It's not longing for inconvenience, it's wanting to restore agency:

newsletter.danhon.com/archive/s21e...

One funny thing is that a role science plays in Moby Dick is deflating the idea that MD has a specific hatred for Ahab. The more we learn about Sperm Whales the more possible it is that not only does Moby Dick hate Ahab but also, when around other whales, absolutely will not shut up about it.

This isn’t a measure of electoral support, it’s a chart from a gambling website.

The NSF 2027 budget has noted that they will close out the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Science Program (SBE). This is not a good thing. nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/FY-202...

Spectacular high-resolution image of our home planet viewed through the Orion Crew Module window by the Artemis II astronauts as they continue their journey to the Moon on Flight Day 2, 3 April 2026 (pic: NASA)

A full disc image of Earth, as seen from the Orion Crew Module. The planet is a pale blue, swirling with white clouds and glowing slightly lighter blue in place from reflected light. At lower left, a large brown landmass is Africa, with Spain and Portugal with twinkling lights where the planet curves. At top right, auroras glow in a thin green glow, just barely separated from the planet's surface. Earth is set against the black of space (pic: NASA/R.Wiseman)

😮 Awesome views from Day 2 of #Artemis II this morning.

@exploration.esa.int @esaearth.esa.int

This is the bleakest post imaginable. You look at an engraving of a guy whipping a horse that’s pulling a wagon of coal. Your options for existing are “am I the horse or the coal.”

A bright thread running through Malcolm Harris’ history of Palo Alto is how race science was woven into Silicon Valley’s culture and structure from the very beginning.

Boredom began to be experienced in epidemic proportions during the 1840s. Lamartine is said to be the first to have given expression to the malady. It plays a role in a little story about the famous comic Deburau. A distinguished Paris neurologist was consulted one day by a patient whom he had not seen before. The patient complained of the typical illness of the times-—weariness with life, deep depressions, boredom. "There's nothing wrong with you," said the doctor after a thorough examination. "Just try to relax-find something to entertain you. Go see Deburau some evening, and life will look different to you. "Ah, dear sir," answered the patient, "I am Deburau." [D3a,4]

Randomly reading Walter Benjamin’s lumber-room of notes for his never-finished “Arcades” project and,

What’s the matter with you? What’s the matter with you, shipmate?

Disturbing anecdotal reports of "AI psychosis" and negative psychological effects have been emerging in the news. But what actually happens during these lengthy delusional "spirals"? In our preprint, we analyze chat logs from 19 users who experienced severe psychological harm🧵👇

A great write-up on brand-new research I was involved in. We used a really different approach from the ones that we & many others have used previously to estimate how many Covid deaths there *really* were--almost 20% more than known. Our results broadly accord w others but add new demographic detail

Opinion | I Predicted the 2008 Financial Crisis. What Is Coming May Be Worse.

“The danger is … that our financial system has attached itself to the vulnerabilities of our physical world — power grids, water, land, supply chains — and created hazards that markets have no framework to analyze.”

Michael Power at LSE has been writing about this problem since before 2008.

A big city emergency management agency procedural is the best untried idea in television. For years I have been saying this

AI autocomplete doesn’t just change how you write. It changes how you think AI-powered writing tools are increasingly integrated into our e-mails and phones. Now a new study finds biased AI suggestions can sway users’ beliefs

“Overall, the study participants who saw the biased AI text shifted their positions toward those espoused by the AI.”

The Invisible Heel How we shape the world when things get out of hand

Wrote about the cumulative effects of generalized uncertainty:

“People do not passively endure an unstable world. They stagger, pivot, or dig in. They reach out to others for support and test out new avenues of thought and action. This too adds up to a real effect. Call it the invisible heel.”

Order, Authority, Nation Cambridge Core - Historical sociology - Order, Authority, Nation

My book on Marcel Déat, “neo-socialism”, fascism, and political conversion is finally out with @universitypress.cambridge.org! Many thanks to everybody who helped me bring this book to print.

Turkey Attack Leaves Mail Carrier With Broken Hip: ‘I Was Horrified' Two turkeys attacked a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier in Cambridge, Massachusetts, last month, according to the man, who had to have his hip replaced, and neighbors who helped shoo the birds away.

Happy Theda Skocpol Saving A Mail Carrier From A Turkey Day to all who celebrate

If LLMs are doing the lit review and the peer review … who is supposed to be reading the work it produces? Where is ‘original thought’ supposed to come from if all the actual work is being done by fifteen acres of silicon brains in a warehouse?

Emergency Managers: Help ProPublica Prepare to Report on the Next Disaster If you are a part of the network of disaster response and recovery partners, we need your help to build a comprehensive picture of the real conditions across the country.

NEW: Disasters are a matter of "when," not "if."

Are you an emergency manager or researcher? Help us build a national picture of the country’s preparedness, from funding to alert systems.

Tell us what we should be covering.

Like, Qualitative Data Analysis software is notoriously crappy. I’m sure it’s expensive to code and the market isn’t very lucrative. I bet soon you could vibe code something that would blow NVIVO, MaxQDA etc out of the water. It would be a huge boon for researchers, but wouldn’t put us out of work.

One reason this piece is so good: it glimpses a future where AI coding creates abundance by freeing people from having to deal with crappy software. That’s a possible future! But tech execs only talk about wanting to use AI to create scarcity and soak up all value by automating all labor.

W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause | Official Trailer | American Masters | PBS YouTube video by American Masters PBS

Coming this May. A documentary about WEB Du Bois - www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kMs...

Don't give anything an Emmy until it's as good as this.

thank you bad bunny for highlighting the importance of critical power distribution infrastructure bsky.app/profile/cost...

image of a report cover, with a US flag in the background, and the text "The Political Disconnect: Working-Class and Low-Income People on What Politics Means to Them and How They Might be Mobilized”

Today I'm releasing probably the most important scholarly thing I've ever worked on - a report based on talking with 144 people about why they don't vote or only vote regularly, and on what needs to be done to build a democracy that can include everyone.
www.swarthmore.edu/u...
please share!

Prove that you're human song

Could make a strong case that There Will Be Blood is a Moby Dick story