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Jeffrey Winters

@jeffreywinters.bsky.social
442 followers 754 following 794 posts

Essayist. Former science/technology journalist, including as editor in chief, Mechanical Engineering magazine. Don’t blame anyone for these posts but me.

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Reposted by Jeffrey Winters
shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 3h
thank you to @mgiraldi.bsky.social, who pointed me to the insta acct for the photographer (www.instagram.com/kevinlohmanp...). the story and the other two photos are 24k gold.
kevinlohmanphotography
Santa Cruz, California
Are You Kidding Me?
Can this Great Horned Owl's eyes get any bigger?
I'm excited that my photo "Are You Kidding Me?" was selected as one of just 43 finalists in the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, from more than 10,000 entries representing 112 countries!
The story behind it is just as crazy. I was photographing this seven-week-old owlet when a squirrel suddenly launched from a nearby branch and landed directly on its head, knocking both of them out of the tree.
And believe it or not, a squirrel knocked this same owlet out of the tree THREE TIMES that morning! Fortunately, the owlet was fine and eventually settled down next to its mother.

(photo depicts a squirrel in mid-flight from a tree branch, apparently about to attack an owl who has the most "are you fucking KIDDING me" look in history)second photo showing the squirrel in question making contact with the owl like the lil furry-tailed (if short-sighted) badass he isthird photo showing the squirrel in question making contact with the owl like the lil furry-tailed (if short-sighted) badass he is
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Emily @emilydawn.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
@hockeyviz.com I found some beautiful data viz for you
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Michael Liebreich @mliebreich.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
My favourite chart from the @IEA special report on electrification. Electricity is only 23% of Final Energy (No big deal), but it's 37% of Useful Energy (What?) and delivers 46% of GDP (Wow!) And it's going clean, fast. Still think there's no transition? iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/1c696...
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Andy Revkin 🌎 ✍🏼 🪕 ☮️ revkin.substack.com @revkin.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Folks blocking @thehonestbroker.bsky.social will miss this calcuation: Thanks to Trump's war, "Consumers have collectively paid about $869 billion in extra payments, equal to an $87 per tonne carbon tax across all fossil fuel emissions." rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/trumps-car... 1/2
rogerpielkejr.substack.com
Trump’s Carbon Tax
The president meets the “Iron Law”
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I ran across some of my late teen journals and it was full of comments about the novels I was planning and the obvious greatness of my writing career. And of how miserable I was. I became much, much happier once I gave up on being a Great Writer and aimed for being a good editor. And a good man.
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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I think about this interview with the distinguished philosopher Conan O'Brien a lot. I actually think this is a healthy way to live your life! www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/a...
Is this how you want to go out, with a show that gets smaller and smaller until it’s gone?

Maybe that’s O.K. I think you have more of a problem with that than I do. [Laughs.] At this point in my career, I could go out with a grand, 21-gun salute, and climb into a rocket and the entire Supreme Court walks out and they jointly press a button, I’m shot up into the air and there’s an explosion and it’s orange and it spells, “Good night and God love.” In this culture? Two years later, it’s going to be, who’s Conan? This is going to sound grim, but eventually, all our graves go unattended.

You’re right, that does sound grim.

Sorry. Calvin Coolidge was a pretty popular president. I’ve been to his grave in Vermont. It has the presidential seal on it. Nobody was there. And by the way, I’m the only late-night host that has been to Calvin Coolidge’s grave. I think that’s what separates me from the other hosts.

