Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

A reminder of the stunning rate of scientific progress: it’s only been 101 years that we’ve known the Universe is larger than the Milky Way. Now we know that it’s at least *1 million* times larger in linear size than the Milky Way (and probably 50 or more times larger than that, even).

I learned "Mr Tambourine Man" because I want to use it in class next semester as my example of a I-IV-V song and, like all Dylan songs, it is much more musically interesting than you would think.

"The silence from NJ’s loudest lawmakers was deafening last week after the Port Authority announced it would jack the PATH train fare from $3 to a whopping $4.... [A year ago] @govmurphy.bsky.social, @mikiesherrill.bsky.social... led a charge to try to kill the [Manhattan congestion] tolls."

Oliver Sacks was a hero of mine. I couldn't let @rachelaviv.bsky.social’s brilliant piece pass without comment. My latest, on why Sacks's fictions are so much worse than those of your garden-variety journalist fabulist. . open.substack.com/pub/mariakon...

If you are in the US and you would like to send a message to your elected representative about the proposed dissolution of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, @agu.org makes it easy with a template here: agu.quorum.us/campaign/151... #AGU25

It is hard to overstate how critical @ncar-ucar.bsky.social is to climate science in the US and around the world. It's the beating heart of our field. Generations of scientists have trained there, and almost everyone I know relies on deep collaborations with NCAR scientists. It's end is unthinkable.

AGU has a Congressional email and call script up on NCAR:

💡 Mathematics is the research field that most likely could be automated. So, what will be left for humans to do? Check out the analysis of the panel discussions on the topic at #HLF25 by George Musser: 👉 scilogs.spektrum.de/hlf/when-ai-...

OK to lie on a job application to pass AI screening? @maxread.info says yes. "You owe the recruiters to whom you’re submitting your job application as much care and respect as they are showing you. Which is to say, if they’re using automatic sorting systems for sweeping eliminations, not very much."

"While elites of both parties have polarized ideologically... this process has been more precipitous for Republicans." Interesting analysis by @anastasiabzv.bsky.social and colleagues in @pnas.org. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

We've collected rocks on Mars that might contain evidence of life. But now they might be stuck there. My latest feature for @sciam.bsky.social delves into the beleaguered Mars Sample Return mission, and the quest to bring samples home. Can we pull it off? www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasa...

KitKat was doomed largely bc of a series of Waymo business and engineering decisions: - 5th gen robot sensor field of view decisions made years ago - routinely deploying sw w inadequate situational awareness - making Randa's Market a pickup location

"Everything that isn’t a ghost is usually woven." LLMs’ style is hilarious but sobering: They make the curious word choices they do because that’s what most people rate as good writing. (PSA: When you see me using “delve,” “—”, and descriptive triplets, it’s really me!)

You've probably heard about how the rapidly increasing numbers of satellites are affecting #astronomy. A new paper in @nature.com looks at the possible future for space-based telescopes — and finds 96% of some images could be impacted. 🧪🔭🛰️ By @jennaahart.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Scientists: have you been the target of an online harassment campaign, doxxing, or weaponized FOIA requests? I'd like to talk to you about steps you had to take to protect your digital security for an upcoming Nature story. (You can be anonymous if necessary.) RTs appreciated.

"Science is being destroyed across many agencies" say federal researchers. For my latest @nature.com piece, I spoke to 19 different scientists across EPA, NOAA, NIH, NASA, and USGS to document how science is being dismantled across US federal agencies.

"New York City's Citi Bike system costs more to ride than any other major bike-share system in the United States, Canada or Europe."

"Witnesses said they saw KitKat sitting under the Waymo, and attempted to stop it from driving off.... 'It just…. ran over him.'" Well, why doesn't Waymo have some kind of emergency switch? Until it does, I refuse to ride in one.

Putting an atom into a hall of mirrors ("cavity") can stop it from emitting light. Now remove a mirror. How long before the atom can emit? Immediately! No matter how long the hallway. Vlatko Vedral of @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social explains this bizarre case of quantum spooky action at a distance.

Tech companies are spending $1 trillion on A.I. China built its entire high-speed rail network for that. It's hard to imagine A.I. would improve our lives by as much as a decent transit system (not to mention universal health care or poverty elimination).

Mindblowing study of a 3800-year-old array of termite mounds in the caatinga shrubland of northeastern Brazil—200 million of them interconnected by tunnels over an area the site of Britain.

A.I. makes it easier for students to cheat, but is otherwise the enemy of cheating, argues @economist.com. It empowers you against unscrupulous plumbers, car dealers, taxi drivers, and five-star reviewers. "Rip-off markets impose an effective consumer tax of hundreds of billions of dollars a year."

