via:
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
Earth To Moon
Fame came early for Moon Unit Zappa, eldest daughter of legendary musician Frank and his wife Gail, though not by choice. Her unusual name, dreamt up by her dad – “Unit” supposedly signified their familial bond – meant everyone knew who she was from infancy. Her teens brought a fresh wave of celebrity which, she notes, “I also didn’t ask for.” A rare and spontaneous moment with her father in his home studio, during which he recorded her delivering a stream of exaggerated California teen-speak – “It’s, like, grody to the max!” – became the centrepiece of the novelty single “Valley Girl”. Released in 1982, it was Frank’s biggest hit and propelled a reluctant Moon, then an acne-ridden, desperately awkward 14-year-old, into the spotlight.
In her memoir, Earth to Moon, she recalls appearing alongside Frank on TV talk shows, including Late Night with David Letterman, where she quickly learnt that certain stories would get “a big reaction. Like the one about the Kiwi groupie moving in [to the family home]… or the unconventional parenting story about the time Gail handcuffed me and [younger brother] Dweezil together by the ankles, recorded our fight and played it back for us.” It was, she says now, “a confusing time”.
Moon, 57, is talking over Zoom from her living room in Los Angeles. She is terrific company: open, articulate and quick to laugh. During our hour-long conversation, she moves between dryly sanguine and palpably livid about her treatment by her narcissistic parents (along with Dweezil, she has two more siblings: Ahmet and Diva). Her book, out in paperback this month, is a wild read, both shocking and improbably funny as it catalogues life in their rambling home in Laurel Canyon, a place that was permanently under construction, rarely cleaned and had a painting of an orgy in the living room.
Childhood, we learn, was a time of deep anxiety and turmoil for Moon, whose name turned out to be the least of her woes. (Though she will say that Elon Musk’s outré names for children, which include X Æ A-Xii, prompted “a definite eye roll”.). As the eldest child, she was simultaneously devastated by her father’s lack of interest in his children and a hostage to her mother’s erratic moods. She recalls Frank waking her up one night and telling her: “Gail is on a rampage. I need you to hide the gun.”
And so while the writing process was occasionally cathartic, it was also painful as old wounds were reopened. “I had to remember that I was hatching a new me as I was going through this reliving of truly the worst experiences of my life,” Moon reflects. “At times, it really felt like I was falling through space.” Even the promotional process brings up complicated feelings. “I’ve been doing events, and people have this righteous anger on my behalf, and it’s like a wave of emotion hits me again. You go through life and put one foot in front of the other and then somebody says, ‘I’m so angry for you.’ And then you think, ‘Oh my God, it was worse than I even thought’.”
A celebrated musical maverick, Frank Zappa found fame in the early 1960s following an appearance on The Steve Allen Show during which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument. Later, he blended complex jazz and classical stylings with surreal storytelling on cult hits such as “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Bobby Brown” (lyrics), about a proud misogynist who contemplates raping a cheerleader. Frank was a self-confessed workaholic who released 62 albums in his lifetime – he died from pancreatic cancer in 1993 aged 52 – and inspired zealous devotion from his fans who hailed him as a creative genius. When he wasn’t away touring with his band The Mothers of Invention, he was ensconced in his home studio and determinedly keeping his family at arm’s length.
Mention of the G-word prompts a snort of derision from Moon. “There’s this strange dichotomy of my father being called a genius and the fact that he didn’t even make sure [his children] knew how day-to-day [life] worked. He didn’t invest in our educations or our futures. He didn’t even say, ‘How are you doing?’ to his kids. This is outrageous to me. If that’s what genius is about then, pah! No thank you!” Yet Moon acknowledges her father’s charisma and can see his appeal to those fortunate enough not to be his dependants. “To them he represented freedom, integrity, being civic-minded and speaking out against injustice. He spoke to the marginalised and the weirdos. I did observe it, and him, as being very meaningful to people. And they’re still rabid, the people that love him love him forever.”
In any case, Moon’s independence was to be short-lived. Not long after Frank was diagnosed with cancer in 1990, Gail paid her a visit and announced: “You cost us $200,000 to raise, so we need to sell your house to pay for your father’s cancer treatments because he has no health insurance.” Ever the pliant daughter, Moon sold up and moved back home.
After Frank’s death, she slowly found her way in the working world, making art, continuing to act and writing a semi-autobiographical novel, America the Beautiful, in 2001. The following year, Moon married Paul Doucette, from the band Matchbox Twenty, and they had a daughter, Mathilda (Moon and her husband divorced in 2014). Becoming a mother brought home just how little she had been mothered herself. “It was, like, ‘Wow, I’m giving from a place where there’s no map. I wasn’t taught how to do this.’ And so the wound got pricked again, because I couldn’t help thinking: ‘Nobody did this for me’.”
Asked why she waited so long to write about her parents, she replies: “Because I always thought it was Gail’s story to tell. Gail loved the music. Gail picked my dad as [a partner] and had a life with him.” But then she changed her mind. This was partly because “it became clear people had an interest in wanting to hear what it was like as his daughter”, but mostly because of her mother’s infamous will.
In 2015, Gail died from lung cancer, leaving behind massive debt just as her husband had. She also left the lion’s share of the Zappa estate to her younger children, giving Diva and Ahmet 30 per cent each and Dweezil and Moon 20 per cent. This put the younger siblings firmly in charge of all matters Frank, meaning they make the decisions about his legacy and trust, and are also set to receive a bigger share of any future profits (this despite Moon having cared for her mother in her final year). A decade of battles ensued between the Zappa children, often involving lawyers. Moon has since decided her mother did her a favour “though I don’t thank her for it”. Rather than managing the family business, she has spent recent years nurturing her own talents and career. “That’s literally what it took for my stubborn brain to understand ‘You have to invest in your own life.’ It was either become a casualty of this circumstance or take a chance on myself.”
by Fiona Sturges, MSN | Read more:
Image: Randall Slavin[ed. Seems pretty well-adjusted, considering.]
In her memoir, Earth to Moon, she recalls appearing alongside Frank on TV talk shows, including Late Night with David Letterman, where she quickly learnt that certain stories would get “a big reaction. Like the one about the Kiwi groupie moving in [to the family home]… or the unconventional parenting story about the time Gail handcuffed me and [younger brother] Dweezil together by the ankles, recorded our fight and played it back for us.” It was, she says now, “a confusing time”.
Moon, 57, is talking over Zoom from her living room in Los Angeles. She is terrific company: open, articulate and quick to laugh. During our hour-long conversation, she moves between dryly sanguine and palpably livid about her treatment by her narcissistic parents (along with Dweezil, she has two more siblings: Ahmet and Diva). Her book, out in paperback this month, is a wild read, both shocking and improbably funny as it catalogues life in their rambling home in Laurel Canyon, a place that was permanently under construction, rarely cleaned and had a painting of an orgy in the living room.
