Sean M
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seantalks.bsky.social
Sean M
@seantalks.bsky.social
I read a lot. Sometimes I talk. | MatSci | PhD student in the Engineered Microstructures and Radiation Effects Lab at SBU | he/him
Reposted by Sean M
is it a good idea to

1) decide that a technology is militarily important,
2) deport as many people as you can who do it to your biggest rival for that technology,
and
3) also deport a bunch of other scientists who have nothing to do with it, but who now have a reason to be upset with you
Apparently every Chinese academic in any field of “interest” to the PLA is getting their visa rejected for, more or less, presumptively being a spy. My friend’s visa is denied because she studies “neuroscience.” What she actually studies is jaw pain - but ICE is flatly rejecting all appeals.
Just got the word that the Trump administration is throwing a brilliant medical researcher friend of mine out of the country because they’re Chinese. Insane and unreal. Literally doing research in the US to help the US
December 2, 2025 at 9:33 PM
Reposted by Sean M
Libgen and Anna's archive are obviously more important than the library of Alexandria ever was
"I think you're being really histrionic about this and having reactions wildly inappropriate to the scope of the issue, unlike me, who is comparing your concerns about uncompensated use of your work to burning the Library of Alexandria"
November 18, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Reposted by Sean M
the reporter assigned to cover epstein and his connections to trump was from the finance desk. also he was more or less on epstein's payroll.
Reporters covering Trump are not the same reporters assigned to cover the NYC mayor's race. Beat reporters have to develop sources and that takes time so you can't just switch beats with every story. So no, a reporter covering the NYC race is not going to suddenly do a Trump story, and vice versa.
So when Trump is running for president, stories about him are less newsworthy than when Mamdani is running for NYC mayor? Fascinating, continue, you're doing really well.
November 13, 2025 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Sean M
Okay. The people have spoken.

For every reskeet this gets, I will post a random picture from my camera roll with no explanation (other than alt text).

Let the games begin.
May 8, 2024 at 3:34 AM
Reposted by Sean M
Idealized science: take walk in the park, think very hard, be struck by brilliant insight. Marvel.
Science frequently: it is week three of being unable to reproduce my experiment from six months ago. Was I wrong then or am I wrong now? Is it just noise? I have not seen the sun.
November 1, 2025 at 6:45 PM
Reposted by Sean M
Sora is not the real problem here. The real problem is that in 12, at most 24 months, there will be a Sora clone from Tencent or Alibaba that is just as good and can be run by anybody with a 5099, at which point everyone in society needs to rapidly agree to treat all digital video as fake, period.
October 7, 2025 at 2:02 AM
Reposted by Sean M
July 23, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Sean M
See all the big accounts claiming Democrats are wooing Musk, with no evidence? See all the accounts bashing Dems for somehow ruining this fight, even though no one’s doing that?

Yeah.

Those accounts are your enemy and you should block them right now.
June 5, 2025 at 10:08 PM
Reposted by Sean M
an accurate description of donald trump's character is per se libel. an accurate description of his policies is a call for revolution. one of his great superpowers is that he generates self-censoring facts.
even with a single layer of indirection, talking about this seems unsafe, but the entire rule limiting how heated rhetoric can get serves as a curb on discussing what is happening honestly.
February 21, 2025 at 6:48 PM
Reposted by Sean M
this is what i mean by decadence. your vote is not a gift you give a person you like. it is a responsibility forced on you by citizenship which implicates you in the actions of the state.
February 21, 2025 at 6:06 AM
Reposted by Sean M
i guess i never posted about it here before but president's day seems like as good a holiday as any to bring it back up:

we don't have nearly enough federal holidays. that's why i think we should create around 30 more, each anchored to the friday or monday around a significant union army victory
February 17, 2025 at 3:07 PM
Musk is going to try to make Twitter into the payment system of the USA. Sigh.
February 2, 2025 at 12:57 PM
Reposted by Sean M
There is a very bad internet bill out there that has bipartisan support. It’s called KOSA. Elizabeth Warren is a cosponsor.

It is being used as a regulatory trojan horse to punish sites that host LGBTQ voices on the internet.

buttondown.email/charliejane/ar…
October 5, 2023 at 2:42 PM
Reposted by Sean M
Time to find all the materials science people here
September 5, 2023 at 12:29 AM