Mike Whelan, Jr.

Did my wife tell you to ask that? She wants ducks. I assume she’s conspiring with my friends to make me get ducks.

My chickens won’t eat these hornworms or the Japanese beetles I bring them. Seriously, the least competent chickens in all chickendom.

Underrated soundtrack

I feel like every single day I need to post a reminder: if you ask an LLM about itself it DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT ITS INNER WORKINGS and WILL NOT TELL YOU ANYTHING ACTUALLY ABOUT ITSELF. It just (as it always does) will make up some plausible sounding answer.

One of the most interesting things about where I live is how much farmers talk about climate change. They all love Trump (the number of cars I’ve seen with Trump’s face on car wraps would shock you) but they know climate change is real better than anybody (80% of them). It’s fascinating to watch.

Faculty Support of George Mason’s President Draws Federal Investigation

Faculty who wrote to defend their president and object to a DOJ investigation of their university...are now being investigated by the DOJ.
The most banal defense of free speech and academic freedom will trigger the full wrath of the US government now.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

I guess I understand the math argument but you’d think higher ed would be more thoughtful than doing simple arithmetic

Mm. That’s definitely how I told my parents that I was engaged to a girl just a few weeks after meeting her.

Wasn’t that the name of the weird lady who had her head shot off in Murderbot?

The NIH’s 2024 budget of just under $37B generated $95B in economic activity in 2024 alone. 99.4% of new pharmaceuticals approved from 2010-2019 came from NIH-funded research. I’m hard pressed to think of anything that generates as much direct economic benefit as our NIH did before they destroyed it

Legal note: Sending a letter does not establish a contract.

Aldous Huxley demands royalties from Marvel after they use his movie theater ideas

elmo from sesame street is standing in front of a wall of fire ALT: elmo from sesame street is standing in front of a wall of fire

He’s got that glow

Big Law Firms Bowed to Trump. A Corps of ‘Little Guys’ Jumped in to Fight Him.

A reminder that our profession is not just big firms, and that countless lawyers are stepping up in this critical moment. GIFT LINK
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/u...

If she lies and says what the admin wants to hear, she’ll earn a get out of jail free card. The incentives are too obvious and the players too corrupt to think any truth will come out of this. I’m surprised she hasn’t already played this card.

Very cool. My son just went up there to propose to his now fiancée as we have friends in Milan and Lugano that gave him some nice places to stay. I’ve never been up there—my LDS mission was all central and Sardegna—but hoping to go this fall. Y’all have fun.

Are you up north? The mountains are beautiful.

These people seem very practiced at ignoring cognitive dissonance. They’re like the bizzarro world version of that Fitzgerald quote about geniuses holding two opposing ideas at once.

“You can’t invent the ship without inventing the shipwreck except this wreck destroys the human world it’s fine because progress.”

When he said Epstein is no biggie compared to the really important things he’s dealing with, this is what he meant.

One time I went to a gas station in a very Hispanic part of Austin near my law practice. I asked the guy behind the counter for a Mexican Coke and he was absolutely flummoxed. I said “You know, a Coke with real sugar in it.” He said, “Oh, you mean Coke.”

How does he get us all to move on from the Epstein story? Shockingly, talking about Rosie O’Donnell didn’t work, so let’s try crashing the economy.

Oh that’s fantastic. Thanks for sharing it.

LOL. The biggest story going on in the minds of Fox viewers is Epstein, and there is literally not one story about Epstein on Fox’s website. Apparently they got the propa-memo.

Since April 4, #SCOTUS has issued 15 rulings on 17 emergency applications filed by Trump (three birthright citizenship apps were consolidated).

It has granted relief to Trump ... in all 15 rulings.

It has written majority opinions in only 3.

Today's order is the 7th with no explanation *at all.*

The question was never how a malignant narcissist could believe he’d do the impossible while being willfully ignorant and inexperienced, but why his followers believed he could.

Again, hard not to blame The Apprentice producers here. Decades of fiction propping this guy up.

FWIW I think Michael Pollan’s “eat whatever as long as you made it from scratch with real ingredients” is a much more compelling argument than creating all these verboten piles of food. Oz is perpetuating the exact reason Americans don’t eat well, this obsession with specific categories of bad food.

My feelings about Flip align closely to my questions about Olynyk: is he a glue guy/great player with a long career in the toughest league in the world, or is he a distraction that makes you too good to be bad but never good? I’m fine just being a fan and watching, but also want to be realistic.

The 2024 picks are like if you took Denver’s bench from last year and made them the starters.

This is not a compliment. The only hope with that squad was that they didn’t burn it down so badly that the best player in the NBA couldn’t fix it.

This is who we are now.