ken vogt

The thing about Mamdani is that he’s a talented politician but not otherworldly or one in a billion, he’s just a competent guy with popular ideas who ran against an entitled piece of shit and to me it’s a lot more optimistic to imagine 1000 campaigns like his than to view him as a unique phenomenon

Trial Dispatch: The Comey Hearing of Nov. 5, 2025 A judge ordered grand jury minutes turned over to James Comey, as well as information from five-year-old searches of Professor Dan Richman.

At 4pm Magistrate Judge Fitzpatrick will hold a telephonic hearing on whether govt must turn over grand jury minutes to Comey’s team. Tech permitting, I’ll live-blog for @lawfaremedia.org .
For background, see
www.lawfaremedia.org/article/tria...
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#BREAKING: Over no public dissents, #SCOTUS denies Kim Davis's petition asking the justices to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges (which recognized federal constitutional protections for same-sex marriage):

www.supremecourt.gov/orders/court...

What we lose when we surrender care to algorithms | Eric Reinhart A dangerous faith in AI is sweeping American healthcare – with consequences for the basis of society itself

“The problem is that when it is installed in a health sector that prizes efficiency, surveillance and profit extraction, AI becomes not a tool for care and community but simply another instrument for commodifying human life.”

So the oldest person ever to become president keeps falling asleep in his office during public events and there’s no big public discussion on how this is a coverup or how republicans are lying to us about how this government is running?

Senate update: Republicans are now trying to sneak a backdoor national abortion ban into their government funding bill. Republicans will stop at nothing to control women's health care decisions.

congrats to everyone for thinking this through before signing very big contracts to put it on every student’s device at the school or university you run

And why exactly is the sex at birth, as opposed to their sex now, at all relevant to identifying, say, a fifty year old woman on DOCUMENTS THAT IDENTIFY HER.

I had blue eyes at birth. You know what my driver’s license says? Hazel. Because they changed, and one is useless for identifying me.

Net zero is an insidious loophole that distracts from the scientific imperative to eliminate fossil fuels | Joëlle Gergis History tells us that polite incrementalism and political kowtowing will prevail at Cop30 – even as catastrophe unfolds around us

As COP30 begins, here's a gentle reminder that well-intentioned half measures aren't going to solve the climate crisis. The era of fossil fuels must come to an end. My latest in The Guardian... www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...

LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text

But... can they? We don’t actually know.

In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test.

And our findings are striking:
LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵

"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk

No it’s important to listen to this. Because then you understand that many of them will do ANYTHING to keep power. Remember Musk got involved in the 2024 election after saying to Tucker “if she wins” I am definitely going to prison.

So we need to move knowing that nothing is off the table for them.

189. The Breezy Inequity of Trump v. Orr The Supreme Court's latest grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration illustrates in technicolor the direct (and ugly) consequences of the two different ways it keeps messing up "equity."

"Beyond being the 24th consecutive grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration, the cryptic ruling in Orr is a reminder of just how bankrupt the Court’s proffered justifications are in these cases—both legally and in other ways, too."

Me on today's ugly #SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. Orr:

leaked irc conversation involving the security department of the louvre

The human brain has 86 billion neurons and 1.5x10^14 synapses. That doesn't even account for the various chemical signals that moderate neurotransmission.

LLMs work *nothing* like the brain of even the simplest animals. I'd say they just parrot information but that's an insult to parrots.

Jury acquits D.C. 'sandwich guy' charged with chucking a sub at a federal agent Sean Dunn faced single misdemeanor offense after federal grand jurors refused to indict him on the felony charge sought by prosecutors.

BREAKING: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT EATS A LOSS IN 'SANDWICH GUY' CASE AS JURORS FIND DEFENDANT NOT GUILTY www.nbcnews.com/politics/jus...

State Prosecutions of Federal Agents and the Presidential Pardon Power State prosecutions of ICE agents may end up in federal courts, but any conviction would be beyond the president’s pardon power.

Any state prosecutions of federal immigration officers would likely be removed to federal court. Even though a potential conviction would occur before a federal judge, it would be beyond the president's pardon power, write Aaron Zelinsky, John Connolly, and David Reiser.

I will translate from NPRese

Scientists are alarmed because the Trump admin has gutted the CDC and USDA at a time when this virus could jump to a threat to humans anyday now.
🩺🧪

The Situation, November 4, 2025 with @annabower.bsky.social

the entire twitter and group chat poisoned elite of American society who decided Trump winning an election by 1.5% heralded a thousand year reich may have miscalculated a bit

I’m just a small-town political scientist, & it’s still relatively early, but it appears that The Actual Democrats did not Need To Do any of the Things or Learn any of the Obvious Lessons that Ezra Douthglesias said they Must Do & Learn.

adding to this: I think anti-trans ads will still play a role in GOP primaries (b/c they're transphobic). & *some* Dem pundits will still blame trans ppl (b/c they're transphobic). but hopefully most voters now understand these tactics as scapegoating & won't fall for them
bsky.app/profile/assi...

America's Mayor is an American Muslim Immigrant.

That's it. That's the post. Carry on.

Don't forget that Zohran Mamdani spent his entire campaign standing proudly beside the trans community. He went to trans rights rallies just to show support. He proudly waved trans rights flags without hesitation. He refused to back down in support of trans rights. That makes me happy.

I think a thing we'll learn tonight is that people fucking hate what is going on and they will straight ticket vote against anyone involved in starving people while pillaging the country and kidnapping their neighbors. I don't think it matters at all who that person is.

If it doesn't split, you must acquit.

So many people were detained extrajudicially, were tortured, or died because of Dick Cheney. You can't get to the danger we're in now without everything he did. The weapons he helped forge are ones we need to take away from U.S. presidents forever.

Naomi Oreskes - Volvo Environment Prize Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes, a world-renowned earth scientist and historian, is the laureate of the 2025 Volvo Environment Prize. She is recognized for her influential work on the history of scien...

Huge congratulations to Harvard’s Naomi Oreskes for winning the Volvo prize! She is a pioneer in unmasking the financial interests and methods behind climate science denial.
I’m proud to have published with her how Exxon knew exactly what they were doing.
www.environment-prize.com/laureates/na...

Citing Trump Order on “Biological Truth,” VA Makes It Harder for Male Veterans With Breast Cancer to Get Coverage A Department of Veterans Affairs memo obtained by ProPublica erects new roadblocks to care for veterans with the rare but deadly cancer. The agency cites no new science but relies on an executive orde...

Male veterans are encountering obstacles in getting treatment for breast cancer in the VA system because of Trump's executive order meant to oppress trans people. I say that again: non-trans men are struggling to get treatment for breast cancer due to transphobia.

www.propublica.org/article/vete...

Cool that renewables have become the cheapest source of energy in the world just as a bunch of reactionary-centrist US pundits have taken up the right-wing "climate vs. cheap energy" framing.