I had a great conversation with Albert Brooks once. When I met him for the first time, I was kind of stammering. I said, you make movies, they live on forever. I just do these late-night shows, they get lost, they’re never seen again and who cares? And he looked at me and he said, [Albert Brooks voice] “What are you talking about? None of it matters.” None of it matters? “No, that’s the secret. In 1940, people said Clark Gable is the face of the 20th Century. Who [expletive] thinks about Clark Gable? It doesn’t matter. You’ll be forgotten. I’ll be forgotten. We’ll all be forgotten.” It’s so funny because you’d think that would depress me. I was walking on air after that.
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Jeff Sharlet @jeffsharlet.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
I give up. I’m moving into a cave.
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“A student whose family income is $750,000 per year and attends, say, Yale, will pay a higher real tuition than that student’s predecessors would have paid twenty-five or fifty years ago.” Not just income. Aid is based on family wealth, too. Families who wouldn’t consider themselves rich get hit.
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Progress! (From My Weekly Reader Surprise, April 5, 1972)
Inventor Robert S McKee is shown (bottom) seated in his experimental electric car and (top left) checking the batteries with an aide. Batteries can be recharged overnight or a fully charged set installed in five minutes. Car can travel 150 miles before the batteries need to be recharged.
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bkmacd @bkmacd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
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c0nc0rdance @c0nc0rdance.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
... it may have just been a matter of some new brewer making it too thick, producing a beer you could CHEW after cooking a 2nd time. Bread *could* have been inspired by a bad batch of beer & that feels =very human= to me. So cheers to home-brewers, practicing the world's 3rd? oldest profession.
sci.news
13,000-Year-Old Brewery Found in Israel | Sci.News
An international team of researchers from Stanford University and the University of Haifa has found the oldest archaeological evidence of cereal-based beer brewing. The discovery is described in the J...
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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is the master key to deciphering contemporary debates about free speech. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
We’ve got to build it before China does.
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Matthew Gertz @mattgertz.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
When contemplating a blank-sheet-of-paper dramatic shift in a policy area, it is useful to ask the question, "does any other government do it this way?"
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Well, they can’t take Week One away from us. #bearsseasonofficiallyover
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Super Shoe @shoe.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
You can't run government like a business. But you also can't run it like some lazy non profit.
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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
what does he have left? what little boys and girls do. play around with dolls, interior decoration, martial arts spectatordom, and racecars
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This seems like evidence that Trump didn’t like the results of his own cognitive tests.
theguardian.com
‘Clear retribution’: dismay as key Alzheimer’s study cancelled amid Trump attacks on science
Participants in Pittsburgh may never learn the results of their cognitive tests – and funding cuts that target ‘DEI’ have the potential to delay vital diagnoses
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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 17/09/2026
"but as the map recursively improves, eventually it becomes..." *clicks to final slide in the pitch deck* "...the territory!"
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Thermal batteries aren't a future technology any more. 80 projects worldwide, 51 operating. Half of those came online in 2025 or 2026. Mostly 1–100 MWh, but Antora (5 GWh) & Chinese molten salt plants (up to 2 GWh) show what's possible. More soon on Substack. Sign up here janrosenow.substack.com
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spooky tail latency @bluespacecanary.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
It's actually extremely bad that congressional reps are paid less today than a baby new grad software engineer made in their first year (well, year and a day so their first year of stock vested) out of college 15 years ago. It's a big part of *why* the corruption became normalized!
A bluesky post:

