I’ve heard somewhere that democracy dies in darkness.

“In a series of paragraphs that are up there as being among the most shocking I have read in my journalistic career, the Post acknowledged on Saturday — dropped in the middle of the holiday weekend, more than a week after the Times’s report — that they had known about the flag since at least January 20, 2021, and had not revealed knowledge of it until May 25, 2024.”

#media #alito

https://www.lawdork.com/p/washington-post-bombshell-washington

Wall Street tycoon Stephen Schwarzman endorsed Trump yesterday.

He joins a growing list of billionaires who once condemned the former president but are now flocking to his campaign.

Never underestimate how quickly billionaires will sell out our democracy for tax cuts.

Google CEO Sundar says Google has no solution for AI providing wildly incorrect information.

Thanks a bunch Sundar. So #Google is a "Guess Engine" now, eh?

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ceo-google-ai-hallucinations

Jim Simons, who was a noted differential geometer (for instance being one of the discoverers of Chern-Simons theory), then a successful hedge fund manager, and finally a major philanthropist to mathematics and the sciences, died today, aged 86: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/business/dealbook/jim-simons-dead.html .

One can debate whether the economic model of first encouraging the concentration of wealth by billionaires, and then relying on such billionaires for philanthropy, is the most effective or just mechanism for creating public goods, but certainly Jim made some very important investments in the modern infrastructure of mathematics and science, with his foundation being a significant funder of the arXiv for instance, and of major institutes such as the SLMath institute (formerly MSRI), as well as the 2026 ICM that is to be held in Philadelpha. I was also fortunate to be supported by a Simons Investigator Award for over a decade, which in turn supported a large number of research activities of my group here at UCLA.

I only interacted with Simons a few times (we were both on the SLMath Board of Trustees, but our interactions were almost entirely via Zoom), but he came across as sincere in his support of the sciences, and I hope the Simons Foundation will continue that support in the future.

I continue to be fascinated by the fact that when Jack Dorsey looks back at his time at Twitter, his only regret is that it was technically possible for him to ban the Nazis so people nagged him to do so.

So now his ideal social network is one where the moderators can’t ban Nazis.

https://www.engadget.com/jack-dorsey-claims-bluesky-is-repeating-all-the-mistakes-he-made-at-twitter-234326121.html

It's only since Cecilia Payne's PhD thesis in 1925, that we know what the stars - and our Sun - are made of: mostly hydrogen.

Her thesis was described as ""the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in astronomy" and it extremely readable: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1925PhDT.........1P/abstract

Yet It took until 1956, 10 years before her retirement, for her to become full professor - because women were barred from becoming full professors at Harvard.

(Posted because she was born #OTD).

#astrodon #VicisArt #VicisAstro

This post is not a joke.

There are #MAGA proudly talking about #Trump wearing diapers, and wearing Trump branded diapers themselves:

https://www.dispatchesfromtrumpland.com/post/more-trump-diapers-at-pennsylvania-rally

To contextualize, his fixer #MichaelCohen confirms Trump sh**s his pants and journalists at his trial have complained about a certain smell.

Dear World:

I deeply apologize, as a mentally competent American.

This cult demon has a real chance of running our country again.

The stupidity in the #USA is beyond my comprehension.

#USpol

Political Consultant: “Kristi, you’re a shoo-in to be picked to be Trump’s VP, the only thing stopping you at this point [laughing] is if you’ve taken a puppy out back and shot it or something.”

Kristi Noem:

Political Consultant:

Kristi Noem:

Political Consultant: