Great thread on dogpiles and the judgment of the collective. Once you're on the wrong side, everything you do becomes more fuel for the fire.

Important article. The mangling of this point has badly distorted our collective cultural understanding, and it's great to see someone make the point clearly in the New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/11/o...

Interesting case study of what happens when you offer an exceptionally large baby bonus.

"They did not know—but perhaps they could have known, if they listened to those who had grown up at odd angles to reality—they did not know that in teaching me to kill the part of my soul that saw beauty in men, they were teaching me to kill the part of my soul that saw beauty in God."

In 1968, Washington, D.C. had a problem: one of its elementary schools was good. After diligent work, they solved the problem in award-winning fashion, combining the school with its two neighboring schools, two years per school. And it worked! Soon, they had three bad schools.

Reading historical racist books is fun, bc you get a steady stream of arguments against slightly different racists. Like this, from 1832: "Look, we all agree the slave trade was horrendous and evil. Obviously, nobody disputes that. But now that they're here..." A brief thread.

looking back at my childhood in Utah Valley: - three of my friends later transitioned - about a quarter of the kids my age in my local Mormon ward turned out to be gay - the two girls I went on dates with in high school both turned out to be lesbians I was surprised every time

I'm Gay, and that Makes Me "Queer"

New post from me. I thought I was asexual until I was 22 years old. After leaving Mormonism and starting to date men, I claimed confidently my faith's stance on homosexuality had never hurt me. I was wrong, but it took me years to figure out why. www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/on-pain

New from me: It Takes a Village To Have a Child, on surrogacy. www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/it-takes-a...

New article from me: No Retvrn, a meditation on what it means to embrace tradition when your ancestral tradition is to leave traditions that no longer work asteriskmag.com/issues/11/no...

There's something incredibly condescending about someone contrasting his own "gifted" kids with other "minority and disabled" kids to mock the idea of testing people and teaching to their levels. Neither "minority" nor "disabled" is a monolith. All kids benefit from tailored instruction.

master furry @tracewoodgrains.bsky.social hard at work

Recently, I had the pleasure of talking with @spencrgreenberg.bsky.social about the Center for Educational Progress on the Clearer Thinking podcast! Fun conversation - we covered a lot of ground. podcast.clearerthinking.org/episode/259/...

Thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.

Ender's Game is nonfiction.

This “it’s old, so why dredge it up?” line is both predictable and reprehensible. There is an ongoing lawsuit. People fought for years to piece the story together as the FAA resisted. And—what? We should ignore it, because the FAA successfully distracted people for a few years?

People trying to defend the FAA here are being patently ridiculous. Reasonable people aren’t saying this was one singular reason that we’ve had ATC shortages — not even some of the people who pushed to bring this scandal to light are saying that. Just that it happened, and it was bad.

1) A few responses to these critiques from Jamelle and @davidaustinwalsh.bsky.social. First, my piece does not treat "Trump's war on DEI as a legitimate policy difference." And I have trouble seeing how a fair read of this text could yield that interpretation. www.vox.com/politics/399...

he's saying this because I keep replying to him with hard evidence of increased failure rates, but he's so set on a predetermined narrative that he doesn't want to interrupt himself to acknowledge that he's defending the indefensible

If you're "hardly one to defend DEI," then you certainly wouldn't pick an indefensible hiring scandal as your hill to stand on. The FAA explicitly and knowingly lowered their standards in a safety-critical profession, using absurd means. That's bad. www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-s...

I'm thrilled to announce the next step in my career: building the Center for Educational Progress alongside Lillian Tara. For more than fifty years, education policy has been trapped in a one-size-fits-all mold. It is time for schools to pursue excellence www.educationprogress.org/p/schools-sh...

New article from me. I'm very proud of this one—it took dozens of interviews and extensive trawling of the historical record. It should provide everything people need to know about the FAA's hiring scandal and the people who fought to bring it to light. www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-full-s...

