Ralph Drayton

Yes, the history of knowledge pre-1400 famously has nothing to do with medicine.

How OpenAI Uses Complex and Circular Deals to Fuel Its Multibillion-Dollar Rise Here are seven unusual financial agreements helping to drive the ambitions of the poster child of the A.I. revolution.

"Many of the deals OpenAI has struck — with chipmakers, cloud computing companies and others — are strangely circular. OpenAI receives billions from tech companies before sending those billions back to the same companies to pay for computing power and other services." www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Cleaning the scientific house: Rebuilding trust in science requires confronting the harms of ghostwriting American science is under attack. Recent cuts to funding and staffing of federal agencies, layoffs of scientists, and rescission of billions of dollars in grants are unprecedented in US history and th...

My latest: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when

When people learn with ChatGPT instead of following their own searches, they end up knowing less, caring less, and producing worse advice, even when the facts are the same.

Friction is an essential ingredient for learning! Convenience makes us shallow.

academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

Happy birthday!

Sorry for all the replies lol. But you hit on a topic…!

I got to quote these lines as a guest lecturer in a modern European history course (though I’m a medievalist— long story) to talk post-WWII British pop music UC Davis c. 2004. A super fun lecture to give, and the Kinks featured heavily in it. Loved their reaction to hearing about Lola.

As a later teenager (c. 1982), I was in Tower Records in Sacramento. A couple of younger kids were a couple of bins over, and one says to the other, “The Beatles? That’s Paul McCartney’s old band.”

I got to see them once at the Cow Palace in SF, in 1983. Then saw Ray Davies here in Portland at the Crystal Ballroom in 2008, a really great acoustic show.

A display of two ancient bronze cupping cups hanging from a delicate, metal stand in the shape of grapevine with a round base. The cups have a weathered greenish patina. The setup is showcased against a dark background.

A grave of a Roman physician in Bingen dating to the 2nd c. AD contained a remarkable set of medical instruments, including cupping cups with a stand in the shape of a grapevine.
These cups were used for therapeutic suction or bloodletting, a practice with deep roots in Greco-Roman . 🧵1/ 2

📷 me

🏺

Jays

a photo of Taki Allen and a bag of doritos

Baltimore high school student Taki Allen was swarmed by police after an artificial intelligence system apparently mistook his bag of Doritos for a gun www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Here's a photo of my friend and colleague, Jorge Bautista, getting shot in the face with a flashbang grenade. The ICE Agent is so afraid of Jorge (who was posing no threat) that he has wet himself. Please share this photo. Everyone needs to know what cowards ICE agents are.

the most popular smartphone maker in history literally had to stop using "AI" because it would constantly just make things up and had zero contextual "understanding" of what it was doing

(Talk) The Body and the Stars. New Evidence on Early Modern Astro-Medicine in the Manuscripts of the Vitali Archive histoiresante.blogspot.com/2025/10/le-c... #histmed

this rocks. when indiana edu killed the student newspaper, Purdue stepped up, printed the forbidden issue, drove it to Bloomington and stocked the boxes.

Trump, Tylenol, and 2000 Years of Bad Advice On Monday, September 22, President Trump, flanked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., stated that pregnant women should not take Tylenol because fetal exposure to acetaminophen causes autism…

New fantastic @nursingclio.bsky.social ER post from Kathleen Crowther: "Trump, Tylenol, and 2000 Years of Bad Advice" 💊

nursingclio.org/2025/10/16/t...

Oriana Korol, a clarinetist with the Unpresidented Brass Band, was arrested after a man and federal agents barreled into band members who were standing across the street from the ICE office and playing the theme from “Ghostbusters.”

Read more: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

lol I learned a while back (via another means) that I was blocked by someone who really hates superstitions like astrology.

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson calls Sunday's naked bike ride in protest of the Portland ICE facility and and Trump troop deployment "the most threatening thing I’ve seen yet"

www.oregonlive.com/portland/202...

Back in the early 90s, my lawyer brother who lived and worked there explained to me the ludicrous financial arrangements that made landlords and tech speculators rich, and basically ruined the place for everyone else.

Growing up in Sacto, I loved the neighborhoods of SF, and the bay area generally, in the 70s and early 80s. The dot com era destroyed it (for me, certainly).

Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver Feds delayed medics who had come to pick up an injured protester. Then, according to confidential incident reports, the agents became aggressive.

In Portland, an ambulance was summoned to the ICE office to treat an injured protester (not clear how he was injured). But when the patient was loaded inside, ICE officers refused to let the ambulance leave and threatened to shoot the ambulance driver: www.wweek.com/news/2025/10...

What The Hell Is Going On, a thread:

I’ve seen some thinkpieces and posts about Portland protests that fail to understand the long-term hyperspecificity of Portland culture/humor, and frame it as a sort of shitposting meme-pilled ironic thing. Which is wrong.

So I’m gonna give you my breakdown.

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

More a comment, really […]

It’s as if Yakety Sax were a fashy anthem, made theme music for these people’s every move.

I was at a free concert in Golden Gate Park back in the 80s, when people started throwing around the KFC buckets meant for donations, money flying flying all over and people hucking change toward the stage, and a fist fight broke out in front of me. That was fun, or rather, “fun.”

MY CARD. MR. GEO. PUSHEM, EFFICIENCY EXPERT. AND STAY OUT! I HAVE NO USE FOR THE SHARP BOYS THAT GO AROUND SHOWING EMPLOYERS HOW THEY CAN KILL OFF THEIR HELP QUICKER BY SHIFTING TUO MEN'S WORK ONTO ONE!!!

The Evansville Press, April 10,1916