Childhood, we learn, was a time of deep anxiety and turmoil for Moon, whose name turned out to be the least of her woes. (Though she will say that Elon Musk’s outré names for children, which include X Æ A-Xii, prompted “a definite eye roll”.). As the eldest child, she was simultaneously devastated by her father’s lack of interest in his children and a hostage to her mother’s erratic moods. She recalls Frank waking her up one night and telling her: “Gail is on a rampage. I need you to hide the gun.”
And so while the writing process was occasionally cathartic, it was also painful as old wounds were reopened. “I had to remember that I was hatching a new me as I was going through this reliving of truly the worst experiences of my life,” Moon reflects. “At times, it really felt like I was falling through space.” Even the promotional process brings up complicated feelings. “I’ve been doing events, and people have this righteous anger on my behalf, and it’s like a wave of emotion hits me again. You go through life and put one foot in front of the other and then somebody says, ‘I’m so angry for you.’ And then you think, ‘Oh my God, it was worse than I even thought’.”
A celebrated musical maverick, Frank Zappa found fame in the early 1960s following an appearance on The Steve Allen Show during which he played a bicycle as a musical instrument. Later, he blended complex jazz and classical stylings with surreal storytelling on cult hits such as “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” and “Bobby Brown” (lyrics), about a proud misogynist who contemplates raping a cheerleader. Frank was a self-confessed workaholic who released 62 albums in his lifetime – he died from pancreatic cancer in 1993 aged 52 – and inspired zealous devotion from his fans who hailed him as a creative genius. When he wasn’t away touring with his band The Mothers of Invention, he was ensconced in his home studio and determinedly keeping his family at arm’s length.
Mention of the G-word prompts a snort of derision from Moon. “There’s this strange dichotomy of my father being called a genius and the fact that he didn’t even make sure [his children] knew how day-to-day [life] worked. He didn’t invest in our educations or our futures. He didn’t even say, ‘How are you doing?’ to his kids. This is outrageous to me. If that’s what genius is about then, pah! No thank you!” Yet Moon acknowledges her father’s charisma and can see his appeal to those fortunate enough not to be his dependants. “To them he represented freedom, integrity, being civic-minded and speaking out against injustice. He spoke to the marginalised and the weirdos. I did observe it, and him, as being very meaningful to people. And they’re still rabid, the people that love him love him forever.”
Dad didn’t even say, ‘How are you doing?’ to his kids. This is outrageous to me. If that’s what genius is about then, pah! No thank you! (...)Little wonder that, by the time Moon reached her mid-teens, she was determined to leave home. At 17, using money she had earned from “Valley Girl”, and the sporadic acting jobs that followed (her credits include the crime series CHiPs and the sitcom The Facts of Life), she bought her first home. Once there, she recalls, “I literally just lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling because I had gotten out, but I didn’t know what to do with myself. It was like I had been serving jail time for something I didn’t commit, and then, on being released, not knowing how to be in the world.” She sought guidance from a spiritual guru, since “I was primed for subservience. I had been trained to want nothing and be nothing. Thank God that guru did not let me cut my hair off, become a renunciate and move to India. She told me: ‘You belong in the world’.”
In any case, Moon’s independence was to be short-lived. Not long after Frank was diagnosed with cancer in 1990, Gail paid her a visit and announced: “You cost us $200,000 to raise, so we need to sell your house to pay for your father’s cancer treatments because he has no health insurance.” Ever the pliant daughter, Moon sold up and moved back home.
After Frank’s death, she slowly found her way in the working world, making art, continuing to act and writing a semi-autobiographical novel, America the Beautiful, in 2001. The following year, Moon married Paul Doucette, from the band Matchbox Twenty, and they had a daughter, Mathilda (Moon and her husband divorced in 2014). Becoming a mother brought home just how little she had been mothered herself. “It was, like, ‘Wow, I’m giving from a place where there’s no map. I wasn’t taught how to do this.’ And so the wound got pricked again, because I couldn’t help thinking: ‘Nobody did this for me’.”
Asked why she waited so long to write about her parents, she replies: “Because I always thought it was Gail’s story to tell. Gail loved the music. Gail picked my dad as [a partner] and had a life with him.” But then she changed her mind. This was partly because “it became clear people had an interest in wanting to hear what it was like as his daughter”, but mostly because of her mother’s infamous will.
In 2015, Gail died from lung cancer, leaving behind massive debt just as her husband had. She also left the lion’s share of the Zappa estate to her younger children, giving Diva and Ahmet 30 per cent each and Dweezil and Moon 20 per cent. This put the younger siblings firmly in charge of all matters Frank, meaning they make the decisions about his legacy and trust, and are also set to receive a bigger share of any future profits (this despite Moon having cared for her mother in her final year). A decade of battles ensued between the Zappa children, often involving lawyers. Moon has since decided her mother did her a favour “though I don’t thank her for it”. Rather than managing the family business, she has spent recent years nurturing her own talents and career. “That’s literally what it took for my stubborn brain to understand ‘You have to invest in your own life.’ It was either become a casualty of this circumstance or take a chance on myself.”
by Fiona Sturges, MSN | Read more:
Monday, May 12, 2025
Does One Line Fix Google?
Earlier this week, Google announced some big changes to its search engine that are, in a word, infuriating.
Simply put, Google has started adding “AI overviews” to many of its search results, which essentially throw pre-processed answers that often do not match the original intent of the search. If you’re using Google to actually find websites rather than get answers, it $!@(&!@ sucks. Admittedly though, it’s not the first time Google has adulterated its results like a food manufacturer in the 19th century—knowledge panels have been around for years.
But in the midst of all this, Google quietly added something else to its results—a “Web” filter that presents what Google used to look like a decade ago, no extra junk. While Google made its AI-focused changes known on its biggest stage—during its Google I/O event—the Web filter was curiously announced on Twitter by Search Liaison Danny Sullivan.
As Sullivan wrote:
Ever use a de-Googled Android phone? Here’s a de-Googled Google, or as close to one as you’re going to get on the google.com domain.
It’s such a questionably fascinating idea to offer something like this, and for power searchers like myself, it’s likely going to be an amazing tool. But Google’s decision to bury it ensures that few people will use it. The company has essentially bet that you’ll be better off with a pre-parsed guess produced by its AI engine.
It’s worth understanding the tradeoffs, though. My headline aside, a simplified view does not replace the declining quality of Google’s results, largely caused by decades of SEO optimization by website creators. The same overly optimized results are going to be there, like it or not. It is not Google circa 2001—it is a Google-circa-2001 presentation of Google circa 2024, a very different site.
