Rob Carnes

Retired physician. Writer, story-teller, rancher, CAPT(USN-ret.) Owner of a smart horse. Transplanted New Englander.
Find me on Bluesky: @robscott3.bsky.social

[El Club del Arte 🎨📷📚🖼🕍🎼 @Arteymas_]

En 1925, un año antes de su fallecimiento, Claude Monet se encontraba en la etapa final de su vida residiendo en su famosa casa de Giverny, Francia, el lugar que fue su hogar y máxima fuente de inspiración durante 43 años.

A pesar de sufrir graves problemas de visión debido a las cataratas, este período consolidó algunas de sus obras y registros fotográficos más íntimos y memorables.

[Rob Carnes @RobScott3]

@davidwkay @MrPitbull07 I agree with the previous post : this is the stpidist post I have read on this site, and there have been some zingers. But this one gets the award.

[Andrew—#IAmTheResistance @AmoneyResists]

$14 million “beautification” and just 3 days later it looks worse than ever because there was a reason we didn’t paint the reflecting pool dark colors like “American flag blue.” Mainly that it would raise the water temp and cause rapid algae growth.

[Rob Carnes @RobScott3]

@uncletwita @Crazymoments01 Terrified dog?

[Olena Rohoza @OlenaRohoza]

🧐🤔YOU WANTED A WALL, TRUMP? YOU’LL HAVE ONE.
Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, responded to Trump’s threats:
“So you voted to build a wall.
Well then, dear Americans — even if geography isn’t your strong suit, and you see America as a country rather than a continent — you should know that on the other side of that wall stand 7 billion people.
And if the word ‘people’ doesn’t resonate with you, let’s call them ‘consumers.’
Those 7 billion consumers can switch from iPhone to Samsung or Huawei in less than two days.
They can trade Levi’s for Zara or Massimo Dutti, and within six months replace Ford and Chevrolet with Toyota, KIA, Mazda, Honda, Hyundai, Volvo, Subaru, Renault, or BMW — brands that are already more popular in many places.
They can cancel DirecTV.
And even if they choose not to, they can stop watching Hollywood films and turn instead to higher-quality productions from Latin America or Europe — with richer storytelling and better filmmaking.
Believe it or not, people can skip Disney and visit the Xcaret resort in Cancún instead — or explore destinations across Mexico, Canada, or South America.
Even in Mexico, you can find better burgers than McDonald’s — with higher nutritional value.
Have you ever seen pyramids in the United States?
Egypt, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, and Sudan have ancient wonders — none of them in the U.S.
If they were, Trump would probably have bought and resold them by now.
We know Nike isn’t the only sneaker brand. There’s Adidas — and even Mexican brands like Panama.
We understand economics better than you think.
And we also know that when those 7 billion consumers stop buying American products, unemployment will rise, and your economy — trapped behind its own self-imposed wall — will begin to collapse to the point where you’ll be begging for help.
We didn’t want to do this.
But you wanted a wall?
Well.
You’ve got one.”
Her approval rating has reached a historic level — according to a recent poll, it stands at 85%.

[#PalabrasSueltas 🪶 @Atardecer_90]

"Pero existe algo que el tiempo no puede, a pesar de su innegable capacidad destructora, anular: y son los buenos recuerdos, los rostros del pasado, las horas en que uno ha sido feliz".

- Julio Cortázar

[Mykhailo Rohoza @MykhailoRohoza]

