Mark (reluctant scrivener)
@markmadsen.bsky.social
Decision support, design, decades of data, architecture, augmenting human analysis, systems, cybernetics, safety, resilience, GOFAI, engineering management, urban planning, botany, history, art, dada.
Since when are they enforcing gun laws and afraid of guns?
Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · 47m agoLooks like the MAGA crowd is anti-veterans now. Why do they hate our troops so much that they oppress them for simply exercising their Second Amendment rights near the president
I’m gradually migrating visualizations to a new home and keep finding things I forgot. Here’s some minimalist music theory, which I hope is a calm moment in your day.
Harmonies
Twelve interactive music-theory visualizations.
datapoems.io
"Being charged with a federal felony, a conspiracy charge that holds the potential for six years in prison because I showed up to a protest, seems to me to be an attack on a fundamental right that all Americans hold," Mavalwalla, a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan, told NPR."
She protested ICE raids. Then agents showed up at her door
The Justice Department is using federal conspiracy charges to sweep up ICE protesters. Some legal experts worry the agency is casting too wide a net to prosecute political activists.
npr.org
“Corrupt leaders are not only rulers of weak institutions...They are mirrors. And what they reveal is often more disturbing than their corruption itself.” www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-pe...
Why People Worship Corrupt Leaders
The ancient world understood something we prefer to avoid: corrupt power does not survive only by deceiving people. It survives by giving them strength, revenge, belonging, and permission.
linkedin.com
Is Russia helping Iran? Duh Is China helping Russia? Duh Is it possible for too many western analysts to live in the delusion that China Russia and Iran can be separated/played against each other? Duh www.reuters.com/world/middle...
EXCLUSIVE: Iran strikes on CIA facilities prompt questions about possible Russian role
Iranian drone attacks on CIA facilities in the Gulf have prompted U.S. intelligence analysts to investigate whether Russia assisted by providing targeting information or advanced drone technology, sa...
reuters.com
Nationalize oil firms, then run them into oblivion as we transfer to 100% renewables. www.theguardian.com/business/ng-...
Revealed: major oil firms make $93bn profits amid war and climate crisis
Iran conflict windfall over three months reignites calls for companies ‘cashing in on human misery’ to pay for environmental damage
theguardian.com
I feel like personalized ad targeting may be improving
Yes. And I am begging U presidents & trustees to read some of the outstanding work on autocracy (from their own institutions!) that incorporates lessons from other countries. One of the first moves in democratic backsliding: The autocrat captures civil society, including universities.
Jonathan Feingold@jpygold.bsky.social · 2d agoMy lord at this point it’s either incompetence or collusion. any university president who thinks they can “work” with the Trump regime lacks fitness for the job.
this is an interesting interview and if i were clipping it for social media i would have excerpted "We're still a place where we don't downrank links. We love sending traffic to people. We send two million clicks a day to publishers" rather than the part that'll just piss people off lol
The Verge@theverge.com · 2d agoBluesky's new CEO Toni Schneider on the platform's reputation for being a liberal bubble: "Yes, we definitely want that to change. It is already changing. It certainly wasn’t designed to attract one specific group of people."
NEW: Trump’s coziness with AI oligarchs is a defining feature of his admin. But the AI companies reshaping our lives are also betting on the support of Democrats. We tracked close to 100 former Biden officials to their new jobs working in the AI industry:
Tracking the Revolving Door Between AI and Former Biden Officials | Revolving Door Project
This tracker was last updated on August 3, 2026. The artificial intelligence industry is rapidly reshaping every facet of life, from the popularity of chatbots and disruption of the workplace to the ...
therevolvingdoorproject.org
The GOP wants to repeal no-fault divorce & women's right to vote so that violent misogynists like Max Miller can un-person us fully: they want to own women, as rape toys & punching bags. We're the majority of the population. We already have fewer rights to bodily protection than corpses & animals.
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com · 3d agoRep. Max Miller: "My former wife has claimed that during a custody exchange at my home that day, I assaulted her…If I had assaulted her, would she have offered to cook me dinner six days later?"
One big take away from the Podcast show Blowback is that the US did this with the mujahadeen, the death squad right wing coups in central and South America , the khmer rouge, domestically with anti Cuba activism, so yeah they probably did it to themselves too and Quelle surprise
Raw Story@rawstory.com · 4d agoConcern is mounting among high-ranking Republicans that the next generation of conservatives consists primarily of "rabid" "idiot" Nazis, according to a new report.
