Thought-provoking piece on the collapse of reading in the wake of the smartphone revolution and the disaster a post-literate society portends for creativity, science, and democracy "The screen revolution represents the greatest theft of knowledge from ordinary people in history"

Thrilled to finally get my hands on this brand new treatment of postwar Japanese history by one of the leading experts in our field, Simon Avenell! Can't wait to read this one!

Today!!!

Next Monday!!!

Corporations are increasingly using AI to charge different individuals different prices for the same product www.pbs.org/newshour/eco...

TikTok's algorithm figured out a woman was pregnant, and then began immediately forcefeeding her miscarriage and birth defects videos. She tried to make it stop and then deleted the app because it was too traumatizing, but then immediately re-installed the app, because addiction.

Gonna be grim when herd immunity collapses and babies, the elderly, the immune compromised, and even some previously vaccinated people start dying of horrible diseases no one even remembers anymore.

Gonna be grim when herd immunity collapses and babies, the elderly, the immune compromised, and even some previously vaccinated people start dying of horrible diseases no one even remembers anymore.

Your occasional reminder that the positive effects of UBI have been tested and validated hundreds of times more often than the murderous Musk robotaxis or LLM’s we’re rushing to put into our schools and streets.

For those who understand German, you might enjoy this podcast about thefascinating history of Kyu Sakamoto's 1961 song "Ue o Muite Arukō," also known as "Sukiyaki" outside of Japan, for which I was interviewed (along with Michael Bourdaghs) for Austrian National Radio: sound.orf.at/podcast/oe1/...

Medieval Germany practiced "trial by combat," where two parties would fight a duel to the death and the winner would be declared in the right. But sometimes one party was a woman, which led to the devising of a type of combat that would be fair if a man fought a woman. 1/

what do we want MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS when do we want it

Millions of the tiny plastic pellets called "nurdles" are being washed up on the coast of Kerala in India in the latest in a series of global spills. These tiny balls, the size of a lentil, are plastic's raw material. Fish, birds, and sea turtles eat them, thinking they are eggs, and then die.

Millions of the tiny plastic pellets called "nurdles" are being washed up on the coast of Kerala in India in the latest in a series of global spills. These tiny balls, the size of a lentil, are plastic's raw material. Fish, birds, and sea turtles eat them, thinking they are eggs, and then die.

Medieval Germany practiced "trial by combat," where two parties would fight a duel to the death and the winner would be declared in the right. But sometimes one party was a woman, which led to the devising of a type of combat that would be fair if a man fought a woman. 1/

Apple pastry shaped like a Japanese flapjack octopus at Délifrance bakery in Takadanobaba. The eyes are chocolate chips.

Apple pastry shaped like a Japanese flapjack octopus at Délifrance bakery in Takadanobaba. The eyes are chocolate chips.

US army rolling the red carpet to murderer’s plane. I will never forget this image.

earth science at NASA includes improving hurricane and wildfire prediction, just so you know

Compute for LLMs like Chat-GPT costs way more than companies are currently charging. Before you get addicted to using "AI" for work or pleasure, you might consider that in the near future, companies are either going to have to drastically raise the price or reduce the quality.

In Arkansas, there's a state park called "Crater of Diamonds" where anyone can go and search for diamonds, and keep any diamonds they find. More than 75,000 have been found by random people since 1906. This woman spent a month looking for a diamond for her engagement ring.

In Arkansas, there's a state park called "Crater of Diamonds" where anyone can go and search for diamonds, and keep any diamonds they find. More than 75,000 have been found by random people since 1906. This woman spent a month looking for a diamond for her engagement ring.

Facebook has always been a rogue company since its earliest days, but these internal guidelines for Meta AI are insane, even for Meta: “It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual"

Gen Z parents don't read to their kids because "it's so boring." Just 41% of parents now read to their kids, down from 64% in 2012. Not only is this creating a future generation of illiterates, but will eventually collapse the market for books and bookstores. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Yet more evidence of how AI usage rapidly de-skills its users

NEW RESEARCH: Parked cars can account for 10 percent of the surface areas of some cities. It turns out that their albedo (reflectivity) can significantly contribute to the urban heat island effect. Dark-coloured cars are the worst, making the air around them 3.8°C hotter vs nearby asphalt road. 🧵

Let this be a lesson to dictators everywhere. If you attack one of our allies, *we will give you a bunch of valuable stuff!*

This is Heritage Foundation Chief Economist EJ Antoni, Trump's new nominee for Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. And THAT is his Nazi battleship wall art/Zoom background.

