Nathaniel Hendrix

@nhendrix.bsky.social

614 Followers 1166 Following

Healthcare data scientist and researcher in Washington, DC 🌱🐈‍⬛🐈‍⬛🐈🏳️‍🌈 nathanielhendrix.substack.com nathanielhendrix.com

A human approaches a woman at her desk and says hello in Chinese. She says, “Aww, you’re sentient.” A computer approaches the same woman and says hello in Chinese. She looks panicked, picks up her phone, and says, “Hello, John Searle?!”

A chart showing value of NIH grants over calendar months by year. The 2025 level initially lagged far below previous years, but has now caught up to the average.

Text from Waymo's safety report: "91% fewer serious injury or worse crashes. 79% fewer airbag deployment crashes. 80% fewer injury-causing crashes. 92% fewer pedestrian crashes with injuries. 78% fewer cyclist crashes with injuries. 89% fewer motorcycle crashes with injuries."

A Threads post stating that the PetSmart point has a stronger exchange rate to the US dollar than the Argentine peso (9,794 points = $18)

Two tuxedo cats and a gray and white cow cat look expectantly at the viewer. They are spaced far apart because they all loathe each other. There is a small, cat-sized couch in the foreground.

The hosts of Project Runway

Two small, elegant birds stand side by side on a window sill, on the other side of the window from the photographer.

Two tuxedo cats sitting together on a blanket. One cat is fluffy, the other is silky.

A conversation with Claude. The poster asks Claude to replicate in ASCII art a screenshot of a woman with one arm curled up and the other curled down. Claude instead makes a person with their arms crossed in front of them.

Low resolution web graphic with fireworks and bubbly gold text reading, "Happy New Year 2008"

From “The Information” by James Gleick: “"Those composing formal legal documents, such as charters and deeds, often felt the need to express their sensation of speaking to an invisible audience: “Oh! all ye who shall have heard this and have seen!” (They found it awkward to keep tenses straight, like voicemail novices leaving their first messages circa 1980.) Many charters ended with the word “Goodbye.”"

A quote from Ursula K. LeGuin: "Lévi-Strauss suggests that to combine the hot and the
cold is to transfer mechanical operational modes to machines while retaining organic modes for humanity. Mechanical process; biological rhythm. A kind of superspeed electronic yang train, in whose yin pullmans and dining cars life is serene and the rose on the table does not even tremble."

A quote from Matthew Rose's article, "Leo Strauss and the Closed Society": "By the “closed society” [Strauss] didn’t mean non-Western cultures, pre-Enlightenment thought, or even undemocratic polities. The closed society represented a perennial moral possibility, whose roots are found in every human soul and whose demands must be confronted by every human community. In its most common expression, the closed society levels a familiar accusation: that the open society is immoral, or at least amoral, because it jeopardizes the very possibility of living a virtuous life."

Quote that reads: "Cultural imprinting is the mechanism whereby an ad, rather than trying to change our minds individually, instead changes the landscape of cultural meanings — which in turn changes how we are perceived by others when we use a product. Whether you drink Corona or Heineken or Budweiser "says" something about you. But you aren't in control of that message; it just sits there, out in the world, having been imprinted on the broader culture by an ad campaign. It's then up to you to decide whether you want to align yourself with it."

Quote from an article reading, "Mass movements that are good at what they do make previously content individuals frustrated and further frustrate their adherents while pretending to advance the movement. This means that the strongest mass movements are inevitably going to be the ones that are the best at not delivering the goods. Any movement that actually advances the interests of its frustrated supporters will make them less frustrated. Hence, they’ll stop being members."

Top artists by month in Apple Music: Jan/Feb Eberhard Weber, March Jean Rondeau, April Miles Davis, May Sam Gendel, June Charli xcx, July Total Blue, August Andy Stott, September The Fiery Furnaces, October Eartheater, November Amnesia Scanner.

A wooden chess piece in the shape of a giraffe from the neck up with a decorative collar near its head

A tweet from Lewis Bollard that reads, “The new cabinet will likely contain more animal welfare advocates than any prior cabinet:

- @PamBondi championed a federal anti-cruelty bill and a ban on greyhound racing in Florida
- @TulsiGabbard is an ethical vegan who championed an anti-factory farming bill in Congress
- @VivekGRamaswamy has spoken out against cruelty, including to factory-farmed animals.
- @RobertKennedyJr led a group fighting factory farms, which he has blasted for animal abuse.

The test now is if they'll fight cruelty in their new roles. And if the USDA nominee -- who oversees most animal industries -- will share their anti-cruelty convictions.”

Screen cap from the American Medical Association Morning Rounds newsletter that reads, “More than one in five Americans suffer from long COVID, review suggests.
HealthDay (11/8, Thompson) reported, “More than 1 in 5 Americans likely suffer from long COVID, a new AI-assisted review has found.” The findings suggest “that nearly 23% of U.S. adults experience the symptoms of long COVID.” That is “much higher than the 7% prevalence of long COVID that’s been suggested by other studies, researchers said.” The findings were published in Med.”

A slightly plump cat lounges on a hardwood floor, his gray and white fur radiant and an expression of ease on his face. In an inset picture, the same cat is shown, but as a sickly, dirty kitten, standing on a white and orange towel.

A blue book cover featuring a fist crushing a pair of scissors

Brutalist library featuring two giant columns that look kinda like walrus tusks

A quote from Robin Hanson’s article, “Who Should Be Our ‘Adults’?”: ‘A common “libertarian” vision is to treat all fully grown humans as “adults” in this sense. But in fact such humans have usually not been full trusted, free, or responsible. Among foragers, the band as a whole, discussing together, was more of an “adult”, trusted to limit the behavior of band members. Later on, during the farmer/herder era, family clans were more the “adults”, held responsible for member behavior and able to limit those individuals. Larger nations and empires have also been treated by the world as “adults”, free to choose and to be destroyed.’

A medium-hair tuxedo cat with big green eyes sitting on the arm of an office chair, looking extremely stately

Book cover of Yergin’s “The Prize.” It’s all black with some lettering in flames.