Pro-Democracy, period. Senior Data Scientist 🧪, #GivingTuesday Scientist for the Disinformation Age, #Python, Lean Startup, #BlueSci, (hobby author 📘 with 900k+ words across 8 fiction manuscripts)
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There was a point in my lifetime (circa 2005-2010?) when Hitler was one of the most popular first names in India ... why? because parents wanted to name their kids after successful world leaders. "Success" in any form. One Indian ballet pitted Hitler vs Einstein. www.npr.org/2012/12/23/1...
Is there a reason why crime is historically low in Chicago right now?
Sounds like something Trump will try to take credit for. Time is irrelevant. He blamed Biden for stuff that happened last Winter when he was president, so why not claim credit for any good news, period?
Russia launched a child trafficking catalog of kidnapped Ukrainian children, sorted by eye and hair color. #3E #OpDeathEaters 🧵
GivingTuesday Data started tracking activism rates in the US in a weekly survey, and we benchmarked against @pewresearch.org @ipsosus.bsky.social @nytimes.com past surveys. Surprisingly, activism rates pretty stable over Q1-Q3 2025. 1/3 did some in past week. www.givingtuesday.org/blog/why-act...
I wonder if shaded areas are also the "more people live here than outside of here in the US" region of the US. I get ~81 million people out of ~320 million, so only a quarter of the US population
a bunker mentality, entrenched against a state whose voting laws make elections actually fair
I avoid scrolling social media. Every day I select my search keywords: sacrifice, noble, subversive, trying, discovered, hero What are yours?
yeah, people whose job is to describe what they see and hear are turning out to be a bit tone deaf. Or... newspapers were using pre-AI tools to robowrite articles a while back? Have we considered that humans aren't involved to begin with?
interesting first line
keep sharing those follow-packs of scientists!
experience of Denver students and educators. The gender-neutral restrooms at East High School are not performative virtue signaling. [Sep 2, 2025]
to a restroom where they feel secure is not symbolic. It is about dignity, health, and the ability to learn. When students speak, we listen and we act. Recent public statements from federal officials have framed districts like ours as advancing ideology. That framing does not reflect the lived
Title IX permits schools to provide sex-separate restrooms. It does not require that to be the only option. The decision to implement gender-neutral restrooms at East followed direct feedback from LGBTQ+ students who reported they did not feel safe. For these students, access
they issued conclusions using an approach that departs from established investigative practice and advances an inscrutable interpretation of Title IX.
creating a multi-stall, gender-neutral restroom at East High School. What is striking about OCR’s process is what they did not do. They did not visit East High School. They did not interview students, staff, or community members. They did not independently verify the claims they now cite. Instead,
Interesting email from Denver Public Schools sent to parents today: The U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR) emailed Denver Public Schools a letter of findings. The letter stems from a directed investigation launched in January that alleges the District violated Title IX by
If MC Escher created coastlines... but this is a real place!
After reading this, seems like the killer was inspired by the "aura" of all prior mass shooters in the media and wanted to emulate them. That was the only motive.
Okay, I'm not interested enough to pursue this right now. I'll leave now.
I think this was the reason the articles of confederation fell apart - the complexity of making national laws thru state-to-state negotiations. But maybe we understand the dynamics better now? I'm not optimistic, since red-state alliances under Obama were never a thing.
Seems like Fediverse is also impossible to shut down or fine/punish because it has no centralized authority? Does #atproto provide a loophole to prevent speech policing, for better or worse?
I finally got to do a long bike ride this Summer! (50mi)
Did he study the odds that ships would be registered to offshore havens? I think about 8 in 10 are, but I'm just spitballing
I love nuggets like these! I wish there was a bot account like @frogandtoadbot.bsky.social that just shares history nuggets from the regular people
This interview, which is also available to listen to as a podcast, provides a useful overview of some of the dangerous trends we’ve been seeing in recent months regarding federalization and militarization of state and local police functions.
When was that "recent historic high"?
"Hyperindividualism is not good for your social and spiritual health. Let’s be clear about what’s happened here: greed. Americans have become so obsessed with economic success that we’ve neglected the social and moral conditions that undergird human flourishing." www.nytimes.com/2025/08/07/o...
The layers of context needed to understand that nested set of tweets is dizzying. Imagine if any of us was transported into this convo from, like, 2015. Staggering what "discourse" has evolved into on social.
Definite Pokemon vibes
yeah, that maybe only applies to a 3 block radius where out of town congresspeople roam. The rest of DC is authentic and awesome. Maybe more awesomer than most of NYC.
I don't even know what to make of all the spiderman renaming hacks. IT's like some exec decided this project needed to happen for $$$ even if they refused to buy sufficient rights to make it not suck. I'm not a marvel fan, and probably will skip this in paper and on arena. I'll write a novel instead
Ta dum dum
Can we all acknowledge just how hard this song rocks? open.spotify.com/track/5wEffe... @russbengtson.bsky.social
Don't forget that RollingStone magazine began in 1967, when the Rolling Stones and Dylan's rolling stone song were both the top of the zeitgiest. They're leaning into their tag-along origins here.
