Since I posted yesterday's Twitter round-up, the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, has resigned after exaggerated charges of plagiarism from right-wing activists, following her testimony before Congress a few weeks back and the right-wing outrage ginned up over that. So the Bluesky posts below that refer to the Harvard or Penn presidents (which are from the first or second rounds of controversy) may seem a bit out of context today, on January 2.
I read at least one thorough thread that explained how AIs are being used (and will be used more in the future) to weaponize plagiarism charges, taking common phrases in subfields out of context in academic writing and showing them to credulous or all-too-willing audiences. There was a rejoinder from another academic explaining how she was plagiarized by her own [male] adviser during grad school — a senior scholar now at Harvard, who stole from all of his grad students and was never called on it. The comparison of who gets away with what is... whew.
Everything below the line is quoted from the attributed account, and is in reverse chronological order, except some of the images, which I move up or down for better visual balance.
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A 2004 study concluded that large pickups and SUVs are ~2.5x more likely to kill a pedestrian in a collision. Notably, the study used data from 1995–2000. Today's pickups and SUVs are significantly bigger and heavier.
David Zipper [link in original]
Safe bet that unironically using the word "wedlock" in a report is the best predictor of whether one believes the report was vindicated.
Lara Schwartz
Like, is the reason central asians living in Russia commit more crimes a function of "bad" central asian culture? Or is it that they can't access jobs and education and face harassment by police? It's a lot easier to see this stuff when you look at other countries.
Michael Hobbes
The pervasiveness of the assumption that different countries are simply incomparable is itself worthy of so much more study. We are an entire planet of exceptionalists.
Another Friggin Dave
I can only listen to self-assured people for so long.
Chris Steller
The electric train was invented in 1879. The safety bicycle six years later. Unleashing the potential of these two “obsolete” technologies is our best bet at addressing the converging climate, health, resource, and inequity crises. Not smarter cars. Not cleaner cars. Fewer cars:
Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife.bsky.social
the argument that trump needs to be convicted of insurrection before he can be disqualified is extremely weak. not only does the constitution not say it, but no one seriously believes that every single Confederate soldier needed to be tried and convicted before being disqualified.
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social
When I hear men complain about being hassled on transit, there's a small part of me that wants to laugh. Like, yes. Let me tell all the times I've gotten "bitch, smile" or threatened for being a woman. And men react to those stories with "well, that's just life but they don't mean anything by it." And duh, NO ONE should be hassled. But the feeling of "this is what had felt like for women for years; and NOW you get it when it's you?" is real.
amityf
Conservative legal theory is when the rights of women and trans people must be "deeply rooted in the country's history and tradition" but also who even cares what a bunch of old dead guys would've thought about Donald Trump
Gillian Branstetter
In a free market, drugs are cheap. Government-granted patent monopolies make them expensive
Dean Baker
I think it's good actually there's a lot of hesitancy to disqualify a popular candidate for President but I do worry how much of that
hesitation comes not from principles or legal doctrine but rather out of
fear of what Trump supporters might do in retaliation
Gillian Branstetter
the point isn't that they're hypocrites or whatever, but that reactionaries are notably good at simultaneously holding beliefs that are plainly in tension. i tend to think that's because much of reactionary thought reflects a set of impulses more than it does a clear ideology.
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social
Some 70 years ago, Lionel Trilling defined modern conservative thought as "irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas." Still holds up.
tonigo
"Malaise" is a contraction of "bad mayonnaise"
CrazyMyra @outonthemoors.bsky.social
I'm shy at first, but once you get to know me I'm actually really quite annoying
Criag @craigpsutton.bsky.social
There’s a certain kind of stats guy who always ends up reinventing eugenics. Has Nate Silver always been an explicit evopsych bro or is that new?
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social
Crazy statistic in an article about prime rib:
Gore Vidal Sassoon @jimmyjazz1968.bsky.social
Nearly 50 Hoover Dams worth of clean power pants — totaling more than $132 billion in private investment— have been announced since 2021. Seems good! Is good. Still more to do.
Costa Samaras
this trip's "fix parents' tech issue" assignment: hooking up dvd players that use component cables. do we have the component cables? no. does best buy have two sets? also no
lowtax speedrun enjoyer @rickywlmsbong.bsky.social
the private equity slaughter of Radio Shack and its panoply of boring but useful store-brand patch cords and adapters was an early harbinger of 21st century enshittification
Amateur Expert Opinions
"The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism." –Hannah Arendt
@brainnotonyet.antifa.llc
All policies have winners and losers and we should mitigate such harms. But one way to tell that most congestion pricing opponents aren't acting in good faith is they never acknowledge the harms the existing congestion has on emergency response times or, say, transit riders going to a hospital.
