Professor Chad

I tried to write a poem ❤️

I wonder if Cain came home for Sunday dinner.
Did earth's first father,
awkward then tear trodden,
embrace Eden's prodigal,
while Mother Eve, relieved, set aside one empty chair?
The brother's aughts against dissolved in rain twice blessed.

My bishop started texting me random questions about my car. "Stick or automatic?" "How many miles does it got?"

Should I be worried?

People spend a lot of time wondering why the left is worse at using independent media to control the national narrative.

A useful exercise is to ask why the left is also worse at selling snake oil and pyramid schemes, because I think the reasons are basically exactly the same.

a cartoon character stands next to a horse ALT: a cartoon character stands next to a horse

What do you think your MAGA relatives would think if they rewatched the opening scene of Hunchback of Notre Dame?

This all alone is an open-and-shut cause for impeachment, yes there are dozens of others but sometimes it's clarifying to just look at one

Peter Marks, MD, PhD Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research U.S. Food and Drug Administration 10903 New Hampshire Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20903 March 28, 2025 Sara Brenner, MD, MPH Acting Commissioner of Food and Drugs U.S. Food and Drug Administration 10903 New Hampshire Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20903 Dear Dr. Brenner: It is with a heavy heart that I have decided to resign from FDA and retire from federal service as Director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research effective April 5, 2025. I leave behind a staff of professionals who are undoubtedly the most devoted to protecting and promoting the public health of any group of people that I have encountered during my four decades working in the public and private sectors. I have always done my best to advocate for their well-being and I would ask that you do the same during this very difficult time during which their critical importance to the safety and security of our nation may be underappreciated. Over the past years I have been involved in enhancing the safety of our nation's blood supply, in advancing the field of cell and gene therapy, and in responding to public health emergencies. In the last of these, during the COVID-19 pandemic I had the privilege of watching the vision that I conceived for Operation Warp Speed in March 2020 in collaboration with Dr. Robert Kadlec become a reality under the leadership of HHS Secretary Azar and President Trump due to the unwavering commitment of public servants at FDA and elsewhere across the government. At FDA, the tireless efforts of staff across the agency resulted in remarkably expediting the development of vaccines against the virus, meeting the standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness expected by the American public. The vaccines undoubtedly markedly reduced morbidity and mortality from COVID-19 in the United States and elsewhere. Many of these same individuals applied learnings from the pandemic during a flawless response helping…

ongoing multistate measles outbreak that is particularly severe in Texas reminds us of what happens when confidence in well-established science underlying public health and well-being is undermined. Measles, which killed more than 100,000 unvaccinated children last year in Africa and Asia owing to pneumonitis and encephalitis caused by the virus, had been eliminated from our shores. The two-dose measles, mumps, rubella vaccine regimen (MMR) using over the past decades has a remarkably favorable benefit-risk profile. The MMR vaccine is 97% or more effective in preventing measles following the two-dose series, and its safety has been remarkably well studied. Though rarely followed by a single fever-related seizure, or very rarely by allergic reactions or blood clotting disorders, the vaccine very simply does not cause autism, nor is it associated with encephalitis or death. It does, however, protect against a potential devasting consequence of prior measles infection, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), which is an untreatable, relentlessly progressive neurologic disorder leading to death in about 1 in 10,000 individuals infected with measles. Undermining confidence in well-established vaccines that have met the high standards for quality, safety, and effectiveness that have been in place for decades at FDA is irresponsible, detrimental to public health, and a clear danger to our nation's health, safety. and security. In the years following the pandemic, at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research we have applied the same unwavering commitment to public health priorities to the development of cell and gene therapies to address both hereditary and acquired rare diseases. During my tenure as Center Director we have approved 22 gene therapies, including the first gene therapy ever to be approved in the United States. However, we know that we must do better to expedite the development of treatments for those individual suffering from any one of the thousan…

Peter Marks’s resignation letter. Everyone should read this.

YouTube video by Studio C International Relations - Studio C

Looks like Studio C has to do a revisit of their "International Relations" at the grocery store scene.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqIh...

And fianlly:

Another really great passage:

This passage from the original paper on ELIZA seems equally true of the LLM craze going on right now. We're reading it together in my survey of AI course:

in all seriousness: one of the most important philosophical questions of our time

The closet technological approximation I have thought of to LLMs:

The Microwave!

Excels in niche contexts, broadly used, but never loved. The results are universally acknowledged to be pretty crap when applied to general cooking tasks.

Saves labour at the margins, but probably cost very few jobs.

The real reason Coca Cola isn't considered a violation of the Word of Wisdom is the Church is in cahoots with the Coca Cola company*

meant in jest, but here's the quote from "Fragments of Revelation"

I mentor an undergraduate research program that may not continue this year due to funding uncertainty of federal programs.

I am saddened that my students will not have the same opportunities that I had when I was in school due to the political farce currently going on.

I also enjoyed the original Chesterton books its based on!

I do a bit of transcribing for the National Archives in my spare time, and the JFK Assassination Records just dropped 👀👀👀

If it was I had never heard it before. And it wasn't in the white handbook for sure

Don't let any portion of your garments show. Had an elder who policed this. If you wore a T-shirt or a button up with the top button undone on P-day, and the rim of your garment shirt show, baaaaaad.

2 day change -1,400

(always a tweet)

This is huge news. Not only are the diaries and papers of Heber J Grant now available—he was LDS president for over two transition decades for the church—but they’re also announcing a new policy to release papers after an LDS leader is dead 70 years. A very positive opening and change.

Movies you've watched more than six times, gifs only

This is Winston Smith’s job in “1984.”

Just so you know, there's a whole anime show with surprisingly high quality representation of the immune system on Netflix, "Cells at Work." Got my kids learning about macrophages, Killer T Cells, and platelets.

Watching the news in 2025 feels like watching a really poorly executed game of Jenga, the outcome of which determines whether you can feed your family or not.

CDC datasets uploaded before January 28th, 2025 by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Topics cdc, government, united states, dataset, archive Language English Item Size 98.5G An archive of all CDC datasets uploaded to https://data.cdc.gov/browse before January 28th, 2025. Excludes corrupt datasets and data not publicly accessible.

The entire archive of all CDC datasets uploaded before January 28th, 2025 has been backed up on Internet Archive.

Incredible work everyone. Science will never be silenced!

It can be a form of repentance. I'm grateful for the authors who have made me a better person.

"In my experience, well-read people are less likely to be evil."

Perhaps this is self-aggrandizing as I consider myself a book person, but this surprising quote from A Series of Unfortunate Events seems even more relevant today. Reading changes you and exposes you to new perspectives.

Aaaand it was caught on tape, I was in pain.

Being a youth leader is humbling because you'll get in one of these and then get absolutely pummeled to the ground by a 16 year old.