The US granted visas to Jews but only allowed 30,000 in from Germany a year. You had to wait for your number to come up. Meet Robert Smallbones. An unassuming British diplomat who 'hacked' this system so effectively (saving 48 THOUSAND Jews) the UK government kept his scheme secret for decades /1 🧵

This is it. This is The Great Filter. We've created Sexy Barista Is Super Interested in Watching You Solo Game (SBISIIWYS).

This whole thread is great but I especially love the final line.

*frantically googling* moral arc bent wrong how to fix wikihow diy moral arc fix moral arc technician near me

Low-latitudes in Europe are reporting aurora! Breathtaking seeing the Alps GLOWING red during this intense solar storm. Check out this current view from St. Anton, Austria. Some nearby webcams are available on my site: go.theauroraguy.com/webcams

MUST READ thread before Monday night's forecasted G4 / SEVERE geomagnetic storm. Auroras could be seen as far south as the U.S.-Mexico border at times. Widespread mid-latitude displays are possible. Here's what you need to know to have a successful aurora chase tonight! 🧵 #heliophysics #aurora

Gary Larson: In my cartoon I invented Cow Tools as a cautionary tale Cows: At long last, we have created the Cow Tools from classic newspaper comic Cow Tools

Building on my last reskeet, I definitely think that media organizations should mostly give platforms to analysts and commentators who didn't completely misread this moment. But giving a little space to big names who blew it could be okay IF it's so they can lift the voices they'd disparaged.

Nuanced take: I think it's really important to give *normal citizens* who supported Trump and off-ramp and *professional writers, pundits and politicians* who supported Trump should have to wear it like a scarlet letter for the rest of their lives

This is your reminder that Hungarian-Jewish scientist George de Hevesy dissolved two Nobel Prizes in aqua regia to keep them out of the hands of the Nazis. He then left the dissolved solution on his shelf and fled to Sweden. (After the war he un-dissolved the gold and the prizes were re-cast.)

An underrated factor in "why don't people in wealthy societies have more kids" is changing societal norms that now expect even older kids to be chaperoned by an adult any time they are in public, and to be chauffeured by a parent as their only means of transportation

This wheel is to the boy squirrel the way that the football is to Charlie Brown and it still makes me laugh every time he tries to use it only to be immediately spun.

I’m seeing posts from people (outside of MN) about how US citizens should carry their passports. And let me say that *inside* MN, we are calmly responding to requests with: “No, I don’t have to show you any documentation.” Because that’s how you protect everyone, regardless of immigration status.

wikipedia turns 25 today! the last unenshittified major website! backbone of online info! triumph of humanity! powered by urge of unpaid randos to correct each other! somehow mostly reliable! "good thing wikipedia works in practice, because it sure doesn't work in theory" - old wiki adage

“ICE is doing what ICE is designed to do” played over video of ICE engaging in acts of violence should be the wall to wall DNC media strategy right now

We have an update on Charlie’s newfound love of printing.

There is a new autistic barbie out, but no one is talking about her mother, undiagnosed computer engineer barbie about to get the surprise of her life when she starts to argue with the evaluator that these are all normal childhood behaviours that she had when she was the same age.

1/7 Peter Sagal says here both "Big journalism has essential value" and "it hasn't shown people the good government does", and I agree. But I see a more fundamental concern about journalism unacknowledged in French's short video. He says Trumpists "hack civic ignorance", but: what causes that?

Leftists address this constantly. We advocate for universal health care and child care, guaranteed pensions, decommodified housing, and all kinds of other things that would directly address these issues. What we don't do is say "more white babies" which is what is really being asked here

A message of defiant hope in this difficult time: MAKE NO MORE CLOUDS. I HAVE DRAWN THE RAINBOW HERE.

OK I love this

I can't believe I'm posting this video - but we actually have to have a conversation about the real world implications of America going to war over Greenland. Let me walk you through it. It doesn't turn out well for us.

Do others remember this headline? According to this new JAMA study, the US reaches this incalculable loss annually. I think most of the public doesn't realize it. #IDEpi #EpiSky

Would you like 30 mins that has nothing to do with any of the big important things happening out there? Here is a performance and interview for Vermont’s wonderful show Across the Fence. It aired on Christmas Day but I was mostly offline and forgot to post about it.

