'Texas A&M philosophy professor Martin Peterson is leaving the university after administrators told him in January that he couldn’t teach Plato’s Symposium in his philosophy class; they said the ancient Greek philosopher’s work violated the system’s restrictions on gender and sexuality content.' 1/3
The Onion plans to turn Infowars into a comedy site with satirical echoes of the fringe conspiracy theories that Mr. Jones is known for. Tim Heidecker, one of the comedians behind “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, has been hired to serve as “creative director of Infowars.” He said he initially plans to parody Mr. Jones’s “whole modus operandi.” Mr. Heidecker has been working on his impression of Mr. Jones. But eventually, when that joke gets old, Mr. Heidecker said that he hoped to turn Infowars into a destination for independent and experimental comedy. “I just thought it would be just a beautiful joke if we could take this pretty toxic, negative, destructive force of Infowars and rebrand it as this beautiful place for our creativity,” Mr. Heidecker said in an interview. During a recent trip to Philadelphia, he traveled to the Liberty Bell to film a video in character as the new creative director of Infowars.
Get excited.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/b...
Not even one tech company names itself after Samwise Gamgee or Goldberry.
Wrote about a court blocking *actual* jawboning by the Trump admin... and how the people who spent the last 5 years screaming about how supposed Biden admin jawboning (for which they presented no evidence since it didn't happen) was the worst thing ever, are completely silent about this case.
We’ve documented more than 560 attacks on science by the Trump administration since January 2025. Read more in @jbd-phd.bsky.social latest blog here:
For Trump, destroying the planet is its own reward I guess
Line graph time series of 2026's daily Arctic sea ice extent compared to decadal averages from the 1980s to the 2010s. The decadal averages are shown with different colored lines with purple for the 1980s, blue for the 1990s, green for the 2000s, and white for the 2010s. Thin white lines are also shown for each year from 2000 to 2025. 2026 is shown with a thick gold line. There is a long-term decreasing trend in ice extent for every day of the year shown on this graph between March and May by looking at the decadal average line positions.
Monday ice update - #Arctic sea ice extent is currently the 2nd lowest on record (JAXA data)...
• about 450,000 km² below the 2010s mean
• about 750,000 km² below the 2000s mean
• about 1,190,000 km² below the 1990s mean
• about 1,780,000 km² below the 1980s mean
More: zacklabe.com/arctic-sea-i...
Articles about Jared Kushner's diplomatic role with Iran that mention Kushner has received billions from the Saudi government (2/28-4/19):
NYT: 5 of 58
WashPost: 1 of 43
WSJ: 0 of 40
AP: 0 of 26
CNN Wire: 0 of 18
NY Post: 0 of 17
Chicago Tribune: 0 of 4
LA Times: 0 of 4
Boston Globe: 0 of 2
Global energy-related CO2 emissions reached a new record high, but growth nearly ground to a halt (+0.5%)
CO2 fell in China, India and the EU, while rising in the US
7/10
First complete genome loaded onto a quantum computer Researchers encode the tiny hepatitis D virus in an early step toward “quantum genomics”
The genome of the hepatitis D virus, with just 1700 bases of RNA, was squeezed onto a quantum computer.
Learn more: https://scim.ag/4mCifuv
NIH grantmaking plummeting under Trump
How many people will die from diseases that would otherwise have been preventable
Opening text of a thread by Palantir from X Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible. 3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public. 4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.
Palantir put out a 22-point summary of their CEO's book The Technological Republic. It's pitched as a defence of the West, but if you read it through the VDA framework, verification, deliberation, accountability, what it's actually doing looks rather different.
twitter-thread.com/t/2045574398...
And on the basis of this -- a pure policy disagreement about which he was demonstrably, wildly wrong -- Roberts dreamed up "major questions doctrine" & thereby rendered US law one big game of Calvinball.
You just can't exaggerate how low, how scummy, how dumb, how fraudulent it all was.
“in the entire chain of correspondence obtained by The Times, not a single justice, conservative or liberal, mentioned the dangers of a warming planet as one of the possible harms the court should consider.”
There’s so much to say about the remarkable reporting from Jodi Kantor & Adam Liptak—and I’ll say a lot of it in Monday’s newsletter.
But the most striking thing about all of it is the role & behavior of Chief Justice Roberts. “Calling balls and strikes” this ain’t:
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
In the months leading up to the midterm elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring A.I.-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace. Several accounts have already amassed thousands followers. Some of the posts have more than half a million views.
Trumpist Law Professors: John Eastman advocates for you being disenfranchised if you voted for the wrong party and shot by the army if you protest it. If you disagree, you’re INTOLERANT
Tesla is not an anomaly. So far, 88 profitable corporations have reported paying $0 in federal income taxes last year, according to a new report by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
From April 2025 to 2026, CAISO installed
4.656 GW batteries
1.534 GW solar
0.308 GW wind
bringing totals to
16.04 GW/64.16 GWh batt
22.577 GW solar
8.681 GW wind
CAISO queue is
17.1 GW batt
19 GW sol
0.8 GW wind
0 bio, gas, nuc
This is why WWS will ultimately supply 100% of demand 24/7/365
The jokes were so funny you are now the Chief Vibes Guru at three AI startups. Congrats
Bruce Lanphear's commentary on industry-funded science comms made me wonder how medical journals address what ISN'T being said. @jama.com @natmed.nature.com @ameracadpeds.bsky.social @thelancet.com @nejm.org @plosmedicine.org @annalsofim.bsky.social @bmj.com
blanphear.substack.com/p/the-illusi...
Need some last second #Tax advice? TrumpoTax.Com
Bad news - we'll soon blow through the carbon budget for stabilizing global temperature at 1.5C
Good news - progress on clean energy suggests it is possible to stabilize by 2C www.nature.com/articles/s41...
What does the science say? Neither is a magic threshold. Every bit of warming matters.
An Ohio school district made a teacher take down a "Hate Has No Home Here" poster because they said it violated a state law against teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity without parental permission reason.com/2026/04/15/a...
Happy Tax Day, New York. We’re taxing the rich.
Poor Sleep Linked To Gong Instrument’s Loud, Resonant Crash Can Be Disruptive
Poor Sleep Linked To Gong https://theonion.com/poor-sleep-linked-to-gong/
I don't know if young people these days understand that this kind of grotesque gutter racism was simply not acceptable in public... not that long ago!
DOGE turbocharged the deficit.
budgetlab.yale.edu/research/wea...
