The misogyny of the Trump administration is palpable…

#MedSky 🧪

Unlike most other countries in the world, where trust in science and scientists isn’t similarly divided by politics.

Federal Judge Vacates Kennedy Declaration, Permanently Blocks Trump's Trans Youth Care Hospital Threats The judgment overturns the Kennedy Declaration which has been used to force 40 hospitals to drop trans youth care.

Federal Judge Vacates Kennedy Declaration, Permanently Blocks Trump's Trans Youth Care Hospital Threats • The judgment overturns the Kennedy Declaration which has been used to force 40 hospitals to drop trans youth care.

Christian Nationalism is a Cult of Convenience

Here’s Trump bragging about making the U.S. a country that no one wants to come to and many want to leave.

The College Affordability Crisis is Real, but the Media is Looking at the Wrong Schools Sturges Hall (Photo by Keith Walters ’11) Opinion By Costas Solomou, Vice President, Enrollment Management Published by the Office of Enrollment Management When Yale University released its Committee ...

"the colleges that dominate the headlines are not the colleges that most Americans attend

their core mission: to serve students from all backgrounds, at a price families can actually afford, prepare graduates for real careers and meaningful lives."

www.geneseo.edu/enrollment-m...

Count me in.

Not surprisingly, when white men totally f*ck something up, they rely on women (and often black women in particular) to clean up their mess.

:-(

In that sense, the logic of viewpoint diversity contains its own extinction, if truth really is the goal. Consider that a researcher in 1952, trying to figure out how DNA is structured, would need to survey all the theories and viewpoints on DNA structure up to that point before making an evidence-based opinion. DNA’s structure was still (just barely) a live question. But by 1954, our researcher wouldn’t need to study the theories of the triple-helix model, or the side-by-side model, at all, because by 1953 the double-helix model had been convincingly established. Our researcher could safely reject the triple-helix or side-by-side models—or simply ignore them, not even stopping to sniff at those particular diverse garden flowers—because the local question about DNA’s basic structure had been answered. Academics do this all the time because we are pursuing local truths. If we are even half-decent teachers, we are instructing our students how to do it too. On any particular topic, viewpoint diversity might be useful to initially survey competing theories, and once a consensus of the truth of that matter has been established, viewpoint diversity on that topic is rightly, habitually, dismissed.

Really excellent logical discussion about the practical problem with 'viewpoint diversity' as a governing logic for universities-- if truth is the goal of scientific research. www.aaup.org/academe/issu...

BREAKING: A jury has found Live Nation and Ticketmaster to be an illegal monopoly that overcharges fans.

After the federal government settled the case, 34 states kept pursuing the giant ticket and concert company.

Now, the states have won.

France passed a law requiring solar panels on every parking lot with more than 80 spaces.

Equals 10 nuclear reactors
Reduces heat island, shades cars

The US -- 800 million parking spaces. Most of them are uncovered asphalt sitting in direct sunlight.

Why aren't we doing this?

This is an important point to remember every time some yahoo politician who wants to defund the NSF reads the title of a grant in dumbstruck tones: "They're studying the venom of Gila monsters? What? Who's *that* for?"

All of us, Gomer. It's how science actually works.

A start.

Want to read more about Just War Theory? Michael Walzer’s book, Just and Unjust Wars is, great philosophy and quite readable.

The Geneva Convention codified correct conduct in war. In recent years, however, we have seen blatant violations of these rules of engagement in Ukraine, Gaza, and now, Iran (and the latter could get much worse). These violations are war crimes.

Hitting a school? Not cool. Hitting infrastructure? Also not cool.

Proportionality: The force used in war must be proportional to the military advantage gained, avoiding excessive harm to civilians and infrastructure.
Noncombatant Immunity: Noncombatants should be protected from direct attacks, maintaining their rights even amidst conflict.

Discrimination: Combatants must distinguish between military targets and noncombatants, ensuring that civilians are not harmed.

Then there is Jus In Bello, which covers correct conduct in war.

Hitting a school? Not just. Hitting infrastructure? Not just. Etc.

Proportionality: The force used in war must be proportional to the military advantage gained, avoiding excessive harm to civilians and infrastructure.
Noncombatant Immunity: Noncombatants should be protected from direct attacks, maintaining their rights even amidst conflict.

How many of these criteria have been met? Not many.

Proportionality: The anticipated benefits of waging war must outweigh the expected harm.

Right Intention: The intention behind the war must be to achieve a just outcome, not for personal gain or revenge.
Probability of Success: There should be a reasonable chance of success in the war effort.
Last Resort: All non-violent options must be exhausted before resorting to war.

Just ad bellum— Criteria of JWT for gong to war.
Just Cause: Wars should be fought for reasons that are morally sound, such as self-defense or protecting others from aggression.
Legitimate Authority: Only duly constituted authorities can declare a war.

Among other things (I’ll let Catholics handle that part), Vance has absolutely no grasp of Just War Theory.

This looks absolutely fantastic! The history of the Voting Rights Act - and all the many ways in which the Roberts Court has been assaulting it.

@kevintmorris.bsky.social is doing brilliant, essential work - and this book will be mandatory reading the minute it is out.

Pre-order this now.

Timely and important research—>

Quiz Generator A local LLM-powered quiz generation tool that creates multiple-choice quizzes from student assignments and documents. There are examples if you are interested in what the results looks like. Currently it uses a local LLM through Ollama. There are validation checks to make sure it produces the right number of questions, and options. I also have set it up to use randomization via python on the answers (when I initially ran it without that almost every anser was B). I personally had good luck with Qwen 3.5. Why? There are two related purposes to this idea: A student who has spent time working and writing a paper ought to be able to easily answer questions about that paper. Yes, this was partially created out of a concern over AI use. I am a firm believer that the purpose of writing is to learn, I hope that this quiz demonstrates to students what they learned through their own research.

I've spent sometime over the last few months working on a way to generate quizzes for my students based on their own papers. I might write up a blog about my experiment later, but for now here is the code if anyone is interested in trying. github.com/reuning/quiz...