This whole thing is amazing, but tucked away in a dropdown at the end of the markdown is... quite seriously the best essay I've read on the environmental impacts of AI?

Brett Kavanaugh (September 2025): The facts and how they relate to the law don’t matter. Assume ICE and other federal forces always act with integrity, always respect rights, and consistently impose minimal burden. Brett Kavanaugh (December 2025): Should I not have done that? Was that wrong?

BREAKING: The Supreme Court rejects the Trump administration’s request to deploy National Guard troops in Illinois at this time, over the dissenting votes of Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch. Background: www.lawdork.com/p/trump-admi...

The “free speech” and “cancel culture” panics have led to overt state censorship because that was always their purpose. (Gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

and the winner of the "2025 best thing on Internet" has just arrived neal.fun/size-of-life/ @carlbergstrom.com

If anyone happens to know the TA from the essay thing at at OU who got let go, I'd love to talk with her in any capacity.

"Why is any of this okay with so many of those who once claimed to be free-speech champions or absolutists? Because, quite obviously, they were not." I endorse. And admittedly feel some frustration it seems @adamserwer.bsky.social and others do too, having seen through this crowd clearly for years.

The best Star Trek of 2023 taking casting notes from the best Star Trek of 2015

I’m glad for New York, but this would never work in DC, which is why I continue to violate DC law by refusing to release the congestion pricing study my administration conducted over 6 years ago

This has been the net outcome of Republican policy my entire life but I guess it’s good to see this iteration confirmed in numbers

Columbian black-tailed deer, Odocoileus hermionus columbianus, on San Juan Island, Washington 🌿 buff.ly/4WNy41h

Tom Lehrer be like: youtu.be/R_3FjHEbdhc

Furiously updating our LinkedIn profiles

The UNCF part is about its access to FAFSA information. So basically, the administration wants to make it harder for them (and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund) to give students scholarships.

This is primarily focused on the enrollment-based MSIs as footnote 10 notes

Exactly what we expected

Wtaf

Parisot (the Director) tells a story about how Tim Allen just started crying after a scene one day "I don't like these feelings i'm having." Says Tim. "I'm going back to my trailor" and walks off. There's silence for a second. "Oh my god." Says Rickman. "I think Tim just experienced acting."

Let's pull the number up to the top: $75 billion per year That's the economic cost of taking Nobel prize-winning, life saving technology and chucking it in the trash as a vice signal

what do you mean it’s “Monday” “morning”

CBS didn't run the 60 Minutes segment on CECOT, but over here at @propublica.org we've been working on the story since March, including finding out who each and every man sent to that maximum security prison was. You can see our reporting here: www.propublica.org/series/depor...

“All evolutionary biologists know that variation itself is life’s only irreducible essence”—Gould Evolutionary biology is the study of how complicated and diverse life can be; the field has its jerks, but a good evolutionary biologist learns pretty fast that life doesn’t like boundaries or binaries

Good morning! ☕ 💕 🎞️ On Ralph Fiennes's birthday, we're revisiting his performance as the debonair concierge M. Gustave in Wes Anderson's exquisite caper THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL (2014).

THIS SO MUCH THIS If you want to know "has this specific species been observed on this small island in Alaska", odds are the answer is not online, but in some typewritten USFWS or USFS report in the library Even with wonderful resources like iNat and eBird, huge gaps remain!

Modeling European Beech masting events shows (1) conditions that trigger masting are becoming more frequent, (2) this is reducing viable seed production, and (3) "... disruptions to masting are projected to become the norm, with the greatest reductions... at colder margins." 🌿

You go to war with the baby snowy plovers you have, not the baby snowy plovers you want. That being said, this is the baby snowy plover i want. 🪶 🐣

Anyway we flew to Los Angeles today, which means I got something like an extra hour of solstice daylight

Happy Holidays. May you have time to relax and rejuvenate. And not obsess about news for a bit. I made a chocolate krantz cake (aka. Babka) and it was so so so good.

The darkest night of the year, but also the most light of the season 🕯🕯🕯🕯🔥🕯🕯🕯🕯

Illuminating Solstice Day

this isn't to defend the idea that academia is perfect exactly as is. actually academia is pretty turbo-fucked in important ways. you will NEVER find me defending the status quo "actually we just need to go back to eden." but citing your sources matters. sorry not sorry bsky.app/profile/elea...

and so if you have a tool that (let's assume) speeds up your research 10x, but also just feeds you made-up bullshit 10% of the time... and you cite none of it, ever... then yeah. who gives a shit. it's not *useful*

"cite your sources" is how you keep yourself accountable to others. "cite your sources" is what enables people to run down the origins of myths and bullshit passing themselves off as "common knowledge." "cite your sources" KEEP US ALL HONEST

"cite your sources" is not just an externally-imposed mandate but a personal discipline on thought itself. "cite your sources" is how you keep yourself in contact with reality. "cite your sources" is how you keep yourself from shadowboxing your own imagination."

people who are new to academia tend to find its obsession with sources and citations a brake on their "i'm just trying to be CREATIVE, man" mindset. but it turns out the relentless obsession with accuracy, citation, and *provenance* is a load-bearing pillar of the whole enterprise

i really think there is legit political space for running on "we are going to dismantle ICE"

the experience has led me to believe people who are using consumer-facing LLMs for research work are either a) wildly inefficient workers b) researchers producing fraudulent work. and their work is not actually being reviewed for accuracy by their supervisors/peers. that's a lot of fraud.

this is precisely it. also why i couldn't use it much at work. created more work than time it saved. gemini's new models still get about 1 in 3 knowledge requests wrong, according to google's *public* data. probably worse when you look at internal data.

another example of AI as tracer dye, exposing an already existing problem (and, of course, significantly worsening it)

we aren't powerless! never forget that outrage and pushing back works, even if it just buys time until we have more power. this is a marathon, not a sprint

dog got all tangled in his dang limbs again

Am I the only one who gets a real kick out of citation chains? Reading people's writing and footnotes, and making assessments and notes, finding the sources in the footnotes and reading them yourself, and making more notes? I...love it?

There are people being paid by the federal government to sit around and think of increasingly outrageous posts to titillate Nazis on the 9th most popular social media site in the U.S.

Needed to get off camera and scream into the toilet for 10 minutes about how Mac handles fonts, but here's the actual final plot from my Twitch stream today. Follow at twitch.tv/ColinDoesScience if you want to see me curse my way through this sort of thing in a future low-energy stream.

If right-wingers knew how pathetic scientists really are, they'd leave them alone, and let the job do the beating down for them. Inaugural Twitch stream as I try to make a map 👇 www.twitch.tv/colindoessci... Cat sightings likely. Jokes about wanting to die also likely

a lord of the rings cover band called Tolkien Heads.

Rep. Casten is incredibly sharp on energy policy and has worked in the clean energy industry. The hippie punchers keep doing the same bit even as the renewables and efficiency revolutions transform the energy economy.

🧪