incredible

Maybe it’s just that I saw Cabaret yesterday, but one part of this really resonates - the aesthetics of fascism always coalesce and become omnipresent before the political machine, because they want you to feel like they’ve already won and stop fighting

This focuses on news but applies, I think, to other threatened civil society institutions: "Network news is not winning back conservatives. Trying to appease them by kowtowing to Trump will only drive away the audience — disproportionately highly educated, highly engaged Democrats — that remains."

The backlash to ABC/Disney canceling Kimmel has been swift, and severe. The whole episode underscores something I've been blogging about for a while: A lot of powerful people just don’t realize how unpopular Trump is www.gelliottmorris.com/p/a-lot-of-p...

🚀 We’ve kicked off the first edition of our online course on Species Distribution Modeling with BART methods led by @jbyoder.org & @colincarlson.bsky.social 🌍🌱 A 3-day intensive program to unlock the full potential of BART methods for SDMs in R. www.physalia-courses.org/courses-work...

The Y axis in Figure 2C is unsquared beta coefficients. Perhaps all this will prove useful for basic science, but the practical takeaway is that once non-causal confounds are cleared, we can't really predict human intelligence at anything approaching useful levels.

This study of intelligence in the UK Biobank is typical of a lot of current social science genomics. Impressive technically, and not over-interpreted. But still, a main result gets lost in the sauce. Within-families, the direct-effect polygenic score explains no more that 1-3% of the variance. /1

Former counselor to RFK Jr’s predecessor:

At the Nuremberg trials, Karl Dönitz was convicted of war crimes for the sinking of civilian vessels. This is not a complicated question, it's been illegal for centuries.

It's particularly the case among the Americans who are paid to decide which news is important, and who despite everything still can't bring themselves to accurately describe the fact that the president is serially murdering people and our systems are unable to stop him

“I have no idea how this paper could have made it through peer review” Journal investigating vaccine contamination paper before CDC committee retractionwatch.com/2025/09/18/c...

New spooky season decor. Can't get it to stay up there tho.

One of the first internet chats I had was with someone who’d worked on the construction crew on the set of Monty Python’s “Life of Brian”, telling me about the bike seats they put on the crosses to make them comfortable for the performers

7 in 10 Americans say President Trump’s tariffs are increasing prices on the things they buy. (Patrick Svitek, @emgusk.bsky.social and @sfcpoll.bsky.social, Washington Post) More, via Opinion Today: opiniontoday.substack.com/p/250921

Most Americans say Trump has gone beyond his authority as president; most say Biden acted within his authority as president. (Patrick Svitek, @emgusk.bsky.social and @sfcpoll.bsky.social, Washington Post) More, via Opinion Today: opiniontoday.substack.com/p/250921

Would you rather see the next Congress controlled by the Democrats, to act as a check on Trump, or controlled by the Republicans, to support Trump's agenda? (Patrick Svitek, @emgusk.bsky.social and @sfcpoll.bsky.social, Washington Post) More, via Opinion Today: opiniontoday.substack.com/p/250921

sometimes you see something so evangelical that it takes your breath away

Still don't see it anywhere else. Please subscribe. www.gravityisgone.com

What's wild about this: railing against the social gospel is — I kid you not — a more than *century-long campaign* by conservative evangelicals. Some theological debates never get old, it seems.

I can’t help it. The grackles are still here, and need to be photographed 🤣 The male Common Grackles usually take every opportunity to display, especially in the spring! But it’s Fall, and this male was displaying a lot! Apparently, he knows what he looks like🤣 #Birds #photography #wildlife 🪶

Tangentially, I think this is the first time I've seen "Harry Potter adults" as a phrase and it really FITS

Disney adults canceling subscriptions, vacations, etc really are making the Harry Potter adults that threw a fit over a $60 video game look like huge bitches

This is a really good read about how experimental psychology research can inform us about human decision making in the context of rare and common outcomes/events/facts.

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win (h/t @miriamposner.com) www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This from @starshine.bsky.social genuinely strikes me as a good game idea.

If you can’t write a good bio for yourself in under “an hour and change” using your brain, calling yourself a “wordsmith” is fraudulent. And I’m not going to get into that last line, because I genuinely pity her.

Me in December 2024 referencing my work from earlier in 2024 www.wheresyoured.at/godot-isnt-m...

okay AI controversy aside, just talking as a nerd for a second: this is such a cool paper

Hah, and: “Analysis of popular benchmarks… found nine out of 10 major evaluations used binary grading that penalized “I don’t know” responses while rewarding incorrect but confident answers.”

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits." www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

"We’re Walling Off The Open Internet To Stop AI—And It May End Up Breaking Everything Else" This is a very interesting analysis from @mmasnick.bsky.social. www.techdirt.com/2025/09/08/w...

Trump and Vance’s contradictory messages on these killings: 1: Our glorious military carried out hyper-precise attacks on dastardly drug smugglers. 2: If you’re an innocent fisherman, watch out because we might kill you by mistake!

Twin Cities: Get over to Longfellow Gardens ASAP, because the Monarch butterflies and hummingbirds are out in force!

a few thoughts (gift link) www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/o...

turns out it's pretty hard to put an hour's worth of charlie kirk together and hold up the "he was not a white christian nationalist, actually" charade

early on i quipped that republicans have so internalized the natural rightness of their regularly winning power with a minority of votes that when they finally got a popular win it truly felt to them like an overwhelming mandate and i'm now kind of realizing that applies to everyone in media, too

In a normal government this guy would be fired instead of imprisoning people "It is still a crime for anyone to seek money to improperly influence federal contracts, the legal experts said, whether they are a public official or not, and whether they ever delivered on their promise or not."

Disney is losing lots of subscriptions, but also needs federal approval for the NFL buying a 10% stake in ESPN and its purchase of Fubo, and if they bring back Kimmel Trump will reject those deals. Can't say I feel bad about their no-win situation.

In community ecology, this is called the "Appendix XVII of a Peter Abrams paper" effect

Oh my god

entire press has gotten bullied into treating charlie kirk as if he was one of the most important americans alive and not a modestly popular podcaster

SO SHOULD YOU CARE TO FIND ME LOOK TO THE WESTERN SKY

Many are saying!

The NYT discussion in this is so good that I didn't realize it was just the windup for a "come to Jesus" moment on Mamdani aimed at the Bulwark's conservative anti-Trump readers open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Although this bill passed both legislative chambers, nine legislators—champions of CFA—sided with California teachers and abstained from voting. We urge you to tell Governor Gavin Newsom to veto AB715 by adding your signature here. 📩 win.newmode.net/caircaliforn... #VETOAB715

A good piece for today.

Surprise surprise, another red-shouldered hawk! 🪶🌿 Live Oak Park, Fallbrook, CA.

I spent a year at UT Austin on a H-1B. There is ZERO chance I’d have been able to afford this.