Another reminder that any reporter who writes about a Supreme Court decision without linking to the actual decision should just, well, they should just do it.

I reiterate my quadrennial proposal that all Olympics announcers get a contract worth $2 million, which is reduced by $100 for every word they say.

Kudos to Professor Peterson. This is exactly the way to respond.

Fun fact: the key term used in these discussions is clinical equipoise. Essentially, for a study to be ethical there must be a genuine uncertainty whether the intervention (withholding the vaccine) or the standard approach (giving the vaccine) is better for patients. This study is 100% unethical.

So 10-8=5. Good to know, I guess.

Every sentence in this book would have won the Bulwer-Litton contest.

Well, I guess they solved the online elections security problem. Sort of.

If you have tenure at Texas A&M and aren't maliciously emailing the president a dozen times every day to ask if you can say this or you can say that, then what's the point in having tenure?

If you have to get permission to teach in your area of expertise from people who are definitionally not qualified to adjudicate your expertise then you are no longer working at a university. You’re working at a state propaganda factory.

Reviewer two has thoughts.

Sad news. They buried the lede: "A proud son of the Midwest, Barnett was born in Illinois and attended the University of Wisconsin...He was married to Braver for 53 years." Bob & Rita have been huge supporters of UW Political Science for many years. True mensches. May his memory be a blessing.

A professor who was actually canceled - fired - and crickets from the hysterical “anti-cancel culture” crowd.

Hitler: Operation Sea Lion. Churchill: "we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." NYT: Settlement Talks Stall between Churchill and Hitler

Aaron Swartz was prosecuted by the feds and faced decades in prison and millions in fines for downloading articles from JSTOR, which asked the gov to not pursue the case. The prosecution destroyed his life. He died by suicide in 2013. www.internethalloffame.org/inductee/aar...

Eliot Cohen, quoting the British general W.F. Butler: “The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.” www.theatlantic.com/national-sec...

GPT-5 regularly asks you why you are not citing its work. GPT-5 always believes your estimator is biased. GPT-5 has more of a comment than a question. Sometimes GPT-5 tells you stories about grad school and expresses regret about getting a PhD. GPT-5's mom wonders when it will start making money.

Wow. A group of top scholars at Harvard just sent a letter to its president, Alan Garber, warning against surrendering to Trump. Signatories include Steven Levitsky, Dani Rodrik, Ryan Enos, Theda Skocpol, and Steven Walt. Someone forwarded it to me. Read it here:

This story is totally and completely hilarious.

Waited on Fred Grandy at a Capitol Hill restaurant. Decent tipper.

Show us your writing process in a gif

Paging @mcopelov.bsky.social

The fatality rate for measles is generally between 0.1% and 0.3%. So, this means thousands of completely preventable deaths from a completely preventable disease that was eliminated from the U.S in 2000.

There are 19 *public* U.S. universities in the global top 100* rankings, more than in any other country in the world has in total (and another 19 privates in the top 100). Andreessen's claim is just asinine and provably false, *world university rankings 2025, times higher education

"JFC" also works nicely.

Now would be a good time for UW leadership to get loud. www.wmtv15news.com/2025/04/07/s...

Apropos of nothing, here's data on annual coal mining deaths from 1900-2023. arlweb.msha.gov/stats/centur...

Unless you were already wealthy your choices were basically: - work until you die - don’t get hurt or sick - move in with with your children - live in poverty - some combination of these

This feels like the defining image from this year’s Midwest Political Science Association annual meeting. The National Science Foundatipn paid for a booth in the exhibit hall. But the booth sits empty, because NSF has been DOGE’d, and there is no one left to send.

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool. - George Orwell.

In the first 20 years of the Nobel Prize (1901-1920), Americans won 5 out of 102 (4.9%). Only 2 of those were for science. Between 1951 and 1970, Americans won 60 of 150 (40%), 56 were for science. This scientific infrastructure is being purposely wrecked. Just monumental stupidity.

And then her cancer spread, the quack she trusted was convicted for practicing medicine without a license, and she died, all because she rejected the standard treatment that would have saved her life. What a dishonest headline, @nytimes.com. Well done, you.

We’re already at the point where this affects ALL universities. The uncertainty of losing 10s or 100s of mil of $ in current spending is leading everyone to cut back now on grad programs & make programmatic & staff cuts across many fields. The next generation of researchers is already imperiled.

When UW Madison went through accreditation in 1999, the reviewers wrote: "It is rather remarkable. . . that a state of such modest size and wealth has managed to build and to maintain for so long such a truly world-class institution." Intentionally destroying it is colossally stupid. 1/2

UW Madison is the greatest economic and technical force in Wisconsin history. Medicine, stem cells, ag, engineering, physics, data science, patents, startups, and on and on. Generates $31 billion/yr economic activity, over 200,000 jobs. Gutting it is stupid and hurts everyone.

The entire business model of American R1 universities is not viable without restoration of federal funding, & every individual institution pretending it can solve this problem alone is also not viable. University presidents need to be speaking out, collectively & loudly about this, in DC, right now.

Universities and other civic institutions must do more of this. Complying in advance will not save you. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

From the National Library of Medicine (for now, at least): www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK519...

When Stanford IT staff and a pro-diversity group shared a list of words they encouraged others not to use, it was national news, despite the fact it never represented campus policy. When the government erases any mention, data or research related to words, will it be treated as a free speech issue?

Whenever you hear someone sneer about scientific research that seems useless to them — “they’re studying the spit of lizards?!” — remind them that’s exactly how we got Ozempic. globalnews.ca/news/9793403...

This is just abject cruelty. www.nytimes.com/2025/02/06/h...

I always hoped there would be a payoff to learning programming using IBM punch cards on a Burroughs 6700.

The national press is capable of calling things by their correct names. It is a choice to not accurately describe what is now happening.

Which one does the media frame as the bigger threat to liberal democracy?: Some students blocking access to a building at Columbia University, or, The world's richest man unlawfully taking control of the administration of the US government while blocking access to those lawfully designated.

Please. To a reporter who hasn't become state media. Ask if the ceiling on helicopter flights in DC was raised and if so, when and where the order came from

It’s hard to explain to people not stuck thinking about politics all the time, how ridiculous Trump sitting around signing random executive orders is. It’s not governing. It’s performative nonsense.

WH Reporters really need to stop letting blatant lies go unchallenged. I mean, I know they won't, but still.

If any reporter is interested in learning why the WH press secretary claim about "$50 million in condoms for Gaza" was a straight up lie, you can start here - the USAID report on global contraceptive programs. For God's sake, ask actual questions and learn something about what you are reporting.

“an extraordinary break from decades of legal precedent” is a weird way of saying “illegal” www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...