ejstark.bsky.social

I actually laughed out loud

I don't want to put this specific person on blast - this is a common sentiment but also a wrong one in important ways. Is one game, specifically, going to condition how people think about WWII? No. Is the totality of the culture they consume around it going to? Yeah, obviously.

Our Altadena/Palisades 5-year soil study launched with Duke U & @jstpwalsh.bsky.social is ongoing. I saw SO many (including scientists), wearing no PPE while sampling Altadena. People need to be more scared of fires, smoke & the contaminants they leave😓 Our peer-reviewed pub. study in comments. 🌱

WASHINGTON—Trump’s federal agents raid Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home over decades-old “immigration paperwork” her father filled out when she was a kid. No charges. Breaking DOJ norms. Over the cliff, folks.

Ms Rachel from the top ropes

I’m ok. Make no mistake: this is an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement. For ten years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation. I will not be silenced.

New — I wrote about Republicans beclowning themselves heading into the midterms with clearly bullshit narratives about James Talarico and Rep. Ilhan Omar, and how the favorable conditions for Dems have produced a noticeable shift to nipping deranged stories in the bud.

A lawyer for ABC asked a federal judge to prevent the Trump administration from conducting an early review of its broadcast licenses, likening it to a looming execution by guillotine that was already chilling the network's editorial decisions weeks before the midterms. https://to.pbs.org/4j99PuU

This morning, the D&D team and Magic's Studio X informed our leadership of our intent to unionize. We love the games we make and the work we do, and unionizing is how we protect that work. unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/news/dnd-stu...

the tech industry is about to invent books

Every year on this date I think of Fred Hoyle's great novel and wonder if this is the year... But it's not too late to register to vote or (If in a red state) CHECK your registration and of every friend. Every week for the next 5 weeks. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October...

waking up every day in 2026 like:

🧵 1/ Our service members accept risks in service to this country. Their health should not be one of them. Eight sailors in the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group attempted suicide during its extended deployment. Mental health. Safe living conditions. Adequate food. Sanitation. Sleep.

“Cutting this much from the university budget will mean that some of the core functions of the university will be lost. It’s not possible to just do more with less — to work smarter, to trim around the edges. We’re going to have to do less with less.” Gift link: www.startribune.com/umn-cuts-sta...

🤔 Oh, that mental image..

So many of the same “intellectuals” who are obsessed with undermining the existence of trans people are also obsessed with undermining the Cornell rape victim’s testimony. It’s almost like they don’t believe people have a right to bodily autonomy

If only our nation's press had accurately reported on Trump's catastrophic cognitive decline, when it mattered - during the election campaign. ... But they had their hands full handwringing about Biden.

Oh, believe me, I am aware of the squirrels in my yard. They're jerks! Well, OK, that gray squirrel with the reddish tail is pretty cute.

"This has been going around a lot. And I'm not saying if it's true or not, but a lot of people have been saying." Wow. The weasel worded denialability is strong in this one.

one of the reasons that I warn researchers away from adapting commercial LLMs into their pipeline is that Big Tech has a history of sunsetting popular, usable products and replacing them with worse ones. (i'm trying to ween myself off of google scholar, but it is hard).

If you want to really know how the outrage machine gets fired up: 1. Schmitt plans to drop “bombshell” on Smith 2. Someone plants story that Schmitt is a Vance VP contender to run same day 3. Right-wing Twittersphere gets talking points 4. Schmitt steps in it 5. Scheduled tweets go out anyway

lol

I have definitely reframed this in my head because of my lack of object permanence. If I block someone I will forget they existed within like 37 seconds but it has become clear they will often die mad about it. Forgetting they were ever there is the true flex, I win every time. lol

The VA lost about 700 social workers and 500 psychologists and psychiatrists over the course of 2025 — a significant change for an agency that was adding mental health staffers nearly every month leading up to Trump’s return to office. (Published March)

(pounces on you at a cocktail party) Did you hear the good news about crabapples! #PlantSky 🌱 #ScienceSky 🧪 #Apples 🍏🍎 source.washu.edu/2026/09/wild...

Speaker Mike Johnson is warning of a “nightmare scenario” if Republicans lose the House: Democrats could investigate Trump, his family, his Cabinet, GOP donors and powerful business figures.

I posit as a trans man that the reward is that you get to fall peacefully asleep at night instead of lying there mortifyingly aware you could have intervened and did not.

We talk a lot about the importance of voting but in doing so, we romanticize it, and I've come to believe that's a mistake. It's not romantic, it's not glorious, it's not an expression of your ideals or your identity. It's selecting the best outcome for the most people. That's all it is. Do that.

A sundowning old man, addicted to AI slop, surrounded by supplicants and apparatchiks, with control over the US nuclear arsenal.

Nice to have a citation for the stuff we all sort of assume to be true but question if it's just our own biases making it look that way

"In Springfield, the heightened level of fear is so widespread, and the state-imposed terror against a vulnerable minority so constant, that it is impossible to see this as anything but Trump's proof of concept for the president’s militarized vision of what America should be." Nails the stakes:

That is an incidence rate of… 0.00547% The voter fraud allegations you’ve been sold are blatantly and provably false.

For the one millionth time: THIS IS FASCISM. IT'S MORE THAN JUST GRANT FUNDING. SCIENCE IS A CRITICAL PILLAR OF DEMOCRACY. democrats-appropriations.house.gov/news/press-r...

Given rising interest in the rapidly strengthening El Niño event in the tropical Pacific Ocean, I've created a one-page fact sheet succinctly describing what El Niño is, this year's (remarkable) forecast, and potential impacts from California to global scales. [Thread]

I watched this twice while trying to see what the danger was, then I realized it was just some suburbanite being neurotic. Then watched it several more times for the couch and the chairs. 👍

Highly usable post from last year

Is it the cutest arrowhead I’ve ever found? Yes! Is it light, lethal and still sharp af? Also yes! Such skilled technique and artistry to make this charming killer from a single flake of volcanic stone 😍 Recovered in Tl'kemtsin / Lytton, Nlaka'pamux territory.

The State Department said ​it takes "full responsibility" for "hastily" altering and then presenting a map of Africa at a global AIDS conference that mislabeled every single country it highlighted. An analysis by Reuters found a watermark in the map image that suggests it was made with OpenAI.

Requesting your library acquire copies of a book is one of the best ways to uplift the authors you love.

Not the biggest issue with mainstream media coverage but not the smallest: There was no plan. There never was a plan. Trump just says shit. An unbiased headline would read, “Trump’s Hormuz Bluster Turns Out to Be Total Nonsense, As Usual.”

#PPOD: NASA's Juno mission provides new maps of the giant planet Jupiter. This is a cylindrical composite map from Juno's 9th close pass by Jupiter. Juno is in a highly elliptical, near-polar orbit, so on each orbit JunoCam takes well-resolved images... 🧪 🔭