Stock market hits all-time high as Dow closes above 50,000
The U.S. stock market ended a bumpy week with a bang,
as the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed above 50,000 for the first time.
The Dow crossed the threshold
— an important psychological barrier
— earlier Friday before retreating
and then surging again to close at 50,115.67.
That was a jump of 2.47 percent, more than 1,200 points for the day.
The rally extended to the S&P 500 and the …
IBM agrees to acquire data streaming software maker Confluent for ~$11B in cash, above its ~$8B market value as of its December 5 close, paying $31 per share (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears…
Approximately 35(ish) years ago Green Day played a show above an abortion clinic on Milwaukee after the “Fireman’s Picnic” in Tichigan, Wisconsin got canceled because someone stabbed an inflatable Hamm’s (Beer) Bear.
Anyway, I hope they tell MAGA to fuck right off today.
It's December, when it used to be winter here at 52 degrees North. We have four straight days of 13°C (55F) ahead. 24-hour average temperature above normal for April.
Frozen fog
...spontaneously forming all around us on our evening walk, as if by magic.
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #BlackAndWhite
Oh, almost forgot #silentsunday!
My last hike led me to this summit which is usually very well visited.
But given the weekday & weather, I was totally alone while I was up there. Noone around. No human made sound. Just me and nature. It felt so much like real freedom.
#hiking
Moody Urbanity - Urbana Composita 🌆
情绪化城市 - 建构城市 🌆
📷 Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 533/16
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
Beautiful night in the woods. It didn't rain at all and we woke up to an awesome sunrise instead of the pouring rain we usually get. I'm not used to packing up my shelter and having it be dry.
Should be a good day of training.
#SearchAndRescue #SoOthersMayLive
Scott Wiener is trying to change the slogan from "Abolish ICE" to "Abolish and replace ICE."
I guess he figures there still needs to be *some* agency that deports international students who criticize Israel, a Trump regime priority he's bolstered in California by co-authoring #AB715.
"Bitcoin is crashing hard, reaching historic lows of well below the $70,000 mark. At the time of writing, the token is hovering just above $63,000, levels we haven’t seen since October 2024."
"According to Coindesk, the average cost to mine one Bitcoin is currently around $87,000 — far higher than its current going rate, making it an extremely unprofitable proposition."
🥳🥳🥳
Almost dropped my phone out the bus window taking pictures of the view I've seen almost every day for 30 years.
#SanFrancisco
"The reasons for Starmer’s exceptional servility are well understood. He has pinned disproportionate hopes for the revival of Britain’s floundering economy on trade with the US, an activity which is now conducted purely at Trump’s caprice.
"Above all, his “coalition of the willing” striving to prolong the Ukraine war depends on US military, intelligence and logistical support for the foreseeable future."
I stayed at Ashworth by the Sea when I visited Hampton Beach a few weeks ago because I saw the sign over and over when I was a kid and they were open for the off season
#photo #photography #buildings
Yes, I will be there -The Muni Now, Muni Forever folks have an excellent proposal that improves on the Mayor's proposal, lowering costs for all but the very wealthiest and the largest, most expensive office buildings compared to what the Mayor wants to do. AND it raises more money. Why won't #MayorLurie adopt it?
Sources: IBM is in advanced talks to buy data streaming software maker Confluent for ~$11B, above its market value of ~$8B as of December 5 close (Lauren Thomas/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/business/deals/ibm-nears-roughly-11-billion-de…
It is not #metalmonday but I can't really wait.
Orbit Culture - Death Above Life
https://youtu.be/4Z5KP0qRS3M?si=cDcrI4uG5LeBdxLP
You probably like this:
…
Scientists just found a game-changing way to check on dolphin health without stressing them out.
Researchers at Flinders University are using drones with thermal cameras to measure dolphin body temperature and breathing rates from above. No more invasive capture methods or stressful probes—just non-invasive monitoring that keeps dolphins safe while giving conservationists the data they need.
