Ted Underwood

https://bsky.brid.gy/r/https://bsky.app/profile/tedunderwood.com

Uses machine learning to study literary imagination, and vice-versa. Likely to share news about AI & computational social science / Sozialwissenschaft / 社会科学

Information Sciences and English, UIUC. Distant Horizons (Chicago, 2019). [tedunderwood.com](http://tedunderwood.com )

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Last Notes

2026-09-18 19:09:22 GMT

- reply

Impossible to overstate how much of this is going on in universities right now

2026-09-18 19:00:17 GMT

actually, it’s not so much the thing I possess that matters — it’s the 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:myqic77tkmdhmaufgkvj43hr/post/3mvsglthfr22v

2026-09-11 17:55:01 GMT

How do y'all avoid having seven+ terminal windows open with agent conversations that are probably over? but maybe you might want to pick back up a few days from now? seems a shame to throw away all that exploration & context, right?

2026-02-08 23:09:15 GMT

Well, I went ahead and wrote it. An attempt to work through the discomfort people feel with AI agents on social media by reframing it as an aesthetic problem.
[The marionette theater of AI](https://tedunderwood.com/2026/02/08/the-marionette-theater-of-ai/ )

2025-12-18 07:45:36 GMT

I think this is right—and also think it makes it increasingly important for us to figure out how to describe and convey the needed metacognitive skills.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ewrnikxmbzcesi4kkxih2sds/post/3ma2zbonmns27

2025-12-17 22:09:03 GMT

People are willing to admit that AI has niche uses (Assyriology &c). So I wonder if Stone Soup would be the smart strategy.
“I agree: AI is useless except for a few niche tasks, like coding.”
“Glad you came to yr senses.”
“And apparently doctors find it useful for paperwork.”
“Sure.”
“Oh, and …”

2025-12-17 20:25:33 GMT

Introverts need an ad campaign to explain that we’re not just taking the subway because we’re cheap, but because taxis and ubers involve rapid unscripted human interaction

2025-12-17 17:03:50 GMT

Like the middle classes, close reading is always rising
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:llsfba2zryavs4uunglknwie/post/3ma6zqzfz7k23

2025-12-16 19:51:50 GMT

Yesterday I told someone “I’m going to steal that but credit you,” so this is me crediting: Tai-Won Kim at Sogang University has students write a short essay by hand on an in-class exam, but then also later expand it into a polished draft using both AI and human feedback.
I like that combination. +

2025-12-16 11:43:31 GMT

Does anyone find that your brain enters babytalk mode after a day of immersion in an unfamiliar language? I start obsessively muttering the 2 or 3 characteristic phrases I’ve learned, like my brain thinks I can become German if I just say “doch” enough.

2025-12-15 22:07:41 GMT

Individualist framing — “Are your microblogs changing voters’ minds?” — is kind of a red herring. Sure, the answer to that question is “no.” But Mike’s point here is more important: communities do matter, and it matters that we create the ones we want to see.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cak4klqoj3bqgk5rj6b4f5do/post/3ma2awesqys27
#note1fsr…rf0e

2025-12-15 20:03:34 GMT

If the timing of my activity here seems off, it’s because I’m in another time zone for the week, learning about digital humanities research in Korea.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:kmj2apwm2djrtjmykn4r6bjb/post/3m72hdc2ymk2e
#note1sh7…yahn

2025-12-14 16:05:18 GMT

I agree that we don’t already know how to teach “AI literacy” well. But I also think literacy is too modest a goal. College students should graduate knowing how ML works; it’s liberal knowledge analogous to RNA or trig, not search-engine skills or Excel. And we do know how to teach it in that way.
[Opinion | Stop Pretending You ...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/stop-pretending-you-know-how-to-teach-ai )

2025-12-14 05:56:04 GMT

There was a time not so long ago (200 yrs) when all visual representation was created by hand, and slightly idealized. Realism was a gradient, not a binary.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:e6n7jxtu2qrhwvp3j6ib6sq6/post/3m7w6gwaers2e

2025-12-13 14:27:08 GMT

Information Science expects its methods to change, because human uses of information change. If we can get ahead of the process, that’s likely good.
This surprised me, coming from literary study—where objects of inquiry are taken as stable, and methodological change requires moral justification. +

2025-12-12 23:42:28 GMT

My bsky “for you” feed is now more interesting than Twitter ever was. Y’all are busy for a Friday afternoon in mid-December.

