Peter Jacobs
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pjacobs.bsky.social
Peter Jacobs
@pjacobs.bsky.social

climate science (paleo, modern, future); public understanding of science (consensus, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience)

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6951-7126
Mastodon: fediscience.org/@peterjacobs
Bird Site: https://twitter.com/past_is_future .. more

Environmental science 41%
Geology 16%

The richest man on Earth spends his holidays posting race war incitements and falling for boomer fake video slop.

No matter how bad your 2025 went at least you'll never be as big of a loser as this guy.
The US State Department is now going to be deporting people and/or revoking visas over Benz, Taibbi, and Shellenberger’s “censorship industrial complex” hoax.

Let that sink in. This is what the Twitter Files pretext was actually about. Water boys for authoritarians.

www.state.gov/releases/off...
Announcement of Actions to Combat the Global Censorship-Industrial Complex - United States Department of State
The State Department is taking decisive action against five individuals who have led organized efforts to coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints they oppose....
www.state.gov

I am not aware of an extant high quality meta-analysis on this, but if memory serves there are a bunch of one off studies on it that have conflicting outcomes, so my expectation is that there's little signal here but a lot of ways you could incorrectly interpret noise as one if you aren't careful.

Reposted by Peter Jacobs

a good time to remember that Brand was chosen to give the keynote address (“Eloquent Rant”) at the MAHA summit, speaking alongside Vance, RFK Jr, Makary, Bhattacharya, and a host of fringe antivax and biohack players plus several biotech leaders

Reposted by Peter Jacobs

BBC News - Russell Brand charged with new rape and sexual assault offences
Russell Brand charged with new rape and sexual assault offences
Russell Brand will appear in court on 20 January 2026 over the new charges.
www.bbc.co.uk

Reposted by Peter Jacobs

whaaaaaaaaat

Papyrus font: naval architecture is my passion

Spelunkers' holiday shakes post snow tubing, an annual tradition.

Reposted by Peter Jacobs

This is a very specific art style instantly recognizable by its depiction of every weapon firing at once.
Proud to build and lead a bipartisan coalition with Rep. Jeff Hurd and @bennet.senate.gov & @hickenlooper.senate.gov — joined by more than 80 of our colleagues in the House and Senate — to protect NCAR in the FY26 NSF appropriations bill.

We will not stop until NCAR is protected — period.
The 60 Minutes piece on the Trump Administration’s torture prison that Bari Weiss doesn’t want you to see has leaked.
Bari Weiss' reporting experience is summed up by the time the NYT bizarrely gave her the cushiest possible assignment - go to Australia and hang out and write about it - and she produced a story so bad and so wrong about basic facts of Australian life that it became a running joke there.

This is a big part of it, but I think is not distinct from but rather is downstream of the original sin of Big Tech insanely overhyping capabilities for years. Almost all of the negative BS flows down from people knowingly overselling where things were & headed ca 2017. The lies exploded thru 2021.
I strongly suspect many people would be a lot less aggressively anti-AI at this point if they hadn’t just spent two years feeling constantly pressured, often by very unpleasant people and actors, to use it Or Else
As a lawyer I’m getting a daily machine gun of come-ons to use AI in legal research, have AI draft my documents, let AI suggest my arguments, AI can take a flying fuck at a rolling seven-fingered doughnut
Crime in the US almost certainly fell at a historic clip in 2025 led by the largest drop in murder ever recorded. The US likely had the lowest murder & property crime rates since at least 1960 & lowest violent crime rate since the mid-60s. My year in review:

jasher.substack.com/p/2025-year-...
2025 Year in Review: A Remarkable Drop In Crime
Crime almost certainly fell an enormous amount in 2025.
jasher.substack.com

Reposted by Smith, Peter Jacobs

Via @liamjscott.bsky.social at the other site here’s the full email from 60 Minutes correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi. She’s putting her career on the line by fighting here. And she’s fighting for all of us.
Here’s a gift link to this stunner Washpost story, quoting the 60 Minutes correspondent on the CECOT story, who accuses Bari Weiss of spiking the piece all because the Trump Administration wouldn’t comment.

“Government silence is a statement, not a VETO.”

wapo.st/3YL4T3D
‘60 Minutes’ correspondent says CBS’s Bari Weiss abruptly pulled segment on Trump deportations
CBS News pulled a ‘60 Minutes’ segment about a prison in El Salvador one day before it was set to air because the Trump administration declined to participate.
wapo.st

Reposted by Peter Jacobs

CBS News now has to decide if it's a news organization or a White House propaganda instrument. If it is the former, Bari Weiss should lose her job over this decision, and CBS News staffers should go public and say she does not have their confidence. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/21/b...
‘60 Minutes’ Pulled a Segment. A Correspondent Calls It ‘Political.’
www.nytimes.com

Can't argue with venerating our forebearers.

The comments on this video show a marked lack of sympathy for Rubio, who seems to be experiencing a variety of uncomfortable symptoms related to his nose, gums, an overabundance of energy, etc. So much for the tolerant left!

www.tiktok.com/@pbsnews/vid...
Right, this line Vance used was a very common line used by segregationists.

Here's Rep. Mendel Rivers (D-SC) reacting to the Brown decision, which he said "would bring mongrelization of the Caucasian race. He added that he for one won't apologize for being a white man."
Now seems like a swell time to point out that Frontline just released this excellent 11-minute mini-documentary about what happened inside CECOT.
Surviving CECOT (full documentary) | Deported to a Maximum-Security Prison | FRONTLINE + ProPublica
YouTube video by FRONTLINE PBS | Official
m.youtube.com
An Editor’s Note from 60 Minutes

Reposted by Peter Jacobs

I strongly suspect many people would be a lot less aggressively anti-AI at this point if they hadn’t just spent two years feeling constantly pressured, often by very unpleasant people and actors, to use it Or Else
As a lawyer I’m getting a daily machine gun of come-ons to use AI in legal research, have AI draft my documents, let AI suggest my arguments, AI can take a flying fuck at a rolling seven-fingered doughnut

These people would probably score off the charts in Social Dominance Orientation.

I don't doubt that there are people within STEM fields that would uncritically accept ChatGPT glosses of stuff, but anecdotally pre-LLMs there was a well deserved suspicion about the way other published papers & Reviews can potentially miscite or incorrectly summarize things that has only heightened
The faction of the the left that lives for harassment is just slamming Matt for this, but he’s correct and this has been considered for years a major cause of the recent homelessness spike. Watching people maliciously misread his very short tweet and call him a “Nazi” is something else.
Homelessness increased primarily because of immigration (lots of people came to the US without setting up housing).

It's possible the Getty photographer's arm is in the extreme foreground of the non-Getty image. Certainly appears to be a person's arm, maybe wearing a corduroy blazer?
bsky.app/profile/pjac...
I think it's just two different pictures (obvious from the angles) by two different people, and in the non-Getty one someone's arm (possibly even the Getty photog's?) is in the extreme foreground which is what looks like a "blanket". Corduroy blazer or similar maybe.

I think it's just two different pictures (obvious from the angles) by two different people, and in the non-Getty one someone's arm (possibly even the Getty photog's?) is in the extreme foreground which is what looks like a "blanket". Corduroy blazer or similar maybe.

YES
What's so hilariously stupid about Jain's statement is, if someone takes controversial stands and still manages to win (this isn't moneyball, WAR doesn't matter), that makes them a good politician. They're maximizing the utility of their office, not their electoral success.
when we said “defer electoral strategy to the actual politicians running for actual offices” we meant “after calculating wins above replacement somehow”