Paul Konstant

Uhhhh

Might be the scariest thing she's ever written

Listening to this press conference it seems clear that Trump is mentally gone and that his team is consolidating power for President J.D. Vance.

Fox News championed anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. Now he’s killing research into next-generation vaccines.

Under Kennedy’s leadership, the Department of Health and Human Services itself has become a grave threat to public health. That is the regrettable but inevitable consequence of Fox News’ cynical exploitation of its viewers.

Someone forgot to take down this webpage:

www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/v...

Folks look at you like you’re crazy when you say we’re in the midst of the worst Article I constitutional crisis in American history, & then, well, when you put it that way 👇🤷‍♂️

In the current anti-science environment, this is concerning as hell

This is why all unsolicited theories I receive go into an appropriately labeled e-mail folder and never return

IIRC Isaac Asimov used to claim to write back "Thank you for your letter; as a mere biochemist they are quite beyond me, but I have forwarded your thesis to my friend Arthur C Clarke, who is a physicist. I am sure he will be happy to reply"
cc @philipcball.bsky.social

FBI agents are not trained to patrol streets. And every agent that is assigned to do that is NOT investigating:

*foreign spies stealing gov’t and trade secrets
*foreign and domestic terrorist threats
*crimes like fraud, corruption, trafficking, and violent crimes (among others)

Do you feel safer?

Love to see FBI agents with accounting degrees walking the streets of DC bullying homeless people instead of doing their jobs because a DOGE cybercriminal named "Big Balls" got beat up by a 15 year old.

YouTube video by The Ezra Klein Show The Man Driving the Nationalist Revival on the Right | The Ezra Klein Show

I'm very hot and cold with Klein but this is by far his most interesting conversation in a while.
His interrogation of Hazony's ideas is gentle but piercing and deeply revealing of the essential incoherence behind the modern nationalist movement.

Williams’s argument has found purchase among journalists he might consider fellow travelers — Yascha Mounk, Bari Weiss and Conor Friedersdorf, among others. It’s also not so new; it might remind some people of the debates about political correctness that raged in the 1990s, though Williams might balk at the comparison. He would prefer that we not invoke history (or context, or ideology, or ideas of “moral clarity”) in our debates. He’d rather we understand current events through the facts of what is happening in the here and now. We shouldn’t have tried, he says, to understand the killing of Trayvon Martin on a continuum of racial violence that includes the lynching of Emmett Till, because doing so flattened the incident into a racial drama and did not deal with specific individuals and their actions. Similarly, he argues, the murder of George Floyd should not be seen in the context of racism and police behavior, but in the light of Floyd’s poverty and drug addiction (and I suppose we are not allowed then to contextualize those factors in terms of race, or the history of labor markets, or the pharmaceutical industry — they are just individual characteristics).

a sharp review of the chatterton book that notes the author’s total refusal to engage with history and his insistence that a “serious” or “good faith” discussion requires participants to exist in an eternal present where individuals exist free of context www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

If an individual offering consensual nudes of themself on OnlyFans is considered “illicit” but a program generating nudes of women without their consent is fine, the powers that be have made their priorities clear. And they’re the same as they ever were.

How John Durham Buried Evidence He Had Been Doing the Work of Russian Spies ... and then Tulsi Gabbard Buried More - emptywheel There are a lot of pieces of evidence that Durham not only chased a Russian conspiracy theory to frame Hillary Clinton, but did so knowingly. Most telling is the way Durham obscured the timeline showi...

Reupping: How John Durham Buried Evidence He Had Been Doing the Work of Russian Spies ... and then Tulsi Gabbard Buried More

www.emptywheel.net/2025/08/09/h...

Indeed. The modelers want unmeasurable data. The biologists are inventing new measurements that add layers outside the algorithms. My career was finding clever ways to integrate their diverse data to help them figure out what each experiment contributes. I retired 3 years ago

Computational biology that begins from the view of an algorithm has been doomed to failure for at least the past 50 years. 1. the models have no data to validate them. 2.The biology, and the processes, have proven to be more subtle and complex. I lost my hubris for modeling by experience.

I don’t know if Newsom, Shapiro and Rahm are idiots, but this is an idiotic strategy.

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” — H. L. Mencken

#Complexity #Populism

Per Bloomberg, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss have invested Bitcoin in American Bitcoin Corp. co-founded by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.

"The investment was part of a $220 million private funding round that Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot called 'oversubscribed.'"

bravenewcoin.com/insights/two...

Blood vessels and immune cells that protect the brain also drive risk for Alzheimer's and stroke The brain's health depends on more than just its neurons. A complex network of blood vessels and immune cells acts as the brain's dedicated guardians—controlling what enters, cleaning up waste, and…

The brain's health depends on more than just its neurons. A complex network of blood vessels and immune cells acts as the brain's dedicated guardians—controlling what enters, cleaning up waste, and protecting it from threats by forming the blood-brain barrier.

Silent Coup: How Trump’s Allies Are Gaming Algorithms To Seize Your Feed New research unravels the secret tactics behind Stop the Steal and other right-wing disinformation campaigns.

Silent Coup: How Trump’s Allies Are Gaming Algorithms To Seize Your Feed

weaponizedspaces.substack.com/p/silent-cou...

Three months ago I wrote about how there has never been a more important time for private philanthropy to support the junior scientists and invest in maintaining the talent pipeline previously supported by federal funding.

Here's the thread: bsky.app/profile/carl...

But instead:

Wild blackberries and raspberries are so worth all of the scratches! ♥️ I rarely go out in the 30C (90F) heat in sweat-inducing protective clothes. 🤣

not to mention the huge cybersecurity risks:
* massive increase in potential vulnerabilities
* lots of disaffected young people with the skills and motivation to target them for lulz, revenge, or profit

‘Half the tree of life’: ecologists’ horror as nature reserves are emptied of insects A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

We should be launching large-scale projects to save the biosphere. Instead rich idiots are putting all of our resources into propping up stochastic parrots.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Statement by President Macron, Prime Minister Meloni, Chancellor Merz, Prime Minister Tusk, Prime Minister Starmer, President von der Leyen and President Stubb on Peace for Ukraine ahead of President ... We welcome President Trump\'s work to stop the killing in Ukraine, end the Russian Federation\'s war of aggression, and achieve just and lasting peace and security for Ukraine.\nWe are convinced that ...

Sent at 00:18, underlining unwavering support for Ukraine’s « territorial integrity ». VDL, Tusk, Starmer, Macron, Merz and Meloni.

ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

Sunday at the garden party for Curtis Yarvin and the new, new right [FREE TO READ] What you learn at a gathering of neoreactionaries, Very Online rightwingers and the formerly cancelled

I spent the day with Curtis Yarvin and the "dissident right" at a garden party in Surrey and wrote quite a few words about it.

My cover story for today’s FT Magazine

on.ft.com/4ooXS4t [GIFT LINK! 🎁]