Bennett

@bennettmcintosh

Science & Technology Studies | History of Sci & Tech || How do data & scientific communities make each other? Current projects on: social genomics; environmental regulation

595 Following250 Followers145 Posts

Bluesky

Is this your profile?Claim it and bennettmcintosh.dirty.social is yours.Claim profile

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 2h

Fuck Mike Carey, all my homies hate Mike Carey

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 10h

Why are you spouting Republican propaganda that is designed to make my governor a J6 supporter and anti-choice radical rather than a guy who's running on universal healthcare and overturning some of the worst anti-union legislation in the country www.crowleyforwi.com/data-centers

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 12h

The ESPN profile of Sean Payton a while back shows this really well. Even the guy who nominally runs the machine and intentionally makes the machine even more convoluted and inhuman does that in part by making himself its meat puppet www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/...

Joe Lombardi, the offensive coordinator, clicks on Dart Screen. Hours pass. Ten o'clock, then eleven... Unlike some coaches, Payton doesn't arrive to the office at 4:30 a.m. He's more likely to leave at 4:30 a.m. Because assistant coaches still have work to do after these meetings end, they're forced to be both morning people and night owls. They fight diminishing returns with all available methods: by standing, stretching, eating snacks, sipping drinks cold and hot, grabbing air, taking the long way to the bathroom and the longer way back, dipping real and synthetic snuff, by multitasking. They stifle yawns as Payton's eyes sharpen. When he's this focused, he's almost scary in his recall -- he remembers the minutia of a decades-old second-down play -- and yet might blank on something as basic as his home address.

"Playcalling is harder at 62 than at 42," he says. "As you get older, maybe you don't like driving in the rain at night."

For years, he has had a recurring dream. Kickoff. Cameras, fans, lights, buzz, national anthem. He's late to the game... on a bike, in his underwear. He pedals, but the bike won't move. He pedals harder. Goes nowhere. The game kicks off. He's finally on the sideline. His offense is on the field. His quarterback is looking to him for the play. He shouts the play, still in his underwear, but nobody can hear him. His chest seizes up. He screams, "32 Lead! 32 Lead!"...

Usually right then, Skylene will nudge him awake. He's calling plays in his sleep.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 14h

Wow, the OMB/NSF's attempt to eliminate the National Center for Atmospheric Research (among many other cuts to CO) sure seems to not just be climate denial but part of a coordinated effort to punish CO for convicting Tina Peters of tampering with voting machines www.denverpost.com/2026/08/14/c...

Screenshot from linked article:

The Justice Department’s pardon attorney told Trump ally Steve Bannon that federal officials were putting “the right kind of pressure” on the state to secure Peters’ transfer; Trump had also promised “harsh measures” if the former clerk remained incarcerated.

Four days before Underwood’s email, the president publicly issued Peters a symbolic pardon.

Within days of that “brainstorm call,” a conservative media outlet reported that the Department of Energy was cutting $615 million in funding intended for Colorado. The Department of Transportation said it would end $109 million in grant funding to the state. The Office of Management and Budget moved to shutter the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. Federal emergency officials rejected disaster relief funding for fire-scarred areas on the Western Slope. The Department of Agriculture ordered the state to swiftly re-certify 100,000 Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients.

Before the month was out, Trump vetoed legislation that would have brought clean water to parts of the state.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 3d

I think that 30pp should be discounted somewhat, seems like a lot of late-deciders broke for Crowley. The polls' numbers were ok-ish, but the headlines had the wrong interpretation b/c "Hong leads" wrongly implies that the undecideds look like the decideds. law.marquette.edu/poll/2026/07...

Vote choice by ideology for the (linked) Marquette poll, showing that as of July 22–27, the majority of "Moderate/Conservative" and "Liberal" voters were thinking "Barnes" (who later dropped out) or "Haven't decided" while 74% of "Very Liberal" voters had already decided for Hong

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 3d

fwiw, in the US House primary here, the anti-incumbent got half that. Pocan is probably a lot more popular hereabouts, but that's kinda the point. elections.countyofdane.com/Election-Res...

