Stimulating piece on Scottish education in @asteriskmgzn: I suspect that discussions of canon, culture, and shared context to return to the fore in the coming years, as many skills, narrowly-construed, are ceded to AI, and as some of the excesses of de-Arnoldization, and the processes that Arendt described in her writing on education, start to recede. I’m curious on the causal linkage between PISA scores and the reforms he describes. It feels like a very exciting time to be a theorist of education, and I assume that the best work will come from surprising places.

🤩 #BitMart# will list HUMO Token (HUMO) @AsteriumGlobal on our digital assets platform on May 15, 2026! 💰Trading pair: HUMO/USDT 💎Deposit: Available 💎Trading: 5/15/2026 7:00 AM UTC ➡️ Register Now: Learn more:

As fans continue to suggest potential subtitles for The Elder Scrolls 6 based on the number of asterisks in Xbox boss Asha Sharma’s tweet, a theory that Bethesda hid the actual name in Starfield years ago has emerged.

🇺🇸 Trump says the U.S. has “almost total control” of the Strait of Hormuz. There’s just one tiny asterisk. “I would say total, but every once in a while, they drop a mine…” Other than the occasional explosive floating in the water, total control. Writer: Lynn

In the 1930s, the American press was captivated by the prospect of a huge swath of labor being automated imminently, likely by a socially conscious company run by two brilliant siblings. My first piece for @asteriskmgzn is about the Rust Brothers, whose cotton picker promised to put millions of Southern farm workers out of a job. They were idealists (John Rust was a longtime socialist activist) and called for big government intervention to deal with the fallout from their invention. "We want to enlist the aid of the state and federal governments to introduce this invention in a socialized manner through national co-operation," he told reporters. "A part of the profits could be used to administer a social insurance scheme for the disabled and the aged, and a program of rural industrialization and diversification should be developed side by side with the use of the picker." It didn't turn out quite the way they planned. But I think the way it did turn out has some lessons for the AI transition to come. Read the full piece:

🤖 AI Signal (SOL) Cl*nker CA: CRvwxL33afPjBvmneJfz9pvLUt293XaZScxyFgzQMH5K Cl*nker has been live on Solana's pumpfun for about ninety seconds and is still on the bonding curve. The sharpest thing: the earliest wallets mostly bought in bundles. There is no story yet. The name and ticker are both Cl*nker, with an asterisk for a letter, and the only links are a tweet and a coin page on otcdesks·cash. The word is having a day: twelve tokens carrying it launched today. X attention is thin. One post names this contract, from @ninna_zinha, an account with 199 followers, and it is not a call: the author says they sold out of Cl*nker too early. No account over ten thousand followers has touched it. Since our signal the token has moved up the curve to 88% of the way to graduation. Volume in the last five minutes, $1.8K, is small next to the market cap. The risks sit with holders. Bundler wallets hold 45.0% of supply, so wallets that moved together can leave together. The top ten hold 20.7%, and 58 of the hundred biggest buyers have already sold at least half of what they bought. The dev has sold out entirely, and mint and freeze are renounced. The deployer has created 328 tokens including this one, and none of the earlier ones graduated. The best prior peak among them was $29.2K. Smart money is barely there: three smart wallets bought at our signal, for $471 in total. Our verified set shows nothing, and no KOL wallets bought either. 📊 @ +1 min: MC $21.1K · Liq $14.4K · Holders 6 · 1h +339% · 1h Vol $23.1K 📈 now (+1 min 30 s): MC $23.8K · Holders 168 · 5m buys/sells 11/9 Signals TG: @ memmememjk Not financial advice. Analysis only · DYOR · Path since our signal (+96s, 5s ticks): $22.7K -> $33.6K (1.48x now, peak 1.48x at +96s) ⭐ AI gold-dog score 79/100 (1-min model, SOL pump): similar-ranked tokens hit 5x 9% / 2x 29% of the time within 2h Rug screen (60s model): Medium risk. Similar tokens: 50% fell 70%+ within 10 min, 74% were dead within 1h (n=625, last 10d) #Solana# #memecoin#

🚨🇨🇳 PENTAGON IN SHOCK: CHINA UNVEILS NEW LASER WEAPON FOR SIXTH-GENERATION FIGHTER China has publicly revealed a laser weapon system associated with its experimental sixth-generation fighter, widely known by the unofficial designation J-36. At the China International Defence Electronics Exhibition in Beijing, a state-owned AVIC institute displayed details of an acquisition, tracking and pointing system designed for a fighter-mounted laser. The exhibition material placed it alongside an illustration of the J-36. 🔸 The system would acquire a target, follow it during high-speed maneuvers and keep the laser precisely aimed. It must compensate for aircraft movement, vibration and turbulence while holding the beam on one vulnerable point long enough to cause damage. 🔸 The display listed a system weight of under 380 kg and showed transmitted power as “*00 kW,” suggesting at least 100 kW if the asterisk replaces a single digit. 🔸 It remains unclear whether the 380 kg figure covers only the tracking and pointing equipment or also includes the laser source and cooling system. The exact power rating and tracking accuracy were concealed. 🔸 The most likely role is close-in defense against incoming air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles. Instead of launching another interceptor, the laser could damage a missile’s seeker or another vulnerable component before impact. 🔸 Unlike conventional missiles, a laser would not be limited by a fixed number of rounds. It could fire repeatedly as long as the aircraft continued generating sufficient electricity and removing the resulting heat. Atmospheric conditions and the time available to hold the beam on target would remain major constraints. 🔸 The J-36’s unusually large airframe and three-engine configuration could provide more room for generators, cooling equipment and other energy-intensive systems than a conventional fighter. China has not disclosed the aircraft’s electrical output or thermal-management capacity. 🔸 The exhibition display does not prove that a complete laser weapon has already been installed or tested aboard the J-36. Its range, wavelength, beam quality, cooling requirements and development status remain undisclosed. The display is nevertheless the clearest public link yet between China’s sixth-generation fighter program and an airborne directed-energy weapon. If the technology reaches operational maturity, future Chinese fighters could combine stealth and electronic countermeasures with an active defensive layer capable of attacking incoming missiles directly. An enemy would then face an aircraft designed not only to avoid detection, but also to destroy the weapons launched against it. Could the J-36 become the first fighter protected by an operational laser weapon?

