Jacob Russell

I was accused of being an AI shill today, which is fun, so I'd like to clarify something while giving credit. My avatar (both Tigers cap and Santa hat version) is not AI-generated. It was commissioned from @reverentgeek.com, who does great work. He is not, as best I can tell, a robot.

Harvard just dropped a study AI productivity in software engineering and it found the average increase in productivity from using Claude code is.....zero and for exactly the reasons you'd think fion.ac/jellyfish.pdf

NEW: "Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s," per new House Judiciary Dem report. Report has new allegation that Trump raped a 24-year-old and then promised the victim a visa & NYU admission, demanding she stay quiet.

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.

Compared to the crypto companies, Bezos, etc. it seems like Apple has gotten a lot more grace from the public during Trump 2. Seems like maybe we should reconsider.

My daughter did her first lockdown drill at 4. Her TK teacher, who was by the way an incredible teacher, told them they were hiding from robbers, and that if the robbers ever got in, they should stay hidden while he tried to fight them off. A part of me will always be thinking about that.

Oh I hate this so much. It explains so much about this mahjong game I play too.

A completely fair and measured response that I think we can all get behind.

a livestreamed execution is just a lynching

Hours later, Trump posts that the US has just had “productive talks” with Iran and announced the US will not attack Iran before the midterms.

"Withholding vital vaccines from children in a third-world country" is the most "wow I can't believe this country did this during WWII" evil shit I can imagine.

Currently finishing up a Powerpoint for my archaeology class that walks students through various logical fallacies. The title: The Faults in our Shards I'll see myself out.

The sailors trying to jump off the boat were just going for a quick swim, no biggie. www.navytimes.com/news/your-na...

Hegseth: "There were a few folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of symbol of dysfunction of low morale or a failed mission. I know it's the exact opposite."

Cops are great

This is very true. A huge theme in a lot of recent coverage that AI is a bit like Saving Private Ryan. Everybody's gotta step up and adopt AI to get it across the goal line.

This is the Dot Com Bubble 2.0, just way more consolidated & bigger. There's no way these AI companies live up to the hype to even close to the degree they'd need to for this to not be a disaster.

My argument isn’t incoherent because you lack an adequate number of brain cells to comprehend it.

I was raped at a frat party. It’s a shockingly common experience and preventative interventions in college are way too late.

This is so unsurprising that the NY Times miscounted the number of Trump press secretaries to join Fox News. Leavitt makes 3, not 2: Kayleigh McEnany is a current host, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders was a Fox contributor between the end of her WH tenure in 2019 and her 2021 run for Arkansas gov.

What I don't understand is being -that rich- and getting busted in a prostitution sting in a trailer park in Ohio. High-class escorts are a thing, right? I can't imagine at that level it's hard to fulfill whatever weird needs Jed York has.

look, if the pentagon wants IT security then they have to do what the rest of us do: hire trans furries who go to renfest don't ask me why, idk, i just know that data is insecure until sanctified by the holy aura of someone who checks at least one of those boxes. it's part of god's plan.

"Pivot to video" is synonymous with a desperate, trend-chasing strategy that sacrifices substantive content and leads to layoffs of talented staff to produce superficial videos to chase social media algorithms. Now it's NPR's turn. www.niemanlab.org/2026/09/npr-...

This was deservedly embarrassing for the Senator and his staff.

Yeah man nuclear war would be worse, but I can still care about the ability to, say, drive and heat my home while also not wanting to die in a nuclear winter.

WOW, RCP polling average has Trump less popular than he was right after Jan 6 (which, to be clear, was *extremely* unpopular)

great piece. man social media is a cancer themomoftheyear.substack.com/p/im-the-mom...

Dr. Oz is on my flight right now. He is sitting in the very first seat, front row. I saw him get on the plane. So when I stepped off the jetway onto the plane I approached him and put my hand out. What the man in charge of healthcare for the people on the very margins of society said…was revealing

Question - Did Trump, strategic mastermind, manage to completely bottom out right before the mid-term, or is the mid-term just happening somewhere on the slope to the bottom? Given tribalism it's hard to think that the floor could be far below where things stand.

It strikes me that there's a very reasonable chance that Trump's ballroom monstrosity isn't finished before he leaves office. How the next person handles that will be very telling about how they'll clean up all the mess Trump leaves behind.

"British Airways abandoned us in Iceland" is the plot of a direct-to-streaming Home Alone 7. What a nightmare.

My goodness, is that the slightest hint of backbone from the White House press pool?

We're not far from diesel prices -doubling- since January, which is honestly pretty insane.

mmygod

Dear Silicon Valley cultists: no, I’m not getting paid by a shadowy they/them cabal to be mean to you. I’m being mean to you because your sicko culture has helped destroy mainstream international aid funding (which is killing people), usher in Trump 2.0, and pervert technology and innovation.

genuinely one of the hardest things in the world because it is, actually, good if former trump supporters become disillusioned and move away from him and also I want to hook up the world's largest megaphone to yell WE TOLD YOU SO over and over

Hunter Biden being both reasonably intelligent and well-spoken and an unreformed degenerate while in the public eye constantly is really obnoxious.

Guys do not be sucked in by the 'Erick son of Erick said something reasonable' gambit. You don't have to hand it to him, because as soon as you do he'll say something awful and make you regret it.

The ability to use the internet as a source of knowledge in everyday life is fading quickly, and I think if anything we're underselling how bad that is. For 20 years I've been able to search for something like "best hvac duct size" and get useful answers. Now it's all AI slop articles.

Yeah man, it's totally fine. Just burn it all down.

After 20 years, it's time to make some changes. With your patronage we can ditch the ads & turn up the science. patreon.astronomycast.com