THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM Kay Ryan The room is almost all elephant. Almost none of it isn't. Pretty much solid elephant. So there's no room to talk about it.
The room is
almost all
elephant.
Almost none
of it isn’t.
Pretty much
solid elephant.
So there’s no
room to talk
about it.
-Kay Ryan, “The Elephant in the Room”
#everynightapoem
Great work from the FT's John Burn-Murdoch www.ft.com/content/b474...
Since July, I've tracked at least 2,300 cases in which federal judges have ruled ICE has illegally detained people without bond or due process.
This is one that stands out:
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.
I hate to break it to you, but heavily-armed government militias are roaming unchecked through US cities and shooting human rights observers dead in the streets. That's happening in our country.
Brazil succeeded in holding coup plotters accountable. "If — when the glass has been swept away & the trials are over — those who empowered, guided, mobilized, and legitimized [the riots] are never held to account, then... the conditions for repetition remain intact.” jacobin.com/2026/01/janu...
Distraught woman says ICE killed her wife in video after deadly Minneapolis shooting "They killed my wife," the distraught woman says, adding, "They shot her in the head." An ICE agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman who was driving an SUV in Minneapolis on Wednesday. / Screenshot/@Breaking911
"They killed my wife. I don't know what to do," the woman says through sobs in the footage, with a damaged SUV visible in the distance behind her. "We stopped to videotape, and they shot her in the head," the woman cries. "We have a six-year-old at school," she says, almost unable to breathe, as a chaotic scene in which federal officers prevented at least one doctor who was on the scene from assisting the shot victim unfolds. "We're new here," the distraught woman says in despair.
You and your wife drop your 6-year-old off at school. You just moved here. You see ICE terrorizing your new neighbors. You film them, as is your legal right. Your wife complies with orders. She is then shot in the head. You still have to pick up your child later today.
This could be you.
The failure of our elites to hold Trump accountable for January 6th is as disgraceful as what happened on that awful day.
Since 2010, 35 democratic leaders around the world have been criminally convicted. Only Trump went unpunished and unconstrained.
Now he threatens democracy at home and abroad.
How long is the U.S. media going to continue to uncritically report the claim that RFK Jr. and his political appointees want to improve trust in public health while they are so obviously, inarguably undermining it?
“If I sit next to a madman as he drives a car into a group of innocent bystanders, I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe, then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver.”
~Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The audacity of the mediocre is infinite
I cannot imagine having a job so inconsequential that I need to invent reasons to not only care, but to actually object to, my supervisees’ choice of font.
It’s giving Cracker Barrel cultural shadow docket, but make it as dorky as humanly possible.
(Aptos 12s, amirite?)
Introduced donkeys in the wild photographed by Michael Alfuso
Details from the 1988 Mark Hallett mural, “Trapped in Time".
Wild donkeys by iNaturalist user rawcomposition.
🫏 How did donkeys and pumas help resurrect extinct food webs in Death Valley?
Learn how #TarPits research reveals how mountain lions have adapted lost Ice Age predator-prey dynamics, while restoring desert wetlands through preying on wild donkeys: bit.ly/BurroingInto...
NEW from me: i talked to the founders of a geothermal startup that is working on a simple (but surprisingly difficult) solution to find more geothermal energy: seek out systems deep underground that we can use for power. it's harder than you think!
The December issue of Brain is out with a wonderful cover. Interested to know what those delicate helical structures are?
Yes, this is Treponema pallidum, the bacteria that causes syphilis and which proved so elusive to detect when researchers first attempted to isolate it.
academic.oup.com/brain
That bag solves problems I didn’t even know I had.
President Trump speaks of making America great again, but my column argues that instead he is systematically undermining the three key ingredients to the formula that over the last 150 years made the US the world's leading economy: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/o...
Cool!! I'll check it out. But, "thinking vs. obeying physics" - the standard paradigm says our thinking is obeying physics too, right? One question is: how much of more advanced "thinking" is also least action dynamics on more complex virtual spaces constructed by more advanced cognitive systems.
