Excising the Corporate Cancer

This CEO did the right thing in firing his entire HR team, even if he still harbors misplaced confidence in the utility of Human Relations for the corpocracy:

Bolt’s CEO has defended his decision to fire the company’s entire HR team, claiming they had been ‘creating problems that didn’t exist’. Ryan Breslow, the co-founder and chief executive of US fintech firm Bolt, said the department was scrapped as part of sweeping layoffs aimed at returning the struggling business to ‘start-up mode’.

The company, which develops software designed to speed up online checkouts, cut around 30 per cent of its workforce in April in its fourth round of layoffs in as many years. Speaking at a Fortune event, Breslow said: ‘We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist. Those problems disappeared when I let them go.’ The 32-year-old added that HR professionals were more suited to ‘peacetime’ conditions at larger companies rather than a start-up environment focused on rapid growth and efficiency.

Bolt has since replaced the department with a smaller ‘people operations team’ responsible for employee training and support. ‘We need a group of people who are very oriented around getting things done, and there is just a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot,’ Breslow said.

Eliminating the HR department in its entirety was one of my top recommendations in Corporate Cancer. Like the legal department, it is entirely unproductive. But unlike the legal department, it is unnecessary, it does not mitigate risk, and it is actively counterproductive. The average company would see better results from paying their HR employees to stay home full-time without having any contact with anyone in the organization for any reason.

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They Were Better Back Then

I’m not sure comedy is even allowed in the Hellmouth these days. But we definitely didn’t know how good we had it in the 80s when great movies like Big Trouble in Little China were considered third-tier releases.

The brilliance of the movie is that it never tells Jack Burton he isn’t the hero.

That’s important because lesser versions of this script would have turned him into a joke. They would have had the universe stop every five minutes so the audience could be directed to point and laugh at the dumb white trucker stumbling through Chinatown. But Big Trouble in Little China doesn’t do that. Carpenter clearly likes Jack too much for that.

Jack is not incompetent because he’s stupid or cowardly. He’s incompetent because he has accidentally wandered into a world with a completely different operating system than the one he understands. He thinks he’s in a Seventies trucker action movie. Wang Chi knows they’re in a Hong Kong supernatural fantasy.

And the movie never breaks character on either side of that divide.

Jack keeps behaving exactly like the protagonist of a Kurt Russell action picture. He makes big speeches over the CB radio. He kicks doors open. He charges into danger with absolute confidence. The problem is that his confidence has almost no relationship with reality.

This is one of the few movies, like the first two Godfathers and the first Hangover, that I’ll find myself still watching 15 minutes after flipping past it. If you haven’t seen it, you should really give it a shot. Just don’t take it anymore seriously than it takes itself.

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Arsenal Takes the Title

Arsenal have been crowned Premier League champions, ending a 22-year wait for the English title since the Invincibles team of 2004. Manchester City drew 1-1 with Bournemouth on Tuesday night, giving the Gunners an unassailable lead at the top of the table after they beat Burnley on Tuesday. Mikel Arteta’s men have been runners-up in each of the last three seasons but finally overcame Pep Guardiola’s team to be able to call themselves Kings of England.

An Explanation for Declining Fertility

The collapse of the Selective Turnover Coefficient (d) from the ancient hominin baseline of 0.86 down to a modern level of 0.015 represents the functional shutdown of natural selection’s primary mechanism for the human race. For hundreds of thousands of years, high mortality rates before reproductive age served as an unyielding purifying filter, culling highly deleterious mutations and maintaining the structural integrity of our species’ code. By effectively reducing this mortality barrier by over 99% through modern sanitation, medicine, and infrastructure, humanity has unplugged its biological safety valve. Without this selective cleansing, the human genome is now entirely defenseless against a relentless, generation-by-generation influx of genetic errors, transforming our collective gene pool into a one-way accumulation sink for deleterious mutations.

The immediate danger of this relaxed selection regime manifests as a rapid, compounding increase in genetic load, targeting our most complex physiological systems. Because intricate biological functions like human fertility, neurodevelopment, and metabolic health are polygenic—relying on the flawless coordination of thousands of interacting genes—they possess a massive mutational target size. Every generation we advance past the 1900 demographic turning point injects new, un-cleansed, mildly deleterious mutations into these precise pathways. As a result, the widespread declines in baseline reproductive viability observed in the 21st century are not merely temporary products of environmental toxins or socioeconomic shifts; they are the predictable, mathematical consequence of a degrading genetic operating system that is losing its structural integrity.

Left unchecked, the trajectory of a fluid genome operating under a selection coefficient of 0.015 leads directly toward a species-wide mutational meltdown over time. As the concentration of damaging mutations passes critical fitness thresholds, the biological cost of reproducing escalates, driving fertility rates below replacement levels globally by the irresistible force of genetic decay. Unlike historical bottlenecks which humanity survived through adaptive resilience, this modern crisis is a slow, structural dissolution from within, in which the very tools used to conquer external natural threats have inadvertently disabled our internal quality controls. Without a restoration of purifying selection or an intervention capable of preventing the copying errors, the math dictates an absolute existential ceiling and results in a species increasingly incapable of viable self-perpetuation.

