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Peter Jacobs

@pjacobs.bsky.social
3.9K followers 1.7K following 3.2K posts

climate science (paleo, modern, future); public understanding of science (consensus, conspiracy theories, pseudoscience) ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6951-7126 Mastodon: fediscience.org/@peterjacobs Bird Site: twitter.com/past_is_future

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Reposted by Peter Jacobs
Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio) @kleinman.bsky.social · 13h
SEN. ERIC SCHMITT: Do these texts not prove that a shrimp fried this rice?
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 11h
And now Big Balls & associates (who are working for the National Design Studio) are attempting to get access to sensitive federal data via the new Executive Order about America dot gov.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
They're calling it a La(m)b Leak.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
showboating Victorian bare knuckle boxer, referring to his right and left fists:
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Reposted by Peter Jacobs
Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Happy Kicked In The Head By A Horse Day, to all who celebrate. It's the 7th anniversary of this absolute banger.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Relative NINO3.4 anomaly is already over +2.5C and this event is not over. Motivated reasoning is a helluva drug.
Climate denialist claiming that the current El Niño would fall short of the mark set by the 1982/83 event in terms of the relative NINO3.4 sea surface temperature anomaly not exceeding 2.4C.A time series plot of the Relative NINO3.4 anomaly showing recent values have exceeded 2.5C and continue to rise. From @cyclonicwx.bsky.social cyclonicwx.com website.Hovmöller plot showing deep tropics (5N-5S) 850hpa zonal windspeed anomalies over time, with observed strong westerly wind bursts to date and continued westerly winds in the forecast period.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
feels like a real landmark of impunity that major corporations are making federal crimes part of the interview process
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Micah @rincewind.run · 21/09/2026
congratulations to everyone on reinventing Worse Cable
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
These will be increasingly useful in helping people understand some common cognitive pitfalls. Enjoy.
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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
"...findings that 3 [insts] violated civil rights law by tolerating antisemitism were predetermined by political priorities that blew past the evidence and cast aside standard investigative procedures..." Reading the whistleblower statement and taking rage breaks www.ms.now/news/frame-u...
ms.now
Whistleblower says probes into antisemitism at colleges were ploys to harass and strip millions
A former Justice Department lawyer says the Trump investigations squeezed Ivy League universities for millions before they were even concluded. A top Democrat is demanding answers.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Four panel cartoon of a kid who looks a little like Ed Norton hanging a red blanket and creating monsters/demons and fire using paint and cardboard and finally laying down rolling on the ground in horror.
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Reposted by Peter Jacobs
Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
You Might Think White Supremacists are Distasteful; Here’s Why You’re Wrong part 315 of an ongoing series at the New York Times
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
A screenshot of Sabrina Carpenter singing "Nobody's Son" on Saturday Night Live with parody lyrics displayed as text on screen. The parody lyrics read,

"Here we go again penetrated
What a familiar feeling
Entire seventh floor's 
An open door
To active measures spieling
Probably should have known 
The threat's home grown
Corrupt and self-deceiving
There's no tool or gun 
'cept Angleton's
Left for me to believe in."
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Reposted by Peter Jacobs
David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
NSF has reduced the research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and earth sciences by ~80%. 80%! A lot of us will not be conducting new research or training new students for the foreseeable future.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Information is often culturally transmitted thru trusted ingroup sources (uncontroversial). When people oversell the significance of or try to browbeat people as luddites about frontier models / agentic AI, do they genuinely believe that is going to convince skeptics? Or is it just virtue signaling?
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
(After deleting my 3am "Who up sloughing they house RN?" skeet in attempt to bond with UK blueskies that got zero likes)
A screenshot from the show Derry Girls
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Many such cases!
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Reposted by Peter Jacobs
derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
A friend of mine works in AI and thinks bad things are about to happen. He sold his home and moved his family out the country. He said that if you own a home in a walkable San Francisco neighborhood near a taqueria with good veggie options, you should sell your home for super cheap right now.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
This pic ⤵️ & the unfolding ENSO event remind me of an incredible piece of trivia: Sylvester Stallone was going to star in a movie where an El Niño somehow thaws out a pack of sabertooth tigers which then kill a bunch of people in and around Los Angeles before being taken down by an anthropologist.
Wikipedia text:

During the original filming of D-Tox in 1999, Sylvester Stallone became attached to star in another Universal produced film, an action horror entitled Fatalis. Written by novelist Jeff Rovin in 1998 and sold to Universal for over a million dollars, the script for the film concerned a huge pack of saber-toothed tigers who come back to life after an El Niño hurricane awakens them from being frozen inside an ancient sinkhole for thousands of years. They start attacking any humans they run into while moving down the mountains and through the woods before eventually attacking Los Angeles.[9][10] Rovin, who wrote the novelization of Stallone's Cliffhanger (1993) and his biography, wrote Fatalis with Stallone in mind for the lead role of an anthropologist who, along with a female reporter he befriends, wants to capture the tigers alive as they are our last link with the past, however the local sheriff wants to destroy them. The film went into pre-production by 2000, but following the huge failure of D-Tox and Stallone's other films, Universal ceased production and it went unproduced, though Rovin later turned his script into very successful novel of the same name. Rovin did the same with Vespers, another cancelled action-horror film from around the same time, which would have focused on giant bats that attack New York City. When asked in 2021 about the chances of Fatalis being produced twenty years later, Rovin revealed that Stallone still owns the rights to the original story, and he suspects it will not be produced.An old Las Vegas Sun News item:

