John Devlin

In the 18th century America created the blueprint for the modern world… …fought a war to end slavery in the 19th …then harnessed the power that fuels the sun, saved the world, and journeyed to a new one in the 20th… …and then went and created the 21st… …America is the greatest country that’s ever existed…

@wil_da_beast630 Why do we care about the odyssey? I can think of a few dozen fantasy books that are better…

As a random note re "Odyssey" debate: Athena is Caucasian but olive-skinned. Very black hair. Eye color shifts constantly across the human possible range and, oddly, to purple. About 5'11" - but human body type is obviously the result of a conscious choice. Very notably Good, but tiger-level predatory. Would not have been nice to Hamas after 10/7: was not, in fact, through four proxies. Generally some type of stylish animal, usually female - the most common is a Harfang owl - is around when you chat. Now you know.

I see Her everywhere.

@drterrysimpson “I once met a student” does that statement pass scientific muster…oh and he “claimed” he raised his mcat…

I once met a student who raised his MCAT score from a 25 to a 30 after taking a commercial test prep course. Did the prep course make him a better future physician? Did it improve his empathy, judgment, communication, professionalism, surgical skill, diagnostic reasoning under uncertainty, or ability to care for frightened patients at 2 AM? Or did it mostly make him better at taking the MCAT? That is the central problem with treating standardized testing as if it were synonymous with clinical excellence.

@drterrysimpson @UChicago There were 80,000 applicants to USC last year… “at some stage, somebody has to actually see the person” No, they don’t

I have a 15-year-old son. He is a freshman at one of the many STEM schools in California. He tests well, has strong grades, and someday he will be one of thousands of applicants who look very similar on paper. He wants to go to @UChicago like his dad, which would make me proud. But how will admissions officers differentiate him from the thousands of other kids with excellent scores, AP classes, polished resumes, and test prep? Yes, he has unique interests. He works with coral reefs, scuba dives, loves theater, and builds community naturally wherever he goes. But what truly differentiates him is not a number. It is his empathy. His kindness. His curiosity. His ability to bring people together. His instinct to lead by inclusion rather than domination. We are fortunate. We can afford tutors, prep courses, enrichment programs, whatever he may need. But an exam score will never fully capture who he is as a human being. And that is precisely why reducing admissions — whether college or medical school — to standardized testing alone fundamentally misses the point. At some stage, somebody has to actually see the person.

@avidseries Why do we care about the Odyssey? I can list a dozen or more fantasy stories that are better….

What Christopher Nolan is doing in The Odyssey isn't "inventive". It's just the latest iteration of a tired lazy gimmick we've seen too many times before. Part of the schtick is that this "inventiveness" only runs in one direction: Black figures from history and literature are never replaced by white ones. After race-switching white historical characters in productions like Hamilton, Anne Boleyn, The Great to The Tragedy of Macbeth, Mary Queen of Scots, The Hollow Crown, Bridgerton/Queen Charlotte and on and on, the hypocrisy and banality and fakeness lives on in The Odyssey. Inventiveness, indeed. "Inventiveness" would be if some filmmaker did the absolutely unthinkable: Disrespected a black figure from history or work of literature by making them white.

@wil_da_beast630 Mammoth difference between an 1100 and 1400… A mid player on a hs tennis team and an accomplished college level player

This has always been a scam argument, as a college prof and former exec. Test scores ALONE don't pick the best scholar and citizen. But - all else equal - if I have an applicant with a 1400 SAT vs one with an 1100, the 1400 guy has a 300pt and 29%(?) edge that's going to be hard to beat. What else does Solid 1100 have to show me? "He's Black" was never that, for me. "He can catch a ball?" Nah - let Athletics try again with this one. He grew up in a trailer in Appalachia and got a 630 the FIRST time he took the SAT...last year (this happened)? Maaaaaybe. I elevated the scores a bit from UK or KSU norms, but college admissions is basically this, and pretending a 200pt boost for race is a near-null is clown shoes.

@wil_da_beast630 35 year 1v1 SAT coach the difference between a student who gets an 1100 and a 1400 is mammoth… The difference between a mid kid on the high school tennis team and a solid college team tennis player

2 Guatemalans indicted in FL for rqping a 7 year old, which carries the death penalty in FL Do you believe they should be put to death?

