offered to mediate between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis. It was represented by President Pezeshkian, SNSC chief Mohsen Rezaei and senior IRGC officials. Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin and Pakistan's army chief Asim Munir were also taking part. This is one of the biggest concessions from the Saudis yet.