2025-12-12 18:47:20 GMT

Couldn’t be at #CHR25 this year but have enjoyed following it here; thanks to everyone posting.

2025-12-12 17:53:46 GMT

Searching for a book using a random quote from the book has gotten complicated.
https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj&cid=bafkreicfpgq24wa3i6il7yiraceurg3x3p4nzfxbhvsx7mo5xozrbh7miq

2025-12-12 13:37:47 GMT

I love how rapidly 2021-24 era AI has become intuitive, wholesome and artisanal.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:6vzb7ty56aiyihf4qa54thpx/post/3m7s3blb5ms2f

2025-12-11 22:10:40 GMT

Everyone is wagging their fingers at Disney for not being as tight-fisted and defensive as they expected. The thing is, y’all, Disney suspects a new market is emerging. That’s also why newspapers and music publishers are making deals. Possibly they’re all wrong.

2025-12-11 19:39:55 GMT

Utterly ridiculous how good models are now. I know it’s important to be balanced and empathetic. We must acknowledge that sign manipulation also leads to error and can have troubling effects. But off the record, btw you and me? Wild surmise, silent on a peak in Darien.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:flxq4uyjfotciovpw3x3fxnu/post/3m7q7uarrgk22

2025-12-11 16:54:55 GMT

People who have feelings about graphic design: If you want a fresh-looking slide template, do you buy something or just improvise with an occasional assist from PowerPoint Designer? My lazy searches for templates find mostly stuff that looks quite canned.

2025-12-11 14:25:19 GMT

For people who trusted copyright laws to rein in AI, this should be the last scene in Animal Farm. “They looked from IP to Tech, and from Tech to IP, but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
[The Walt Disney Company and Op...](https://openai.com/index/disney-sora-agreement/ )

2025-12-10 19:46:07 GMT

This is a masterclass in how to move opinion. All the rhetorical emphasis falls on "your anger and fear are understandable," while the tacit premise that "AI is in fact useful and not going away" slides in like a vaccination needle you barely even noticed.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:fwks525g7gw5wc7ul2wg4wj5/post/3m7ninjmhzk23

2025-12-10 16:20:03 GMT

My underlying theory of the 21c right is modeled on Gellner's theory of nationalism: it's about devaluation of local credentials by a larger (in this case, global) cultural sphere.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3m7nduylsyc2z

2025-12-10 13:33:23 GMT

I admit I’m pro-Lattimore on aesthetic grounds. A 3000-year-old poem should not sound naturalized in contemporary idiom; I want it to sound oral-formulaic.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:sohyhnl2jmkzb4qcyebz5grj/post/3m7mvwabhgs27

2025-12-10 04:07:14 GMT

I don't think I actually tried it — because at the time I couldn't have onions! — but I was eating there with colleagues who ordered it
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:64gnfkb4vguspilo6hqeaebr/post/3m7m5y6m3ds25
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2025-12-09 21:47:55 GMT

I aspire to a state of enlightenment where I can laugh at the LLM fail of the day, tsk-tsk the Altman video being tsked, and then go right back to coding w/ Claude. It's not like we're debating a policy to reduce AI use. It's more like deploring the weather, which I can do even as a user of weather.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5wm25vgenhgut3iqfjf4ozj5/post/3m7lhe3uif22t

2025-12-09 17:02:28 GMT

I'm not sure *how* it happened, but I encounter a lot of undergrads proposing remarkably thoughtful and well-informed indep. study distant-reading projects. It's not like those methods got incorporated in the curriculum! But students are somehow self-educating—possibly with LLM assistance?