@SamuelBiagetti @jpodhoretz Yes, and the central conceit of Beloved is not just dumb it projects a 20th century sensibility onto slaves…

@Devlinside123 @jpodhoretz are you familiar with the concept of novels

The Guardian’s panel has chosen the 100 greatest novels of all time and has put BELOVED second. That is among the most ludicrous aesthetic judgments in the annals of Western culture. Embarrassing tokenism.

I’ve read 7/10…none of the works are particularly good…. Ulysses has a few phenomenal stretches, Eyre is fine until its ridiculous plot twist, Pride and middlemarch are well crafted…for the 19th century… Literature is a bit like technology…to a point the styles and subjects and genuineness improved until about 50 years ago… Example: Huck Finn was masterful for its time for its use of real language…does that still make it as great as when it was written? No, like most of these books they’re important works…being good is a different conversation…

For my money even just the ten greatest novels of the nineteenth century are mostly not on this list.

A big pivot from Ken Griffin on AI: “Number one is, in the last few months, there has been a step change in the productivity of the AI toolkit. It is profoundly more powerful than it was just nine months ago. And for us at Citadel, that has allowed us to unleash a much broader array of use cases for AI. And it has been really interesting to watch, to be blunt, work that we would usually do with people with masters and PhDs in finance over the course of weeks or months being done by AI agents over the course of hours or days. These are not these are not mid-tier white collar jobs. These are like extraordinarily high skilled jobs being, I'm going to pick a word, automated by agentic AI. And I gotta tell you, I went home one Friday actually fairly depressed by this because you could just see how this was going to have such a dramatic impact on society. When you witness it in your own four walls, when you see work that used to be man years of work being done in days or weeks, it's like, wow, like that's the first time I've seen real impact in our four walls.” This echoes my own experience with agents and the conversations I am having with students, friends & clients. The toolkit has dramatically transformed and it feels like in finance, for the first time, AI is real.

@PhysInHistory The larger Mississippi delta has as much navigable rivers as the rest of the world combined…

What's the coolest science fact you know? ✍️

This tweet, with its extreme claims, caught my attention because Elon Musk reposted it. I asked Gemini if any of these claims are accurate. It assured me that they are not. I then asked Grok, which replied that the first four are in fact accurate, and it provided details and sources supporting its response. So, I went back to Gemini, copied and pasted Grok's reply into a prompt, and asked Gemini what it thought about what Grok had just told me. Here's Gemini's response: "I stand corrected... I apologize for my previous response. I attempted to separate fact from social media exaggeration but failed to properly verify the depth of the horrific testimonies from the actual trials like Operation Bullfinch and the Rotherham inquiries. The details you cited from Grok accurately reflect the devastating and brutal reality of what these victims endured."

@GoRavens1008 @jpodhoretz More serious in that just overall it was saying a mother’s love for her child meant killing them bc they might live as a slave…

@Devlinside123 @jpodhoretz Kind of almost sounds like pro choice propaganda, get an abortion because the kid may have a tough life.. didn't read the book, was that the idea. If so then it makes sense why it's #2.

These guys wanted everyone who was right about everything Covid canceled

@PhysInHistory Lie, something RF told himself to humble brag… Bc then his accomplishments just came from his own grit, his own agency…he had a phenomenal IQ

Richard Feynman said, "There's no miracle people." ✍️

@phalpern That’s a very high average IQ

Eminent physicists assemble to discuss quantum enigmas: John von Neumann, John Wheeler, Hans Bethe, Robert Serber, Robert Marshak, Abraham Pais, J. Robert Oppenheimer, David Bohm, and Richard Feynman at the Shelter Island Conference of 1947 (AIP ESVA)

2016. Guy McPherson (a climate change expert, scientist, and professor from the University of Arizona) says that there will not be any humans on the planet by 2026 due to the effects of climate change. Trust the scientists. 😜🤣

@nwpealan Ty

@Devlinside123 🎯 2016 was very early to see it in this way. I think many just innately knew it was odd, weird, and offputting...but most weren't yet realizing the complexity. You nailed it.

Ten year ago today

@wil_da_beast630 The great irony was he lost to the blacker guy in that Illinois race, so he had to take his beige show on the road where he could grift off the white guilt….he needed more white people to win…and even then he only won the senate bc the Republican liked sex clubs…

If Obama were white, he would have finished his career as a Mayor in Illinois.