Once more, for old times’ sake

If you read anything today, let it be Nikole Hannah Jones’ essay on how Charlie Kirk’s death is doubling as an invitation to transform white supremacist views into normal political discourse www.nytimes.com/2025/09/28/m...

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

What to make of POTUS's attempt to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)? Let's run down what knowledgable people are saying...

Garlic harvest.

This is the same amount as the entire National Science Foundation's R&D spending for the entire field of *engineering* for the whole country. All of it.

This first-person account of bring swept away by the Texas floodwaters is harrowing & an incredible piece of writing.

Five things to remember about war:

Well worth a few minutes to listen to. Thank you @leighfinke.bsky.social for your wisdom and clarity.

Abducting people at work sites - meaning they have jobs. Capturing them at court dates - meaning they're following the law. Blocking them from accessible higher education - meaning they're striving for more. And peddling lies about jobless, lawless, driftless.

I’d think a lot of people would find this gross, but as a Jewish person with cancer it has, let us say, a special repulsive resonance.

🧵 1/9 It could have mattered. Nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds deprived of oxygen should have chastened the world to become allies, and not just for a summer. A man being murdered by those who should protect and serve should have been an indelible metaphor.

Bravo, to Stanford faculty, led by physics, to ask their administrators to stand up and fight Trump. stanforddaily.com/2025/05/22/f...

Please read and share the League of Women Voters of Maine's fact check of Jared Golden on the SAVE Act. #mepolitics www.lwvme.org/node/3443

RFK's the last person who should be allowed to run HHS. He's wholly unqualified and his hostility its mission is the very thing he's famous for. Susan Collins helping confirm him breaks faith w/ decent folks who've given her the benefit of the doubt till now. They need to hear about it. #MEpolitics

An American tragedy in three short panels.

New White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did her first press briefing today and told a number of demonstrable lies (about condoms for Gaza, the criminal records of undocumented migrants, and more). This is how the New York Times covered it.

I'm just going to (re)post this whenever I need to remind myself. Maybe it'll help you too? 1. Focus on things in your control & take ONE action there. 2. Limit your inputs. You can't help if you're paralyzed.

New euphemism for sexual harassment just dropped www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Being a person with deadly, incurable cancer who is nonetheless still alive for an indefinite timeframe gives me an interesting metaphor that helps me deal with things like large-scale corruption in government or commerce. Bear with me for a second while I try to explain.

Calm before the storms. Warm and sunny after two weeks of cold. Tomorrow will be very different.

So, you may ask, why do I get so angry about the new liberal spin on RFK Jr, as in, "he gets some things right, so let's collaborate on those" or "we have to work with him because he has a huge following we need to reach"? Because I've seen this movie before. 1/

Haunting piece. This is how this country treats people who have spent their lives caring for others.

My response below to Qs for this article on “Private Schools Group Apologizes After Claims of Antisemitism at Event” in which my talk was one that made four Jewish students feel threatened bc I used the word genocide. Let’s unpack since they gave ADL the last word. www.nytimes.com/2024/12/15/n...

Yep, he should have stayed on and forced Trump to fire him.

The New York Times had entire homepages full of stories on campus antisemitism hearings. It has not yet written about the biggest human rights organization in the world saying that Israel is committing genocide.

just kind of thinking about the fact the nyt sent a breaking news alert when a college kid said something dumb about Zionists but not when Amnesty International said it had determined that Israel is committing genocide

Every academic right now

Lesson 1: Do not obey in advance. Thread of lessons from my book #OnTyranny. Written in 2016.

Democracy is not a supermarket, where you pop in whenever you need something. It’s a farm, where you reap what you sow. the.ink/p/get-back-up

My department at the University of Cincinnati is hiring a Computational Neuroscience TT faculty member -- Please reach out if you have any questions! neurojobs.sfn.org/job/38445/te...

Picture you took (no description) to bring some zen to the timeline.

NEW: The great Trump-Musk crackdown is coming. And it will hit hard & fast. Journalists will be first. But everyone else is next. I urge you to read my 20 lessons in How to Survive the Broligarchy, inspired by & featuring the great @timothysnyder.bsky.social 1/ www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Susan Collins could easily say: "I'll happily confirm far right picks -- look at my record for crying out loud -- but I draw the line at deranged cranks and sex criminals. Start over." That she won't underscores the gap between the Collins brand and Collins reality. #mepolitics

College of the Atlantic is hiring a Faculty Member in Interdisciplinary Computing.This is an unusual position, and COA is an unusual college. I expect that candidates may have questions. I am happy to talk w anyone considering applying. Please help spread the word. www.coa.edu/human-resour...

Embry Kidd, a Yale Law grad, former federal law clerk, litigator in private practice, Asst US Attorney and current federal magistrate was rated well-qualified by the ABA (highest rating). Collins just voted against as many Biden judges in 24 hours as she did in 8 years of George W Bush. #mepolitics

Quote with a picture of water that you took.

On the left, our two elderly cats, Panda and Apple. On the right, the two newest members of our household. Names pending. The kittens are around nine weeks old, and each weighs about 2.5 pounds. #cats #proofofcat

Taylor Swift as classic physics textbooks, a thread #ITeachPhysics

How I started calculus class today.

Calm before the chaos.

The view from Otowi Peak.

Happy "top 2% of applicants" season to all who celebrate

Took a nice little Thanksgiving hike yesterday.

It was a pretty good year for beans.

View from my home office. 4:01 pm.