This is the great mystery of human vision: Vivid pictures of the world appear before our mind’s eye, yet the brain’s visual system receives very little information from the world itself. Much of what we “see” we conjure in our heads. via @quantamagazine wired.trib.al/d1hTzdt

Yes it’s a dreary Tuesday. “Boomers own the houses and bar municipalities from building more of them, thus benefiting from rising prices and soaking up endless rent checks forked over by younger and poorer families”

My latest via Atlantic So happy to be writing again! "When I decided to attend Yale five years ago, people held me up as an example of a black student who 'beat the odds'. I wish they were more curious about why my brother wound up in prison instead" theatlantic.com/education/arch…

The Slate advice columns always keep me coming back but this weeks was pure gold

Is this a joke?

Instead of taking black-and-white pictures of ourselves and sharing them on Instagram, how about women share stories of women who inspire them? Meet Jewher.Ilham, a Uighur Muslim who is bravely speaking out about the cultural genocide happening in China. dailysign.al/3hHTIBy

Go time. a16z.com/2020/04/18/its…

Only 2 countries have recorded ~300,000 confirmed new covid cases in a day. Today India joined the US. What are we doing to help get this turned around?

Now we're going in opposite directions right now but that's only because of vaccines and the vaccine difference isn't particularly a difference of "competence" but a matter of intellectual property protections which we are ghoulishly using to deprive ordinary Indians of life

“The common joke, that Harvard is a hedge fund with an educational arm, is not so far off.”

Israel destroyed this residential building w/ no military significance just as it blew up several apartment towers in middle class areas of Gaza in 2014. The purpose of this terror attack was to guarantee escalation and demonstrate total impunity.

Hospitals used to negotiate rates in secret with insurers, leading to a confusing tangle of different prices for the same procedure. A new federal regulation is forcing providers to make those deals public. on.wsj.com/2QFFIjQ

I love this story!

Breaking News: The Pentagon acknowledged that a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on Aug. 29 was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, a military official said. nyti.ms/3lxhZ0B

"A New York Times Style article on journalists’ egress to a Mastodon server included one writer’s invocation of a 'trauma bond' with the app. This is neither press nor paean but just—ugh—painful." theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

I asked ChatGPT to rewrite Bohemian Rhapsody to be about the life of a postdoc, and the output was flawless:

Today is not a good day. I can't stop crying. I hurt so fucking bad. I try so damn hard to not fall apart but every day it gets harder. I push my feelings down and put on a mask. I'm not just the pissed off dad. I'm the broken dad. The dad that is in excruciating pain because

I keep seeing analysis claiming to show that the U.S. economy is actually great, but Americans refuse to see it--or are too uninformed or unintelligent. Let's consider the claims here from John Burn-Murdoch

Leaked docs: While Gaza starved, USAID and State's refugees bureau came to a legally explosive conclusion — Israel had deliberately prevented food & medicine from getting in But Blinken told congress the exact opposite, so the arms could keep flowing. propublica.org/article/gaza-p…

This is good, actually. She barely shows up and doesn’t do the reading. To borrow a phrase I saw elsewhere, it’s like giving someone an unplugged controller.