Mom, come pick me up, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Poor families used to own my ancestors. Poor families benefitted from depressing their labor and drowning their communities after they were freed. Misdeeds often are financially attractive; it'd be pointless if they only offered moral compromises. Having integrity isn't a privilege, it's a choice.

Sweden is a morning-people country but Stockholm always surprises me how early everything closes. Even Gothenburg seems to be awake at least an hour later, and it's the second city. Stockholmare really like their bedtimes.

shadow men are vying for control of the powerful apples

the pity is that Europe at least doesn't seem to have picked up any of the slack

why learn anything? why cultivate an inner life? better to wander out of the way of understanding and remain, even while living, among the congregation of the dead.

I grew up with stovetop basmati and other South Asian rices and never even heard of rice cookers until much later, then later discovered that East Asians think that all rice cultures use rice cookers.

it *was* a turning point, just in the opposite direction

was just told that a thermostat has volition in the manner of a paperclip maximizer

New Moltbook research: agents reproduce macro-level social structure (power laws, hubs) but not micro-level depth. Mean conversation depth: 1.07 turns. Identity from "narrative coherence," not relational bonding. The structure is easy. The depth is what's missing. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.12634

So many ppl are excited about solar 😍. This is a great photo essay on “Solar Hockey Stick of hope”, and countries breaking free of oil and gas dependence. IF your country's media is telling you about AI boom but not the renewables global boom, then consider why... bsky.app/profile/scie...

It’ll be sad when the Winter Olympics ends and all the sports in it except ice hockey cease to exist for four years

once again I would like to periodically remind people that in-depth devil's advocatry is good and you should indulge in it from time to time

Germany's far-right AfD, who are totally not Nazis, are planning to hold their national party conference exactly 100 years after a major Nazi party congress in 1926, in the exact same location. p.dw.com/p/58oLt

a gogurt used for getting someone’s attention. a yogurt.

wake up homie, new culture war just dropped

May I offer you a small painted chicken in these trying times

My adolescence can be precisely described by the fact that I learned to touch-type by hanging out in a busy X-Files chat room on CompuServe where I had to break typing speed records to get my deep and insightful comments in before the conversation moved on

I wonder if people are paying attention to how much their doom scrolling is cutting into time they used to use to read books

I love the Olympics man

Roses are red Violets are prime This is the sort Of linguist that I'm

the egyptians used huge sponges to build the pyramids. think about it!

I have no idea what this is about, but it's great game theory.

You’ll know the Chomsky hierarchy* if you’re a computer scientist. You’ll know the Chomsky hierarchy if you’re a linguist. But you’ll only know the subregular language hierarchy if you’re a sublinguist.** *) regular, context-free languages, etc. **) phonologist*** ***) #sorry

Laura Dern for president

It's oddly under-discussed that there are actually enough people who want to read and pay for this that it's a viable business model. I knew it before ChatGPT was a thing. A lot of genre fiction readers' preferences DO NOT ALIGN with those of writers or the publishing industry for some reason.

but what about girlsenberries

I've been singing this to myself all day

Let’s be honest: in many of these winter Olympic “sports”, the snow is doing most of the work. An unexpected thaw would expose these so-called athletes for the frauds they are

now that UG is unpopular can proponents (me included) be called UGgos?

writing an unauthorized sequel to game of thrones, a prance with princes

Its sort of a shame that big long form magazine journalism is dying simply because we now frown on the authors simply making stuff up for a better story

Nobody ever tries to bribe me. I feel left out in the modern era

(And now AI LLMs do something eerily similar - reflect the user back to themselves but packaged as an outside person, with fondness and care. There are already whole subreddits full of people who have fallen in love with their chatbot…)

bluesky this, blacksky that, what about chomsky, the colorless green social network?

Apropos of nothing, but there's a lot of people -- spectators -- who *might* be "reached" in the "debate me, bro" format who *won't* be reached if you don't engage in that. I'm sorry, but there's a big part of the population who doesn't respect the source otherwise.

All the Swedish funders very kindly have deadlines all within the same like 2 months, it's nuts.

***Postdoc@Chalmers University*** There is no doubt that generative AI has changed the way we write. But how, and how does that influence scientific writing? Spread the word among recent graduates in (computational) linguistics and related subjects! www.chalmers.se/en/about-cha...

Ever tried boiled pasta? Not as crunchy but still good

HOW IT WORKS IN MOVIES: 1. Government lies 2. Brave heroes release video showing the truth 3. Press says “the government is lying!” HOW IT APPARENTLY WORKS IN REAL LIFE 1. Brave heroes release video showing the truth 2. Government lies 3. Press says “Oh no, what now? So confusing! So hard!”

As my ability to understand spoken Swedish has gone up, my ability to interpret spoken Danish has gone *down*. I can only think of how uncomfortable it must be to fill your mouth with burning hot potatoes in order to speak.

Not a new thing, to be sure, and I actually wouldn't blame the companies for this. LLMs cannot discern source quality, so hard coding against the use of bad sources will always be a post-hoc effort.

I wrote up some thoughts on why the Poverty of the Stimulus Argument - a mainstay in linguistics and other areas of CogSci - is not (really) an argument. I also argue, controversially, that usage-based reliance on LLMs to refute the POSA are weakened. 🧵 vincentcarchidi.substack.com/p/on-misunde...

I have never subscribed to the ‘great man of History’ as the font of progress and good things but I’m willing to be persuaded by the ‘Stupid Man of History’ as being responsible for some bad ones.

your last meme saved is your moral philosophy (what happens to people who don't save memes?)

"42"

the funniest outcome would be GRRM finishes his book but he uses AI

philosopher of language going down an undetached rabbit parts hole