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jordantcarlson.bsky.social
Jordan Carlson
@jordantcarlson.bsky.social
13K followers 2.2K following 18K posts
Canadian postdoc in Japan.
Energy, sustainability, unrelated ramblings.
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
batarong.com
Linus Torvalds being unfathomably based
November 17, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
kblidook.bsky.social
Come work in the Political Science Dep't at Memorial.
(click link to see full job ad)

www.mun.ca/vpacademic/m...
WE'RE HIRING The Dept of Political Science invites applicants for the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) Program, with a specialization in Comparative Democratic Resilience in the Global South. Closing Date: Dec. 14, 2025
November 17, 2025 at 4:45 PM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
jigarshahdc.bsky.social
Clean Energy accounted for all electricity growth this year. Gas/Coal were basically a wash and will be for years to come for electricity generation.

We need to ramp up batteries because they are 90% cheaper than distribution grid upgrades which is the main reason we have rate increases.
November 14, 2025 at 4:06 AM
jordantcarlson.bsky.social
One of the funnier, and very understated, things I saw in a museum while in Berlin: a display that said, of the 1970s, "West Germany's economy boomed, in part thanks to over a million 'Temporary Workers' that no one in government had expected to stay." (From memory, so very slight paraphrase)
jamesarthurwagner.bsky.social James Wagner @jamesarthurwagner.bsky.social · 1d
THE GERMAN ECONOMIC MIRACLE DEPENDED ON IMMIGRANTS

but miracles aren’t forever
okwonga.bsky.social Musa Okwonga @okwonga.bsky.social · 1d
Yes. By the same token, I don't think Germany as a society truly understands what Germany's complicity in all this means for the country. I predict Gaza will be a significant factor in alienating or repelling the "high-skilled" workers the economy needs: www.iamexpat.de/expat-info/g...
November 17, 2025 at 1:20 AM
jordantcarlson.bsky.social
I am going to regret this question, but:
If any of my followers can explain why Call of Duty has giants now, I will appreciate (hate) the brain poison
November 17, 2025 at 12:28 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
eugenevinitsky.bsky.social
There’s this pervasive idea that most scientific research is useless and it’d be great if the people who say that could propose an alternate system that could identify dead ends without doing the work first
November 15, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
bhaggart.bsky.social
Colleagues and I have been promoting the need for a Royal Commission on the future of Canada’s economy for the better part of a year. That many are only now starting to realize that the US *really* isn’t interested in economic cooperation highlights the need for this vital national conversation.
Open letter to the next prime minister: We need a royal commission on Canada’s future
(Version française disponible ici) Sign up for A Stronger Canada for The Trump Era. A temporary newsletter with the latest Canada-U.S. analyses from Policy Options. There is no longer any room for dou...
policyoptions.irpp.org
November 16, 2025 at 12:16 PM
jordantcarlson.bsky.social
The only time I ever interacted with an Alexa I walked into my sister's house and demonstrated for her children that "Alexa, order 5 pizzas from Dominos, all pepponi, for delivery right now" worked.

The next time I visited her house all the Alexas had been disabled and removed.
gomizone.bsky.social Gomi @gomizone.bsky.social · 2d
just saw the worst gaming ad ive ever seen
November 16, 2025 at 9:50 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
eatingpolitics.bsky.social
We are hiring! Please share!
Canadian Excellence Research Chair in Comparative Democratic Resilience in the Global South
careers.mun.ca/hss/api/care...
@memorialu.bsky.social

Note we are working with a very tight deadline
careers.mun.ca
November 14, 2025 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
kevinjkircher.com
Equalizing electricity prices between residential, commercial, and industrial customers would save households - aka voters - 21% on their electricity bills. Commercial prices would go up 1%. Industrial prices would go up 59% because residential and commercial customers deeply subsidize them today.
kevinjkircher.com Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 29d
7. Residential customers - aka you and me, aka voters - pay 28% more (16.5 c/kWh, 2024 average) than commercial customers (12.9 c/kWh) and 201% more than industrial (8.2 c/kWh). This trend is accelerating: Residential prices rose 27% from 2019-2023, vs. 21% for commercial and 19% for industrial.
Bar graph of retail electricity prices and 2019-2024 price increases for the residential, commercial and industrial sectors.
November 13, 2025 at 11:21 PM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
swolecialism.bsky.social
Youre so vain you think these subtweets are about you
November 13, 2025 at 5:14 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
iiotenki.bsky.social
Thanks to everyone who's read this. It's genuinely nice to be heard. 🙏

The writing itself only took a couple hours, but one reason I struggled to put something together before was that it was hard to sufficiently explain work realities without it drowning out the moral thrust I wanted to convey.
iiotenki.bsky.social Tom, Legally Certified Date Simmelier @iiotenki.bsky.social · 5d
I wrote more words about how it feels to be a translator watching the games press report on AI and labor, coming from a field that's fought these battles for decades. It may look like I'm beating up on one outlet, but it's not about them; I've been trying to write this for me and my peers all year.
You Can't Report on Hunger While Taking Bread Off the Table
On the proliferation of machine translation in video game outlets covering the effects of AI on labor.
dateemups.com
November 13, 2025 at 3:36 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
deformedearth.bsky.social
I am hiring 4 postdoctoral researchers for up to 4 years each. Topics include ice sheet reconstruction, GIA, spatial stats, and satellite geodesy. Based in Tasmania.