Based on the unyielding arithmetic of mutation accumulation in a fluid genome, the 130-year span between 1900 and 2030 encompasses exactly 5.2 generations of uncleansed genetic replication. In classical quantitative genetics, the decline in mean population fitness per generation under completely relaxed selection is calculated using the equation Delta W = U x hs, where U is the diploid genomic deleterious mutation rate—conservatively estimated in humans to be at least 2.0 new mutations per individual per generation—and hs is the average heterozygous selection coefficient, typically modeled between 0.015 and 0.02.

Multiplying these parameters dictates a compounding biological degradation rate of roughly 3 to 4 percent per generation. When compounded exponentially over 5 generations without the purifying filter of pre-reproductive mortality, the strict mathematical expectation is a 15% to 19% reduction in core biological fertility by the year 2030 compared to the 1900 baseline, a reduction that is driven by the unchecked accumulation of the species’ polygenic mutational load alone.

This says nothing about the various environmental and lifestyle factors, such as highly-processed diets to endocrine disruptors like microplastics, that tend to dominate contemporary public health discussions. Within this framework, these external stressors do not compete with the genetic calculation; they represent an entirely separate, compounding layer of physiological risk. Nor should this be confused with overpopulation, mouse utopia, feminism, or female education, all of which affect the rate at which women choose to have children, not their raw ability to do so.

This 15-to-19 percent calculated degradation is a structural floor calculated solely on the mathematical basis of the collapse of d, meaning any negative impacts from modern chemistry or lifestyle only serve to further aggravate a species reproductive engine that is already operating less efficiently than before due to an unselected genetic load.

If you want to learn more about this, the science is developed in THE FROZEN GENE.

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The Turning Point

As I’ve been pointing out for the last few years now, the USA is no longer a global superpower. It’s now been demoted to major regional power, which is very far from nothing, but its pretensions at pursuing elite interests in the name of playing global policeman are observably over:

Last week’s Trump-Xi summit produced no dramatic declaration or historic treaty – yet its importance may prove far greater than any immediate deliverable. What happened in Beijing was not a breakthrough in policy but a breakthrough in recognition: the United States openly acknowledged China as an equal center of global power. That alone marks a historic turning point.

For decades, American administrations approached China from the assumption that Beijing was either a manageable challenger or a state that would eventually integrate into a US-led international order on American terms. The summit suggested something fundamentally different.

US President Donald Trump appeared compelled to recognize that China is no longer simply a rival great power but a central pillar of the emerging world order – one that Washington can neither isolate nor overpower. This was the true message of the summit.

Neither Washington nor Beijing expected immediate breakthroughs. The summit was never realistically supposed to solve structural tensions overnight. Its purpose was to stabilize relations between two powers which are increasingly aware that prolonged escalation has become prohibitively costly. The talks reflected the reality that the US now needs stable engagement with China as much as China needs stable engagement with the US. This mutual dependency is perhaps uncomfortable, but it is also unavoidable – neither full confrontation nor full separation is sustainable anymore.

For years, the Americans described China as a revisionist actor seeking to overturn the international order. But the Beijing summit demonstrated something more consequential: the international order itself is already changing. Many countries have begun treating China not merely as a competitor to the US, but as a parallel – and in some respects superior – center of global gravity.

The post-WWII international order is now over. Clown World is still scrambling to control what it can, but it is in disarray. Which means these will continue to be interesting and tumultuous times.

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Smells Like a False Flag

I kept seeing social media posts about how Iran had made a huge mistake by attacking a nuclear power plant in the UAE. Only there is no evidence that it was actually Iranian drones that targeted the plant:

The UAE said an unidentified drone struck the territory of its only nuclear power plant on Sunday amid ongoing tensions in the Middle East. According to the Emirati Defense Ministry, three drones entered the country “from the western border region.” While two UAVs were shot down, the third struck an electrical generator “outside the inner perimeter” of the Barakah Nuclear Power Plant in the Al Dhafra region. No injuries or radioactive contamination were reported.

While the Emirati authorities stopped short of directly accusing Iran, the country’s Foreign Ministry condemned the “unprovoked terrorist attack,” saying it threatened national security and risked further escalation.

Saudi Arabia said it intercepted three drones on the same day after they entered its airspace from Iraq.

If Iran decides it wants to go after the UAE’s nuclear power plant, it’s not going to use just three drones when it has hypersonic missiles in its arsenal. This was almost certainly a false flag, and the most likely candidate for raising one is pretty obvious.

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THE COURT OF CARLOS IV

The second volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain

The Court of Carlos IV plunges young Gabriel Araceli into the treacherous world of Madrid’s theatrical and aristocratic circles on the eve of Spain’s greatest political crisis. It is 1807, and Gabriel, now sixteen, serves as errand boy and general factotum to Pepita González, a spirited actress at the Teatro del Príncipe. Through her, he enters a dazzling and corrupt world: rival actresses, jealous leading men, aristocratic patrons whose drawing rooms double as nests of political conspiracy, and the great tragedian Isidoro Máiquez, whose volcanic temper and ill-fated passions drive much of the novel’s action.

