John Kellden

Opinion | The Death of the Fourth American Republic

This is such an important piece, by @jamellebouie.net. As I mentioned elsewhere, he has an uncommon ability to write essays that are erudite and informative, while also being easy and enjoyable to read.

This one puts the current moment and what's at stake in historical context.

Gift link.

New Method Is the Fastest Way To Find the Best Routes | Quanta Magazine A canonical problem in computer science is to find the shortest route to every point in a network. A new approach beats the classic algorithm taught in textbooks.

My latest in @quantamagazine.bsky.social: a new algorithm solves the classic single-source shortest paths problem faster than ever before — by finding paths out of order:

OK, y'all, as I mentioned, I went to see Paul Simon play last night. I found it unexpectedly moving, quite profound actually, and I want to do a short thread about it.

I'll start by saying that, for a whole bunch of reasons, aging & mortality have been much on my mind lately.

We've acquired the historic game magazine Computer Entertainer.

As in, we got the rights. We own the magazine. And we're putting it into the Creative Commons for anyone to use for free.

Learn more: gamehistory.org/computerente...

Royal Society sets out plan to move journals to full open access in 2026 through Subscribe to Open | Royal Society The Royal Society has agreed plans that would make its journals fully open access in 2026 by adopting the ‘Subscribe to Open’ model.

We're excited to announce our plan to make the Royal Society journals fully open access in 2026 by adopting the ‘Subscribe to Open’ model. This change supports global access to research without shifting costs to authors and relies on continued library participation. Find out more: buff.ly/18m5g6z

He’s the ‘Mozart’ of Math and Trump Killed His Funding The latest casualty in the administration’s assault on higher education is a legendary researcher who embodies the best of America.

He's widely considered to be among the smartest people on the planet...

He's won every award... produced research essential to MRIs and cybersecurity... is loved by peers...

And now he's a cautionary tale, bc he lost his funding in the latest wave of Trump cuts www.thebulwark.com/p/terence-ta...

diagram showing the stages of writing an essay.

There are lots of valuable resources on #LearnHigher at ALDinHE for note-making & essay writing, including this essay writing pack. Download for free: https://aldinhe.ac.uk/teaching-learning/essay-writing-pack #LoveLD

People want to be more afraid because it’s actually easier. They will continue consuming media and finding community that reinforces their fear as a safety blanket. In order to attract them to courage we need to show how great the payoff is when you commit to living in courage.

🎉LUDOCENE LAUNCHED 🎉

So excited (and nervous) to send our game-finder into the world.

Ludocene.com

If you want a better way to find amazing games that rewards experts and is in the hands of players, this is our shot.

Thank you to the 1000's backers and supporters.This is just the beginning.

Since No One Else Seems to Care, Let’s Remember Epstein’s Survivors They've already told us everything we need to know...

As everyone … scrambles for further evidence of Trump’s connection to the prolific pedophile and sex-trafficker, what’s been—once again—lost in this discourse is the hundreds of women who survived the horrors Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their moneyed friends inflicted upon them.

Postcard from Toni Cade Bambara stating, "Do not leave the arena to the fools."

In 1995, Nikky Finney received "the most important postcard of my life."

It was from Toni Cade Bambara and said, "Do not leave the arena to the fools." Word.

Too be clear: this isn’t Trump’s fault. He’s an opportunist who is riding the wave of societal collapse, not the cause of it. The cause is thornier, but can be traced pretty clearly back to concentration of wealth, the political empowerment of money, and the success of the corporate model of trust

Evidence from Formal Logical Reasoning Reveals that the Language of Thought is not Natural Language Humans are endowed with a powerful capacity for both inductive and deductive logical thought: we easily form generalizations based on a few examples and draw conclusions from known premises. Humans al...

