Setting aside objective arguments about AI technologies are their costs & uses, etc., it should not surprise anyone that there are grumbles of hostility to technology that the loudest proponents gleefully promise will make tens of thousands of people unemployed

New paper in Nature uses broad study of physiology of extant insect species to *reject* the popular hypothesis that insect gigantism during the Carboniferous (2-foot dragonflies!) had anything to do with atmospheric oxygen concentrations www.nature.com/articles/s41...

We must not forget who has found courage & integrity in these times, and who unmasked their gutless cowardice

The gist is Trump DoJ filed & Alito parroted data using a misleading non-standard denominator ("all over-18 residents"), purportedly showing black turnout had exceeded white turnout in Louisiana in 2012 and 2016 Using more usual metrics, black turnout actually has steadily fallen since Shelby

In terms of playing hardball in Virginia I still like the idea of just clarifying the word “election” (since that was the main point of the majority‘s decision), then just pretend you really are complying with the court‘s ruling as you implement the new map

I haven’t yet read the primary source (will report back), but little pro tip, if you see a bold claim primary-source science article was published in the journal Scientific Reports (as this one is), there’s a good chance the result is preliminary or data is only so-so phys.org/news/2026-05...

Reading the article, Klob says she supported redistricting in California & Virginia but not Minnesota, but gives a legalistic reason, and she attacks Walz over it, and she attacks wealth tax proposals Idk, at least she’s leaving the senate www.startribune.com/klobuchar-pi...

The Va Constitution fixes the size of SCOVa to 7 to 11 justices, with the specific number selected by the legislature by 3/5 vote Dems would, on paper, have enough votes to expand SCOVa from its current 7 seats if they pick up 3 state senate seats and hold their assembly supermajority in 2027

I got to try a red kiwifruit today and it's f cking delicious, so on balance it's a good day www.zespri.com/en-US/rubyred

Just legislate a state-law definition for the terms “election” and “next election“as used in the state constitution, make the legislation expressly retroactive, and implement the new maps

I'm not saying the Bayh-Dole Act is bad public policy, but I do think the Bayh-Dole Act helped break American universities as centers for public-good, and steered them into profit centers that also run a school

In case you're wondering, SCOVa justice are appointed by the legislature to 12-year terms, and Kelsey, the author of today's majority opinion, is the next term to run (in Jan. 2027) at which point the Dem-majority General Assembly will appoint his replacement

The gymnastics here are that the majority says the phrase "elected to each of the two houses" means not two consecutive sessions, but two votes separated by an election, and that the "election" is not election day but begins with early voting

The reasoning for this... whew. Va. Const. Art. XII, §1 says an state-constitutional amendment proposal must be passed by the assembly in two consecutive sessions The court throws it out bc the first passage happened Oct. 31, 2025 after early-voting had begun on Sept. 19, 2025

(Adam published this prescient paragraph on the day the Kavanaugh nomination hearings started, when Jeff Sessions was AG, Paul Ryan was Speaker, AOC hadn't yet been elected, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg was still doing pushups, Theresa May was UK PM, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy hadn't yet been elected)

Another thing about the misleading data calculations Trump DoJ and Alito used in Callais, is the race of voters and American Community Survey respondents does not map neatly onto what one might call archetype Eg, a whole lot of Hispanic ppl identify as white www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

The gist is Trump DoJ filed & Alito parroted data using a misleading non-standard denominator ("all over-18 residents"), purportedly showing black turnout had exceeded white turnout in Louisiana in 2012 and 2016 Using more usual metrics, black turnout actually has steadily fallen since Shelby

What is even the insinuation here? Just saying some facts, but sinisterly? Trying to suggest to followers that Moderna is responsible for an isolated outbreak on a cruise ship?

The trailer looks fine if a bit uninteresting to me? Idk, maybe the sort of project where the audience would permit more artistic flexibility with a less prominent director and with less famous actors

Complaint linked below This is a real kitchen sink complaint, covering everything from trademark infringement to right-of-publicity claim to a deepfake porn claim (!) bc of a sex scene in 'Avatar' I'm not a Cali. att'y but seems likely statute of limitations will be an issue

Walking the dog, was listening to an old 2018 interview with motion capture specialist Brett Ineson, who was one of the leads on the pioneering LOTR mocap for Andy Serkis as Gollum, it's like a distant warning bc he talks about the new tech in 2018 and warns that it'll lead to rampant deepfakes 😭

I title this work ‘The Industrial Revolution’

this is 100% political retaliation, but as fun & fiery as Lucas is on social media, she's deeply in bed with the casino & gambling machine industries, promotes pro-gambling legislation, and recently flipflopped on a gaming issue Wouldn't be surprised if she isn't all above board

"Intramuscular injection of Vitamin K1 in aqueous emulsion" almost -sounds- like a woowoo MAHA wellness thing, which really lays bare how it's not about the treatment intervention itself, it's all rooted contrary-reactionary distrust in establishment medicine "If you're for that, we're against it"

I admit not knowing much about Ted Turner beside all the cable TV networks he founded, WCW, and that Captain Planet was Turner's passion project Re Captain Planet, though, this episode of 'Decoder Ring' is really good: slate.com/podcasts/dec...

