One semi-intrusive thought I have is to begin a blogsletteraccountfeed called "What The Paper Says" where I translate "New anti-aging treatment" to "They injected this to 25 D-Galactose poisoned mice and they died more slowly". The... 1/ via @abeba.bsky.social @bildoperationen.bsky.social

This is why my concern about systemic impact coexists with observations of its usefulness: (1) there's a lot of pressure to use driven by commercial and political interests (2) this impacts mostly on the more vulnerable (3) it's precisely the context where AI is most harmful. via @abeba.bsky.social

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Altermagnets * Einstein Probe * Cosmic noon

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Altermagnets * Einstein Probe * Cosmic noon

"Cruise zeppelins don't have windows looking down. Theirs open at night to look with indifference to the stars and with admiring envy to the orbital bunkers of the rich and insane." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

"Cruise zeppelins don't have windows looking down. Theirs open at night to look with indifference to the stars and with admiring envy to the orbital bunkers of the rich and insane." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

"Cruise zeppelins don't have windows looking down. Theirs open at night to look with indifference to the stars and with admiring envy to the orbital bunkers of the rich and insane." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

"Cruise zeppelins don't have windows looking down. Theirs open at night to look with indifference to the stars and with admiring envy to the orbital bunkers of the rich and insane." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

"Cruise zeppelins don't have windows looking down. Theirs open at night to look with indifference to the stars and with admiring envy to the orbital bunkers of the rich and insane." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

This kind of thing is worse than demolishing a third of the White House[1]: the root of a modern state's capabilities isn't in its buildings but in its specialists, their knowledge, behavior patterns, and ethical commitments. 1/ via @drjlhazelton.bsky.social

To be filed under "things very unlikely under my existing models [pun not intended], so it's model-revising times." via @tedunderwood.com

I feel very strongly --and have I believe plausible, somewhat rigorous arguments-- that any form of algorithmic weighting or sorting will make a social network unusable or even toxic in a relatively short span of time. via @t0nyyates.bsky.social

"We show that although general discrete models are unidentifiable from purely observational data, it is possible to characterize the complete set of compatible parameters and structures." Useful as such, but also seems like it could work very well as a component in a experiment design cycle.

Haven't read this one yet, but (1) "Judo Calculus" is a great term, (2) the idea of regime-specific causal claims is a nice one, and (3) "sheaf-theoretic causal discovery" is another great term, although for different reasons.

The TL;DR, which is about 25% of the importance-weighted news in 2025: * We're doing a *lot*. Really, like - wow. * We aren't doing enough. Not even close. I'd add: * The US going all-in for climaticide is going to be a bit of a headwind.

Argentina's long term strategic bet on fossil fuels --worrisomely typical of non- and backsliding democracies, BTW-- might well waste a couple decades it doesn't have but, more immediately, it's displacing development in renewables that would give much-needed help to its energy constraints.

I love data analysis, strategy optimization, etc --it's part of how I pay my bills-- but --maybe this comes from my Argentinean background-- now and then I feel to urge to scream "They are kidnapping people off the streets! We are past polling!" into, idk, the Void. via @deanbaker13.bsky.social

Perhaps worth noting that a version of this isn't new: "signature strikes" have been a common feature of the "GWoT" for a long while. What's different --and I'm not defending the ethics of the earlier case... via @thakurdhanaraj.bsky.social

Unlike Schneier I'm pessimistically optimistic. I don't think we're at risk of AI-designed bioweapons [good!] as AI isn't nowhere close to being useful enough [bad!] to bring new actors to the table. If we could "hack bioweapons" we could do drug design a heck of a lot faster and cheaper than we do.

Having done some Linux admin in the past & tech horror stories being my favorite genre of non-fiction, this fills me with unholy anticipation. "[...]AI-powered local administration through[...]the default configuration management tool for SLES 16, and the command line, reducing operational overhead"

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory * Optical interconnects * Abelian anyons

It's probably/largely down to different political cultures, but the wording in these statements always feels weird to me - as if trying to respond to unprecedented institutional (and real!) violence with the rhetorical tools of a gone era. The... 1/ via @aaronsojourner.org

The problem with trying to model what's on fire, how bad it'll be, and how to protect what's still standing is that the monkey is still waving the flamethrower around.

via @brendannyhan.bsky.social @alexanderfurnas.com

By @alexclapp.bsky.social, on @ivanfranceschini.bsky.social et al's "Scam: Inside South-East Asia’s Cybercrime Compounds." I was aware of the existence of the industry, but not of its sheer scale. It indeed feels as an organic development of [gestures at everything]

That's 10% of the canonical figure for people disappeared during the whole of the last Argentinean military dictatorship. "Trump still hasn't taken over" is not the optimistic observation you'd think. They are already doing a racial and political purge. via @nickharkaway.com @robshum.bsky.social

