Shen Pan

These are not the images of a free society.

University of Virginia President Resigns Under Pressure From Trump Administration

What a disgrace. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/u...

RIP Helen. You will be remembered fondly in my heart for years to come.

Even granting that Tom Crewe has identified stylistic and other flaws in OV's writing, I would've expected the critique to engage with the question why OV is so admired by many, despite these flaws. Or to even just ask that question.

Unbelievably useless.

On the other hand, “we’re all going to die” anyway.

Vile.

Immigration lawyers and advocates were there to beg them not to. The Torrance County Detention Facility is one of the system’s most troubled, they argued. It has a long history of failures that at one point led a federal watchdog to demand an immediate evacuation, something ICE declined to do after disputing the findings. At the meeting, an activist read testimony from a man detained at the facility who said he had to wait almost four hours for an ambulance to take him to get treatment for a third-degree burn he got while working in the kitchen to make money to call his family. “Please, truly, we need help from people outside,” the advocate read. “We’re human beings. Please. We’re not prisoners, we’re not animals. We’re human beings. I urge you to not extend the contract.” No one spoke in favor of extending the county’s ICE agreement. No one had to. Since signing the contract six years ago, the Torrance County Commission has voted to approve regular extensions without much hand-wringing over its role in US immigration policy.

"He had to wait almost four hours for an ambulance to take him to get treatment for a third-degree burn he got while working in the kitchen to make money to call his family" is not a sentence that can be written about a humane society.

Why Even Try if You Have A.I.? As A.I. grows more powerful, we may be more and more tempted to give up in advance and let it figure out things for us. What will we lose as a result?

One of the best articles on the personal perils and costs of AI. "It feels strange to imagine that, someday soon, we might need to start reminding ourselves to think." www.newyorker.com/culture/open...

Optional reading: www.npr.org/sections/goa...

On a slightly different issue, same pattern:

This is exemplary leadership by Van Hollen and it is beyond outrageous that a White House atrocity necessitates it.

Foreign concentration camps*

America has descended into a country with an extralegal system which kidnaps innocent people and sends them to foreign prisons without any access to due process. And the Trump regime is reveling in its cruelty and lawlessness.

US judge rules Mahmoud Khalil can be deported for his views White House has claimed that Khalil’s ‘beliefs and associations’ are counter to US foreign policy interests

US immigration judges, despite the title, are DOJ employees, so this is not surprising. And Khalil’s lawyers are correct to point out the decision was clearly pre-written. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

“According to the center’s 2025 budget justification, two-thirds of its grants typically go to U.S. institutions that partner with groups in low and middle-income countries. Fogarty says it has trained some 7,500 people across 132 countries since 1989.”

Count on Florida to race to the bottom.

This seems silly on its face (Chinese vehicles are already banned de facto), but the context that needs to be kept in mind is that Slotkin is the junior Senator from Michigan who would be up for re-election in … 2030.

“I Am Seeing My Community of Researchers Decimated” www.newyorker.com/news/deep-st...

It's not at all stunning to me.

famous moments in psychology / cog-sci as lego sets, a thread.

1. Pavlov's dogs.