We won our tariff case!! Yay!! A 6-3 decision. Much more to come later. Here is the link to the decision: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...

Before vaccines, measles once killed millions of people each year. Diphtheria suffocated children. Polio paralysed tens of thousands annually. As the polio vaccine marks 70 years, it’s worth revisiting what sustained immunisation has achieved, and why it's crucial we don’t forget: bit.ly/3O7neWN

Hm. www.wall.org/~larry/perl.... is giving a 404 (and has been since May 2011?). Archived version from 2010: web.archive.org/web/20100420...

Water droplets on a bush poppy (Dendromecon rigida) leaf. calscape.org/Dendromecon-...

Probably a silly thought, but does this lend credence to electric field theories of consciousness? www.quantamagazine.org/cells-use-bi...

It was dark by the time I finished planting this woodland strawberry (Fragaria vesca). Thought it looked a little spooky lit like this. Hoping it will turn into a monster and fill up this space.

IRS and DHS in April agreed to share info to help detail suspected undocumented immigrants. That data sharing began in Aug. In Nov, a judge said the whole process was illegal. Now in recent weeks, IRS discovered that it violated its own internal process (that a judge already said was illegal).

The immigration case against Rümyesa Öztürk is over, and rightfully so. Writing an op-ed is protected speech, not a deportable offense. Now, the administration must be held accountable for abusing the immigration system to punish expression.

“victims of nazism & other dictatorships never stopped repeating fascism had not died, that it was still lurking, waiting for the moment to resurface. That is why it will be so important to be aware of history. Looking back is the best way to face the present” www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

@jburnmurdoch.ft.com Was Turkey notably less free than Russia after 12 years? Hungary comparable to Venezuela? It looks like the plot says these things. It'd be interesting to see the raw data. What are the starting points? A bracing synthesis of where we may be in any case.

some Public Service Journalism: I took that Minnesota judge's pdf list of court orders that ICE violated, found all the cases on CourtListener and linked to the dockets reason.com/2026/01/30/j...

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Learned of the existence of "We are Bellingcat" from the author's profile, @eliothiggins.bsky.social, which I saw from a reskeet. Excited to see that our library system has it. Put it on hold. Something to look forward to. Thank you, Bluesky.

ICE secretly told its officers that any time someone has been ordered removed, ICE can break down their door. It has been accepted for generations that the only thing which can authorize agents to break into your home is a warrant signed by a judge. No wonder ICE hid this memo!

One teeny thing I tinkered with tonight -- "wallpapers" based on A. K. Dewdney's description in his "New Turing Omnibus". I find them mesmerizing. You can play around here: revfad.com/dewdney_wall.... Code: github.com/fadend/dewdn.... Would like to understand the patterns but haven't yet tried.

I’ve been writing Popular Information for 8 years, and this is one of the most important stories I’ve ever published. This is a humanitarian crisis that has gone unreported.

Impressed with how many reinforcement learning books are available online, starting with Sutton and Barto: incompleteideas.net/book/the-boo...

There are only 45 million foreign-born people living in the United States right now, about half of whom are naturalized citizens. So this ridiculous edge-lord post by taxpayer-funded trolls is suggesting deporting 55 million native-born citizens.

@archive.org Scary to see archive.org offline. Hope they're able to get things back up soon. Another PG&E outage?

The share of counties where 95% or more of kindergartners were vaccinated against measles has dropped from 50% before the pandemic to 28%, according to our analysis of public records from 44 states and the District of Columbia. At least 19,000 schools are now more vulnerable to outbreaks.

Enjoyed this article from @pollinatororg.bsky.social about @primroseway.bsky.social www.pollinator.org/nappc/pollin....

Tonight’s dumb napkin cartoon…

I met Melissa Hortman in October of 2024. She was smart and kind. I heard about her murder in a LA hotel room and it dropped me to my knees. So I went to Minnesota and talked to her kids, parents, and friends. This is not true crime, this is Melissa in real life. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Read this from Ben Santer (very famous climate scientist for those who don’t know) about what NCAR means and what dismantling it will do.

