This would have been useful to for anyone who imagined that a bombing campaign would result the spontaneous collapse of the Iranian regime to read

People need to understand how bad, how devastating, how unjustified Israel’s bombardment of Beirut is — it’s not just yet another of the strikes that have become routinized. Catastrophic civilian harm and human suffering that simply must not be shrugged off as normal and forgotten. Stop the madness.

It’s crazy that the vice president openly intervening in a foreign election for the candidate backed by Russia ranks a distant second in insane things happening today.

everything we are seeing now is the consequence of having a political environment in which indifference to the deaths and suffering of other people - even by the state whose supposed responsibility is to safeguard their welfare - is a superpower rather than a political liability

All of this was very foreseeable but lots of people spent the election prosecuting their precious factional disputes rather than rallying to prevent a fascist from taking office and so here we are.

something strange and horrible and somehow fitting that we should have a very real threat of madman civilizational destruction at the very moment when we also have humans on the dark side of the moon taking pictures that show how small, precious, and beautiful our world and existence is

Today, April 7, is Kwibuka32, the commemoration of the 32d anniversary of the first full day of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda.
Past US presidents marked the date with stock statements of “never again.” Today the president instead echoed the language & threats of the perpetrators.

Impeach Trump.

Iran War Live Updates: Trump Issues Grave Threats as Hormuz Deadline Draws Closer

“A whole civilization will die tonight”

The president is openly threatening genocide.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to wonder if he’s depraved enough to order a nuclear strike. The consequences of that would be existential, for everyone on the planet.

www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

Great articulation of my main worry about AI use among researchers (including myself!)

Among current students, a hugely beneficial trait will be the ability to force oneself to sometimes do hard stuff on their own to really understand it even when AI is faster.

ergosphere.blog/posts/the-ma...

From our FirstView articles: A Precolonial Paradox? Rethinking Political Centralization and Its Legacies by MARTHA WILFAHRT. doi.org/10.1017/S000...

Deadline for submission to the Boston/New England Area Working Group in African Political Economy (BWGAPE) at Harvard is March 27. Please apply! @nlnathan.bsky.social @evlieb.bsky.social @piaraffler.bsky.social @scrosenzweig.bsky.social @chinemeluokafor.bsky.social

Link:
forms.gle/7R9PkFWEZTc6...

U.S. Considers Withholding H.I.V. Aid Unless Zambia Expands Minerals Access

Horrific. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/h...

Bobi Wine: Ugandan opposition leader goes abroad after two months in hiding Uganda's military chief has said Bobi Wine is wanted "dead or alive", although some ministers have denied he is being sought.

Listening to Bobi Wine on BBC speaking about fleeing Uganda, it strikes me how much the recent attack on international human rights led by Trump has empowered dictators like Museveni to act with impunity. Wine was attacked and intimidated before, but now they feel free to try to kill him,

Delays in awards and funding calls worry NIH-funded researchers Many programs may be pushed into the next fiscal year, and some could face funding gaps

The quiet part being illuminated: there have been very few new awards from NIH this fiscal year, for some very specific reasons 🆘

www.science.org/content/arti...

First 6 Days of Iran War Cost U.S. $11.3 Billion, Pentagon Says

That's about half of what it cost for USAID for a whole year www.nytimes.com/live/2026/03...

Who knows if AI will replace us. But I'm feeling pretty confident its about to overwhelm us in an absolute tsunami of crap research...

This is the part about the Gen AI revolution that gives me great pause. This is a real example: compare two PDFs, text only, tell me if one copied the other. Claude Code *cannot do it*

What level of task do you trust without verification?

going to keep saying: to keep functioning, a society must discourage baldfaced lying, especially by authorities

The former African minister in ICE detention Federal agency says Ghana’s Kenneth Ofori-Atta overstayed his visa but lawyers accuse US of aiding ‘political’ extradition request

www.ft.com/content/84ea... The former African minister in ICE detention

Demanding Idi Amin-level sychophany will destroy our military and bureaucratic capacity for generations to come.

The United States has just begun a massive, open-ended war — and nobody knows why

The Board of Peace has wasted no time starting its first war.

If you still believe a word that comes out of this man’s mouth I have a plot of land on Jupiter I would like to sell you that could be great for onion farming.

-Zero Congressional consultation or approval.
-Zero preparation of public for need/consequences of war.
-Zero evidence of thought about "OK, what might the other side do?" Next month. Next year.
-Zero mention of anti-nuke agreement Trump voided, or Trump claim last year that nukes "obliterated."

And they wouldn't even have to caucus with the Ds. If 4 R senators came to the Ds and said "vote to make one of us the majority leader and we'll oppose Trump's democratic abuses, while still otherwise pursuing an R agenda," the Ds would be insane not to say yes.

Have had this same thought for months. The Thom Tillises of the world, who clearly seem to think poorly of a lot of Trump's most extreme behaviors, can go out quietly, retire into complete anonymity, and be lost permanently to America's historical memory by February 1 2027. Or...