The magical @jerthorp.bsky.social created this visualization of the feathers of every bird (or at least about 10,000+ we have documented) and I can't wait to have some version of this in our home

post your on-screen leadership idols

Tried (and failed) to get some fundamental customer support from #amazon today via chat. I was chatting with one rep who suddenly dropped, and was immediately replaced by another. That’s it, that’s the whole story.

when all this is over and done, a new version of the Prisoners Dilemma will have to formalized, in which both of the accused can tweet

Someone on Reddit asked “what’s dangerously close to collapse” so I dumped a bunch of thoughts I’d compiled about what’s about to happen to higher ed in the US: www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/...

samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium, and yttrium

It’s not 2025 unless we also get an antipope, and it leads to war and higher social media DAUs

Putting aside debates about macroeconomics for a moment In a way, everything you need to know about why tariffs and why not is right here in this trading chart from this afternoon.

Petabytes of critical government research that is marked for possible deletion cannot be archived because of technical and legal restrictions, meaning it is very likely to be lost forever: www.404media.co/nih-archives...

HODL VIX

It was 14 years ago that I told the audience at TED that the future is bright, if you’re an algorithm For the next 4 years at a bare minimum, I’ll say that the future is bright, if you’re a pathogen

Wait are you telling me we had people researching existential risks this whole time

I can’t think of any innovation that a Apple could come up for the iPhone that would effectively restore the 10 minutes per day I spend trying to unlock it with my face.

Ermächtigungsgesetz

I feel bad asking a banal question in the most extreme timeline but can anyone recommend a service or a means by which I can just receive one fucking fax, without subscribing to some service I’ll never use?

We lost our home and the majority of everything I cared about six years ago (because of a roofer who was an idiot, who’s been ducking legal efforts for recovery since years.) Doesn’t make me an expert on the subject, but I have some thoughts if they are helpful to anyone who just experienced this.

Worked on this relatively close up for a year and would endorse every word of this summary There was plenty that could have been done, that wasn’t done But the danger is in what’s about to be undone truthout.org/articles/big...

Trying to imagine the meeting at Goldman Sachs where they reviewed this as the cover for the “Goldman Sachs Wealth Management Outlook” and said, yeah, perfect, hit send

Meta’s introduction of AI creators is misguided and dystopian in a way that makes you wonder if anyone there has talked to humans recently. That said, the idea that AI will displace *social media influencers* was not on my 2025 bingo card but

Former Sgt Aquilino Gonnell (Capitol Police on Jan 6) has an essay in the NYT about the facts — and his first hand experience — of the day and those that came after. I have nothing to add except a gift link to the essay www.nytimes.com/2025/01/05/o...

Now that Bluesky seems to have basically restored the premise and dynamics of Twitter, can someone build the thing that does the same for Instagram? All I’m asking is to see the photos from my friends (as opposed to ads and accounts I don’t follow.)

“Scientists are not big spheres of rationality. They are spiky and make use of intuition and aesthetics.” open.substack.com/pub/erikhoel...

Carter passing brings to mind a work by the late, great Sascha Pohflepp. The Golden Institute, a work of speculative design imagines Carter beats Reagan in '80 and govt backed alternative energy research flourishes in the US. we-make-money-not-art.com/rca_summer_s... www.flickr.com/photos/sasch...

Jimmy Carter, back to the stars. A good day to be off twitter. I was a kid when he installed these solar panels on top of the White House in 1979. I remember looking at the announcement with my dad in the NYT. It was amazing.

Without downloading any new pics what’s your energy going into 2025

next time you’re struggling with the things you have to do, as opposed to the things you care about, know that the Medicis needed someone to spec out a *fortification system* and turned to Michaelangelo Fucking Buonarotti like I know you’re busy with the Last Judgement but maybe over the weekend?

There’s no strong reason for non-German nationals to have been closely following the rise of the AfD (Alternativ fuer Deutschland) party in Germany, so here are some details to get you up to speed:

if you don’t like the way Elon Musk is running the country, don’t vote for him next time, that’s how democracy works

Totally disagree. We’ve only been sleepwalking toward this one for 11 months.

Giving a new talk at the Volksbuehne in Berlin on Sunday (please come!) In prepping the talk, I was researching something in German and found this word *Audiodatenkompressionsverfahrens* translates as "Audio Data Compression Method" That's it. That's my gift for anyone who wondered how to say it.

Can anyone source “eliminating the NIH” as noted below? My understanding is that ~half the 27 institutes w/in are being considered for elimination that would be *catastrophic* for US health / research, but the wrong language just fosters greater confusion, which always benefits bad actors

no notes

Cleaning up, I just found this Lawrence Weiner x Agnes B print from mid or late 90s and just posting it today no reason really

not a bad thing, but an interesting one — on the bird site since its earliest days, it was how I connected with a core group of beloved friends, and reached also another 10,000 followers This feels like moving to a new town, where mostly no one knows me and i think it suits this chapter of life

Since H5N1 flu is finally getting news coverage, here’s a looong 🧵 on what I learned while working on it for a few months at Ginkgo Biosecurity (I don’t work there anymore and this thread is on no one’s behalf) Everything here is info you can get elsewhere but just to lay it all out insomnia style

obligatory burroughs post youtu.be/sLSveRGmpIE

If you’re not spending the day replacing the bent tailpiece after breaking it while clearing the p trap of the kitchen sink, are you even celebrating Thanksgiving in the puritan tradition?

In spirit I agree, but in the interest of public health I don’t want to broaden the disease reservoir and more importantly: It will be when one of these assholes gets H5N1 from raw milk at the same time they already have a “regular” flu that the trouble can begin:

Feeling this, but you can’t move fast and break things in, like, immunology or climate, which is the whole point

TIL about 30 species were discovered and named in context of lockdowns, and thus named after Covid Black plague gave us Shakespeare, so the story goes, but looks like coronavirus gave us flatworms so it wasn’t a total waste en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

🎯

Post a pic YOU took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline.