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Trump’s Katrina Is Coming - The American Prospect
https://prospect.org/2025/12/05/trumps-katrina-is-coming-fema/

The Communication Complexity of Combinatorial Auctions with Additional Succinct Bidders
Frederick V. Qiu, S. Matthew Weinberg, Qianfan Zhang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06585 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.06585 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.06585
arXiv:2512.06585v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the communication complexity of welfare maximization in combinatorial auctions with bidders from either a standard valuation class (which require exponential communication to explicitly state, such as subadditive or XOS), or arbitrary succinct valuations (which can be fully described in polynomial communication, such as single-minded). Although succinct valuations can be efficiently communicated, we show that additional succinct bidders have a nontrivial impact on communication complexity of classical combinatorial auctions. Specifically, let $n$ be the number of subadditive/XOS bidders. We show that for SA $\cup$ SC (the union of subadditive and succinct valuations): (1) There is a polynomial communication $3$-approximation algorithm; (2) As $n \to \infty$, there is a matching $3$-hardness of approximation, which (a) is larger than the optimal approximation ratio of $2$ for SA, and (b) holds even for SA $\cup$ SM (the union of subadditive and single-minded valuations); and (3) For all $n \geq 3$, there is a constant separation between the optimal approximation ratios for SA $\cup$ SM and SA (and therefore between SA $\cup$ SC and SA as well). Similarly, we show that for XOS $\cup$ SC: (1) There is a polynomial communication $2$-approximation algorithm; (2) As $n \to \infty$, there is a matching $2$-hardness of approximation, which (a) is larger than the optimal approximation ratio of $e/(e-1)$ for XOS, and (b) holds even for XOS $\cup$ SM; and (3) For all $n \geq 2$, there is a constant separation between the optimal approximation ratios for XOS $\cup$ SM and XOS (and therefore between XOS $\cup$ SC and XOS as well).
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'Largest economic development in history': $20 billion dollar data center coming to Southaven (Hannah Kozlowski/Action News 5)
https://www.actionnews5.com/2026/01/08/largest-economic-development-history-20-billion-dollar-data-center-coming-southaven/
http://www.memeorandum.com/260108/p106#a260108p106

Mick Shots: Talk about coming out of nowhere https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mick-shots-talk-about-coming-out-of-nowhere

Liam Coen is 'totally fine' with Jaguars not getting respect: 'That's the beauty of it. It ain't coming.' https://www.nfl.com/news/liam-coen-is-totally-fine-with-jaguars-not-getting-respect-that-s-t…

Please sign this petition
I'm a chemist. As a grad student I was a TA and a tutor. I taught college chemistry classes.
That's teaching a subject, not communicating about a technical issue (yes, these really are different skills)
And climate change advocacy has highlighted how difficult communicating is.
I wish this proposal had been enacted when I was a student.
Please sign.

A Theoretically-Grounded Codebook for Digital Semantic Communications
Lingyi Wang, Rashed Shelim, Walid Saad, Naren Ramakrishnan
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07108 https://…

A Theoretically-Grounded Codebook for Digital Semantic Communications
The use of a learnable codebook provides an efficient way for semantic communications to map vector-based high-dimensional semantic features onto discrete symbol representations required in digital communication systems. In this paper, the problem of codebook-enabled quantization mapping for digital semantic communications is studied from the perspective of information theory. Particularly, a novel theoretically-grounded codebook design is proposed for jointly optimizing quantization efficiency…

Governmental communism, like theocratic communism, is repugnant to the worker.
---- - Peter Kropotkin - ----

Magic and communication complexity
Uma Girish, Alex May, Natalie Parham, Henry Yuen
https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.07246 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2510.07246

Magic and communication complexity
We establish novel connections between magic in quantum circuits and communication complexity. In particular, we show that functions computable with low magic have low communication cost. Our first result shows that the $\mathsf{D}\|$ (deterministic simultaneous message passing) cost of a Boolean function $f$ is at most the number of single-qubit magic gates in a quantum circuit computing $f$ with any quantum advice state. If we allow mid-circuit measurements and adaptive circuits, we ob…

Mick Shots: Talk about coming out of nowhere https://www.dallascowboys.com/news/mick-shots-talk-about-coming-out-of-nowhere