The effective federal corporate income tax rate: 1950: 50% 1990: 25% 2020: 13% Stop asking "but how we will pay for it?" Restore the corporate tax rate. That is how we will pay for it.

So, I really hope I get to tell this story in longer form in the near future, but it it’s burning a hole inside me. Most of it comes from an interview with Bob Hirst this weekend. Bob has been Exec Editor of the Mark Twain Project for 47 years, before which he was part of its staff for ~15. 1/16

Fuck you. Seriously, fuck you. Using this framing: "Two people died of a preventable infection. But don't worry, its just disabled/vulnerable people!" should automatically mean you are eligible for a fiery, pus-ridden, painful, endless and eternal toil in the depths of Tartarus

The New York Times@nytimes.com · 2d ago

Breaking News: Two deaths in Michigan have been linked to cyclospora. Both people who had the parasite also had underlying health issues.

This is everything I feel both as a library worker and an academic trying to figure out how to teach libraries to be better. It took me until late this year to realize why discussing AI feels like the moral injury I sustained trying to get people I trusted to care about COVID. They’re the same.

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3d ago

If useful, here's my attempt to process my feelings about how I feel sadly kinda — or rather very — sick from all this AI fascist nonsense as an academic. 😶‍🌫️ I'd be pleased if even one person finds something useful because there's something to be said for processing this all together, so, um, enjoy?

This thread captures a big part of why I want nothing to do with LLMs right now. And it’s why I am so, so frustrated and disappointed when I see people who support anti-oppressive causes using them.

vortex_egg@vortexegg.com · 4d ago

For me, LLMs are clearly powerful machines, but everything about their construction and deployment in society by the people constructing them appears oriented around achieving a political project that deeply conflicts with my values or a vision of a future I want to live in and dont have a choice in

For me, LLMs are clearly powerful machines, but everything about their construction and deployment in society by the people constructing them appears oriented around achieving a political project that deeply conflicts with my values or a vision of a future I want to live in and dont have a choice in

NERV IRB Coordinator@professormusgrave.bsky.social · 4d ago

This is what is driving me nuts. So many posters around here keep haw-hawing about R’s in strawberry and clearly have NO idea that these are extremely powerful machines *already* that we have not yet figured out how to utilize fully. If we stopped development today, they’d still be astonishing

It is critical to the survival of humanity that Sam Altman upload his brain into a computer and shoot it off into space. I support him in this goal if he will just do it sooner rather than later.

Adam Becker@adambecker.bsky.social · last wk.

lol, no, that's not a thing

lol, no, that's not a thing

Thanks! I’m not an editor at Science, though, but rather an independent contributor (with no editorial oversight).

Admirable clarity @science.org

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 2w ago

Whew, the editors of @science.org are getting real.

The responses from Fable are computed at the Colossus 1 data centre. The one that's destroying the air quality of South Memphis by running natural gas turbines 24/7 that were only designed for emergency backup.

As good as many of you said. I really appreciate the unambiguous point that this primarily a racist moral panic before unpacking the nuanced second-order explanations. dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to...

We used to be able to buy things in this country

Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy

dannykatch.substack.com

"Her father often told Koko she was the only baby in the neighbourhood to survive, and that she had a duty to remind the world what had happened. But for half her life, she turned her back on the enormity of the bomb..she found it too much too bear." www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

‘I never mentioned it for 25 years. I didn’t want to be a victim of the bomb’: Hiroshima survivor Koko Kondo on horror, anger and forgiveness

On that fateful day in 1945, Kondo was just a baby in her mother’s arms. She talks about her father’s newly discovered eye-witness account of the aftermath – and why she decided to continue his work a...

theguardian.com

“it’s reasonable to ask questions about trans girls in sports” was always intended to mainstream transphobia. It’s absurd that people fell for it. Democrats are constantly letting oppressors set the terms of debate instead of just saying “no, fuck you.”

So embarrassing to watch “progressives” being manipulated into transphobia on an issue that affects about a dozen people in the fucking country. Conservatives needed a wedge issue after Roe and so many Democrats and liberals fell for it. Just disgraceful.

Sal r.r. tamarkin@sal.gay · 2w ago

center for american progress (2021): "Trans inclusive policies "which allow transgender athletes to compete in accordance with their gender identity, should be implemented nationwide." Center for american progress in (2026): "restrictions may be appropriate under some circumstances"

I hope it will be sufficiently complimentary to share the little journey this fine post sent me on, but let me know if not! The choice of “unctuously” got me wondering about the subtle distinctions in meaning between “unctuous“ and “oleaginous.” So I went to the dictionary app on my computer.

