Nathan Griffith

[Kite & Key Media @kiteandkeymedia]

What does it mean to be a real American? The answer isn’t about where you’re from. It’s about what you believe.

[Tea with Tolkien @TeawithTolkien]

the Pope quoting The Lord of the Rings!!!!!!! I feel so alive!!!!

[Robert Doar @RobertDoar]

Yale’s recent faculty report diagnoses the public’s declining trust in higher education by pointing to ideological conformity, administrative bloat, and a loss of core academic purpose.

Read below for AEI’s @cjscalia optimistic response to the report. https://t.co/Xy4kJBW62L

[Second Tier podcast @secondtierpod]

Cost of sacking Liam Rosenior: £24m

Cost of buying Sheffield Wednesday: £20m

When sacking a manager costs more than a club in the Championship, it's probably time to start addressing those financial oblivion questions in football.

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

@SwansOfficial @SkyBetChamp The referees have done an amazing job keeping SOU in this game. Flynn Downes threw an elbow then threw a man to the ground (and stayed on top of him). Nathan Wood yanked a man back who was past him in the box with the ball.

SOU should have been down 2 men and 2 goals.

[Hedgie @HedgieMarkets]

🦔A researcher invented a fake eye condition called bixonimania, uploaded two obviously fraudulent papers about it to an academic server, and watched major AI systems present it as real medicine within weeks.
The fake papers thanked Starfleet Academy, cited funding from the Professor Sideshow Bob Foundation and the University of Fellowship of the Ring, and stated mid-paper that the entire thing was made up. Google's Gemini told users it was caused by blue light. Perplexity cited its prevalence at one in 90,000 people.

ChatGPT advised users whether their symptoms matched. The fake research was then cited in a peer-reviewed journal that only retracted it after Nature contacted the publisher.

My Take
The researcher made the papers as obviously fake as possible on purpose. The AI systems didn't catch it. Neither did the human researchers who cited it in real journals, which means people are feeding AI-generated references into their work without reading what they're actually citing.

I've covered the FDA using AI for drug review, the NYC hospital CEO ready to replace radiologists, and ChatGPT Health launching this year. All of that is happening in the same environment where a condition funded by a Simpsons character and endorsed by the crew of the Enterprise was being presented as emerging medical consensus. The people making these deployment decisions seem to believe the pipeline from research to AI to patient is more supervised than it actually is. This experiment suggests it isn't supervised much at all.

Hedgie🤗
https://t.co/8Kg8FOrgHW

[The Babylon Bee @TheBabylonBee]

Lego Introduces ‘California Home’ Set Where Kids Fill Out Permit And Wait 2 Years For Approval https://t.co/twYhpLkNDP

[University of Austin (UATX) @uaustinorg]

To: Admitted Students on Ivy Decision Day
From: UATX

Congratulations. Getting in was hard and you should be proud. Now here’s some unsolicited advice so you don’t waste the next four years.

Go to class. We know this sounds obvious. But as the New York Times reported recently, Harvard students routinely skip class, rarely speak up when they're there, and focus on their devices instead of the discussion. Faculty say few students do enough preparation to contribute meaningfully. The average college student spends about 20 hours a week on class and studying combined. At UATX, we aim for 50. That’s the difference between a part-time commitment and a full-time job. You (or your parents) are about to spend upwards of $90K a year. If you don't show up, you're paying roughly $250 per skipped lecture for the privilege of sleeping in.

Read the books yourself. Your generation is the first to arrive at college post-literate — raised on short-form video, dependent on algorithms, and increasingly incapable of sitting with a difficult text long enough to let it change your mind. Ninety percent of college students use AI academically. This makes you more reliant on the authority of others. Most professors will also stand between you and the text. They’ll tell you what Marx “really meant,” what Aristotle “failed to see,” as though an academic in 2026 has outsmarted minds that shaped civilizations. The good professors do the opposite: they put you in front of the book and they work with you to find what a great mind has to teach us directly. Find those professors, and read everything yourself.

Say what you actually think. Seventy-three percent of conservative students report withholding their political views in class out of fear their grades will suffer. Our advice isn't political; it's intellectual. If you spend four years learning to say what's expected instead of what's true, you’ll graduate roughly where you started — just older, more credentialed, and more practiced at self-censorship. One study finds that nearly half of students show no measurable gains in “critical thinking” after two years in college. Keep this in mind as you make decisions about which professors to take and how to do your assignments. Taking a small hit on your paper to gain integrity and wisdom is usually worth it.