In a very empirical sense, your citizenship --at least as a nominal shield against being shipped to be tortured somewhere-- is at the discretion of the ICE goon in front of you, modulated by bystanders' courage and convictions. via @mollytempleton.com @jonathancohn.bsky.social

Like "predictive models," gig platforms, and AI, the true use case isn't to facilitate but to sidestep existing legal protections. (BTW, implications for ante y post vote suppression are obvious) @kevinriggle.bsky.social

"You love him but sometimes it's hard to look at him, the beauty that first attracted you a mirror of his parents' ugliness. They didn't pay for the sweetness in his eyes but they did pay for their deep blue." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

If there's one type of organization where NDA are legally and professionally redundant is the military, I'd think. Do they... do the believe that it'll reduce the risk of whistleblowing? I mean, they do have more legal experience as sex abusers than as military leaders. via @marypcbuk.bsky.social

It's been fun [1] to realize in real time how much analysis in international relationships, economics, etc, implicitly assumed all major powers -at least the democratic ones- have a functional equivalent of the 25th Amendment[2]. via @ejfagan.com [1] Not really, no. [2] Turns out the US doesn't.

What's broken can be rebuilt: it's not doomerism to say that a country where this is continuously happening (he's the one who was released; most aren't) and happens without immediate consequences, is already broken in a fundamental way. via @aaronsojourner.org @deanbaker13.bsky.social

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory * Optical interconnects * Abelian anyons

There's a horror plot somewhere in here about Octavian's political retcon getting stronger over time until archeologists begin to find physical traces of the events of the Aeneid... and I just realized @adapalmer.bsky.social wrote a version of this. via @lukeplunkett.com @bretdevereaux.bsky.social

I'm convinced senior Democrats and their analysts as a group *personally* like Republican voters and donors better than they like they own [so many uppity women! so many non-whites!] and, as the latter have no option, would really like to be appreciated by the former[1]. 1/ via @alexanderfurnas.com

"You love him but sometimes it's hard to look at him, the beauty that first attracted you a mirror of his parents' ugliness. They didn't pay for the sweetness in his eyes but they did pay for their deep blue." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

On one hand: As a survivor of The Great Migration - yes, yes, yes, it's definitely a better model. On the other hand: I don't want DreamWidth to become any more known than it'd take for the site and the team to be financially secure. To utter the name is to taunt the Monkey's Paw.

Even a few years ago I'd have been skeptical of the Chinese government's ability to implement large scale industrial modernization beyond the capability frontiers of the US and Europe. Boy was I wrong. Doesn't imply they can do another round of that. Does mean it's not obvious they won't.

Very interesting by @delong.social on the short- and long-term impacts of Trump's trade chaos (smaller than you'd expect at first as counterparts learn to manage Trump and mitigate his volatility; larger as the slower process of shifting a planet's supply chain structure takes place).

@brandonlive.com is 100% right on this, but I'd like to add that most of the economic and social drivers of the use of AI by students, professionals, etc manifest through time/cost pressures that makes things like checking sources a pragmatic impossibility. Managers... 1/ via @marypcbuk.bsky.social

Personnel is policy, etc. It's a given that ICE will be used during the midterms to "prevent buses of illegals from voting" so expect lots of armed, untrained, unaccountable would-be fascists (why else would you enter ICE now?) with a de facto license to harass and pick up "probable suspects" 1/

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory * Optical interconnects * Abelian anyons

The story of most elite journalism abdicating their professional responsibility shares drivers with and is parallel to, mutually reinforcing with, and ultimately just as important as the story of most of Congress abdicating theirs. I... 1/ via @alexanderfurnas.com

On one hand it's deeply surreal. OTOH "women began entering traditionally male-gatekeeped spaces, men freaked out violently, and [mostly male] institutions ended up siding with them" is more than half of what's going on, isn't it? [1] via @jmberger.com [1] Most of the rest being racism.

I strongly believe return to office and pro-fertility policies are first and foremost *about power*: it's about controlling workers/women, not increased productivity/demographic sustainability. via @jessicacalarco.com

Unironically, this is the sort of software I sincerely wish there were more of[1]. via @onslies.bsky.social @adapalmer.bsky.social [1] In absolute terms there's probably more than ever, but in the wider tech culture the weird ad hoc program has become self-consciously retro as a form.

"You love him but sometimes it's hard to look at him, the beauty that first attracted you a mirror of his parents' ugliness. They didn't pay for the sweetness in his eyes but they did pay for their deep blue." #ShortFiction #ScienceFiction #AdversarialMetanoia

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory * Optical interconnects * Abelian anyons

#RisingOnArxiv (ignoring a lot of genAI stuff): * Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory * Optical interconnects * Abelian anyons

@chenoweth.bsky.social interviewed by @pkrugman.bsky.social -- among the most interesting and likely the most useful thing you can read this week/quarter if you're in the US, as it spells what we know, what we don't know, and what can be done anyway.