Variety has reported that the thriller "Fatalis" has just been optioned by Universal Pictures. The movie, which is already being mentioned as a possible Sylvester Stallone project, follows at least one thought-to- be-extinct sabertooth tiger going on a rampage through downtown Los Angeles. Meow! All this happens after El Nino-induced climate changes force the creature(s) to leave their hidden habitat. Quick, get me 5,000 catnip mouse toys!
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CIDRAP @cidrap.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Ebola outbreak in DRC grows to 7,200 cases as government officials suggest transmission has peaked This remains the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history. Read more: bit.ly/4xYoei2 📷: UN Photo, Ari Gaitanis / Flickr cc
Ebola workers
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
After a tremendous run of record warm daily 2m near surface air temps, we've fallen (bc of pronounced Antarctic cold) below the extremely high values seen in September 2023 but are still at or near the second hottest values from 2024. Meanwhile SSTs continue their run of record high daily anomalies.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
A prayer candle with the face of CIA counterintelligence legend James Angleton on it.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The "Head of Strategic Futures" for OpenAI saying that the transparent ploy to get a government moat isn't exactly what it looks like because 'uh antitrust law uh makes it double super illegal for companies to uh voluntarily coordinate on public safety, yeah that's it' 🥴
Dean Ball lying about antitrust law.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"Altman and Amodei must have seen something that scared them if they're suddenly calling for a slowdown" yeah bruh I am sure they did www.bloomberg.com/news/article... www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202... www.reuters.com/business/ret...
bloomberg.com
US Lead in the AI Race With China Is Rapidly Narrowing
A spate of new releases show Chinese competitors are closing the gap on Silicon Valley, and winning market share with lower prices.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
sold out 70mm showing of Aliens, when Ripley comes out in the Loader everyone loses their dang minds
A black and white image of Martin Scorsese seated with his hands raised in the air.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I'm hearing Anthropic is worried p(doom) is not a very accessible concept for the masses, while "chance of triggering human extinction within the decade" is too wordy. They're trial ballooning Imminent Public Obliteration (or IPO) as a replacement term, eg "All this discussion is really about IPO".
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Onboard Navvy @onboard-navvy.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Always remember this one from the archives.
A Nate Silver Tweet from 4 Feb 2021 (referencing the Johnson and Johnson covid vaccine): "Why should this take three weeks though? Is the data intrinsically that complicated? Is there any doubt that J&J will be approved?" 
@forgethewings replies: "Hi Nate - if it helps think about how unimportant your work is and how you still manage to get it wrong, and then imagine it was important work and you had to get it right"
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Mea culpa. We do have a plausible, concrete answer as to how AI will be able to exterminate humanity. And don't worry it's not some silly sci fi narrative like grey goo or superviruses! It's *checks notes* uh... the plot from T2: Judgment Day
A screenshot of a tweet claiming to articulate how AI can exterminate humanity, that bears more than a passing resemblance to the plot of James Cameron's Terminator films.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Hmm. Yes, yes I see. And tell me: are these "models that solved Navier-Stokes" in the room with us right now? 🧐
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☀️ Starshine @starshine.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
general secretary avasarala played by the stunning Shohreh Aghdashloo. theres a chat bubble at the bottom of the screen as if shes saying the quote post. obviously shes got drip
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I think I'm genuinely less offended being seen as a potential mark by these hucksters as I am offended that none of them have done even a little bit of work to understand mass extinction events well enough to make something up that sounds plausible.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
post a witch "Old Virginia" from the short story of that name by @lairdbarron.bsky.social (image from the LairdBarron subreddit / rickyho_concept on IG)
An image of a pale bald woman crouched on the back of a man standing up with his hands by his sides, in a dark room that appears to be out in the woods.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Very funny to see people who had sort of nodded along to a lot of the Anthropic/OpenAI hype starting to go "Oh hey wait a sec. Maybe it IS more likely that they're trying to get the government to ban their competitors than it is that they genuinely believe they're zooming towards human extinction."
static.klipy.com
Jason Mantzoukas Says Welcome!
Alt: Jason Mantzoukas Says Welcome!
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Every time one of these companies rolls out a new model, tries to secure a huge new tranche of money, etc. they pull the same kind of stunts: less than meets the eye maths claims, employees claiming the models are insanely dangerous, etc. And yet people act like they have no memory of previous times
static.klipy.com
George W. Bush's 'Fool Me Once' Quote
Alt: George W. Bush's 'Fool Me Once' Quote
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Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
The far-right AfD surged to a record 44% in regional elections in Saxony-Anhalt—its best-ever result. The success has some local dimensions. The state of 2.1mn, once part of communist East Germany, is much older, more rural and less prosperous than the average in the EU’s largest economy.
