Near the blue Caribbean Sea
Joined January 2008
- Tweets2.6K
- Following948
- Followers362
- Likes3.3K
LWG retweeted
Here is a beautiful list! 125 free math textbooks, written by the mathematicians who teach the courses and shared on their own university pages. No sign-up, no paywall, no pirated copies. From high school algebra to graduate analysis. 👇
abakcus.com/book-lists/free-…
LWG retweeted
beautiful explanation. this is 100% happening. xitter.cf/sotak/status/211179423…
LWG retweeted
This part is like a glass of fresh water. Critical thinking is the *outcome* of secure domain knowledge, not its replacement.
LWG retweeted
I read hundreds of papers during my PhD.
Here is the literature review matrix I wish I'd used from day one.
Early on, I made the mistake most people make.
I read, highlighted, and hoped I'd remember how the studies connected.
I didn't. The literature became a pile.
What changed everything was a simple table.
One row per study, the same columns every time.
A few things that make it work:
→ Fill the same columns for every paper.
↳ Consistency is what lets you compare studies instead of just listing them.
→ Summarize findings in your own words.
↳ If you can't, you haven't understood the paper yet.
→ Use the last column to link each study to your own work.
↳ This is where a summary becomes a literature review.
The goal is to see where the field agrees, where it conflicts, and where the gap is that your study can fill.
Save this for your next review.
What's your system for keeping track of what you read?
LWG retweeted
12 Shakespeare quotes that continue to live beyond the stage.
From ambition and love to fate, identity, grief, and the complexity of human nature, Shakespeare had a way of putting timeless truths into words. These lines remind us why his works remain relevant centuries later.
LWG retweeted
小孩问庄子，什么是诡辩。庄子反问：我家来了两个客人，一个很干净，一个很脏。我请他俩洗澡，你觉得谁会洗？
小孩脱口而出；肯定是脏的那个!
庄子摇摇头：不对。干净的人爱干净，脏的人不在乎脏，应该是干净的人洗。
小孩赶紧改口：那就是干净的洗。
庄子又笑了：又错了。干净的人没必要洗，脏的人才需要洗，是脏的洗。
小孩情了：那到底是谁洗？
庄子说：干净的人有习惯，脏的人有需要，两个人都洗。不等小孩反应，他又补了一句；其实俩人都不洗，干净的不用洗，脏的不爱洗。
小孩彻底迷糊。
庄子这才点明：这就是诡辩。逻辑都通顺，但答案却不一样，很多人跟你争论，逻辑听着都没问题，但结论可以随意变换。
绕来绕去，目的不是求真，只是把你绕晕。
遇到这种诡辩，不必争辩。
LWG retweeted
Check out this useful definition of “mental health” from psychoanalytic instructor @JonathanShedler. It’s an assembly of attributes and practices that can be quantified and discussed in session, rather than merely conjectured.
LWG retweeted
Sometime before 2016, a psychiatrist started asking their late-diagnosed adult patients with ADHD whether they thought they were more sensitive to rejection and failure than other people.
They said that they were. He didn’t (as far as I can tell) do any comparison with people with mental health problems, or with those with social anxiety. He didn’t look at children or those diagnosed in childhood. He just asked his patients to self-compare with others.
There were no attempts to test out whether this was specific to ADHD, nor universal in those with ADHD.
In 2016, the psychiatrist, William Dodson, gave this a name - rejection sensitivity dysphoria - and started writing about it. It resonated with influencers who created content talking about their RSD. It quickly multiplied. Articles were written about it on official sounding websites. Qualitative research was done, asking people who had heard about RSD whether they experienced it and what it was like.
By 2024, Dodson was saying that RSD was neurological and genetic, not related to trauma and wouldn’t respond to psychotherapy.
By 2026, bestselling author Alex Partridge wrote a whole book about his RSD, pinning it squarely to ADHD and saying that RSD ‘explained my entire life’. He gave a convincing sounding brain-based explanation about ‘glitches’ in how the ADHD brain processes dopamine and nor-epinephrine, and how these lead to rejection feeling far more brutal than for people without ADHD. There is no evidence of this that I have found.
And in this way a psychological and emotional reaction was framed as a neurobiological symptom. Millions started to think that perhaps they had ADHD, because they were sensitive to rejection and failure. RSD spread, and soon people started saying it was part of autism too.
Why does that matter? Because when people think something is due to how their brains work, they think that it is set in stone and won’t change. They think that medication is their only option, and that psychotherapy has nothing to offer. Emotional sensitivity is a really common psychological symptom, and it hasn’t been shown that it’s uniquely part of ADHD. RSD is an example of how neurodivergence is expanding to incorporate emotional reactions, and in the process turning psychology into neurology.
With RSD, the most basic scientific questions haven’t been answered, but you’d never know that from what you see online. There, it all seems so certain and clear.
It’s not.
LWG retweeted
El Nobel de Medicina 2026 deja una paradoja extraordinaria: Karl Deisseroth ayudó a crear una técnica capaz de encender y apagar neuronas con luz y precisión de milisegundos. Sin embargo, sostiene que “no hay bisturí más preciso que una palabra o una frase bien construida”.