Accepting how a person's feels about themselves as their truth has spread worldwide in the last 30 years. Autism, like ADHD, and gayness, is more prevalent because we started paying attention to people, and not projecting a single way of being onto everyone. This is "good" individualism.
The "autism epidemic" myth on that list of 45 reminds me of a similar effect, in Gambia 1999, when I was Peace Corps Volunteer. Villagers says gayness is not a real thing in Africa. It is imported. Social-norms, freely accepting what is inside you, and expressing it -- those were imported. So yes?
I would listen to a daily podcast called 'mythconceptions' like these informationisbeautiful.net/visualizatio...
@sierkovitz.bsky.social @covertgoblue.bsky.social @mtgarena.com @mtgnerdgirl.bsky.social I saw CGB's brawl video today - watched two uncommons make an infinite combo, and couldn't help but get that turn 3 kill. IS this the fun part? At least I didn't have to craft a single card
clearly these voters weren't alive for homelands/fallen empires - the year nobody went to a game store because it was SO BAD
Maybe Cliff was the genius behind their 80s metal sound.
yeah, Trump is a constant threat to democracy, but I think the fall of democracy -- if it comes -- will ultimately be because the opposition couldn't align. Gambia (where I did Peace Corps 1999) had an unpopular dictator for 27 years until their opposition got it together.
Hah! Those albums are the musical equivalent of "brutalist architecture" ... in the best way. And Justice was my favorite, though the 20-page playboy interview of their short breakup mentions that none of the band members were even speaking to each other as they recorded their best album.
Perhaps my favorite metal songs of all time (to live is to die ... into ... dyers eve). I think the words and melody are written by Cliff Burton though, and performed by Jason Newsted, right?
The one difference - CA's is ballot measure certified policy; TX is not -- will give the supreme court some impossible logical acrobats to perform in their explanation. I tend to think ballot measures are more democratic than edicts, though both can be tyranny.
This might seem radical if the solutions don't align with someone's pre-existing idea of what solutions are possible. The establishment wing of the Democratic party hasn't aggressively tested new policy approaches lately.
Would it help people understand if you called it "establishment" instead of "corporate"? I mean every faction is willing to take some money from anybody, but there's a deep well of context beneath what this ~13% fears.
Also: fill your barrels with snake oil strategic reserves before its too late!
yes! There is so much useful data from Pew and others that tell you what resonates on a deep level, and so little overlap with either party and these things right now. It just takes an open mind, discipline, and a vision to parse a winning path.
Authenticity matters a LOT. If I imagine other political leaders using Mamdani's rhetoric verbatim, it rings hollow because they didn't live his life. I wonder how many cycles it will take seasoned politicians to discover this one weird trick.
Until you post a copy of you actual job application on a website, AI will continue to have poor training data from which to compile similar "actual work descriptions" for other people. I will ensure our future job applications only include questions that require a unique answer :)
MY typos prove this was not LLM-generated.
Also: people's definitions of what's acceptable are moving in many directions at once. Many who would never accept despotic leadership a year ago are fine with it now that it promises them whatever their heart desires.
Reminds me of the hundreds of job applications that came in at my workplace this past week with personal essays and "describe a project you did" that were written by LLMs/AI. One person's chatGPT answer quoted my own work as their reason why we should them them. No, #AI is no substitute.
This makes NO sense. Renewable energy has - until recently - been more expensive. More expensive things can only the raise the price of cheaper alternatives if those companies are gouging customers. www.npr.org/transcripts/...
city arborists are hard to get to come! We'll be waiting on one in Aurora, CO for the next 2 years to clean their try on our property
Boulder and Arvada are in the 99th and 100th percentile, respectively.
Economic connectedness is a predictor of socioeconomic class. Here, in Denver, my neighborhood is in the 90th percentile, and 1 mile away, West Aurora is in the 12th percentile. Research shows that people in these two places will probably never cross paths www.nature.com/articles/s41...
One of the most fascinating things is that this group that is frustrated and angry with the status quo and demands change keeps showing up to polls, when other groups that benefit from that status quo struggle to protect it in elections.
Pew has some good data on this group, but they rarely report on it through this lens. They're the leftover middle / non-square-peg-fitting faction that Establishment Left and pedigreed right both tried to ignore. Trump decided they were his sheep. They never get what's promised them.
I lived in Mount Pleasant for 8 years. I love the area and trust them to protect the people from harm if possible.
IT's weird to realize that Reid Hoffman (linkedin) and Elon Musk (CEO of a bunch of crap) both intersected at PayPal at one point. Since then, they've moved in very different directions while both creating massively successful companies. Ya don't have to be a jerk to succeed.
I hope you noted that places in DC most targeted (U-street, 14+U, Columbia Heights) have historically been some of the most diverse intersectional neighborhoods. These places were targeted because they represent the diversity that's the real target. They're more resilient because of their diversity
"You do not need the strongest powers of observation to see that crime is a pretext — and not the main reason — for the military occupation of Washington by federal agents and soldiers from the National Guard."
Wait till the public discovers who effective prevention is...
