JD (not that one) Paul (not that one)

And in the continuing saga of "Charles Darwin speaks directly to my soul on his bad days" I present to you these excerpts from actual letters he actually wrote to actual people, please enjoy:)

This is stellar. 15/10, no notes.

I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.

Peak Performance (episode) With the Borg threat in mind, Starfleet stages a war-game simulation pitting Captain Picard and the Enterprise against Commander Riker and the eighty-year-old starship Hathaway. However, when the Fere...

SF authors provided other templates, back into the 1980s: Marc Stiegler's Zetetic Institute stories had "Decision Duels" that were explicitly set up differently (providing "here's where we agree/disagree" processes). And ST:TNG included stuff like Strategema: memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Peak_Pe...

💯 (Model UN nerd here)

My biggest criticism of ST: Starfleet Academy so far is that the "Let's debate whether Federation should FORCE the Klingons to accept help" episode (S1E4, "Vox in Excelso") used shitty debate forms as if no one had come up with something better by the 32nd Century.

Wow

YouTube video by Peter Gabriel Peter Gabriel - Heroes (Live in Verona 2010)

I'm pretty partial to the Peter Gabriel cover: youtu.be/wSX9F6ETTDQ

💯
Democratic party leadership keeps saying "keep our powder dry", as if political power is a non-renewable resource. The sheer wrongness of the metaphor is infuriating.

So many jokes in various comment sections:

Shart of The Deal
Thank you for your attention to this fecal matter

etc.

This video is great. An hour of info and fantastic framing of renewable energy (fossil fuels are "disposable energy"; we should extract and *build* things, rather than extract and *burn* things -- build stuff that we can *recycle*), and then 30 minutes of barn-burning political sermon. Outstanding.

You can test new tech ideas using the Seinfeld Test

Would the product eliminate the plot of an episode? (Google maps, cell phones, paypal, battery packs)

Good tech.

Would the product inspire new Seinfeld plots? (NFTs, AI chatbots, crypto currency, blindboxes, metaverse land sales)

Bad tech.

Every social theory undergirding Trumpism has been broken on the steel of Minnesotan resolve. The multiracial community in Minneapolis was supposed to shatter. It did not. It held until Bovino was forced out of the Twin Cities with his long coat between his legs. The secret fear of the morally depraved is that virtue is actually common, and that they’re the ones who are alone. In Minnesota, all of the ideological cornerstones of MAGA have been proved false at once. Minnesotans, not the armed thugs of ICE and the Border Patrol, are brave. Minnesotans have shown that their community is socially cohesive—because of its diversity and not in spite of it. Minnesotans have found and loved one another in a world atomized by social media, where empty men have tried to fill their lonely soul with lies about their own inherent superiority. Minnesotans have preserved everything worthwhile about “Western civilization,” while armed brutes try to tear it down by force.

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

YouTube video by Eleanor Morton We Have AI Now

youtube.com/shorts/8-lgJ...

I live to serve. 😁

The standard for “cultural revolution” according to centrist and right wing commentators is “liberals being loud about their opinions” whereas Trump is making prosecution, regulatory, and funding decisions based on the politics of the speaker but that’s also libs fault for making him mad

I didn’t realize cassian andor was a real person bsky.app/profile/kevi...

The Burglary by Betty Medsger: 9780804173667 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books INVESTIGATIVE REPORTERS & EDITORS (IRE) BOOK AWARD WINNER • The story of the history-changing break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, by a group of unlikely activists—quiet,...

For anyone looking to learn more, I recommend www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/224642...

I wish that Bill Davidon (who was one of the prime instigators of the burglary) had lived long enough to contribute. (Full disclosure: Davidon was a professor at Haverford, my alma mater.)

😳👀

My natal river is the Niagara, but I have lived beside the Charles for decades now.

Counterintuitive Comparison Of Relative Population Latitudes Of US, Canada & Europe

Full map: brilliantmaps.com/populatio...

Reply to previous post with a screenshot of the immediately following post: Effin Birds' "Get some fucking popcorn, it's shitshow time"

The reactionary centrist logic is simple: if the left does something bad it’s the left’s fault, and if the right does something bad, it’s also the left’s fault for making them do it. It’s a simple formula and once you see it every one of their arguments is the same

How a New Hampshire libertarian utopia was foiled by bears Seriously, this happened. You should absolutely read about it.

And watch out for bears...

www.vox.com/policy-and-p...

anyone who believed trump was a non-interventionist should not be allowed to go outside without adult supervision

They also stole the art from a *Japanese* artist!

bsky.app/profile/geor...

Screenshot of a post by Alex Luck criticizing others while showing an auction listing for a painting. The image displays a beach scene artwork featuring palm trees, a pinkish car, ocean waves, and a bright blue sky. Below the artwork is text identifying the artist as Hiroshi Nagai and describing the piece. Beneath that, a quoted post from the Department of Homeland Security repeats the phrase, “The peace of a nation no longer besieged by the third world.”

A Japanese artist made the print DHS lifted to spread anti-immigrant hate. Can't make this up.

To the degree that anyone actually says this in good faith, is it because the "experts" they know are all political pundits, who are almost always wrong?

12YO girl signed up to do “stand up comedy” at the talent show. 13YO boy decided to heckle her. Teacher started to tell the boy to leave her alone, but the 12YO comedian said “no, no, let him go, this is the closest he’s ever going to get to having a conversation with a girl.”

Still waiting for the guillotine emoji....