Christopher Mims

Mark Kelly flew 39 combat missions in Desert Storm

Mark Kelly has flown more than 50 different aircraft and successfully landed on aircraft carriers 375 times

Mark Kelly is one half of the only pair of siblings who have both traveled to space

Mark Kelly has traveled over 20 million miles in orbit

I feel like Mark Kelly facts could be the new Chuck Norris facts only they would be fact-checked and delivered in a stone-cold deadpan

The Eastern Veil Nebula shines in a new deep-space portrait

whenever I get caught up in the hullabaloo, I find it helps to remind myself that nearly every atom in my body was born in the death throes of one of the most violent explosions in the history of the universe -- yet somehow, I am here

(image: Cornelis van Zuilen's capture of a supernova remnant)

starting a petition for you to create an Evil Bump alt

oh now that's interesting

Opinion | GOP holiday photos with guns are the real war on Christmas After the Oxford school shooting in Michigan, GOP members of Congress show us we're facing an empathy and humanity problem.

wow, you weren't kidding www.nbcnews.com/think/opinio...

a New Yorker cartoon by Jon Adams of a woman waving off a server at the take-out window of a coffee shop, captioned "No, thanks, I stay energized with perpetual anxiety."

[nervous laughter]

Pretty crazy to me as someone who doesn’t cover politics to only just learn that this guy is from Kentucky and a “rock ribbed conservative”

Something is happening in the GOP

how crazy is it that this reference is already a deep cut

This really feels like we are at the Bored Ape stage

KEEP SHARING YOUR STORIES about increased ACA premiums due to the disappearance of subsidies. The stories clearly are having an impact, they help people feel less helpless, and they create solidarity that leads to action.

Mine went from $395→ $821. What happened for you?

CRAZY popular, and also a gateway drug to cheaper and in some cases better and less destructive alternatives

this is the way

Thank you!

I do not

Just a reminder that pre-orders for books matter way more than they should!

If you enjoy and appreciate my work and you want a *bullshit-free* guide to the limited (but powerful!) applications of AI that are already happening. here's the book for you.

Is it a threat to free speech when the President of the United States threatens to yank the broadcast license of a channel whose reporters are asking him challenging questions?

I ask because I feel like there used to be tons of pundits worried about free speech. Where'd they go?

enlightening - thank you for sharing

WSJ: “.. If the AI market blows up, the blast radius would be wide, hitting not only Wall Street firms, but also pensions, mutual and exchange-traded funds and individual investors, because of how debt is often sliced and resold across the financial landscape.”

@wsj.com
www.wsj.com/finance/inve...

Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive

Quick analysis of Bezos's Prometheus startup, based on what scant knowledge we have:

Seems like Prometheus and Periodic Labs are betting that RL+real-world = AI that can learn from reality rather than just optimizing in simulation

MuZero for reality, you might say.

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/t...

genuinely curious, how'd it change you to go off it?

This is a @jamellebouie.net newsletter appreciation post.

This was the first thing I read today:

static.nytimes.com/email-conten...

And it led me to this incredible @adamserwer.bsky.social piece about why Musk is mad that D&D is less racist now

www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Currently testing the self help gurus' advice to avoid caffeine in the morning until I actually sit down to work.

As much as I hate to admit it, it seems to be working.

60 Attorneys on the Year of Chaos Inside Trump’s Justice Department (Gift Article) Sixty former staffers describe an environment of suspicion and intimidation within the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency.

Gift link to NYT article about the corruption of DOJ. One former insider says “I wouldn’t even call it the Justice Department anymore. It’s become Trump’s personal law firm. … [T]he American people should be enraged.”
www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

As ICE Street Raids Ramp Up, New Yorkers Stock Up On Whistles Taking a cue from Chicago, community groups have distributed thousands of whistles in recent weeks — a grassroots system people in other cities have adopted to help neighbors sound the alarm.

“Short bursts indicate an ICE sighting. Long whistles indicate agents making arrests. If you hear the whistle and you’re undocumented, said [Whitney Hu, a community activist and organizer with South Brooklyn Mutual Aid], ‘you hide. And if you’re somebody who’s not, you go to the street.’”

this is a good book

well deserved! reading The City We Became now

we run ours so hard, like an 18-wheeler on the NAFTA highway

to be clear, I'd have to sit down with you and look thru your entire work process to tell you how and where -- hence the self-help nature of the book, smart people are good at figuring this stuff out for themselves, with a little guidance :)

yah