Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
@michaelhendricks.bsky.social
3.7K followers 2.1K following 2.1K posts
Biologist, McGill University
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Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
chuckwendig.bsky.social
This is why the inflatable costumes works so well -- it works the same way calling them "weird" or "creepy" did. It disrupts their narrative, and makes them seem pathetic rather than cool-and-cruel.
cwebbonline.com
You need to see this:

“The show of force is the point. They want these images to be out…The Department of Homeland Security is walking around Chicago with a film crew.” @jacobsoboroff.bsky.social
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
mehr.nz
while this topic is certainly an issue across Aus/NZ/UK academia it's not limited to it. @michaelhendricks.bsky.social has mentioned Nous Group trying to move in on Canadian academia as well
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
mehr.nz
—we're often told our unis are broke, but large external contracts contradict that claim
—there is good reason to believe that bad consulting advice is the source of many problems in Aus/NZ/UK academia, so a starting point in fixing it is finding out how deep in it we already are
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
mehr.nz
there are a few reasons I think we should find out more about unis hiring big $ consultancies
—consultancies typically work for corporations so may not have great ideas about how to run nonprofit, public institutions
—unis have a ton of internal expertise they could rely on instead, but often don't
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
mehr.nz
for VUW that's like $20-65 per student in fees paid to consultants, per year. auckland is nearly double the size of VUW in terms of student numbers so we might expect closer to $1m-3m/yr on consultants if VUW is any guide

let's see what they say though! nice for this info to be public I think
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
mehr.nz
still waiting on an OIA response regarding what Auckland Uni spends on Nous Group, Doloitte, PwC and other consultants but I just saw somebody inquired the same re Victoria University (Wellington) in July

looks like between $400K - $1.5m / yr between 2020-2025

i'm guessing it's more for Auckland!
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
mitodynamics.bsky.social
New paper - MAPL strikes again! Interested in mitochondrial signalling, inflammation, lysosome biology, pyroptosis, and Parkinson's disease? Have a look, there's something for everyone! Feeling grateful! @mitocollier.bsky.social Funded by #CIHR, @asapresearch.parkinsonsroadmap.org.
rdcu.be/eKKz1 🇨🇦
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
jamellebouie.net
i'm sure duffy is just lying here but also i'll say again that they hard time conceptualizing relations between people that aren't strictly hierarchical.
atrupar.com
Sean Duffy: "The No Kings protest, Maria, really frustrating. This is part of antifa, paid protesters. It begs the question who's funding it."
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
matthewstiegler.bsky.social
Roberts is presiding over, and driving, a stunning collapse in faith in the U.S. Supreme Court, not just among the public, but among federal judges.

What a failure. The Titanic captain of chief justices.
murshedz.bsky.social
“More than three dozen federal judges have told The New York Times that the Supreme Court’s flurry of brief, opaque emergency orders in cases related to the Trump administration have left them confused about how to proceed in those matters and are hurting the judiciary’s image with the public.”
Federal Judges, Warning of ‘Judicial Crisis,’ Fault Supreme Court’s Emergency Orders
www.nytimes.com
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
It's both hilarious and awful learning about the thought-turds rattling around in the heads of rich morons. You'd hear more interesting pseudo-theological musings from any tripping undergrad who just watched The Devil's Advocate, but because he's a billionaire people pay to listen to it.
sarahkmoser.bsky.social
This is the weirdest article you'll read all week... Peter Thiel is not just a Trump fascist, he's deeply worried about the antichrist: “I’m a libertarian, or a classical liberal, who deviates in one minor detail, where I’m worried about the antichrist”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
Inside tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s off-the-record lectures about the antichrist
The political svengali and investor has been giving lectures on ‘an evil king or tyrant … who appears in the end times’
www.theguardian.com
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
drannecarpenter.bsky.social
15 years in the making, we confirmed that mitochondria - the powerhouse of the cell - have an unusual localization in patients who experience psychosis (including schizophrenia and bipolar disorders). You’ll never guess what kind of patient cells we used to make this discovery… 🧵
mitochondria from bipolar patients are closer to the nucleus in these images; control patients' are spread out further
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
gregggonsalves.bsky.social
Thank you @nytopinion.nytimes.com for publishing this rot. Marc Rowan has run hundreds of companies into the dust to extract profits from their failure and bankruptcies. Now he wants to do the same to American higher education. Do not believe a word this man says. 1/ www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/o...
Opinion | Trump’s ‘Compact’ With Universities Is Badly Needed
www.nytimes.com
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
jenniferhendricks.bsky.social
Is this by any chance the same writer who recently announced that after intense study, he felt compelled to inform a shocked and reelling world that the genius of Springsteen's work is more in the lyrics than in its similarity to Schubert's lieders?
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
This is the most insane musical take I have ever seen in my life.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
cianodonnell.bsky.social
looking forward to Kennedy's theorem
atrupar.com
RFK Jr on Tylenol and autism: "It is not proof. We're doing the studies to make the proof."
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
junoryleejournalism.com
David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)
SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems...
SIMON: What?
SHAPIRO: ...Or saying...
SIMON: You imagine that?
SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over.
SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level.
SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this.
SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
katzish.bsky.social
Got a recent Pulitzer for warning on the spread of autocracy around the globe, after decades of service to the paper? You can bet your butt you're getting laid off by form email, on Yom Kippur
davejorgenson.bsky.social
The Post laid off seemingly the remaining of their liberal-leaning staff members on Opinion last Thursday, when some of them were observing Yom Kippur.