ft.com
Who is voting for the far-right Alternative for Germany?
AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt reflects national trends — ‘but on steroids’
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Giles Wilkes @gilesyb.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
It's always the way, isn't it giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...
Graph shows far right support higher where the number of foreign nationals is lowest
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
TIL that NSF’s Ocean Science Program also supports research in Lake America. 🇺🇸 More seriously, funding for ocean science was ~$400 million and 730 awards annually the last 10 years. The total budget in 2026 for atmospheric, ocean, and Earth sciences is only $110 million and 200-350 awards. 🤯
nsf.gov
Ocean Sciences Program
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
As long as I live I'll never forget seeing old video of the moratorium announcement in a marine ecology course; fishermen so incensed they tried to bash down locked doors to stop the announcement news conference. Many careers worth of effort to try to restore this fishery www.cbc.ca/player/play/...
cbc.ca
Cod moratorium called 'the biggest layoff in Canadian history' in 1992
Fishermen in St. John's react angrily to the government announcement of a ban on cod fishing. Aired July 2, 1992 on CBC's The National.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The SECDEF told me the Iran-Russia alliance keeps capturing his autonomous vehicles, so I asked how many drones he has and he said he just goes to the techbro new primes and gets some new AVs afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just doing tech transfer and then his DCSA Director started crying.
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
You already know where this is headed.
"Academic Courage" (sic) prize announced in the WSJ op-ed page by Bill Ackman and Roland Fryer which will inevitably highlight the same debunked "heterodox" idiocy as every other such effort. Scene from Not Another Teen Movie (2001).  The setting is a high school hallway. In the top panel, Catherine Wyler (played by Mia Kirshner) asks her younger brother Jake (Chris Evans) "Hi Jake. Can I ask you a question? Why is it every time I tell a guy he can publish any idea he wants..." and in the lower panel she continues "He always tries to recycle race 'science'?" The original dialogue ('stick it anywhere he wants' and 'stick it in my ass') is clearly visible beneath the revised text.
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Harriet B. Drage @harriedrage.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Interested in fossil arthropods, palaeoecology, dispersal, and interesting methods? 🦀 🌎 I'm hiring a 4-year, fully funded PhD student at the University of Geneva as part of my European Research Council (ERC) grant. Deadline: 16th October. Reach out if any questions! www.unige.ch/sciences/ter...
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Mr. Joshua @pantspants.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
A man is vacuuming while trying to make conversation with someone in another room. He is thrilled with the turning radius of the machine. A voice from the other room yells, “What?” The vacuuming man yells back, “I said this puppy’s got serious turning radius.” It’s likely he’ll continue to repeat himself over the sound of the vacuum  Artist’s note: I’m always aiming for bold and sloppy line work. We achieved that here.
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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
she's right you know
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Well sure I guess technically "show posts from only people you follow in reverse chronological order" is also an 'algorithm' but something tells me professional take haver Singal might be talking out of his ass again.
A screenshot of Jesse Singal accusing Dave Roberts of being enslaved by Bluesky 's "algorithm".
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
If you've never read Matthews's description of the air loom or his tormentors, it's fascinating (albeit tragic) to get such an articulate description of paranoid schizophrenic beliefs in an 18th century context. archive.org/details/b220... (Haslam's sarcasm about certain doctors is also something)
archive.org
Illustrations of madness: exhibiting a singular case of insanity and a no less remarkable difference in medical opinion ... with a description of the tortures experienced [by the patient, James Tilly ...
Author mentioned in Garrison-Morton
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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 07/09/2026
Summer in England was record smashing - 2026 was 0.75°C warmer for a seasonal average than the previous record set in... <checks notes>... 2025. The remaining seasonal records from 1976 were all broken by a significant margin this year. (These were the seasonal average Tmax for England and UK)
Timeseries of average summer temperatures in England showing 2026 sticking out above every other year
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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 07/09/2026
2026 really was a fundamentally different summer to 1976 in terms of temperature across the UK and Europe Data: ERA5
Comparing 1976 and 2026 summers in NW Europe
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Germany’s far-right AfD thanks Elon Musk as France warns state election win a ‘serious moment’ www.theguardian.com/world/2026/s...
theguardian.com
Germany’s far-right AfD thanks Elon Musk as France warns state election win a ‘serious moment’
Lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt welcomes further ‘strong’ cooperation with Musk as French minister says ‘we cannot forget our history’
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
*and ambiguously neurolodivergent
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Peter Jacobs @pjacobs.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Still slaps.
A theater placard for Akira 4k
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