"It’s insane that people in Congress are paid over $174K a year in taxpayer dollars whilst making millions of dollars from insider trading whilst getting 18 vacations a year as Americans all over the country struggle to pay for rent, gas and groceries."
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Super Shoe @shoe.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
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Shipwreck @shipwreck75.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
A political adviser to the IRGC commander, Mohammad Bakr Zo-Alkadar, said the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed as long as Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu hold power.
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Ed Burmila @edburmila.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
This is supposed to be fun for your kid and maybe teach them some useful lessons like "How to try and feel proud even when another person bests you" and instead it's this $100,000 investment mommy and daddy demand a return on and it's six trans kids fault when you don't end up QBing at UCLA.
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Love this message from the CTA.
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John Weldon @realjohnweldon.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Is the first ever orange man advocating for United Ireland?
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Once you construct a personalist regime, where everyone caters to the leaders whims, its a fastrack to delusional behavior.
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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
If you want to see the data center backlash turn into a full out Butlerian Jihad keep saying stuff like, "I as lead researcher at private AI company estimate the chance that AI ends humanity in the next decade at roughly 10 percent"
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David Fickling @davidfickling.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
But “AGI will kill us all” from people who got freaked out about Roko’s basilisk is about as convincing to me as a Squeaky Fromme warning about hidden messages in Beatles lyrics.
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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 09/09/2026
They all want to be the Oppenheimer of Death Star Ouija boards and that is not something you should want to be, even though it's a very silly fantasy
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
You know the old economist joke with the punchline, “Assume a can opener”? I feel like that’s what’s going on with CDR. 25 years ago, folks tried to assume into existence dollar-a-watt nuclear reactors. New designs, economies of scale, blah^3. Totally ignored why nuclear was/is so expensive.
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 08/09/2026
My anecdotal bespoke theory is we need to reestablish a sense of accomplishment around being different. Having your own bespoke tastes and interests used to be the way we cultivated individuality and we lost that somehow.
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Dr Kathleen Neal @kbneal.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Yep. People aren't anthropomorphizing LLMs because they can think; they do so because an LLM is designed to greet you in the first person. It the linguistic form of stitching on some eyes and a mouth.
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Erin Sikorsky @erinsikorsky.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
1/ My latest newsletter covers the security implications of the climate overshoot report released by UNEP yesterday. The bottom line? Plan for 3 degrees, work like hell for 1.5. Five more takeaways threaded below....
securityinaclimatechangedworld.substack.com
Security Takeaways from the UNEP Overshoot Report
Plan for Three, Fight for 1.5
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Whether it’s Chuck Schumer’s daughter getting a spot on OpenAI’s board or it’s Kirsten Gillibrand’s son getting millions in backing for a crypto startup, the children of New York elites always prove that with hard work, anyone can beat the stimga of a family name by A. G. Sulzberger
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New York Amsterdam News @nyamnews.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
NYC hosts the World WallBall Championships for the first time ever, Sept. 14-19, with finals in Central Park. #Handball #NYCSports
amsterdamnews.com
The best handball players in the world set to compete in NYC  
History will be made in New York City Sept. 14–19 as the World WallBall (handball) Championships take place.
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Sam Brody @samuelhayimbrody.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
“New ENGLAND?! You mean New AMERICA” “Sir you already renamed New Mexico New America” “Okay so make New England NEW New America” “Sir, that’s what you did to New Hampshire”
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K. Thor Jensen @kthorjensen.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
there is absolutely going to be an incredible book written about how AI melted this gobshite's brain even more than it was already melted
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jordan @jbythekilowatt.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Sharks are older than trees
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I suppose it’s Facebook, but I can’t believe this slop got nearly 1,000 likes.
AI generated map of NYC with various locations misplaced.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 03/09/2026
China is doing amazing things on clean tech manufacturing but the humanoid robots are hypey hardware junkslop with no practical applications and pretty frankly a sign of weakness
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I assigned Michael Abrams to write about this work last year, and he sure as heck didn’t miss. www.asme.org/topics-resou...
asme.org
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ceej @ceej.online · 03/09/2026
I do think “every rich person went insane during covid because it was the first time they’ve been inconvenienced in decades” felt a little reductive at first but damn if isn’t more and more compelling as the years drag on
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Following weeks of White House attacks on Canadians as "perfidious" and "nasty people," amplified by extended smear campaigns on Rupert Murdoch TV, Republicans have started to hate Canadians.
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Alex Wellerstein @wellerstein.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Did I just spend several hours playing with numbers to conclude "it doesn't matter all that much"? Basically, yeah... Welcome to the world of research, where even a null result is useful, if you can actually have confidence in it being true, and can put some real bounds on it.
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Justin Mikulka @justinmikulka.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
The Iran war taught us this. "China appears to have discovered something that should make oil bulls at least a little uncomfortable. It can get by on less fuel than anyone thought."
oilprice.com
China Is Learning to Use Less Oil—and That's a Bigger Deal Than It Sounds | OilPrice.com
China's gasoline and diesel demand has been falling for years as electric vehicles gained market share and economic growth slowed. But the latest drop has surprised even seasoned observers.
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Humanity is saved!
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Jeffrey Winters @jeffreywinters.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Excellent thread on MHD propulsion.
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Dave Jorgenson @davejorgenson.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
The renaming of this lake is so dumb and petty and should not be the focus of the news right now but … I cannot overstate enough just how sad and pathetic this update is for Google
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