Joe Hanson

Can you DM a link? I will report

I WANT TO BELIEVE (that people were making nuanced distinctions between little grays and slime-covered exoplanets, but I can't)

Alien Invasion! A MAN WHO ONCE worked for NASA is lecturing a couple of hundred normal-looking Americans in the exceedingly normal-looking ballroom of the Asheville, N.C., Radisson.

In 1996 only 48% of Americans thought aliens were real so things are going great 🫠 www.newsweek.com/alien-invasi...

In 1996, only 48% of Americans believed aliens were probably real. Things are not moving in the right direction! 🫠

www.newsweek.com/alien-invasi...

In the sense that “unhealed emotional and spiritual trauma” means multiple mutations in genes involved in cell proliferation, DNA repair, and immune system evasion, this is true

Bluesky traffic is not gonna top any scales here

YouTube video by ShadowStrike Tech Mi-6 Helicopter | The Cold War Monster That Shocked the West!

Here's another: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgpy...

These channels are tiny nothingburgers when it comes to traffic, but this is a critical invasion of privacy. If these companies aren't going to protect creator identities from AI theft, we're doomed y'all

YouTube video by Droid Sage What Samsung's Phone Letters REALLY Mean (A, M, S, Z, FE)

Numerous videos are using an unauthorized model of my voice to narrate AI slop.

And YouTube just told me this doesn't violate any privacy rules!

This is unquestionably me: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F4N...

Apparently YouTube doesn't care about protecting our identities from AI theft. Infuriating.

YouTube video by Be Smart Did I Make This Video to Debunk Your Biology Class?

@pbs.org & @drjoehanson.bsky.social doing the lord's work & letting ppl know that genetics isn't as simple & convenient as the Punnett Square, & that life is so complex & messy that even the simplest, most mundane things about us are still the result incredibly complex systems interacting 🧬

YouTube video by BBC Archive 1973: The MUHAMMAD ALI of MARBLES | Nationwide | Classic BBC Sport | BBC Archive

I refuse to believe this is not a Monty Python sketch. No notes. Next-level hilarious!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=53w9...

If a person wants to build wealth, there are much easier and cheaper ways than buying a slowly appreciating asset that requires insurance, maintenance, and property taxes and would cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars of interest payments in order to see any real equity

Sadly, I think a lot of people don’t know better

A friend used to work in computer sales. He was required to sell financing but frequently broke his sales script to ask if buyer understood how much they would end up paying for a $500 computer

Few cared. Monthly payment was all they understood

Here’s the breakdown of a $500,000 home with 5% down at 5% interest.

Who wouldn’t want to be tethered to a single asset for 50 years in exchange for paying double the asset value in interest and achieving little to no equity until year 25?

Financial illiteracy is a prerequisite for this

Dangling the idea of a 50 year mortgage as a solution to home ownership relies completely on assuming that the average American can not do basic math

And sadly, that might not be a bad assumption 😐

I had the honor of seeing Watson's racism on display first-hand

In grad school, he was the invited guest for a speaker series I ran with other students. At dinner he looked my Latina classmate in the eye and said "Your people don't usually have the work ethic to succeed in this field!"

Bad guy.

James Watson, Co-Discoverer of the Structure of DNA, Is Dead at 97

In 1953 James Watson revealed the double helix structure of DNA

He spent the rest of his career revealing how great scientists can be awful people

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/s...

My kind of abundance

Absolutely!

Pundits could explain all this nuance too, but I think they know that saying it the troll-ish way is what gets the clicks.

Politics is a game of perceptions & popularity

Is this how normal Dems think? No! But huge coordinated conservative media campaigns have succeeded in making Democrats look incredibly weird and out of touch. Saying that they could fix that by tripling down on popular things is not a bad idea?

It's easy (and usually fun) to dump on pundits. But I think both of these things can be true

1. Very few Dems think algebra is racist or banning plastic bags is a big priority

2. Lots of people *think* D's are obsessed with these things because being a Democrat is historically unpopular and uncool

I dare you

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...

Michio Kaku did this? I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

Super cool that the FDA is out there telling doctors the opposite of what the president said as he was vibing through a press conference

People will lie to themselves and unconsciously invent post hoc rationalizations for why they think what they do, but most of the time they are doing just that: lying to themselves

Politics is a game of manipulating human belief in order to create action. Dishonest people are better at the game

More people need to realize politics has devolved into sorting people into buckets and keeping them there

1. Pick position (e.g. vaccines r scary)
2. Signal "if you're one of us, you must believe [1]"

The reality of the position doesn't matter to these people. It's all just shepherding for power

Please tell me it wasn't @alamodrafthouse.bsky.social that got cold feet

Kakistocracy kills.

Epidemiology is hard! We can find real associations between things, but they aren’t always cause and effect. There’s often a third, invisible thing controlling them both.

Luckily, we have a way of teasing out the difference: Careful, well-designed scientific research studies.