Someone should gift my senator, Chuck Schumer, a copy of Max Frisch’s Biedermann und die Brandstifter. I am guessing he does not know German, but I can’t find a translation in Spinelesscowardese so maybe English will have to do. Perhaps he will need some Cliff‘s Notes.

In case anyone is on the academic job market and has an upcoming online video interview: * do some research on the department: what classes can you teach, who can you collaborate with? * be able to answer "why do you want to come here" with something more concrete than "because you are great..."

ICLR AC: "The scores were too low, reject. Reviewer A's score was the lowest." Also ICLR AC: "Reviewer A was marked as AI generated." Also also ICLR AC: "Reviewer A is unlikely to raise their score." It's ok to reject the paper, but come on...

My partner @drnycnerd.bsky.social and co-authors from @cnti.bsky.social published a report on how people use LLM-based chatbots to get the news (even if it is wrong). cnti.org/reports/chat...

“When we use terms like ‘output,’ ‘feedback,’ ’interface,’ and ‘networking’ to express the transactions of everyday life, we reveal how thoroughly artificial things now shape our sense of human being.” -Langdon Winner, “The Whale and the Reactor” (Preface)

Bezos calling his new startup Prometheus just makes me think of Jay Sherman's college film. I'll just call it "Promotheus" from now on.

JD Vance claims that diversity weakens unions, as people end up distrusting each other and not organizing. Let me tell you two menswear stories related to this claim. 🧵

TFW you open a new browser tab and your fingers automatically type "overleaf.c" + tab.

Good news about the cutting-edge AI tools from the $3-trillion-dollar company.

Worn, vintage yet precious to my heart. Souvenir: a mousepad from #ISIT 1998, the International Symposium on Information Theory, in honor of Claude E. Shannon 1948 paper, "A mathematical theory of communication", where I was a lucky voluntary student.

This. Actually this. www.argmin.net/p/the-banal-...

by applying a QR decomposition, any matrix can be written as a QR code multiplied by an upper triangular matrix

I've created a new AI assistant called Bartleby that politely refuses to do any task you ask it to do.

Went to go look at Grok but got distracted by this quite funny burn on Continental philosophy.

The New York Times was more skeptical of the academic qualifications of a black woman who had secured tenure and become the president of Harvard than they were of a white man who washed out of a grad program with a massive scandal and then became a white nationalist troll.

The saga of the NYT's anti-Mamdani story taken from notorious white supremacist Jordan Lasker (they call him an "academic") gets even more amazing: Lasker's only impactful paper, which claimed white people are smarter, is infamous: it misused data so badly it got his tenured co-author fired. 2/

OpenReview's servers appear to be borked so I can't upload my already written reviews and I've planned to be off the next few days. NeurIPS appears to be very dire about deadlines but also don't have the infrastructure up.

While I've expressed a number of disagreements w Mamdani, Sen. Gillibrand's lacerating and tendentious attacks on him just cement my longstanding belief that's she's a self-seeking opportunist of the worst order. I fully respect those who think Al Franken was right to resign. But Gillibrand ...

Did you know that ICML is also the International Conference on Malignant Lymphoma? The "AI is a cancer" jokes just write themselves! www.icml.ch/icml/home.html

It is not yet fall but already my leaves runneth over. (Or amok?)

They're terminating OPT. Today the nominee to head USCIS stated directly: he will end Optional Practical Training, the single largest channel for high-skill immigrants to work in the US. 6 weeks ago I warned about this & summarized the research on impacts of this drastic action—> @piie.com

Visiting Bristol Uni for the week and I'm glad I'm in the Fry building (maths) and not the Abattoir. ... although I guess one might get fried after visiting the abattoir?

The trend of creating "acronyms" (I call them nacronyms) by picking random letters from the *middle* of words in the system's name is bad enough, but somehow C turned into a K as well? Don't try so hard, people. Actually, pulling random letters and calling it "meaning" is a good metaphor for AI.

Excited to learn from @spmontecarlo.bsky.social at LSIT!

