Nate Borland

A joke scientific paper with the title "Over 90% of children diagnosed with autism consumed breast milk and/or formula mileL a comprehensive cross-sectional analysis of the obvious"

Who did this?!

My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph

We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.

YouTube video by MIT Quest for Intelligence Prof. Judy Fan: Cognitive Tools for Making the Invisible Visible

very cool talk by @judithfan.bsky.social

Lead author Auke-Florian Hiemstra holds the oldest known caddisfly casing containing microplastic, dating to 1971. Photo: Liselotte Rambonnet.

A caddisfly casing with pieces of blue microplastic, dating 1986. Photo: Auke-Florian Hiemstra

NEW PAPER, JUST OUT! 👀

Insects from the '70s and '80s were already collecting microplastic, decades before the term microplastic even existed. 🤯

A thread on the surprising history of this pollutant and the incredible insect larvae that helped us uncover it. 🐛

Let's dive in! 🧵👇 1/x

Everybody knows what a nazi salute looks like. You can’t pretend you don’t know. It’s evil iconography. It’s a racism classic. You can’t have any remaining self respect any pussyfoot around what we saw today. We know what we saw.

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable - but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art. Very often in our art, the art of words. Ursula K. Le Guin - AZ QUOTES

I respectfully disagree

depends on how you're defining the spectrum, most Democrats are self-avowed capitalists and if you draw the center line between worker-owned and private-owned means of production that puts Dems right of center

I think it's a mistake to extend the disgust for this all the way to people in general. Many people would never do this and find it abhorrent, there are specific systems that produced this and disgust should be reserved for them.

OBSERVED EFFECTS OF UBI No significant reduction in labor supply (38 studies meta-analysis) Increased self-employment (301%) and part-time employment (17%) Slight decrease in alcohol and tobacco use (31 studies meta-analysis) New mothers extend their maternity leaves Birth weights improve due to better maternal nutrition Graduation rates and educational outcomes improve Hospitalization rates decline (8.5%) Crime goes down (15%–42%) especially illegal hunting (95%) Domestic violence decreases (30%–51%) Trust increases (13% in politicians | 6% in other people) Home ownership rates increase (17%–26%) Food security increases as does consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables Improved cognitive functioning (43%) and personality traits (31%) Savings go up, debts go down Source: scottsantens

I've been researching the idea of Unconditional Universal Basic Income since 2013. Here's a collection of findings I've compiled from various UBI experiments and studies of cash transfer programs around the world.

This will be a VERY LONG and ongoing thread focused entirely on empirical evidence. 🧵

do you have a specific instance in mind where the dirtbag left demonstrated a belief that black folks' desire for equality is a step too far?

A friend just asked me

"what is the most fundamental particle in economics?"

What would you say?

If NYU administrators think a sit-in at the library has a “significant disruptive impact” on the university, wait til they hear what the Israeli military has done to every single university in Gaza.

The insanity of being a fire ecologist in the epicenter of a major fire event, bags packed and ready to evacuate, watching active fire from my window, while taking media requests and explaining to the public, for the 100,000th time how climate change is largely responsible for this

A cartoon depicts a group of children sitting around a campfire, listening to a storyteller. The background shows a desolate landscape. The text quotes the storyteller, humorously commenting on environmental destruction and the financial success of carbon offset developers.

There’s an interesting story to be written about CO₂ removal and money but it’s not this one.

I try to narrate this differently. The 1924 act was a triumph of a eugenic restrictionist movement that had sought tirelessly to curtail immigration to preserve/promote a white racial order. Immigration was key context, but not the cause.

two more tests, one more project, and I'm done with my first semester of my master's degree program 😤

best way to post

Cartoon of a top-down central state combined with a local network of decisions units.

Cartoon of decisions as a statisfiability problem (decision network) where each decision is solved by a higher-order network (governance network) of agents with their own opinions on what decisions should be made.

Some decisions are best made quickly and locally. Governance can work better as a higher-order network, not a pyramid around a central state. How should we design these networks?

We looked at this with law and complexity scholars and found "effective governance" networks.

arxiv.org/abs/2412.03421

Every time I see this man I'm going to remind everyone who will listen that his career started under Obama where he was ICE's head of deportations & innovated a policy of separating children from parents as a migration deterrent. Obama gave him a Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Executives.

Cartoon with road full of gridlocked cars with drivers thinking “If these idiots would just take the bus, I could be home by now.”

Here’s some common sense for you. If u want to or need to drive in cities, your problem isn’t people choosing walking, biking & public transit because of smart, safe infrastructure. It’s all those people being forced to drive big cars instead, stuck in traffic in front of you. #TheTRUTHaboutTraffic

I always get "bubblegrunge" in my genre tags, which as far as I can tell means "indie rock but the singer is a girl"

to be clear I don't think reducing polarization is unimportant, I just think it's important to talk about how that re-alignment happens. I think it needs to happen in a way that centers justice and human dignity

I'm not sure if this is controversial but I don't know that reducing polarization is valuable in and of itself. Polarization between someone invested in justice and a proud bigot could be reduced by the former adopting bigoted beliefs, but I don't think that would be good for society.

Finally diving into this mind altering tome. High energy lucid rebuttal of the conquerors’ mythology.

Folks, now that @timnitgebru.bsky.social is here I want to encourage you all to check out the *extended* critical AI starter pack because it’s got some stellar recent additions :) go.bsky.app/B2kmVWg

Healthcare and housing are both human rights.

how long till we get raw milk in school lunches do you reckon 😭