3.17 Axios: Nvidia’s chips are improving at such a staggering pace that it defies any historical comparison. Without these gains, physics would slam the brakes on the data center boom. It’s like going from a Model T to a Tesla in under a decade — instead of more than a century. If fuel efficiency in cars had improved as swiftly as chips, “we’d be driving to the moon and back in one gallon of gas,” said Josh Parker, head of sustainability at Nvidia.
3.16 Richard Florida in the Times: “Dubai now sits just behind New York and London and ahead of established global cities like Tokyo, Singapore, Zurich, Paris, Frankfurt, Los Angeles and Chicago in its ability to attract global white-collar talent. . . And the Dubai model is spreading. Other cities — including Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Istanbul; Miami; and Doha, Qatar — are attempting to adopt some variation on the same basic formula to compete for the same class. But that duplication also means these cities can be replaceable. If one falters, another steps up to take its place. The elites can flit among them, because any real attachment they feel lies elsewhere. Dubai has become a gathering place for conferences and art fairs and the types of events that globally mobile people like to attend (some of which are now being canceled, postponed or moved online), but they can move elsewhere, too. This new kind of city is a sharp break with the past. For most of human history, people lived and worked in the same place, and cities grew up around that basic fact. They transform, rebuild after fires and disasters and become richer and sometimes poorer, but they draw their resilience from their rootedness, the fact that people feel they belong there. To say “I am a New Yorker” or a Londoner or “I am from Pittsburgh” or Detroit or Rome or Barcelona — that is not just a map. It conveys a deep sense of history, belonging and meaning, a personal identity, not just a transaction. Those identities are messy and unequal, but they are substantial. They are one of the primary ways people answer the basic questions of who they are and where they belong. And they are part of what brings people back to hang on and rebuild, no matter what. That kind of identity has deep roots. Long before factories or financial markets, people rooted themselves in where they lived and in the communities they built there. Place, kinship and a shared way of life were the basic materials of human identity. Marx described how industrial capitalism alienated workers from their labor, from one another, from their sense of agency. But there is a deeper form of alienation, one with a far longer history, and that has to do with the identity we draw from place, from home, from community. That source of identity is now being ripped apart.”
3.15 Len Deighton dies at 97.
3.14 Pete Hegseeth: “The only thing prohibiting transit in [Hormuz] right now is Iran shooting at shipping/ It is open for transit should Iran not do that.”
3.13 Sen. Jon Ossoff in Tyrone.
3.13 Military historian and strategic studies expert Phillips O’Brien, in conversation with Paul Krugman: “I really think Trump believed he would’ve had a few days of air raids, decapitate the government, and that would be it. I just don’t think it entered their mind, and because no one stands up to him. Supposedly, there were some military warnings, people saying, ‘the Iranians might fight back and you have to have preparations in case they do. But he seemed to not take those on. And these are people who wear shoes that are too big for them to make him happy. That story about Marco Rubio, that picture reveals a great deal about where we are. I don’t know how he kept them on, but he did and he was humiliated, because Trump gave him those shoes. If that is the culture you create around you, you’re gonna make really bad decisions. You know what I thought? I actually thought, and I’m not saying Trump is Stalin but it’s very much the culture Stalin had around him where he humiliated everyone around him by making them look and be faintly ridiculous. That was actually something he did deliberately. And what happened, of course, is that all they would do is reinforce all his prejudices. And that’s why you end up with Stalin saying, “Oh, Hitler’s not gonna attack me in June, 1941. Never! Not gonna happen!” And everyone around him going, “Of course Joseph, of course they won’t do that.” And that’s where we are. We basically have a Stalin-like court around Trump and we see the decisions that such a court makes.”
3.13 John F. Burns dies at 81.
3.10 Alexander Butterfield dies at 99.
3.8 Country Joe McDonald dies at 84.
3.8 Fayetteville
3.7 Atlanta tour
3.7 Outside Gracie Mansion, NYPD Assistant Chief Aaron Edwards leaps a barrier to chase down one of two allegedly ISIS-inspired, suspected would-be bombers.
3.5 Trump on X: “The current Secretary, Kristi Noem, who has served us well, and has had numerous and spectacular results (especially on the Border!), will be moving to be Special Envoy for The Shield of the Americas.” Noem will be replaced by Sen. Markwayne Mullin.
3.4 Ronnie Eldridge dies at 92.
3.4 Lou Holtz dies at 89.
3.3 Axios: “Secretary of State Marco Rubio effectively blamed Israel for drawing the U.S. into war with Iran. Rubio’s remarks were the first time a Trump official had so explicitly acknowledged Israel as a driving force behind the war — landing at a moment when Americans’ public support for Israel has hit historic lows. “We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action” against Iran, Rubio told reporters. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces” by the Iranian regime. “And we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties … And then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.” Rubio added later: “Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what.” . . .The big picture: Rubio’s remarks were widely interpreted as making the U.S. look subordinate to Israel’s interests. And they inflamed already angry MAGA elites who had spent the day railing against President Trump’s decision to go to war.”
3.2 Greg Carlstrom on X: “Trump is basically calling up every journalist in his phone to workshop different timelines and goals for his war. In the past two days:
: the aim is “freedom for the people” of Iran
: maybe we can “end it in two or three days” with a deal
: might be “four to five weeks”, I have “three very good choices” who might take control in Iran
: actually, nevermind, we killed those choices He doesn’t sound convinced by any of it. He’s throwing spaghetti at the wall. Ultimately I suspect he just wants to say he “solved” a problem that has vexed every American president since Jimmy Carter. But there’s no clear idea what that looks like and no plan for how to get there. And there are plenty of possible scenarios in which Trump declares victory and leaves the region with an absolute mess.”
3.2 Pete Hegseth: “This is not a so-called regime-change war, but the regime sure did change.”
3.2 George Will in the Washington Post: “The wielders of Iran’s regime, which is founded on fear, surely experienced a sudden, terrifying epiphany when the aerial attacks, unlike previous ones, began in daylight: The attackers knew when and where the regime’s senior officials would be meeting in Tehran that day. Precision munitions, directed by spectacular intelligence, enabled a decapitation strategy. The at least 30,000 protesters who perished in Iran’s streets in early January did not die in vain.”
3.2 Robert Frost: “The best way out is always through.”