2025-12-09 14:19:20 GMT

Or you could just look at God and widen your eyes like Jim Halpert
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:p572wxnsuoogcrhlfrlizlrb/post/3m7kpwuegdn2q

2025-12-09 05:41:31 GMT

Actual bluesky challenge: post your favorite work of art from fifty years before you were born
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ivn4xhafftaoizrtonzx6xio/post/3m7jovjjpa22x
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2025-12-08 21:32:41 GMT

If you let Crassula arborescens spend the summer outside, it sends up a 4ft tall powdery-white bloom stalk in winter 🌱
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2025-12-08 17:01:39 GMT

Why it's Wise to stay on X:
• Crucial to stay well-informed about Palantír
• Understand the arts of the Enemy
• Let's be real, rag-tag band of furries and elves has no chance
• If you can't beat them join them

2025-12-08 13:43:38 GMT

It’s plausible that these systems will have a homogenizing effect or be used to manipulate opinion.
Also possible that they’ll expand vocabularies and teach some users to think more cautiously or dialectically. (Not sure the median human post is as willing to say “we don’t know” as Claude.)
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:qomkdnxrqw3gkbytdxea5z65/post/3m7fstzygqc2e

2025-12-07 22:18:39 GMT

It's fair to rehabilitate the Luddites by saying they *didn't* simply refuse technology, but prepared the way for a socialism that could embrace and steer industrialization.
But I'm not sure I see how that rehabilitation transforms them into icons that can inspire us — to refuse new technologies.

2025-12-07 15:46:18 GMT

Socializing the means of production has even better odds of succeeding with AI. It's much easier to copy and share a language model than a cotton mill.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3m4m5dcdjys2f
#note16a7…ct0y

2025-12-07 12:35:12 GMT

If you read LOTR when young I think you miss how much the hobbits represent, not “children” exactly but the rising generation. Incredibly annoying, foolish, don’t listen, but somehow—though this is obviously insane—they’re the only ones in a position to save us all. 100% about Christopher in RAF.

2025-12-06 20:35:26 GMT

You had the period where indie bands were animals (Caribou, Bonobo, Panda Bear), and the one where they were vacation property (Chairlift, Beach House, Real Estate). Now we're in the period of gender headfakes (fronted by women: Boygenius, Men I Trust, Ratboys — by men: Goth Babe, TV Girl).

2025-12-06 14:49:33 GMT

Observing ad for Hallmark movie with man wearing Christmas sweater, next to lighted tree, in café with cats and great windows, [@[email protected]](https://bsky.app/profile/ecourtem.bsky.social ) remarks “to make masculinity appealing they have to surround it with decorations.”

2025-12-06 13:03:12 GMT

A modest proposal that no one should be allowed to use “positivism” — and certainly not equate it with belief in “objectivity” — without adding a footnote where they explain whether Gelman & Hennig “Beyond subjective and objective in statistics” is also positivist.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xwpapeentoankvx5z34hdbs6/post/3m7cmsfx6p22r
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2025-12-05 15:25:06 GMT

As UKRI explores using LLMs to review grants, it's a good time to revisit Bryan Wilder's excellent blog post.
There are a lot of naive reasons to oppose AI review ("you'll never automate human intuition!"). But there are also good reasons, including the *load-bearing role of human disagreement.*
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:n2wspglyvd4z3agsqxxrphv7/post/3lq3s2ooook2n

2025-12-05 13:36:58 GMT

Both sides of the Atlantic have been laying legal trenches for a year in preparation for this fight. Remember the rule that bars from the US any foreign official who limits the free speech of US corporations?
This doesn’t resolve quickly. Bluesky can start hiring more moderators who read German.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3m7akosrwec2i