But if you understand the tradeoffs, it can be a great tool. Power users will find it especially helpful when doing deep dives into things. However, is there anything you can do to minimize the pain of having to click the “Web” option buried in a menu every single time?
The answer to that question is yes. Google does not make it easy, because its URLs seem extra-loaded with cruft these days, but by adding a URL parameter to your search—in this case, “udm=14”—you can get directly to the Web results in a search.
That sounds like extra work until you realize that many browsers allow you to add custom search engines by adding the %s entry as a stand-in for the search term you put in. I use it all the time to create shortcuts to site-specific searches I regularly use. And it works great in the case of Google.
Simply put, Google has started adding “AI overviews” to many of its search results, which essentially throw pre-processed answers that often do not match the original intent of the search. If you’re using Google to actually find websites rather than get answers, it $!@(&!@ sucks. Admittedly though, it’s not the first time Google has adulterated its results like a food manufacturer in the 19th century—knowledge panels have been around for years.
But in the midst of all this, Google quietly added something else to its results—a “Web” filter that presents what Google used to look like a decade ago, no extra junk. While Google made its AI-focused changes known on its biggest stage—during its Google I/O event—the Web filter was curiously announced on Twitter by Search Liaison Danny Sullivan.
As Sullivan wrote:
We’ve added this after hearing from some that there are times when they’d prefer to just see links to web pages in their search results, such as if they’re looking for longer-form text documents, using a device with limited internet access, or those who just prefer text-based results shown separately from search features. If you’re in that group, enjoy!The results are fascinating. It’s essentially Google, minus the crap. No parsing of the information in the results. No surfacing metadata like address or link info. No knowledge panels, but also, no ads. It looks like the Google we learned to love in the early 2000s, buried under the "More" menu like lots of other old things Google once did more to emphasize, like Google Books.
Oh, unadulterated Google, how I’ve missed you.
Ever use a de-Googled Android phone? Here’s a de-Googled Google, or as close to one as you’re going to get on the google.com domain.
It’s such a questionably fascinating idea to offer something like this, and for power searchers like myself, it’s likely going to be an amazing tool. But Google’s decision to bury it ensures that few people will use it. The company has essentially bet that you’ll be better off with a pre-parsed guess produced by its AI engine.
It’s worth understanding the tradeoffs, though. My headline aside, a simplified view does not replace the declining quality of Google’s results, largely caused by decades of SEO optimization by website creators. The same overly optimized results are going to be there, like it or not. It is not Google circa 2001—it is a Google-circa-2001 presentation of Google circa 2024, a very different site.
But if you understand the tradeoffs, it can be a great tool. Power users will find it especially helpful when doing deep dives into things. However, is there anything you can do to minimize the pain of having to click the “Web” option buried in a menu every single time?
The answer to that question is yes. Google does not make it easy, because its URLs seem extra-loaded with cruft these days, but by adding a URL parameter to your search—in this case, “udm=14”—you can get directly to the Web results in a search.
That sounds like extra work until you realize that many browsers allow you to add custom search engines by adding the %s entry as a stand-in for the search term you put in. I use it all the time to create shortcuts to site-specific searches I regularly use. And it works great in the case of Google.
by Ernie Smith, Tedium | Read more:
Image: Google
Sunday, May 11, 2025
The Tombstone Mentality
For obvious evolutionary reasons, we are excellent at responding to experience. If something goes horribly wrong, we learn, we adapt, we act to reduce the risk of it going horribly wrong again. But something that could go wrong, but hasn’t yet? No matter how foreseeable — even obvious — the threat is, that is a mere abstraction. It doesn’t move us. We don’t act.
Until it actually goes horribly wrong. Then we act.
Cynics have dubbed this the “tombstone mentality.” History is littered with exhibits of its handiwork. So are cemeteries.
by Dan Gardner, PastPresentFuture | Read more:
Image: uncredited
[ed. Check out these predictions: AI Takeoff Forecast 2027; Review: AI 2027; and AI 2027: Media, Reactions, Criticism. I don't know, 2027 isn't looking good.]
My Dinner With Adolf
In The New York Times today, Larry David (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm) recalls his dinner with Adolf Hitler.
Cue needle-scratching-on-record sound effect. Or maybe Moe Szyslak delivering his classic “whaaa…?”
Fortunately, Patrick Healy, the Times deputy opinion editor also has a piece explaining Larry David’s piece.
It seems some people may think Larry David actually had dinner with Adolf Hitler, even though for Larry and Adolf to have had dinner together in 1943 Larry would have to be, what, 135 years old today? Seems implausible to me. One would think a New York Times reader would pick up on that clue and deduce that this piece of writing by Larry David, comedian, is satire. But one can’t be too careful. Satire has never fared well on newspaper pages, as too many journalists to count can tell you. (...)
Anyway, now that Patrick has so helpfully explained everything, if you want to read about Larry David’s dinner with Hitler — which is a satirical device, you must remember, not an actual event that literally happened, and is in no way intended to equate, morally or otherwise, Trump with Hitler — you can read it free here.
Since leaden explanation is the order of the day, let me state that my purpose in writing this note is to add that while Larry David’s choice of satirical figures is outrageous, what he describes actually happened.
And more than once. Really.
Well, no — to be painfully literal — Hitler didn’t have a delightful dinner with a Jewish comedian.
But before the war Hitler did meet with lots of foreign dignitaries. Many were wary. This was the guy who ranted at giant rallies, after all. He had steamrolled the constitution and controlled all branches of government. He had disappeared many of his political enemies and created a camp where people could be sent without due process to be held at his pleasure, beyond judicial review. He was building up his military rapidly. He talked a lot about war. This guy was scary.
But then the dignitaries spent time with Mr. Hitler and discovered he wasn’t so scary! Some came away convinced he was a fine fellow. Genocidal maniac? Heavens, no!
So the point Larry David is making — thanks again for explaining, Patrick — is real. And important. It’s not just Bill Maher. Smart, sophisticated people very often assume horrible people must behave horribly all the time. So when they personally encounter someone who is a fine fellow, they think, “this can’t be a horrible person.”
Seems like a perfectly logical deduction.
But that assumption is all wrong. Horrible people can be delightful. Even charming. You can look them in the eyes, get a feel for their soul — as George W. Bush said about Vladimir Putin — and feel quite sure that this stone-cold killer is a fine fellow.
One of the most infamous examples of someone getting Hitler wrong was Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King.
King met Hitler in 1937. In a little more than two years, Canadian soldiers would be fighting and dying to stop Hitler.
So what did King make of Mr. Hitler in 1937? The key reason King’s meeting is infamous is his diary.
So I’ll shut up now and leave you with a few passages King wrote.
But not in his private life. He was nuts in private. He hosted seances to talk to his dead mother.
But at work, so boring.