Claude and Gemini are often correct. And they both point out real sources that I hadn't seen. Which is useful! But "often correct" isn't good enough. Road directions where 75% of the street turns are correct is not going to get me to the destination.
I think academic philosophy has gotten a lot less overtly mean over the last couple decades, and that’s overall good. But it is sorta *weird* that as a result a lot of people sorta linger in the hallway after talks to whisper ‘that was shit, right?’ to one another
Devin@dervine7.bsky.social · 4d agoone thing I’ll note on this is that as a young grad student it can be pretty disheartening to see a talk you’re pretty sure is bs but no one in the q&a is calling it out, and now you’re wondering if there’s something you aren’t getting
"Participants complained about moldy rooms, dead nightlife and not enough women—a downside familiar to Silicon Valley." It's weird how every time these weird billionaire types try something, their followers always have the same compllaints.
Gil Durán@gilduran.com · 4d agoIf that link isn't working, try this one: www.wsj.com/tech/a-tech-...
It's a tough job, but literally no one has to do it
What do you call it when the federal government secedes from the union?
Lindsay Beyerstein@beyerstein.bsky.social · 5d agoI can't stress enough what a crisis this is. Trump's own intelligence agencies concluded that Iran attacked Minnesota's critical infrastructure and Trump is saying that it's Minnesota's own fault and denying it was Iran. The federal government won't defend blue states in a literal war.
"Researchers at the University of Chicago studied the impact of removing police and shifting to restorative practices at CPS high schools and found declines in school-based arrests and high-level discipline violations. Students said they felt a stronger sense of safety and belonging."
Chicago to slash funding earmarked for schools that replaced police with restorative justice programs
At the same time CPS is cutting funding for Whole School Safety Plans, the district plans a new push to help all schools implement a 2024 policy that requires social-emotional learning, maintaining at...
chalkbeat.org
There is an urgent need for water to be released to the Tule Lake NWR. If it doesn't happen there will likely be another massive bird die off like 2024. Please contact your elected officials, dept of the interior and or USFS. Info and talking points in the link birdallianceoregon.org/take-action/...
Urgent: Water Needed at Klamath to Avoid Deaths of Thousands of Birds
Urgent: A botulism outbreak at Tule Lake National Wildlife Refuge is already killing hundreds of birds, and without immediate action, tens of thousands more could die. Please urge the Bureau of Reclam...
birdallianceoregon.org
So the Anthropic chatbot saw the system date is 2026 and concluded that "this must be staged" (because the training data it's trained on probably ends in 2023 or whatever) and ignored it's instruction that "you're in sandbox". Truly the brightest minds of a generation working on this stuff.
Damn. Was not aware he passed until today. Rest in peace. bsky.app/profile/swif...
Richard Swift@swiftofopal.bsky.social · 3mo agoRest in Peace Tony Stella
The news that should be surprising isn’t that the machine to output plausible-looking answers isn’t accurate. It’s that there is nobody in the state department making this presentation who knows where any of these countries are.
Dr Alina Utrata@alinau27.bsky.social · 5d agoA U.S. government map of Africa mislabeled every country during a State Department presentation. Reuters analysis found artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools. but the AGI will replace us 🫠🫠🫠🫠 www.reuters.com/world/africa...
McKinsey is the Andersen Consulting of this generation
Asheesh Kapur Siddique@asheeshks.org · 6d ago“Harvard paid McKinsey & Company at least $250,000 to consult on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ staff restructuring efforts, according to internal documents obtained by The Crimson.” www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...
Yeah so NYT asked me ~2 yrs ago to write an op-ed about how the Colorado is running dry, & what we should do to keep this exact thing from happening. I said "There's only one real answer. Bill farmers by how much water they use. Duh." NYT editorial staff freaked tf out & cancelled the piece.
Elias Thorne@truebe.horse · 6d agosaw an article today about an az politician saying how great it was that we're now in emergency drought conditions because the farmers get automatic bailouts and I feel like way more Professional Rural Understanders just breeze by sentences like that. www.paysonroundup.com/news/arizona...