Mark your calendars! The 2025 MJHA Distinguished Annual Lecture will be given by Andrew Gordon (Harvard) on Monday, September 15, 2025, and is titled "After the Pandemic: Revising a Textbook and Rethinking History." REGISTER FOR ZOOM HERE: mjha.org/event-6201539

Academic freedom is over. No more freedom to go wherever the evidence takes you. American science is dead.

An "economist" so dumb I had to explain to him how the import price index works last month will now lead the BLS, kill me

EJ Antoni has never worked in statistics collection. He is 5 years out of his PhD. He's only ever written one economics paper. His explicit, only qualifications are that he works in ultra-conservative think tanks & believes Trump's conspiracies about the BLS. Grim stuff.

Gen Z parents don't read to their kids because "it's so boring." Just 41% of parents now read to their kids, down from 64% in 2012. Not only is this creating a future generation of illiterates, but will eventually collapse the market for books and bookstores. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

"Everyone must learn to code," they repeatedly told us

This is literally unconstitutional: "Article 1, Section 9, Clause 5. No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State"

"Everyone must learn to code," they repeatedly told us

I'm also a fan of "Misconsin," "Peanstinama," "Lowa," "Keatnexy," and "Chid" 😂

Trump orders homeless people during a drive to a golf course to leave DC immediately, via a post on Truth Social

Doesn't work at all. I've tried this many times with many types of prompts. It still lies. Since it doesn't actually know anything in the first place, it doesn't know when it doesn't know.

So ChatGPT 5 has been released and it supposedly "hallucinates less." But why use a thing that hallucinates at all? Even if it only hallucinates 10% of the time, that still means you have to manually double-check everything if accuracy is required.

Main reason is the proliferation of smartphones and especially, short-form video like TikTok and Reels, which shatters people's attention spans and ability to focus. And as time spent on screens has skyrocketed, actual face-to-face time with other humans doing activities in person has plummeted.

Content creator who exposed scams online gets scammed. Key quote: "Because I deal with scams nearly every day, I didn’t think I’d become a victim myself – but somehow I did." Anyone can get scammed. You're *more* likely to get scammed if you think you can never be scammed.

To again paraphrase @brendannyhan.bsky.social, we're endangering the future of the most successful higher education system in the history of humanity. For nothing. Over nothing.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to cancel nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for mRNA vaccine development is the "most dangerous public health decision" ever, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm said.

"Conscientiousness," a shorthand for the ability to make plans and follow through on them in a disciplined way, is in free fall among young adults in the US. Previously, young adults were always the most extroverted, but now are the least.

A tale of two Fujis: L: A few of the 100s of B-29s that conducted a fly-over of the signing of the Instrument of Surrender on Sept 2, 1945 R: A few of the 500 IJA aircraft that flew over Tokyo as part of a Jan 5, 1943 celebration of the "start of the second victorious New Year"

On Monday! Pieter Van Lommel (Tokyo Keizai U) on his new book "The Age of the ‘Country Teacher’: Japanese Literature, Education and Media in the Second Half of the Meiji Period", in conversation with 鈴木貴宇 (Suzuki Takane, Waseda U). Register for Zoom here: www.mjha.org/event-6259090

We are on the verge of a fantastic leap forward in medical science... ...but it won't happen in the U.S., because conservatives resent mRNA. Because it is associated with Covid vaccines. Which they resent because admitting Covid was a problem made Trump look bad.

Every 10 years, like clockwork, a third baseman named "Maxwell Muncy" shall arise to play for the Athletics. It is written that each and every Max Muncy must be born on August 25. Since the previous Max Muncy appeared in 2015, this year is the year. #AncientMuncyProphecy

Every 10 years, like clockwork, a third baseman named "Maxwell Muncy" shall arise to play for the Athletics. It is written that each and every Max Muncy must be born on August 25. Since the previous Max Muncy appeared in 2015, this year is the year. #AncientMuncyProphecy