UC Berkeley Law creates new AI policy that bans AI for "conceptualizing, outlining, drafting, revising, translating, or editing any work submitted for credit" or exams because "thinking remains the sine qua non of good lawyering (and of a quality legal education)." That's what I'm talking about.

I feel like I’m on the verge of losing my mind. google recommended to me this paper written by a physics guy who decided to dabble in game theory during a sabbatical & now claims to have “discovered” that cooperation can evolve in a PD if players can recognize each other, something known for decades

States that retain capital punishment must devote an inordinate amount of time and resources—taxpayer dollars—to defending a practice that does not deter crime or make anybody safer. It's so deeply pointless. Every peer nation has moved on from this archaic practice for good reason. It helps no one.

One reason I hate death penalty cases is that capital punishment is incredibly stupid and irrational. It's cruel, expensive, and serves no deterrent effect. It's rarely imposed, except against a tiny minority of unlucky defendants—and in those cases, racism almost always plays a role. Just end it.

"‪It would emit more CO2 than the entire nation of Jamaica."

Most of Britain thinks net migration is still rising — when it has actually fallen by more than three-quarters From our new 2026 @britishfuture.bsky.social study of public attitudes to immigration, published online here www.britishfuture.org/britain-thin...

It’s actually so funny to see Helen of Troy upset thousands of angry men in 2026 in the exact same way she did back in antiquity.

the natural gas apologists drive me nuts. In California I saw whole Honda Civics running on “CNG,” or “Clean Natural Gas.” Both there & here I’ve seen buses running on natural gas with slogans like “IT’S ONLY NATURAL” painted on the side. They go to great lengths to advertise natural gas as “clean.”

finish them

I now have five students enrolled in my summer course that starts in early July and I need five more to enroll if I don’t want it to be cancelled for low enrollment :/ it’s so stressful trying to advertise a course and just hoping it fills and I’ll be able to pay my bills this summer

There was an attack to try to get me fired for being a “pro assassination” professor last fall (someone wildly mischaracterizing my Bluesky posts, resulting in like 200 calls to fire me and having to get the police involved), so to get this student eval about that this term feels a bit poetic.

cool. Can they mandate that students take at least six credit hours of our department’s classes next? enrollment is still kinda low over here

I know there a ton of people jumping on this like “wow Gen Z is so entitled” but I don’t actually see an effort to take into account the rising cost of housing or ridiculous amounts of student debt?? Like you can’t even get most jobs that start at $22/hour without a bachelor’s

Eric Schmidt really said, in his much-booed AI graduation speech, “if someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on.” Unbelievable

Raising a glass to the 10-month under-reviewniversary of my paper! I like to think the referees are microdosing my philosophy by reading one sentence each day.

Talking to the LSE Choice Group later today about consequentialism and the ethics of strikes. Join in person or online! www.lse.ac.uk/philosophy/e...

Like this post and I will assign you a Roman name based on my current corpus (people with aliases/nicknames).

Very rich people getting booed during commencement speeches is my new favorite genre of entertainment.

The latest in my 10-post series on hurricanes and climate change covers studies showing dramatic swings between active and inactive hurricane seasons are likely in the future, the risk of back-to-back hurricanes is growing, and hurricanes will likely get more damaging and deadly.

did a thing

weird to hear random people from the university of California system talk about it like it’s some utopia. Like bro doesn’t know I almost died there

went to a conference today at A Place With Stairs and began spontaneously trying to reflect on why exactly I am so afraid of stairs. Is it because I’m afraid of heights, or because I don’t trust people not to push me off?? I concluded that I don’t know but I’d rather take the elevator

did a thing that was kinda scary. Proud of myself regardless of how it turns out

well, this is a first: this person matched me on a dating app for the sole purpose of telling me that my rabbit shouldn’t be allowed to sit on a wire floor. And apparently this issue was such an atrocity that it was going to cause her to “lose sleep.” I’m so tired man

it's been suggested that there exist other possible emotional states besides anxiety can anyone confirm this?

