Monthly Roundup #43: June 2026

Monthly Roundup #43: June 2026

The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. * 00:00 - Introduction * 00:28 - RIP FiveThirtyEight * 01:25 - RIP Books * 02:13 - Bad News * 10:14 - Good Advice * 18:47 - Opportunity Knocks * 19:30 - Lower Awareness * 23:00 - The New York Times Has Some Issues * 23:25 - Liar Liar * 26:46 - Conspiracy Theory * 27:12 - Good News, Everyone * 27:23 - For Your Entertainment * 28:56 - A Matter of Taste * 36:51 - Gamers Gonna Game Game Game Game Game * 39:11 - I Was Promised Flying Self-Driving Cars * 40:21 - Sports Go Sports * 40:52 - Government Working * 43:42 - Jones Act Watch * 44:53 - Humans Can Be Strategic * 46:56 - Variously Effective Altruism * 48:14 - Support Anti-Aging Research * 49:19 - The Lighter Side https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/monthly-roundup-43-june-2026?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/monthly-roundup-43-june-2026?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

GLM-5.2 Is The New Best Open Model

The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. * 00:00 - Introduction * 01:57 - Alex Bores For Congress In NY-12 * 03:44 - Signs of Life * 05:06 - The Benchmarks * 08:45 - GLM-5.2 Is Distilled From Claude * 09:38 - Positive Responses * 15:28 - Finding The Niche * 17:07 - Negative Reactions * 19:33 - Looking To The Future https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/glm-52-is-the-new-best-open-model?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/glm-52-is-the-new-best-open-model?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5: Capabilities

The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. * 00:00:00 - Introduction * 00:01:11 - The Official Pitch * 00:04:10 - Technical Details * 00:04:34 - The System Prompt and Jailbreak * 00:06:49 - Benchmarks * 00:17:52 - Other People’s Benchmarks * 00:25:01 - The Classifiers Are Not Messing Around * 00:26:56 - The Classifiers Need Work * 00:32:26 - The Classifiers Have Consequences * 00:33:24 - First Hit Is Free * 00:34:01 - How Easily We Forget * 00:35:10 - Data Retention Is An Issue * 00:35:37 - Fable For The Win * 00:40:04 - Andrej Karpathy Is Impressed * 00:41:47 - Every Is Very Impressed * 00:42:53 - Other People Are Impressed * 00:54:30 - Know How To Tell a Fable * 00:56:23 - You Can Just Make Things * 00:58:46 - You Can Just Install Things * 00:59:11 - Good Personality * 01:01:00 - Fable Writes A Fable * 01:10:56 - Is That Code * 01:14:00 - Fable Crosses The Threshold * 01:14:34 - Man With A Plan * 01:15:29 - Less Impressed Assessments * 01:18:50 - Actively Negative Assessments * 01:19:20 - Coherence * 01:20:38 - Good Night And Good Luck * 01:21:09 - Curious Fable * 01:21:25 - I See You, Baby * 01:21:40 - We Finally Did It We Know How To Count Letters * 01:22:54 - That’s Not My Style * 01:30:50 - The Lighter Side https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5-capabilities?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/claude-fable-5-and-mythos-5-capabilities?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

AI #173: AI Pauses

The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. * 00:00:00 - Introduction * 00:03:06 - Table of Contents * 00:06:50 - Language Models Offer Mundane Utility * 00:06:59 - Language Models Don’t Offer Mundane Utility * 00:07:22 - Huh, Upgrades * 00:07:51 - On Your Marks * 00:13:41 - VirtueBench * 00:16:04 - Choose Your Fighter * 00:16:38 - Papers, Please * 00:17:05 - Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon * 00:18:46 - Goodhart’s Law Strikes Again * 00:19:32 - They Took Our Jobs * 00:22:12 - The MidJourney Full Body Imaging Scanner * 00:24:30 - Introducing * 00:26:00 - In Other AI News * 00:28:52 - Show Me the Money * 00:29:17 - Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble * 00:30:50 - Quiet Speculations * 00:33:28 - People Just Say Things * 00:36:58 - The Widened Path * 00:39:17 - Scott Alexander Lays Out His AI Opinions * 00:46:01 - Quickly, There’s No Time * 00:47:04 - Policy On The AI Exponential * 00:57:03 - Anthropic Offers Two Policy Frameworks * 00:58:08 - Obligations of Developers * 01:02:53 - Societal Resilience Measures * 01:04:12 - Economic Policy Framework * 01:09:49 - White House Pauses AI Deployment * 01:18:28 - The Once And Future Fable * 01:23:27 - How To Fix This Code * 01:25:11 - The End of Privacy * 01:26:38 - AIs Have Preferences * 01:29:27 - The Quest for Sane Regulations * 01:32:13 - Chip City * 01:32:43 - The Week in Audio * 01:32:52 - Rhetorical Innovation * 01:33:29 - Aligning a Smarter Than Human Intelligence is Difficult * 01:35:14 - People Are Worried About AI Killing Everyone * 01:36:27 - The Lighter Side https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/ai-173-ai-pauses?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/ai-173-ai-pauses?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

The Once And Future Fable #3: Fix This Code

The Don’t Worry About the Vase Podcast is a listener-supported podcast. To receive new posts and support the cost of creation, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. * 00:00 - Introduction * 01:46 - There Was No Fable Jailbreak * 08:02 - If This Jailbreak Was Real It Would Be Trivial To Prove It * 09:26 - No Eyes * 10:30 - What The Letter Actually Said * 12:28 - Anthropic Cannot Challenge This But If It Did Then It Plausibly Wins * 14:33 - What Happened At Amazon * 19:00 - This Was Not About Chinese Access * 19:18 - Absolute Discretion And Ad Hockery Is Not Deregulation * 22:11 - All Of American AI Is Permanently Damaged As This Continues * 23:47 - Dean Ball Gives His Interpretation * 26:52 - Again, Yes, I Do Think Anthropic Should Have Taken Fable Down * 30:09 - To What Extent Was This A Deliberate Attack? * 34:57 - The Next Chapter For Fable * 39:10 - Our Continuing Coverage https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/the-once-and-future-fable-3-fix-this?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/thezvi/p/the-once-and-future-fable-3-fix-this?r=67y1h&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web] Get full access to DWAtV Podcast at dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe [https://dwatvpodcast.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]