GOOD NEWS! Researchers have shown Alzheimer’s disease can be REVERSED- not just prevented. Using a potent neuroprotective compound called P7C3-A20, they found RESTORING balance to a central cellular energy molecule (NAD+) not only PREVENTED disease features but REVERSED them, EVEN at late stages.

Very cool online tool that let's you see how your life might have turned out if you had been born in a different place on the planet. The biggest lottery in life is the "lottery of birthplace":

Bluesky was generally better when we all more or less agreed to simply block dumb accounts and move on rather than quote dunk on them for clout.

I support a lot of independent journalists now with the $$ that I once spent on WaPo & NYT. This one is not only a great news source, but also a tax-deductible contribution!

this is the simple answer to people who keep saying NATO expansion matters. Sure, it matters because it presented an obstacle to Russian imperial ambitions. Putin didn't invade because he hated NATO expansion, he hated NATO expansion because he wanted to invade

These two images of Chinese train driver Han Junjia were taken less than 30 years apart. Transformative change is possible when it is relentlessly pursued.

Imagine it being easier to just pay the 8 billion dollars and it won't affect you in the slightest. Man what have we done lol

So much of the issues related to transit governance is downstream from the fact that both the boards of these agencies and many of advocates in this space believe that transit is a welfare program that acts as “transportation of last resort” as opposed to a viable, affordable alternative to cars.

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

America has 925 billionaires as of this year. Collectively they have a record $6.9 trillion in wealth. The bottom 50% of Americans control $4.2 trillion in wealth. When 925 people control more wealth than half a country’s population, we have a very serious problem.

The offshore project here off the coast of Virginia Beach was one of those subject to Trump’s sabotage. It is already halfway completed, with hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure already built, and was set to power a couple hundred thousand homes. Madness.

“EEG revealed significant differences in brain connectivity: Brain-only participants exhibited the strongest, most distributed networks…LLM users displayed the weakest connectivity. Cognitive activity scaled down in relation to external tool use…Brain (only) users exhibited higher memory recall…”

Said the river: Imagine everything you can imagine, then keep on going ~Mary Oliver With our Greetings to all the Heroneers of the World. 💙

When tasked with playing games of visual telephone, #AI systems tend to converge on stock photo defaults such as sporting celebrations, pompously decorated dining rooms, sunset shorelines, a rainy romantic evening in Paris, Gothic cathedrals, and opulent bedrooms. https://scim.ag/4pKh7FG

Honestly im shocked Well Not that shocked

🚨🚨 SCOOP @ms.now : The Department of Veteran Affairs has quietly implemented its abortion ban following a DOJ memo issued last week. This will affect 9 million veterans and their dependents, and has been a long time coming: It was outlined in Project 2025. Read/share 👇

Academics and technologists are sounding the alarm about a growing crisis in scholarship as we know it: AI-generated citations of nonexistent papers that have infested real journals. Despite being fake, the sources are widely assumed to be authentic the more they appear in published literature.

“They study not only the artifacts, but also the hands that forged them, the minds that conceived them and the hearts that loved them. Behind every object there is a person, a soul and a community…it gives a voice to the silence of history, restoring dignity to the forgotten”

not that the present economic picture is rosy, but i do think that popular culture — and specifically nostalgia bait television — is a big part of the reason that our public memory of the 1970s, 1980s and even 1990s seems to miss the real economic pain that marked each of those decades.

I think this post nails the actual problem, for researchers at least—AI hallucinations would simply not be a problem in academic work if we’d not normalized citation-as-signaling rather than actual engagement—you can only cite a fake paper if you’re not in the habit of reading the papers you cite

Nobody works this hard for this long to cover up something this bad unless they are guilty.

“My change of mind in 2025 is that democracy, far from being the natural twin of capitalism, has to watch it like a hawk… The problem is the attitude that business instils in people: that everyone is negotiable, that a so-called extremist must just be bluffing.” www.ft.com/content/36c2...