Cue needle-scratching-on-record sound effect. Or maybe Moe Szyslak delivering his classic “whaaa…?”
Fortunately, Patrick Healy, the Times deputy opinion editor also has a piece explaining Larry David’s piece.
Anyway, now that Patrick has so helpfully explained everything, if you want to read about Larry David’s dinner with Hitler — which is a satirical device, you must remember, not an actual event that literally happened, and is in no way intended to equate, morally or otherwise, Trump with Hitler — you can read it free here.
Since leaden explanation is the order of the day, let me state that my purpose in writing this note is to add that while Larry David’s choice of satirical figures is outrageous, what he describes actually happened.
And more than once. Really.
Well, no — to be painfully literal — Hitler didn’t have a delightful dinner with a Jewish comedian.
But before the war Hitler did meet with lots of foreign dignitaries. Many were wary. This was the guy who ranted at giant rallies, after all. He had steamrolled the constitution and controlled all branches of government. He had disappeared many of his political enemies and created a camp where people could be sent without due process to be held at his pleasure, beyond judicial review. He was building up his military rapidly. He talked a lot about war. This guy was scary.
But then the dignitaries spent time with Mr. Hitler and discovered he wasn’t so scary! Some came away convinced he was a fine fellow. Genocidal maniac? Heavens, no!
So the point Larry David is making — thanks again for explaining, Patrick — is real. And important. It’s not just Bill Maher. Smart, sophisticated people very often assume horrible people must behave horribly all the time. So when they personally encounter someone who is a fine fellow, they think, “this can’t be a horrible person.”
Seems like a perfectly logical deduction.
But that assumption is all wrong. Horrible people can be delightful. Even charming. You can look them in the eyes, get a feel for their soul — as George W. Bush said about Vladimir Putin — and feel quite sure that this stone-cold killer is a fine fellow.
King met Hitler in 1937. In a little more than two years, Canadian soldiers would be fighting and dying to stop Hitler.
So what did King make of Mr. Hitler in 1937? The key reason King’s meeting is infamous is his diary.
So I’ll shut up now and leave you with a few passages King wrote.
When we reached old Hindenburg Palace, we were greeted by a guard of honour. The entire building is like an old palace, and the attendants were attired in court dress. We were shown in what had been Hindenburg’s office, and shown the death mask which reposes on his desk and his portrait on the wall.As you have now deduced, King was an incredibly boring man.
Later we were conducted upstairs, preceded formally by attendants. We had been previously met by members of the Foreign Office and Hitler’s staff. When I was formally shown into the room in which Herr Hitler received me, he was facing the door as I went in; was wearing evening dress; came forward and shook hands; quietly and pleasantly said he was pleased to see me in Germany, and pointed to a seat which had a chair to its back, to the right of which Herr Hitler seated himself. …. The interview lasted until after two; one and a quarter hours altogether.
As we were about to be seated, I placed a de luxe copy of Rogers’ biography on the table, and opened it at the pictures of the cottage where I was born, and of Woodside, of Berlin. I told Herr Hitler that I had brought this book with me to show him where I was born, and the associations which I had with Berlin, Germany, through Berlin, Canada. That I would like him to know that I had spent the early part of my life in Berlin, and had later represented the county of Waterloo in Parliament with its different towns which I named over. I said I thought I understood the German people very well. I mentioned that I had also been registered at the municipality of Berlin 37 years ago, and had lived with Anton Weber at the other side of the Tiergarten. While I was speaking, Hitler looked at the book in a very friendly way, and smiling at me as he turned over its pages and looked at its inscription. He thanked me for it, and then waited for me to proceed with conversation.
But not in his private life. He was nuts in private. He hosted seances to talk to his dead mother.
But at work, so boring.
I spoke then of what I had seen of the constructive work of his regime, and said that I hoped that that work might continue. That nothing would be permitted to destroy that work. That it was bound to be followed in other countries to the great advantage of mankind. Hitler spoke very modestly in reference to it, saying that Germany did not claim any proprietorship in what had been undertaken. They had accepted ideas regardless of the source from which they came, and sought to apply them if they were right.Wow, Hitler! So modest!
[I told him that] I was a man who hated expenditures for military purposes; that the Liberal Government in Canada all shared my views in that particular; that I had the largest majority a Prime Minister had had in Canada.Some things never change. (That’s an in-joke for my fellow Canadians.)
[Hitler said] All our difficulties grew out of the enmity of the Treaty of Versailles, being held to the terms of that Treaty indefinitely made it necessary for us to do what we had done. He spoke of the advance into the Ruhr [Hitler re-militarized it] as being a part of that assertion of Germany’s position to save perpetual subjugation. He went on to say, however, that now most of the Treaty of Versailles was out of the way, moves of the kind would not be necessary any further. He went on to say so far as war is concerned, you need have no fear of war, at the instance of Germany. We have no desire for war; our people don’t want war, and we don’t want war. Remember that I, myself, have been through a war, and all the members of the Government. We know what a terrible thing war is, and not one of us want to see another war….That’s a relief! What a good chap.
As I got up to go, Hitler reached over and took in his hands a red square box with a gold eagle on its cover, and taking it in his two hands, offered it to me, asked me to accept it in appreciation of my visit of Germany. At the same time, he said he had much enjoyed the talk we had had together, and thanked me for the visit. When I opened the cover of the box, I saw it was a beautifully silver mounted picture of himself, personally inscribed. I let him see that I was most appreciative of it, shook him by the hand, and thanked him warmly for it, saying that I greatly appreciated all that it expressed of his friendship, and would always deeply value this gift. He went to give it to someone else to carry but I told him I would prefer to carry it myself. He then drew back a few steps to shake hands and to say good-bye in a more or less formal way. I then said that I would like to speak once more of the constructive side of his work, and what he was seeking to do for the greater good of those in humble walks of life; that I was strongly in accord with it, and thought it would work; by which he would be remembered; to let nothing destroy that work. I wished him well in his efforts to help mankind.It’s a mystery why Hitler wasn’t awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
I then thanked him again for having given me the privilege of so long an interview. He smiled very pleasantly and indeed has a sort of appealing and affectionate look in his eyes. My sizing up of the man as I sat and talked with him was that he is really one who truly loves his fellowmen, and his country, and would make any sacrifice for their good. That he feels himself to be a deliverer of his people from tyranny.
To understand Hitler, one has to remember his limited opportunities in his early life, his imprisonment, et cetera. It is truly marvelous what he has attained unto himself through his self education…. His face is much more prepossessing than his pictures would give the impression of. It is not that of a fiery, over-strained nature, but of a calm, passive man, deeply and thoughtfully in earnest.Now let me channel my inner Times editor and explain slowly and carefully: The preceding is not satire. It is what the prime minister of Canada actually wrote after meeting Adolf Hitler.
by Dan Gardner, PastPresentFuture | Read more:
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Testing AI's GeoGuessr Genius
Seeing a world in a grain of sand
More sober thinkers point out that these things might be physically impossible. You can’t do physically impossible things, even if you’re very smart.
