Parallel Blogs / Subscribing / Song

We have been putting out this blog since 2009 under the heading "UCLA Faculty Association" using the link:

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

The blog site was originally created by the then-executive director of the Faculty Association. As such, yours truly does not have control of the site; he is simply a blogger on it. So when technical issues arise, that can be a problem. Given that issue, we have been adding a parallel site with the same blog entries since July 23rd:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/

We will be running the two in parallel for the indefinite future. Possibly, at some point we will switch to the new link.

If you read the blog using the Facebook page of Yousee Elayemeriti, you can continue to do so:

https://www.facebook.com/yousee.elayemeriti

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Want to subscribe?

You can't subscribe directly. But you can subscribe indirectly to this blog via a service called Blogtrottr. Go to blogtrottr.com and fill in the URL for the blog:

https://danmitchellsblogcontinues.blogspot.com/ 

or

https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/

and put in your email address. 

You will then receive an email at the email address you provided asking you to confirm. After you confirm, you will receive an email notification of new postings whenever they appear. If there are, say, three postings on a particular day, you will receive three notifications (one for each one). 

Note and full disclosure: There are ads on these notifications. 

==

And here's a little song, based on the information above, composed by Gemini:

"Sharp and Clever Pen":

Or https://archive.org/details/sharp-and-clever-pen

Verse 1

I scroll the screen looking for some light

A voice that cuts right through the noise

They talk about the taxes and the spin

But Dan Mitchell has a different kind of truth

He talks about the spending and the waste

The parallel blogs that keep us truly free

Independent channels are the only way to go

To find the analysis the mainstream never shows

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Verse 2

He analyzes policy with a sharp and clever pen

Decentralized and honest, standing on his own ground

You don't need their filters and you don't need their spin

Just some liberty and facts to help you really win

Bookmark the connection and let the truth begin to flow

A parallel alternative to the status quo we know

Fiscal sense and freedom are waiting on the page

The perfect antidote for a confusing modern age

--

Chorus

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

Get real economic facts!

Escape the corporate tracks!

Subscribe and find the key!

To keep your mind free!

--

Outro

Yeah, find the facts for yourself

Dan Mitchell's blog is out there waiting

Just click and subscribe and see the difference

Get free and stay informed always.   

Olympics

From Chancellor Frenk: In less than two years, the Olympic and Paralympic Games will return to Los Angeles for the first time since 1984 — and UCLA will once again have the extraordinary honor of welcoming the world to our campus as the home of the Olympic and Paralympic Village. Today, we are launching https://2028.ucla.edu/, UCLA’s central digital hub for our journey to the Summer Games. The site will celebrate our history as the home of Olympians and Paralympians and share inspiring stories of Bruin athletes. It will also provide updates on anticipated campus impacts...

Full statement at https://chancellor.ucla.edu/messages/uclas-olympic-and-paralympic-journey.

Where the money is - Part 2

From the Daily Californian: Four Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researchers have received Early Career Research Program awards from the U.S. Department of Energy. Each scientist will receive $875,000 from the department to pursue their desired research over the next five years. The awardees — Asmit Bhowmick, Bingqing Cheng, Marcus Noack and Dan Wang — will focus their research on applying artificial intelligence, which the federal administration has labeled “superintelligence,” in the fields of physics, biology and chemistry. Both Wang and Noack will focus on developing AI systems that are guided by physics, with Wang’s research focusing on AI’s possible use to control particle accelerators. Cheng, an assistant professor of chemistry at UC Berkeley, will use AI to try to find how electric fields affect chemistry...

The awards were dispensed by the Office of Science of the DOE, which describes itself as the largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences nationwide, supporting 32,000 researchers...

Full story at https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/doe-awards-4-berkeley-lab-uc-berkeley-scientists-funding-for-ai-research/article_12c21622-ed5b-4ffd-9ec4-bd307d2ff6e6.html.

Straws in the Wind - Part 501

From Inside Higher Ed: The National Institutes of Health awarded nearly 12 percent fewer grants in fiscal year 2026 compared to the year before President Trump took office... The data from the Association of American Medical Colleges shows that NIH obligated all of its funds for fiscal years 2025 and 2026, but the way in which the agency is awarding grants continues to cause uncertainty for research institutions. NIH is funding more grants up front—a practice that allows the agency to get more money out the door but supports fewer projects over all. And the agency has yet to reinstate hundreds of grants that were frozen or terminated early in the second Trump administration.

