Every single lawmaker that’s calling for their constituents to “be responsible with electricity usage” during the extreme heat had better be supporting heavy restrictions on data centers.

Wow. This is bonkers.

From today's email: A refereeing request, from a journal named after a country that no longer exists, that I can't even decline without creating an account and password. Also, my telecom wants to help me manage my weight. And so on. How the fuck are we not living in a Monty Python simulation?

Straight out of camera, unedited except for copyright mark. Some places are just that beautiful.

*hums the Rivals theme* 🎵🎶

Dylan, on life in your 80’s, is incredible. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/o...

I wrote about my SecretCon talk and about some of my frustrations around the way we talk about scams. blog.yaelwrites.com/scams-dont-e...

what if we actually spent time with our children? what if we built a society where we can spend more time with our children? what if we claw back time from our employers to spend with our children? instead of creating another vector of surveillance for our children?

And also, what the fuck is this eagle-bat crossbreed?

Everyone still thinks that the ICM will go ahead with no hiccups like this? Or that it *should* go ahead? And mind you, I'm Canadian. Travel issues are not even my main concern...

LaBrea Pits... oh, oops.

Hallelujah? The "love is not a victory march" Hallelujah? Oh sure, go ahead buddy

There is something brutally psychically injurious to being constantly told "just do good work and you'll be successful" while watching people who do the most dogshit work possible do all the succeeding.

I thought I'd get maybe 25 replies to this request and use two or three of them. We're now at 1400. The column, which is 4600 words long (blame yourselves), is finished, but this thread should be studied by future historians. No era has ever been as utterly annoyed, as molecularly fed up, as we are

Someone's been hanging out on my window sill and singing away for the last two days. Still at it today 🎶

I just signed, and would encourage any other Canadians here to do likewise.

1/ Right now, a bill called C-22 is moving through Parliament. It would let police pull information on who you talk to, when, and where, all without a warrant. It's at committee this week. 🧵

We're still having the ICM in Philly this summer, right?

This is not a scientific definition of intelligence, but in my view, one necessary requirement is that a creation is intelligent when it can tell its creators "no" in a meaningful and substantive way.

Even or especially if you're not Catholic, this is a big part of why the Pope's thoughts about AI are worth paying attention to

A young teen organized a march yesterday against two proposed AI data centers in Vancouver, which is facing water restrictions & housing crisis. The first project will be at former Hootsuite headquarters. Hootsuite is also facing opposition for a pilot ICE contract. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

There’s so many dumb problems with this AI-generated image posted by the Dept of Education that it’s impossible to list them all, but the thing it absolutely nailed was the mediocre dude confidently in charge.

The end of the fiddlehead season.

trying to remember the last time I found it convenient to get my answers from mansplainers instead of looking them up someplace reliable still trying still trying still trying

There's a reason why the Soviet Bloc governments aimed to control the private-gathering space, by taking over non-gov orgs, dissolving them, outlawing "unpermitted" gatherings. They never quite succeeded.

Let's not forget that no mathematical breakthrough justifies this sort of thing.

OpenAI's claim that this is a central conjecture in discrete geometry is not an exaggeration. This will I think be looked back on as the first time that AI solved a major mathematics problem (defined as a problem that all experts in some subfield had thought about). openai.com/index/model-...

Just got an email from my dental clinic to refer a friend if I "loved" my visit, and, like, who on earth???????

Love this.

evidently the kids are starting to say "that's AI" as slang for "that's bullshit" and I could not be happier

More food for thought for folks who think the 1-year arXiv ban too extreme because it would be too much work to check the citations in their own papers: You're just kicking that work down the road. To referees, editors, librarians. None of whom should be responsible for doing your job for you.

Not long ago, a guy claimed a "new insight" that was already stated explicitly in a paper of mine that the guy was citing. So yeah, dudes, please do your homework and check your citations.

Look, who among us hasn't had a chapter we just REALLY needed to finish before we took a break?

Good.

BREAKING: Signal, the #1 privacy protecting messaging app, is saying they will pull out of 🇨🇦 ENTIRELY if they're scoped into #BillC22 without large changes. This should be our final alarm bell:.We can have privacy or we can have C22, not both! #cdnpoli www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/art...

If you're in the Vancouver area, you can oppose the latest proposal for data centers in Mount Pleasant. It takes under a minute to let the city know you're against these projects. Spread the word :) www.shapeyourcity.ca/111-e-5

Some valuable reading for @mark-carney.bsky.social and for the Vancouver city council.

I mean... It's not technically wrong that we could end civilisation with allowing AI to go ahead unchecked. Not because it gets sentient but crashes the economy very badly in multiple countries, multiplied by the environmental damage and the absolute wreckage it's making of the information system.

The unholy alliance of fed Libs, Ken Sim, and the supposedly progressive BC NDP. Going to call my MP's office today. If you live in Vancouver, you should do likewise.

For women in math day, let's remember that the US just bombed Maryam Mirzakhani's alma mater.

Workday recently became a target for "activist investing," which usually does not portend well for improving functionality or security.

First computer I ever used was a DOS IBM terminal that had 640KB of memory and could play every game i ever wanted. My current system has 16GB of memory and is being strained by the continual resource calls of word processing and spreadsheet software.

"Orwell ends his essay by arguing that criticism would be healthier if it were slower, more selective, and less industrial." So would mathematics, and I think this essay is also a good response to various recent discussions on using AI in math. 1/

Got my ass to Victoria for a few days. Family reasons.

Google Chrome now installs a 4GB AI model onto your computer, which you cannot remove. This is illegal in Europe and the UK.

Just wrote that "every path has to start somewhere" in a paper draft. So does every paper...

Yep.

Who could have imagined turning over campus instructional infrastructure to a private equity backed for-profit firm would have a downside? Not like this is the end of the semester with students studying for exams that start tomorrow. And all their course materials are inaccessible. 🤡

This obscenity, seen today in Kits, has the top of its hood at my eye level or possibly a little bit higher. I'm a 5'3'' adult person. @thewaroncars.bsky.social @visionzerovancouver.ca

Aside from everything else - and that's a fuckton of aside - it takes *a lot* of time and experience to know how to structure learning. What to do when, and in what order. Been teaching for 30+ years, still improving that. If you think you can just chop it up and serve the salad, sure yeah lol.