Software nerd. Order Muppet. Recovering physicist. Not really that sad of a dad. https://verm.me
1,221 followers 1,462 following 4,295 posts
view profile on Bluesky 
The cool thing about a White House announcement these days is that it’s either they took the woke out of Cheetos or we just invaded Venezuela. No in between. I’d love to hear something about Trump more directly but I’m convinced the news we’re all waiting for will just happen without warning.
Sorry to ruin people’s fun, but:
vax your kids. if you're old, get your titers checked. or if you're in doubt, ask about getting an mmr booster.
Follow-up to “Eat, Pray, Love”: “Fuck, Marry, Kill”
If it happens today, we’ll already have a built-in holiday that can simply be extended to a week
Time for a spinoff series, call it the Sawpranos
you deserve a little break. stop healing, choose violence, go fucking apeshit
And a batter steps to the plate for a redemption arc.
This has possibilities instocklabels.com/product/for-...
This was incredible, important lawyering from National Immigration Law Center (@nilc.org) over the past 24 hours. Here's their case page: www.nilc.org/litigation/l... Here was the statement from Efrén Olivares, NILC VP of litigation, from earlier today regarding the TRO:
Incredibly wild that the only software that seems capable of archiving Blu-rays is a proprietary mess created by a single dude that disappears for months at a time, supported only by a early 00s php forum where it appears that only 2 people actually answer questions and it's always via PMs.
no matter your politics it’s disrespectful to joke about someone’s death. don’t say rudy giuliani died from driving his car into a wall painted to look like a tunnel and all his clothes flew off in the crash and then a sixteen wheeler semi truck ran over his dick and balls. don’t say stuff like that
Seen on my run in Rock Creek Park today. Parking lot near Beach and Tilden. Paper taped on over a Harris 2024 sign.
the future of the internet is its past: a bunch of horny teenagers downloading “milfs-xxx.avi.exe” from sketchy websites and fucking up the family computer
as a DC resident I cannot overemphasize how much less safe I feel
This whole thing is great but the highlighted bit made me laugh out loud. 😂 Marlon on Snoop:
Let’s start a rumor that the guy playing golf was a body double
“Having a guy” for a task is the number one most important thing you can do as you get older. We need to cultivate your guys, and the greatest honor is to be someone else’s “guy.”
hey, speaking of words I thought rhymed with “albeit”
This one is funny for me because until maybe a year ago I thought “di-TRY-tuss” was an affected British pronunciation and it was obviously “DEH-trih-tuss”, so I’d always thought I was being an asshole but accidentally I had it right.
this is “stuff pillows under the blanket to make it look like someone is sleeping in the bed” levels of cover up
President Trump is "diminishing, and Going into the West," per White House insider.
I have initial confirmation of a CDC walkout happening - will be looking for news coverage & more details.
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
nope
What Democrats need isn't a PAC, but to intercept the French privateer Acheron en route to Pacific INTENT ON CARRYING THE WAR INTO THOSE WATERS... Sink, Burn, or take her a Prize.
Dearest Martha, The National Guard stand solemn watch at the Krispy Kreme tonight. I cannot tell if they defend the people from the donuts, or the donuts from the people. Powdered sugar hangs in the air like cannon smoke. Jensen took a hot coffee to the face, he may never recover. Yours in glaze,
"My friend Victor like saved me though, because he laid on top of me. But he got hit." 10-year-old describes witnessing Minneapolis shooting.
Reading the list of conditions that qualify you for an updated COVID booster, I think the easiest route for most people without an existing diagnosis will be "physical inactivity" because that's entirely self-attested, with the runner up being "I was a smoker for a few months a few decades ago"
Buy his books. Read his newsletters and website. Garrett M. Graff @vermontgmg.bsky.social offers brilliant analysis and insights.
Hero jury saves hoagie hurler from legal grinder www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/u...
some of you need to make like travis kelce and engage with a tailor swiftly
Making them wear high-visibility vests over camo is such a good joke you couldn’t write it
The full 12 minutes of @govpritzker.illinois.gov speech today, which was superb. (Via Nicole Wallace / @msnbc.com segment.) www.msnbc.com/deadline-whi...
www.haaretz.com/israel-news/...
