A thought from seeing the Discourse about authors being asked to share their drafts to combat AI- if you use any Office software it has saved a bunch of older versions. Other software may do the same thing, I don’t know.

I’m not even mad, this is hilarious

Your kid isn't getting admitted on an athletic scholarship no matter how much you drive her to practice, but it always feels better to have an Other to blame, especially one that isn't real and can't be falsified.

I had a slow month for reading, but fitting for Pride, all three books were extremely gay.

We definitely need a new term for this kind of person, and I propose “prolapsed Catholic.”

On one hand, I think it's really good that younger queer people have no idea just how bad it was to be growing up queer in the era when Pete Buttigieg was a kid, but good god people, at least listen to people who lived through the era about why it took time for queer kids to accept themselves.

I seem to have misunderstood- I thought that elections allowed the people to choose who should represent them. I now see that politicians are entitled to have their jobs forever. When they gracefully retire at 90 (or die in office), then we get to “vote” for their chosen successor. Got it!

I could go on and on. Over 500,000 children have already died due to USAID cuts. Hundreds of thousands more children lost their parents. Every one of those children had a name. They had futures, and they were loved

In 2025, USAID stopped funding clean water in Goma, DRC. Goma then suffered the worst cholera outbreak in 25 years, with 1,479 deaths, a 361% increase. Every one of those people had a name www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/issu...

CALLING ALL WORMS Barnes and Noble is running a pre-order sale from TODAY through Friday, June 26th, and preorders of the paperback of The Works of Vermin are discounted 25-35% ORDER NOW ORDER NOW ORDER NOW

This is a very interesting read and I’m curious about the production and testing processes. 1) I have not worked with peptide synthesis myself, but my understanding from colleagues is that it can be very difficult to keep the process clean.

The unique thing they're doing is "fund public health enough to do its job." Other states are trying to do similar things but at the end of the day, it's the state legislature that gets final say on funding it or not.

The people cry out for Jarnathan

a lot (most?) people understand racism as “being a meanie” and if you aren’t a meanie then you can’t be racist, even if you believe in, say, the biological inferiority of entire groups of people based on phenotype

I know there is a lot going on, and not all of this is new, but numerous aspects of this OMB proposal are highly alarming and would, if enacted, effectively force American scientists receiving federal funding (which is...most of them in some capacity or another) to stop engaging with the public.

You have to support the projects you love with money. I am sorry we do not live in a world where that is not the truth.

“A book is a good book if it is good at what it’s meant to do.” I think that’s a really useful way to think about it. I also think that a big problem we have with art interpretation is that people think “this is not for me” means “this is bad.”

I have mixed feelings on term limits but I simply do not understand these politicians in their 70s and 80s who clearly can’t do the job anymore but won’t resign and insist on running for reelection.

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I’m very excited to announce my new podcast! I'll be telling true stories of survival, starting with the story of Ada Blackjack, who was stranded for two years in the high Arctic. If you subscribe now to What to Carry, What to Burn on your fav podcast app, you’ll get the first episodes on May 12!

Into the Broken Lands deserves more hype. This book is both a great story and one of those novels that makes you consider the foundations on which fantasy stories are written. Highly recommended!

Pierre Bourdieu once argued that the question of whether something is art isn't answered by the artist's intention or even the object itself. Instead, the quality of being "art" is conferred by a community — curators, dealers, auction houses, audiences, etc. 🧵

I do think that “what is college actually for, as it currently exists” and “how and why has that changed over time” and “what SHOULD college be for, ideally” are all fascinating questions and it’s too bad that they are totally impossible to contemplate without being stricken with The Madness

murderbot day

Whenever I see stuff about online controls I think about my middle/high school, where they kept installing internet filters. We always figured out how to bypass them within days.

all these articles have this framing of the anti-public health backlash stemming from the pro-public health side being too cruel and abusive in their victory, instead reality where anti-health won the war and almost every battle since the beginning of COVID and are feeling their oats

Nothing has killed more soldiers in the history of humanity than disease. While worst is a more complicated question Hegseth is absolutely the dumbest secretary of defense the United States has ever had. bsky.app/profile/ones...

Most people don’t know that public health is largely handled by state agencies. I didn’t until a couple of years ago! The CDC provides support and guidance (and a lot of money) but the work is largely governed by the states.

having given it due consideration, i have decided that "government by the stupidest most hateful morons to ever walk, or really more of sort of ooze gelatinously, on the planet" is a bad form of government and we should try something different

It's important to remember that Iran has a population of 92 million people. Actual human beings who have lives, who have dreams, who want to live.

I have nothing to say that matches the gravity of the situation. I just want peace and safety for everyone targeted by the insane whims of a madman.

I know this and you know this and we all know this but sometimes you gotta say the obvious thing out loud (so to speak) just so you don’t feel alone or crazy: our president is a deeply unwell and utterly vile man who shouldn’t be in charge of driving a golf cart much less the free world.

"daddy only hits you because you cry" is the reactionary centrist theory of american politics

May has both my birthday AND a bunch of incredible books coming out, so I get to pre-order them as gifts for me 😈

No Kings is not perfect (what is?) but today I saw little kids and folks in their 90s out protesting. It’s a balm to the soul, really.

Some YA fantasy authors who to my knowledge have never funded an attempted trans genocide: Terry Pratchett Diana Wynne-Jones Garth Nix Suzanne Collins Susan Cooper Phillip Pullman Rick Riordan Pierce Brown Sheri S. Tepper V. E. Schwab Rachel Hartman Alex Pheby Alan Garner Ursula Le Guin And more!

COMIC: Have you tried...?

Public health is a wild field to be in because when things go right, people assume we're not doing anything useful, and when things go wrong, people assume it's our fault. This pattern dates back to the beginning of public health.

The African crested rat (Lophiomys imhausi) is a rabbit-sized rodent with patterned coat. They have no natural predators which puzzled scientists because they don't display obvious deterrents to large African predators. That's when studies found they were packing enough poison to kill an elephant.

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

One of the main reasons I don't use AI is that you have to fact-check every single thing it gives you and by the time I do that, I could have just done the research myself.

we were probably all up last night staring at the ceiling with our own version of the same thought running on endless loop, but mine looked something like this: I hate these people to a degree that feels simultaneously corrosive to the soul, and also the only righteous response to this kind of evil

You’ve heard of “Man states same point you’ve been making, met with cheers” now we have “ChatGPT gives the answer you’ve explained six times, man finally accepts it” what a time to be alive!

if dog so worried about being vacuumed up why dog always in front of vacuum

Fixing American science is no longer just about science. It’s about media and information and public consensus truth. It’s about other public goods beyond basic science. And also it’s about law, the Supreme Court and its separation of powers views (ie presidents of their party get all the power.)

There has seldom been a better time to read my book. (Because you can have it for free, apparently.)

I keep thinking about Hank Green saying that no one knows when they don’t die. And now we won’t know all the ways we could have survived. Article for a trusted source: www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-emergin...

I wish we could renormalize being able to simply dislike a thing without having to prove your dislike is due to a massive flaw in the thing. You can just not like it. It doesn't have to be due to a pile of discourse.

Must-read thread

If I don’t buy the rotisserie chicken what will I eat with my $5 artisanal avocado?