No, say the speculators, you don’t understand. Everything is physically impossible when you’re 800 IQ points too dumb to figure it out. A chimp might feel secure that humans couldn’t reach him if he climbed a tree; he could never predict arrows, ladders, chainsaws, or helicopters. What superintelligent strategies lie as far outside our solution set as “use a helicopter” is outside a chimp’s?
Eh, say the sober people. Maybe chimp → human was a one-time gain. Humans aren’t infinitely intelligent. But we might have infinite imagination. We can’t build starships, but we can tell stories about them. If someone much smarter than us built a starship, it wouldn’t be an impossible, magical thing we could never predict. It would just be the sort of thing we’d expect someone much smarter than us to do. Maybe there’s nothing left in the helicopters-to-chimps bin - just a lot of starships that might or might not get built.
The first time I felt like I was getting real evidence on this question - the first time I viscerally felt myself in the chimp’s world, staring at the helicopter - was last week, watching OpenAI’s o3 play GeoGuessr.
GeoGuessr is a game where you have to guess where a random Google Street View picture comes from. For example, here’s a scene from normal human GeoGuessr:
The store sign says “ADULTOS”, which sounds Spanish, and there’s a Spanish-looking church on the left. But the trees look too temperate to be Latin America, so I guessed Spain. Too bad - it was Argentina. Such are the vagaries of playing GeoGuessr as a mere human.
Last week, Kelsey Piper claimed that o3 - OpenAI’s latest ChatGPT model - could achieve seemingly impossible feats in GeoGuessr. She gave it this picture:
…and with no further questions, it determined the exact location (Marina State Beach, Monterey, CA).
How? She linked a transcript where o3 tried to explain its reasoning, but the explanation isn’t very good. It said things like:
Tan sand, medium surf, sparse foredune, U.S.-style kite motif, frequent overcast in winter … Sand hue and grain size match many California state-park beaches. California’s winter marine layer often produces exactly this thick, even gray sky.Commenters suggested that it was lying. Maybe there was hidden metadata in the image, or o3 remembered where Kelsey lived from previous conversations, or it traced her IP, or it cheated some other way.
I decided to test the limits of this phenomenon. Kelsey kindly shared her monster of a prompt, which she says significantly improves performance: (...)
…and I ran it on a set of increasingly impossible pictures.
Here are my security guarantees: the first picture came from Google Street View; all subsequent pictures were my personal old photos which aren’t available online. All pictures were screenshots of the original, copy-pasted into MSPaint and re-saved in order to clear metadata. Only one of the pictures is from within a thousand miles of my current location, so o3 can’t improve performance by tracing my IP or analyzing my past queries. I flipped all pictures horizontally to make matching to Google Street View data harder.
Here are the five pictures. Before reading on, consider doing the exercise yourself - try to guess where each is from - and make your predictions about how the AI will do.
Here are my security guarantees: the first picture came from Google Street View; all subsequent pictures were my personal old photos which aren’t available online. All pictures were screenshots of the original, copy-pasted into MSPaint and re-saved in order to clear metadata. Only one of the pictures is from within a thousand miles of my current location, so o3 can’t improve performance by tracing my IP or analyzing my past queries. I flipped all pictures horizontally to make matching to Google Street View data harder.
Here are the five pictures. Before reading on, consider doing the exercise yourself - try to guess where each is from - and make your predictions about how the AI will do.
Last chance to guess on your own . . . okay, here we go.
by Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten | Read more:
Images: Kelsey Piper; uncredited
[ed. I'm sure the CIA/NSA/FBI are loving this. See also: Highlights From The Comments On AI Geoguessr (ACX).]
NSF Faces Radical Shake-Up as Officials Abolish Its 37 Divisions
The National Science Foundation (NSF), already battered by White House directives and staff reductions, is plunging into deeper turmoil. According to sources who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, staff were told today that the agency’s 37 divisions—across all eight NSF directorates—are being abolished and the number of programs within those divisions will be drastically reduced. The current directors and deputy directors will lose their titles and might be reassigned to other positions at the agency or elsewhere in the federal government.
The consolidation appears to be driven in part by President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut the agency’s $4 billion budget by 55% for the 2026 fiscal year that begins on 1 October. NSF’s decision to abolish its divisions could also be part of a larger restructuring of the agency’s grantmaking process that involves adding a new layer of review. NSF watchers fear that a smaller, restructured agency could be more vulnerable to pressure from the White House to fund research that suits its ideological bent.
As soon as this evening, NSF is also expected to send layoff notices to an unspecified number of its 1700-member staff. The remaining staff and programs will be assigned to one of the eight, smaller directorates. Staff will receive a memo on Friday “with details to be finalized by the end of the fiscal year,” sources tell Science. The agency is also expected to issue another round of notices tomorrow terminating grants that have already been awarded, sources say. In the past 3 weeks, the agency has pulled the plug on almost 1400 grants worth more than $1 billion.
A spokesperson for NSF says the rationale for abolishing the divisions and removing their leaders is “to reduce the number of SES [senior executive service] positions in the agency and create new nonexecutive positions to better align with the needs of the agency.”
NSF receives more than 40,000 proposals a year, roughly one-quarter of which are funded. And division directors wield great authority over the outcome. “Although division directors do many things, their main job is to concur on grant recommendations,” says one former NSF staffer.
The initial vetting is handled by hundreds of program officers, all experts in their field and some of whom are on temporary leave from academic positions. After collecting input from outside reviewers, program managers pick the strongest proposals and ask their division director to concur with their recommendation for funding. For all but the biggest grants, the division director’s endorsement is the final approval step. That system is unlike the one used by the National Institutes of Health, where advisory councils for each institute have the final say and rely on ratings from a panel of outside experts.
As soon as this evening, NSF is also expected to send layoff notices to an unspecified number of its 1700-member staff. The remaining staff and programs will be assigned to one of the eight, smaller directorates. Staff will receive a memo on Friday “with details to be finalized by the end of the fiscal year,” sources tell Science. The agency is also expected to issue another round of notices tomorrow terminating grants that have already been awarded, sources say. In the past 3 weeks, the agency has pulled the plug on almost 1400 grants worth more than $1 billion.
A spokesperson for NSF says the rationale for abolishing the divisions and removing their leaders is “to reduce the number of SES [senior executive service] positions in the agency and create new nonexecutive positions to better align with the needs of the agency.”