#silentSunday
Condor. August 2018
A fogbow or white rainbow. Taken at Venice beach Venice Fl by Sharky's,
#beach #florida #rainbow
Someone please tell me whomever put the wreaths up know what they were doing 😞
Yes, I will be there -The Muni Now, Muni Forever folks have an excellent proposal that improves on the Mayor's proposal, lowering costs for all but the very wealthiest and the largest, most expensive office buildings compared to what the Mayor wants to do. AND it raises more money. Why won't #MayorLurie adopt it?
I appreciate the boosts on the thread above, which I take as support.
The defeatist replies make me despair a bit. Just to address some greatest hits en masse:
1. “Kick them out yourselves” − JFC, what the hell do you think we are trying to do, constantly, day after day, the amount of action and engagement against the federal invasion where I live is like nothing I’ve seen in my lifetime. WE ARE ASKING FOR HELP. Please do not be an ass about it.
More of the edging, most of the handles, many of the holes I asked for are there so cables can get where they need to. They've been painting a bit and varnishing a bit and the coving is prepared for the gap above the windows there.
One more day, they say. One more day. I'll have to make a list of everything still to be done over the weekend.
Robust forecast aggregation via additional queries
Rafael Frongillo, Mary Monroe, Eric Neyman, Bo Waggoner
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.05271 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.05271 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.05271
arXiv:2512.05271v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: We study the problem of robust forecast aggregation: combining expert forecasts with provable accuracy guarantees compared to the best possible aggregation of the underlying information. Prior work shows strong impossibility results, e.g. that even under natural assumptions, no aggregation of the experts' individual forecasts can outperform simply following a random expert (Neyman and Roughgarden, 2022).
In this paper, we introduce a more general framework that allows the principal to elicit richer information from experts through structured queries. Our framework ensures that experts will truthfully report their underlying beliefs, and also enables us to define notions of complexity over the difficulty of asking these queries. Under a general model of independent but overlapping expert signals, we show that optimal aggregation is achievable in the worst case with each complexity measure bounded above by the number of agents $n$. We further establish tight tradeoffs between accuracy and query complexity: aggregation error decreases linearly with the number of queries, and vanishes when the "order of reasoning" and number of agents relevant to a query is $\omega(\sqrt{n})$. These results demonstrate that modest extensions to the space of expert queries dramatically strengthen the power of robust forecast aggregation. We therefore expect that our new query framework will open up a fruitful line of research in this area.
toXiv_bot_toot
Reddit reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $726M, vs. $665M est., DAUq up 19% to 121.4M, above est., forecasts Q1 revenue above est., announces a $1B share buyback (Jonathan Vanian/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/05/reddit-rddt-q4-2025.html
For a few years I had an office in the Frank Gehry-designed Stata Center at MIT. Here are some photos I took on a sunny autumn day using a film camera in 2005. This building had a lot of problems but it definitely made a statement. #architecture #FrankGehry
“Pete Hegseth, much like the president he serves, sees himself as, essentially, above the law, as unconstrained by legal procedure.”
Foreign policy analyst Matt Duss discusses the brewing conflict within the Trump administration over the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth,
including his involvement in a leaked announcement of U.S. strikes on Yemen in March
and the chain of command behind U.S. strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and the eastern Pacific Ocean.
@… and how do you feel about the misinformation in the 18th December post above?
Moody Urbanity - Relations 👥
情绪化城市 - 关系 👥
📷 Minolta Hi-Matic AF
🎞️ Shanghai GP3 400 Pan
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
Pro-indy SNP supporters should vote for Scottish Greens on the list vote in May if they don't want to waste their 2nd vote and want to help keep Reform down:
"The [SNP]’s likely success in [constituency contests] would mean that, despite not being awarded a single list seat, the nationalists will have 45% or so of the seats in the chamber, well above the party’s 29% share of the list vote"
Sonnet 122 - CXXII
Thy gift, thy tables, are within my brain
Full charactered with lasting memory,
Which shall above that idle rank remain,
Beyond all date, even to eternity:
Or, at the least, so long as brain and heart
Have faculty by nature to subsist;
Till each to razed oblivion yield his part
Of thee, thy record never can be missed.