La frase no nació hablando sólo de psiquiatría. Deisseroth discutía algo más incómodo: cómo políticos, medios y otras personas pueden modificar nuestra conducta mediante el lenguaje. La optogenética interviene circuitos desde la biología; las palabras pueden hacerlo a través del significado, la memoria, las emociones y las expectativas.
Ahí aparece también un problema jurídico antiguo con una dimensión nueva: si las palabras tienen poder real sobre las personas, ¿cómo protegemos simultáneamente la libertad de expresión y la autonomía frente a la manipulación? Quizá la neurociencia esté demostrando algo que el Derecho sabe desde hace siglos: gobernar las palabras también es gobernar poder.
LWG retweeted
I reread this every year.
I cry like a baby every year.
Todd Beamer died a father, husband, and hero.
Todd: Hello… Operator… listen to me. I can’t speak very loud. This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco. Our plane has been hijacked.
Lisa: I understand. Can they see you?
Todd: No. There are three that we know of. They have knives — razor knives, like box cutters. Someone announced from the cockpit there was a bomb. It sounded fake.
Lisa: Your name?Todd: Todd Beamer. United Flight 93.Todd: They killed one passenger in first class. They forced most of us back. Fourteen of us here. Five flight attendants. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor.
Lisa: Are you okay?
Todd: We’re going down… wait. No. We’re leveling off. We changed directions. We’re flying east again.
Todd: A guy named Jeremy called his wife. She told him two planes hit the World Trade Center. Lisa, is that true?
Lisa: I have to tell you the truth. It’s very bad. Both towers are gone. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Our country is under attack. I’m afraid your plane may be part of their plan.
Todd: Oh God. Lisa, will you do something for me? Call my wife and my kids. Promise me you’ll call.
Lisa: I promise.
Todd: Our home number is… You have the same name as my wife. Lisa. We’ve been married ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her I love her. I’ll always love her. We have two boys — David, he’s 3, and Andrew, he’s 1. Tell them their daddy loves them and he is so proud of them. The baby is due January 12th. I saw an ultrasound. We still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy.
Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.)
Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol.
Todd: I understand. I’ll be back.
Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot.
Lisa: What are you going to do?
Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out.
Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.
LWG retweeted
"Expert intelligence" - new feature of Gemini that allows buyers of an ebook to apply the knowledge in the book to their own projects. In this case, the advice in my writing style manual, The Sense of Style, is applied to a draft of the user's writing. I checked it out and it's really good -- the advice is very close to what I would have said.
The power of Expert Intelligence in @Gemini_Notebook:
Add The Sense of Style by @sapinker to a notebook with a draft you're writing. Ask for feedback based on Pinker's ideas.
It's the opposite of AI slop: personalized advice based on human expertise, facilitated by AI.
And what I love about this is that I'm getting actionable suggestions here AND Notebook is serving as a guide to Pinker's underlying philosophy of writing. So I'm learning deeper principles as I improve my draft. And of course everything in the Notebook response points directly back to specific passages in Pinker (and my own draft) with citations.
We have a Featured Notebook curated by Steven Pinker available here, but if you purchase the book, you can add it to any notebook you want. (And read it in its entirely in Notebook or the Google Play Books reader.)
notebook.google.com/notebook…
LWG retweeted
"Parenthood is not an exact science, but a vexed privilege and a blessed trial, absolutely necessary and not altogether possible."
— Wendell Berry, Family Work
My favorite single sentence on parenthood I've ever read.
LWG retweeted
hold on what do you mean “cover”
1997. Natalie Imbruglia’s cover of ‘Torn’. A cultural phenomenon. Hairdressers inundated with requests for pixie cuts. Cargo trouser sales soared. MTV had it on repeat. Guess you had to be there! @notgwendalupe @8090Throwbacks @Phil3Pan @UKBackintheDay2
LWG retweeted
“These are 17- and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn’t fill in four words. Four words!”
Darius Williams, a teacher at Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, was overcome with emotion on only the second day of the school year when he discovered that several of his high school seniors could not complete a simple literacy exercise.
In a viral video filmed during his lunch break, a tearful Williams described how, even after guiding students carefully through a reading assignment and nearly supplying the answers himself, many of his 17- and 18-year-old pupils still could not complete a four-word sentence.
He emphasized that the same students were fully capable of expressing sophisticated ideas and engaging in thoughtful verbal debate. Their difficulty appeared only when they tried to convert those ideas into written language.
The emotional video has spread quickly across social media and drawn attention to what many education specialists describe as a widespread literacy crisis in the United States.
Some online observers have pointed to the influence of technology, citing research that links increased use of artificial intelligence tools with declining literacy skills among young people. Others have criticized educational policies that discourage holding back struggling students. Still others have stressed that the roots of the problem often lie in limited parental support at home.
Williams’s visible distress has highlighted the heavy burden carried by public school teachers as they work to close large academic gaps and equip students with the basic skills required for adult life.