THE MEN WHO WANT WOMEN TO BE QUIET 🚩🚩🚩 A virulent form of misogyny has become the single most important force holding together the American right. By @helenlewis.bsky.social archive.md/2026.05.15-0...

Commencement addresses are an interesting medium: an occasion to speak earnestly and profoundly to a bunch of people on the precipice of entering the real world, predominantly given by people with nothing at all to say

Same fucking story, over and over. Thinking of my friends being sued by another author (and former professor at my alma mater UBC) in Canada for similar reasons. Disgusting.

Moving forward, PELASE remember that downplaying the danger of climate change only helps the climate deniers. That’s why they’ve all jumped on this. Please undo the damage done! Please trumpet that 3C by 2100 is catastrophic (and just a step to more heating w/out fossil phaseout and net zero).

Don't worry about us sweaty we are prepared 🥂 💃🏻 💅🏻

CNBC TV show footage of the far right march in London They've just about filled Parliament square With barely anyone between Parliament square and Trafalgar square On the cover image, look at the bottom, there's a giant screen, with pretty much no one to watch it

lol there’s a chapter in this climate book I’ve just started reading called “What Part do Psychopaths Play and How Can We Contain Them?” good question!

Seriously, fuck this. I'm so sick of our profession's cowardice. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

I just can’t get over this one mother who thinks she should be able to hire an SAT math tutor for her daughter for $10/hour

faith in humanity restored

Tonight’s Sunset Over Kyoto

I had no idea this was happening. Your car is spying on you and car companies are collecting and selling vast quantities of your personalized data. www.bbc.com/future/artic...

sometimes I wonder why prospective clients can’t read and then I remember that’s probably why they have to hire me to tutor their child and can’t do it themselves

just had a prospective tutoring client “interview” me while driving though a bank window and cut me off as I’m introducing myself in order to talk to the bank teller. So that’s a first

by Albina Bugarcheva #art

I feel like getting into freelance work needs to come with a disclaimer that clients will try to contact you late in the evening with the expectation that you are fully made up and dressed in your business casual and ready to hop on a video call with them at a moment’s notice

honestly, fuck every single last person who told me that all I had to do to successfully graduate from my former program was “visit an academic counselor” or “read The Art of War and learn how to get along with people you don’t like” or (my favorite) “have you tried turning the other cheek?”

"One study found that increasing the number of people who receive SNAP benefits by 5 percent could have prevented nearly 32,000 suicides over 15 years. And a $1 increase in minimum wage has been linked to roughly 8,000 fewer suicide deaths over a decade."

Residents in Fayette County, Georgia noticed their water pressure was unusually low. Turns out that a data center 20 miles away had been drawing 30 million gallons of water in secret through connections the county didn't know existed. Is it any wonder why so many are opposed to data centers?

A wonderful sentence from this story, describing the video of the man who threw a rock at a seal for no reason getting beat up by a local: "Meanwhile, an unidentified gentleman begins wailing on him."

remembering how, growing up, one of my mother’s friends (who also homeschooled all of her kids) kept locks on all her cabinets and pantries to prevent her (very visibly scrawny) kids from eating food throughout the day. And my mother was just like “huh that’s odd” and stayed friends with this woman

When I see historians using gAI to read, think or write (mercifully few in my circles), I admit to feeling a great deal of contempt. How can you be so uncritical that you do not see the labor implications of gAI for our already-wounded profession? Or who owns/runs these tech companies?

Now, a tiger circulating in a Mexico City avenue They don't know where it went. www.instagram.com/p/DYD2XMZEYdn/

pray for me, I have finally discovered the red button/blue button discourse that is basically a rehash of the red pill/blue pill discourse from like three years ago that ended with me blocking a ton of people who got offended when I said they were stupid and lacked basic reasoning skills