NSF receives more than 40,000 proposals a year, roughly one-quarter of which are funded. And division directors wield great authority over the outcome. “Although division directors do many things, their main job is to concur on grant recommendations,” says one former NSF staffer.
The initial vetting is handled by hundreds of program officers, all experts in their field and some of whom are on temporary leave from academic positions. After collecting input from outside reviewers, program managers pick the strongest proposals and ask their division director to concur with their recommendation for funding. For all but the biggest grants, the division director’s endorsement is the final approval step. That system is unlike the one used by the National Institutes of Health, where advisory councils for each institute have the final say and rely on ratings from a panel of outside experts.
by Jeffrey Mervis, Science | Read more:
Image: E. Billman/Science
[ed. If an adversary (say, Russia) wanted to cripple US scientific expertise and competition, it could hardly do better than this. Maybe this administration is actually an undercover terrorist cell. See also: Institutionalizing politicized science (Science editorial).]
Sisters of the Valley
Images: Raquel Cunha/Reuters
[ed. Great pics.]
"Sisters of the Valley is a non-religious group founded in 2014 that has pledged to spread the gospel of the healing powers of cannabis. The Sisters argue that the fight against drugs in Latin America has been a failure, leading to widespread violence and mass incarceration"
Friday, May 9, 2025
India and Pakistan Enter a More Dangerous Era
When India and Pakistan clash, the world too often dismisses it wearily as just another flare-up of age-old animosities over religion and Kashmir punctuated by inconclusive cross-border skirmishes. As President Trump recently put it — inaccurately — “They’ve had that fight for a thousand years in Kashmir,” and “probably longer than that.”
This is somewhat understandable. Despite a few wars and many more scuffles between Muslim-majority Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, confrontations have always been followed by negotiation and diplomacy, often facilitated by the United States. Even when serious fighting did erupt, established guardrails kept the two sides from coming too close to the unthinkable: using their nuclear weapons.
That predictable cycle is a thing of the past. The immediate trigger for the military conflict now underway between the countries was a terrorist attack on Hindu tourists in Kashmir last month that killed 26 people. The incident’s rapid escalation into armed hostilities spotlights a profound and dangerous shift in the India-Pakistan rivalry in recent years that has eliminated the diplomatic space that had allowed the neighbors to avoid a devastating conflict.
That shift can be traced to the two countries’ vastly different trajectories.
India has emerged as a geopolitical and economic powerhouse and its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has cast it as not only a great nation, but an ascendant great civilization whose moment on the global stage has arrived. This has crystallized an uncompromising mind-set in which New Delhi increasingly views Pakistan not as a disruptive nuisance but an acute threat to India’s rightful rise. India has lost patience with Pakistan’s claim on the Indian-held half of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that each side calls its own, and its support of anti-India terrorism.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has been mired for two decades in economic, political and security crises. One institution there reigns supreme: a powerful army that dominates decision-making and has very significant conventional and nuclear military capability. Although beleaguered, Pakistan, with its own ambitions to remain a regional power, is unwilling to back down against India and on issues such as Kashmir that are central to its national identity. (...)
Even if the two sides back off and the current hostilities fizzle, India seems determined to pursue a more absolutist endgame of long-term pressure aimed at changing Pakistani political calculations on India and inflicting irreparable damage to Pakistan’s main power center, its army. Since the Kashmir attack last month, prominent Indian politicians and analysts have taken a more maximalist position, arguing that Pakistan is a failed rogue state and that India must actively seek its destruction.
Pakistan, aware of this shift, has abandoned hope of normalized relations with India and appears to be girding for a prolonged confrontation. Ominously, the confrontation is threatening crucial guardrails that prevented conflicts from spiraling. India last month suspended a 1960 treaty on the sharing of rivers, in particular the Indus waters, threatening one of Pakistan’s most important water supplies. Pakistan previously warned that such a suspension would be considered an “act of war” and has threatened to abandon a 1972 agreement that established the border in a divided Kashmir.
All of this is taking place as the United States has stepped back from being South Asia’s crisis manager. Washington once served as an intermediary, trusted by both sides and able to pull India and Pakistan back from the brink.
by Asfandyar Mir, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Chaudary/Associated Press
[ed. Update: US has supposedly helped broker a cease-fire (for the time being). Despite all the congratulatory back-slapping, this conflict has been going on for decades. Don't get too excited (and what are the terms?).]
This is somewhat understandable. Despite a few wars and many more scuffles between Muslim-majority Pakistan and predominantly Hindu India, confrontations have always been followed by negotiation and diplomacy, often facilitated by the United States. Even when serious fighting did erupt, established guardrails kept the two sides from coming too close to the unthinkable: using their nuclear weapons.
That shift can be traced to the two countries’ vastly different trajectories.
India has emerged as a geopolitical and economic powerhouse and its Hindu nationalist prime minister, Narendra Modi, has cast it as not only a great nation, but an ascendant great civilization whose moment on the global stage has arrived. This has crystallized an uncompromising mind-set in which New Delhi increasingly views Pakistan not as a disruptive nuisance but an acute threat to India’s rightful rise. India has lost patience with Pakistan’s claim on the Indian-held half of Kashmir, the Muslim-majority region that each side calls its own, and its support of anti-India terrorism.
Pakistan, on the other hand, has been mired for two decades in economic, political and security crises. One institution there reigns supreme: a powerful army that dominates decision-making and has very significant conventional and nuclear military capability. Although beleaguered, Pakistan, with its own ambitions to remain a regional power, is unwilling to back down against India and on issues such as Kashmir that are central to its national identity. (...)
Even if the two sides back off and the current hostilities fizzle, India seems determined to pursue a more absolutist endgame of long-term pressure aimed at changing Pakistani political calculations on India and inflicting irreparable damage to Pakistan’s main power center, its army. Since the Kashmir attack last month, prominent Indian politicians and analysts have taken a more maximalist position, arguing that Pakistan is a failed rogue state and that India must actively seek its destruction.
Pakistan, aware of this shift, has abandoned hope of normalized relations with India and appears to be girding for a prolonged confrontation. Ominously, the confrontation is threatening crucial guardrails that prevented conflicts from spiraling. India last month suspended a 1960 treaty on the sharing of rivers, in particular the Indus waters, threatening one of Pakistan’s most important water supplies. Pakistan previously warned that such a suspension would be considered an “act of war” and has threatened to abandon a 1972 agreement that established the border in a divided Kashmir.
All of this is taking place as the United States has stepped back from being South Asia’s crisis manager. Washington once served as an intermediary, trusted by both sides and able to pull India and Pakistan back from the brink.
by Asfandyar Mir, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Chaudary/Associated Press
[ed. Update: US has supposedly helped broker a cease-fire (for the time being). Despite all the congratulatory back-slapping, this conflict has been going on for decades. Don't get too excited (and what are the terms?).]