I am already guilty of responding to this with a hot take, but tbh I wish we could dial back and at least listen to what Obama says in context. He singles out Zorhan Mamdani for praise as an extraordinary talent!

I found out about the Nolan ‘Odyssey’ adaptation ~18 hours ago and I’m already tired of hearing about it 🤷‍♂️

Today’s New Yorker piece about AI supposedly ending higher ed‘s knowledge monopoly has me thinking again about NHJ’s terrific ed reporting, and how so much ed policy deals in “measurables” (test scores, college admissions, employment outcomes) but ppl really don’t talk about what education is *for*

Last month, this writer belittled No Kings for being a performative detached effort to experience a public event through self-generated social media content, and today he seems pleased to forecast that generative-AI spells doom for higher education enrollment levels www.newyorker.com/news/fault-l...

This is Bungalo. She uses that face to get what she wants. It works unbelievably well. 12/10 would never say no to

Among many problems with constitutional Originalism as a supposed jurisprudential framework, a big one is that it lacks rigor or sufficient theoretical development from jurists & right-wing academics on: When does pre-Founding England inform originalist analysis, and when doesn’t it, and why?

[smug] “I was into right-wing racism before it was popular, back in the year [checks notes] 2009”

“The immunity decision actually shields Democrats from retaliatory prosecutions” beside being foolish is also deeply cynical and presupposes corruption of the justice system as an inevitable fact!

the public East Potomac Park Pool has been closed and in public-contracting-hell for the last 8 years, but Trump wants to spend $40 million on statues in a golf course www.nytimes.com/2026/05/02/u... washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7536...

We tried to derive elephant iPSC using bacOSKM, chemical reprogramming, and those in combination; always got senescent cells. Never iPSC. I’m not sure #ColossalBio did either, but hey, maybe… 🧪 🐘

Screaming to the abyss: #ColossalBio did not resurrect the dire wolf and they're probably just going to make an antelope with methemoglobinemia to give it a bluish color. Their #DeExtinction #DisInformation campaign is just a pyramid scheme because #ExtinctionIsForever 🧪

Update: am told the victim, miraculously, is apparently banged-up but otherwise fine The driver was a learner who was driving under direct supervision of a licensed driver 🙀

A child (maybe 9?) was hit and pinned by a car directly in front of my house this evening, so that’s horrific & nauseating 😥

Sometimes I just think about this conservative dissent from the Wisconsin Supreme Court to remind myself how far-gone an ideological judiciary can get There are no perfect words or arguments that can overcome a judge who is this ideologically committed destroy you

I'm fairly sanguine that Democratic party politics will not tolerate a situation where Dems are so malapportioned, but if you're gonna do something to act, you'd better think ahead about how & when to do it *before* you're permanently locked into a minority

We need a term (if one doesn’t already exist) for ultra-high-valuation companies who raise publicity & investments off their plainly unrealistic sci-fi promises It’s not really fraud like Theranos was, it’s all out in the open gizmodo.com/de-extinctio...

Trump’s Iran-negotiating team by July:

If you could be dropped anywhere on the globe in 1066, where would you go? I feel like California had to have had some decent foraging

I’ve read Steve Vladeck’s takes and Beau Beaumann’s takes and will just admit I don’t know what we should do

The idea that the judicial branch generally has too much power in American statecraft is an old one With the history of the judicial "parlements," the French Revolutionaries & Napoleon sought to defang the judiciary, and French legal theorists have tended to adopt an anti-juristocratic viewpoint

Gerrymandering has always been one of the United States' original sins, but now the combinations of— -Rucho and now Callais, -highly predictable voting patterns, -robust GIS and statistical modeling, and -total shamelessness make it critical to somehow end the practice

William Howard Taft also said in a Nov. 1929 to his brother that he was refusing to retire from SCOTUS despite onset of dementia symptoms because he regarded his indispensable role as chief justice as "to prevent the Bolsheviki from getting control," so Taft and Coolidge were both Red Scaring

If Dem strategists think Trump’s corruption is too abstract and it’s best to focus on “kitchen table issues,” I’d suggest there are ways to synthesize these ideas such as promising to investigate Trump’s kids’ oil investments and personal interest in driving prices up

Idk wtf the “perpetual House majority” thing is about here Analyses I’ve read of a post-VRA-§2 landscape suggests maximally aggressive redistricting could gain Republicans ~10 to 19 seats, plus Dems could crack their own minority districts to retaliate slate.com/news-and-pol...

The best prospect for major judicial branch reform is to go back in time and get Hillary Clinton elected, because a Clinton appointee in Antonin Scalia's seat would coalesce right-wing support for disempowering the judiciary