I wonder if there is any connection of this being on the front page today with this paper [0] being uploaded on arXiv today or if it's just pure coincidence.
Hi! Wanted to ask you a question in another thread, but it was an old one and already closed. Glad I could catch you posting.
It was one of your posts regarding von Neumann, where you listed books about him. What I wanted to ask is I remember reading one or two comments by his friends from after his death (one for sure, but the second one might be from the same person, I didn't know) in which they talk about his hidden parameter proof. What I remember is that they were like "well, sadly after his death he was attacked for his proof not being absolute, but of course he knew that!" I'm looking for this quote or a similar one.
The usual suspects are of course Ulam or Birkhoff, but it could have been someone else, Wigner I don't think so, but maybe. I can't find it.
So that's what I thought maybe you could help me with.
I've seen her unpublished memoir, A Grasshopper in Very Tall Grass, quoted in quite a few places and it definitely seems worth publishing, such a shame no publisher has taken any interest in it yet.
Marina vN Whitman had the book in her possession so I suppose they visited her and got access to it that way. I emailed her back in 2022 about it and she said she was planning on sending it to Josh Levy at the Library of Congress to go with the von Neumann/Klara papers there but I don't know how that ended up going, perhaps the book might be there now.
In a similar fashion Vincent Ford, who was the Air Force colonel responsible for von Neumann when he was in hospital dying of cancer, published a manuscript, Twenty-Four Minutes To Checkmate, on the US crash program for ICBMs focusing on the 1953-1957 period, which obviously overlaps a lot with when von Neumann was involved in those topics. It's held in the Dwight Eisenhower Library in Kansas however it's also only available if you visit in person.
It would be a great boost to the history of science if both texts were either published or scanned and uploaded online to make them significantly more accessible to both scholars and interested laypersons.
By the sounds of that article there needs to be more work done on applying abstract notions of complexity to the real world and developing suitable methods for this.
That is one of the exact purposes those agencies exist for in almost every country of the world.
> possibly misleading the public about casualty numbers
The numbers given in the documents are consistent with the numbers publicly stated by the US military.
> demanding an investigation
For what? I don't see how he is a whistleblower when he hasn't exposed any illegal activity. It's pretty clear from what he friends said that he was doing this solely to impress his friends, which is pretty clearly illegal.
Ukraine's Western supporters can propose a ceasefire but why would either side agree to one? Putin seems to be in it for the long haul, he probably knows Western support for Ukraine will gradually go down and then once Russia's military recovers a bit they can go back their original aim of taking all of Ukraine. For Zelenskyy there exists plenty of popular support for trying to take back territory, and unless the US says they'll completely throw them to the wolves and cut off all aid (which would make the US look completely terrible internationally), why would he agree to a ceasefire if he thinks Russia will go back to war once they recover anyway?
"Ukraine might still refuse the call for a cease-fire. If so, it would hardly be the first time in history that a partner dependent on U.S. support balked at being pressured to scale back its objectives."
"Another plausible outcome is that Russia would agree to a cease-fire in order to pocket its remaining territorial gains but in fact has no intention of negotiating in good faith to secure a lasting peace settlement."
My own maybe wishful thinking:
There are reasons for both sides to end the war.
Ukraine is failing more and more and Ukrainian people are suffering the most.
The cost of war is high for Russia as well and Putin's aims are limited.
They literally openly admitted it last November. You can say the special forces part is new but that isn't the point being made by most, which is about US troop boots on the ground, and the military never says which specific type of troops are there anyway for operational security reasons.
If ICs were already all over major social media like Discord, then how did these leaks sit spread around unnoticed for almost half a year? I swear every time this comes up people's critical thinking just vanishes into thin air. Mythologizing intelligence agencies as these omniscient entities only benefits them.
Having access, using access, using access to detect threats, and using access to detect leaks are 4 different capabilities. If I was NSA chief I personally would rank "proactive leak detection" far below "proactive threat detection".
As an aside, if lack of critical thinking skills sets you off easily, you are in for a rough ride. It's particularly dangerous because directed at others, it gives you clout in with the wrong people, and directed at yourself contempt can lead to self-loathing and depression.
Parent post doesn't distinguish between those. It just annoys to see people always talking about governmental or corporate bureaucracy but when it comes to intelligence agencies suddenly it's like they're immune to it and become perfect panopticons of information gathering and analysis.
"You know, Herb, Johnny can do calculations in his head ten times as fast as I can. And I can do them ten times as fast as you can, so you can see how impressive Johnny is"
The War Zone is a well reputed publication for defense news so I'm not sure why you're making this comment? The fact it publishes under The Drive has nothing to do with the author and hence quality of the content.
[0]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.10744