Nathan A Burroughs

Last week, I witnessed some truly appalling behavior at a conference, something I haven't seen in about 20 years and thought we had moved past. A senior faculty member was invited to the conference as a keynote speaker, and used their talk as an opportunity to attack the work of a graduate student.

I dunno, maybe bad-faith questions sometimes deserve bad-faith answers? Also, this is terribly vague - "could be interpreted"? Really?

Here: www.offmessage.net/p/ai-risk-ne...

The fact that people are talking about a mythical/illegal $5K is yet another demonstration that the political press in this country is utterly incompetent. And frankly has been for at least a quarter-century.

Another Supreme Court decision, another hit to the court's legitimacy, another blow to democracy.

Just want to note that Trump's governance of the U.S. has mirrored exactly his running of his real estate companies & casinos. You know, the bankrupt ones....

Fascinating piece that brings to mind Scott's Seeing Like A State. laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur...

I am absurdly excited to see this movie. www.theringer.com/2026/08/07/m...

Apologies to my friends & family for all the texts while I endured a day of AI hypoganda.

"Crazy" idea to replace current peer review publication process. Reviewers just determine if the paper meets basic criteria of quality, and then manuscripts are selected by lot from this pool. This approach could also be used for research grants.

If the @nba.com lets Dundon move the @trailblazers.bsky.social, it will not only kill professional basketball in Portland - a lot of us will never spend another penny or moment's time on the NBA. I am done with shady billionaires shaking down cities.

It's not a great look when the Supreme Court is asking for more security when ICE is shooting people.

Well that game was....unexpected.

BREAKING: New proposed OMB regulation, applying to all federal grants, requiring grant reviews by senior political appointees and re-emphasizes that "peer review remains advisory and does not replace agency discretion". #standupforscience public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-10817.pdf

I remain persistently amused that "originalists" on the court so gleefully exercise a power - judicial review - that does not appear in the plain text of the constitution.

I've started spending 5 minutes practicing guitar between stressful meetings as a form of self-care. Also, I really need to practice!

Historians are going to have a hard time deciding whether the Supreme Court or the Trump Presidency has had a more destructive impact on U.S. democracy. It's an attempt to impose a Redeemer government on the entire country.

7AM reading of Bernstein, Krugman, and @gelliottmorris.com this morning has my brain consumed with expectations & loss aversion theory, and thinking about heterogeneity in attitudes about prices. Clearly it's time for a new project.

Catholic convert gets into a public spat about theology with....the Pope? Did you even seminary bro? Where's your tonsure?

Fascinating analysis that at first glance gives a pretty plausible answer to the whole "vibecession" debate.

10 years ago I could conduct a lot of useful personal business on the internet Now I'm back to doing things by phone or even in person because it's bots all the way down. It's like we're back to 1994.

Booo, Hulu! Boooooo! variety.com/2026/tv/news...

It's pretty clear that for all our society's valorization of "leadership", their most important function is in avoiding really stupid mistakes. A good one can't necessarily solve your problems, but a bad one can make everything terrible.

noem's dog looking down from heaven

For no reason whatsoever, I should mention that presidential pardons can't protect you from international war crimes charges.

On a brief scan, there's a lot in here that is very worrisome for the future of rigorous, scholar-driven research.

Welp gonna be canceling my HBO subscription soon.

Modern journalism pre-dates modern popular government. The sickness of the former does not bode well for the latter.

It's probably time to adopt a strategy of collective responsibility for Democrats in the Senate & House. Their current game is to designate a few defectors to ensure bills pass, but rotate them so nobody gets yelled at too much. Perhaps we should withhold donations to ALL of them if ANY defect.

That terrible feeling when you put something off for ages and then it winds up taking no time at all.

Soooo....the only way to get Democratic Senators to actually fight fascism is to withhold donations for any candidate while Schumer is leader? Is that where we're at?

Still playing the wrong game.

oh God, this is like that scene in all the presidents men when woodstein spent a couple hours asking a random lady’s opinions abt watergate in her apt and then finally realize she’s not the woman who works at CREEP.

If Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act falls, Democrats might need to win the national popular vote by 5 to 6 points to take control of the House, via Nate Cohn www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

This piece is fantastic, arguing that the path forward is to stick to a real moral center and pull others in, not to compromise your values away. “You don’t buy into the MAGA lies to get supporters. You give them a vision of what you support, and you call them to it.”

So bring together all your generals in one place & show them how insane you are. Do you want a coup? Because this is how you get a coup.

National guard deployed to Portland. Start wondering why they've been drinking such crappy coffee at home.

Fact

"Common decency stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply." me on why Ezra Klein should be ashamed / why shame is Good Actually www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...

As a severe allergy sufferer, I can confirm that it can really affect your emotional state, i.e. "Is feeling this crappy just my life now?"

People keep asking what the Democrats should demand in exchange for budget votes. My answer is: Nothing. Just don't vote for it. Make the Republicans own all of this.

gift link bc this shit is delicious

Interesting new essay on rising housing costs in the Journal of Economic Perspectives:

Link to article here: www.ft.com/content/5cd7...

Academia is basically a collection of people who got lucky early on and mistook it for genius. doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

But in the meantime, why not slap “powered by AI” on your toilet brush and win over a few extra customers from your competitors. This is essentially what you’re seeing now with every single company just ham fisting some half-baked LLM chatbot into their workflow.