Mar Hicks

Well, I guess this is where the 2026 dad joke thread begins… bsky.app/profile/hist...

Please tell me your favorite horror comedies (film or tv)

Once you’ve finished the pop history version of Dormouse, graduate to @histoftech.bsky.social whose book Programmed Inequality is both fascinating and infuriating. bsky.app/profile/hist...

This report is genuinely overwhelming, in terms of the evidence both against Trump and of a ham-fisted cover-up. Including one instance in which Ghislaine Maxwell was actually about to mention one of Trump's young accusers and Todd Blanche told her to stop talking. The media response is "yawn."

Interesting senior astronomy role going here @oxfordphysics.bsky.social for a two-year senior research post leading the growing Breakthrough Listen SETI effort. Happy to chat to anyone interested: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru... 🔭 👽

No rise in productivity due to AI, according to that great Luddite institute, Apollo Global Management. www.apollo.com/wealth/insig...

HARVARD STRIKE HARVARD STRIKE HARVARD STRIKE HARVARD STRIKE www.instagram.com/reel/De9j6Tb...

Genuinely baffled that anybody at Boston Dynamics seriously thought they were building a death ray for peaceful purposes only.

Regular reminder that when you go to things while sick, you are giving those germs to people with autoimmune disorders, you’re passing them to someone’s newborn, to someone’s elderly parents. It’s “just a cold” to you but it can and does severely impact countless people.

Beyond disgusted by even more rape allegations against the President of the United States. "In total, more than 25 different women...have independently accused Donald Trump of rape, sexual assault, or other sexual misconduct." Report w/ new details: democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

So there’s this goalie for the Flames named Cooley and his post-game interviews are gold because he has a personality. He READS WITH HIS RABBIT. The bunny’s name is Tito. The goalie’s name is Cooley. Search for his interviews. He avoids cliches and you never know what he’s gonna say.

happy halloweek🎃 #staypuft

Offered to 60,000 employees (their total workforce is 223,000 employees) “As we well know from watching the tech industry over the years, big earnings is the perfect time to shave off some headcount to keep the line going up.”

Microsoft offers parachutes to 60k employees if they jump by the end of the year

Exactly why in speaking to @theteamyriamf.bsky.social I said that I refuse to call Jacob Coxon a "whistleblower." Because since when do you have your top execs be like "yes we agree with this whistleblower" 🙄 That's not how whistleblowers are treated. www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EY2...

I had to take a little break to rest my eyes & voice after recording the audio for my upcoming book (which you can preorder at simonandschuster.com/books/Deep-U...). So it took me a while to get to the indomitable Arundhati Roy''s essay, Apocalypse Now and Then (H/t) @ambakak.bsky.social 🧵

Your monthly reminder that if you're using ChatGPT to do your science, you're failing your colleagues, community, and all of us. Here, ChatGPT makes up data and presents it as the real thing — then apologizes when confronted.

My heart is heavy. Walter Koenig, our Ensign Pavel Chekov, passed away early today. Walter and I met on the bridge of the Enterprise in the 1960s, and we stayed friends for nearly six decades. When Brad and I married in 2008, Walter stood beside us as our best man.

Once seen as a crucial issue after the fall of ‘Roe,’ candidates here are now largely ignoring it altogether.

I asked UNH's archivist to create a file of letters protesting the "weeding" of 30% of the library's books. Future researchers need to know faculty did not let the books "go gentle into that good night" (30+ books on Dylan Thomas to be culled). 🗃️ #skystorians www.unionleader.com/opinion/op-e...

Solar is booming.

What's striking to me are the rules of engagement and the methodology of action here, which more or less is predicated on burying liberal delusions about "debate" or the "marketplace of ideas". The rules were ultimately very simple: amplify your own message and suppress your opponent's.

I don't know that there is a template or a "secret sauce" or a clear-cut lesson to take from this. But if there is one it's the idea of treating social media as the hostile territory that it is, of actually acting like you are a participant in propaganda warfare and not like a consumer.

“I am a stranger to my closest family members so ask AI basic questions about them.”

when you have to go in your pen for 15 minutes so I can vacuum

Every year this one house in Ann Arbor has the largest pumpkins for Halloween

Sign this Authors Guild petition against the Australian government allowing AI to legally scrape books — any books, your books, even if they’re not Australian authorsguild.org/news/austral...

I also recall when all the polls said Hillary was going to win

My regular reminder to students that they can vote in Texas with their gun license but not their student ID never fails to get a laugh.

while you were using ai, i studied the ceiling boob

We are in the middle of the constitutional crisis, of which wild unaffordablilty is the result. The President is making very random decisions—tariffs, budget, war—without any democratic accountability and it is tanking the economy.

Really fascinating and generative conversations @shothisttech.bsky.social conference these past few days—and excited to see too that the roundtable on Kranzberg’s Laws I was a part of has just been published to coincide with it: muse.jhu.edu/issue/57935

The "serial entrepreneur" at Harvard that wrote that "AI peer review is GREAT" is a former magician? 🙃

instead of hearing about ai more can you just punch me in the head until I pass out

It is impressive how they make a global statement when their sample set is a narrow branch of Social Science papers.

you'd think a successful entrepreneur would only have to entrepren once