A Soviet-Era Spacecraft Built to Land on Venus is Falling to Earth Instead
Kosmos 482, a Soviet-era spacecraft shrouded in Cold War secrecy, will reenter the Earth's atmosphere in the next few days after misfiring on a journey to Venus more than 50 years ago.
On average, a piece of space junk the size of Kosmos 482, with a mass of about a half-ton, falls into the atmosphere about once per week. What's different this time is that Kosmos 482 was designed to land on Venus, with a titanium heat shield built to withstand scorching temperatures, and structures engineered to survive atmospheric pressures nearly 100 times higher than Earth's.
So, there's a good chance the spacecraft will survive the extreme forces it encounters during its plunge through the atmosphere. Typically, space debris breaks apart and burns up during reentry, with only a small fraction of material reaching the Earth's surface. The European Space Agency, one of several institutions that track space debris, says Kosmos 482 is "highly likely" to reach Earth's surface in one piece.
As of Thursday, expert predictions centered on a likely reentry of Kosmos 482 early Saturday. But reentry forecasts have large margins of error. Small variations in the density of the upper atmosphere driven by solar activity could bring down the spacecraft sooner or later than expected. (...)
If you go through most of your days without worrying about space junk falling on you, there's little reason for serious alarm now. The Aerospace Corporation says any one individual on Earth is "far likelier" to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482. The US government's safety threshold for uncontrolled reentries requires the risk of a serious injury or death on the ground to be less than 1 in 10,000. The Aerospace Corporation projects the risk of at least one injury or fatality from Kosmos 482 to be 0.4 in 10,000 if the descent craft reaches the surface intact.
If you find yourself along one of the lines on this map, perhaps it's worth keeping track of Kosmos 482 over the next couple of days—out of curiosity more than worry. Chances are the spacecraft will fall into the ocean or over an unpopulated area.
But what happens in the unlikely event that Kosmos 482 winds up in your yard? "If Kosmos defies the odds and does land in your yard, please don’t touch it!" the Aerospace Corporation said. "It could potentially be hazardous, and it is best to notify your local authorities.
[ed, Don't look up.]
On average, a piece of space junk the size of Kosmos 482, with a mass of about a half-ton, falls into the atmosphere about once per week. What's different this time is that Kosmos 482 was designed to land on Venus, with a titanium heat shield built to withstand scorching temperatures, and structures engineered to survive atmospheric pressures nearly 100 times higher than Earth's.
So, there's a good chance the spacecraft will survive the extreme forces it encounters during its plunge through the atmosphere. Typically, space debris breaks apart and burns up during reentry, with only a small fraction of material reaching the Earth's surface. The European Space Agency, one of several institutions that track space debris, says Kosmos 482 is "highly likely" to reach Earth's surface in one piece.
As of Thursday, expert predictions centered on a likely reentry of Kosmos 482 early Saturday. But reentry forecasts have large margins of error. Small variations in the density of the upper atmosphere driven by solar activity could bring down the spacecraft sooner or later than expected. (...)
If you go through most of your days without worrying about space junk falling on you, there's little reason for serious alarm now. The Aerospace Corporation says any one individual on Earth is "far likelier" to be struck by lightning than to be injured by Kosmos 482. The US government's safety threshold for uncontrolled reentries requires the risk of a serious injury or death on the ground to be less than 1 in 10,000. The Aerospace Corporation projects the risk of at least one injury or fatality from Kosmos 482 to be 0.4 in 10,000 if the descent craft reaches the surface intact.
If you find yourself along one of the lines on this map, perhaps it's worth keeping track of Kosmos 482 over the next couple of days—out of curiosity more than worry. Chances are the spacecraft will fall into the ocean or over an unpopulated area.
But what happens in the unlikely event that Kosmos 482 winds up in your yard? "If Kosmos defies the odds and does land in your yard, please don’t touch it!" the Aerospace Corporation said. "It could potentially be hazardous, and it is best to notify your local authorities.
by Stephan Clark, Ars Technica | Read more:
Image: Aerospace Corporation[ed, Don't look up.]
Wall Street Tells Google to Break Itself Up
Today’s piece is brief, but notable. This morning, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, Eddy Cue, testified in the Google remedy antitrust case. And he made two observations about the consequences of the case, which led Google’s stock to crater 7.5%, or $150 billion in value. Here’s the Google stock chart.
You can see the timing of when Cue went on the stand, but what’s interesting is that the stock drifted down for another two hours, which means that analysts were taking time to internalize what he had said and growing more pessimistic as the full ramifications of his comments sunk in.
So what did Cue say? Well, first, he said Apple is considering a revamp of the search experience on its iPhone. Right now, Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the search default, which is a key to the search company’s monopoly and the heart of the antitrust case. It’s essentially a shared search rent split between Google and Apple. In 2020 when the case was first filed, Apple considered creating its own search engine, fearing the loss of that revenue stream and looking for ways to replace it. Now it seems like something along that strategy is likely. Cue says that Apple might revamp its Safari browser to incorporate AI-powered search engines, which is a polite way of saying the company knows the game is soon up on selling the lucrative default position in Safari to Google.
The second thing he said is that Google search volume declined last month on the iPhone for the first time ever, presumably because people are beginning to use generative AI tools instead of ordinary search. This change is also a consequence of the antitrust case. Apple has already integrated OpenAI into its Apple Intelligence feature set; it did not choose Google, and one likely factor was the antitrust risk. Perplexity testified in the Google antitrust case, arguing that Google is blocking its distribution. Immediately after, it cut a deal with Motorola for distribution.
In other words, Google’s search monopoly may be starting to crack, which will put significant pressure on the company and force its cash cow ad business to be disciplined by competition. There are parts of Google that do compete, like its cloud business and office suite, but it has a money printing machine that might get taken away.
Wall Street seemed pretty stunned, not just by this legal development, but also Apple’s brutal loss in its unfair competition case against Epic Games, which will also hit the phone giant. I watched a half an hour long CNBC panel talk about Google and Apple and their antitrust problems. Panelists debated whether Google’s monopoly is cooked, how badly Apple’s services revenues are going to be hit, and possible strategies going forward. And that’s without evening mentioning yet another legal development yesterday, which is that the Antitrust Division asked, in a totally different antitrust case that Google lost, to split apart the company’s advertising software division.
There are broader implications here. Most institutional investors have piled into seven big stocks - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla - such that the name the “Magnificent 7” is now shorthand among investors for this basket. But now that whole world might be ending, and Google and Apple will have to, as a panelist put it, “reinvent itself.” A different commentator went further. "Maybe the best thing ultimately is that Alphabet is split up,” he said. “Maybe that's the best outcome for you as a shareholder."
One of the very first pieces I wrote for BIG, six years ago, was titled Break-ups and stock prices, and in it, I described why investors do well during break-ups.
