Kerry Champion
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kerrychamp.bsky.social
Kerry Champion
@kerrychamp.bsky.social
Professional interest: applications of AI.
Civic interest: rule of law and fight against authoritarianism.
Reposted by Kerry Champion
I cannot imagine having a job so inconsequential that I need to invent reasons to not only care, but to actually object to, my supervisees’ choice of font.

It’s giving Cracker Barrel cultural shadow docket, but make it as dorky as humanly possible.

(Aptos 12s, amirite?)
December 10, 2025 at 5:10 AM
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🫏 How did donkeys and pumas help resurrect extinct food webs in Death Valley?

Learn how #TarPits research reveals how mountain lions have adapted lost Ice Age predator-prey dynamics, while restoring desert wetlands through preying on wild donkeys: bit.ly/BurroingInto...
December 8, 2025 at 10:35 PM
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NEW from me: i talked to the founders of a geothermal startup that is working on a simple (but surprisingly difficult) solution to find more geothermal energy: seek out systems deep underground that we can use for power. it's harder than you think!
A Startup Says It Has Found a Hidden Source of Geothermal Energy
Zanskar uses AI to identify hidden geothermal systems—and claims it has found one that could fuel a power plant, the first such discovery by industry in decades.
www.wired.com
December 4, 2025 at 2:17 PM
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The December issue of Brain is out with a wonderful cover. Interested to know what those delicate helical structures are?

Yes, this is Treponema pallidum, the bacteria that causes syphilis and which proved so elusive to detect when researchers first attempted to isolate it.
academic.oup.com/brain
December 5, 2025 at 6:09 AM
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That bag solves problems I didn’t even know I had.
November 23, 2025 at 2:11 AM
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President Trump speaks of making America great again, but my column argues that instead he is systematically undermining the three key ingredients to the formula that over the last 150 years made the US the world's leading economy: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/15/o...
Opinion | America’s Formula for Greatness Is Under Threat
www.nytimes.com
November 16, 2025 at 4:16 PM
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Cool!! I'll check it out. But, "thinking vs. obeying physics" - the standard paradigm says our thinking is obeying physics too, right? One question is: how much of more advanced "thinking" is also least action dynamics on more complex virtual spaces constructed by more advanced cognitive systems.
November 12, 2025 at 12:56 PM
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How “intelligent” is a slime mold? When it solves mazes, it might not be thinking:it’s obeying physics. Our new paper with
@jordiplam.bsky.social shows how it follows a least action principle,letting physics do the job arxiv.org/pdf/2511.08531
@drmichaellevin.bsky.social @docteur-drey.bsky.social
November 12, 2025 at 4:17 AM
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“He’s actually weakening the economy by eliminating the very industrial strategy that led, in the past 50 to 100 years, companies like Intel to be born.”

I interviewed @mazzucatom.bsky.social for Politico Magazine on Trump’s brand of capitalism
www.politico.com/news/magazin...
‘He’s Actually Weakening the Economy’: Why Trump’s Strategy May Fail
A top economist says Trump is doing industrial policy all wrong.
www.politico.com
November 12, 2025 at 1:14 PM
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Today's talk from the #NaturalPhilosophy Symposium is Nick Lane on Life as a Guide to Its Own Origins, with commentary by Michael Wong @miquai.bsky.social.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHL_...
October 28, 2025 at 3:40 PM
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Important column in @economist.com by @palfrey.org, head of MacArthur Foundation, on how foundations, NGOs, nonprofits, etc are standing up against MAGA attacks.

www.economist.com/by-invitatio...

Paywalled, but here's a sample:
October 27, 2025 at 3:25 PM
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Shielding Chart

xkcd.com/3158/
October 23, 2025 at 8:10 PM
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What if we could chart all cell types across the tree of life?
In @nature.com, @arnausebe.bsky.social and colls launch the Biodiversity Cell Atlas, a global effort to map eukaryotic cell diversity using single-cell & genomic data.
drive.google.com/file/d/1G4zZ... @crg.eu @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social
October 23, 2025 at 9:27 PM
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A prince in a monarchy is being held more accountable than our elites in this democracy.
October 17, 2025 at 11:30 PM
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As they should. It's clearly illegal. The US is not a monarchy. He is trying to put Band-Aids on problems he himself created.
Leavitt: "The president tapped into tariff revenue to keep WIC money going out the door. He found a creative solution to keep the troops paid. And rather than congratulate him for doing that, this unprecedented action to get our troops paid, Dems want to sue him for it. They're saying it's illegal."
October 16, 2025 at 11:33 PM
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Physics Insight

xkcd.com/3154/
October 15, 2025 at 8:14 PM
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If conservative ideas were so great, they would easily withstand any attempts at belittlement.
October 15, 2025 at 9:43 PM
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A staggering boost to quality of life tbh
The Japanese parent company of 7-Eleven is betting billions of dollars that it can expand its business in the U.S. by making its convenience stores more like the food meccas they are in Japan. nyti.ms/3KTwGve
October 15, 2025 at 10:01 PM
Reposted by Kerry Champion
🦝 Even amid mammoths and saber-tooths, raccoons were part of Ice Age Los Angeles too. A rare fossil from Project 23 shows one of these masked foragers once lived here—quiet, small, but surviving in the shadows of giants: bit.ly/RaccoonsofLA
October 11, 2025 at 8:34 PM
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After a long time in the making, my paper on nonequilibrium thermodynamics of Darwinian evolution has been published in Philosophical Transactions B. Updated version: arxiv.org/abs/2112.02809
October 7, 2025 at 9:33 AM
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Strong truth here from @himself.bsky.social. Civil society has to get its act together and coordinate for the greater good, even if that's not its usual mode. Universities most especially.
"It wanted to signal strength. Instead, it’s revealing its weakness. The administration’s need to break the academy is forcing it to make a desperately risky gamble." www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/o...
Opinion | You Beat Trumpism by Banding Together. It’s as Hard and as Simple as That.
www.nytimes.com
October 8, 2025 at 12:40 PM
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Trump’s enablers in govt/media honestly think of him as a ranty old gasbag, so they don’t treat authoritarian pronouncements like this seriously.

They should! Have they learned nothing?
I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?
October 8, 2025 at 2:55 PM
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Below the radar, the second Trump administration has taken extraordinary steps to expand the rights of gun owners and manufacturers. He doesn't care about crime, nor does he care about kids.

Trump 2.0 shows every sign of doing anything the NRA wants. trib.al/MliH8vt
August 29, 2025 at 4:44 PM
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Europe is selling its soul to Trump on.ft.com/3JBTEGx | opinion
Europe is selling its soul to Trump
What masquerades as pragmatism is self-harming opportunism
on.ft.com
August 25, 2025 at 4:31 AM
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The BEST assist in the league last year belongs to Brandin Podziemski 🤯
August 23, 2025 at 4:05 AM