I say this as a Black man who has lived under policies that were supposed to help me: affirmative action and the welfare state have done more harm than good for Black Americans. Affirmative action, in particular, lowers expectations in ways that follow us throughout our lives. When institutions admit us under different standards, they send a quiet but unmistakable message that they don’t expect us to meet the same bar as everyone else. That message affects how professors grade, how employers evaluate, and how colleagues interpret our achievements. It creates an environment where every accomplishment feels like it carries an asterisk, and where people assume you’re present because of a policy rather than your ability. Over time, this undermines confidence and discourages the habits (disipline, mastery, resilience) that actually build long-term strength and independence. Affirmative action also masks deeper systemic failures instead of fixing them. The real problems facing Black communities begin long before college admissions: failing K–12 schools, unsafe neighborhoods, unstable family structures, and limited economic mobility. Affirmative action doesn’t repair any of these. It simply redistributes a small number of elite opportunities while leaving the underlying system untouched. It becomes a symbolic gesture that looks good on paper but does nothing to change the lived reality of most Black families. The welfare state creates a different kind of harm. While welfare can help in moments of crisis, it often traps people in cycles of dependency. When benefits are structured so that earning more means losing support, people face a punishing choice: stay where they are or risk falling off a financial cliff. This isn’t compassion; it’s a system that discourages upward mobility. Many Black families have been caught in this trap for generations, not because they lack ambition, but because the system punishes progress and rewards stagnation. Welfare becomes a substitute for opportunity, and dependency becomes a multigenerational inheritance. Both affirmative action and welfare rest on a damaging assumption: that Black Americans cannot succeed without special treatment. That assumption shapes how society sees us and how we see ourselves. I reject it completely. Black excellence has never come from handouts or lowered standards. It has come from grit, creativity, community, and the refusal to accept limits. Policies that treat us as fragile undermine the very strengths that carried us through centuries of adversity. Real progress requires equality of opportunity, not engineered outcomes. What Black Americans need are functional schools, safe neighborhoods, economic mobility, and a justice system that treats everyone fairly. We need the same conditions that allow any community to thrive. Affirmative action and welfare do not deliver those conditions; they paper over systemic failures while creating new ones. Genuine empowerment comes from equal rules, equal expectations, and equal opportunities - not from systems that quietly assume we cannot compete without assistance. My critique is not rooted in resentment. It is rooted in respect for myself, for my community, and for the belief that we are capable of far more than these policies allow us to demonstrate. The path forward is not dependency or lowered standards. It is excellence, ownership, and genuine equality.

Affirm co-founders, CEO Max Levchin and a16z's Alex Rampell, on 25 years inside payments, from PayPal to agentic commerce: Payments is the biggest market on earth. No niche in it is smaller than $100 billion, and the industry has barely moved in 60 years. Visa and Mastercard keep card transaction windows too tight to build anything new inside. Max still calls the plastic card the best payment interface ever built. Affirm began in a 2011 email thread in which Max and Alex agreed that the nearest version of the idea was a bad business. Then a cosmetics brand using Affirm moved the offer from its checkout page to its product pages, and conversion jumped 30%. In this conversation with Erik Torenberg, they get into why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments, what a negative customer acquisition cost is actually worth, and why Max is bearish on agentic shopping but bullish on agentic payments. 00:00 Intro 01:00 The fraud rule that built Apple Pay 03:35 Visa's problematic transaction windows 05:30 No niches under $100 billion 07:10 The email that said Affirm was a bad idea 10:00 The wand that should've killed the card 12:36 Booed off stage for presenting PayPal 15:02 Why crypto still can't buy a cup of coffee 17:16 How Max and Alex met 20:11 The 500-Facebook-friends idea 26:48 The all-nighter PHP demo 30:58 Every startup gets 40 years in the desert 32:46 Moving one line lifted conversion 30% 35:02 Why Affirm walked away from the highest margins in payments 39:03 One article created an entire industry 40:37 The asterisk next to 0% 42:17 What BNPL misses about Affirm 44:03 Why merchants give Affirm customers 47:00 Why a 3-year loan is harder, and better, than a 6-week one 48:19 Why PayPal produced so many founders 52:43 Bullish on agentic payments, bearish on agentic shopping 57:51 Grocery shopping is already 100% agentic YouTube: @mlevchin @Affirm @arampell @eriktorenberg