Voting results for "Dem Representative in Congress District 2" Douglas Alexander has 11.6%, and (incumbent) Mark Pocan has 88.3%.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 4d

thank u to @sabs.bsky.social for, among other things, mentioning the giraffe weevil, who is a great Little Guy to know about defector.com/theres-big-n...

The giraffe weevil. Looks like a normal red-and-black beetle sitting on a leaf, except that where its head should be it's got this weird chitinous neck, hinged at what looks like a ball and socket joint, with a tiny lil' normal looking head a the end. The "neck" is longer than the rest of its body

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· 24d

Gonna ask you the question on everybody's lips (I don't have a good answer either way myself) www.vox.com/politics/496...

Screenshot from a Vox article: a photo of Mandela Barnes at a lectern and a subhed reading "Why not Mandela Barnes?"

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jul 14

"The modern soybean is one of the world’s miracle technologies, capable of cheaply, efficiently, and healthfully feeding billions of people. But, unfortunately, we’ve mostly chosen to squander it on the most destructive purposes possible." ~ @mbolotnikova.bsky.social 🎁 www.vox.com/future-perfe...

The old headline of the linked article: "Why the Trump administration loves the stupidest renewable energy / America's biofuels policy is helping destroy the world's rainforests."

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jul 11

I'll miss HSS too 🫠, but folks interested in #HistGeo should also check out my friend Cam's great work on peat bog fossils and the rest of what looks like an exciting set of talks on the history of deep time

052. Stratigraphy, Deep Time, and the Making of Geological Knowledge 2
Contributed Paper Session
11:00 am to 12:30 pm, Monday 13 July
EICC: Floor, Level 1 - Harris Suite 2
Participants:
“Organic Remains Restored”: Leonard
Horner, August Goldfuss, and
International Geological Research in
Penny Magazine, 1833 Anne Ricculli, Morris
Museum
New Practices of Scientific Internationalism
in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The
Example of Geology Brian Vick, Emory
University
Bones in the Bog: Giant Deer, Ancient
Landscapes, and the Politics of
Prehistory in Nineteenth-Century Ireland
Cameron Daddis, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Chair:
Nan Kim, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

A related of talks ("...The Making of Geological Knowledge 1") at 9:15 on Monday the 13th, featuring Rachel Walcott, Serena Masters, and Josef Řídký and chaired by Jim Secord

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jul 6

Celebrated America's 250th with the best possible use of our amber waves of grain: my* famous† BBQ ribs‡ *Miyoko Schinner's recipe; link down-thread †Praised in national news site vox dot com ‡ #vegan (made of seitan) 🎁 www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Text followed by picture: The best ultra-processed food to eat on the 4th of July — Last Independence Day, I (okay, my husband) made these life-changing plant-based ribs from Miyoko Schinner’s The Homemade Vegan Pantry. The magic ingredient is wheat gluten, which the NOVA classification treats as a marker of “ultra-processing,” but we’ll be repeating them every Fourth until I die. The full recipe is available on Schinner’s YouTube channel here.

Picture of a baking tray stuffed with seitan BBQ ribs, charred pieces slathered in a rich reddish-brown bbq sauce

The same ribs as in the previous picture (actually this year's version, not last year's), but in the process of cooking -- four cuts of seitan "meat" on a wooden cutting board, all charred and marinated in sauce, with one sliced open to reveal the savory reddish-orange interior

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jul 2

Really compelled by @mnolangray.bsky.social 's argument here that Zoning is not only often unproductive in itself, but has taken Planning departments' attention away from what they should be doing to guide growth

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American planners were animated by real civic ambition, laying out future-minded street grids that could continue to grow and connect the residential and the commercial. One reason more recent development has been so poorly designed, Gray argues, is that planners have become so bogged down enforcing the tedious minutiae of zoning codes. “Zoning has utterly consumed planning, to the point that many city planning departments now do little that would resemble what a normal person might think of as planning,” he writes in his book Arbitrary Lines. Gray calls for abolishing zoning altogether, and freeing up municipal planning offices for more useful work that can accommodate the changes we know we need to make to our housing stock.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jun 29

