Agree with the quoted statement by @richarddmorey.bsky.social and disagree with Gelman on that point of asymmetry. Much of what we call metascience today has gained popularity and momentum from scientists/policy makers/funders is by making major positive claims about how science works/doesn't work.

This is a first. Finally slept like a log at the airport hotel. Came down for breakfast. There's someone playing Knocking on Heaven's Door on electric cello live while people are having breakfast. It's surreal!! Maybe I'm still asleep. Idk.

We just received an email from the uni admin today, informing us that the state board of education now requires all course syllabi to be posted on Canvas. Not sure whether that means the state board has access to Canvas. If so, it doesn't help to post a stripped, barebones syllabus there. Bec all

After 60+ hrs, throwing out a tub full of freezer food, buying tens of gallons of water & paying for a hotel room just to take shower, we finally got power (& water) back! I hate how dependent we are on utilities but it's been a miserable few days. So relieved we get to leave Pseudo in a warm home!

*on chat w a Verizon agent for an ungodly amount of time waiting for an answer* Human agent: Please hold on as I bring up your account AI agent: This issue is resolved. You can close this chat now Me: No it isn't! I am waiting for an answer Human agent: You can ignore the AI agent I give you AGI

But job candidates: Please never under-estimate the role of internal politics, which are usually a) impossible for outsiders to understand, b) irrational, and c) more powerful than anything else.

Are these people for real? Ofc these things are confidential so institutions cannot come out to confront them w facts but I wish someone w insider knowledge would dare disclose how exactly they sucked & why they couldn't make it. What a bunch of whiny ass racists with a massive case of sour grapes.

I think I have aged a whole decade today. Still no power, no water. On top we now have snow and roads covered in slushy ice. But I've still managed to give a talk, give my final exam, and submit the grades. I'm done with this semester. Heck, I'm done with this whole year. Sheesh, I need light!

We built on Higgins et al. (2018) symmetry-based disentangled representation learning (SBDRL) framework and introduced a mathematical framework to incorporate world transformation relationships arising from an agent's actions into the agent’s representation. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Ha, this is the perfect opportunity to share this awesome Turkish cartoon many of us will relate to. The man: Have I died and come to heaven? The demon: Dude, what was your life like?

Many think LLM-simulated participants can transform behavioral science. But there's been a lack of accessible discussion of what it means to validate LLMs for behavioral scientists. Under what conditions can we trust LLMs to learn about human parameters? Our paper maps the validation landscape. 1/

When assumptions hold, these estimators are consistent & asymptotically unbiased. But they’re not a panacea: you need ample human data for stable bias estimates. But by the time you have enough human data, is it still worth bringing in LLM? 6/

How much does it cost to raise a quack, including the cost of the obligatory ivy education, and watching them fail up in this country?

At the office as of 5:30. So dark and cold outside. Brought everything here to charge. As of this morning, freezer started to melt 😞 We'll eat some of it today but so much waste. Thank goodness we can come to the uni gym to take showers. That's something I guess.

so grading done (for now). most of packing done. talk for tomorrow morning ready. no power, no internet. so after way too many years of not having used the language in any way, spending the day reading comic books in italian. i honestly have no right to remember it as well as i do!

massive thunderstorm, nonstop sounds of things flying around, branches falling on the roof. may have lost some trees. power is out too so it's pitch dark. extreme weather warning for winds up to 80 knots. that's crazy. they can't fix the outage in this weather. now I'm worrying abt the fridge.

Watching Elementary, I have developed some bedsheet/duvet cover envy every time they showed Lucy Liu in bed. So I have found the brand they used on the show. It's... EXPENSIVE!! 😭

Working with synthetic data is not a groundbreaking new idea or capability. Usually we do it to understand the behavior of a model or to test the capabilities of a method, and not to draw inferences about a real world population. When doing that, it is essential to know the assumptions of your DGM.

And here is the graph in question:

For your collective delectation this holiday season: Quite possibly the silliest thing I've ever written (and definitely the most ridiculous graph I've ever made!) loreandordure.com/2025/12/16/j...

One of the biggest moments of my career: USCIS canceled my client’s naturalization oath ceremony. We filed a lawsuit, went to trial, and the judge swore him in right there in the courtroom!

Hubby has subscribed to their official app to read Bonelli comics in the original Italian. The app's got everything like Zagor, Mister No, Martin Mystère, Ken Parker, Dampyr, etc but the one I want to read. Someday, somehow I will manage to read all Dylan Dog books but that day is not today.

