Holy shit! Was that an earthquake?!

"This thing you like is just like another [bad] thing" was always a strategy that baited the response "huh, you know what, I like the other thing too."

So many academics just absolutely desperate to not be doing their jobs. Y'all are free to quit any time if you don't like doing research.

Rare book room is really doing some commentary today lol

"gender/sexuality and STS? What a strange combination of interest areas. Those are so unrelated." "Macrohard"

Sir.

Heckin yes, internet upgrade day is here. Hello my Cat6A friend.

Having students is great because sometimes they do really exciting work and get me to think in new ways.

Fascinating, unpleasant data broker nonsense. My old work email used to get confused with an undergrad at the same university. Now we have both left there. I assume she moved to Texas, because my personal email is getting nextdoor invites addressed to her.

Donna wants to be right on the edge of the sun today.

Sitting on the balcony with Donna listening to our neighbors sing along to j-pop. Solid Sunday.

This is a great piece: “The issue is not what these machines can do, in other words, but what we believe they can do, and how this changes how we act. The problem is primarily ideological, not technological.”

Before we go calling for media types to become fluent in 4chan etc ... Maybe we should remember how exposure to even the most banal parts of old Twitter absolutely broke a lot of them.

Three weeks ago, the chancellor gave a rather encouraging speech to us new faculty. New reporting suggests that he was lying through his teeth at the time.

Very glad to see that someone is doing the important work of aligning AI alignment. alignmentalignment.ai

I checked FIRE's website, and of course it's totally silent on the firing of a Texas A&M faculty member.

If you don't have anything mean to say, you can just say nothing at all.

Celebrating caturday by putting out a towel warm for the dryer for Donna to sit on.

This is hilarious because so many of the prediction markets people still think they're magic crystal balls of truth when they have always been markets in the most vulgar and unregulated sense of the term.

Thrilled about a new cable drop.

Yet another CS paper where the hobbyists on reddit understand LLMs better than academics. All model behavior is basically dependent on a handful of parameters. This is the whole insight behind quantization.

I've apparently lost my NYC mean mug because every time I take BART people ask me for directions. (It's actually quite lovely.)

There was an absolutely MASSIVE spider in my apartment: Google search AI unhelpfully listed all the most venomous spiders in California. My university's entomology department website has a simple listing of local spiders w/ pictures & assuring me this one wasn't dangerous.

There's something so... Pokemon about the way some men interact with women. Like a little boy ordering fictional creatures around. Not coincidentally, this is also how the latest "AI girlfriend" app advertisements go.

Professor achievement unlocked: my first pub with a student coauthor was accepted!

Ten out of cat

The "LLMs feel like magic" crowd seem to forget that humans see magic and even divinity in all manner of things, from inert totems to Babbage's difference engine.

It was only a matter of time before we had a major news story with horrific details, but I don't think most people reacting know the true scale or depths of depravity going on in chatbot land. And among them all, chatgpt is one of the much more "safe" products.

Muted account list is growing rapidly today.

New glasses Rx, and seeing is hard, y'all.

TFW "innovation"

Lol the "family friendly" party outside my building started blasting Shaggy / Wasn't Me for a moment, before abruptly switching to Vanessa Carlton / A Thousand Miles

A colleague at UB is conducting a 6-9 minute survey on the experiences of transgender people in academia: sunybuffalo.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Ideology is a helluva drug and all that but... Have reporters checked whether these people make their money in the death care industry?

Aaaand UChicago social science PhD cohort cuts are here.

Where could Donna be?

Upside down life

Tucking her paws in

The jailbreakers are going to be so busy this week.

Sure, she could be right side up, but why?

What if a sleepy little smile?

Today in every accusation is a confession, the people who hate 'postmodernism' have retreated entirely into the symbolic order.

An unusually large blep.

Lavender is so good.

I love her so much.

Donna likes balcony. More at 11.

Spell check making some very strong claims this morning

Donna dozing off... until there was a sound outside.

Ideal friend

We have a T-REX?!