That poor retention could not so much hold,
Nor need I tallies thy dear love to score;
Ther…
How To Podcast By PodcaSTAR With Mel Sargeant
Tune into entertainers, producers, podcasters and radio stars to discover the secrets to being a cut above...
Great Australian Pods Podcast Directory: https://www.greataustralianpods.com/how-to-podcast/
The fact that so many on the Fediverse remain so uneducated isn’t surprising. It only reveals how deeply bourgeois ideology continues to shape public consciousness, molding perception to serve the interests of capital, especially US imperialism.
Just as it took decades for many to see the war on terror for what it truly was, and even longer to grasp Palestine’s struggle against imperialism and settler colonialism, the same pattern will repeat.
I wholeheartedly reject imperialis…
I think the root of the “AI” evil is when AI researchers in the 1960s recognized that they outrageously underestimated the complexity of the human mind.
They became humiliated by their promises that AGI was just a few years away—and then went full goblin mode that’s lasting to this day.
Some of the OG researchers took it quite badly that they stalled and weren’t in the limelight anymore.
‣ Marvin Minsky (co-founder of MIT AI lab and arguably the most important early AI bro) went on to visit Epstein’s island multiple times.
‣ Karl Steinbuch, who came up with the German term for computer science ("Informatik")—who also was a literal Nazi (and likely war criminal) in World War II—later wrote articles in ultra-right magazines about things like “equal rights rob women of their children”.
‣ John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp, co-authored document that coined the term “Artificial Intelligence”) was a staunch Republican who years later claimed (in a serious article) that “thermostats have beliefs”.
[one moment, I am receiving more information]
‣ There’s a second Epstein Island AI pioneer? Who also was Chief Learning Officer at… Trump University? That would be Roger Schank (founded one of the first AI companies in the 1980s AI boom, it even had an IPO. Of course the 1980s AI bubble burst).
Obviously all of the above received all the awards in computer science and are very revered people.
Affirm reports Q2 revenue up 30% YoY to $1.12B, vs. $1.06B est., GMV up 36% to $13.8B, and forecasts Q3 revenue slightly above est.; AFRM drops 6% after hours (Reinhardt Krause/Investor's Business Daily)
https://www.investors.com/news/technology/affir…
Just updated our server's downtimes for 2025 and for all-time. Although datasci.social had a downtime of over 10 hours in 2025, our all-time uptime is still way above 99.9%. 🤓
https://community.datasci.social/docs/server/
We've come to Hadestown, and the funniest thing so far is hearing EVERYONE coming in saying "Good grief, it's a long way down!" Or words to that effect. I think it's good to be looking down on hell from above. #theatre #WestEnd
Finally, a more modest increase in atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa: based on daily values, the December average was 427.5 ppm, that's 2.1 ppm more than last year
#emissions #co2 #climatechange…
The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height
but just above the ground. It seems more designed to make people stumble
than to be walked upon.
-- Franz Kafka
For folks forking IdentityServer. It's not "just code". There are decades of understanding specs, working with security teams around the world, ongoing support, and doing all those things continually.
When it comes to security, staying behind, or even worse, standing still, is the worst option.
From a maintainers perspective, think of doing all of the above for FREE to save your employer money for the "atta boys". In the meantime wasting the most precious …
"In the past, whenever there was a financial crisis or a major political conflict, investors would pile into dollar assets, driving the dollar up – as happened during the 2008 financial crisis. That hasn’t happened under Trump; the dollar index has fallen 10% against other currencies in 2025. ...