How “intelligent” is a slime mold? When it solves mazes, it might not be thinking:it’s obeying physics. Our new paper with
@jordiplam.bsky.social shows how it follows a least action principle,letting physics do the job arxiv.org/pdf/2511.08531
@drmichaellevin.bsky.social @docteur-drey.bsky.social
“He’s actually weakening the economy by eliminating the very industrial strategy that led, in the past 50 to 100 years, companies like Intel to be born.”
I interviewed @mazzucatom.bsky.social for Politico Magazine on Trump’s brand of capitalism
www.politico.com/news/magazin...
Today's talk from the #NaturalPhilosophy Symposium is Nick Lane on Life as a Guide to Its Own Origins, with commentary by Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHL_...
Article text: In turn, every community in America depends on charitable organisations: hospitals, schools, museums, libraries, community centres, medical researchers—the list goes on. When the federal government reneges on its commitments to these pillars of society, it creates gaps in our social infrastructure. This year MacArthur has increased its giving by over 20% to respond to the government-induced funding crisis that non-profits in America and around the world face, and we plan to repeat this in 2026. The extra money comes from tapping some of the excess growth from our investment portfolio—we are having to spend a higher portion of the returns from our endowment. Many charitable foundations are doing the same, and together we could put to work billions of dollars more than was previously budgeted in the coming years. There are trade-offs here, and spending more now might mean less is available later. But this is a crucial time to support the social sector, with the sudden collapse in federal funding having sent budgets under water in field after field.
Important column in @economist.com by @palfrey.org, head of MacArthur Foundation, on how foundations, NGOs, nonprofits, etc are standing up against MAGA attacks.
www.economist.com/by-invitatio...
Paywalled, but here's a sample:
![Comic. Confusion matrix showing renditions of different combinations, colored yellow, tan, or gray. [Air: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G] [Lead: gamma rays G, neutrons T, alpha particles G, light G, Sound Y, heat Y, swords G, toxic dust T, radio G, sharks G] [Water: gamma rays T, neutrons G, alpha particles G, light T, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks Y] [Vacuum: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound G, heat T, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G] [Oven mitts: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound T, heat G, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks Y] [Armor: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound Y, heat Y, swords G, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks T] [Biohazard suit: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust G, radio Y, sharks Y] [Faraday cage: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks Y] [Shark cage: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cz73r7iyiqn26upot4jtjdhk/bafkreib7rzofmrqb5cvnyccnb7ftj6qroxtp55i4dqqnbp2ozun6gaxbkm@jpeg)
Comic. Confusion matrix showing renditions of different combinations, colored yellow, tan, or gray. [Air: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G] [Lead: gamma rays G, neutrons T, alpha particles G, light G, Sound Y, heat Y, swords G, toxic dust T, radio G, sharks G] [Water: gamma rays T, neutrons G, alpha particles G, light T, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks Y] [Vacuum: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound G, heat T, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G] [Oven mitts: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound T, heat G, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks Y] [Armor: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound Y, heat Y, swords G, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks T] [Biohazard suit: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles G, light G, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust G, radio Y, sharks Y] [Faraday cage: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio G, sharks Y] [Shark cage: gamma rays Y, neutrons Y, alpha particles Y, light Y, sound Y, heat Y, swords Y, toxic dust Y, radio Y, sharks G]
Shielding Chart
xkcd.com/3158/
What if we could chart all cell types across the tree of life?
In @nature.com, @arnausebe.bsky.social and colls launch the Biodiversity Cell Atlas, a global effort to map eukaryotic cell diversity using single-cell & genomic data.
drive.google.com/file/d/1G4zZ... @crg.eu @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social
A prince in a monarchy is being held more accountable than our elites in this democracy.
As they should. It's clearly illegal. The US is not a monarchy. He is trying to put Band-Aids on problems he himself created.
🤣
It fills a spot in you mental landscape and you have yet to find another memory that better fills that specific niche so it remains.
Comic. PERSON: Sure, when *Einstein* suggests using the Lorentz transform to explain the connection between velocity and time, people call him a genius. But when *I* suggest it, it’s “basic physics” and “undergraduate stuff.” PERSON 2 with white hat: Such a double standard!
Physics Insight
xkcd.com/3154/
