Jonathan M. Gilligan

Jonathan Gilligan

@jgilligan.org

8.4K followers 2.1K following 3.9K posts

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Environmental science 24%

Physics 17%

Posts Replies Media Videos

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 1h

He also appears to be expecting a flood.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan

Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 12h

1. In Tennessee, public libraries have closed for up to a week to facilitate a Trump-inspired book purge.

Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett (R) has ordered most of the state's public librarians to remove children's books with LGBTQ characters or themes.

Tennessee public libraries close for Trump-inspired book purge

One hundred and eighty-one public libraries in Tennessee are reviewing their children’s collections after Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett (R) ordered them to remove books with LGBTQ themes…

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 14h

"My mentor always tells me, 'Kim, dogs don’t bark at parked cars." They’re coming after critical race theory, 1619, intersectionality because these ideas mobilized people. They gave them the language to actually articulate what they were seeing with their own eyes," says Kimberlé Crenshaw.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 1d

Pink Popey Club, I'm gonna keep on dancing at the
Pink Popey Club, I'm gonna keep on dancing down in
West Vatican, I'm gonna keep on dancing at the
Pink Popey Club, Pink Popey Club!

Pope Leo XIV looks like he's singing into the microphone on front of him

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 1d

For the US, perhaps, but global coal consumption just keeps growing. It set new records in 2022, again in 2023, and once again in 2024.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, Robert C. Richards

Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 1d

Congressional redistricting is monumentally important. But for Black people in places like Fayette County, TN, it is the County Commn where the stakes are highest.

What SCOTUS does in Louisiana v Calláis may threaten Black representation across the rural South.

boltsmag.org/voting-right...

Black Residents in West Tennessee Just Won Fairer Districts. Now Comes SCOTUS. - Bolts

The Supreme Court may further erode the Voting Rights Act in an upcoming decision. Beyond affecting Congress, that would reverberate across local governments nationwide.

boltsmag.org

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

Also...

Cover of Michael Spivak, _Calculus_, 4th edition.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

what are those ✨nostalgic✨ textbooks for you? not the most useful textbooks, or the ones you liked the most, but the ones that really take you back...

Cover of Herbert Goldstein, _Classical Mechanics_, second edition.

Reposted by Richard S.J. Tol

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

Tired: Logical positivism
Wired: Positivism mit Schlagobers

Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 2d

AI for the win again

• Bing Al Overview

The "Vienna circle" likely refers to Vienna's historic
Ringstrasse cafes, such as
Café Schwarzenberg and
Café Landtmann, which are
located along the famous city boulevard. These are traditional Viennese coffee houses, known for their elegant atmosphere, history, and as important social and intellectual hubs.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

Entire shelving unit in the closet filled with trays holding cables and wall warts, sorted by type.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, Martin Lenz

Alan Richardson @alanrichardson.bsky.social · 2d

AI for the win again

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, Juan Cole, Lisa Diedrich , and 1 more Jonathan M. Gilligan, Juan Cole, Lisa Diedrich, Aviel Roshwald

Heather Bryant @hbcompass.bsky.social · 2d

I don't understand how anyone can watch how blatantly Grok is manipulated to answer the way ownership desires it to and then act like the other LLM chatbots couldn't possibly be similarly but less obviously compromised to produce responses in whatever way corporate interests and priorities dictate.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, Annalee Newitz

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 2d

"I was embarrassed. I had been naively operating with a pre-ChatGPT mindset, still assuming a pitch’s ideas and prose were actually connected to the person who sent it"

Stunning investigation of how slop merchants are getting work into established media outlets

thelocal.to/investigatin...

A 2024 story about climate change memes from the non-profit Outrider quotes “Juliet Pinto, a Professor of Psychology” at Pennsylvania State University. I emailed Pinto, who is in fact a communications professor at Pennsylvania State University. “I have not spoken with any reporter about that piece of research, and I am not a professor of psychology,” she wrote back. The piece also quotes “Terry Collins, a climate scientist and professor of environmental science at the University of California.” I could not find anyone of that description, but Terry Collins, the director of the institute of green science at Carnegie Mellon, said he’s never communicated with Goldiee.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

I prefer people who loudly label themselves the "pompatus of love."

