Outrage at character AI goes mainstream. www.cbsnews.com/news/charact...

was at an event on AI for science yesterday, a panel discussion here at NeurIPS. The panelists discussed how they plan to replace humans at all levels in the scientific process. So I stood up and protested that what they are doing is evil. Full post: togelius.blogspot.com/2025/12/plea...

And Ukrainian journalists, civil society, and legal institutions still work.

Super gripping (and fun!) lectures here: youtu.be/OHDYdmuLMW0?... "Fourier Analysis & Beyond I" - Mini-course - Stefan Steinerberger

"Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English." - Orwell agreeing with all the Elden Ring Nightreign players who didn't know what N.B. means

I don’t want to vote for a Democrat who promises to get Trump’s voters to vote for them. I want a Democrat who wants to put Trump in prison

a billionaire who sees undermining political sovereignty as an alternative to paying a relatively minor fine is a problem that will have to be dealt with eventually

“Zoning was invented to separate housing from noxious uses” Everything below happened after zoning came to the US. We were better off without it

Holiday deal alert! the paperback of Someone You Can Build A Nest In is just $10 on Amazon! In case you need a shapeshifting monster in search for love this holiday. www.amazon.com/Someone-You-...

Guys… it looks like someone invented a fake Russia advance in Ukraine to manipulate online gambling markets. @evystadium.bsky.social gets into it. Full story by @mjgault.bsky.social here: www.404media.co/unauthorized...

With Giorgos Vasdekis, we have written a manuscript - arxiv.org/abs/2511.21563 - which surveys the state of affairs within this literature, outlining signals for anticipating non-robustness, principles for improving robustness, and examples of contemporary methods which confront these issues.

Bookish Holiday Fun and Games For... YOU! Now in its sixth year, for this #NewberryLibrary Advent Calendar, we'll play around with the collection! Cards, Board Games, Puzzles, Gambling... What's up first? CHESS! December 1 (1/24) Here's last year's extra-shiny offering: bsky.app/profile/drka...

The big news this month is a teaser for The Bloggies 2026. Don't worry, you've got plenty of time. Submissions don't open until the New Year. Until then, write, bookmark, and count the days. www.explorersdesign.com/bloggies-2026/ An official announcement will go out later this week.

This is actually quite brilliant, up to and including the final sentence 🔥

While Reeves and Starmer are idiots, at least they haven't killed hundreds of thousands of people through misconduct and an indifference to suffering. Like the Tories.

It's a fortunate position to be in to make levels for a game series you really love. Even more fortunate for the studio @ustwogames.co.uk letting you make a video showing how these levels can be designed. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL-F...

one reason "great power competition" is a bad description of the emerging order is that an interlinked global kleptocracy does not care about national interests or rivalries

Springer-Nature statement “Whilst the details of peer review are confidential, we can confirm that the article underwent two rounds of review from two independent peer reviewers, supporting an accept decision.” How am I now expected to believe that two people looked at the paper twice and DGAF?

Headline: "AI can replace 11.7% of workforce" Actual study: Anthropic paid MIT to use a "labor simulation tool" that said 11.7% of TASKS could be done by AI

the hardest part of writing politically charged fiction is that a good villain needs to be complex, cool and about as right as the protagonist; while evil people in real life are lame, cruel, childish morons motivated by greed or not wanting to look at minorities

When The Splinter in the Sky—a novel about imperialism and misogynoir—came out, one of the most common critiques of it was that the villains were outrageously cruel. I did not put anything in that book that did not at one point happen in history.

The authors, the reviewers, and the editor all should be shamed publicly, this is completely absurd

I just released version 0.10.0 of SuperSonic - my web port of the powerful SuperCollider audio synthesiser. It's feeling *really* good now, and I definitely think it's ready for people to start exploring. Have a play and let me know what you think! sonic-pi.net/supersonic/d...

Friction *helps* the creative process. Why do you think artists constantly challenge themselves with trying new mediums and giving themselves restrictions? Same reason people play games on harder difficulties or do speedruns, because overcoming a challenge is REWARDING you motherfuckers

Bushtit flock! 🪶

“.. This is X in 2025: Potentially fake accounts crying at other potentially fake accounts that they aren’t real, all while refusing to acknowledge that they themselves aren’t who they say they are — a Russian nesting doll of bullshit.” @cwarzel.bsky.social www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Yes, and also, leave X if you have not already

This is what bothers me so much, the assumption that Linux is "so hard to learn!" Imagine a Windows XP interface. No ads. No "OneDrive" popups. No Copilot getting between you and the cursor. That's what using many Linux distros is like now! I'm a professional in the area of helping...

Finland uses “Russia-gauge” rails. They are going to move to European compatible rail gauge for their own resilience. This is what we should be thinking about for moving to open social away from American platforms: it should come with significant spending commitments & is absolutely necessary.

🔥 WANTED: Student Researcher to join me, @vdebortoli.bsky.social, Jiaxin Shi, Kevin Li and @arthurgretton.bsky.social in DeepMind London. You'll be working on Multimodal Diffusions for science. Apply here google.com/about/career...

You can now convert your Notion pages and databases to durable, private, local files. Your data, offline, forever, for free.

Home Alone makes changes to the Die Hard formula that render it hard for me to enjoy. The McClain character should feel overawed. And in theory having Kevin be a child versus adults achieves that. But the thing is: Kevin is a god. It's not just Tom & Jerry. This is some random punks versus Anansi.

AdventureX off to a good, aspirational start

A nontrivial fraction of these people appear to be seriously unwell. OpenAI claims that they have the situation well under control. My inbox suggests otherwise.

We asked Roblox's CEO about child safety on the platform. It got tense www.nytimes.com/2025/11/21/p...

gambling for kids, but make it educational so it’s fine???

xAI is currently in talks to raise $15 billion at a $230 billion valuation. The flagship product is self-identified "MechaHitler" chatbot with training so warped it describes Elon Musk as more physically fit than LeBron James. It is powered by gas turbines poisoning South Memphis.

Headline's a bit misleading. They're not worried that AI will replace them because it's good, but because "generative AI trained on vast amounts of [stolen] fiction will undermine the value of writing" itself

"For students, AI teaching appears to be less transformative than it is demoralising". “I do not want to be taught by GPT.” www.theguardian.com/education/20...

i can literally see the “oh god oh god oh god” and the frantic attempts to try to minimize the damage which in the end only made it worse

1. Great, let's do this 2. Here's some useful info (from my agent). You have until March 23, 2026 and it now includes illustrators 3. Here is the Works Lookup link: secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

With Advent of Code coming up I've written a blog post about solving coding challenges with functional programming. Maybe someone reads it and recognizes that you dont need deep understanding of type theory or monads to get started with the cool stuff. Examples in OCaml. ecsodikas.eu/posts/functi...

British and Australian chemists have discovered a powerful new antibiotic called pre-methylenomycin C lactone, hiding in a well-known soil bacterium. This molecule kills drug-resistant bacteria without triggering resistance. buff.ly/YlXaONo #ShareGoodNewsToo

“Re ‘There are a lot of people on your side who will be in the Epstein Files too!’: No there aren't, my side is the ‘People Who Don't Fuck Children’ side, anyone not on this side can get all the way into the bin, what side are YOU on, exactly?” — John Scalzi

If you need me, tap me on the shoulder. I’ll be happily working all day listening to this on a loop.

The section subtitles in betanalpha.github.io/assets/case_... continues to be one of my greatest achievements.

I Shibuya Punk'd the Lady of Pain. #dungeons&dragons #planescape