War, war, what is it good for?
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According to an editorial I'm editing today, training higher-quality trauma surgeons π¬
15.02.2026 21:36
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War, war, what is it good for?
...
According to an editorial I'm editing today, training higher-quality trauma surgeons π¬
Somewhat lost in the discourse hubbub, this is huge news - increasingly seems like we're committing to trying a private response (or lack thereof) to climate change.
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/c...
It's been a difficult week on multiple levels β and having a Thursday with two @catherineproject.bsky.social discussions of Dante and Dostoyevsky with groups of incredibly thoughtful readers has been the absolute highlight of it. Tremendously spirit-lifting. (And completely free.)
It's mildly trippy to be editing a paper by East Asian researchers where "USSR" is used as an acronym for ulnar superficialis slip resection.
The world moves on, life-changing institutions for some are random historical footnotes for others, and so forth.
Somehow I never watched the classic James Bond movies β and I'm delighted to find that the most charming part of "From Russia with Love" is the background footage from early 1960s Istanbul.
I was noticing today how I still get ~1-2% of my editing work in .doc, not .docx, format, even nearly 20 years after the .docx format was released.
Kinda interesting re: technology obsolescence cycles, maybe especially for technologies that generally fly below our conscious radar screen
Introducing the 4th grader to some (recorded) late night talk shows:
"Is Stephen Colbert a bear? A cold bear?"
This meso loop of #Melissa from CIRA is absolutely stunning at it makes its closes in on landfall in southwestern Jamaica.
rammb-data.cira.colostate.edu/tc_realtime/...
#hurricanemelissa
Ooh, another nice linguistic coinage tonight from the middle schooler βΒ "more sneakily" is "sneakilier".
Glad to see no "surge" this weekend, but also disgusted by the framing, on multiple levels.
www.berkeleyside.org/2025/10/23/t...
Sometimes stating the question answers the question.
Philosophical conversation with the 7 y/o today β why, indeed, ARE farts funny?
"They're just smelly things that have noises and come from your butt! And why are butts funny, bro? All they are is like an oval with a crack in it that shoots out poop [pause] that's kinda funny."
Interesting innovation in phrasal verb usage from the 9 y/o: "this make sures that..."
I've heard similar things from the 11 y/o too but have forgotten to jot them down.
Interesting Gen Alpha linguistic usage from the middle-schooler today. Apparently "AFK" can apply to being absorbed in work for a couple hoursβeven if that work is *at a laptop*, literally *at a keyboard*.
Very interesting interactive map of indigenous territories, treaties, and languages:
native-land.ca. The choices of what to include in Asia, Africa, and Europe are quite interesting. I wonder if future versions will have more Siberian representation (e.g., Tungusic?)
I started learning Turkish many years ago with high-minded ideas about using it in my research.
15+ years later, I'm rocking out to this fun ditty about partying with Dracula, hooking up with Frankenstein's wife, and becoming a vampire.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOGD...
Good response: smallpotatoes.paulbloom.net/p/psychology...
By far the best part of watching Oakland A's games now is listening to the back-and-forth between the announcers, esp. how Dallas Braden tries to politely conceal what seems to be genuine dislike and WTF responses toward Chris Caray's random comments.
Feel like one political party kidnapping an opponent should be bigger news
Thoroughly enjoyed
@mastroianni.bsky.social's post on the woeful state of academic psychology, esp. the critique of "pick a noun and study it" (I often edit research along those lines, in nursing). Not sure I share the optimism re: boredom's effects, though.
tinyurl.com/5akw8b3h
Watching Jurassic Park with the 9 y/o, and I had never noticed before the thread of "whether to have kids" discourse, or remembered that the cool, black-leather chaos theory guy apparently has 3 kids and is a big fan of both kids and divorce π.
This online presentation of the Genji poems is one of the coolest things I've seen in quite some time! Not just that the "poems are online", but so much thought and care has clearly gone into the presentation and interface. genjipoems.org
Today's work-related reminder that someone's always having a worse day (and of the importance of flared devices) β apparently there's at least one documented case of a heart attack resulting from the stress induced by a self-inserted glass bottle getting stuck in the rectum.
Never imagined a word-for-word theatrical adaptation of a short story could be so good. I was stunned by Word for Word's adaptation of "Annunciation" www.zspace.org/annunciation.
One vividly played character in particular was a delightful reminder of someone from my past, too.
Plans for bacterial-driven biomanufacturing on Mars!
Super cool. Back when I was a 30-year-old career-changing premed (before those plans fell through too), I low-key fell in love with microbiology, and this reminds me of why.
pioneerlabs.substack.com/p/our-first-...
A little bit of Goethe today, reflecting on how our entire built landscape is a sort of fossilization of human stories and passion. #poetry
"Competitive authoritarianism" is a great phrase. Also an excellent point re: people's assumptions about transition states β there's never going to be a day where we wake up to the announcement, "NOW HEAR THIS, IT'S AUTHORITARIANISM TIME," and waiting for such an announcement is a fool's errand.
A first in a paper I've edited: "Statistical analyses were conducted using ChatGPT 4o." π€π€π€π€
Mamdani & the impact of his campaign/election remind me a lot of Obama, maybe not least because I lived in Chicago (and was in my early 20s) when Obama became prominent. Multiple parallels come to mind, and I'm surprised I haven't seen more people note the similarity.