2025-12-05 13:07:19 GMT

€120M is 5 times the fine Brazil imposed. But paying it is not crippling. It only becomes a big deal if the company at issue is run by an asshole with impulse control issues. Or if he thinks the US itself is spoiling for a fight over moderation practices & has his back. Then you get trench warfare.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3lqgm2wwf2k2x

2025-12-05 04:41:57 GMT

Lots of detail here, down to the level of which models are used more for programming (Anthropic) or for roleplay (DeepSeek).
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:cq4gg3odxz2pzmkx2fuac3u3/post/3m77cyeqvts2w

2025-12-04 16:01:49 GMT

Feeling better now that I see 2025 was actually dominated by Cloud Dancer supremacists.

2025-12-04 14:26:16 GMT

The median academic opinion about AI has been
2017: quant methods are no use for qualitative problems
2021: these models are just parroting memorized phrases
2025: now that they do everything, higher ed is doomed
So, if you're depressed right now, remember: we're almost certainly wrong! +

2025-12-04 13:42:29 GMT

The hyper-responsiveness of the For You feed is training me not to click on ragebait. It’s like a little automated Yoda designed to prove that anger leads to hate leads to suffering.

2025-12-03 18:23:08 GMT

Teaching — in an undergrad class for non-majors — a literary-critical text that uses “theory” sans adjective to mean a very specific, otherwise unnamable intellectual tradition. And I really feel it would be easier to explain why Venetian doges threw a golden ring every year into the Adriatic Sea.

2025-12-03 17:36:52 GMT

We don't stream music, we play CDs, so let me see what Spotify Age ... ah, it's giving me "Witch-King of Angmar."
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2025-12-03 05:50:54 GMT

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:54qbpe4tbdo77fbcvikvw4fz/post/3m7235c77u22e
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2025-12-03 05:06:21 GMT

It is completely unnecessary to pay $17 million to OpenAI—and also, I think, unnecessary to get quite this doomy on the topic. I work at a school that is being proactive about AI without becoming dependent on a vendor. I think lots of schools will take that path.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3mkycvuszblbsbzdtm22y24f/post/3m72mf5irwc2g
#note1xm5…gzmp

2025-12-02 22:47:30 GMT

You can just feel that Anthropic listens more closely to philosophers than other labs, and has defined epistemic character in a way that places high value on "recognizing areas of ignorance."
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2025-12-02 16:28:23 GMT

I spent 2010-15 figuring out that it was easier to switch disciplines than to persuade humanists to adopt computational methods.
But I wonder. ArXiv closing to position papers is making me think there's just not going to be *room* in CS/IS for all the conversations that need to happen. +

2025-12-02 05:53:48 GMT

We've created the protagonist of Memento, from the famous film Don't Use Externalized Memory to Rewrite Your Own Identity Like in Memento.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s27fo7dzltw3acjxxld3rjmb/post/3m5br3z5tf22v

2025-12-01 14:28:31 GMT

Applications by Dec 15
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3m4xzxig7q22c
#note1map…f3pw

2025-12-01 12:37:04 GMT

“This spring: Relationships are fuzzy. So what if he’s not the perfect match? Make a few additions to him with … the Levenshthein Distance.”
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ckaz32jwl6t2cno6fmuw2nhn/post/3m6uyshrdck2b

2025-11-30 23:08:49 GMT

happy northern hemisphere winter
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2025-11-30 15:18:40 GMT

For me, the promise of language models is that we get to explore new ways of thinking. What if you could fit a million words in short-term memory? What if you could adjust the balance between brainstorming and critique?
Are these better ways of thinking? Idk. But we never know that in advance. +

2025-11-30 04:49:09 GMT

A little context: The author is appointed at Ohio State's state-mandated center for "intellectual diversity." That doesn't mean he's wrong; I agree that it's a good idea for students to do things themselves before using AI. But if the dire tone here sounds like cultural conservatism? Well, it is.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:lcbuqpy74exvkmrzhbogi6vt/post/3m6smj5m7j22c

