Truth Social users skew older and generally have a great deal of faith in Trump—demographics that suggest a less sophisticated approach to evaluating online claims. The site has become fertile ground for false or contested health claims.

🐉+🪰 Yes, the dragonfly was drawn with this very brush. 🧐🔍

Measles is highly preventable! This didn’t have to happen—and without anti-vaccine pseudoscience, it most likely wouldn’t have

Lots of Netflix shows have trans or non-binary characters (and have for ages), including Sense8, Sandman, Warrior Nun, and, of course, Orange is the New Black. Bigots don’t own culture, and I hope we’ll see big platforms tell them so? Right wing agitators have overplayed their “anti-woke” hand

Automating the contempt spiral into divorce seems like a good way to make sure lots of kids are going to need actual therapy one day—which, crucially, involves calling us on our bullshit in a way we can finally hear, not lavish reinforcement of our biased personal narratives

"[Scam artists] readily discerned that human life is swayed by two great tyrants, hope and fear, and that a man who could use both of these to advantage would speedily enrich himself." —Lucian of Samosata (2nd century CE)

"[Scam artists] readily discerned that human life is swayed by two great tyrants, hope and fear, and that a man who could use both of these to advantage would speedily enrich himself." —Lucian of Samosata (2nd century CE)

“When the president posts a fake video promising a miraculous piece of healing technology, it speaks directly to the deepest hopes of some of his base. But, Jarry warns, it also opens the door for more scams.”

The takeover of CDC, NIH, and FDA by COVID contrarians, antivaxxers, quacks, and grifters is the result of a failure of the medical profession to see the threat. Too many of us were shruggies. Now US medical science and public health are utterly screwed for at least four years.

The dream is to have a sanctuary for these animals where they can live out their lives happily and free of exploitation.

Wrapped my day greebling a time machine, so there’s that

We’re gonna save dictatorship with the best damn talent show anyone’s ever seen

I’ve never had much time for prancing, preening, pretend macho puffery, and I’d bet some of these generals feel much the same

I don’t buy this. As far as I’m aware, we’re nowhere close to digital minds with the sentience of a cricket, let alone people, and have no idea how to get there from here. It makes more sense to consider the personhood of whales and elephants, which clearly have internal experiences (and also exist)

“The censorious right does not represent the entirety of conservatism, but it is one of the movement’s most persistent and dominant strains.” Yup. Right wing handwringing about “political correctness”/“wokeism”/“cancel culture” etc was always largely performative bad faith nonsense

That's me! Oct 14th we'll be talking about all sorts of far-right pseudoarchaeological things. Join us! 🏺

Just ordered my copy and I'm extremely stoked to read it!!!

I've been interviewed by the Daily Express about #dinosaurs, ahead of a King Tyrant talk I'm giving at New Scientist Live next month. The article, alas, features stock imagery rather than genuine #paleoart (mine or otherwise), but that's newspapers for you. www.express.co.uk/news/science...

The ADL defended Elon Musk's "awkward gesture." Now he calls it a hate group.

To trigger dissonance (and dissonance reduction) your brain has to, at some level, notice a disconnect in the first place (though just un-noticing or forgetting it is one available means to reduce dissonance). Merely being a hypocrite or contradicting yourself doesn’t necessarily generate dissonance

There’s no dissonance in lying for profit, for example, or just being too stupid to recognize or generalize the implications of your claims. “I’m a canny operator advancing my goals by fooling the rubes” doesn’t generate dissonance—it may instead generate power and profit, confirming your self image

Things take on colloquial meanings, but “cognitive dissonance” is built on that 2nd word—clash, disharmony, discomfort our brains feel when confronted with contradictions between our beliefs or between our principles and actions. Our brains tend to automatically resolve this through various means

Things take on colloquial meanings, but “cognitive dissonance” is built on that 2nd word—clash, disharmony, discomfort our brains feel when confronted with contradictions between our beliefs or between our principles and actions. Our brains tend to automatically resolve this through various means

My latest:”Through gossamer tributes, Kirk’s cruel condemnation of transgender people & his racist throwback views abt Black Americans were no longer anathema but instead are being treated as just another political view to be respectfully debated —like a position on tax rates or health care policy.”