from @oliverdarcy.bsky.social for Status
status.news/p/washington-post-opinion-cuts-adam-oneal
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
...meanwhile the ratio of dependents (children + elderly) to workers has gone DOWN by a third over the same time period and won't reach 1960s levels until 2040+. There is no demographic crisis.... there is a resource distribution crisis.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
This is the lie at the center of the "demographic crisis" framing. In the US, per worker productivity has tripled since the 1960s. But instead of increasing compensation or various forms of dependent care, this **enormous** new surplus goes to private profits, asset inflation, and rent extraction...
brandontbishop.bsky.social
People really don't like do deal with US labor productivity being *vastly* larger than even a couple generations ago.
US labor productivity and real hourly compensation from 1973 to 2024 both increase steadily.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
"The Man in the High Castle" portrayed perfectly how fascism looks like a Norman Rockwell American dream for upper middle class white people.
brianbeutler.bsky.social
Watching so many people in high places go through the motions of polling and median-voter whispering can make you feel like you're in Bodysnatchers. It's worth a reminder that the typical experience of tyranny is...basically normal life. Which means we have to will ourselves to fight harder.
The Median Experience Of Tyranny
If the politics of tyranny were self-discrediting, we wouldn't need mantras like "never again."
www.offmessage.net
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
Good thing there is no downside to runaway deflation.
carlquintanilla.bsky.social
ANDREESSEN: Even if AI ends up destroying all the jobs, “the result would be hyper-deflation of prices, which is the thing that people miss. .. Things that today cost a lot of money will all of a sudden be cheap or free.”

@fortune.com
fortune.com/2025/10/08/b...
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
While we're all handwringing over "political violence," here is political mass murder on an unimaginable scale.

Musk wants to die on Mars...history is going to bury him in a latrine.
michaelhendricks.bsky.social
I'm happy with <10% of what Carney has done or has indicated he plans to do so far, but 1) "transformative" sounds wordsmithed to be something only an idiot would assume is a compliment, and 2) there is a lot more at stake in this diplomacy effort than either of these two mens' egos.
atrupar.com
"You are a transformative president" -- I regret to inform you that Mark Carney is kissing Trump's ass
Reposted by Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦
jamellebouie.net
very cool that if you are working on behalf of right-wing culture warriors, you no longer need standing to have your claim adjudicated by the supreme court
tomscocca.bsky.social
It's not just that they're going to strike down a law against conversion therapy, it's that they're going to do it on behalf of made-up claims from a straw plaintiff who can't honestly show the law affected her at all
tomscocca.bsky.social
One thing about American's widespread distrust and disapproval of the Supreme Court is that mainstream news coverage mostly doesn't dwell on stuff like standing, so people don't even begin to grasp how rigged the Court truly is www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...