Is the Language of Thought == Language? A Thread 🧵
New Preprint (link: tinyurl.com/LangLOT) with @alexanderfung.bsky.social, Paris Jaggers, Jason Chen, Josh Rule, Yael Benn, @joshtenenbaum.bsky.social, ‪@spiantado.bsky.social‬, Rosemary Varley, @evfedorenko.bsky.social
1/8

So now, the Trump administration’s primary effort — at which they’re throwing vast federal resources and manpower — to turn the page on the Epstein debacle is to collectively promote a far-right conspiracy theory about how a secret cabal of Trump-loathing deep state subversives and liberal villains…

Trump's Sloppy Effort to Distract From Epstein Mess Creates a 'Ticking Time Bomb' Donald Trump’s advisers worry his effort to turn attention away from the Epstein scandal — his threat to jail Obama — will blow up in their faces.

NEW: Senior administration officials continue to privately concede that the way Trump talks about the Epstein saga likely arouses more suspicion than it suppresses.

‘1984’ is upon us

Friction and not being touched The journalist Karen Hao – who published an absolutely fantastic book about OpenAI called “Empire of AI” recently – coined (as far as I know) one of the best terms for describing modern “AI” systems: Everything Machines. “AI” systems are not framed as specific tools that solve specific problems in specific ways but just as […]

I wrote about frictionlessness and "AI". The essay is admittedly a bit of a weird ride trying to connect a few very distinct thoughts. I hope it's still worth reading.
https://tante.cc/2025/07/30/friction-and-not-being-touched/

Bluesky's CEO warns you shouldn't 'fully outsource your thinking' to AI Bluesky CEO Jay Graber emphasized the importance of critical thinking and developing a generalist skillset for the AI era.

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber emphasized the importance of critical thinking and developing a generalist skillset for the AI era.

@anneapplebaum.bsky.social:

“The West doesn’t understand the extremism of Putinism…that (its) goals involve the destruction of the transatlantic alliance & maybe of the EU…The path to peace is through convincing Putin that he won’t win the war, that it’s hopeless.”

(ht: @berlinbridge.bsky.social)

Democracy Docket is about to send out my latest analysis of how the DOJ is already interfering in the 2026 elections.

Sign up now to receive in your inbox for free. hubs.ly/Q03jcjqP0

Great thread! Preview of a brand new feature we haven't quite announced yet (still adding some finishing touches) 👀✨

Excited to start using this and adding other social features (comments? likes? other things tbd?) that take full advantage of the atproto network

"And all is silent,
And from this silence arise
New beginnings, intimations, changings."

Rainer Maria Rilke.

Find myself thinking about these words by Kurt Vonnegut: ...the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

Sarah Ransome: “Jeffrey very, very clearly said to me: ‘you answer to Ghislaine… I will kill you, I will kill your parents, if you ever run, if you tell anybody, or if you go to the authorities [about] the rapes’… She orchestrated everything… Ghislaine is as responsible, if not more, than Jeffrey.”

#comics

8. The sociology production of a premature end to the pandemic showed it plainly: disabled and chronically ill people are treated as collateral damage as a normal operating procedure of our economy. When ‘reopening’ was prioritized over survival, the message was clear—profits matter more than lives.

Trump fumes as Epstein scandal dominates headlines, overshadows agenda The White House and Justice Department’s response to the crisis has been driven by no clear strategy other than asking the country to forget it and move on, multiple people close to the situation told...

#Trump fumes, etc.
www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

Between these two sides, we won't be drowning in a sea of mediocrity. We're caught in a tsunami of inexhaustible cultural bankruptcy by people who are lazy and don't care, and truly dumb people who are smart at one hyperspecific thing and think that makes them smart at all things.

And it's being propelled by cultural doorstops who think because they know Python that they can write a script to make AI replace the human experience.

I can't get out of my head that story I heard a guy tell recently where his date showed up at the restaurant, took a photo of the menu and asked ChatGPT what she should order.

That's who AI is for -- the most intellectually incurious people who want to offload all agency and taste onto an app.