We spoke to a dozen professional concept artists who are currently or have previously worked in game development about whether generative AI image tools have made their jobs any easier. Zero said it did. Most said it made things harder. thisweekinvideogames.com/feature/conc...

On the theme of, "American planners regulate the wrong things," we should have much stricter regulations on noise-proofing apartments. It's the sort of issue regulation is meant to handle: it's difficult for most consumer to assess it before making a decision, and it really impacts qualify of life.

worst trend of the last 5 years has been every part of the internet getting more “for you page”-y in the sense that it will show popular posts to Every Person on The Website instead of a small niche. End result is nobody interacting knows basic background of the topic or even bothers to read details

this field biologist does a great job highlighting the insidiousness of AI editing these one-click AI edit buttons are incredibly appealing to many photographers, amateurs and professionals alike, and are framed as innocuous this is worth sharing and educating people about

a leader can’t ignore public opinion, but a leader can’t also be subservient to it

The "unaccountable" NIH and NSF just produced, over the last 80 years, the greatest innovation machine the world has ever known. By the logic today, NIH and NSF are dead in the water too, replaced by presidential direction of grants to whomever he wants — his cronies.

not sure how to square ‘no one person can be reasonably expected to pay for every media subscription’ with ‘sorely underpaid writers need to make a living’ but my inclination is not to locate that problem with any of the broke ass people on either end of the complaint

Column worth reading, by former two-term GOP governor who discovers that Harvard is not the hellscape of intolerance and group-think that the MAGA and its media are constantly telling him about. (Think of parallels in so many other realms.) www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

But y'know what's priceless? Having a sense of personal style and not being swayed by trends.

Simply amazing that the Supreme Court declared an end to legal race discrimination in the affirmative action case two years ago and now allows overt racism in both immigration arrests and redistricting. Using race to help minorities? Bad. Using it to discriminate against them? Very, very good.

“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” - Garry Kasparov

“She showed up as scheduled, and when she arrived, officers were asking everyone what country they were from, and if they said a certain country, they were told to step out of line and that their oath ceremonies were canceled.” www.wgbh.org/news/local/2... @gbhnews.bsky.social

I'm going to keep saying this in my effort to speak it into reality: Supreme Court should have at least 100 Justices with rotating panels (and maybe an en banc option). No single Justice should have so much power and they shouldn't be names everyone knows.

I am a woman who joined the Let’s Rethink Chicks Having The Right To Vote Party and I am concerned they do not take me completely seriously, somebody please help me

To be very clear, Kennedy's team is messing with a vaccine which has led to a 99 percent drop in the incidence of hepatitis B, which kills, early and painfully, 25 percent of the people who get it as children. lnk.thebulwark.com/3Xt957M

After becoming a congressional leader, a politician’s stock portfolio beats out those of peers by 47 (!!!) percentage points a year through trades timed around bills and firms that later get government contracts www.nber.org/papers/w34524 via @florianederer.bsky.social

if you like something about a person, tell them if you love something about a person, tell them make it awkward if you have to 💗

there is no legitimate definition of the term "democracy" under which maps like these are "democratic." this level of stovepiping is banana republic shit. this is effectively no different from stuffing a ballot box

Correct. Do not memory-hole the fact that Marin County was the antivax capital of the country before Trump.

Unfortunately, in US journalism it is considered neutral to spread a lie, but it is considered "biased" to call out a lie. So, there is a structural asymmetry that rewards colorful lies with virality.

Please understand, if you are not in higher ed in the US, that this is a playbook that is so common that instructors brace for it (and you can see that in the feedback to the paper, which for sure took more time than the original submission did, & probably at least one meeting)

I don't recall where I found this, but I'd say this looks about right.

Excellent question and it so happens that back in August our editors picked five books each to make a reading list: www.liberalcurrents.com/the-liberal-... Now, at the time, we did that as a post for patrons only. But you know what, let's make it public today. 🍾

useful reflections in this thread

Nope. Nope. When I actually need to know, a person I respect will tell me.