newly released: Canon and Fugue in B minor in the stile antico By Ericsson Hatfield, lover of canons nonpareil www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGo2...

Famous people who lost children to smallpox variolation or vaccination: a thread

Famous people who lost loved ones to water-borne disease: a thread

The City of Ottawa posted the raw speed data from before and after Doug Ford banned speed cameras and the effect is so obvious it's not even necessary put a line marking when that happened. This chart shows the percentage of drivers going 15km/h or more over the posted limit.

Meanwhile, this is how actual AI knowers are talking about prompting

I have collected into one PDF every harmonization JS Bach did of the "passion chorale" (known by various names — Herzlich tut mich verlangen; O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden; Befiehl du deine Wege) You can download it here: drive.google.com/file/d/1rm17...

Going to be at the @planetmoney.bsky.social event at Rotman tomorrow — so excited!

Looks like we have no excuse for making ugly slides or charts ever again

Anthropic announced but did not release their latest model, Claude Mythos Preview, because it can break into every major operating system: red.anthropic.com/2026/mythos-... Researcher @sleepinyourhat.bsky.social reported that this AI can break containment. It will only get crazier from here.

I do like running my own AI at home, but it's worth acknowledging that my box pulls >100W idle, fights my air conditioner, and has a dismal PUE of probably <~30%, compared to >90% for a datacenter. you should use datacenters more and self-hosting less if you care about energy usage.

Quote of the month "Babies, however, are vastly understudied for the simple reason that they are defiant and wiggly"

Also in newsletter Remember how the Houthi rebels halved traffic through the Suez Canal in late 2023 it has not come back

What's your recommendation for a good book on the politics of food and famine?

top-secret sci-fi Canadian project to improve highway safety through GMOing moose to make them smaller: Operation #ReduceTheMoose

@cycletoronto.bsky.social In Markham, on April 14, a city councillor is going to be introducing a motion for a "temporary" moratorium on new bicycle lanes. Do you have connections with folks who might be interested in this? Full text of the motion: pub-markham.escribemeetings.com/filestream.a...

EA ideas suffer from a particular problem where many people who've been significantly influenced by them still feel like endorsing any part of the worldview means endorsing all the people and orgs who are currently operating under the EA umbrella. (1/5)

📢New WP: Minimum Wages and Workplace Injuries Using California state and local minimum wage increases 2000-2019, we find minimum wage hikes increase workplace injury rates for low-wage workers. A plausible mechanism is work intensification 🧵 w/ @rjisungpark.bsky.social & Michael Davies

LLM-generated recipe in which the addition of a root vegetable is determined by the roll of a die. That vegetable? The stochastic carrot.

Bio teachers and professors: there is a *free* library of scientific images here: thestacks.org/publications... The Creative Commons Zero licence on these mean you can use them without attribution, and even commercially!

After doing a nocturnal, unnecessarily deep dive, I want to say a few things about the use of strong mayor powers by Markham's mayor to reject some pro-housing zoning amendments.

Markham’s mayor for the first time has used his strong mayor powers… to block city-wide 4plexes that council approved. Presumably this puts in jeopardy the federal housing money the city has already agreed to, as this was a condition of those funds. www.markham.ca/sites/defaul...

Exogenous what??? What can I instrument that for.....🤔

www.queensu.ca/history/abou... Buchanan Postdoctoral Fellowship in Canadian History at Queen's. Please help circulate the ad. widely.

panpsychism: the belief that one can communicate with one's cookware

From 🐦: "I show that Vision Language Models used zero-shot outperform every existing OCR system across every script evaluated, and I propose a pipeline for deploying them on new collections. I apply it to six archival collections spanning 1.8 million pages across six countries for under $1,900."

where's the "in mice" guy when you need him?

University of Toronto sociolinguist Jack Chambers has died. This is so sad to hear—he was at the university when my mum majored in linguistics, and was still teaching in my undergrad years. The whole U of T community will miss him. www.linguistics.utoronto.ca/news/memoria...

an upcoming EAGx event in Washington DC — spread the word! apply here before April 16: www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global/ev...

stir-fry pans that are still developing their patina: Woks in Progress

Wikipedia has a "signs of AI writing" page intended as a resource for its editors, but much here seems useful for a general audience: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... This 👇🏻 tendency in particular may be the biggest reason I now find scrolling social media so much more exhausting than in 2022.

urged my MP to try to bring Anthropic or its employees into Canada

For those not following along, when transit vehicles go faster they complete more trips in a day and you can get the same service level for fewer vehicles and a lower wage bill

CRUCIALLY, this is a non-London problem We calculated the grad wage premium for each UK region and nation a few years ago, and you see declining graduate wage premia in every English region except London If we want to diagnose why the UK is such an outlier the answer is in the regional story

The p<0.001 thing is important because a lot of smart people think lowering the p value threshold will save us. I’m very skeptical of this.

"Pheidippides, for all his valour, lacked a sports watch."

something I learnt recently: Galileo Galilei was really into visual art. He was once an instructor at the Florentine "Accademia delle Arti del Disegno". This helped him as a scientist when he made his famous moon drawings (first pic). We also have some other sketches from his notebooks (pics 2-3).

Finding ways to improve trade with the EU is great. But on the other point in the poll: even considering EU membership is not great. It is likely infeasible. It is very surely unwise. The reason is that we are North American not European.

The French organist Thomas Ospital visited Rochester, NY to play a recital and do a masterclass. I had the good fortune to attend! The end of his concert included three improvisations, which I've written a description of on Facebook: www.facebook.com/story.php?st...

Seeing a concert by one of France's best organists, Thomas Ospital, tomorrow night. So excited!

Get pharmacies to switch from fax machines (Canadian edition) Challenge level: impossible Gift link from the Globe and Mail: www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/acfc5cc...

Elon's decision to shut down USAID is the direct cause of countless deaths. That he isn't persona non grata in many communities after that is a source of shame.

Kinda fun to see someone discover Gladwell for the first time

"stop doing the thing that hurts" is advice applicable far beyond the context of RSIs!

This is a big step, folks! Been watching this one a while, broad spectrum SARS vaccine! Would be a big deal even w/o Covid but with its 🌟🌟🌟

87.4% for Poilievre. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...

Perhaps Claude will be able to read sheet music soon 🤔 techcrunch.com/2026/01/29/m...

Seems like one of those issues that should greatly concern everyone regardless of their politics.

I tried to join the marsupial observatory unfortunately, they said I didn't have the requisite koalafications

sneaked into a private club to hear a friend's viol consort concert :)

Wouldn’t have made it out of the VEEP writers room