Flutterby™! (short)

Finally, a "Ken Paxton looking at what's in children's underwear" story I can get behind: Texas AG Paxton investigating Hanes, Fruit of the Loom over children's underwear materials.

Via Tara Calishain @researchbuzz.bsky.social who noted:

I bet if the Epstein files were released in full we'd learn all about all kinds of toxic things as they relate to children

McMaster University: As employers call workers back, research points to hybrid work

After examining 82 studies, McMaster economist Colin Mang found that hybrid work boosts productivity and hours worked, suggesting that employers should reconsider back-to-office mandates.

Does Working from Home Improve Employees’ Productivity? Empirical Evidence from a Meta- Analysis Colin F. Mang and Amar Anwar

Via.

Max Mautner: Driving 5 mph slower beats driving 5% less.

A deep dive into the safety impacts of driving less vs driving slower. Of course doing both is best.

Current listening/mood: Amy Ray - Didn't Know A Damned Thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alGmuzNvsXk

Since Blue Zones sucks up a lot of grant money in our town for ... outcomes? ... this seems very worth a link. Be sure to scroll down to the Ignobel acceptance speech in rhyme: Dr Saul Newman has uncovered the “secret” to living to 110.

“I'm being asked a lot about the Mediterranean diet at the moment. The Mediterranean diet came about when someone went to southern Italy and noticed a lot of centenarians on the books. Why are they on the books in southern Italy where people have relatively short lives, and not in northern Italy, where people actually have relatively long lives?”

Is it the minestrone soup?

“No, it's probably got a lot to do with bad record-keeping and the mafia. Because that's where pension fraud happens. In 1997, there were 30,000 ‘living’ pension recipients found to be dead in Italy. And, to bring out an old cliche, that's the tip of the iceberg.”

Via and a quote toot of that.

I'm not going to defend who I was in my teens and twenties, I've evolved a lot since then, and I'm super appreciative of all of those who helped me grow past some of the attitudes I held in those eras. And memory is a malleable thing, we often create justifications in history for things that happen.

But as I think back to all of the reasons I dropped out of college, all of the reasons that I believe that academia is inherently and deeply abusive, I both question all of the "liberal arts will save us!" claims (the number of philosophy majors currently fucking up society is distinctly non-zero), and... well...

Anyway, college is in the news again.

Vogue: When Will Schools Ban Frats Once and for All?

Do frats, and the men who join them, have a monopoly on predatory behavior on campus? Absolutely not. But a 2007 study found that frat brothers are three times more likely to rape than other male students; and in a 2025 survey at Cornell University—where seven fraternity brothers have been accused of drugging and gang-raping a 20-year-old student (and sorority member herself) in 2024—roughly one in three women reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at the school.

Via.

Chris Hedges: Thoughts on the Mass Rape at Cornell University

You are admitted to these male enclaves by allowing yourself to be hazed, humiliated and stripped of your dignity. Hazing rituals weed out those with enough self- esteem and independence to stand up to the hierarchy. They ensure conformity and obedience. It is a filter. Fraternity “brothers” are self-selected. Those who have the strength to oppose public humiliation and that perpetuated on each new cycle of recruits, leave.

Via.

AI training of copyrighted material not fair use: Third Circuit (Via)

Plausible sentences are not advice: Teenager rescued from B.C.’s ‘Widowmaker’ after getting stranded using AI instructions.

Markey said the teenager rode the gondola up to Grouse Mountain at around 8 a.m., and asked Claude AI to plan a trip to Crown Mountain. The artificial intelligence tool sent him down the Crown Pass and up through Crater Slabs and Crown Couloir before his instructions led him off the trail route.

He continued on through difficult terrain, and eventually called for help from the base of Widowmaker Arete’s final headwall.

Via Count Melancholia @lillyh.bsky.social, who asks:

Is the company that makes "Claude" going to pay for all these rescue missions? How does one establish culpability in these cases?

Looking even more like that old "What did Watson & Crick discover? Rosalind Franklin's notes." line isn't a joke. Science: Exclusive: How did Rosalind Franklin miss the helix in her iconic DNA image? She didn’t

Watson’s slight took hold partly because Franklin’s lab notes, usually thorough and meticulous, say little about photograph 51. But in a paper published today in the Journal of the History of Biology, Sponsel and Sutton draw attention to the earlier image, photograph 49, showing she made extensive notes about it despite a cosmetic defect. She recognized it suggested a helical structure and used it to calculate, for the first time, the length of each turn in the spiral—34 angstroms—and the number of bases “per turn of helix (if there is a helix).”

Our household political giving this year is four figures. I consider myself progressive/liberal. I believe in restorative justice.

But if your platform suggests the death penalty for political SMS spam begging for more donations, sign me the fuck up.