All details are here: careers.utas.edu.au/en/listing/ with titles below

I am also recruiting multiple PhD students (see below)

1/n
Current Vacancies
careers.utas.edu.au
November 13, 2025 at 3:04 AM
jordantcarlson.bsky.social
This is the most "Dudes Rock" story of someone doing a very silly thing (without harming anyone) in a while
November 13, 2025 at 3:56 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
pauljnadeau.bsky.social
Remembering how my first job in Japan was deciphering U.S. politics to members of the Japanese Diet
andycraig.bsky.social Andy Craig @andycraig.bsky.social · 5d
The attorney general and the FBI director, a manosphere podcaster bro, pulled into the situation room a member of Congress best known for getting kicked out of a Beetlejuice musical for drunkenly giving her date a handy, in order to pressure her about the president's child sex trafficking scandal.
November 13, 2025 at 3:16 AM
jordantcarlson.bsky.social
It is “they turned the hot section of the building vending machines back from cold to hot” day in Fukuoka so lunch is being followed by hot chocolate out of a can.
November 13, 2025 at 3:12 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
aphclarkson.bsky.social
If the US system remains trapped in an endless knife fight between a party of good government and a party of nihilistic governance then Europeans need to accept that the US will no longer be a stable partner long after Trump is gone
gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social James @gravitysra1nbow.bsky.social · 5d
I'd just like to point out that we spent an entire shipment of air defense interceptors' worth of money on new signs for a name change that isn't even legally the name of the DoD.

Ukraine is currently experiencing rolling blackouts from Russian strikes, btw.
thedailybeast.bsky.social The Daily Beast @thedailybeast.bsky.social · 5d
Letterheads and signage alone would quickly run the bill upward of $1 billion, with a full overhaul likely rising to double that amount.
November 12, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
hansonmark.bsky.social
Scientists operate on principles of good faith. But this is just ridiculous. If you, dear reader, take nothing else away from The Drain paper, it is that publishers cannot be invited to the table any longer.

They can participate and carve a space, but they can't be part of shaping policy.

3/n
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
hansonmark.bsky.social
The solutions of the past 3 decades have failed to change the incentives of #PublishOrPerish. As a result, researcher funding, time, control, and trust has been lost.

The ONE CONSTANT in the wake of the serial crisis, #PlanS and #OpenAccess reform has been publish profit margins.

2/n
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
hansonmark.bsky.social
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 11, 2025 at 11:52 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
lorak.bsky.social
Read the letter:
“Dear President von der Leyen, We, experts in artificial intelligence (Al) and its societal impacts, are deeply concerned about your unscientific and inaccurate statement that Al is nearing human reasoning. You claimed in your budget speech in May "we thought Al would only approach human reasoning around 2050. Now we expect this to happen already next year." We understand from Commission disclosure, which followed a lengthy process to obtain this information, that you relied on the statements of Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang and Sam Altman as the basis for your statement about Al nearing human reasoning. These are marketing statements driven by profit-motive and ideology rather than empirical evidence and formal proof. In short, these tech CEOs claims concerning "superintelligence" and "AGI" are manifestly bound with their financial imperatives and not rigorous science. For the President of the European Commission to repeat the misleading marketing language of US technology firms without independent scientific verification undermines Europe's credibility as a reliable and trusted source of scientific knowledge. This is particularly so amidst a significant speculative bubble to which baseless Al hype is contributing. It also undermines the ability of Commission staff to evaluate the claims of Al vendors at a time when the Commission regulates them and procures Al services. The Commission has the duty to diligently assess claims made by industry and to determine with impartial and scholarly analysis where best the objectives of the Union should be pursued. The scientific development of any potentially useful Al is not served by amplifying the unscientific marketing claims of US tech firms. We call on you to: 1. retract your statement on Al approaching human reasoning next year; 2. diligently evaluate other such marketing claims about Al products; and 3. ensure you have the benefit of the necessary impartial scientific advice in future.”
November 10, 2025 at 10:57 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
kendrawrites.com
Friendly reminder that dishwashers made after 1995 or so are so water and energy efficient that even if you ran them twice fully loaded it would still use less water than handwashing the same load.

So many "green" things feel like sacrifices. Dishwashers are not one of them.
November 12, 2025 at 5:03 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
virginiagewin.bsky.social
If any researchers--particularly early career scientists--would like to share their experiences trying to secure a PhD, postdoc, or asst prof position in the current funding/political environment, please let me know. I'm working on a story to run in January. You can be on the record or anonymous.
virginiagewin.bsky.social Virginia Gewin @virginiagewin.bsky.social · 6d
I'm a science journalist attending the @entsocamerica.bsky.social conference in Portland, Oregon--but only for today and tomorrow. #EntSoc25

Since I wasn't able to go to the whole thing, hit me with suggestions! What have been the best talks? What stories need to reach the public?
November 12, 2025 at 4:49 AM
Reposted by Jordan Carlson
jamellebouie.net
it's not that i ever doubted that being a barista was a skilled position, but my year-long effort to try to produce a half-decent latte at home has convinced me that a good barista is easily more skilled than virtually every c-suite executive on the planet
November 11, 2025 at 3:58 PM
jordantcarlson.bsky.social
This is correct.

With that said, and in the spirit of "this applies to every -ist": guitarists making fun of bassists (and vice versa) for the dumbest things is still always funny.
segyges.bsky.social SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 5d
have said some version of this like twenty times so a longer treatment seemed due
When To Vague
segyges.leaflet.pub
November 12, 2025 at 3:27 AM