[Clickhole voice]: Heartwarming 🔫👮🌞

Reddit post in /r/nextfuckinglevel headlined "Berlin police using water cannons to cool crowds in the heat"; still in the video below shows a police vehicles shooting water cannons at a high angle over a crowd of people in a cobblestoned Central European-style plaza

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Apr 28

Timing probably depends on traffic, but busses drop off at the departures gates, so the van Galder=>L transfer was the quickest in the entire itinerary. Plus, vegan food at Union Station is slim pickings, so the L gave me more flexibility & a chance to enjoy the city a bit during my transfer. YMMV!

Picture taken from within a CTA train, going over the Chicago river. It's a bright sunny day, with the glass skyscrapers reflecting the blue sky and fluffy clouds

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Mar 31

The famous DaShareZone "Just Walk Out" image of a skeleton purposefully walking away from something in a blue-and-white liminal space. White text over the image reads "JUST WALK OUT / you can leave!!! / work / social thing / movies / home / class / dentist / clothes shoppi / too fancy weed store / cops if your quick / friend ships / IF IT SUCKS... HIT DA BRICKS!! [finally, in cursive] real winners quit"

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jan 14

I get that reporting standards can be vague but I doubt that this is just a statistical artifact captimes.com/news/public-...

Monona officers outpace peers

Since 2021, the Monona Police Department has logged 220 pursuits with 20 officers on its force.

In comparison, the Madison Police Department, with over 500 officers, reported 78 pursuits in the same four-year period.

Under state open records laws, the Cap Times obtained the pursuit data for Dane County law enforcement agencies from the state Department of Transportation, which is required by law to collect the data.

The records show over half of Monona’s pursuits exceeded 100 miles per hour and 42 of those chases resulted in crashes, more than for any other Dane County agency. Two officers and 12 others were injured in addition to the deaths of Nelson, Ray and Willis.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jan 13

I thought this tidbit from a linked article -- that when Obama agencies raised their various VSLs in 2011, the Chamber of Commerce suddenly pivoted back to "eh actually these are incommensurate, let Congress decide" -- was compelling www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/b...

Most of the difference came from the increased value of human life. By raising that number to $6.1 million from a figure of $3.5 million in the original study, the Obama administration rendered those 135 lives — and hundreds of averted injuries — more valuable than the roofs.
The pattern of increases is scrambling a long-standing political dynamic. The business community historically has pushed for regulators to put a dollar value on life, part of a broader campaign to make agencies prove that the benefits of proposed regulations exceed the costs.
But some business groups are reconsidering the effectiveness of cost-benefit analysis as a check on regulations. The United States Chamber of Commerce is now campaigning for Congress to assert greater control over the rule-making process, reflecting a judgment that formulas may offer less reliable protection than politicians.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Nov 14

your post put this image in my head so now I'm putting it online

a doctored photo of a WeWork building, in which the letters "w-e" on the building's sign have been replaced by the letters "j-e-e" in a shoddy photoshop job. The building has a glass facade framed by tan concrete on the top floors and dark gray stone on the bottom floors. Palm trees slightly soften the edges but do not mitigate the imposing looming of the building

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Oct 29

It is ever cheaper & easier to produce new science undermining key regulations. Technical/"objective" signals of merit don't prevent this, and relying on social signals like funding source breeds resentment (and, as reanalysis becomes cheaper/easier, they may grow less reliable too)

"However, if we distinguish between replication (performing a study de novo) and reanalysis (re-examining an existing study’s data), several things become clear. First, recent clashes are part of a long conflict over data access, stretching back at least to the 1990s: while some actors may be interested in preventing the consideration of certain data, others are interested in reanalyzing data to challenge the scientific consensus, and in fact have done so. Second, using procedure or methodological quality to adjudicate reanalyses often fails, leading to a recourse to reputational markers that amplifies conflict. Scientific transparency is a"

