opening up the 2026 reading season

lol, lmao even src: Gian-Carlo Rota, "Husserl and the reform of logic"

My first foray into systems biology -- this work was led by Boya Hou, a postdoctoral researcher at UIUC, now on the academic job market. She presented an early version of these results at the @nitmb.bsky.social MathBio Convergence Conference in August of 2025.

This is primarily why I left X: couldn’t stand the “vibes.”

wut

Some people question whether misalignment in LLMs results from deeper characteristics, like intentionality or consciousness. Others use this possibility as a bludgeon. I wrote about this to get the thoughts out of my head and move on to something else. vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/against-fa...

The final post of 2025, where I propose the "paradox of highly optimized tolerance" (with nods to Carlson-Doyle and to Popper) as a frame for thinking about the impact of AI. Thank you all for reading, subscribing, and commenting! Happy New Year!

Some thoughts on what Hermann Weyl's dialectic of the infinite in science and mathematics has to say about the age of AI: realizable.substack.com/p/games-with...

magret de canard, pommes de terre sarladaises, good burgundy

books I read in 2025 (no ratings, no notes) 1. Brian Evenson, “Good Night, Sleep Tight” 2. John Crowley, “Flint and Mirror” 3. Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, “What Makes Us Think?” 4. Deborah Modrak, “Aristotle: The Power of Perception” 5. Keiji Nishitani, “The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism”

Swedish cardamom bun time

Here's the delicious Chinese food Wells ordered at Golden Harbor and Dim Sum House.

My grandma would take leftover latkes and braise them with beef the next day.

here we go

The inevitable has happened. I've started a substack. The first post is now live, and its a longform review of Leif Weatherby's Language Machines that uses the opportunity to say some things about inferentialism, computation, and LLMs: deontologistics.substack.com/p/computatio...

Paper accepted to ALT 2026! (algorithmiclearningtheory.org/alt2026/)

Welcome to the Intellectual Dark Roast Web, Seva!

Woohoo, crossed 1000 subscribers on this thing! realizable.substack.com

Where I’ll be next week: conferences.cirm-math.fr/3346.html

back at my favorite coffee place in Paris: Araku Coffee

One of the dishes on this list is from a Chinese restaurant right here in Champaign! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/d...

From J. Carlson and J. Doyle, "Highly optimized tolerance: A mechanism for power laws in designed systems" (1999). Today's salient example would be AI systems, but all the same points stand. journals.aps.org/pre/abstract...

look at these tall bois

Winter Old Fashioned 2oz rye .5oz Ancho Reyes liqueur .5oz cinnamon simple syrup angostura and chocolate bitters garnish with orange twist and rosemary

so I tied an onion to my belt etc etc

PSA: "Geometry, Topology, and Control System Design," published by American Institute of Mathematical Sciences. It is edited by my colleague Ali Belabbas and is dedicated to the memory of Roger W. Brockett, a pioneer of modern geometric and nonlinear control. www.aimsciences.org/book/AM/volu...

Smoked turkey carcass and leftovers about to turn into delicious stock, per the recipe from @hels.bsky.social

strong floor, no ceiling

Right before I left Twitter, technical discussions about AI were already beginning to collapse into Ilya/Sutton/Karpathy/… exegesis and obligatory mentions of information theory, thermodynamics, cybernetics, and Kolmogorov complexity with all the sophistication of a LW post. It’s happening here now.

post-Thanksgiving cocktail and mocktail mise en place

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen The Magnetic Fields The Legendary Pink Dots Leonard Cohen Thom Yorke Stereolab

Love this tune. It’s like Edith Piaf meets Amy Winehouse, with Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli accompanying. youtu.be/5-RY4AxfrRU?...

it’s go time

I was not aware of this recently found link between descriptive set theory and distributed algorithms on graphs. Neat! www.quantamagazine.org/a-new-bridge...

it’s cocktailpoasting time! Cranberry Negroni 1oz gin 1oz Campari 3/4oz Martini & Rossi Bitter Aperitivo 1/4oz cranberry juice two dashes of orange bitters garnish with orange twist and cranberries

For this occasion, I wrote an article for the #Rudolphina research magazine on Riedl's legacy at the University. "The endless pursuit of life's hidden order" rudolphina.univie.ac.at/en/the-intel... #evobio #philbio #cogsci #marinebio

So, on Monday I gave a guest lecture in my daughter’s science class about control systems and homeostasis. Have you ever tried explaining feedback and PID control to a bunch of 6th-graders without using a single equation?

Is it wrong that I now want to add Sfizietto Calabro to everything?

approved

From “The Open World” by Hermann Weyl:

uzumaki hours up here www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

Good, cheery reading to close out the year:

Martin McDonagh should adapt “Waiting for Godot,” but make it Irish.

Simplest recipe ever, and a big hit with family: buy a basic olive oil focaccia, top with sliced mozzarella di bufala, grated asiago, fried zucchini slices, thinly sliced red onions, oregano. Bake at 350 for 10 min, then finish off by broiling at 500 for 2 minutes.

afternoon, y’all

One of the trick-or-treating kids tonight was dressed as a pair of cards, six and seven of diamonds. Iykyk.

Dave’s Hot Chicken is basically System of a Down of fried chicken joints.

Next year I’ll go as Big Yud (wear a sequined fedora and a tshirt that says “If anyone builds it, everyone will die”).

🎶 average American, average American average American hates median American they have a fight, average wins average American 🎶