AAMC has been tracking NIH funding for the past two years, and this latest brief offers a “look at the funding trends that have reshaped the research environment” since Trump returned to the White House. In fiscal year 2026, NIH awarded 56,600 grants, which was a slight drop from the 58,500 awarded the previous year. But in fiscal year 2024, the agency awarded 64,000 grants...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/10/16/new-analysis-finds-nih-awarded-7400-fewer-grants.

A new problem to solve

From the New York Times: Terence Tao is typically described as one of the world’s greatest living mathematicians, but right now he is doing very little math. “I’m on a war footing,” he said while grabbing coffee during a two-day math workshop at the University of California, Los Angeles, that was rife with talk about the existential crisis that artificial intelligence has created in his field. Days earlier OpenAI had announced that it had solved the Navier-Stokes problem, one of seven “Millennium Prize problems” that had stymied the greatest minds in math for nearly a century. “There are no rules any more,” Dr. Tao, 51, said in an interview before the workshop in his modest office on the U.C.L.A. campus, his home since 1996, when he arrived after completing his doctorate at Princeton at the age of 20. ...He was hit by a bigger bomb on Oct. 6, when OpenAI released more than 350 findings in nearly every subfield of the profession, including algebra, number theory, theoretical computer science, mathematical logic and topology. Stunned mathematicians, some who were close to solving problems they had worked on for years, found themselves beaten in an instant by A.I.

Dr. Tao, who has been a tenured professor since the age of 24, said senior academics like himself are not as threatened by A.I. as those starting out. But the math world is looking to him for answers. He has accepted that his celebrated status has made him an unofficial spokesman for the field, a job that for now is consuming most of his time. Until recently his job was as a bridge between the slow-moving world of higher math and the scorching speed of A.I. Dr. Tao, who uses A.I. as an assistant to run calculations, write code, search vast troves of literature and brainstorm ideas, has been experimenting with OpenAI’s models since 2023. He was an enthusiast for a “best of both worlds” future. OpenAI’s releases have now left him feeling used. “As recently as a year ago, I had a pretty good relationship with many employees at OpenAI,” he said in a recent phone conversation ...“At this point, I don’t see a way to constructively engage.”

...At the heart of the crisis in the profession is a menacing question. If solving hard problems is a mission of math, what happens when machines can do it faster? So much of higher math — hiring, promotions, graduate training and acclaim — is based on the difficulty, quality and the impact of papers (the written documents explaining proofs) that a mathematician produces. The consensus is that A.I.-assisted problem solving is the inevitable future, but no one knows exactly what that new world will look like. “Deep uncertainty will persist in these next years,” a draft report by a group of mathematicians meeting at Harvard on Ph.D. education concluded last month...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/16/us/math-ai-terence-tao.html.

Campaign

UCLA appears to have launched a "True Bruin" campaign featuring faculty on Instagram and Facebook: 

Or direct to https://ia600406.us.archive.org/14/items/newsom-briefings-oct.-1-2026/UCLA%20True%20Bruin%20campaign%20Jorja%20Leap%20downloaded%2010-20-2026.mp4.

A note on the Facebook version indicates these clips disappear after a day or so. Not sure about Instagram.

Swap

Not sure exactly how this works but Mom is onboard...

From the Daily Bruin: A new platform is aiming to help UCLA students swap enrollment stress for smoother schedules. Joseph Borna, a fifth-year history student, created ClassSwap over the summer to connect students looking to exchange classes and allow users to share course recommendations and feedback... Students can upload the class they are currently enrolled in alongside their desired class with information detailing the discussion section number, professor and location. “If we’re both in a section we’re unhappy with, maybe we can find a way to meet or drop each other’s courses and find a way to exchange sections in a way while abiding UCLA’s code of conduct,” he said...

Maya Borna, Joseph Borna’s mother, said she manages ClassSwap’s social media and meets with students to promote the software...

Full story at https://dailybruin.com/2026/10/15/classswap-platform-hopes-to-solve-enrollment-woes-help-students-graduate-on-time.