2025-11-29 16:07:19 GMT

As someone who likes change — when it's slow enough to understand — I've been cheered up by Ilya's affirmation that scaling won't solve everything, and by recent signs that business adoption is slowing (Economist article below).
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3lvtktklemc2i
[archive.is/deRZG](https://archive.is/deRZG )
#note1j28…zq7m

2025-11-29 13:16:50 GMT

The Lapdog Archipelago
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:edpae46tbzm7c65jahgdpb6b/post/3m6rf7l7ojk2w

2025-11-29 05:10:31 GMT

I didn’t want to overreact, and took time to read this. Having done so, I’m adding Northwestern to the list of places I won’t visit or speak. The concessions re: international students and gender-affirming care are not merely symbolic.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yj436z2s2v37rvaw33lc4ryq/post/3m6q677z4zk2q

2025-11-28 13:20:53 GMT

Otoh frequentism is no use at all in a minefield, unless you have enough legs to approximate a normal distribution.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:dflgxbqvn3f7udrfgfx222eu/post/3m6oadsf4sk2x
#note1vu5…y4y0

2025-11-28 01:22:20 GMT

Listening to “Upside Down” (Stranger Things, natch) and — how does she make “respectfully I say to thee” sound like it belongs in a pop song from 1980?

2025-11-27 23:54:26 GMT

“Relaxed fit” language model
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v3age3xmvu33bamkwqcupdwc/post/3m6nhx5zed22o

2025-11-27 20:08:20 GMT

Dorothy Pilley was a journalist and mountaineer who in 1921 founded the Pinnacle Club, the first rock-climbing club for women. She also wrote a 60-page letter rejecting a marriage proposal from literary critic I.A. Richards. (A later proposal was eventually accepted.)
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2025-11-27 17:21:54 GMT

Enjoying my people’s annual IP Parade, which expresses thankfulness for the intellectual property totems that ensure continuity of our social world.

2025-11-26 14:48:08 GMT

I think the answer is “acceptance”:
most thoughtful accounts here have moved toward “AI is real, is happening, and if it has downsides we need to address them.”
However there are still several thousand accounts who hate nothing more than hearing that and will try to stop the process by brigading.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:yym5dkfbnzf6lspvh4hnstjg/post/3m6fbnnhynk2i

2025-11-24 18:15:02 GMT

"Ask students to explain why the chatbot is wrong" was a short-lived pedagogical fix — because it's now likely that the students will stumble more significantly than the bot.
There's a path forward for analog/offline learning, and also a path that uses AI. John Henry pedagogy is a dead end. +

2025-11-24 15:31:54 GMT

Bad decisions are key. If you want good decisions, what you’re looking for is called a “game.”
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:25eldixqevvsb3o3dxrdk4dz/post/3m6cq7bn5fk2o

2025-11-23 14:39:54 GMT

I dislike the term “AI” too, but it’s well rooted at this point. We’re more likely to change assumptions about AI than to replace the term.
And the dichotomy between “machine learning” and “LLMs” being proposed as a substitute would actually be worse; it doesn’t identify a real difference. +

2025-11-23 12:10:42 GMT

I could imitate human voices better than most Rigelians, and I enjoyed being part of the advance team.
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2025-11-22 17:58:50 GMT

On sunny days in late November the gone-wild arugula is still blooming and attracts so many bees that it gets loud
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2025-11-22 16:04:10 GMT

I’m sorry but it’s hilarious that the walkback on the Gmail thing is “well, but they’re the ones *responsible* for turning us into a pitchfork-waving crowd who trust groupthink, fear the new, and freak out before examining evidence.”

2025-11-22 04:30:20 GMT

Saw The Running Man tonight. It’s based on a 1982 book that envisions reality TV producers taking over the US and sending their masked goons to terrorize American cities—which probably sounded implausible at the time.

