Cheryl Rofer

Cheryl Rofer

@cherylrofer.bsky.social

7718

Posts

Retired nuclear scientist. Worked in Estonia, Kazakhstan, and Los Alamos.

Posting on nuclear issues, war, nature, science, and women's issues. Also cats. She/her.

Blogs at Nuclear Diner and Lawyers, Guns & Money

Banner photo is a Bullock's Oriole.

Posts Replies Media Lists

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I periodically ask ChatGPT to describe very basic things about nuclear weapons to me. It does a great job of regurgitating well-known information, but then will insert subtle hallucinations that only someone already well-informed on the topic would catch.

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Project 2025

Project 2025 - Lawyers, Guns & Moneywww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com Project 2025 is one of the Republican campaign’s big vulnerabilities, after Donald Trump and the operatives and elected officials who are calling for blood. Trump and even Stephen Miller now recognize this and have issued claims that they had no idea this was going on, which are not credible. Project 2025 is an enunciation of […]

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“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’"

The governors of a dozen Republican-led states — AL, AK, FL, GA, IA, MS, OK, SC, SD, TX, UT, WY — opted out of a new federal food assistance program, leaving about 9.5 million students without the aid this summer

Republican-led states are blocking summer food benefits for hungry familieswww.usatoday.com Money for food is especially tight for families in a dozen states where Republican lawmakers declined to accept federal food assistance.

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🎶 Ұлттық домбыра күні құтты болсын! 🎶 We wish you a wonderful National Dombyra Day with a concert from the Kazakh National Conservatory in #Almaty in #Kazakhstan. #travel #music

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I’ve been very lucky to see beluga in the Churchill river a number of times, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this. There are a few hundred whales here churning up the water, herding capelin into a bait ball to feed. It was incredible! 🌿🐳https://youtu.be/sgM21bM0wd8?si=QDNac_tw5hYbmFsm

Beluga Feeding Frenzy in the Churchill River.youtu.be A few hundred beluga whales are charging back-and-forth, herding schools of capelin into a bait ball so that they can scoop them up and eat them. While there...

Jose loaf

Thank heavens for Rebecca Solnit.

Why is the pundit class so desperate to push Biden out of the race? | Rebecca Solnitwww.theguardian.com Yes, Biden had a bad debate – but so did Trump. The media is once again repeating the mistakes of 2016

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It’s more complex than this but: 1% response rates force pollsters to infer; the responses they get may reflect only trends within the set {will take a phone poll} This is why polls are broken: inferences can’t scale down this far. If you want to know what’s gonna happen in Nov, go make it happen.

13/ To put some numbers to this, polling prior to 2008 had extremely high response rates, and pollsters were flipping their shit that in 2008 their response rate, P(R), was down to 30%. Many polls we're seeing now have P(R) down under 1%. The real analysis is more complex, but this is the idea.

@digby56.bsky.social has a partial cheat sheet on Project 2025. @nadabakos.bsky.social @hayesbrown.bsky.social

Incomplete Cheat Sheet - Digby's Hullabaloodigbysblog.net That's just for starters. Trump says that he doesn't know the people involved or anything about it but he doesn't agree with it. He's not bright. https://twitter.com/mjfree/status/1809445482487...

This is weird. I went to the Project 2025 website yesterday and found their report right off. No problem, I thought, so I didn't bookmark it. But today I can't find it. Can anyone give me a link? @hayesbrown.bsky.social

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Whoa.

Masoud Pezeshkian, the reformist candidate who advocated moderate policies at home and improved relations with the West, won the presidential runoff in Iran against a hard-line rival, according to results released by the interior ministry on Saturday. nyti.ms/3xMgPZc

Hey folks, I just put up a post at LGM on the stakes of the election!

At Stake: Reproductive Rights

At Stake: Reproductive Rights - Lawyers, Guns & Moneywww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com Whatever the outcome of the current panic, Dobbs and the end of Roe v. Wade are an important part of the campaign and election. For the past half-century or so, Supreme Court decisions have extended the scope of rights. Dobbs revoked the right of more than half the population to bodily autonomy. Some of us […]

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We can still do it. The Soviet Union was going to last forever until it didn’t. We built them. We can take them apart.

i guess i should just go ahead and make a meme out of this. Sigh. can you believe i once thought i stood a fair chance of living to see nuclear weapons eliminated entirely? how naive of me

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Meanwhile. This is what the House GOP has in store for health. aspph.org/news/pressro...