Benjamin Dreyer@bcdreyer.social · 2w ago

If you quote-post me in any other way than slavishly and unctuously complimentarily, particularly if you don't even follow me in the first place, you're probably gonna get your ass blocked, so...

One way that I have dealt with stress during <gestures broadly> these times has been to play games on my iPad. Since January 1, 2025 my go-to game has been an old kids game (or, at least, a game suitable for kids) called Sprinkle Islands.

None of this is new. DeepMind's governance record: 2014: independent ethics board — reportedly a condition of the sale 2015: one informal meeting; then effectively abandoned 2018: AI Principles exclude weapons & surveillance 2025: exclusions dropped 2026: Pentagon contract

Towards a Genuinely Global Mathematics Community 👀 👀 👀 🧮 sites.google.com/view/icm2026...

It feels ridiculous to be told my entire life the importance of reducing my energy usage and switching to stuff like LED bulbs and then read reports of energy prices spiking in many US communities due to data centers.

when you tell us that the people who murdered comity and civility—who are trying to kill and rob and enslave us—are actually your dear friends, you don’t create civility, but despair; we see you don’t actually believe the danger is real, can’t be trusted to fight the battle that needs to be fought.

Deeply saddened to learn of the loss of my dear friend Satan, the Prince of Lies. Though we often disagreed about matters such as the appropriate role of torture in the afterlife, I will most remember how his quick wit and affable nature made our weekly golf outings a ritual. He will be missed.

Lizzie creates striking images, some of which are based on ideas from math. I have a couple of her prints on my wall, so that’s a testimonial! Why not take a look, as a birthday present?

Liℤℤie Kodpuak née Acid Lich (can’t spell sheaves without she)@acidlich.bsky.social · 4w ago

Hey, did you know it's my birthday today?! It is! And you can support me (if you'd like) by buying a print, sending a tip, commissioning art, reposting my art or otherwise just being nice to me. That's all for now. Here is a link ko-fi.com/acidlich

Hey, did you know it's my birthday today?! It is! And you can support me (if you'd like) by buying a print, sending a tip, commissioning art, reposting my art or otherwise just being nice to me. That's all for now. Here is a link ko-fi.com/acidlich

Buy Learn Math with an Artist a Coffee

Become a supporter of Learn Math with an Artist today!

ko-fi.com

When Lindsey Graham appears in a history book, it'll be his prediction in 2016 that the Republican Party would be destroyed for supporting Donald Trump and then a few lines about how he proved it by becoming Trump's toady. That's pretty much it. That's his legacy. Pathetic lickspittle.

My coauthor Jay Falk's postdoctoral fellowship was terminated by the Trump administration for documenting the hummingbird example in this paper.

Andy Lee, PhD@andylee.bsky.social · 4w ago

In our Viewpoint (onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...) we synthesize the gametic definition (outlined by Janicke et al below) and other definitions of sex (e.g., multivariate definition). We contend that is NO consensus on “biological sex” (maybe a consensus isn’t actually necessary…)

In other words, there is no knowing without knowers, scholarship is a giant conversation in which we speak with our colleagues sometimes slowly (in papers) sometimes faster (Q&A sessions of talks). It is not the accumulation of "facts". We get into this some in this episode, with MJ and Lisa: >>

Episode 31: Science Is a Human Endeavor (feat. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri), April 15 2024 - Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000

Will AI someday do all our scientific research for us? Not likely. Drs. Molly Crockett and Lisa Messeri join for a takedown of the hype of "self-driving labs" and why such misrepresentations also harm...

buzzsprout.com

I first became aware of neo-pronouns in the mid-1980s, from reading Michael Spivak’s manual for AMS-TeX. I only just now learned of the neo-pronoun that had been proposed 125 years earlier, and that made it into dictionaries! www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/thi... Seems hardly “neo” at that age.

The History of 'Thon', the Forgotten Gender-Neutral Pronoun

We added a gender-neutral pronoun in 1934. Why have so few people heard of it?

merriam-webster.com

I should be spending my one wild and precious life in other ways, but instead I’ve decided to rant about the complete incompetence of Straive, the AI company Springer Nature @springernature.com uses to typeset some of its journals. This is why I will never willingly publish with Springer again.

Oh hey, it’s some new art! Here is: Rigid & Non-rigid transformations