This is insane. The terms of DOJ's slush fund appear to transfer control of $1.8 billion beyond US government entirely. Unless I'm misreading this, that would circumvent Congress *entirely* and put the money outside of *any* constitutional and/or legal constraints ofany kind. Straight up theft.

1965 VRA roll call vote.

Asking myself why this is so satisfying, I'm realizing some of the anger I have about AI mania is having worked for people like this, who thoughtlessly inhale the latest BS, present it as deep thought, and then use it to impose extra work on employees for their own resumes and self-aggrandizement.

I’m firmly in favor of each and every one of these guys coming face to face with the public and realizing in real time that they’re unlikable, antisocial goons

Memphis Press-Scimitar, 21 December 1945. "[Gerald Smith] wants to preserve 'Christian Nationalism' without domination by the Jews or any other minority group. And he wants America First--with Mr. Smith leading the 'crusade.'"

NYT confirms — with new details: Last year, Navy SEALs used two boats to escort Kash Patel and nine others on what a Pentagon email called a 'VIP Snorkel' next to one of the military's most sacred sites, the underwater tomb of the U.S.S. Arizona. One Navy vet called the swim "horrifying."

Someone with power please enforce our constitution challenge

"The cost of a typical utility-scale battery installation has fallen by well over half since 2022, and by 27 per cent last year alone" www.ft.com/content/b5c5...

It's not possible for my empire to have problems. My courtiers are always nervously smiling and telling me everything is great

Surprise! www.politico.com/news/2026/05...

my favorite genre of international dialogue

Japan is one of the most R&D intensive non-US countries, and RIKEN is its most prestigious (non-university) research institute. If you isekai’d it into the US, it only has the fourth biggest R&D budget in the state of North Carolina, which is like the twelfth biggest state bsky.app/profile/awma...

Conservatives hate universities because they are broke outside the club, liberals think it’s gauche to brag, and foreigners self soothe by making “100 top universities for elite reproduction” lists that ignore the fact that, like, ETH Zurich and Oxford have a lower R&D budget than UW-Madison

Many people have a vested interest in pretending otherwise, but the US research university is globally dominant to an almost unbelievable degree. The typical state university is a football team stapled to a R&D lab with a budget bigger than the entire nation of Belgium.

little sweethearts, you see them all the time nbd

interesting the way the VRA is presented as some kind of imposition from above, and not the product of one of the greatest social movements this country has ever seen

Students calling a speaker a jerk is not a crisis of free speech; it is an expression of free speech. A university shutting down student protest at the request of an authoritarian state *is* a violation of free speech. A free press worthy of the name would report accordingly.

so funny to be doing these stories in 2026, as like your entire job. what happened, did the kids strip his funding, launch a harassing investigation, and engineer a series of mergers to silence him?

first sabbatical of my career and I don't even know what to make of it

February: Gallup says that due to cost reasons it will no longer do presidential approval polling May: Gallup says it is exploring "digital twin" technology that replaces human respondents with AI/LLM-generated answers news.gallup.com/opinion/meth...

Part 2 of the New Yorker series on higher ed is up; it’s an interview with someone who has even weirder and less good ideas than Jay Caspian King (the author / interviewer). For example: rhere’s no meaningful experience at the edge of chemistry without knowing some (and probably a lot of) chemistry.

Oh look, yet another research paper showing that synthetic samples don't work aapor.confex.com/aapor/2026/m...

farmers bank by louis sullivan, west james street, columbus, wisconsin, 1977

"For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints in elite higher education." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/wer...

This is the University of Central Florida. So many people really have no idea how much kids hate this shit.

“Even if you stopped climate change today, New Orleans’s days are still numbered,” he added. “It will be surrounded by open water, and you can’t keep an island situated below sea level afloat. There’s no amount of money that can do that.” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This 1952 memo from the Pentagon UFO files is superb There is no point preparing for aliens ‘because no one of consequence is going to take this rubbish seriously unless it happens. At that point, our policy will be determined in the traditional manner of grand panic.’ 🤣 www.war.gov/medialink/uf...

How unprepared US has become: States cannot send samples to the CDC for orthopoxvirus testing – like mpox – because that division has been temporarily paused. labs can no longer test for leishmaniasis. rabies testing at the CDC was also temporarily halted. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

shaw's barber sign, route 80, shreveport, louisiana, 1982

We should fully fund science.

New from 404 Media: ICE plans to develop its own smart glasses to "supplement" its facial recognition app, according to a DHS official told about the plans in a meeting. A second person who attended a conference this week heard a senior ICE official discuss the plans www.404media.co/ice-plans-to...

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

They’re gonna close down the predatory learning management system unless we put on the best dang talent show this town has ever seen!!!

the absolute size of the national debt gets overstated in importance, but it changes the dynamic when (a) the underlying spending *isn't* being invested in infrastructure, science, and the long-term health and well-being of people and (b) the US is internationally viewed as unstable and unreliable

every day i find an incredible guy (from a painting scroll attributed to qiu ying called "raising the alms bowl: the conversion of hariti, mother of demons) asia.si.edu/explore-art-...

How armadillos gather foliage for their nests

Neil Gorsuch was on Megyn Kelly’s show today.

still thinking about that Goldman Sachs “analysis” that predicted we would be at 120% of normal traffic in the strait of Hormuz by now

It's a comforting thought that our political problems are simply a matter of rhetorical mismatch and not hoary, broken, anti-democratic institutions that will take a generation-long reconstruction project to fix.

Prime with ads. Just how Kubrick intended.

We're hiring a Post-Doc (3 years) at the @hertieschool.bsky.social for a @scripts-berlin.eu project on authoritarian influence in the video games industry (I am soooo excited about this project)! More details here (deadline 31 May): hertie-school.dvinci-easy.com/en/p/en/jobs...

SCOOP: The F.D.A. blocked the release of studies finding that Covid and shingles vaccines were safe. In the case of Covid, FDA staff had to withdraw studies heading toward publication: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/u...

Have seen this cycle a lot of times: Paper promotes the benefits of AI in education, paper is hyped in media/LinkedIn/in AI circles. Paper is retracted as bullshit months later www.404media.co/nature-retra...

law offices, bill williams avenue, williams, arizona, 1987

This means that hundreds, if not thousands of labs all over the country will close. Tens of thousands of jobs will be lost. This is in defiance of Congress's will and in defiance of good stewardship of the US economy. This is entirely because Russ Vought hates science

Bring back the ancient knowledge

Some useful public speaking tips from Freud here.