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Oct 29

In v2 of our preprint on "Adversarial Reanalysis," Kelsey Ichikawa, @nicolecnelson.bsky.social, & added our take on Gold Standard Science as an example of how #OpenData challenges science's existing tools for self-governance osf.io/preprints/me... #sts #metascience

MetaArXiv title on osf.io: "Adversarial reanalysis and the challenge of open data in regulatory science"

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Sep 21

It's awkward phrasing, but I don't read this as barring anything that *isn't* education/advocacy/support, so much as saying that those explicitly *will* be allowed, even in forms that might otherwise violate other rules. But possible that I (& bsky!) have not thought through how this could go wrong!

E. Mental Health & Wellbeing: We support a healthier community by prohibiting content that could harm people's mental or physical health.

Do not share content, methods, instructions, or promotion of self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, and extreme dieting practices.
Do not share methods, instructions, depictions, or promotion of dangerous stunts or abuse of dangerous or controlled substances.

5. Protected Expression

These guidelines protect legitimate expression that serves the public interest and supports community wellbeing. The following content is welcome on Bluesky when appropriately labeled and contextually framed:

Journalism, Analysis, Education, and Advocacy:
Factual reporting, academic research, or educational content about matters of public interest, safety, or legal significance.
Anti-violence advocacy, safety campaigns, and prevention resources that raise awareness without providing harmful methods or glorifying harm.
Content warnings about dangerous viral challenges or emerging safety threats.
Support, Recovery, and Mental Health:
Personal recovery experiences or survivor stories shared to promote healing and community support rather than encouraging harmful behavior.
Sharing verified mental health resources, crisis prevention information, and support group discussions.
Transparency and Public Information: Publicly available information from official sources such as court records, business filings, property records, or related to government transparency and public officials.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Sep 17

Doomers, who treat super-intelligent AI as likely and threatening, treat intelligent as almost a magic power, but it's much more heterogeneous, spiky (and, I would add relational) than that; But the AI-as-Normal-Tech argument seems naive about the incentives to use risky AI in, e.g., Mil Tech

Second, what exactly does this argument take “intelligence” to mean? It seems to be treating it as a unitary property (Yudkowsky told me that there’s “a compact, regular story” underlying all intelligence). ==But intelligence is not one thing, and it’s not measurable on a single continuum. It’s almost certainly more like a variety of heterogenous things== — attention, imagination, curiosity, common sense — and it may well be intertwined with our social cooperativeness, our sensations, and our emotions. Will AI have all of these? Some of these? We aren’t sure of the kind of intelligence AI will attain. Besides, just because an intelligent being has a lot of capability, that doesn’t mean it has a lot of power — the ability to modify the environment — and power is what’s really at stake here.

One of the most glaring flaws of the normalist view is that it doesn’t even try to talk about the military.
Yet military applications — from autonomous weapons to lightning-fast decision-making about whom to target — are among the most critical for advanced AI. ==They’re the use cases most likely to make governments feel that all countries absolutely are in an AI arms race, so they must plow ahead, risks be damned.== That weakens the normalist camp’s view that we won’t necessarily deploy AI at scale if it seems risky.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Aug 20

I still think about this (from 2018!) regularly. So many people reaching seeking solace from the "privilege of an apocalypse" proteanmag.com/2018/12/11/n...

Two paragraphs from the linked essay. The passage begins by pointing out that climate change brings the timescales of geology and human life into "nightmarish combination" and then continues: "The paralyzing effect of discussing this leads some to conceive of climate change as Armageddon, the end of the world as we know it. But this too is inaccurate. In the near future, we will be denied the privilege of an apocalypse. There will be no point at which external forces will summarily and magnificently end human enterprise, because there will be no recognizable end. Like an engine starting to wheeze, sputter, and break down, the expanding growth of our economy will begin to be undercut by the intractable difficulties of adapting to these new conditions."