If you want to see the purportedly oldest living organism in NYC, go in the dead of winter unless you love poison ivy and ticks. www.nycgovparks.org/parks/alley-...

@drnycnerd.bsky.social and I saw this show on Saturday after I read this post and it was AMAZING. While you there, go across the street to see Kenny Kguyen’s exhibit ‘Mother Tongue” @ Sundaram Tagore’s gallery, also AMAZING.

Possibly useful if you’re the victim of a cancelled grant! www.spencer.org/grant_types/...

If you are or know an information theorist who would be interested in joining a Queer in IT group (QuIT is a bad acronym, looking for suggestions), please fill out (or send to the person you know) a link to our survey!

🚨#NSF illegal grant termination update! Based on work with my admin/ppl in the know, my to do list: 1. APPEAL! NSF: “this is a final decision/not subject to appeal.” FALSE! What they’re doing is illegal AF and they know it. Contact your admin #Resist 2. BUDGET: outstanding + research dissemination

An emotional rollercoaster of a day... Up: was told that in July I will no longer be an Ass Prof... Down: more bad news from NSF. www.science.org/content/arti...

The legal admission by DHS that it cannot actually unilaterally remove student non-immigrant status means every time a university informs a student that a SEVIS change by DHS means they must unenroll and leave the country, they are actively collaborating with a depraved regime.

Breaking: a judge in GA ordered that the fed'l gov't CANNOT pull the visas of foreign students. The order applies ONLY to students who are part of the lawsuit. If you want to join the lawsuit, reach out to: [email protected] and [email protected] youtu.be/FS6B8CM8uf4

Apparently students who are affected can still be added as plaintiffs to the suit by contacting Charles Kuck or Danielle Claffey -- not sure if this is still the case but for those who know affected students... www.acluga.org/en/press-rel...

This alone should be an impeachable offense.

It's the terror of knowing what this world is about Watching some good friends screaming, "Let me out" Pray tomorrow gets me higher Pressure on people, people on streets

Trans rights are human rights and human rights are trans rights.

In my voice lesson I have started learning "O sleep, why dost thou leave me" (Händel, from Semele) because I believe art should speak to the present moment.

"Several university researchers have recently received requests to sign attestations for federal grants and subawards stating that their grant activities comply with recent executive orders. Some of the requests indicated a response was needed within a few hours." Ignore/"IANAL" is the right move.

I lost my job at the National Science Foundation yesterday, along with 167 of my colleagues, including some dear friends. This was the best job I've ever had, and I thought it would be my last. The PI community has been sympathetic and supportive, without exception. I will miss working for you.

Upon learning that yesterday would be my last day as a program officer at the National Science Foundation, I shared this parting message with my colleagues. The next few months will be frenetic and stressful for them. Here are some things that you can do to help them with the mission ahead. (1)

Optimal transport makes the NYT!

The monograph on AVCs is free until Friday! www.nowpublishers.com/article/Deta...

Dorfman, Warner, and the (false) stories we tell I've been thinking about reviving the blog and as maybe a way of easing back in I've come up with some short post ideas. As usual, these are a bit half-baked, so YMMV. A common way of generating a "hook" in a technical talk is to say "actually, this…

Good things can happen too!

Welp, here we go.

There are two types of people in the world: those who write {\em blah} and those who write \emph{blah}. Don't be the first kind of person.

Pursuant to my previous thread, I just got my copy of our monograph in print. Thanks, Santa!

Please share! My collaborators at the TReNDS Center are hosting a virtual neuroimaging data analysis workshop using COINSTAC "Vaults" (CV) on January 21st, 2025. If interested, please sign up by January 15, 2025 via this Google Form. More details in the following thread. forms.gle/LjfUVTrYRF1i...

The Heaviside Step Function ♾️🎢🧮⚛️

Not sure anyone following me is in the NYC area and likes choral music, but: I am singing with the New York Chamber Choir in a concert on DECEMBER 14th of music in Slavic languages. Come if you're interested! I will try not to butcher the palatalized consonants! www.eventbrite.com/e/slavic-cho...