Donald Trump attacks Giorgia Meloni — and she delivers a fiery speech he’ll never forget.
Donald Trump thought he could easily score political points by calling Giorgia Meloni “an insult to Jesus,” accusing her of “not being woke,” and claiming that God does not discriminate. Unfortunately for “Don Dementia,” this time he picked the wrong target.
Standing at a historic location, Giorgia Meloni didn’t just respond — she delivered a full moral reckoning.
“The President of the United States just said that I insult Jesus,” Giorgia Meloni declared. “Do you want to know what really insults Jesus? Taking healthcare away from the sick while cutting taxes for billionaires.”
And that was only the beginning.
“Do you want to know what else insults Jesus?” she continued. “Deporting foreigners and separating children from their mothers.”
Then she went even further, touching on war, corruption, and hypocrisy.
“Do you want to know what insults Jesus? Bombing innocent schools in Iran and sending our brave men and women to die in yet another endless war… hiding the Epstein files and then refusing to prosecute anyone involved.”
This wasn’t politics as usual. It was a full moral indictment.
Giorgia Meloni, targeted by Trump for supporting transgender people and for saying that “trans children are children of God,” completely turned the tables. Instead of backing down, she grounded her message in the very teachings Trump tried to weaponize.
“I am not a perfect Christian,” she said. “There was only one perfect man, and two thousand years ago he was crucified.”
Then came the line that hit the hardest:
“Jesus told us to love our neighbor as ourselves… Can we imagine war in heaven? Can we imagine hatred in heaven? Can we imagine poverty in heaven? Then why do we tolerate these things on Earth?”
This is how you respond. Not with insults. Not with fear. But with clarity and conviction.
Trump tried to discredit her. Instead, Giorgia Meloni delivered a sermon that now echoes far beyond that hall.
Please share Giorgia Meloni’s inspiring words.

[Rob Carnes @RobScott3]

I know the man, as do thousands of others. Gifted teacher, a real gentleman and one of the reasons why MIT is what it is.

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

An MIT professor taught the same math course for 62 years, and the day he retired, students from every country on earth showed up online to watch him give his final lecture.

I opened the playlist at 2am and ended up watching three of them back to back.

His name is Gilbert Strang. The course is MIT 18.06 Linear Algebra.

Every machine learning engineer, every data scientist, every quant, every self-taught programmer who actually understands how AI works learned the math from this one man. Most of them never set foot on MIT's campus. They just opened a free playlist on YouTube and let him teach.

Here's the story almost nobody tells you.

Strang joined the MIT math faculty in 1962. He retired in 2023. That is 61 years of standing at the same chalkboard teaching the same subject to 18-year-olds.

The interesting part is what he did when MIT launched OpenCourseWare in 2002. Most professors were skeptical. They worried that putting their lectures online would make their classrooms irrelevant. Strang did not hesitate. He said his life's mission was to open mathematics to students everywhere. He filmed every lecture and gave it away.

The decision quietly changed how the world learns math.

For decades linear algebra was taught the wrong way. Professors started with abstract vector spaces and proofs about field axioms. Students drowned in the abstraction. Most never recovered. They walked out believing they were bad at math when they had simply been taught in an order that nobody's brain is built to absorb.

Strang inverted the entire curriculum.

He started with matrix multiplication. Something you can write down on paper. Something you can compute by hand. Something you can see. Then he showed his students that everything else in linear algebra eigenvectors, singular value decomposition, orthogonality, the four fundamental subspaces was just a different lens for understanding what the matrix was actually doing under the hood.

His rule was strict. If a student could not explain a concept using a concrete 3 by 3 example, that student did not actually understand the concept yet. The abstraction was supposed to come last, not first. The intuition was the foundation. The proofs were just confirmation that the intuition was correct.

The second thing Strang changed was the classroom itself. He said please and thank you to his students. Every single lecture. He paused mid-derivation to ask "am I OK?" to check if anyone was lost. He never used the word "obviously" or "trivially" because he knew exactly what those words do to a student who is one step behind. He treated 19-year-olds learning math for the first time the way he treated his own colleagues. With patience. With respect. With the assumption that they belonged in the room.

For 62 years.

The result is something that has never happened in the history of education. A single math professor became the default teacher of his subject for the entire planet.

Universities in India, China, Brazil, Nigeria, every country with a computer science department, started telling their own students to just watch Strang's lectures. The University of Illinois revised its linear algebra course to do almost no in-person lecturing. The reason was honest. The professor said they could not compete with the videos.

His final lecture was in May 2023.

The auditorium was packed with students who had never met him before. He walked to the chalkboard, taught for an hour, and at the end the entire room stood and applauded. He looked confused for a moment, like he genuinely did not understand why they were cheering. Then he smiled and waved them off and walked out.