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jul 6

Still better than dairy milk on basically every metric, and the good news is that there are even better options -- soy milk is high-protein, low impact, and delicious; imo The King of Milks ourworldindata.org/environmenta...

$charts from Our World in Data showing the environmental impact (in land use, greenhouse gas, freshwater use and eutrophication) of dairy milk and various alternatives. Dairy milk is by far the most impactful; only in water use do any of the plant alternatives even reach half the impact of dairy milk (Almond milk uses ~370 liters of water per liter of milk, to dairy milk's ~630). In every other case, every other milk has a fraction of the impact$

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· Jun 19

BTW you probably aren't allergic to penicillin, and if your chart says you are, ask your doc about delabeling for your own sake and the sake of antibiotic stewardship. Test might be 1hr; $0 out-of-pocket Helps everyone if front-line antibiotics are available! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Abstract
Background

Even though 8%-25% of most populations studied globally are labeled as penicillin allergic, most diagnoses of penicillin allergy are made in childhood and relate to events that are either not allergic in nature, are low risk for immediate hypersensitivity, or are a potential true allergy that has waned over time. Penicillin allergy labels directly impact antimicrobial stewardship by leading to use of less effective and broader spectrum antimicrobials and are associated with antimicrobial resistance. They may also delay appropriate antimicrobial therapy and lead to increased risk of specific adverse healthcare outcomes. Operationalizing penicillin allergy de-labeling into a new arm of antimicrobial stewardship programs (ASPs) has become an increasing global focus.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· May 29

INWORKS data availability statement from their most recent pub: www.bmj.com/content/382/...

Data availability statement

For reasons of ethics and permissions from different agencies, the data are maintained at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Lyon, France) and cannot be made available outside of the agency.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· May 29

Follow up: in another EO on Friday, the White House apparently ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to reconsider the Linear No Threshold dose response model discussed in our paper, at least in regards to radiation www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...

Screenshot from White House site: (b) Adopt science-based radiation limits. In particular, the NRC shall reconsider reliance on the linear no-threshold (LNT) model for radiation exposure and the “as low as reasonably achievable” standard, which is predicated on LNT. Those models are flawed, as discussed in section 1 of this order. In reconsidering those limits, the NRC shall specifically consider adopting determinate radiation limits, and in doing so shall consult with the Department of Defense (DOD), the Department of Energy (DOE), and the Environmental Protection Agency.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· May 26

Such science – even in less-partisan contexts – can be difficult & time-consuming to adjudicate properly. There's no objectively best analytical decision, & reputational markers are imperfect at best & counterproductive at worst. We don't have a lot of solutions, but hoping this prompts discussion!

When they do gain access, the debate necessarily shifts away from the quality of the data they hold and towards the quality of the analysis they have conducted. This is typically more difficult and time consuming to adjudicate. Even in cases not already mired in political controversy, disagreements about whether to use dichotomized or continuous variables or which participants to exclude can consume hours of time from dozens of editors and reviewers. A recourse to reputational markers may further exacerbate the problem by feeding a politics of resentment that provides additional motivation for dissident scientists to engage in these disputes

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· May 26

Anyway, we see these political actions -- subpoenas, legislation, regulations -- as continuous with attempts by folks we call "dissident scientists" to gain access to regulatory data. They were often stymied by data holders, but when they did gain access they did do and publish science on these data

that this is a case where the cigar may just be a cigar—there is ample historical evidence to show that proponents of the Transparency Rule did want access to data to perform their own reanalyses. Moreover, taking these efforts at face value is analytically useful because it demonstrates how open data polices, regardless of motive, could promote adversarial reanalysis and produce potentially paralyzing challenges to existing scientific and regulatory infrastructures.

Bennett@bennettmcintosh· May 26

As @danhicks.bsky.social notes, this order has a lot of continuity with the Pruitt/Wheeler EPA's "Strengthening Transparency" rules – and we trace that history back as well to legislation aimed at "secret science" in the early 2010s and to attempts as early as the 1990s to access regulatory data