There's a dude who has - for years - been on that corner (near Z-burger / tripoli) blasting old skool Michael Jackson from the overpowered bicycle mounted boombox like 1986 never ended. [It's the best we can offer]
It doesn't take that big of a crowd; just one that is disciplined, confident (in their rights and in the strategy), and present.
My old neighborhood! yeay! It is noteworthy that this intersection is one of the most racially diverse spots in DC, based on the 2010 census. That's why it is targeted; that's why it is resilient to targeting.
This is subvertgineering 101.
There ought to be members of these intimidation squads who feel uncomfortable about it and will share their stories of what it's like being told to do this. Journalists - find them, please. Put faces on the faceless and they will find their humanity.
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏 My novel drafts take 100-200 hours each. So this is a monumental achievement!
Do you get the feeling that everyone in the world has caught on that Trump gets all bent by this kind of petty trolling? Gavin Newsome and Zelenskyy on the same page.
In the US House of Representatives there are 5 used car dealers but only one artist. 30% are lawyers and 31% are businesspeople. Of 541 representatives (including non-voting members), only 4 are scientists, 8 engineers. Compared to 35 consultants. www.congress.gov/crs-product/...
The game: Let's see what happens when we fire all the experts on hurricanes and such.
if BLS data is fake, these are substitutes. Inferior to the government sources, but still viable for understanding the world. Most countries in the world lack the kind of economic transparency that USA has had for a century. Part of why their GDPs grow more slowly.
BTW CPS (source) is something Trump's Cabal would like to eradicate, as it tells us what's not working in society.
Voter turnout is proportional to household income. Why? because we don't make election day a holiday. When there's a renewal of interest in a fair democracy, election day must be a non-work day for every adult.
Also not a great look that healthcare is over 7% of the economy; many other countries achieve better results with far smaller share of GDP spent on health. For example: EMRs are an industry, when other countries run a cheaper national records system. Nurses are underpaid; most money goes elsewhere
I hope people understand why this is so bad. I'll test it on my 10 year old.
Flabbergastingly bad!
These are helpful mostly in diverting the news cycle control away from a president who constantly tries his own antics to distract real reporters from covering his daily criminal and unconstitutional activity, and a complicit silent congress. But we also need voices promoting what we're for.
If nobody from the press live-streamed his antics conference, and nobody calls Trump out for his social trolling, it's a demonstrate that the press (collectively) can be co-opted by fear like every other institution. They were afraid of losing access; they already did. And still they're silent.
I think if there is a change in power (I'm kind of doubtful what Trump began won't continue another 25 years) the other side is going to have to do a full purge. It won't be hard to identify who is out, because there's rampant incompetence, easy to spot.
And it will be as public and shamey as possible, because the reason for attacking marginalized groups is to shore up support from those who live to hurt others. If they did it behind closed doors, it wouldn't be valuable for control. Economically stressed people thrive from others' suffering.
Looking for a good visual explainer of the power of #atproto
headline says "allegedly" while the video shows it happening. How come journalists can't write what they see? the press is a fragile institution, easily coopted just like any other
ten years later, @muellershewrote.com Mueller, she wrote is still an excellent name.
step 0.5 of 10000 steps to victory is realizing that we don't know what the rest of the steps are until we try stuff
When you're tired of trying to win within the rules, there are people who've studied how effective social movements grow, and you should read their work. Political parties co-opt movements that threaten their relevance - as a survival tactic. They never WANT to change. Movements force the issue.
Without any legitimate "the economy added XXX number of jobs last month" BLS report to trust now, it's probably time to ask whether that statistic is as meaningful for action? It's more of a journalism headline. Job sites / other digital exhaust can give us estimates about shifting employment rates
yeah, credible threats seem necessary to get to a negotiating table where both sides accept fairness only because alternatives would be worse. Takes a lot of things to go right for those conditions to exist though.
Ridicule is probably the most painful retort possible for Trump, whose entire being revolves around being "liked" by sycophants.
14th and U is the heart of the city, and for decades, was the heart of African American culture in DC. So they picked that spot to signal who is really being targeted.
BLS is one of 1000+ government data sources going dark. I suspect job sites and other informal gig-economy sites will provide a reasonable proxy for those who want serious economic signals in the short term. The jobs-numbers methods are prohibitively expensive for anyone to replicate exactly.
At GivingTuesday we've been doing a weekly national survey of generosity for the past 3 years. There are 2 questions on there that gauge early signs of the economic impact (leading indicators) affecting generosity. Happy to explain more if you're interested. Seeing tariff-related trends.
Here's an oddball indicator: has any economist bothered to track the average cost of hookers in the US during boom and bust cycles? I feel like they probably are a leading econ indicator. I read somewhere (reddit?) that in Jan-2025 "business" was down, post-election funk. Please investigate.
the press is a fragile institution, so easily co-opted into reality TV
In the 1980s and 1990s, 90% of white people believed the government should do "whatever is necessary to ensure everyone has an opportunity to succeed." But by 2012, Republicans and Democrats were 33 points apart. This was socially engineered polarization. www.pewresearch.org/wp-content/u...
it would be ironic if red states lost control of congress because of Trump's efforts to erase people living here who can't vote. The Census must count every person.