His written comment under the YouTube video of that final lecture was four sentences long. He said teaching had been a wonderful life. He said he was grateful to everyone who saw the importance of linear algebra. He said the movement of teaching it well would continue because it was right.

That was it. No book promotion. No farewell speech. No legacy management.

The man whose teaching is the foundation of modern AI just thanked the audience and went home.

20 million views. Zero ego. The entire engine of the AI revolution sits on top of math that millions of people learned for free from one quiet professor in Cambridge.

The course is still on MIT OpenCourseWare. Every lecture, every problem set, every exam, every solution. Free.

The most important math course of the 21st century is sitting one click away from you. Most people will never open it.

[Crazy Vibes @CrazyVibes_1]

In the final, desperate months of World War II, as Nazi control over Hungary began to collapse, ten-year-old Aron stood in the doorway of a home that was no longer his. His parents had been taken—no explanations, no return, just absence. In his arms was his baby sister, too young to understand the silence that had replaced their world. In that moment, Aron made a decision no child should ever have to make. He would not wait. He would not leave her. He would carry her to safety—wherever that might be.

He found a length of cloth and tied her carefully to his back, the way he had seen mothers do. Her small breath rested against his neck, warm and steady—a quiet reminder of what depended on him. There was no map. Only rumors whispered between frightened people: villages farther west, safe zones, soldiers who might help. So he began to walk.

The road was long—seventy-six miles of cold, hunger, and uncertainty. Aron learned quickly how to survive. He traded what little he could find—potatoes scavenged from fields—for a cup of milk. He knocked on doors, sometimes turned away, sometimes given a crust of bread or a place by the fire for a few hours. At night, he wrapped his sister in his coat and held her close, whispering stories he barely remembered, just to keep her calm. When she cried, he kept moving. When he stumbled, he got back up. Because stopping was not an option.

There were moments when the world felt too big for his small body to carry. His legs ached. His stomach twisted with hunger. But every time he thought he couldn’t go further, he felt her breathing—soft, fragile, alive. And that was enough. Step by step, mile by mile, he kept going—not because he was fearless, but because he refused to let her disappear into the same darkness that had taken everything else.

Days later, when he finally reached a place of relative safety, he didn’t collapse in relief. He simply untied the cloth, held his sister in his arms, and made sure she was still breathing. She was.

They had both survived.

Years passed. The war ended. The world rebuilt itself slowly. His sister grew up, carrying no memory of the journey—but living because of it. When she had a child of her own, she gave him a name that carried a story.

Aron.

“For the brother,” she said, “who gave me life twice.”

Because sometimes history isn’t written by armies or leaders—

sometimes it’s carried on the back of a child
who refused to let go.

[Joel Montfort @jmontforttx]

This is Texas under the GOP. A west Texas Wellhead has been blown out for years, creating a highly toxic lake ( Lake Boehmer). The toxic water is from fracking in nearby wells. The Texas Railroad Commission refuses to do anything about it. #txlege

[Sarrah Bellus @sarrah_bellus]

Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen.

Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it. RT

[Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴‍☠️ @mercoglianos]

🚨NAVY LOGISTICS 🚨
Everyone seems concerned that the @usnavy ships in the Arabian Sea - carrier Abraham Lincoln stike group, 3-ship amphibious group based on Tripoli, and a surface action group centered on approximately 8 destroyers - are running low on food, with some pictures showing the supposed meals on board.

To understand how the Navy supplies ships you have to understand how @MSCSealift, the fleet of civilian merchant mariner crewed ships work.

There are three main considerations - fuel, food, and ammo.

1️⃣Fuel: There are two MSC oilers in the Indian Ocean. They provide alongside Underway Replenishment (UNREP) for diesel fuel for ship population and JP5 for aviation. The oilers can carry between 180 to 150k barrels of fuel. A Burke can carry about 12k bbls of fuel.

When the oilers run low on fuel, they will either return to a forward base or meet up with commercial tankers from the US merchant marine, some in the Tanker Security Program.

These tankers are equipped to receive rigs from the MSC oilers so that they can transfer fuel to the oilers.

The oilers can maintain their forward presence as station oilers while the commercial tankers shuttle fuel.