The hardest an Onion headline has ever hit
An amazing life, that should be iconic for the industry and yet… well, isn’t. Thanks to Mar for bringing Dame Shirley to my attention years ago.
Thiccest Position Player Since Babe Ruth
everything is a touchy subject for Mariners fans, our existence is suffering
think tcw has to go post on facebook after this
i'm hardly the only one saying this, but it's very hard to look at the long arc of history and think that biopolitics-obsessed, patriarchal, racist, and bellicose political projects are a mere reaction to liberalism, rather than their own longstanding, active political tendency
The Seattle Public Library offers a free service called "Your Next 5 Books" where you submit a form about what kinds of books you like + what you'd like to read, and a librarian writes back with their personalized recommendations. My librarian is Jane and she *gets* me on a molecular level
The most compact, informative, and useful introduction to the Philosophy and Sociology of Science remains Kovar (2001), “Electron Band Structure in Germanium, My Ass”.
can I say something without everyone getting mad
This is why if you’re actually a ‘techno-optimist’ you should fucking hate Elon musk: self driving cars are here, they are real, they work. I could call one right now today. But all he’s been promising Tesla vaporware for like a decade so many people still think the technology as a whole is bullshit
To whoever screamed “LOOK! IT’S SENATOR WHAT’S HER FACE!” at the State Fair, I hope you have an incredible day 😂
Casually eating potato chips the whole time is 👌
This They Might Be Giants TONIGHT SHOW performance of "Birdhouse In Your Soul" from 1990 remains firmly lodged in my noggin thanks to the Tonight Show Band's full commitment and Doc Severinsen's incredible trumpeting... It took an already great song and made it transcendent.
we used to build household shrines to Going On The Computer and it's no coincidence that as we abandoned these we started straying further from god's light
Just discovered that Adam Levine and Adam Lambert are different people, I will now be stepping back from popular culture for another fifteen years
Also
White woman puts Mexican flag on her truck to waste ICE’s time.
hot take: the implementation complexity of POSIX semantics contributed to the decline of "files", and this has been bad for user freedom
amazing. just bribing people for the love of the game
⚰️
Scheiße!
If this were happening in a Spanish-speaking country, how do you think American media outlets would describe that country? Would they use words like extraordinary and unusual? Would they call it an attempt to “prevent another disruption”?
Dude looks like he just won debate club after getting the girl who walked circles around him disqualified on a technicality
Aside from everything else, these are maybe the least surprising ideas possible for a human on the internet to hear from an “edgy comedian”.
My two cents here is that if you are the sort of person with strong feelings about how many spaces go after periods, you should be composing text in a markup language like LaTeX where it doesn’t matter (and thus should be forgiving of anyone forced to use an inferior system).
There is a staggeringly massive opportunity to lead the most important political struggle of the 21st century sitting in plain sight for whomever can seize it, as no existing public figure seems to have the combination of will and competency necessary to do so
Bill Kristol please...you're our only hope...I know you have one more regime change in you
A terrorist targeted federal workers last week. There wasn’t much reporting on it. But I’m not finished thinking about it! 🧵 An anti-vaxxer fired more than 500 gunshots into CDC Atlanta, shattering 150 “blast-proof” windows on 6 buildings. Employees were pinned down in terror.
Potent Pedophiles for $1000.
A sweet old lady wrote me to ask if I would help her out by signing off Jeopardy! every night saying "Don't forget your night medicine, my friends." I am actively considering this.
[Weird Al voice]: That’s when I threw the pink polo sub
sandwich guy got charged with one count of monte cristo
Good morning Bluesky !
And they say nothing inspiring is happening in America anymore
You might ask this question about E.J. Antoni: How did a guy with zero academic publications become Chief Economist at a "think tank" with a $100 million yearly budget? Because the Heritage Foundation is just a bunch of hacks, and that's who the right values and elevates.