2025-11-21 17:09:59 GMT

We have long known that people retain more from doing synthesis themselves than from a prepared summary. And yet, papers have abstracts, journals have review essays, and the web has Wikipedia. People decide for themselves—not always rightly!—when to consult the full text of original sources.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:s24o3i2gmddihekekk6tu6ac/post/3m657leylxz2d

2025-11-21 14:24:38 GMT

MajinBook is a badly-needed catalog for shadow libraries. It provides metadata (e.g., date of first publication, popularity on Goodreads) for over half a million English-language books. [arxiv.org/abs/2511.11412](https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.11412 ) +
[MajinBook: An open catalogue o...](https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.11412 )

2025-11-21 14:07:22 GMT

Hey now they frosted the edges. Is this liquid glass bluesky?
https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj&cid=bafkreigqcknis23fnrtsyve3yngwbajujzvhxpsd7w3rsinbq3gfv5irqy

2025-11-21 02:01:19 GMT

What surprises me is that his competitors use it. They sometimes (like eg Altman) complain about their posts being throttled. But hey, it’s just a tiff. Still seems like a smart long-term strategy to do comms using a rival’s platform.
Primates are herd animals.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:5wm25vgenhgut3iqfjf4ozj5/post/3m63yeqgknc24

2025-11-20 23:59:19 GMT

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:izpllsvcyml7mcwanxfzdgkf/post/3m5zqoj6qok2h
https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj&cid=bafkreifrgi26zmdsp5ce26nhh6pbzxmezlrcdb44msrcnqnxe3kspyc3rq

2025-11-20 18:44:19 GMT

A lot of useful details re: OLMo development in this thread.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:xl4nejvjc52uhp25mceh3f7q/post/3m63f2qeeck2a

2025-11-20 18:01:00 GMT

The best thing about this job, by far, is when doctoral students cross the threshold from mostly learning from you, to mostly teaching you new things they've discovered. Struggling to keep up is a good feeling.

2025-11-19 17:37:56 GMT

2 kinds of news stories about AI:
1) "What happens if <0.1% of people make the tools the rest of us use to think?" No buzz. It's vague & abstract.
2) "AI is alienating a generation of kids from their parents." Picture of Nåndõ, who let an LLM choose her name & shocking hairstyle. Wow! Viral. +

2025-11-19 05:49:22 GMT

the three genres of credit sequences
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:2lzzbs266lqtpywzx5v7i5lb/post/3m5xi7l3byk2t

2025-11-19 05:19:40 GMT

Is our self-conception as homo faber / "tool-using animals" just because stone endures better than behavior?
If we had ethnographic records of australopithecines, H. erectus, &c, would all the stages between simian communication and "language" add up to a story more fascinating than flint?

2025-11-18 19:42:07 GMT

New initiative at UW to be led by [@[email protected]](https://bsky.app/profile/nlpnoah.bsky.social ). This comes on top of the NSF-NVIDIA $150mil investment in a national fully open AI ecosystem, led by [@[email protected]](https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social ) and Noah. Good news for UW; imo probably good for academia more broadly.
[UW joins 'first wave' of colle...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/technology/university-of-washington-pumps-10-million-donation-into-ai/ )

2025-11-18 18:43:24 GMT

I think it's a kind of category error to use social media as an opinion barometer.
People vent opinions on social media in large part *because* they are not getting enough support for that perspective IRL. So the signal is not just unrepresentative of offline life; it's sometimes inverted!
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:rkxmnef6ew54xygxgjzgpi6x/post/3m5wbe4jmm225

2025-11-18 17:38:50 GMT

This is a corporate publicity account, but for the record I appreciate it when tech companies create publicity accounts here on Bluesky.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:v46lelmg2arh4cihy5ff76ki/post/3m5w7ajzr3s2u

2025-11-18 16:23:18 GMT

Tested Gemini 3 Pro with a question I had previously tried on Chat and Claude—with okay but not stellar results. (Asking for a taxonomy, w/ rationales for each category, and ideas about what's missing.) And fwiw, the Gemini answer was probably more helpful.