"'[People] have to protest peacefully, they can’t commit crimes, they can’t attack the federal officers.' But what about when those protesters are attacked by the feds? What about their ability to exercise their rights in public?" asks @ndhapple.bsky.social.

Some journal websites such as PNAS and Science open PDF links in the browser, forcing you to go through an extra step to download the actual PDF. Does anyone know how to bypass the in-browser reader?

Are there any good Trump-era protest songs?

"Mosquitoes have been found in Iceland for the first time as global heating makes the country more hospitable for insects. The country was until this month one of the only places in the world that did not have a mosquito population. The other is Antarctica."

"Many researchers are fighting to stay in an increasingly competitive academic system. 'You can work as hard as you want, but at the end of the day, it’s down to numbers. It’s down to luck.'" www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels jumped by a record amount in 2024 to push concentrations to their highest point since measurements began.

500 job cuts at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab.

Acoustic analysis aided by community science shows how many birds burst into a dawn chorus in the aftermath of the 2024 total solar eclipse- very cool! #birds #birding #nature #elipse #animalcommunication #animalbehavior 🧪

Aren’t bumblebees just awesome? #FarmLife #LittleFarm

It was yet another rough night for CDC employees: Dozens — possibly hundreds, they are still self-surveying — were let go late at night, including those who worked on the prestigious MMWR reports www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...

Swipe up to try a new variant on Conway's Game of Life. And another. And another. This is how artificial-life researchers spread the joy after the #ALIFE2025 conference! They say it's like TikTok, but I wouldn't know.... ⚙️🧫 rulehunt.org?rulesetHex=7... #cellularautomata #gameoflife

Hey #ALIFE2025 people! Have you heard of Assembly Theory? A month ago, I wrote a good, objective essay summarizing AT's contributions, limitations, and possible improvements. It's perfect if you don't want to read all the critiques and counter-critiques that have been written!

Tech is depleting not only material resources but also intellectual resources, especially common knowledge. Political polarization erodes agreement on the most basic facts and concepts. "It's almost like seeing the ozone layer deplete before our eyes," said @audreyt.org at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫

#ALIFE2025 Day 4 keynote Blaise Agüera y Arcas shows a live demo of his famous Brainfuck experiment (which looks very much like the Matrix)

Evolution has an arrow of time toward greater complexity. It's driven neither by mutation nor by crossover/sex but by symbiogenesis, argued @blaiseaguera.bsky.social (following Lynn Margulis) at #ALIFE2025. He showed lots of cool CoreWar-like competing programs. whatisintelligence.antikythera.org ⚙️🧫

Richard Löffler creates lifelike oil droplets during the public event at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫

Another mirroring illusion for your puzzling pleasure, created by @eijiwatanabe.bsky.social, demonstrated by @sinalana.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫

Here's a depressing solution to the Fermi Paradox: In a hostile Galaxy, we won't ever see aliens because, if we did, we'd be dead already, mused Georgii Karelin of @oistedu.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. ⚙️🧫

At the industry session, He Wang (Galbot Robotics) introduced us to a Vision-Language-Action loop to achieve generalist robots. As a solution to the big amount of data needed to train their robots, they propose the use of large scale synthetic data. #ALIFE2025

The usual explanation for great music is that it's predictable but not too predictable. But there's more to it, said @frosas.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. We prefer music when we perceive agency behind it. Improvisation trumps a prepared performance. See paper at www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy.... ⚙️🧫

Monkeys on typewriters would take eons to generate π, but much MUCH less time to generate a program that would generate π, said @hectorzenil.bsky.social at #ALIFE2025. He has a cool applet to prove the point at demonstrations.wolfram.com/InfiniteMonk.... ⚙️🧫

For A.I. to feel empathy, it has to be able to feel pain, argued roboticist Minoru Asada in a provocative talk at #ALIFE2025. He has built a pain signal into his robots. I hope it doesn’t inure them to others’ misery, as we see all too often in people. www.er.ams.eng.osaka-u.ac.jp/asadalab/?pa... ⚙️🧫

In this bizarre #opticalillusion, an object seems to switch direction when viewed in a mirror. Mathematician and puzzle-maker Kokichi Sugihara wrote it up for the @euromathsoc.bsky.social magazine at euromathsoc.org/magazine/art... and created a very helpful video at youtu.be/vGxTKpOt6xU?....

Thousands of NASA employees to bid farewell to the NASA they knew Yes, NASA science is being destroyed, and the NASA we know is actively in the process of being gutted. Here are the receipts. bigthink.com/starts-with-... #space #astro #nasa #usa

Interesting interview of Eliezer Yudkowsky by @kevinroose.com and @caseynewton.bsky.social. One problem I have with A.I. doomsters is that they equate intelligence with power. When I look around at who exerts power and accrues wealth, I see a fairly weak correlation between those two attributes.