Ask for real grades. Sixty percent of Harvard undergraduate grades are now A’s. Twenty-five years ago, it was 20%. It got so bad that the legendary Harvard professor, Harvey Mansfield, started giving students two grades: the official one for their transcript, and a private one reflecting what they actually earned. He called the official grades “ironic.” So here's a suggestion: Take your A, but also ask your professors for a “Mansfield grade” so that you know where you stand. And don’t avoid difficult courses to keep your transcript clean for law school.

Get work experience before you graduate. Forty-two percent of recent college graduates are working jobs that don't require a degree. Many employers are projecting the next few years to be the worst college grad job market in years. A degree alone — even from an Ivy — is not a job guarantee. Seek out apprenticeships, internships, and real work starting freshman year. The students at UATX are connected with entrepreneurs and business leaders from day one. Many will graduate with four years of work experience alongside their degree. You can build something similar at your school, but you'll have to do it yourself.

Understand how debt shapes your life. If you're paying full freight or even half, do the math with your eyes open. Your decision to take on debt will quietly reshape the trajectory of your adult life through countless small surrenders: the job you take because it’s safe instead of starting the company. The city you choose to live in. The relationship you delay and the kids you don’t have. For women, a $1,000 increase in student loan debt lowers the odds of marriage by 2% per month in the first four years after graduation. None of that shows up in the college brochure. If you're going to take on debt, treat it like the constraint it is from day one: save aggressively and make sure every dollar is buying something that will actually compound in your favor.

Find the people who take school seriously. The best thing about a great school isn't the lectures or the library. It's the handful of professors and students who are genuinely there to learn — who read ahead, argue in good faith, and push you to be sharper. Find them. UATX is a small community of those who seek a serious education. At a larger university, you have to build this community yourself.
*
The most dangerous thing about an elite university is that it is very easy to do nothing for four years and still come out looking successful. The transcript will say you excelled. The diploma with the fancy crest will open certain doors. Your parents will be proud. And yet you will have coasted — through inflated grades, unread books, and borrowed opinions.

Getting in is an accomplishment. Making the next four years worth it will be harder, and the right decisions will change everything.

We wish you luck.

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

@kirk_bado The triumph of hope over experience is the lifeblood of fandom.

[Bob Golen @BobGolen]

Greenland deploying their weather on us was an unexpected first strike.

[Tea with Tolkien @TeawithTolkien]

Happy birthday JRR Tolkien! On this day, January 3 of 1892, the author of The Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit was born!

I am so thankful for his lifelong devotion to storytelling and world-building, and I am inspired everyday to pursue beauty, goodness, and truth because of him.

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

@ScovilleLaw Now they just need a cardboard cutout where they remove a piece of outerwear each time they win. Unless the cutout is one of us—then they remove one each time they lose.

[Shaka Mitchell @shakamitchell]

“Since the pandemic, we’ve seen more than a dozen states pass something akin to a universal private school choice program.” This has led to so much innovation and re-thinking of what education needs to look like. Thanks for joining us on @QMCast, @ProfMartyWest of @hgse @schoolchoicenow
https://t.co/gOqWa139OK

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

@USPSHelp Trying to complete and print a customs form online. I am required to choose the destination from a list, which only offers "The United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland." When I try to print, I get an error message that this term does not fit in its block.

[Jeremy Kauffman 🦔🌲🌕 @jeremykauffman]

oh you're upset about the Supreme Court? let me tell you a relevant story

the year was 1942 and an Ohio farmer was growing wheat on his own property and feeding it to his own animals...

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

"One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent." H.L. Mencken

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

I miss him, too. I hope we do not lose the American tradition and appreciation of authors who don't let us take ourselves or our politics too seriously.

Mitch Daniels: America needs its pretension punctured. It needs a P.J. O’Rourke. https://t.co/vGyB0Anuwi

[Nathan Griffith @ndgriffth]

Still two of my very favorite people, jointly and severally. :)
https://t.co/o7AjFjMsdx via @BelmontUniv

[David Wolpe @RabbiWolpe]

Resilience is the quality required when the world does not go as you wish and graciousness the quality required when it does. Praying for both, and praying for America.