"The dollar, as the world’s major currency for central bank reserves and in transactions in international trade and finance, has been in gradual decline for decades."
Activists are capturing and burning methane at an abandoned Colorado coal mine
as a “macro solution” for the climate
The methane destruction project above Paonia could be a global model for reducing emissions of a potent greenhouse gas
https://coloradosun.com/2025/12/03/pao
Years ago I used to work on the fifth floor of Olin Library for Library Systems and the arXiv preprint server: it's all different inside now but here it is freshly fallen snow
#photo #photography #library
I agree with the storyteller: the experience of having a slave is abhorrent, simulated or not, and this story is a window into something •deep• about the present moment. Even without having slaves, we are all in danger of having a •slaver mindset•. It’s a disease that’s running rampant now in billionaire-shaped techno-utopian circles.
I wrote this thread on the topic earlier:
https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/113295613785073188
…and even having written that, it’s still shocking — not surprising, exactly, but shocking — to hear those thoughts expressed so baldly by the colleague in the story above.
Un Momento II 🕰️
一瞬 II 🕰️
📷 Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 533/16
🎞️ Lucky SHD 400
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
#silentSunday
Migrating geese
(Embedded dad joke in alt text)
Toblinger Knoten / Torre di Toblin
(October 2024)
#SilentSunday #LandscapePhotography #Photography
We went for a walk. I saw a pelican gliding along on the lake. Wasn't fast enough to get close enough for a photo before he sailed around a corner. But took these on the way home. Just a short walk in suburbia. Canberra views really are delightful.
#LakeTuggeranong #Canberra
Found an old power bill while cleaning up. In the end of 2018 I was paying 9.05 c/kWh for the first 600 kWh and 10.94 above.
Now it's 15.1 and 17.0.
The rate of increase was very much nonlinear though: from October 2018 to October 2024 (six years) the tier 1 rate only climbed by 27%.
It went up 10.5% in 2024 and 20.7% in 2025 alone.
Foxconn reports Q4 revenue up 22% YoY to ~$82.7B, above ~$77B est., and record December revenue up 31.8% YoY to ~$27.5B, driven by AI and networking demand (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/foxconns-q4-revenue-surges-2207-yea…
Temps above freezing today means window is open.
Trans people are incredible, strong, beautiful, and absolutely bring so much love and strength to our world.
:bisexual_pride: 🏳️⚧️ :genderfluid_flag: :nonbinary_flag: :heart_trans: 🏳️🌈
I wholeheartedly, unapologetically, and forever believe that #TransRightsAreHumanRights.
Always, forever, endlessly, trans people are real, valuable, and human in every way…
The latest in our climate chaos theatre: Arctic ice melting in January!
@… on Bluesky:
SUMMER IN WINTER IN GREENLAND
Crazy Temperatures tonight up to 9C (above summer average), persisting during the day.
24 stations at low elevations out of 31 above freezing today.
Kitsissorsuit is chasing the WORLD RECORD of the highest monthly…
ICE: Finally, here comes warmer weather, soon it will be above freezing and all this crud will melt and we can drive at freeway speeds on every tiny side street like we keep trying to
MSP: *snrk*
ICE: what
MSP: nothing
ICE: WHAT
MSP: nothing
MSP: …
MSP: …*(potholes)*…
ICE: What? Why are you whispering? What did you just say???
MSP: Nothing!
ICE: <glares>
MSP: “Assholes.” We called you assholes
ICE: …OK then
MSP: hehe *snrk*
We need to stop this harmful practice. There are other ways to celebrate the new year which doesn't harm nature, environment or animals.
#NewYear #NewYear2026 #fireworks
Roblox reports Q4 bookings up 63% YoY to $2.2B vs. $2.05B est., DAUs up 69% to 144M, and forecasts FY 2026 bookings above estimates; RBLX jumps 18% after hours (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/roblox-fo
Missed the first peak of tonight's show because I was busy showing my wife from the front steps and didn't get my camera set up, lol.
