Honestly a little disappointed by the dearth of Donnie Darko imagery after last night's Super Bowl announcement. #WhatADragItIsGettingOld

Today's article is about a form of bad-faith speech somewhat akin to bullshit, which I'm calling (because why not) wank. I don't quite think I've focused the ideas down as much as I can, but I think it says some interesting things regardless:

Computer Science is in many ways applied philosophy of language and thus—like Mathematics—not a Science at all, but more properly a practically useful branch of the Humanities.

All politics posting should take place on the only good and actively pro-social social media platform: Strava.

I came up with a new line that I like. We don’t do science to get stuff, we get stuff because we do science

Promo video for the recent HSBC and IBM Quantum breakthrough in finance, if it was directed by Scott Aaronson. scottaaronson.blog?p=9170

One of these days, I’m (Jordan) going to learn how this sport works.

I'm kind of appalled by how often I go into one of the public bathrooms on campus and somebody is in a stall watching videos on their phone with the sound way up. What the hell, people?

CHILDREN OF DUNE (1976):

Last night was the "Back to School" event where I went through a condensed version of The Pip's daily class schedule. From which I learned two things: 1) Niskayuna HS is a sprawling maze 2) All his teachers are younger than I am.

none of my friends have yet been brave enough to adopt Caesar/Caesar as their pronouns

By many independent standards, Mississippi’s educational standards now exceed California’s. Illiteracy is a policy choice. www.theargumentmag.com/p/illiteracy...

We did a potluck lunch in the department today, which was an excuse to dust off the recipe for Grad School Chicken Creole: chadorzel.com/principles/2...

I wrote a bit about an unusually good comparison between This Site and That Other One, and the big blind spot in all of this: chadorzel.substack.com/p/theres-mor...

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Somebody compiled a list of Patio Hall Of Fame albums. Humbled and grateful, though the list is incomplete and not wholly accurate. Still, an epic and necessary undertaking. www.albumoftheyear.org/user/laszlo-...

the freakiest diorama at the NYC Natural History museum IS REAL

Easily one of the top 2 members of the Catholic clergy who famously supports Chicago area sports teams

Just to follow up on this, Judge has been IBBed more this season than any other team. He has 34. The Dodgers have 33.

RYAN FITZGERALD GOING FULL KEANU REEVES MY GOODNESS

I was about to make a derisive reference to the late-night kerfuffle as "Jimmy-gate," but on reflection, that seems like it should be saved for something more prurient...

Urbain Le Verrier: sir, I have predicted the location of a heretofore unknown celestial body due to the perturbations of Uranus Arago, Director of the Paris Observatory: the perturbations of my WHAT

The mark of a great English actor is being able to play posh when born lower class and being able to play an American when born in the upper class.

The Trump Administration does not do stupid things as part of a genius plan. The Trump Administration does stupid things because it is, in many ways, stupid. Evil and stupid so often go together like peanut butter and jelly, but, you know, evil and stupid.

politics writers are bad at their jobs because they are entertainment writers

I would’ve had a happy life as a serf but they took that away from us 😤

The one rapture adjacent thing I’m starting to believe in is that both Trump and Mr. Beast do increasingly sort of give me Antichrist vibes.

The great thing about Rosh Hashanah and Fat Bear Week starting the same day is apples and honey is completely appropriate for both

Physics: Answering the Important Questions since 1632: physics.aps.org/articles/v18...

sorry, i'm not going to get negatively polarized into liking tylenol. i'm an advil girlie and always will be

far and away the most compelling argument for pro-natalist policy is how fucking dysfunctional greying countries are becoming politically. can't cut elderly benefits. can't raise taxes. can't let in workers. no throw only fetch politics until something collapses.

This is how the first wearable quantum computer will look like.

when computer people say something has a ‘simple solution’ half the time it’s “change two things in system settings” and the other half it’s “first, install Linux”

So… since we pretend like we don’t care about being the forgotten generation but really are filled with angst without it… what are our most GenX gripes? I’m at the stage of complaining about teenagers never leaving their houses and getting into trouble like my friends and I did.

“Evil corrupt theocracy that is also 100% right about the evil demons” is a funnily common setting in genre fiction, but most of it doesn’t really acknowledge this sort of tension. “Yeah man, my bad about like casting our lot in with the Ruinous Powers thing. Fr tho, how was I supposed to know!”

Every so often I see people complaining about the Discover tab pushing them weird porn and look there to see what they're talking about, but just find more of the same non-pornographic stuff I see in my regular feed. I'm sort of half relieved and half disappointed that it thinks I'm THAT boring...

If you have two followers, you are ahead of half of all Bluesky accounts. If you have 400 followers, you are in the top 1%. bsky.jazco.dev/stats

If you have my number, you can do this. I mean, give me the heads up, but still.

Oh no, Otto is doing drone strikes now.

What movie do you consider "perfect"?

The Pip's travel team played under the lights last night, which means a lot of the photos ended up with significant motion blur because of slower shutter speeds. Every now and then, though, I end up really liking the effect:

🧪⚛️. Stand back, folks! A lunar 3He mining startup just got the backing of “Big Dil Fridge”! gizmodo.com/moon-helium-...

corollary to "personnel is policy" worth more empirical testing/theorizing: "policy is personnel"" meaning that certain types of people are attracted to certain types of jobs, & that by changing the type of work done, you can change the type of personnel, & the nature of agency, without law change

*inventing Bluetooth* Well, it works about 60% of the time. That’ll probably be good enough forever.

An fyi for foreigners like me: in many American schools they get taught a "fact/opinion" dichotomy whose part of the point of which is to encourage a kind of live and let live attitude about opinions, no disputing taste kinda thing. That is the background against which things like this make sense.

To be fair, if you were to make a list of people who have ever walked this Earth who would've wanted this, Stan Lee is definitely on it.

37 strikeouts on 39 at-bats means he successfully hit the ball into fair territory twice. This is one of the best athletes on the planet against the lowest level of minor league competition. And I bet like 20% of guys think they could hit a major league home run if they had enough chances

Today in "Oh, My Sweet Summer Child..." (or possibly "Well, Bless Your Heart..."):

And if you take whatever the owl on the right in the second row had, seek immediate medical attention.

I set out to avoid the News by writing about academia, but it got dark: The function of higher education is split between credentialing and actual education, and the angst around academia mostly oozes from the gap between them: open.substack.com/pub/chadorze...