Nathaniel Comfort

Home. omw back from beautiful Madison, WI, where I gave a JDW talk co-sponsored by 3 depts. Seemed to go well, I think?

It’s so unfair

Oof. 6 am flights are for the birds

Quick trip to Madison, WI, where I gave a talk I called, “Poisoned by the secret of life: James Watson and the creation myth of molecular biology.” Graciously sponsored by Pop Health, Genetics, and Medical History and Bioethics.

Had great convos,excellent cheese curds & 65 deg weather. Go Badgers!

Short, good🧵 on polygenic screening of embryos by @philipcball.bsky.social, w/ helpful links.

It’s fun when ppl get all excited about this (Phil doesn’t, obvs) to get all excited too and say, “And I just read they’ve found a gene for gullibility!”

There Will Always Be an England Dept.

I am resolutely pro-daylight savings and now I can say it’s cause I care about teh Earth

Historians:

I can't tell you how my life improved when I stopped fighting and embraced the J of P, as well as the Editor of Despond, as the historian's lot

Not sure it's mathematically possible to get everything done that needs to get done in the next 2 days and still sleep, and yet quite sure it's not existentially possible to do it and not sleep.

Sciencing problems that are not science problems — that's the most concise accurate definition of scientism I've seen

Withholding comment so as not to be judged

A brown penguin chick of some kind. It looks very much like a man in a suit. It is bedraggled and miserable

Made it to Friday but at what cost

Congratulations to @matthewcobb.bsky.social on his now-award-winning biography of Francis Crick!

(even if he can't spell 'check" ;-)

Can we laugh at the name Markwayne yet? Because it's like Timtom or Bobfred.

Optical illusion of a woman bent over some papers. Her sunglasses are pushed up and she is wearing a hair band so the top of her head looks exactly like a Muppet face

Sorry I know the world is in a terrible fix but I've been laughing at this for ten minutes now

The Hatchards & Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize awards The Hatchards & Biographers’ Club First Biography Prize awards £2,500 to the judges’ choice of the best first biography published each year.

Congratulations to @matthewcobb.bsky.social and #Crick on winning 1st prize in the Hatchards & Biographers' Club First Biography Awards!

Trump fires Kristi Noem as homeland security secretary The president said he would tap Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma to replace her.

Good riddance. Kind of amazing we got this far before a cabinet member was fired.

It's a great one--I should pull it out!

Do you know the Nassau Coliseum show, 3/29/90? Where Branford Marsalis comes on in set 2 and jams on Eyes and Dark Star et al.? Available as "Wake Up to Find Out". Amazing set.

She looks like an Esmeralda to me

Maternal, Minnesota farmer -- genuinely rugged

Paternal, San Francisco stock broker -- unrugged, but did play basketball

I’ve had whole courses with this dynamic and it is, indeed, glorious to behold ✨

Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”

"To me, it was very simple"- David Agus

"Since you don’t care that much about money, they can’t buy you"- Scott Aaronson

"At the end of your life, who you are is the accumulation of the things you did. It’s not just how much money you got"- Sean Carroll
#AcademicSky
www.science.org/content/arti...

Academic friends, you know that feeling when a seminar (undergrad or grad) takes off, and as instructor you feel like you're playing keep-it-up with a balloon, just giving the lightest tap once in a while to keep it in play? It's almost worth going to faculty meeting.

That's cool. At the Googleplex? Amazing place. Did he reveal Mickey's psychology of drumming?

[Devil on my shoulder says, Start a silly Pythonesque Grateful Dead one-upsmanship battle! But, discretion also being the better part of humor, I will hold my position unless challenged.]

Really! Good to know, thanks!

It's worth rereading @naomiaklein.bsky.social's Shock Doctrine in this moment. Kegbreath is using classic "shock-and-awe" rhetoric.

Starting to see this administration as post-neoliberal. Even the pretense of spreading democracy is abandoned. It's all just brazen swagger and obscene profiteering.

!!!

I've never gone to SciFoo, though I've been invited a couple times. It's expensive! Apart from Country Joe, was it worth it?

Here's an optical allusion:
The little screw holding the temple piece fell out of my glasses. I have another one, as well as the tiny screwdriver.

But now I'm stuck b/c I can't see well enough w/o my glasses to fix my glasses.

I have Catch-22:20 vision.

a pack of kittens closes in a a large dog standing on a chair

David Attenborough [whispering]:

“As the predators close in on their helpless prey, we can only watch in silent horror, for it is not man’s role to interfere in the hierarchy of nature.”