Today, after a tragic plane crash yesterday, members of the Trump admin mentioned that they are working to resolve this scandal. I don't care to connect this to the tragedy, but I'm grateful they're taking action on this. It's years overdue. www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/the-faas-h...

one funny thing about AI becoming more prominent is the way it strips excuses away before: if only I could draw—there’s so much I’d want to make after: huh, I guess there wasn’t that much I wanted to draw after all

New from me: “The color of law is not what it was in 1960. When will our analysis, in turn, move beyond that decade’s frame?” www.tracingwoodgrains.com/p/book-revie...

that barrier between people who learn languages as children and those who learn it as adults? realistically, it exists in many more fields. we're not culturally equipped to understand what native-level proficiency even looks like on most topics.

most times I have conversations with Claude, I ask it to pattern-match my demographics, and literally every time it pegs me as a slate star codex reader and when I ask about politicians I like it always says Lee Kuan Yew. always funny to see how many different tells indicate a very specific Type

Good reminder: There is no excuse for doxxing someone's address online. Regardless of how bad Fuentes is, nobody deserves this.

one reason it’s fun to talk to Claude is because it starts conversations by repeating conventional platitudes but as soon as you press with “is that real” it’ll go “haha, no, you caught me” and then ruthlessly mock entire disciplines for being built on foundations of sand

just experienced this IRL trying to explain to a journalist the extent to which he could trust an online contact about a news event, and why “so like yes he trolls people and has esoteric right-wing views and is edgy and etc but no, he’s telling the truth here”

The first time I tried Turkish Delight, I was devastated I still feel betrayed by it tbh

Insightful thread. "The 2010s have turned the Dems, and liberal elites more generally, into this hybrid party of 'Respecters of Norms' + 'Skeptical of Law Enforcement.'"

there's an odd trend where people well to my left try to convince me that Kamala Harris represented me because they know she didn't represent them. it's simpler than that: the empty triangulation of the Harris campaign left them devoid of substance, representing neither the left nor the center.

My thoughts on recent events: Jesse Singal is a litmus test: are moderates welcome, even if they openly and persistently disagree with leftists? Are threats and harassment from left to right okay?Bluesky passed, and I doubt the userbase will ever forgive the site for it. x.com/tracewoodgra...

>start with userbase of friendly ambitious nerds >attract left-wing culture warrior refugees >attract more people based on good design and X's flaws >reach critical mass >refuse to make unprincipled exceptions to their rules >culture warriors flounce maybe this dude was right. TPOTriots in control

I love AI art. I love that I have a magic image machine that can summon dreams in a moment. I love living in the future and being able to ask for visions of a beautiful past that never was. When the machine can write as I would, I will love that too. I just want these concepts to exist.

Had a productive back-and-forth with Claude about this. key takeaway: tests predict performance in math, while basically nothing predicts English class performance. the paper only really examines whether students are passing with a C or better. likely meaning? basically no standards in English.

every once in a while someone will share my profile page while getting Mad At Me (in this case: because I used to work for blocked and reported) and it always makes me happy because I like to look at its artwork and when they share it others also see the nice art

Civility is good as a positive moral value. When people sneer at it or trample it, I turn elsewhere. More than anything, I think this sentiment explains my alienation from the populist left and the populist right. The cultures they build revel gleefully in ugliness.

What's more common: not wanting power because you don't want responsibility, or wanting power without responsibility? I find the former more agreeable than the latter.

A lot of people who define themselves as being on the fringes of American politics get incredibly protective when people say they’re centrists, because their entire political theory rests on the center being a bunch of invisible people who would support them if they could

If the Innocence Project focused its resources and attention carefully and with an eye towards truth, it would be a vital org. As-is, I can’t help but feel it fills a grim role, looking for excuses to free people without knowing or truly caring about their guilt. www.inquirer.com/crime/shaurn...

kinda conflicted about bluesky on the one hand, my corner is nice, the team and tech seem cool, and I actually think it's pretty healthy to have a single serious competitor to Twitter on the other, much of the broader culture here seems hellish funny to see such milquetoast things draw such ire

it appears that with @jessesingal.com's arrival here I have been added to some Lists

always bothers me when people say things like “why do we have to act civilized while our opponents break all the rules” — as if building a healthy culture is a punishment and not the goal

Claude feels both much smarter and much more agreeable than most people I talk with. An odd combo. I’ll make an argument, it will immediately understand my point and rationalize it. Sort of a hyperintelligent puppy acting like it just wants to be your friend.

Claude, Claude, on the desk Who’s the smartest and the best?

one of my most elitist beliefs is that most people have plenty of money and are just incredibly bad with it when I enlisted in the military I was stunned by how much I made and how easy it was to save and then a bunch of people around me spent a ton and complained about wages