Piece of shit. This is a small state and I hope this stain shames him everywhere he goes.

In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.

The random delights you find online! I just watched Waiting for Godot (on youtube with my high schooler). I read the play as an angsty teen and freaking LOVED it. It was ok the second time. But, this review is *chefs kiss*

Vaccination during pregnancy was associated with lowered maternal risks of COVID infection, stillbirth, preterm birth (including a 34% lower risk of severe preterm birth before 28 weeks), neonatal intensive care admission, & congenital anomalies 1/2

I can’t believe I’m watching interviews of city mayors talking about how they are coordinating with other mayors to discuss how to protect their residents FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES I know we are “used to it” but it is absolutely insane

Physics/math hive mind, I get this question from students and never feel like I am giving a satisfying answer: how do I think about radians, dimensionally? 🧪🔭⚛️

I interrupt all the misery in this world for 90 seconds on whether chili is soup.

rewatching NETWORK for a project 👀 and it is absolutely shocking how prescient this film is. it’s like paddy chayefsky was granted a vision of america in 2025 and he furiously tried to turn what he saw into something intelligible to viewers in the 1970s

Damn. Clairvoyance is a curse.

Dear @ukri.org, I think JJ Thomson nailed the perils of having Government agencies use “clear eyes” to decide where to focus research funding to maximise benefit to society. 🧪 (www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...)

Let's all to take a deep breath & understand that we have reached the phase in fascism where if they want to declare you a criminal, you are a criminal. You can not magically avoid it, or do exactly the right thing to stay off the list. Fascism must always have enemies, and one day you will be one.

The first week of the semester is always a month long. How is it only Tuesday?

we are however many years into this misery and i still don't know what "teach someone to use LLMs" actually means. like what does that mean??

Next time a student asks you to write them a letter of recommendation, ask them if its OK with them if you just feed the facts to Chat GPT. I bet this will help them find the ethical line pretty quickly. (FTR the person I spoke to was a full ass adult, not a student.)

Sincerely, though, this came from me asking what are actual benefits that genAI/LLMs provide that I cant do on my own with my own brain. And this was the answer! (Also "vibecoding" which, I guess, is worth the environmental destruction, to have your computer organize your recipes?)

I had a very troubling conversation with someone yesterday who suggested it was totally cool to have AI write your letters of recommendation (“to save time” 😭). Perhaps institutions should start requiring letter writers to affirm not having used AI.

Newly Discovered Origami Patterns Put the Bloom on the Fold www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/s...

Let's be generous, here, and assume that by the solar system Altman wants to put the sphere outside the orbit of Neptune, and we'll just exclude the kuiper belt entirely. That would be a sphere with a diameter of 6 billion miles. Let's assume that it has the thickness of an eggshell: .3mm thick.

My own child who is in college will not go to office hours. He's heard me complain about this all his life, and yet... what can we do about this? The not-so-secret secret to success in college: GO TO OFFICE HOURS, ask questions, get help, listen to others' questions... It fucking "works"!

If it’s not leaks on the signal chain it’s papers left behind in the printer. It’s an incompetent kakistocracy. www.npr.org/2025/08/16/n...

A recent comment by an older colleague encapsulated it for me: Before Reagan, the US government viewed the nation as the beneficiary of higher education. Reagan reframed it as the *individual* being its beneficiary. And so the costs shifted accordingly. 40+ years later, here we are.

I’ve never been to Chicago but, I just finished reading Devil in the White City (fantastic book!) and, apropos of nothing, one of the big takeaways from that book is that Chicago is a city with tremendous civic pride. I hope to visit someday.

Part of the reason I yearn to move back to NYC is that I walk like a New Yorker. Do you know how hard it is to walk at this pace in Middlebury Vermont? You run out of town SO FAST. Evening strolls are not possible; People are always telling me to slow down 😅

Vaccines are the cheat sheet for your immune system to crush anything that comes its way. The “natural immunity” people should be its biggest champions. But we live in the cruelest stupidest time.

I am *finally* going to make physical albums of photos from various family vacations and other digital albums. Looking for recommendations for services that I can upload and create an album to print (snapfish, shutterfly, that sort of thing). Tell me, friends, which ones do this best and why?

When people say things like "I asked chatGPT" it sounds no different to me than "I asked my psychic".

Waiting for tsunami…

Yes indeed. Insurance companies use “peer to peer” consults as a delay tactic after denying coverage. They waste doctors’ time in order to create a bullshit pretext.

I’m watching love bloom in the seats across the aisle from me on this flight. Two very cute strangers. She sat in the wrong row. The person with her assigned seat came by “are you together?” because the vibes were strong. And she relinquished to the girl because “Maybe it’s fate” 🥰😻

TLDR; but did you know that until 1978 airlines prices were heavily regulated? Basically prices were fixed by the government. Airlines couldn’t compete on price so they competed on service. Close your eyes and try to imagine!

Today, I learned you can select Nate Bargatze as the Waze navigation voice. It is quite charming.

This is consumer abuse and should be incorporated into the rest of the “right to repair” vision. I hope there is a big class action. People have real damages having to replace what Google took from them.

Settling in with a cozy dystopian novel for this 3 hour wait at the DMV 💫

No matter what you’re studying, you should be able to reduce it to the simple harmonic oscillator. Seriously, everything is either a spherical cow or a simple harmonic oscillator.

Gulp.

Look, the enemy of my enemy is still my enemy. But in this case, I want Musk to go down.

I went to bed thinking ‘Trump lost a big court case on tariffs so he’s going to be mad and do something extra mean today’ I grew up in a sweet and gentle home so I don’t really know, but I sense this must be a little like life with an abusive parent?

Everything right now…

Just in general: colleges and universities are one of the best things about America. Smart people trying to pass on what they know to the next generation. This is good.

Seen in Great Barrington. I had to share the LOL 😂

This is sad.These were my neighbors. My apartment window faced one of their offices and me and the guy who worked by the window pretended not to see each other for 6 years!

Truly, bless this woman

The guilt and unease over taking a day of rest is something I have *got* to vanquish. Such an unnecessary burden!

Pope Gnocci V 🤣🤣🤣

AAS put my talk (on quasar evolution and galaxy mergers) in a supernova session 🤦‍♀️ and when emailed about it I got a vague reply that it was withdrawn 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️ (from the session? from the conference entirely? unclear!) Disconnected when I call, no response to emails 😬 Alaska should be interesting...

The best fuel to power AI is a balanced diet and good sleep so your FUCKING BRAIN can work at its best. That’s my TED talk. Blah blah blah.

Unbelievably stupid move. These simulators play a steady role in my teaching. Ugh. The carnage is so so so so stupid. 😔

A little rainbow out my window…

Pediatricians say that childhood vaccines are safe. A heroin-addled nepo baby with a brain worm says they may not be. For busy voters, it can be hard to know who to believe.