OK I'm ready. Burn this whole mess down!

at this point no one cares, but i was invited to talk about the high-rep retraction saga, and once again, i find myself perplexed at the exclusion of confirmatory results in any calculation in a study making a key claim about the inclusion of confirmatory studies making results highly replicable.

i will never prefer video format over written text. in case anyone cares, lol. i seriously cannot stand watching videos of people opining. i'd rather read a dan brown book, and that's saying a lot. i don't know that i'm alone at this. but then again, i don't care for influencing or being influenced.

Since I can’t get it out of my head, I wrote up my thoughts on @kevinbaker.bsky.social's critique of AI-automated science and the logical end of processes that can't self-correct.

Continuing my streak of replicating Turkish bakery products at home. This time it's "galeta". Crunchy, dry, savory rolls like grissini. They're full of anise, sesame, and nigella seeds. It smells so good (butter and seeds so yeah)!!

currently dunking my biscotti into a piping hot cup of chai based on @mehr.nz's perfect recipe

"But, as we should all know by now, systems can persist in dysfunction indefinitely, and absurdity is not self-correcting." Indeed. Doubling down on absurdity, hoping at some point we won't be able to ignore it, is hanging everything on an assumption that doesn't necessarily hold.

I never doubted Berna but OMG this is the BEST shortbread recipe. I split the dough in half to make some non- berry dusted ones bc kid 1 will never touch those so I don’t have pretty ones to share (yet!) but trust me: add this one to your December baking on taste alone!

On the ethics of writing: "Not writing which has ethics imposed on it from outside. The ethical changes that happen inside you in a lifetime of working with characters, plots, stories, language. Working with them sincerely, trying to represent the world."

the fact that a phrase like "school shooting" is readily available in our collective consciousness without requiring a lengthy explanation or invoking severe incredulity is an abomination itself

Brown University says there's an active shooter on campus. Emergency scanner says multiple victims, but unclear how many. Video footage viewed by the Brown Daily Herald "depicted several individuals lying on the ground near the Sciences Library appearing to be assisted by police."

i don't think it's necessarily a virtue for books/articles to be written for the laziest audience possible. sometimes academic writing advice and norms appear to assume the worst reader—unmotivated, biased, close-minded, rushed, passive. we need counter norms for rigorous, engaged academic reading.

Did it. Finished half of my grading and watched Wake Up Dead Man to celebrate the end of the semester. Mystery, faith, guilt, and an impossible murder. It's got everything. Solid acting from Craig, O'Connor, Brolin, Close, and everyone else, really. It's great fun! As usual, I can have more of this.

If I can finish as much grading as I hope to, I know what my reward will be tonight. So motivated rn. Will report back after having graded the first couple of projects 😬

Today in “Dudes Rock”: A dude playing Dire Straits’s “Sultans of Swing” guitar solo on…a recorder.

This. Those tasked with enforcing the law should be its greatest avatars. Highly trained (in restraint), well compensated (without overtime) and utterly destroyed upon breaking of the laws they're tasked with upholding.

Currently binging Elementary for the first time. I have enjoyed both takes. Neither comes close to Jeremy Brett's Holmes as he encapsulates the character Doyle imagined perfectly imo. Modern versions take many liberties. Miller and Liu make Elementary compelling but writing at times is too sloppy.

BREAKING: Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been released.

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana Senate Republicans reject new congressional maps in defiance of Trump’s redistricting push.

New preprint: Empathy, Thick and Thin papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/

Someone asks a question on the TL whose answer I'd be interested in and the replies that follow are of one of three kinds: - answer to a different question - "more of a comment" that the question is wrong/unnecessary/trivial - vaguely related comment that doesn't address the question

Rep. Magaziner: How many veterans have you deported? Noem: We have not deported military veterans. Rep. Magaziner: We are joined on Zoom by a combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient. Earlier this year, you deported him to Korea.

This a pretty funny encapsulation of ai scientist work. The authors hand it some softball software tasks, then it comes back with very different results than what it’s replicating and the authors shrug at the data being different www.nature.com/articles/s43...

BREAKING: Judge Paula Xinis orders the immediate release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from immigration custody

Sometimes I read a Turkish word while in an English mindset and I'm caught off-guard about the stark contrast in structure and efficiency. Turkish: işletemediysen English: if you have not been able to make it work I miss the agglutinative world of words sometimes.

TNR is just the beginning. They'll soon come for our keming

while i think the backlash was against ai use in this ad, i strongly believe that what makes it bad is the writing. it's a terrible idea. mocking a season people associate with love, family, joy, celebration, etc. and associating your brand with misery, misantrophy, resentment. the intent is off.

wow i woke up in an exceptionally piss-poor mood today and i have been exceptionally absent-minded all day. feeling like an idiot and a curmudgeon now. i give up on today. what an absolute waste.