Caro Williams-Pierce

[Scene is ANCIENT GREECE - where SOCRATES and PLATO and others are sitting round, thinking] 1 SOCRATES: Plato.. PLATO: Yes Socrates? 2 SOCRATES: Can you tell me, are you human? PLATO: Why… yes, Socrates 3 SOCRATES: And would you agree, Plato, that a human knows what a chariot is? PLATO: Um, yep 4 SOCRATES: So you can tell me, then 5 [Socrates produces a papyrus, showing a drawing of the corner of a chariot wheel] SOCRATES: *Is that a chariot*? 6 PLATO: Well that’s more just a bit of wheel 7 SOCRATES: So not a *chariot*. PLATO: No. 8 SOCRATES: [Producing another papyrus with the full drawing of the chariot, chopped into boxes] So if a man were challenged to “tap the boxes containing chariots to prove you’re human” when he was just trying to check his ClubCard points... *where could he tap*? 9 PLATO: Well you can’t tap any of them really 10 SOCRATES: So are we not human? PLATO: ‘Spose not. 11 [Bleak pause] 12 PLATO: I’ll get the hemlock SOCRATES: Yeah [ends]

1 Nurse: It’s become a real problem in this area 2 Nurse: We’ve seen the whole community lost to addiction 3 Show a building sign posted: Westminster ‘X’ Addiction Clinic With various Westminster people or looking at their phones outside it Nurse: Ministers, Spads, Researchers… 4 Nurse: Most mornings we’ll get a call about someone acting strangely [Nurse on phone taking a call] Ok - we’ll be right over 5 Nurse: We just have a gentle chat [Nurses approach a minister –Robert Jenrick? - standing in the Palace of Westminster Minister: I understand your concerns… 6 Nurse: Are you OK love? Minister: Yes I’m just hearing legitimate concerns from real voters 7 Nurse: That’s a robot, a Nazi and a poorly-disguised Russian [Show that the people he is talking to are precisely these characters] Nurse 2: Give us your phone, love 8 Nurse: At the clinic we put them in a Grass-Touching Pod, with a real voter to talk to [We see them back at the clinic, holding the minister's head and pushing him into a glass isolation booth with a grass floor. And it is a baffled looking woman, on a chair, ready to talk to him.] 9 Minister: YOU MUST BE WORRIED ABOUT THE COMING CIVIL WAR [woman looks baffled] 10 woman: I just want a bus service Minister: LOOK AT MY FLAG [produces a St George's flag] [ends]

Discworld QOTD, from Feet of Clay

Laypeople often learn about science from expert explanations & those explanations often contain JARGON. Does jargon make explanations better or worse? In a paper out today in Nature Human Behaviour, @cruzf.bsky.social and I find that jargon can support illusions of understanding...

Okay, I looked online and found a bunch of similar shirts, but not that actual one - and I love it!! Would you share the shop/artist info?

Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish. Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points. We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are. Anelise Feldman Freshman, Yarmouth High School Yarmouth

this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...

I need a pirate expert - or just someone who REALLY gets into Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s for research!

Thinking about devastating cuts to NSF: US gov-funded science has been the engine upon which most of the tech wealth was generated. But the oligarchs (currently hoarding much of that $) think it’s their own brilliance & not the accident of standing close to the scientific engine that made them rich.

Don't trifle with a Mainer

Thanks to the many wonderful folks who came to the workshop and plotted - err, planned - with me! It was a beautiful time, and amazing things are coming out of it ❤️

Rogue Workshop: transform your science into action! Caro Williams-Pierce (carowp@umd.edu) Filled with rage at the dumpster fire that is our world and our countries right now? Tired of screaming endlessly into the void, and want to do something - anything - to stop the burning down of science and human rights?  Learn how to channel that rage, use your CHI knowledge, and communicate with people, organizations, and political bodies. They need to hear our voices, our science, and our fury - time to make them listen. Wednesday, April 30 Room G313 2:10 - 3:40 pm

Come to my Rogue Workshop at #CHI2025 - if you're furious at funding cuts and public kidnappings and letting 19-year-old kids mess around in the Social Security database, this workshop is for you!

Wednesday, April 30
Room G313
2:10 - 3:40 pm

Watching this talk feels like looking at the near future of the US #CHI2025

Heading to #chi2025! See you all in Japan!

A friend who was out as a gay man during Section 28 was telling me the advice he used to give to straight allies asking how they could help back then: stand in solidarity with us so that some of the shit they’re throwing at us sticks to you. If you’re clean, you’re not standing close enough.

This is why I still chew nicotine gum like mad ☹️

Sign: DEMOCRACY ISN'T DYING IN DARKNESS ***** REPUBLICANS ARE MURDERING IT IN BROAD DAYLIGHT

Sign spotted in a yard in Capitol Hill, where freedom of expression endures.

Today’s Bonus Daily Cartoon, by Guy Richards Smit. #NewYorkerCartoons

PROTECT our trans students! STOP terrorizing trans athletes! DISOBEY these evil motherfuckers! love and defend love and defend love and defend First word of each line is bubble letters in the color of the trans flag. There are some little plants with flowers growing through the words.

Comrade card for 3/30/2025.

At Kennedy Center, Guster Perform With Cast of LGBTQ+ Musical Canceled by Trump Takeover — Rolling Stone Band and cast of LGBTQ+ musical Finn — whose own Kennedy Center performances were canceled after Trump named himself Kennedy Center chairman — take stage at historic D.C. venue

Beautiful 🥹

apple.news/AyXnrnJRMTTe...

I wonder if David Plaxco would make a fancy RUME Rubik’s cube? Couldn’t find him to tag here, though 😭

Imagine if Terry Pratchett wrote a #DoctorWho episode

What if the TARDIS landed in Ankh-Morpork?

What if Death and Binky met The Doctor

“OH DEAR, IT’S YOU. *sighs*
I FIND YOU INCREDIBLY IRRITATING AS JUST AS YOUR HOURGLASS RUNS OUT IT BECOMES FULL AGAIN. I CALL THAT CHEATING”

@rhi.bsky.social

😂🙌🏽

sorry i didn’t reply, i:

☐ forgot to
☐ am speechless!
☐ honestly thought i did?
☐ have nothing of value to add
☐ have no idea what you’re talking about
☐ don’t know how to respond to that?
☐ disagree and am letting the leaden weight of my silence speak for me
☐ don’t want to

(check all that apply)

Essay: Fuck Fascism On Radical Rudeness

New essay:

Fuck Fascism: On Radical Rudeness

www.feministgiant.com/p/essay-fuck...

We Stan a legend

5 people standing outside, holding handwritten signs: ‘Yay science!!’ and ‘Will factor 4 food’

INFO’s little walk-out protest contribution today - just a couple of us, but we are but one node in a broad web…

What do we want? SCIENCE!
How do we want it! PEER REVIEWED

What do we want? SCIENCE!
How do we want it! APPROPRIATELY ARCHIVED

Doing meta-reviews of reviews of meta-analyses.

I feel very meta right now.