How I’m walking out of 2025

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has stated that the 1918 flu pandemic was caused by a lab virus from vaccine research, a defective influenza vaccine. Let’s analyze what a lie this is. First, in 1918, 107 years ago, virology was in its infancy

Read Jim's whole thread! I also want to add some historical context. During the 1918 pandemic, there was so much confusion because many scientists still thought that a bacteria, not a virus caused the flu (because, as Jim notes, we couldn't even see viruses under a microscope yet).

Here’s to 2026

No woman I know in academia would be surprised by this, but its good to see it documented like this, I guess.

One of the lessons of that afternoon was that, even though Mr. D was literally just joking--a joke he didn't expect any of the kids to get--he still suffered the consequences of being a shithead. I think this should happen more often, to more people.

I kind of like this whole “We won’t buy your liquor but we will air your state-suppressed news stories” niche that Canada’s apparently carved out.

Corbin and Fergus insist on extensively inspecting all decorations.

See also teaching. It's important that the student does the work. Outsourcing to an LLM does nothing for learning necessary skills. And universities having policies to "Ensure students are trained on AI" is complete nonsense. Any graduate can easily use AI.

Especially in academia—where everyone’s job is also to teach and, you know, to educate—this „but you‘ll be left behind!“ declaration (sort-of-threat?) is really misplaced and very annoying. Demonstrate how. Explain why. Reason and persuade. Don’t phrase-beat people over the brow.

Why even be an academic if you’re going to outsource your thinking? I don’t get it.

Conflating GenAI with machine learning is a discursive choice

My friends, I say this with all the love in my heart: Right now might not be the moment for “But we should be TOLERANT and NUANCED about the plagiarism machines!” Your tolerance and “nuance” will be weaponised by the grifters and their apologists. Please respect yourselves more.

A sentence I just said out loud: "Cats, why is the light fixture swaying?!?"

Hey all, I reached out to the PO of my NIGMS MIRA to ask if the gov't shut down, and rescheduling of study sections, might allow for some accommodation to the standard rule that PIs cannot resubmit a MIRA while their MIRA (or other RPG) is under review (waiting in scores or summary statements) 🧪

"A new study has found that eating 50g or more of high-fat cheese a day correlates with a lower risk of developing dementia. That means all cheeses with more than 20 percent fat content, including brie, gouda, cheddar, parmesan, gruyere, and mozzarella." www.sciencealert.com/cheese-linke...

Today, Trump declared that the nation will host the first-ever “Patriot Games,” an “unprecedented four-day athletic event” featuring high school athletes, one boy and one girl, from each state and territory. If you think this sounds like The Hunger Games, you're not alone.

How are people dealing with AI use in their grad programs, specifically for thesis proposal, qualifying exam, dissertation? Banned completely? Allowed, but have to recognize its use? No guardrails at all? We have to develop a policy and I’m totally at a loss.

I can't imagine revealing to the whole world in 2025 that I got a PhD and still don't understand that there are economic forces more powerful than my own individual choices and merits that shaping whether I get a TT job.

Going into 2026 like

you can connect and find common ground with people without trying to force them to think like you do. in fact, what we see from the rest of the congregation proves exactly the opposite. if you surround yourself ONLY with people who reinforce your priors, you atrophy and become a monster

Meanwhile, over at NSF…

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

Go to your doctor and get your measles titers checked to make sure you are still immune and if not get re-vaccinated. It’s more and more likely all of us are going to eventually come in contact with it.

I still can’t believe the National Science Foundation is being forced to move out of their brand new, purpose-built building because the HUD secretary thought his building was ugly. The Trump administration is destroying the best parts of this country, and it will take decades to rebuild.

Panic! At the final grades submission.

we talk a lot about the weirdo techbro obsession with immortality these AI necromancy projects embody, but I'm arguably even MORE fascinated by the terror of allowing yourself to experience deep, complex emotions they so obviously reveal you cannot prevent yourself from feeling grief with an app??

Yup. Teaching is a two-way street. Student and teacher. It’s a process. It’s personal. A conversation of sorts. Believing this isn’t “romantic.” It’s true. It’s good teaching. Period.

on one hand, science isn't inclusive anymore. on the other hand, AI is plagiarism and research misconduct. so it's impossible to say if NSF is woke or cheugy

My students are not my customers. A person walks into a shop, they want a bag of oranges, they buy it+ leave. I check them out, having no interest in their well being or existence. A student walks into my classroom. I invite them on a quest to become a better thinker and human.

You will be visited by 3 spirits

it's fewer. also bite me

Holding on for one more day (of classes).

I think too often physics students unconsciously have the idea that some people have brains that are "natural" for physics and some don't and who knows maybe that's true to some extent but regardless of natural tendency at some point everyone has to practice practice practice

If you feel like you are behind or underprepared, the only way out is through: spend the time on the things you don't know, figure out who will answer your "stupid" questions. Then ask them, even if it's anonymously online Learn to do your own calculations, even when it's tempting to lean on others

"are you enjoying duo mobile" does a hamburger enjoy being made of quarks. does a fish enjoy linear time. does the mountain enjoy the first taste of a cup of hot chocolate when you get back to the ski lodge. your question means nothing to me. i couldn't enjoy duo mobile even if i tried

Last week @theverge.com published my essay exploring the limitations of large-language models. This week, that same essay is cited by a federal judge in Michigan to distinguish the process of human reasoning from what these models do. Very, very gratifying.

Just imagining how much better it would be if ALL news stories about vaccine-preventable illnesses were illustrated with pictures of people with the disease, not pictures of needle injections. If you must show something that people will find scary & unpleasant, make it the disease, not the cure.

Frog knocked at Toad’s door. “Toad, wake up,” he cried. “Come out and see how wonderful the winter is!” “I will not,” said Toad. “I am in my warm bed.”

The thing I keep coming back to about this is it’s the OU administration coming out against… learning

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

These were my favorite candy growing up. Normally my dad mails me some every December, but the tariff shenanigans means he wasn’t able to do so this year. (He couldn’t figure out the online payment system.) Sad there will be no chicken bones this year.

Every time someone jumps on socials and says there is no point to mass protest days and visible reaction in the streets, share this chart with them. The approval ratings are tanking not just because they're doing bad things but also because protestors won't let people forget it either.

It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick. Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.

I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.

Anybody who is like “Piracy is activism!”—trust me, supporting your local library is about 1000% more effective activism, and it’s still free for you and authors still get paid!

AND supporting your local library is super important! If you actually DO want books to be available to everyone, the library *already exists* and is staffed by the people who are deep in the trenches of fighting censorship! Supporting the library is doing actual good for your community!

In a round about way, this is quite funny

Someday I will spell 'Berkeley' correctly on the first try, but today is not that day. Happy grad school letter writing season, folks.