List 3 things you can talk about for 3 hours with no prep 1. Scientific racism 2. 20th century evolutionary biology 3. Star Trek

The way you can now put a simple idea into an LLM to have it spit out a bunch of words that express roughly the same idea, but with some random shit added to it, probably isn't good for the whole "words have meanings and are chosen on purpose, figure out what that purpose was" angle of text analysis

someday a historian will begin their history of the Trump era with the Trump Tower escalator descent and finish it with the stalled UN escalator ascent and they will be so pleased with that neat little bookended narrative encapsulation and anyway release the Epstein files

Final one of these is Saturday night (Sept 27). Come join us on this spicy & unique tour while you can!

Today a dream thing happened. I published an essay on Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Best of Both Worlds" Borg double episode in @reactorsff.bsky.social. #SFF #StarTrek #TNG #histsci #histmed #writingcommunity

Is this out of scope for @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social?

talking about the space program put me in mind of a quote from apollo astronaut Michael Collins: "I have said that the best crew for the Apollo mission would be a philosopher, a priest, and a poet. Unfortunately, they would kill themselves trying to fly the spacecraft."

Perfection

Reconstruction bros have long understood that in the American context, "socialism" most often means "integration and equality" bsky.app/profile/bren...

Here we propose adding an 11th criterion to UNESCO’s framework to protect animal cultures—habitat protection alone isn’t enough. Excited to collaborate with philosophers @merikatariina.bsky.social & @birchlse.bsky.social on this! Message me for access ;-) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Holy shit. Italy has sent a naval frigate to a flotilla of boats attempting to bring aid to the Gaza Strip www.dw.com/en/italy-sen...

And remember, the reason he wanted separate vaccines wasn't due to any science, but because *he'd filed a patent application for a single measles vaccine*. It was just grifting.

Hopefully the rapture helps with this

It's not easy cramming this much wrong into a single paragraph, but clearly the philosophers have been making great advancements in fractal wrongness technology. (With all respect and affection for my philosopher pals on here)

My only proposed solution to this is just... rich entitled people shouldn't be on the boards of big foundations or on the board of trustees for colleges, especially public universities. But, that is going to be such a hard nut to finally crack.

I also want to note that 'suspected drug boat' is not a legal category - either something is carrying civilians or it's carrying combatants, and murdering everybody on board is not how that determination is supposed to be made. Especially when we aren't at war with the place the vessel is from?

this is the most Atlantic article of all time

Forums were a good social technology and forum drama was perfectly fine and normal, but we were not meant to have forums with millions of users and forum drama with geopolitical implications.

When we pointed out all of the hagiography surrounding Charlie Kirk, I didn't think we meant it strictly literally, but here they are trying to attribute miracles to him

My sort of crank, not thought through theory is that as MBA brain has proliferated, management of businesses has gotten more and more divorced from the particulars of the businesses they’re managing, and CEOs’ jobs are “business” in the same way Ken’s job is “beach.”

Victor Robles robs Carlos Correa on a dead run with a diving catch and the Mariners win on the double play

this charlie kirk deification is some of the weirdest shit i have ever seen

fundamentally, the modern new right is Schmittian and i'm not sure our contemporary domestic or international political elites know how to rationalize this tbh

MAKE IT MISTER MXYZPTLK, COWARDS!!!

Nice

Wait, they really haven't set up a payment system yet for the $100k H-1B visa fee that's going into effect *tomorrow*?

In hindsight, perhaps we should have done more to intervene when Zuck incited a genocide in Southeast Asia.

“The big perspective change from ancient DNA study is that people living today are almost never the descendants of the people in the same place thousands of years before” news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

What did Google do to Jeeves. WHERE IS JEEVES??

Ezra Klein 🤝 Neera Tanden Despite the overwhelming popularity of abortion rights in all states, we should surrender instead

Any recommendations for a good immigration attorney in the Bay Area /DC that are taking clients right now?

Yes, Financial Times, we know. We told you this shit from the start.

Yoda: yeah hi sorry but I didn’t even like this guy before he was evil and the last time I saw him he was killing children Luke: thank you for your wisdom Master Yoda Yoda: no I’m saying it’s bullshit I have to sit on a log with this guy Obi: yeah I wasn’t going to say anything but he murdered me

Because I’m unemployed currently, I have been able to indulge in the special interest of reading “102 Minutes” (the book about escapes from the Twin Towers) for the last four hours. I am now enraged by real estate’s influence on shoddy building safety codes and am now a Frank diMartini stan.

I will never not believe that this was the moment Google turned to pure evil

We can, and should, all be this guy

bob iger lapping up whatever slop trump tells him to while costco is about to soft-launch five new experimental genders

It is fucked up what they did to the headphone jack

"Potentially fatal taint rot" has always been my favorite pharma ad warning, but "you might irradiate anyone standing too close to you" is giving it some stiff competition

@tansyg.bsky.social asks a simple question -- why does Luke Skywalker wear blue jeans in A New Hope? -- that unfolds into an awesome analysis of both costuming logic and the history and politics of clothing. You'll want to read this one.

hey so this is insane

Imagine how bad things have to be for the right wing hack FIRE organization to actually be defending free speech.

Got to see my favorite sign in the world today

Beyond cancelling Kimmel's show are about 200 writers and crew members in LA who just lost their full time gig.

oh thank god

Becoming increasingly clear we’re gonna have to build a parallel infrastructure for all the media we really love. The reason all of this is happening under the color of law is hyperconsolidation, dissent being traded straight up for merger approval, or fear of harassment.