Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
@michaelhendricks.bsky.social
3.7K followers 2.1K following 2.1K posts
Biologist, McGill University
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
gregggonsalves.bsky.social
Thank you @nytopinion.nytimes.com for publishing this rot. Marc Rowan has run hundreds of companies into the dust to extract profits from their failure and bankruptcies. Now he wants to do the same to American higher education. Do not believe a word this man says. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Badly Needed
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
jenniferhendricks.bsky.social
Is this by any chance the same writer who recently announced that after intense study, he felt compelled to inform a shocked and reelling world that the genius of Springsteen's work is more in the lyrics than in its similarity to Schubert's lieders?
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
This is the most insane musical take I have ever seen in my life.
bendwalsh.bsky.social
wtaf are you talking about
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
cianodonnell.bsky.social
looking forward to Kennedy's theorem
atrupar.com
RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
katzish.bsky.social
Got a recent Pulitzer for warning on the spread of autocracy around the globe, after decades of service to the paper? You can bet your butt you're getting laid off by form email, on Yom Kippur
davejorgenson.bsky.social
The Post laid off seemingly the remaining of their liberal-leaning staff members on Opinion last Thursday, when some of them were observing Yom Kippur.

from @oliverdarcy.bsky.social for Status
status.news/p/washington-post-opinion-cuts-adam-oneal
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
...meanwhile the ratio of dependents (children + elderly) to workers has gone DOWN by a third over the same time period and won't reach 1960s levels until 2040+. There is no demographic crisis.... there is a resource distribution crisis.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
This is the lie at the center of the "demographic crisis" framing. In the US, per worker productivity has tripled since the 1960s. But instead of increasing compensation or various forms of dependent care, this **enormous** new surplus goes to private profits, asset inflation, and rent extraction...
brandontbishop.bsky.social
People really don't like do deal with US labor productivity being *vastly* larger than even a couple generations ago.
US labor productivity and real hourly compensation from 1973 to 2024 both increase steadily.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
"The Man in the High Castle" portrayed perfectly how fascism looks like a Norman Rockwell American dream for upper middle class white people.
brianbeutler.bsky.social
Watching so many people in high places go through the motions of polling and median-voter whispering can make you feel like you're in Bodysnatchers. It's worth a reminder that the typical experience of tyranny is...basically normal life. Which means we have to will ourselves to fight harder.
The Median Experience Of Tyranny
If the politics of tyranny were self-discrediting, we wouldn't need mantras like "never again."
www.offmessage.net
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
Good thing there is no downside to runaway deflation.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
ANDREESSEN: Even if AI ends up destroying all the jobs, “the result would be hyper-deflation of prices, which is the thing that people miss. .. Things that today cost a lot of money will all of a sudden be cheap or free.”

@fortune.com
fortune.com/2025/10/08/b...
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
While we're all handwringing over "political violence," here is political mass murder on an unimaginable scale.

Musk wants to die on Mars...history is going to bury him in a latrine.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
I'm happy with <10% of what Carney has done or has indicated he plans to do so far, but 1) "transformative" sounds wordsmithed to be something only an idiot would assume is a compliment, and 2) there is a lot more at stake in this diplomacy effort than either of these two mens' egos.
atrupar.com
"You are a transformative president" -- I regret to inform you that Mark Carney is kissing Trump's ass
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
jamellebouie.net
very cool that if you are working on behalf of right-wing culture warriors, you no longer need standing to have your claim adjudicated by the supreme court
tomscocca.bsky.social
It's not just that they're going to strike down a law against conversion therapy, it's that they're going to do it on behalf of made-up claims from a straw plaintiff who can't honestly show the law affected her at all
tomscocca.bsky.social
One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
"The work I was involved in had no obvious therapeutic benefit. It was purely of scientific interest. I hope the country will continue to support basic research even though it may have no obvious practical value."
- John Gurdon
katherine-brown.bsky.social
Very saddened to hear of John Gurdon’s passing. I’ve been lucky enough to interact with him at multiple points through my career - from undergrad lectures, through his position as former Chair of @biologists.bsky.social’s Board of Directors, and as an author at @dev-journal.bsky.social.
Nobel Laureate Professor Sir John Gurdon dies aged 92
It is with great sadness that the University shares the news of the death of Professor Sir John Gurdon, founder of the Gurdon Institute.
www.cam.ac.uk
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
That's more of a funny [derogatory] thing about Parisians.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
kyrla.bsky.social
All I'm saying is that when you write "I am alive" on some paper and put it in a photocopier, judging by the output we don't know that there's *not* a very small man in there. And maybe he deserves rights
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
oxinabox.bsky.social
as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
boylan.xyz
Supreme Court poised to rule that religious beliefs allow for child abuse over the states interest in preventing child abuse.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
We've found a new low in individualizing climate responsibility.
gopher33j.bsky.social
As somebody with asthma who uses inhalers - SHUT THE FUCK UP. THIS ARTICLE IS SHAMING PEOPLE WITH A CHRONIC CONDITION.