Doug Gordon @brooklynspoke.bsky.social
the shorthand is rural = white and cities = Black
Prisonculture
It's crazy how they pretend agricultural work isn't primarily done by POCs.
Saint Stranger
Tonight Elon Musk will be visited by the ghosts of apartheid past, bigotry present, and bankruptcy future.
Frank Conniff
clarence thomas’s clerks constitute a who’s-who of some of the worst people in this country, each of whom has put in tireless work to degrade american democracy for the sake of oligarchs and would-be authoritarians. just look at the names: leonard leo, john yoo, mike lee, john eastman
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
A Christmas cartoon for the Guardian. Happy holidays, everyone!
Tom Gauld @tomgauld.bsky.social
This is why when free speech advocates break out the argument that you don't want to curtail speech, I have to laugh. We had a fucking World War to fucking curtail Nazism. Nazism was put on trial by the World at Nuremberg and it was found to be wrong, vilely wrong.
How Many Parsecs Until 5 O'Clock @sailbarque.bsky.social
Only a matter of time until we get “the Nuremberg Trials were Cancel Culture” hot takes. Brace yourselves.
Kevin M. Kruse
York, PA has the highest concentration of confederate flags north of the Mason Dixon than any other place
Wes Burdine
live, work AND play? In this economy??
Chris Steller
People who say of Nazis “deal with bad ideas is by defeating them in the marketplace of ideas” are smuggling in the notion that Nazi ideas have not already been defeated on the merits, and are still valid and worthy to consider, or that Nazi "ideas" involve bloodless debate. My rebuttal: Which Nazi ideas have not already been considered and rejected? Which have been unfairly thrown out? Which of them do you feel it is vital to rescue and restore and list on the "marketplace of ideas?" And when have Nazis ever been defeated in the way you suggest?
A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social
I mean Clarence Thomas probably would have voted that way anyway, but now there are indications that he felt he was underpaid and was considering leaving the court so he was essentially bribed to stay on and keep voting that way.
Jeremy Morong
“We can prove he’s incorruptible because he seeked and received bottomless riches from donors who befriended him only after ascending to power and ruled their way 100% of the time!”
Grudgie the Whale
Chris Steller
The annoying thing about The Marketplace Of Ideas is that in a real marketplace the people selling bad products and services are allowed to go out of business and meanwhile their existence isn't presented as prima facie evidence that the market is legitimate
Hemry, Local Bartender @bartenderhemry.bsky.social
Why is 2024 a test of democracy but 2020 wasn't? Trump should plainly be in jail. It's already a profound failure of American institutions that he's allowed to be a candidate at all. "we must defeat trump at the ballot box to save democracy" is so fucking stupid. We did! And he fomented an insurrection to overthrow the results. Anyone who actually believed this would be arguing that he should already be disqualified.
Michael Hobbes
Don't miss results just in this month from Earth's biggest UBI experiment: 6,000 people in rural Kenya getting cash. Result: lump sum at the start helped more than monthly payments, but both caused so much growth that even neighboring towns got wealthier, healthier, and safer!
Ada Palmer
Maybe 2024 will be the year that more and more people will grapple with the challenge that it is features, not bugs, in current dominant systems that give us everything from plastic particles in our tissues to a warming earth to sacrifice zones and poverty.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
Interviewer: Can you explain this gap in your resume?
Me: Yes, it's because "your" and "resume" are two separate words.
Chris Steller
I just wish open Nazis were treated with the same level of contempt by the news media as annoying 19 year old college kids
Brendel
What's hilarious is that there is zero evidence that ending affirmative action has done what conservatives say that it does. It ended in California in the 1990s. Here in Michigan in the 2000s. Do you think they're not still sneering about who's an AA admit and/or hire here or there in 2023?
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas @ebonyteach.bsky.social
Oh, great. Jeff Bezos hired Tom Wambsgans to run the Washington Post.
Dan Froomkin (Presswatchers.org) @froomkin.bsky.social
One of these days, I'm just gonna walk in here with an armload of 2x4s and see what I can get for them:
Stone entry sign of the Lumber Exchange Building in Minneapolis.