2️⃣Food & Ammo: There are three MSC dry cargo/ammo ships in the region. To keep the ships supplied one of the T-AKEs will rotate through the ships providing either replenishment at sea or vertical replenishment via civilian embarked AS-332 helos.

Another ship would be rotating out a forward base to reload and tag team with the station AKE.

The third AKE, along with civilian commercial ships, many of the Maritime Security Program, would shuttle forward supplies from commercial ports or Defense Logisitics Agency depots.

3️⃣ The addition of the Bush Carrier Strike Group will allow the Lincoln to pull back for down time and resupply at a base. Bush has a fast combat support ship (T-AOE) that can carry a mix of food, fuel and ammo on a ship capable of 26 knots. This ship is a one-stop shop for a carrier strike group. The arrival of the Boxer amphibious group will also provide a relief for Tripoli or operate in SE Asia to intercept, divert or board Iranian ships.

Now, does this mean every ship on the blockade is supplied to full capacity...probably not. But before everyone leaps to conclusions that sailors are not being provisioned, understand that the US Navy and @CENTCOM has done this for a long time.

At the same time, this logistic system can be more robust and represents a point of vulnerability for operations. MSC has experienced issues with crewing and availability of vessels.

[InfoGram @_InfoGram_]

BREAKING: This is ABSOLUTE HILARIOUS 🔥

🇺🇸Trump: "United States and Italy have been friends since the time of Ancient Rome, Yeah since Romans." 😂

*6 days after*

🇺🇸Trump : Italy wasn’t there for us, we won’t be there for them.

This man is BIGGEST LIER on earth 😂

[Kavish aziz @azizkavish]

At 2 pm 🇺🇸 Trump - I will cut off all trade and cooperation with Spain because of its refusal to support Israel.

After 2 hours 😂

At 4 pm - 🇪🇦 Spanish Prime Minister arrived in China with a clear message to Trump, there is an alternative.

[Brian Allen @allenanalysis]

BREAKING: Protesters in Hungary have flooded the streets in open defiance of Viktor Orbán and his ally Vladimir Putin demanding an end to creeping authoritarianism.

Mainstream media is barely touching it. Let’s make sure the world sees it.

[Occupy Democrats @OccupyDemocrats]

BREAKING: King Trump now wants the American people to fund his $15 million monument to HIMSELF that will desecrate the hallowed Arlington National Cemetery!

For the first time, the Trump administration admits it will seek funding from the from the National Endowment for the Humanities to build his own personal Arc de Trump in Washington D.C., asking for $2 million straight up plus $13 million in matching grants.

During Monday’s Easter Egg roll, with the country on the brink over the illegal Iran war, Trump was carrying around printed renderings of “his” imperial tower.

And as we reported, a day earlier instead of attending Easter services, he took a drive and slowed his motorcade to admire the spot near Arlington National Cemetery where the monolith will screw up traffic and block the flight path to Reagan airport.

Vietnam veterans are already suing to stop this atrocious and historically offending ego trip, rightly saying it desecrates hallowed ground meant to honor their sacrifices.

This is on top of Trump paving over the Rose Garden, and bulldozing the historic East Wing (and Melania’s office!) to make room for his also atrocious and historically offending ballroom. But one abhorrence at a time.

At the end of the day, we know that this is the part of Trump’s “let’s play president” game he likes most. That war thing stressed him out, and people said mean things about him, so let’s not do that one anymore. I know, let's build stuff so I will be remembered eternally!

So, amid the deadly fallout from his illegal war in Iran and skyrocketing costs at the pump, Trump is quietly trying to funnel $15 million from the National Endowment for the Humanities into his vanity project.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are still struggling to sort out how much real damage this Iran war has done -- to the region, to the global economy, and to the perception of the United States as the new bully on the block.

Taxpayer money should honor our history and our fallen heroes not fund Donald Trump’s narcissistic building spree. The National Endowment for the Humanities is supposed to provide grants to museums, libraries, archives, colleges, universities, public TV and radio, not this “I’m an Emperor” wank of Trump’s.

