My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

When Edward Teller was chair of the early AEC Reactor Safeguards Committee, he was considered extremely conservative in his safety demands. His reasoning was that even one catastrophic accident could destroy all public enthusiasm for a technology he believed was important.

Carl Quintanilla@carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 2d ago

“.. AI companies are privately gaming out scenarios for a public and political revolt after a catastrophic AI event .. most likely a cyberattack, that shuts down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water.” @axios.com www.axios.com/2026/10/09/a...

Last week I stumbled across a once-classified report from 1971 that listed the actual times for SLBM attacks and warning systems. What hooked me from the onset was that all the times are listed in *seconds*. This week for DOOMSDAY MACHINES, I try to unpack all that a bit...

The speed of war

The short times of nuclear warning and attack (1971)

doomsdaymachines.net

I have noticed in various offline circles — particularly media and political science — it is still considered rather inappropriate to acknowledge that the US President is evidently quite insane. It's not that these people don't *know* it; they clearly do. You just aren't supposed to *say* it. 🙃

Joey Politano🏳️‍🌈@josephpolitano.bsky.social · 2d ago

Again he’s really losing it with the AI stuff now

Last week I stumbled across a once-classified report from 1971 that listed the actual times for SLBM attacks and warning systems. What hooked me from the onset was that all the times are listed in *seconds*. This week for DOOMSDAY MACHINES, I try to unpack all that a bit...

The speed of war

The short times of nuclear warning and attack (1971)

doomsdaymachines.net

They wrapped up their set with an instrumental rendering one of my all-time favorite children' songs, "The Song That Doesn't End." It's got such a wonderful trickster quality to it, a clever self-referential nature, and I've tended to think of it as a metaphor for the circle of life itself.

The Song That Doesn't End

YouTube video by G boz

youtube.com

Alex Wellerstein@wellerstein.bsky.social · 7d ago

There is what looks like a Catholic big-hair heavy metal band (big hair, leather, Jesus tattoos) loudly playing a brass band instrumental rendition of The Cure's "Close to Me" under my apartment window at the moment. Vive la France?

There is what looks like a Catholic big-hair heavy metal band (big hair, leather, Jesus tattoos) loudly playing a brass band instrumental rendition of The Cure's "Close to Me" under my apartment window at the moment. Vive la France?

I find all xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment disgusting and offensive, but perhaps because I have spent so much of my life around Indian immigrants and Indian-Americans, the anti-Indian sentiment currently rising on the American right is just beyond the low expectations that I had for them.

In 2022 and 2023 I became somewhat obsessed with the warnings about surviving “radiation emergencies” that were posted around northern New Jersey. For this week’s DOOMSDAY MACHINES, I share my obsession with you, and analyze the motivations, messages, and methods of the campaign. 🐕

“Do you know what to do in a radiation emergency?”

New Jersey’s strangely-decontextualized nuclear terrorism PSAs

doomsdaymachines.net

In 2022 and 2023 I became somewhat obsessed with the warnings about surviving “radiation emergencies” that were posted around northern New Jersey. For this week’s DOOMSDAY MACHINES, I share my obsession with you, and analyze the motivations, messages, and methods of the campaign. 🐕

“Do you know what to do in a radiation emergency?”

New Jersey’s strangely-decontextualized nuclear terrorism PSAs

doomsdaymachines.net

As part of a system that was used to legally verify my identity online, a site asked me a series of "knowledge-based questions" — what is my SSN, birth date, former addresses, where I went to school, etc. — and then, this one... note that I already had to provide my DOB...

There is a special place in hell for websites that have a phone number input field that is hyper-specific about what kinds of formatting it will accept for input, but they never tell one what the formatting requirements are. Parentheses? Spaces? Dashes? Country code? Sorry, you have to guess!

The White House accord on AI that was signed by all the big tech oligarchs today misspells United States as “Unites States.”

Quite a remarkable map, table, and diagram from a 1971 report on launch-on-warning, showing the implications of Soviet submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) on detection, reaction, deliberation, and response time. All numbers are in SECONDS, which is what I find the most wild about it.

I found a few more entries in the ever-popular "babushkas buffing bombs" genre of photography... (*I recognize that not all are authentic babushkas, but the alliteration was too great for me to resist, I apologize)

Alex Wellerstein@wellerstein.bsky.social · 4w ago

I didn't manage to get a DOOMSDAY MACHINES post up last week and I was feeling guilty, so this week will be a DOUBLE-SIZED edition, with a short little meditation on the cleaning of nuclear bombs today and the more substantial writeup of a French post-apocalyptic novel later in the week.

So I find staying on top of e-mail IMPOSSIBLE. IMPOSSIBLE! How do you all manage it? How do you sort out the stuff you need to reply to or take action on in the future, and not lose it or forget about it? How do you keep e-mail from being 90% of your workday if that is not really your "job"?

chat is this good?

I keep coming back to this clip against the background of AI companies infesting higher education. And I feel like I need to show this in class to students, for them to understand why not to trust these bastards

Leah McElrath@leahmcelrath.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Upside down, by the ankles, and then treat him like a piñata.

The techbros don't want you to see this trailer. Pass it on.

Forget grandiose talk of curing cancer - this is what AI is actually doing to healthcare. In the words of one cardiologist: “it’s bots fighting bots, agents fighting agents, a horrible dystopic future nobody wants to live in.”

I'm not Catholic, but it was still pretty cool to see the Pope outside my window yesterday

been thinkin about how robots are gonna kill us

For DOOMSDAY MACHINES this week, I take a trip down memory lane, revisiting one of the first books I can remember reading that had anything about nuclear weapons in it: David Macaulay’s 1988 classic, "The Way Things Work."

The Way Nukes Work (*Sort of)

Nuclear weapons and war in David Macaulay’s “The Way Things Work” (1988)

doomsdaymachines.net

*record scratch* "So you might be wondering how I got here..." (Roberto Valturio, De re militari, 1472. No, I have no idea what it is trying to show about war.)

For DOOMSDAY MACHINES this week, I take a trip down memory lane, revisiting one of the first books I can remember reading that had anything about nuclear weapons in it: David Macaulay’s 1988 classic, "The Way Things Work."

The Way Nukes Work (*Sort of)

Nuclear weapons and war in David Macaulay’s “The Way Things Work” (1988)

doomsdaymachines.net

The Pope is visiting Paris tomorrow and will be literally across the street from me for part of it. I keep having these fantasies of running into him and having a banal Americans-in-Paris conversation. "Actually," I say to him, "if you tell them you're learning French, they're pretty encouraging."

From a strange conspiratorial Indian book on Google Books about how nuclear weapons don't exist (sigh) — but I thought these fruit analogies were fairly amusing. (The rest of the text, which is just that painful mixture of terrible confusion and disturbing overconfidence, is less amusing.)