Dan is literally not kidding. "The man picked to lead the Post — a paper with the slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness" — stands accused of helping to lead a massive cover-up of criminal activity when he was acting outside public view."
Sarah Posner
"Democracy Dies in Darkness" can be read as a threat or a dark promise.
GrumpyBen
When we point out that crime is down, despite widespread belief that it's up, are we "disrespecting voters' lived experience"?
David Roberts @volts.wtf
Another basic income pilot focused on homelessness has released preliminary results after only 6 months because halfway through the experiment, it is already showing incredible effectiveness. $750/mo for 6 months led to homelessness dropping to 12% versus 23% in the control group on a wait list.
Scott Santens
The gap between the evidence and the practice of anti-poverty policy exists because, for most of the last sixty years, the goal hasn't been ending poverty. Ask Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ask Charles Murray, ask Bill Clinton. Assistance programs are used for control.
Gillian Branstetter
Virtually all of the research I've seen confirms that homelessness is largely caused by a mismatch between local rents and local incomes. So build enough housing to bring down rents and subsidize the lowest incomes to meet them in the middle. It's really that simple.
Ned Resnikoff
I think a lot about the people who used to tell me, as recently as 2 years ago, that I was endangering the future of humanity by mocking Elon
Tom Tomorrow
A lot of yall claim to support workers until that Worker is Clarence Thomas asking for a 2000% raise on his lifetime guaranteed salary of $300k per year
Jason O. Gilbert
Somehow the piece itself manages to be even worse than the headline:
Radley Balko
It's 60 degrees in New York City right now [December 15] and the birds are singing outside my window as if it were Spring. Last night I went to a party where all the chit chat centered on where people were jetting off to for the holidays. Fuck, y'all. My kid is 13. What the hell are we doing??
Dr. Genevieve Guenther @doctorvive.bsky.social
At some point it will sink in that the richest man ever to live has to decided to engineer a massive Nazi-making machine.
L O L G O P @lolgop.bsky.social
Ugh Axios sez that House Dems being upset with Dean Phillips shows "the perils of challenging party orthodoxy." No! It shows the perils of doing something stupid and damaging with no potential upside. Lots of Dems have done unorthodox things without the party turning on them.
Jonathan Bernstein
It is so embarrassing that this dumb myth lasted as long as it did. There was never any evidence other than some viral videos and myths of “organized” crime are a central component of numerous moral panics. What is the point of professional journalists if not to spot this shit?
Michael Hobbes
Governor Newsom just passed a nearly $300 million budget to combat “organized retail theft.” Since then: Retailers are admitting they lied about the extent of retail theft. And FBI data just released tells us retail theft is down and property crime is *lowest since 1961.* Lies.
Scott Hechinger
The other thing is that it's genuinely wild to me how many people who were alive during the 70s to 90s get freaked out about crime now
Ken @tcbullfrog.bsky.social
Water gets in cracks in rocks, freezes, breaks them open. Maybe our grief – our covid grief, our genocide grief, our climate grief, our ecocide grief – is like this:
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
watched the OG grinch whole stole christmas with the kids today, and one thing i appreciate about it is that there’s no backstory or tragic past or anything. why does the grinch hate hooville and christmas? because he’s the fucking grinch that’s why! there’s nothing else you need to know
b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie.bsky.social
“Get politics out of x” always means “impose my politics on x”
Adam Serwer
xkcd.com is an evil genius and we're going to be seeing this going around the internet and creating mischief for years to come.
Jacob T. Levy
In light of the Alex Jones and Giuliani verdicts, it continues to be funny that there's a concerted conservative project to lower the standard for defamation because they believe it will own liberal newspapers and not all the weirdo scammers in the conservative movement.
CJ Ciaramella
This is unbelievable. The maternal mortality rate for millennials in the US aged 25 to 34 is 230% higher than it was for Gen Xers and 300% higher than it was for baby boomers of the same age
Nate Bear
COP28 [celebration emoji]:
David Ho
As far as I can tell there's an estimated $400 billion needed every year in developing countries for coping with losses caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich countries. At the COP, rich countries pledged a one-time commitment of $800 million. Say you (the global south) have an ongoing and worsening leak in your roof that I (the global north) caused by crashing my remote controlled helicopter toy into it. That leak costs you $400 each year to cope with. I agree that I have a responsibility to address this problem. And so I make a one time pledge of 80 cents. And, I don't give you the 80 cents today, I promise that I will eventually give you 80 cents. Also...I agree only to someday transition away from crashing my toy helicopter into your roof and making the hole it in worse.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
I would think Americans — of all people — could look at what Israel is doing in Gaza right now and 1) hold the truth that the government will do terrible things in your name that the people do not support, and 2) recognize settler-colonialism when they see it and have some awareness about why it’s bad.