"Significantly" My ass. You know what else does? AI Data centers - corporations - cows - asphalt - THOUSANDS OF OTHERS THINGS THAT ARE NOT MEDICINE.

Fuck you - fuck you again.
Inhalers contribute significantly to global warming, study finds
Millions of Americans using inhalers for chronic lung diseases like asthma may be unknowingly contributing to global warming, according to new research.
local12.com
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
samwang.bsky.social
He's commenting on an essay by Dan Nexon, pointing out that the existing Constitutional order has failed - and the main question is what comes after.

www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2025/10/the-...
1) The Republic as we knew it is over. The fight now is whether the new one will be a fascistic, competitive authoritarian regime or a pluralist democracy that, we can hope, is better than what came before.
2) Even if you think restoration is possible, it’s a bad idea. The Constitution has failed. Or, more accurately, the Constitutional order built out of the New Deal, the Second Reconstruction, and the repudiation of the Nixon presidency has failed. This is not a prediction. It’s not a “if we continue on our current course.” The Constitution as designed by the founders, was supposed to prevent the current regime. Its original guardrails did not work. The ones added after the Civil War did not work. The de facto amendments created by the accretion of judicial decisions did not work. The post-Watergate reforms did not work.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
samwang.bsky.social
From Stephen L. Taylor: The Constitution Has Failed. outsidethebeltway.com/has-the-cons...
It is difficult to summarize how bad this administration is (it’s part of why I have the In Front of Our Nose series, because it is just so much). I suspect that if, for some reason, you are reading this but think Trump is a normal president, nothing I can say will disuade you, and if you agree with me that he is a clear threat to the constitutional order, I don’t need to make a list.

I will just note the following. He is usurping congressional authority on spending and staffing, and therefore literally ignoring the law. He has empowered ICE to violate due process. He has ordered the military to commit murder in the Caribbean (and they have complied). He has publicly directed the Attorney General to go after his enemies because he, Trump, declares them to be guilty. He has pardoned/commuted the sentences of ~1500 people who tried to disrupt a constitutional process. All the while, he and his family have been enriching themselves because he is president.

Oh, and the Supreme Court has said he is immune from prosecution for anything linked to his “official duties.”

The fact that the above is my short version of the situation is more than a bit disturbing.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
tomscocca.bsky.social
It's not just that they're going to strike down a law against conversion therapy, it's that they're going to do it on behalf of made-up claims from a straw plaintiff who can't honestly show the law affected her at all
tomscocca.bsky.social
One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...
Supreme Court Live Updates: Justices Seem Set to Rule Against Colorado’s Ban on Conversion Therapy
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
gbrockell.bsky.social
Claim: 10 cars rammed ICE
Truth: No cars rammed ICE

Claim: She boxed ICE in
Truth: ICE boxed her in

Claim: She shot a rifle at ICE
Truth: She did not have a rifle

Claim: ICE returned fire
Truth: Only ICE fired

Claim: She drove herself to the hospital
Truth: Paramedics found her