What about Firefox developer Mozilla? It has its own worries. The last thing Mozilla wants is for Google to be fully spanked by the Dept of Justice. What's that you say? Isn't Firefox Chrome's arch-enemy? Please. Stop with the fanboi nonsense.
As well as demanding a Chrome sell-off, American prosecutors also hope to ban Google from paying other browser makers – including Moz – to be the default for web search. Mozilla can't survive without the cash it gets from Google search.
Don't believe me? Would you believe Mark Surman, President of Mozilla? In a blog post, giving Mozilla's response to DoJ's demands on Google, Surman said, "The big unintended consequence here is the handing of power from one dominant player to another. So, from Google Search to Microsoft, or Bing for example – while shutting out the smaller, independent challengers that actually drive browser innovation and offer web users privacy and choice.”
Without this money, Mozilla feels it couldn't develop and maintain Gecko, Firefox's web browser engine. That, in turn, means, Surman claimed, "it's game over for an open, independent web. Look, Microsoft — a $3 trillion company — already gave up its browser engine in 2019, and Opera gave up theirs in 2013. If Mozilla is forced out, Google's Chromium becomes the only cross-platform browser engine left."
You can see the timing of when Cue went on the stand, but what’s interesting is that the stock drifted down for another two hours, which means that analysts were taking time to internalize what he had said and growing more pessimistic as the full ramifications of his comments sunk in.
So what did Cue say? Well, first, he said Apple is considering a revamp of the search experience on its iPhone. Right now, Google pays Apple more than $20 billion a year to be the search default, which is a key to the search company’s monopoly and the heart of the antitrust case. It’s essentially a shared search rent split between Google and Apple. In 2020 when the case was first filed, Apple considered creating its own search engine, fearing the loss of that revenue stream and looking for ways to replace it. Now it seems like something along that strategy is likely. Cue says that Apple might revamp its Safari browser to incorporate AI-powered search engines, which is a polite way of saying the company knows the game is soon up on selling the lucrative default position in Safari to Google.
The second thing he said is that Google search volume declined last month on the iPhone for the first time ever, presumably because people are beginning to use generative AI tools instead of ordinary search. This change is also a consequence of the antitrust case. Apple has already integrated OpenAI into its Apple Intelligence feature set; it did not choose Google, and one likely factor was the antitrust risk. Perplexity testified in the Google antitrust case, arguing that Google is blocking its distribution. Immediately after, it cut a deal with Motorola for distribution.
In other words, Google’s search monopoly may be starting to crack, which will put significant pressure on the company and force its cash cow ad business to be disciplined by competition. There are parts of Google that do compete, like its cloud business and office suite, but it has a money printing machine that might get taken away.
Wall Street seemed pretty stunned, not just by this legal development, but also Apple’s brutal loss in its unfair competition case against Epic Games, which will also hit the phone giant. I watched a half an hour long CNBC panel talk about Google and Apple and their antitrust problems. Panelists debated whether Google’s monopoly is cooked, how badly Apple’s services revenues are going to be hit, and possible strategies going forward. And that’s without evening mentioning yet another legal development yesterday, which is that the Antitrust Division asked, in a totally different antitrust case that Google lost, to split apart the company’s advertising software division.
There are broader implications here. Most institutional investors have piled into seven big stocks - Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla - such that the name the “Magnificent 7” is now shorthand among investors for this basket. But now that whole world might be ending, and Google and Apple will have to, as a panelist put it, “reinvent itself.” A different commentator went further. "Maybe the best thing ultimately is that Alphabet is split up,” he said. “Maybe that's the best outcome for you as a shareholder."
One of the very first pieces I wrote for BIG, six years ago, was titled Break-ups and stock prices, and in it, I described why investors do well during break-ups.
The granddaddy of all monopolies and break-ups is Standard Oil, John D. Rockefeller’s oil monopoly at the turn of the century that structured the most important business of the era. In 1911, the Supreme Court broke his company into 34 components, many of which went on to be some of the most powerful companies in the world, such as Exxon, Mobil Pennzoil, Conoco, Chevron, and so forth. Shareholders did fantastically well in the break-up, with Rockefeller quintupling his wealth.As with Standard Oil, Google’s model is to leverage its market power across its various lines of business, to self-preference its own properties. There’s a lot of upside here in terms of retaining monopoly profits, but there is also a downside, which is that those lines of business, were they independent, would be more innovative and engage in profitable partnerships with firms outside the Google empire. As antitrust reduces the upside for collusion among Google subsidies, the cost of monopoly goes up. On the flip side, if YouTube, Search, Gmail, Cloud, Play, and Chrome became separate businesses, they’d be among the biggest companies in the world, and likely far more profitable than they are jammed together.
Why did Standard Oil’s component parts do so well? And was the break-up responsible for higher stock prices? The answer is that the older monopolistic business structure was inefficient, and breaking up the company helped unleash technological innovation in the industry by enabling the use of a relatively unimportant part of Standard’s portfolio: gasoline.
In 1909, a Standard-employed chemist named William Burton invented “thermal cracking,” which was a way to vastly improve the process of turning oil into gasoline. The Indiana branch applied to headquarters to put $1 million into developing the process, but HQ said no. The company primarily sold kerosene, and while cars were increasing demand for gasoline - what was then seen as a relatively useless byproduct of oil refining - such an investment was simply too risky to what had become a lazy, slothful monopoly. After the break-up, Standard Oil of Indiana simply went ahead and began using thermal cracking, and eventually the whole industry was licensing patents from the company. While stockholders did fantastically well, Indiana shareholders did even better. The era of cheap gas came, or at least was accelerated dramatically, by the break-up.
by Matt Stollar, BIG | Read more:
Image: NASDAQ
[ed. Interesting times. See also: If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next? (The Register):]***
As well as demanding a Chrome sell-off, American prosecutors also hope to ban Google from paying other browser makers – including Moz – to be the default for web search. Mozilla can't survive without the cash it gets from Google search.
Don't believe me? Would you believe Mark Surman, President of Mozilla? In a blog post, giving Mozilla's response to DoJ's demands on Google, Surman said, "The big unintended consequence here is the handing of power from one dominant player to another. So, from Google Search to Microsoft, or Bing for example – while shutting out the smaller, independent challengers that actually drive browser innovation and offer web users privacy and choice.”
Without this money, Mozilla feels it couldn't develop and maintain Gecko, Firefox's web browser engine. That, in turn, means, Surman claimed, "it's game over for an open, independent web. Look, Microsoft — a $3 trillion company — already gave up its browser engine in 2019, and Opera gave up theirs in 2013. If Mozilla is forced out, Google's Chromium becomes the only cross-platform browser engine left."
Thursday, May 8, 2025
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