ASPPH Opposes Public Health Cuts in House FY 2025 Spending Billaspph.org June 27, 2024 – The Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) is deeply concerned by cuts and structural changes to public health agencies proposed in the House

I am highly skeptical of the polls this year, but for those who celebrate them, here is a result to consider.

NEW: Biden has narrowed Trump’s lead in swing states despite a widely panned presidential debate performance, the Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll finds

Biden Narrows Gap With Trump in Swing States Despite Debate Losswww.bloomberg.com The incumbent trails his GOP rival by just 2 points across key states, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult shows, even as three in 10 Democrats say he should leave the race.

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If I could repost this a million times I would.

one of the most dishonest things people in my profession do is pretend as if “the story” and “the narrative” isn’t something they have direct control over

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There's no responsible way to precisely model uncertainty (or bias) when we know for a fact that several black swans are in play. Doesn't mean modeling / polling / etc. are useless, but it does mean anyone who's not being humble about how much we know is too arrogant.

The problem is this is just a really hard election to properly model; in some profound ways it's not like any election up to 2016, and has some very important differences to 2016 or 2020 too in lots of important directions. Which isn't great for anxiety. But it does mean it's still all to play for.

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These are terrible human beings, and they should be kept as far away from power as possible.

As a side note, this is John McEntee, Trump's Director of White House Personnel and the primary architect of Project 2025. On Tik Tok he said he gives counterfeit bills to homeless people so they will be arrested when they go to spend them.

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This is not just dangerous, it’s also annoying. Some of us told you Trump was a threat to our democracy in 2015. We’ve been managing these feelings since then & through a lot of days when anxiety (worry about something not currently happening) became fear (focus on a threat). Toughen up or shut up.

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If you want polls that predict a Trump loss-if that is your condition for accepting that Biden is the nominee for good reasons like he is doing a great job running the country after beating Trump: You can’t have it. Polling is broken. We won’t know until we know. Manage those feelings & get to work.

what you want isn’t Nominee Harris. it’s a comfortable lead over Trump. the evidence that switching to Harris will produce that comfortable lead is nonexistent. so reassure me that you’re not going to continue filling your drawers if you get what you say you want.

Good night y'all. Fortunately, tomorrow is the weekend. The best thing today came just before I came back to the desktop to post. All three kitties were playing a game together with a piece they had removed from furniture. Each one had it and passed it on to the others. Smart kitties!

Absolutely true!

I’m not freaking out either

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I’ve been more than patient with everyone’s freak out. I too am concerned but I’m fully behind Biden-Harris and won’t say one word to jeopardize their/our win. If, from this point on, you continue to call for him to step down, I will mute or block. We don’t have time for foolishness. There

After watching the Biden interview, for better or worse, what is abundantly clear is he is not stepping down, so move on if you want to beat Trump.

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this is wayyy under-discussed

Thanks largely to Biden and the Democratic party there is now a kind of global race to get to the mass, chear carbon-free energy. We're going to hit peak global emissions (fingers crossed) this year or next. We're deploying solar at a level that blowing away every single prediction.

I have been thinking this

are we allowed to observe that a meaningful proportion of the Biden Old pundit freakout is white men getting up in their feelings about aging and losing their virility?

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are we allowed to observe that a meaningful proportion of the Biden Old pundit freakout is white men getting up in their feelings about aging and losing their virility?

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Arkansas, y'all.

Arkansas abortion rights groups collect enough signatures to advance ballot measurewww.nbcnews.com A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the ruby red state’s constitution is now one step closer to making the November ballot — but major obstacles remain.

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You know what? Go on about Biden's age and debate performance. Me? I'll focus on the existential threat that Donald Trump and his minions represent. We all have limited time and energy. Do you really want to spend July and August talking about Biden's infirmity? Do you really think this is helping?

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Another post from the thread of video and images of picketers in front of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house today. Their actions are pure speech like law textbooks discuss. tweet: x.com/LiteraryMous...

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I see it’s time to post this again, which I wrote the last time the Trump camp pulled this bullshit. www.funraniumlabs.com/2017/03/want...

So, You Want To Test A Nuclear Weapon? - Funranium Labswww.funraniumlabs.com I dedicate the following rant to my Lovely Assistant, who can probably recite this by heart now, and Meredith Yayanos who hit boggleface about halfway through an in person version and asked “PLEASE, W...