If you had predicted with precise accuracy any of our current top stories this week during the ‘24 election, it would have been dismissed as Trump Derangement Syndrome by most of the professional takesmiths.

This month's Physics Teacher has a column about 2-year college profs doing neat, different things students will remember. To my delight, it cites my bivector work: "Students found the geometric intuition easier to grasp than that of cross products, and I honestly found bivectors easier to teach." 🎢

“When I speak about making our city more affordable, my vision is not limited to the homes that we live in or the child care that we’re making universal — it’s also a vision where we make it possible for working people to afford lives of joy, of art, of rest, of expression.”

BIG FIGHT AT POLAND’S WROCLAW ZOO!!!

My ongoing belief: Americans DO care deeply about democracy and the rule of law. Lots of Democratic politicians took Trump's 2024 election to mean they didn't and only costs matter, but really they just couldn't bring themselves to believe the warnings could be real: assumed political exaggeration.

Five years ago.

Interesting thread about history and what we're leaving for the future. Its focus is mostly on bits of danger we're leaving behind that folks might stumble into, but I'm also contemplating the damage LLMs are doing to future historians of our era. I hope they at least know about LLMs, to be wary!

@davidjroth.bsky.social for your reference and enjoyment later. www.funraniumlabs.com/2017/01/good...

The destruction doesn't make for a photo-op like tearing down the East Wing of the White House or bulldozing the Rose Garden, but it's every bit as bad. Generations of American children learned to spell and count, learned the Preamble to the Constitution, from watching shows produced by the CPB.

Casey did basic due diligence here, and it's depressing (and not even a little surprising) how many people wrote takes/stories on the post without doing that.

There was a period where I cited Miyazaki's Nausicaä as a personal hero figure. The story's sense of deep history, the conflicts driven by characters with understandable motivations, the beautiful and terrifying setting, and Nausicaä's own courage and moral focus: both movie and manga are great.

What in the Gestapo is going on in Grand Rapids? Watch this activist get arrested *mid-interview* for speaking out against U.S. action in Venezuela.

This is the funniest thing that's ever happened on Threads.

I tell myself over and over not to litigate past elections, but I do think I should be allowed one (1) free bitchslap on every “Donald the Dove” person in the United States.

Okay, I will preface this with the GIGANTIC disclaimer that I promise I know how this looks, and I *swear* this is not personally motivated: If you have an old #LiveJournal account, and it has things you still care about in it, download it or import it to Dreamwidth SOON. Details:

I need to get my giggles under control so I stop bothering the nice people here at the airport.

The final Calvin and Hobbes, which appeared in papers 30 years ago today.

So, I keep occasionally seeing comments about Zootopia 2, and as I don't get to a lot of movies and often entirely fails to pay attention to them, it has slowly dawned on me that I've somehow blurred together Zootopia, Zoolander, and Beastmaster. It turns out those are actually kinda different.

There's a whole thread here, and it's painful, painful gold.

I had a dream about a musical called "Faculty Meeting" and weirdly it was good? The first number is about someone objecting to approving the minutes without unanimous consent but not offering a correction. This is how we meet The Parliamentarian, our narrator.

Does anyone know the history of human clothes and fur? I feel like clothes are the only thing that makes it viable for us to be hairless (other primates are furry!). But were we furry until we'd mastered clothing?? What would those early clothes have been like?

Brooklyn has some talented snowy artists lurking about. Father Winter making his appearance on Atlantic Ave, btwn Bond and Nevins Sts, around the corner from us. Say hello tonight for tomorrow we hit temps back into the high 40’s!

My college is requiring all faculty to take a 53-minute "online training course" about Hazing, for some reason. I've only finished the pre-test so far, but my tentative conclusion is that college administrations enact hazing on faculty by forcing them to take VectorSolutions online training courses.

🎆Welcome to the Round of 16 of the 2025 Headline of the Year Contest!🎆 Voting will be open in 4 locations for each round for about a day. 16 headlines. Only 1 winner. A reminder of the nominees: bsky.app/profile/paul...

My one resolution for 2026 is to refer to all my meals as either “wet food” or “dry food”