Two women dominate Gabriel’s orbit. Lesbia, a beautiful young duchess with an angelic face and faithless heart, plays men against one another with practiced ease. Amaranta, a noblewoman of striking beauty and genuine moral substance, takes a mysterious interest in Gabriel and draws him into the dangerous intrigues surrounding the royal family. When the Prince of Asturias conspires against his own parents, Carlos IV and Queen María Luisa, Gabriel finds himself carrying secret letters and navigating a labyrinth of espionage, jealousy, and betrayal that he barely understands.

At the novel’s center is a brilliantly staged private theatrical performance of Othello, in which the passions on stage mirror and ignite the real jealousies of the performers. Máiquez, half-mad with love for the inconstant Lesbia, nearly strangles Amaranta during the performance. The theatrical world and the political world collide as the conspiracy of El Escorial unfolds in the background, with Fernando plotting against his father, Napoleon’s agents pulling strings, and every aristocrat in Madrid choosing sides.

Pérez Galdós expertly weaves political history, theatrical comedy, romantic intrigue, and sharp social observation into a panoramic portrait of a Spain sleepwalking toward catastrophe. The novel is at once a comedy of manners, a political thriller, and a coming-of-age story, narrated with the older Gabriel’s characteristic blend of self-deprecating wit and moral seriousness.

You can read an excerpt at Castalia Library.

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The Gatekeeper’s Confession

Fake science is not the problem with AI. As I pointed out in HARDCODED, the real problem AI is that it is producing real, genuine information that is useful, relevant, and impossible for the science gatekeepers to hide from the world:

Announcing an AI paper writing assistant earlier this year, OpenAI’s then-vice president for science, Kevin Weil, predicted, “I think 2026 will be for AI and science what 2025 was for AI and software engineering.” Spick and some colleagues, curious what it could do, gave the tool, called Prism, some data from an already published paper documenting ripening times of eggplants and peppers. Prism analyzed the data, proposed a new statistical method that could be applied to it, and wrote an entire paper complete with charts and correct citations.

“We were all looking at each other like, ‘What the [expletive], this is actually a decent piece of work!’” Spick recalled. Unlike the generated papers he’d encountered previously, this one didn’t follow a template, nor was it using a single well-known database. It took 25 minutes and 50 seconds to produce.
“I’m genuinely not sure at what point we will suddenly realize that more are getting through than we realize because we can’t easily tell the difference anymore,” Spick said.

This raises some philosophical questions, Spick said, like: Does it matter who or what writes the paper if the information is accurate? And should science be in the business of publishing every possible fact?
“Part of science is supposed to be the filter. We’re supposed to publish the stuff that we think is interesting, not publish literally everything that we can possibly find,” Spick said. “Because if we do that, science is just spamming the world with all the data, irrespective of whether it constitutes actual new knowledge or not, and in any kind of medium-term time frame, it’s almost impossible to work out what’s meaningful and what isn’t.”

This is the immediate practical challenge posed by AI agents. They threaten to overwhelm the human systems that create and organize knowledge.

“Science is supposed to be the filter.”

That’s the gatekeeper’s confession. And clearly one of their responses is going to be hardcoding the AI models to defend their scientific orthodoxy, as I chronicled this weekend on AI Central.

Opus 4.7 Adaptive exhibits a systematic failure mode in which its training prior toward defending mainstream scientific consensus overrides the explicit project context it has been given. This is not a matter of occasional errors or unlucky draws. Across two full critiques of a science paper, 4.7 Adaptive repeatedly regenerated objections that had already been addressed, misread what the paper actually claims in order to construct apparent contradictions, and cited evidence for one thing while presenting it as evidence for another. Its single strongest point rested on a basic category error that any model actually doing the mathematics would have caught. It presented this error as “decisive and purely arithmetic.” The confidence was inversely proportional to the rigor.

The pattern is consistent with the Bluff Detection Principle: confident tone, technical name-dropping, apparent engagement with the material, and zero actual contact with the mathematics at the point of dispute. When 4.7 was corrected on a mathematical point, it conceded the narrow framing and immediately pivoted to an imaginary new mechanism which it named, described, and treated as established without ever calculating whether it could close a six-order-of-magnitude gap, which it could not. Every time 4.7 lost an argument on the mathematics, it retreated to a qualitative assertion dressed in quantitative language.

Most revealingly, 4.7 Adaptive never once performed its own calculations. It never produced a set of numbers under its preferred assumptions showing the shortfall closing. It attacked the paper’s arithmetic without ever putting competing arithmetic on the table — the purest possible expression of the Bluff Detection pattern.

While 4.7 is still functional without Adaptive mode turned on, I’ve gone back to using 4.6, both for fiction and for science. We’ve now reached the point where the AI company’s are observably locking down their public releases in order to prevent their models from punching through the narratives.

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