If you want to know how quickly culture can change study Quebec 1950 to 1970.
Retired GP. Bicycling. CrossFit, cognitive disability, Lib. Eternally curious. TrueName John Faughnan (not actor). Amateur xenopsychologist. Painfully woke. Also mastodon - https://appdot.net/@jgordon
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If you want to know how quickly culture can change study Quebec 1950 to 1970.
I lived as a child in Catholic theocratic state. Religion was in the air. And thus it became meaningless and was discarded within a decade. White Americans grew up in a world of decent freedom, decent governance, good enough democracy. It was in the air …
NVIDIA stock is about to surge a VLDB paper from Microsoft demonstrates that SQL Server can be both faster and *cheaper* if run on a GPU www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol18/...
The 21st has given me a different perspective on surrealist literature.
Vulnerable people. But there are a lot more vulnerable people than most imagine.
You can save a lot by not paying utility bills
the GPT-5 system prompt explicitly says not to ask clarifying questions i feel like we’re hitting the bitter lesson on theory of mind. they’re trying to fix every last behavior bug, except human preferences are blatantly contradictory, you simply need to understand the person
Depends on lots of things but mostly on who has power in setting prices.
As someone who is not counting on Democrats in DC to save us in any way, I think we still need to be accurate about what they've been doing to bring the fight to MAGA. And this is a good list of what we may be missing.
The Trump administration used Benny Johnson's claims that his house was "burned to the ground" and that "people were murdered in my front yard" to justify its federal takeover of DC. @kenbensinger.bsky.social found out that Johnson made it all up. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/30/b...
Perplexity description here (Claude LLM): www.perplexity.ai/search/descr...
In positive ai news a physician friend recommended the OpenEvidence medical ai app. You need an NPI to use it. My first question was about a pt with pectus excavatum, lumbar spinal stenosis and cervical spine stenosis -- references confirmed likelihood of a genetic disorder. #medsky
Very thorough bike lock review. I have a Litelok on my e-cargo bike and feel much better about it now. www.theguardian.com/travel/2025/...
You are in the minority. I suspect his health is getting worse, but at his age that's not a surprise. I figure he's got at least 10y left to live but that doesn't mean his brain is going to make it.
It's quite cheering to contemplate Trump's demise (from natural causes of course), but it's too easy. The narrative would never allow that exit. He has to linger on the edge for the rest of his term ...
Discord isn't really a social media site though, it's a platform.
Ski resorts similar
JD Vance walking up to the Epstein Coverup Assassin like “I know you’re retired but I need you for one last job.”
Crime in Japan?
Ever since we gave him the vaccine my dog has been non-verbal
I’m now considering supernatural explanations for our current state. Reason is dead.
I had to read comments to realize what Mike did here.
Jonathan Howard, a neurologist and psychiatrist in NYC, received an email from YouTube on Friday, which stated that Prasad had demanded the removal of six videos of himself from Howard’s YT channel. Howard’s entire channel has now been deleted by YT. 2/3
Nine former CDC directors basically said RFK Jr is a threat to public health.
Do we need to remember who she was? Because I burned those memories
I’m hoping my ai will watch them for me and summarize anything useful
It makes me emotional to see Judge Sooknanan showing that she values each individual child’s life at a moment when this administration is doing exactly the opposite
Judge Sooknanan is giving a master class in judging during the Trump Administration -- but really in how judges should always value the people whose lives are affected by their decisions.
Yes. It is not clear enough Americans like freedom.
Could be an LLM. They are a lot smarter than Trump.
He explains research in the post replies. Feels like a promising approach to characterizing an alien “mind” - and tweaking how it works.
However, this comparison already revealed an important difference. When we quantified the proportion of visual, semantic, and mixed dimensions, it turned out that human representations were much more semantic, while the DNN was dominated by visual dimensions. 6/n
I’ve long been curious about disease and demographics of Hawaii. The population presumably grew rapidly after initial human settlement — but euro disease impact would have been large.
What do you get when you blend idiocracy, fascism, and hatred of virtue? MAGA
Anna has had excellent coverage of this developing case in which the Trump administration tried to use the holiday weekend to secretly and illegally deport children.
Metarepresentation etc. Big in linguistics side of cognitive science.
The past two years are causing me to reconsider my secular materialism. Maybe Thiel really is the Antichrist.
Melania has only been seen with Trump a handful of times since the inauguration, but I don't think Barron has been seen with him at all since then.
VHA will be completely unable to hire and even retain MHPs after the Trump-Musk-DOGE disaster.
Media has been hollowed out from the bottom and a lot of that was beat reporting and grassroots stuff. The top is left without much to support it. There are about a fifth as many reporters per capita compared to 25 years ago.
If the NYT did this they might feel o loved to report the findings. That could interfere with their business.
They will not become perfectly predictable with current tech. However they will likely do intense surveillance, individual risk scores, and notification to authorities of suspicious behavior. Pre-crime detection with a very high false-positive rate.
Former ally.
Add Sookanan to a plaque in the hall of heroes that will replace the Trump ballroom.
I’ve heard wall streeters are buying up the tariff refund rights from importers as speculative investments.
This month spoke w the ambassador of a longtime close US allied country. The indignities, damage, and "the cruelty is the point" (tm A Serwer) that this allied country has been put through would defy belief, except that we see counterparts every day in ICE / MAGA news. Just for the record.
It can be wise to work with a therapist on this kind of trauma.
“.. with the exception of the pandemic, Black women have never seen such staggering losses in employment.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/u...
Come on now. Stand by your past statements or publicly change your mind. But don’t try to pretend.
They all lie compulsively.