Erica M @ericamauter.bsky.social
We live at a time when anyone can publish their thoughts anywhere. "Debate" is the cheapest and easiest form of discourse. It is *everywhere.* What we need are institutions that fortify debates with basic facts and, yes, close down debates where one side is plainly wrong. Genuinely embarrassing how many American elites are convinced that the purpose of newspapers is to foster "debate" rather than report the truth.
Michael Hobbes
Republicans are straight up refusing to answer questions about Kate Cox because they don't want voters reminded that the Texas law worked exactly as intended
Jessica Valenti
Me when people keep saying "unique":
Chris Steller
"Trump makes a lot of threats, but he doesn't mean them. Also, I like Trump because he's a plain speaker who just tells the truth." Doublethink ++good!
Lizard @lizardky.bsky.social
Certainties in life:
1. Death
2. Taxes
3. The opposite of whatever Ross Douthat thinks
Eryn @erync.bsky.social
It feels real bad to know there's an actual genocide going on and that the response of both American political parties is how much we should punish universities to get young people to shut up about it.
Ian @mplsnightmayor.bsky.social
I'm a professor at an Ivy League institution and I think about Ivy League institutions about a tenth as much as the editors of major media outlets do. I'm begging you, for the love of God: Touch grass. Somewhere *other* than Harvard Yard.
Kevin M. Kruse
The Life-Changing Magic of Not Caring About What's Happening in the Ivy League
Laura Seay @texasinafrica.bsky.social
Seriously, the obsession a handful of editors have with the Ivies is starting to creep from "unhealthy obsession" to "psychotic stalker." It's only a matter of time before a campus takes out restraining orders.
Kevin M. Kruse
"If the U.S. had made as much progress reducing vehicle crashes as other high-income countries had over the past two decades, about 25,000 fewer Americans would die every year."
The War on Cars
Lots going on in higher ed censorship right now, beyond UPenn:
OH could pass worst censorship law in US next week
FL admits it banned sociology general education requirements as viewpoint censorship
WI system head capitulates to legislature on DEI, but blocked by Regents
PEN America is on the case.
Jeremy C. Young
As I keep saying — it is impossible for me (or anyone else) to teach sociology in Florida now.
wesinjapan
Reproducing here one of the most important and damning works of media criticism I've ever come across, as I, in another window, demonstrate that it's true it's all true your honor:
Eric Roston
This is very bad. This kind of right-wing bullshit - force an academic into an impossible situation by acting in bad faith - has been going on for a while. If university presidents were paying attention when their faculty were being attacked, then maybe they would’ve been prepared
Matt Gabriele @profgabriele.com
its wild that she has to resign but Elise Stefanik is allowed to be in Congress after trying to overthrow the government (this is also true for other members of congress at that hearing)
viktor shtrum
It’s funny how easy it is to see dastardly deeds [like Lyft ending scooter share] in hindsight, but not in the present. Few people seem to understand that Lyft did a similar thing (without the need for gangsters) to bike-sharing that was done to the streetcar system: buy the competition & destroy it
Lou Miranda @newlou.bsky.social
Undocumented immigrants who worked decades on US farms — and who feed us all year round, often laboring in extreme heat and cold — are reaching retirement age in a country that offers them neither Medicare nor Social Security.
Gabe Ortíz @tusk81.bsky.social
“The eviction risk for Black households earning more than $80,000 is still higher than it is for a white household earning under $20,000 a year.“
Nails Nathan @chadstanton.bsky.social
The perverse pointless cruelty of forcing a woman to risk her life giving birth to a guaranteed DOA baby is breathtaking. And there’s ZERO political upside! WHO is this for? A handful of power-mad sadists? Just mind-boggling wickedness.
Will Wilkinson
I strongly encourage Republicans to run on a “we promise to force grieving moms to give birth to dead fetuses at great risk to their own health” platform.