Impressively comprehensive reporting.

One bit of happiness today: seeing a hummingbird feeding on a chaparral currant that we planted a year or two ago. It started blooming nicely in the past few weeks. calscape.org/Ribes-malvac...

Loving seeing these baby plant photos: www.reddit.com/r/Ceanothus/...

While pregnant, Tierra Walker had a cascade of health complications that threatened her life. Of more than 90 doctors who were involved in her care, not one offered her an abortion, according to medical records.

A reminder that seven years ago almost to the day, the CIA determined that Mohammed Bin Salman ordered the killing of @washingtonpost.com journalist Jamal Khashoggi. I hired and worked with Jamal for a year. www.washingtonpost.com/world/nation...

Another book for the reading list. Anyone tracking all of the censorship going on at the parks? www.sfgate.com/national-par...

Say you've had a cooking mishap, the house is a little smokey, and an alarm is going off. Which way should you point a box fan to clear the smoke the fastest? Pointing in, drawing air in, or out?

Finished "Rainbow's End" last night, 3rd book I've read from Vernor Vinge. I liked it. Would be curious to get a retrospective from the author reassessing it with the changes in tech since its 2006 publication date. I thank @moultano.bsky.social for introducing me to Vinge's work via a post here.

Reminds me of "Brothers Home": en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brother.... I'm sure there are many other historical echoes. Adding Goldstone's "There Is No Place for Us" to my reading list.

Also happy to see what I think is soap plant popping up. I wasn't sure if it had survived or not. calscape.org/Chlorogalum-... I believe this one came from nativeherenursery.org in Berkeley.

Something that cheered me up yesterday: Idaho fescue sprouts! calscape.org/Festuca-idah... An earlier batch of the same seed failed to sprout at all earlier in the summer. Too warm?

Talking of which, give this a (free to) read on.ft.com/48JYzji

To Haunt and Be Haunted: On the Exhumation of Edgar Allan Poe Ed Simon Explores the Terror of Being Buried Alive and Americanism in Poe’s Work lithub.com/to-haunt-and... Edgar Allan Poe at PG: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/autho... #books #literature

Maybe I'm being pedantic (or just wrongheaded), but this line from "The Great Mental Models" bugs me: "If you had perfect information, you would always make the best decision." Shouldn't that be "perfect information" plus "perfect reasoning"?

Having fun looking at the submitted code for benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksga.... First time hearing of chapel-lang.org?

When I knew him as a coworker, Sean always had great insights, and I know plaid a central role in a lot of metrics and eval work at Google. I'm looking forward to reading more from him. seantime.substack.com/p/the-metric...

It'd be fun to glom this together with something that speaks IPA aloud: cohenpr-xpf.github.io/XPF/Convert-...

Happy to have come across Project Gutenberg on here.

Watching this online now. Resonates with me as someone who once dreamed of being a journalist. Also credit on the great sound track. Neat to hear of it via a post from someone involved with the production of it. Also fun to see that some of the journalists interviewed are on Bluesky.

Possible title: "blue sky divided". One benefit for me of using this site is that I like to imagine sharing nice photos of a blue sky, which gets me to look up at the sky and appreciate it more.

Gary Larson actually visited Jane Goodall in Tanzania and got attacked by a famously belligerent chimp named Frodo: www.cracked.com/article_4363...

Grateful to get some new perspectives on collinearity from this.

When @wired asked me to look at Silicon Valley in the age of Trump, I saw the crash of the idealism that originally drew founders--and me--to the tech revolution. Selling out the dream will not serve those moguls (or us) well. www.wired.com/story/silico...

Having some fun with the Speech API: revfad.com/keompyuteo/. Source code: github.com/fadend/keomp...