GOOD NEWS! Researchers have revealed a synthetic glycosystem -a sugar-coated polymer nanoparticle- that can BLOCK SARS-CoV-2 from infecting human cells, REDUCING infection rates by NEARLY 99%. Acting as a decoy, the molecule BINDS to the spike protein, PREVENTING it from attaching to real cells.
"What’s currently needed is not the death-defying heroism of the French Resistance; rather, what we must avoid is the cowardice of the Vichy collaborators." A moving history & meditation by my former WSJ colleague @paulthedogman.bsky.social momentmag.com/jewish-respo...
You think it’s funny? Some guy threw a sub sandwich at a fed and you’re laughing? What if that sandwich had have been laced with fentanyl? He could have killed them!
George Packer hates this book! Buy it today! Out tomorrow wherever books are sold. Bookshop: shorturl.at/ykg4a Amazon: shorturl.at/0d7A3 Barnes & Noble: shorturl.at/EFA9I www.theatlantic.com/books/archiv...
I just finished Lewis Mumford’s magisterial exploration of city life. Published in 1962, it has some of the sharpest takedowns of car-centric society I’ve ever read. Mumford: “We have sold our urban birthright for a sorry mess of motor cars. As poor a bargain as Esau’s pottage.” Choice bits 🧵
oh my god
One of our great achievements as a civilization.
Anyway, it’s really fun to read a book where the author not only loves the subject, but enjoys enthusing about her sources.
Not sure which first-century heresy this entry for “Christ” is committing
I’ve been reading @adapalmer.bsky.social’s Inventing the Renaissance for months now because I keep getting distracted and chasing down references. Using an ILL request to enjoy a funny index entry might be a new frontier in indulging my inner grad student.
I know I’m supposed to be thinking about which Muppet’s special interest I’m willing to hear about for four hours but I’m a single-issue seat voter and therefore pick 4, which is surrounded by short Muppets and has no one behind it.
I see it, but as a tall guy, “last row and behind Sweetums” is right out.
New study: researchers looked at hospital visits after a coal plant was closed near Pittsburgh --> immediate 20.5% decrease in weekly respiratory emergency dept visits --> immediate 41.2% decrease in pediatric asthma ED visits pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40691837/
Maine stays winning
Happy International Cat Day to absolutely no cats other than Mariners closer Andres Muñoz’s cat Matilda
those damned outdoor pigs can't keep getting away with this
Encouraging everyone to think about how every right-wing paramilitary death squad around the world for the past century has armed itself with “lost” or “stolen” military/police gear and also 97% of their members were the same guys but with masks on.
(meeting a lesbian cop couple) so which of you does the domestic violence?
About 9 for our oldest. Would have been <1 for the youngest, so YMMV as ever.
Like, I understand the use cases and appreciate the capabilities, but using a tool that has a “just talk to it” API and that uses it to constantly lie to me is pretty annoying!
I was playing with this a bit last night, and yeah, “don’t lie to me about what you ‘did’ and use an algorithm to solve a problem when appropriate” is very hard for it to stick to!
I guess now we know how Sam Altman thinks it would feel to talk to a PhD-level expert in any topic. “Yes, you’re absolutely right! I did get that one wrong. Would you like me instead to elaborate on how clever I found your question?”
Charging once for hardware that works is just not a good long term business model compared to charging monthly for software that doesn’t
Trying not to get nerd-sniped matching models to ex-physicists; fortunately I don’t know the former well enough to make a serious go at it. Best case seems to be Stephen Wolfram: mostly right, full of annoying stylistic tics, and somehow completely ignorant of the primary sources.
Yes, although they lack some of the spittle-flecked contempt for their audience
Daily Eternal September
I think Altman assumes that “PhD-level expert” means someone who speaks confidently on everything as opposed to saying “it’s nuanced,” losing their keys, and getting maniacally fixated on their current topic to the point of seeing it in everything.
Basic Binkstinct (1999)