Thought I gift linked to it. Here you go. READ it. Your welcome. GIFT. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...

A nice little surprise in a local library used book store: Insectivorous Plants by Charles Darwin (New York: Appleton, 1899). $3.50

Part of the work of seeking precision in responding to the moment (w/ understanding that it's always subject to revision) is filtering out machismo, which in a patriarchal world can infect rhetoric of anyone. Maybe ask yourself, "Do I think this is true? Or do I just think it sounds badass?" 5/

I made it through 1 of the 4 hours. Well presented, amazing on several levels

Let me try that w/out pettiness: there will always be Taibbis, Blumenthals; the temptation is to follow writers who punch loudest. But there always *lots* of writers doing greater precision work. Less dopamine, more truth, & yr less likely to end up with a fascist apologists on your shelves.

Lots of admiration around the world for the better facets of America, too

Still shaking my head that the bizarro rebooted version of my former org made this guy a conference headliner in 2023

That’s exactly what RFK Jr.’s endgame is, but he knows he can’t just ban vaccines all at once. So he’s chipping away at access. The latest is that, as I predicted, he’s going after the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, plotting to bankrupt the system by adding autism as a compensable “injury.”

Yet another reason to be frustrated with that crazy press conference: Now Team Normal can't point out the very *real* risks of acetaminophen (eg., liver damage at high doses) without sounding like they've hopped on the crackpot wagon. 🙄

May I suggest a book to you? #ScienceUnderSiege ⁦is a must-read for anyone interested in fighting back politically & ideologically motivated opposition to science. To my fellow science friends, take the message:"The public needs to see scientists as people, rather than simply sources of information"

Talk Of Fascism Dangerous, Warns Ministry Of Compliance

Look, this all makes more sense if your head is entirely filled with bees

I'm sort of a pain to travel with because I generally incessantly photograph everything there is to see—not just documentation of the trip, but thousands of shots of textures & reference. Walls! Rust! Fossils! Skies! Thing is… I'm right now wishing again that I took more pictures on previous trips

Jeff it’s almost like you said this would happen. I’m not trying to be cute I literally just cited this thing you wrote in 2021 and thought, oh well at least Jeff got it right. I just wish your headline writer had been right that it was the last gasp

Ugly stuff

Having my peers call my a dumb dumb stupid head for warning about RFK, Makary, Bhattacharya, and Prasad won’t be the highlight of my career.

Especially @gorskon.bsky.social

Canadians are angry, but we’re also sorry the American public keeps getting hammered from every side for no reason

There’s a bifold door on a closet where we keep towels and stuff, and every once in a while it comes off its track. In principle it’s easy to fix; in practice, it’s the sofa in the stairwell from the Dirk Gently books, the geometry simply cannot be done, and anyway that’s where 40 minutes just went

nothing bad can happen it can only good happen

Few people know who Pat Linse was—she was deliberately stealth, even for movement skeptics—but I really miss her. She was *always* in the office, often till almost midnight, and would phone sometimes just to tell stories

Historian Thomas Zimmer has been one of the most clear-eyed observers and analysts of US political culture and the global far right over the past 5+ years. He's left Substack and started over at a new site that is NOT a Nazi bar. I encourage you to check out what he's doing there.

We all say dumb shit and we rely on the people around us to tell us we're being stupid. If everyone around you validates everything you say, you will go mad.

The common “dog who caught the car” metaphor applies all over the place. It’s easy for anti-vaccine conspiracists, creationists, and the like to sit on the sidelines and snipe at scientists, but “the truth THEY don’t want you to know” doesn’t work as well when you’re the ones in charge of everything

Good title! This fiasco vaguely reminds me of a mea culpa from Penn Jillette, where he basically says libertarianism works great when you’re not in charge of solving any problems. We’re watching contrarian, conspiracist outsiders flail and flounder through the challenge of becoming the establishment