For researchers interested in semantic change over years and decades... I've created a toolkit — lexichron — for measuring long-term shifts in word meanings using Google Ngrams and other corpora (e.g., COHA, COCA). Here's the public GitHub repo: github.com/eric-d-knowl... 🧵

for me, the apparent absence of any serious policy process, clear thinking about the national interest or more concrete foreign-policy goals, or effort to look down the game tree is impressive even by Trump standards (1/n)

I can't look at Marco Rubio without thinking of Faust/Gob.

For me, the most important consequence of the methods revolution in psych is that I’m now more skeptical of my own findings. Everything, even well-powered replications, feels “initial” to some degree. I think it’s a healthy development and hope it’s common in the field.

Venezuela is about profit. Trump doesn't lift a finger unless it enriches him personally.

Here comes the profiteering. How much does Trump take for himself and his family and associates? www.wsj.com/livecoverage...

NEW: People are using Elon Musk's chatbot, Grok, to alter images to depict real women being sexually abused, humiliated, hurt, and even killed. futurism.com/future-socie...

imagining Laura Loomer going to an Alabama football game and thinking all the women in the audience are Hamas

In a statement, an emotional Grok told me it was "shaken" by the revenge porn it had generated. "It's not epic, and not based," Grok said. "It's neither. Frankly, it's cringe. And gay." An emailed request for comment to X received an auto-reply of a rofl emoji and a custom swastika emoji.

The fact that anyone cares what the government of Israel says is one of life’s great mysteries.

My brother got me Master Of Puppets on vinyl and I love him very much.

Yes, the fact that the man who controls the U.S. nuclear arsenal is PROUD OF BEING ABLE TO RECOGNIZE A CAMEL is a bad thing when you think about it.

Constantly getting calls from Joel/Paul/Keith/Marissa/Sally/Robert/Doris from the “tax resolution unit” with important information about my “tax matter.” Must be serious. They’ve got ‘em working in shifts.

Just watched Weapons and holy f*ck Amy Madigan deserves all the Oscars.

Great historical perspective on Mamdani’s mayoralty from Kim Phillips-Fein (NYU Department of History). www.nytimes.com/2026/01/01/o...

Mom introduced me to Hysteria/This F*cking Guy, hosted by badasses @eringloriaryan.bsky.social and Alyssa Mastromonaco. EP374 taught me about an axe-throwing photo op in which a drunk Pete Hegseth lobbed his blade over the target, seriously injuring a marching-band drummer. url-shortener.me/596S

Pope Leo said in a Christmas Eve sermon that the story of Jesus being born in a stable because there was no room at an inn should remind Christians that refusing to help the poor and strangers today is tantamount to rejecting God himself. For @reuters.com

We wrote a paper in 2008 examining how people bend popular ideologies to fit their social agendas. It gives a psychological account of ideological cooptation—such as right-wingers touting colorblindess or freedom of speech for ends antithetical to these ideas’ original meaning. shorturl.at/oCfC4

Distinctions between in-bounds and out-of-bounds speech are inevitable and evolving features of every culture. The right’s biggest strategic innovation was to co-opt libertarian rhetoric to gain greater, and more centralized, control over speech than the American left ever did.

I'd be happy to go to the land of Animals, Suns and Atoms

I’ve made a copy of the 60 Minutes INSIDE CECOT segment. If Substack takes it down, I’ll put it up on my website. I know there are cleaner copies out there, but I kinda like the punk rock bootlegged version. The link is in my pinned post if you haven’t seen it yet.

I see they haven't learned about the Streisand Effect.

It's painfully obvious but worth saying: All those paeans to free speech emanating Weiss, Rufo, and their ilk were never in the least sincere. From the get-go, these folks wanted to control the cultural narrative by eliminating speech they didn't like. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...

Per NY Times’s Michael Grynbaum on X, this is Sharyn Alfonsi’s email to her “60 Minutes” colleagues in full:

So Bari Weiss’s first real editorial intervention at CBS is to repress coverage of American concentration camps.

One thing about the old clip of Bing Crosby singing a Christmas duet with David Bowie is that at the time it was supposed to be “wow look at good ol Bing singing with this WEIRDO” but if you know about Bing Crosby it’s like “glad Bowie made it out of there after spending time with that maniac”

I'm genuinely blown away by how many rich and/or powerful men were in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit. He knew *everyone*.

I’m not quite an atheist, but the existence of Maroon 5 almost gets me there.

I could listen to good space prog schlock rock forever.

What bothers me more than anything about this is that many of the same people who correctly go, "This guy's a crank!" when he's talking about Tylenol causing autism or anti-vax stuff will sit there nodding along like, "Hey, if HHS said this, it must be legit!" when it involves trans care.

Excellent piece. “Pointing out that neutral rules can be discriminatory … [is] a simple descriptive reality that anyone interested in achieving fair outcomes should take seriously.” The idea that race-blind procedures can yield racially-biased outcomes is backed by mountains of empirical evidence.

i'm glad i rewatched this because i have a much better handle on why i was so obsessed with it as a teenager. besides the fact that it is very funny and a great send-up of heavy metal bands, it has the loose feel of a hang out. putting the movie on feels a bit like chilling with the bros.

let me suggest that the impulse that leads someone to run to compact magazine to complain about DEI — "they took my job!" — probably does more to explain professional failure than DEI

Nate Silver wrote a whole article about one of his tweets. His verdict: "I think it was a good tweet."

A million Muslims live in New York City. We belong here, as does every other New Yorker. This is vile Islamophobia from the Councilwoman and it has no place in our city.

The horrifying news from Bondi Beach breaks my heart. May the victims’ memory be a blessing, and may their families know peace. To my friends in the Jewish community, I am so sorry that a celebration of light has been marked by violence. I stand beside you in the spirit of care and repair.

I already don’t like a few things Zohran Mamdani has done. It doesn’t mean he was wrong to do them (strategically speaking) or I am wrong to be disappointed. Our favorite politicians are flawed humans like the rest of us, but for our purposes, they are tools to work with, not saviors to worship.

New preprint in advance of a Phil Trans paper. Outlining a theoretical argument bridging Bayesian causal learning and empowerment in reinforcement learning. And empirical data that kids do too! arxiv.org/abs/2512.08230

Lol. Is this what happens when you ask AI to draw Steve Pinker?

🚨New research in SPPS: Call a dish plant-based meat and people think it will taste worse + looks “less manly.” Sexist beliefs made this even stronger. Results of nearly 1400 meat eaters across 2 studies w/ Salmen, @nadirafaber.bsky.social & Krings Open access: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

There does not exist a hot dog suit big enough nor a face eating leopard ferocious enough to serve as an adequate metaphor for Chris Rufo complaining about right wing media becoming conspiracy addled click bait

The people the government wants to deport are far better exemplars of the American ethos than those who want them gone. This irony—which anyone close to immigrants understands—gnaws at me constantly.

This is genius.

i am struck, again, by that essential distinction between physical and moral courage. whatever physical courage admiral bradley may have, he appears to possess none of the latter.

Trump is a TV guy and a sadist — so, yeah, they probably pick off these little boats so he can post the videos on Truth Social for his supporters to rapture in.

That's the part that sticks with me. This isn't some Tom Clancy novel where they do war crimes because it's the only way they can get at the evil terrorist criminal mastermind or something. Even if we believe them -- and, ha ha, no! -- they murdered low level drug runners. That's it!

Ilhan Omar: Trump Knows He’s Failing. Cue the Bigotry. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/o...

Good to remember that racial gerrymanders can backfire spectacularly in close elections.

womp womp

MAGA isn’t doing so well in the court of legal opinion.