James Holland Jones

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Wars, Star Trek, LOTR, or Marvel.

hell yeah.

He’s still going on about lockdowns and vaccines mandates too!

He really misses 2020 and 2021.

He's super-popular here too. Well loved by all!

“This irresponsible and purposely misleading guidance will lead to more hepatitis B infections in infants and children.” Read our full statement by AAP President Dr. Susan J. Kressly:
www.aap.org/en/news-room...

Meanwhile, here I am, an effete college professor, trying to make my hands more calloused and generally failing. My occasional pulls on a barbell or lat pulldown are clearly not sufficient. Need to work more shoveling into my workflows somehow...

I only deal in the grandest of insofars.

Sorry for interceding in a nice back-and-forth, and not having read the paper (yet), but it seems like the cost matters only insofar as they are the thing that induces the trade-off. This suggests that it is the trade-off rather than the cost per se.

I should probably just read the paper though...

I'm just profoundly confused by her answer.

I asked the class what company they thought has the greatest deficit in system 5; was most rudderless and subject to the excesses of system 3 (optimization). They were (1) quite opinionated, and (2) unanimous. Hands down, it was Meta.

I found that really interesting. 3/3

Level 5 balances the here-and-now (system 3) with the there-and-then (system 4). It establishes the vision and values for the organization. Most importantly from the standpoint of sustainability, it ensures the long-term viability of the organization. 2/3

Short 🧵 In the last meeting of my social science of sustainability class yesterday, we talked about @dsquareddigest.bsky.social and the relevance of the viable systems model for sustainability. Level 5 of that model is Identity of Purpose, basically, vision and judgement for your organization. 1/3

Teaching using R (and other free software) helps continue this amazing legacy by providing tools that scholars from the Global South (and poor people in otherwise affluent countries) and take back to their communities after they finish their training at American/European universities. #rstats

Wow, this is some 🧵

and just like that, I got a request just now with a deadline of 4pm on Weds. Cool, cool, cool...

I write lots of letters for grad/post-doc/faculty. Very few for undergrads. This has always baffled me because I often have 150 or more undergrads in my classes each year (which is a lot for Stanford) and almost never get hit up for letters. I must really terrify them 👻

you could try be so scary and unpopular that no students ask you for letters. I hear this works well!

LSU is paying its previous football coach over $50 million NOT to coach there while likely guaranteeing Kiffin something approaching double that, all while having an academic hiring freeze and budget cuts across the board. What is the purpose of a university (rhetorical)?

Man, I sure coulda used this as a lad. I mean, I still have deficits in traditional manly knowledge…

Just keeps getting better and better...

Liberalism or Inertia? Cass Sunstein's "Liberalism: In Defense of Freedom" Cass Sunstein’s book adopt a small-c conservative defensiveness that belies a now requisite rejuvenating liberal imagination.

"The most stirring contemporary defenses of liberalism, like Elizabeth Anderson’s 𝘏𝘪𝘫𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘦𝘥, demonstrate a combined commitment to liberalism’s merits along with an honest understanding of where we have gone wrong. Unfortunately, many others adopt a small-c conservative defensiveness."

A DDoS attack on Waymo. Some writer (Jeff VanderMeer maybe?) pointed out how vulnerable to pranking Waymos are when they got backed up in front of a Lakers game and a traffic cop tried unsuccessfully to direct cars out to break up the snarl. Prescient.

They're all over Palo Alto now. Their fleet is based somewhere down by Costco, so we always see 10-or-so on Alma on the way there and back. TBH, they seem fine here -- better than most of the Tesla drivers!

Nightmare.

U.S. dams, levees, stormwater, and wastewater systems get D to D+ grades, need almost $1 trillion in upgrades » Yale Climate Connections Climate change is increasingly stressing dams, levees, wastewater, and stormwater systems through heavier precipitation events.

My post today is a reminder that we need to spend a ton of money on adaptation for our new climate, based on a report issued in March on U.S. infrastructure needs. yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/11/u-s-...

AS THE COP3O CONFERENCE TAKES PLACE IN BRAZIL, WE SEEM TO BE TALKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE LESS AND LESS IN THE US. WHY? SCREAMING CROX NEWS ANCHOR: HOAX! SCAM! AGENDA! PLOY! PUNDIT: FOR SOME REASON, VOTERS DON'T CARE ABOUT IT, SO CANDIDATES SHOULDN'T BRING IT UP. METEOROLOGIST: I GET DEATH THREATS WHEN I MENTION IT, SO NOW I JUST TALK ABOUT CLOUDS. BIG MEDIA CO. EXECUTIVE: DOESN'T GET CLICKS! GOTTA GET CLICKS AND EYEBALLS! WOMAN AT KITCHEN SINK: I JUST PREFER NOT TO WORRY ABOUT IT. HEY, WHAT HAPPENED TO THE WATER? BILLIONAIRE: I HAVE MY LUXURY DOOMSDAY BUNKERS, SO HUMANITY WILL SURVIVE. IF BY "HUMANITY" YOU MEAN ME.

Latest comic: Climate Silence

I'm afraid the work of DeSantis has been a ratchet, so we won't need to worry about the way back up. That said, I suspect it will remain a money pit for a while.

DeSantis’s makeover of ‘left-wing’ Florida college has been costly Gov. Ron DeSantis’s makeover of the public honors college has been thorough — and costly, a new report shows.

Ideological engineering is expensive! It costs a lot to change an ideology and produce worse educational outcomes.

Apparently, it costs about $70M to drop 60 spots in the college rankings.

wapo.st/49mrPgl