Christian A. Meissner

How to deal with holiday stress, Danish-style Denmark, despite its cold and gloomy winters, is full of people who consistently rank among the happiest in the world.

Feeling holiday stress?

A psychologist (and native Dane) shares how Denmark relies on two words to stay grounded: overskud (the energy/space to take something on) and pyt (to let it go).

This season: say no when you lack overskud and say pyt when things don’t go as planned 💛

Opinion | The Dishonesty of the Northwestern Deal The university claims it preserved academic autonomy. It didn’t.

"Northwestern officials proudly noted that their pact with the WH explicitly declares that the agreement doesn’t allow the gov't to dictate “the content of academic speech and research” .... But the pact itself restricts speech and research at the university. Saying otherwise won’t change that."

Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends

It will take America *decades*—not merely years—to recover from what these robber barons did to us.

They destroyed our government, caused untold pain to the average American directly and indirectly, and used our money as their piggy bank.

And all of it *should* have been criminal.

Mark Kelly: "This president, when he says things like 'third world countries,' what is he really saying? I think what he's saying is he doesn't want brown people in our country. And that's disturbing. It's un-American."

All the president’s millions: how the Trumps are turning the presidency into riches From Vietnam to the Balkans, Donald Trump’s family has launched a global dealmaking blitz since his re-election

I've done a deep dive into the Trump family's global moneymaking campaign. The White House says there's no conflict of interest. But from Serbia to Vietnam to crypto it's being called "pay to play" on a vast scale. If you have info, get in touch @theguardian.com
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...

Reranking partisan animosity in algorithmic social media feeds alters affective polarization Today, social media platforms hold the sole power to study the effects of feed-ranking algorithms. We developed a platform-independent method that reranks participants’ feeds in real time and used thi...

New study finds that down-ranking hostile political content in people’s social media feeds decreases political polarization.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The White House Intervened on Behalf of Accused Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate During a Federal Investigation Federal authorities were chided for seizing electronic devices from Tate and his brother, and told to return them, records and interviews show. Experts said the intervention was highly inappropriate.

Experts say it’s highly unusual for the White House to tell agents to give up custody of potential evidence in an investigation, as it did with the Tates.

“I’ve never heard of anything like that in my 30 years working,” an ex-DHS official said.

James Taylor
Bruce Hornsby
U2
Lollapalooza
Jason Mraz

Cartoon by @slyngstad.bsky.social.

Even the turkey pardons are for sale.

It's a tiny amount of money ($25K, $12K when I was a student), but the consequences are huge. e.g., Years ago, this funding enabled me to conduct my PhD research, which ultimately informed the Supreme Court litigation that prohibited patents on human genes.

Talk about undone science.

YouTube video by The Hometown Holler ICE Detained an 18-Year-Old U.S. Citizen. This Is His Story.

An 18yo US citizen, surrounded by eight masked, armed agents of the state, taken into custody, not read his rights, not offered a chance to contact a lawyer, proof of citizenship ignored, handcuffed so tightly he later required medical attention.

Profoundly, profoundly anti-American shit.

Big news today: Chris Duncan, who spent decades on Louisiana's death row on 'junk science' until his conviction was overturned this spring, is being released today.

You'll remember this story from a few months ago, when his conviction was overturned: boltsmag.org/chris-duncan...

Sen. Mark Kelly facing military investigation after clashing with Trump A statement from the Pentagon said all service members have a "legal obligation" to "obey lawful orders and that orders are presumed to be lawful."

America needs more patriots like Senator Mark Kelly and fewer miserable cowards like Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth.

I used to handle interlibrary loans for a public library. ILL is a magnificent expression of the idea that readers deserve books, and books deserve readers. It’s libraries everywhere pooling their resources for the benefit of everyone.

Killing IMLS could have killed ILL.

This is great news. 📚

Calling all student 2025 Annual Meeting attendees! Don’t miss your chance to network and connect at tonight’s student social beginning at 9:00 PM MST. #psynom25
buff.ly/54rGdBh

The SPARK Society is sponsoring a lunchtime workshop at Psychonomics (noon today, Governor's Square 12) on Science Outreach and Advocacy, featuring @ozgegurcanli.bsky.social @paulacroxson.bsky.social and @jzacks.bsky.social, moderated by me. Free lunch for the first 50 attendees - join us! #psynom25

Military Oaths and Unlawful Orders A few important questions and answers from our senior defense policy analyst

Important read from my @pogo.org colleague Virginia Burger on her oaths of office during her service in the U.S. military and obligation to disobey unlawful orders: www.pogo.org/analysis/mil...

How to End Shadow Budget, Protect Congress’s Power of Purse Unless Congress reasserts control over federal spending, the balance the framers designed could collapse into a self-financing presidency.

President Trump is building a “shadow budget” outside of Congressional control. @scott-levy.bsky.social explains why it is unlawful and how Congress should respond:

www.justsecurity.org/125302/shado...

The “Presumption of Regularity” in Trump Administration Litigation Comprehensive study of court cases involving Trump administration and the basis for courts no longer giving a "presumption of regularity."

We've updated our Study.

New stats (jaw-dropping imho):

1. DOJ noncompliance with court orders:

26 cases

2. Courts’ distrust of government information and representations:

Over 60 cases

3. Court findings of arbitrary and capricious government conduct:

68 cases

Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq

This story is nuts.

"ICE agents then surrounded the judge’s car and demanded everyone to exit the vehicle, threatening to smash in the windows if they did not comply."

🧵

U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify swastikas, nooses as hate symbols The military service, which falls under the Department of Homeland Security, has drafted a new policy that classifies such items “potentially divisive.”

Exclusive: The U.S. Coast Guard will no longer classify the swastika, nooses and the Confederate flag as hate symbols.

The military service drafted a new policy that classifies them as “potentially divisive.”

Learning with AI falls short compared to old-fashioned web search Doing the mental work of connecting the dots across multiple web queries appears to help people understand the material better compared to an AI summary.

Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.

YouTube video by LastWeekTonight Public Media: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

John Oliver and Co did a great explanation of what public media does, and who exactly the funding recission actually hurts (Hint: it's not liberal elites.) Also very proud to see my old friend and former WBEZ reporter Lauren Chooljian featured for her amazing work.

youtu.be/yknMJOgy2pA?...

A Chinese firm bought an insurer for CIA agents - part of Beijing's trillion dollar spending spree - BBC News When an insurer for FBI and CIA agents was sold to a Chinese entity, it led the US to tighten investment laws.

The BBC picked up on an old Newsweek story of mine and gave it great new color and context.
www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc....

Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events.

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/glo...

We could spend years demanding a list be released, or we could just believe women…

How Trump Has Exploited Pardons and Clemency to Reward Allies and Supporters The president’s second term has brought a flood of clemency for allies and donors — as well as felons, like him, who were convicted of financial wrongdoing.

Those seeking pardons through official channels have watched while Trump grants pardons to people who never entered the system at all.

“If you’re just an average citizen, you can’t even get in the line,” one lawyer said. “I told my guy he’d probably be better off if he broke into the Capitol.”

The Founders were so concerned about bribery that the Constitution forbids it three separate times. Two emoluments clauses ban officials—unambiguously including the president—from accepting things of value, plus bribery is the only named impeachable offense besides treason.

Unprecedentedly corrupt.