2025-11-18 14:56:17 GMT

Absurd, sir—and uncivil! I concede that the physical charms of my colleagues <gestures around the ballroom with lorgnette> play a role in binding our community. But to insult my Aloysius! What could he do? <white mouse on shoulder hides stolen Cartier earring behind back, bows, looks contrite>
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ccxl3ictrlvtrrgh5swvvg47/post/3m5vx5dwc422v

2025-11-18 02:49:37 GMT

Yesterday the Epstein emails gave academics a win in Game One of the Public Humiliation Series—but journalists came back strong tonight with bamboo metaphors and twist endings to carry Game Two! Still betting on us for the series.

2025-11-18 02:00:15 GMT

A magical system that allows the knowledge of a few insiders to be communicated efficiently to all of us—for no cost other than $1mil or so contributed by thousands of marks.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ckaz32jwl6t2cno6fmuw2nhn/post/3m5ums4sghk2y
#note1stg…v0rv

2025-11-17 15:56:34 GMT

Very persuasive. Worth underlining that there are trade-offs. If your goal is to "improve the writing," but also "keep this accessible to the widest possible audience, and don't advocate any specific perspective," you are pulling and pushing on the same lever. Humans can't both pull & push either.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:brkj2yocng7vtggmyujy4khq/post/3m5tkqzhztw2t
https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj&cid=bafkreiaxo6cmjxoq6m2fjl5orrgyybde3ggbsev2dkg3ed7y53zeu5kvvm

2025-11-17 04:06:01 GMT

Fell asleep at my computer, and woke up to this. Guess I got early access?
https://morel.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.sync.getBlob?did=did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj&cid=bafkreiepbtkh7pib3zlktlqfmqkbb5wwvok7q6lumqo5gj47pwlaeff34e

2025-11-17 00:47:27 GMT

BESSENT: REAL $2000 DIVIDEND WAS THE FRIENDS WE MADE ALONG THE WAY
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:43fdk46qa5gsokzygzildsaq/post/3m5rxm7ws2o2o

2025-11-16 23:44:08 GMT

Top 5 movie genres:
fast-talking screwball heroine
paranoid thriller starring J Stewart or R Redford
grossly manipulative romcom
heist
vehicle for either Hepburn
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ivn4xhafftaoizrtonzx6xio/post/3m5rk3kyw422t

2025-11-16 16:23:34 GMT

Lovely thread about synthetic data. The libraries we happen to have are not necessarily the best libraries to learn from.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:ckaz32jwl6t2cno6fmuw2nhn/post/3m5qy36fui22a
#note1reg…crrd

2025-11-15 21:42:38 GMT

I’m now angry that no one told me my neurons have cilia. Seems like a big oversight.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:7sebaxtdw75e6zafhewftg6i/post/3m3xqhyibzk2s
[Primary Cilium](https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/the-primary-cilium-an-orphan-organelle-finds-14228249/ )

2025-11-15 17:47:45 GMT

This week's installment of Things I Think Are Awesome from @npub1gm4…6mcr has lots of fun stuff, including a way to turn 4 surreal images into a World Model of Surreal World.
[TITAA #72.5: Hist Whist](https://arnicas.substack.com/p/titaa-725-hist-whist )

2025-11-15 16:12:38 GMT

We'll know the danger of AI-fueled inequality is over when people who don't personally like AI feel comfortable admitting that language models can be as beautiful and terrifying as a cathedral or a Piranesi sketch. Give it 50 years. Okay, maybe 200.
RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:565ebob5f6hw33hjdkxty6qj/post/3m5lszuu5ns23
#note1uu4…lpkz