Leslie Guelcher
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lguelcher.bsky.social
Leslie Guelcher
@lguelcher.bsky.social
Climate security researcher, analyst, and trainer. Ole Miss Instructional Associate Professor. All opinions my own.
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
If Obama or Biden had said this, it would be rightfully understood as them arrogating dictatorial authority to themselves, it would be the only thing anyone in the media or opposition would talk about for a year, and it would probably end their presidency. For Trump, it’s literally just Tuesday.
Trump on deploying the National Guard to Chicago: "I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States."
August 26, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Adam Raine, 16, died from suicide in April after months on ChatGPT discussing plans to end his life. His parents have filed the first known case against OpenAI for wrongful death.

Overwhelming at times to work on this story, but here it is. My latest on AI chatbots: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/t...
A Teen Was Suicidal. ChatGPT Was the Friend He Confided In.
www.nytimes.com
August 26, 2025 at 1:01 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Grocery stores that have been eating the cost of tariffs are about to pump the brakes. Some are looking to be more transparent about the coming price hikes.

Starting tomorrow, new tariffs of 15% to 50% hit a wide range of food items.

If you’ve got a household food budget, this is a must-watch.
August 7, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Oh god, a breach of ECF could be extremely dangerous. Lots of sealed filings.
NEW: "The electronic case filing system used by the federal judiciary has been breached in a sweeping cyber intrusion that is believed to have exposed sensitive court data across multiple U.S. states, according to two people with knowledge of the incident."
Federal court filing system hit in sweeping hack
The identities of confidential court informants are feared compromised in a series of breaches across multiple U.S. states.
www.politico.com
August 7, 2025 at 2:14 AM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi
I spent decades at Columbia. I’m withdrawing my fall course due to its deal with Trump | Rashid Khalidi
The university’s draconian policies and new definition of antisemitism make much teaching impossible
www.theguardian.com
August 1, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Greta Thunberg for the win
Here you are
June 24, 2025 at 1:12 AM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Reminder: in broken and gerrymandered states, politics ceases being about public service…and it warps into a corrupt form of private service, where politicians use public power and raid public assets to serve private interests.

This Browns fiasco offers the perfect case study:
June 17, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Once again, Gavin Newsom is stealing my trolling beat.

Curse you, Gavin!!!
June 17, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Agree
June 14, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Some thoughts about the military parade in my hometown of Washington DC today -- specifically, the route. Military parades in DC are quite rare. But when they happen, they have always begun, symbolically and geographically, at the Capitol and moved outward. 1/
June 14, 2025 at 12:35 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
The news isn’t being clear about this but to people hearing about these Minnesota shootings: Melissa Hortman is the Dem leader in the Minnesota House and was Speaker of the House 2019-2025. She’s probably the most influential state-level Democrat barring the governor.
June 14, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Essential reading (by @jasonstanley.bsky.social) for every American. The media, aided by a handful of reactionary academics and compliant university administrations, has sold the public a huge lie about wokeness on college campuses, enabling the extreme right. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
The mainstream media has enabled Trump’s war on universities | Jason Stanley
For the past decade, the US press has fueled a moral panic over leftists on campus while failing to report on the right’s assault
www.theguardian.com
June 13, 2025 at 7:02 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Put this on a billboard.
More Americans voted for Senator Alex Padilla than for 48 of the 53 red state GOP U.S. Senators combined.
June 12, 2025 at 11:28 PM
The sad thing - this works as people don’t generally pay close attention to these types of things.
Taking credit for other people’s work is par for the course.
It’s finally infrastructure week, now that Biden and the Democrats did the infrastructure bill!
May 31, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
That's three years from now.
May 31, 2025 at 12:40 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
I am at a global health conference this week. I do not think Americans fully understand the degree of harm we have done to our international reputation and to our ability to wield soft power for decades to come.
May 28, 2025 at 9:25 AM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
its crazy how dominant germany was in science (especially chemistry) in the 19th century, it was basically the international language for scientists, people came from all over the world to train at heidelberg etc, and then....
There are 2 previous historical cases of countries destroying their science and universities, crippling them for decades: Lysenkoism in the USSR and Nazi Germany. The Trump administration will be the 3rd.
It's not just budgets but research, institutions, expertise, and training the next generation.
May 31, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
I don't think anyone outside of universities, pharma and biotech, independent research institutions have any idea of what is happening right now. If you haven't sounded the alarm among your friends, family and colleagues, now is the time to do it.
May 31, 2025 at 11:25 AM
@marcwatkins.bsky.social does an excellent job of describing why it is important to have discussions around AI use in the classroom. This isn’t an all or nothing topic.
substack.com/@marcwatkins...
Marc Watkins on Substack
The AI crisis in education isn't simply that it enables cheating—it's that we're failing to develop a nuanced understanding of how this emerging technology intersects with long-standing educational ch...
substack.com
May 18, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
#WARNING: CPSC is warning consumers to immediately stop using VFAUOSIT, HGN, Kicimpro and Qomolangma kitchen faucets and NICTIE bathroom faucet, all sold on Amazon.com
May 16, 2025 at 2:02 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
I don't know what this means, but I'm the one who wrote a fully updated, 624-page hurricane response plan at FEMA that took over 2 years of work and careful coordination among state and federal agencies. He could start by studying that.
Breaking WSJ:

The newly appointed head of FEMA acknowledged in private meetings that with two weeks to go until hurricane season, the agency doesn't yet have a fully formed disaster-response plan. www.wsj.com/politics/pol...
www.wsj.com
May 16, 2025 at 3:53 AM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Excellent thread from Patrick here demonstrating how the 'most powerful' reasoning model to date deals with an extremely simple question.

Think about the people in positions of power - lawyers, scientists, academics, gov't workers and officials - relying on *even crappier* versions of this, daily
I woke up today to this email, advertising Qwen3, a state-of-the-art reasoning LLM that is apparently 40x faster/better/smarter than all other leading CoT models.

And if you know me, you know I had to try to break it.
May 16, 2025 at 10:36 AM
Par for the course. Welcome in actual criminals while sending away innocent asylum seekers.
May 14, 2025 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Leslie Guelcher
Many people claim there is a natural connection between capitalism and democracy. Sometimes the two concepts are virtually fused together. I always find this odd because I value democracy, but there is nothing democratic about capitalism... jasonhickel.substack.com/p/why-capita...
Why capitalism is fundamentally undemocratic
The antidote is economic democracy.
jasonhickel.substack.com
May 13, 2025 at 1:29 PM