Please like and share.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

This is what it looks like when you’re critically out of your depth, yet still trying to speak about things you have absolutely no understanding of -- things you neither care about nor even grasp, because they lie far beyond the horizon of your knowledge and your thinking.

Go ask those questions to your Russian counterparts whether they should keep grinding hundreds of thousands more of their own people into a bloody pulp over a few square kilometers of territory.

And no -- you are not smarter than the Ukrainians who have been fighting for years over those “few square kilometers” in Donbas.

It means nothing to you but for people here on the ground, the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk area is the largest defensive stronghold, fortified and prepared for battle for over a decade, and one the Russians have been trying to break for just as long, including four years of full-scale war.

What looks like a stupid inconvenience to your boss, something standing in the way of what he imagines will be profitable deals with the Kremlin, is, for Ukraine, the main defensive line protecting the country’s heartland from a deeper breakthrough.

Ukrainians refuse to surrender it not because they are less clever than JD Vance, but because they understand exactly what the consequences would be and what the word of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump is worth.

And that’s not even getting into the fact that this is the homeland of hundreds of thousands of people, their homes, their land, which they would be forced to abandon.

It’s about abandoning our own people and their hopes, about a nation and its sovereignty, things that are often absent from this kind of discussion.

You see, people here in Ukraine are dealing with matters far more serious and consequential than posturing in front of TV cameras, talk this delusional arrogant BS, and acting as a rally agitator for a corrupt authoritarian in Central Europe that your boss likes very much.

[Anthony Scaramucci @Scaramucci]

Actual quotes from President Trump:

Trump’s “victory timeline” claims.

Mar 3: "We won the war."
Mar 7: "We defeated Iran."
Mar 9: "We must attack Iran."
Mar 9: "The war is ending almost completely, and very beautifully.
March 10: practically nothing left to target
Mar 11: “You never like to say too ⁠early you won. We won. In ​the first hour it was over.” Mar 12: "We did win, but we haven't won completely yet."
Mar 13: "We won the war."
Mar 14: "Please help us."
Mar 15: "If you don't help us, I will certainly remember it."
Mar 16: "Actually, we don't need any help at all."
Mar 16: "I was just testing to see who's listening to me."
Mar 16: "If NATO doesn't help, they will suffer something very bad."
Mar 17: "We neither need nor want NATO's help."
Mar 17: "I don't need Congressional approval to withdraw from NATO."
Mar 18: "Our allies must cooperate in reopening the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 19: "US allies need to get a grip - step up and help open the Strait of Hormuz."
Mar 20: "NATO are cowards."
Mar 21: "The Strait of Hormuz must be protected by the countries that use it. We don't use it, we don't need to open it."
Mar 22: "This is the last time. I will give Iran 48 hours. Open the strait"
Mar 22: "Iran is Dead"

Mar 23: "We had very good and productive talks with Iran."
Mar 24: "We’re making progress."
Mar 25: “They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. I’m not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize.” Mar 26: "Make a deal, or we’ll just keep blowing them away."
Mar 27: "We don’t have to be there for NATO."
Mar 28: No major quote
Mar 29: Claimed talks were progressing
Mar 30: "Open the Strait of Hormuz immediately, or face devastating consequences."
Mar 31: Claimed a deal was "very close" and that Iran would "do the right thing"
Apr 1: "We’ll see what happens very soon."
Apr 2: Repeated that a deal was likely, while warning of continued strikes if not
Apr 3: "Something big is going to happen."
Apr 4: Said Iran must comply "immediately" or face further consequences.

Apr 5: "Open the fuckin' Strait, you crazy bastards, or you'll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah."
April 6 :a whole civilization will die
April 7: total and complete victory
April8: objectives were met

A true disaster

[Rob Carnes @RobScott3]

Very correct diagnosis

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

Listen to what this psychologist has to say:

"Trump has the most severe personality disorder a human being can have.”

“The world is in a hell lot of trouble, because the most powerful man in the world is both evil and demented."

[ᗰᗩƳᖇᗩ @LePapillonBlu2]

Listen to what this psychologist has to say:

"Trump has the most severe personality disorder a human being can have.”

“The world is in a hell lot of trouble, because the most powerful man in the world is both evil and demented."