Got a few nice shots from the park before it slowed down too much but got cold and didn't want to be out too late. If it picks up again I might pop outside.
In this in-depth interview Billie Jean Sweeney
— a former editor at The New York Times
— details how the paper shifted towards openly promoting anti-trans hatred,
why this was directed from the very top,
how some staff pushed back
and the immense damage done by the NYT legitimizing bigotry.
https://
Moody Urbanity - Old & New VI 🔆
情绪化城市 - 新与旧 VI 🔆
📷 Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 533/16
🎞️ Ilford HP5 Plus 400, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
Uber reports Q4 revenue up 20% YoY to $14.4B, above $14.32B est., Gross Bookings up 22% YoY to $54.1B, trips up 22% YoY to 3.8B, and a $296M profit, below est. (Connor Hart/Wall Street Journal)
https://www.wsj.com/busin…
Un Momento III 🕰️
一瞬 III 🕰️
📷 Nikon F4E
🎞️ ERA 100, expired 1993
#filmphotography #Photography #blackandwhite
Galaxy Digital reports a Q4 net loss of $482M, above $282M est., driven primarily by the crypto market crash, and says its trading volumes declined ~40% QoQ (David Pan/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20
What does money machine eat?
It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty, and,
above all, it eats creativity.
It eats quality and sh*ts quantity.
-- William S. Burroughs
https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1352864
German chipmaker Infineon reports Q1 revenue up 7% YoY €3.66B, above €3.62B est., expects to raise investments to €2.7B in 2026, and forecasts growing AI demand (Christina Kyriasoglou/Bloomberg)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/20
Alphabet says it expects 2026 capex to be in the range of $175B to $185B, above estimates of about $115.26B (Deborah Sophia/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/google-parent-alphabet-forecasts-sharp-surge-2026-capital-spen…
Arm reports Q3 revenue up 26% YoY to $1.24B, vs. $1.22B est., and license and other revenue up 25% to $505M, vs. $519.9M est.; ARM drops 7% after hours (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-cons…
MongoDB stock jumped 22% on December 2 after Q3 revenue rose 19% YoY to $628M, above $592M est., and raises full-year guidance on Atlas growth and AI demand (Samantha Subin/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/02/mongodb-stock-ai-cloud-database-mdb.html
Super Micro reports Q2 net sales up 123% to $12.7B, vs. $10.43B est., and expects Q3 net sales above estimates; SMCI jumps 5% after hours (Luke Kawa/Sherwood News)
https://sherwood.news/markets/super-micro-computer-q2-2026-earnings-ai-boom-bubble-s…
Salesforce reports Q3 revenue up 8.6% YoY to $10.26B, vs. $10.27B est., and forecasts Q4 revenue above estimates; CRM jumps 5% after hours (Jordan Novet/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/03/salesforce-crm-q3-earnings-report-2026.html
Palantir reports Q4 revenue up 70% YoY to $1.41B, vs. $1.33B est., and forecasts FY 2026 and Q1 revenue above estimates; PLTR jumps 6% after hours (Samantha Subin/CNBC)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/02/palantir-pltr-q4-2025-earnings.html
Alibaba plans to spend ~$431M in a Lunar New Year campaign starting February 6 to attract users to its Qwen AI app, above Tencent's ~$143.7M and Baidu's ~$71.8M (Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-tel
Seagate reports Q2 revenue up 22% YoY to $2.83B, vs. $2.73B est., forecasts Q3 results above estimates on strong data storage demand; STX jumps 8% after hours (Zaheer Kachwala/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/seagate-f
Texas Instruments reports Q4 revenue up 10% YoY to $4.42B, vs. $4.44B est., and forecasts Q1 revenue above estimates; TXN jumps 9% after hours (Arsheeya Bajwa/Reuters)
https://www.reuters.com/business/analog-chipmaker-tex…