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

This take got it right.

bsky.app/profile/fain...

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 2d

it is absolutely the tech companies fault that people now assume they’re doing something evil and sneaky even when they actually aren’t (regarding the latest Google kerfuffle)

like, no kidding that people have zero willingness to cut big tech the benefit of the doubt anymore

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

This, but with fiber-optic drones.

Telephone, telegraph, and power lines in New York City, in 1888.

Photo from collection of New York Historical Society. Public domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_currents#/media/File:Blizzard_1888_01.jpg

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

Quasi-independent agencies & departments, staffed with MAGA appointees that future presidents cannot remove, could obstruct reform after a regime change.

The federal judiciary, and especially SCOTUS, illustrate this problem.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

The fundamental problem is that the people voted this government in. I'd focus on convincing the public to care about good governance (e.g., integrity, transparency, & accountability) when they vote.

Otherwise, if the public keeps voting for bad actors, they will co-opt quasi-independent agencies.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 2d

I understand the value of robust quasi-independent bureaucratic agencies to protect against executive abuses, but fundamentally the problem is with democracy itself, not the structure of government.

Congress and SCOTUS could stand up to Trump & DOGE, but choose not to.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan, Peter Jacobs

Faine Greenwood @faineg.bsky.social · 2d

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 3d

I also think that people have gotten so excited (justifiably) by Mamdani's victory that many have developed unrealistic expectations for what he can accomplish.

I hope folks won't turn on him just for having to be realistic and pragmatic in a system where he's mayor, not dictator.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 3d

I always think about the case of Blas Cabrera's magnetic monopole. Cabrera's observation was data, although the lack of reproduction affected the interpretation.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 3d

I'm reminded of the excellent point Paul N. Edwards makes in A Vast Machine, that when people talk of comparing climate models to measurements, they really mean comparing a model of climate processes to a model of observations.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 3d

Observations of natural phenomena, such as supernovae, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions may not be repeatable, but they're data.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 3d

If someone wants to analyze it, that makes it data.

All data has issues. Some more than others. But anything to which you apply a statistical analysis becomes data.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 4d

This. Money in the bank won't bring back dead pedestrians and cyclists.

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 4d

If we have all this money, why aren't we building more sidewalks and bike lanes?

Last week, I was cycling on a stretch of Charlotte near 28th that doesn't have a bike lane, and a car bumped me while it was passing me too close. I wasn't hurt, but I easily could have been.

We need bike lanes now!

Reposted by Joshua Gans, Anna O. Law, Will Jennings , and 10 more Joshua Gans, Anna O. Law, Will Jennings, Linda R. Tropp, Jamie Morgan, Rosemary A. Joyce, Mark Alfano, Jonathan M. Gilligan, Daniel W. Drezner, David R. Miller, Carlos Nunes Silva, Seth Masket, Nathan P. Kalmoe

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 4d

They line up perfectly.

An Oval Office photo of Trump looking adoringly at Mamdani, while a portrait of Reagan looks on. Above the man-ignoring-his-girlfriend meme.

Reposted by Jonathan M. Gilligan

Amanda Litman @amandalitman.bsky.social · 4d

TN-7 is competitive in part bc of the environment & in part bc @runforsomething.net alum @aftynbehn.bsky.social
is an incredible community-rooted candidate who is willing to do the work to make the case to voters, even when the odds are against her.

This is why we build a bench *everywhere.”

Jonathan Gilligan @jgilligan.org · 4d

This kind of thing is baked deeply into the character of the Times. It reminds me of the 70s and 80s, when Abe Rosenthal was the executive editor and wouldn't let the Times report anything about gay people, including AIDS.

www.truthdig.com/articles/lar...

Screenshot of the article: "As Rosenthal ascended to the top of the Times ladder, his prejudices defined the unspoken but nevertheless unmistakable rules for deciding what was fit to print. As journalist and writer Charles Kaiser, who worked at the Times under Rosenthal, put it, 'Everyone below Rosenthal spent all of their time trying to figure out what to do to cater to his prejudices. One of these widely perceived prejudices was Abe’s homophobia. So editors throughout the paper would keep stories concerning gays out of the paper.'"

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