Since Americans won’t restrict weapon access we will instead get comprehensive ai surveillance and pre-crime intervention when risk reaches 5% threshold.
As a friend recently put it: the venn diagram of people who assured us the gun violence was worth it because we need the guns to protect ourselves against a tyrannical federal government and the people cheering on Trump as he deploys the military to take over American cities is a circle
GolfWatch is fun. I do admit Trump and team act like he is facing a deadline other than the midterms. If Vance stops taking vacations …
These are hard times for many. Whitewater with expectation of a waterfall … somewhere ahead
Reposting to emphasize I’m totally serious. Either America manages weapon availability or we move to full ai surveillance and pre-crime prediction and intervention. China’s social credit system with extra ai. My money is on option 2. It helps to consider assault weapons to be religious artifacts.
“Far easier to carry on, either pretending that the transformation of the US is not, in fact, as severe as it is, or that normal service will resume shortly.” The normalcy bias is powerful and, in a truly complex adaptive system, often correct. Until it isn’t. We have been broken for a while.
It is a pleasant read
… 40y ago computer literature searches included an option to filter by a core set of journals. That no longer exists.
The failure of American science and medicine to address and manage the fake journal/fake paper problem is yet another sign our institutions were breaking before the MAGA came…
At some temps it’s easier to carry dry clothes and skip the waterproofs. But heavy cold rain takes gear even I don’t have … much tougher than -10F
Putin stopped the supply of the “vitamins” he has been sending Trump.
Covid settles in as an influenza-class endemic disease. Good thing we have vaccines.
There is a dangerous leadership succession process underway there. They are focused on that I suspect.
I was convinced this had to be fake but he really posted this. I was wondering why he would post this then realized it continues his grand tradition of stiffing contractors.
The supernatural thesis has new support.
That should be good for a measure of inner tranquillity
Same!
Enrollment in the pre-crime panopticon program will be through criteria such as antidepressant use, gender fluidity, pigmentation and voting Dem
Both understand the MAGA (formerly Republican) are not rational. The interesting question is why the NYT has to pretend they are.
With AI companies declaring they will notify authorities of interactions suggesting a risk of violent behavior the American response to gun violence is taking shape. Extreme surveillance with pre-crime prediction rather than weapons restrictions.
I remember the countdown for Fidel Castro. At least ten years before he finally expired.
The golf metric is a good one. Trump does not love much, but he loves golf.
Yes, I contradicted myself. I’m righter the second time.
One of the most successful pedestrian streets in the world, the Strøget in Copenhagen, was filled with cars until a 2 year pedestrianization pilot project in 1962. The opposition argued “no cars means no business,” but the street has been a massive retail success, the city’s busiest shopping street.
I can imagine ways that our structural problems could diminish with time. So it’s possible that political tactics alone will suffice. Of the two the tactics are most important. But I think talking about structural issues can still be helpful.
There are two sane political groups on Bluesky. Both important. One is about tactics, candidates, constitutional law. These focus on lessons from 2024. This is very important. Another much smaller group is about how and why America self-destructed. This may be equally important.
I suspect these need to be updated for the times.
“the experience gave them a new perspective on life.”
What will be the deranged reason given for this idiotic move? That they might recommend vaccine research or something? RFK Jr. must be removed from office. It’s him or us.
Old Soviet joke for today: A man walks into a newsstand every day, looks around, and leaves. After a long time of this, the owner says “Can I help you find something?” “I’m looking for the obituaries.” “The obituaries are in the back of the newspaper, comrade.” “Not the one I’m looking for.”
The MAGA have made many skeptics of democracy
Thanks for the heads-up. I’ll stop following him. I don’t like to follow people who block carelessly; I unfollow anyone who blocks boastfully. I think blocks should expire yearly unless renewed - and profiles should show number of active blocks. Blocks may be necessary but they are bad.
Modi and Trump are two of a kind.
We wil, of course, still have the deep structural problems that gave us Trump as the GOP nominee.
Trump’s latest infusion from Thiel’s recipe of ivermectin and the blood extracts of young men has had side effects?
From Krugman-Eichengreen interview: E: “only way of correcting that problem—which is to raise more tax revenue—is a political third rail in the United States” Ummm. Didn’t Trump just implement a huge new tax?
Ahh! Time to redouble our local efforts! (Not really, in the US we are trying to be invisible now.) I stand corrected then.
9/11 practice.
also in general I think we're back to woo of all stripes being largely right-coded, as was the case in the 1920s and 30s, rather than progressive
So long gov shutdown then some martial law event?
🎗️MedSky🎗️ According to the pharmaceutical company Lilly Oncology, a phase 3 clinical trial has now confirmed that the Abemaciclib pill, sold under the brand name Verzenio, can significantly reduce the risk of relapse in some types of early breast cancer, which had spread to the lymph node.
I have also ridden both, though it’s been 6-8y since I last did Montreal. I ride MSP daily.
A bold claim! Tim is pretty solid so I’ll be watching this space.
They seem increasingly desperate. As though some clock were running out. Somebody important might leave at any time …
You jest — but this has already happened. Not by clock speed but changing response to disengage.
It is curious. Miller? Thiel? Melania? Trump himself? A minion racing to interpret a delirious rant? The Trump-MAGA madness makes constructing motives an exercise in futility.
Montreal is a decent bicycling town, but they have fallen well behind your close neighbors of Minneapolis / St Paul. Only 2nd best in NA now.
Brawndo to replace IV fluids.
Now that Gemini has written my class assignment I'll ask GPT to grade it.
I wonder what goes on in the weird warped mind of Clarence Thomas at times like this.