Radley Balko
Being able to google sing lyrics is in the top 5 of why I love the internet.
amityf
in this bizarro political world we are trapped in it barely rates notice that a son of immigrants is running for GOP nomination as an anti-immigrant Great Replacement-espousing nationalist
Tom Tomorrow
Always been fascinated that cats are coded as feminine when they exhibit the traits patriarchy demands of men and dogs are coded as masculine when they exhibit the traits patriarchy demands of women
Gillian Branstetter
really excited about going from the economy is bad because there are too many jobs to the economy is bad because there are not enough jobs
David M. Perry @lollardfish.bsky.social
Whiteness is the belief not only that you are to be free from the oppression experienced by others, but that even knowing about that oppression is itself oppressive
@lawyersheryl.com
Ron DeSantis--who threatens to deport political dissidents, has banned over a 1000 books in Florida, and who just lost a SCOTUS appeal in an effort to ban drag shows--thinks we need to put the Constitution back in our politics
Gillian Branstetter
Ireland is being invaded…by foreign far right social media:
Don Moynihan
The more voters reject the GOP's transphobia the more transphobic the GOP becomes because if democracy won't help them enforce their social and cultural regime then it's democracy that has to go
Gillian Branstetter
Just the hottest year in human history. "The global mean temperature for 2023 is the highest on record, 1.46°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average." Probably fine...
Alex Steffen
The more I think about it, the more things really started going downhill here in the US after Prince died.
Pedaling Professor
We don't get to choose whether or not to live in an interconnected system. We just do. What we get to choose is whether to work with that interconnection or to ignore and fight it. One of the ways to choose to work with interconnection (i.e. work with reality) is to multisolve.
Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social
Among the most glaring acts of projection from the right is the accusation the left valorizes victimhood when nine tenths of all conservative agitprop is attempting to portray themselves as the victim
Gillian Branstetter
It’s hard not to notice that the pro-Israel side relies almost exclusively on generalized statements — “Israel has a right to defend itself,” “Israel must remove Hamas” etc — that are utterly irrelevant to the specific ways the IDF has carried out its bombing campaign.
Michael Hobbes
If defining women by biology was the key to their safety and freedom then women would already be safe and free
Gillian Branstetter
Every morning I wake up, lurk on twitter for 15 minutes and feel sick to my stomach at the news and images coming out of Gaza. I don't understand how anyone can defend it, I really don't.
Michael Hobbes
It is now official: November was the warmest November on record by a wide margin in the JRA-55 dataset, beating the prior record set in 2020 by 0.3C. November 2023 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, and the year-to-date temperatures are 1.4C above preindustrial.
Zeke Hausfather @hausfath.bsky.social
one of my favorite genres of social media content is when someone says crypto has no use cases and 100 guys show up in the replies to describe 100 different situations that all boil down to evading banking regulations
Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social
The connection between Putin's anti-queer purge and the same wished for by American conservatives is not some cloak-and-dagger Russiagate conspiracy. It's a shared value of authoritarian nationalism and illiberalism in both contexts. It's an objection to self-determination and a worship of the state
Gillian Branstetter
My favorite skyway alley view now features three (3) skyways:
Chris Steller
A vibrant queer life will always require certain guaranteed rights that
dictators will not abide: Freedom of expression and association, freedom
from religion, bodily autonomy. These are anathema to the reactionary
mind, particularly when paired with an expansive vision of community and
democracy
Gillian Branstetter
Reminder: Physical books are one technology that no corporation can turn off. Once you buy one, nobody can ever stop you from reading it! That's what I call innovation!
Jarrett Walker @humantransit.bsky.social [referencing a PlayStation notice that content will no longer be available]
The "theme park" critique of traditional city design always makes me really sad since it makes you realize the only context Americans have for processing a neighborhood that it's safe to walk around in - how all humans lived for 10,000 years! - is like, Disneyland. The "you have to drive everywhere to get to every destination" thing is presented like it's just The Natural Order of Things and not something that's only really existed (or even been possible) since the 1960s.... To the extent there's meat to the "theme park" critique it's the part about these areas being so expensive that service workers can't afford to live in them, but think for a second about why "a 1000 sq ft apartment" costs more than a "a big house on a lot of land an hour drive from any jobs."... If you start providing walkable neighborhoods at scale they will be much *less expensive* than sprawl because they consume far fewer material resources (and labor) to build and run!
Michael Tae Sweeney @mtsw.bsky.social
Is it inappropriate to ask people who travel to international climate conferences to stop posting photos as if they're on vacation? The fact that they are not actual decision makers but are spending their carbon budgets like water is not lost on us.
Mary Morse Marti @marymm.bsky.social
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