The full cost of the IRA subsidies
-
Congress has the opportunity to fulfill Donald Trump’s pledge to “terminate
the Green New Scam” aka IRA subsidies.
“Emergent Misalignment” in LLMs
-
Interesting research: “Emergent Misalignment: Narrow finetuning can produce
broadly misaligned LLMs“:
*Abstract:* We present a surprising result regardin...
Douthat again—in The New Yorker
-
I swear, NYT columnist Ross Douthat must have a huge publicity machine,
because his latest book, Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, is
appearing ev...
Can Systems Stop Culture Drift?
-
Compared to before writing, religions that had sacred texts were better
able to resist changes to their religious dogmas and dogma-enforce social
rules.
Prove it
-
It’s easy to get caught up in the hype, to buy a product, buy into the
idea, plan classroom activities, or even invest in the company, that makes
the most ...
Capital as Power in the Polycrisis
-
Nitzan Hudson discussion Feb 2025 Capital as Power in the 21st Century A
Conversation MICHAEL HUDSON, JONATHAN NITZAN, TIM DI MUZIO, and BLAIR FIX
Februa...
Dispensing with the tech-bros
-
As I type this, Trump is threatening tariffs on anyone who challenges the
interests of America’s technology oligarchs, all of whom are now paying
obeisance...
Ryan Williams strikes again
-
- Because of a recent breakthrough by Cook and Mertz on Tree Evaluation,
Ryan now shows that every problem solvable in t time on a multitape
...
What can we send to Mars on the first Starships?
-
As of today, it is 601 days until October 17, 2026, when the mass-optimal
launch window to Mars opens next. While I don’t have any privileged
information,...
Azimuth News (Part 7)
-
In 2023 the director of the Fields Institute asked me to lead a program on
climate change. For quite some time I’ve been meaning to say what happened
to th...
Week Notes 08-25
-
A week at home, not overly busy, but as it is in between two weeks of
travel abroad, plenty of small things I don’t want to have to take care of
while trav...
Meet the Maker: April Capalungan (APRL)
-
A Peek into APRL’s Paper Playground Today’s spotlight is on April
Capalungan, a contemporary paper folder and visual storyteller who embraces
experimenta...
What is a Specious Argument?
-
Contrary to its traditional definition as an argument that “seems true but
is actually false,” speciousness arises when reasoning is based on
species-level...
Using MirrorMaker 2 for simple stream processing
-
Kafka Connect Single Message Transformations (SMTs) and MirrorMaker can be
a simple way of doing stateless transformations on a stream of events.
There are...
Become a Firefighter for Democracy
-
Wildfires are terrifying. They are especially gobsmackingly horrible when
you add in hurricane-style winds. I will never forget the day of the
Marshall Fir...
Phase 4
-
Phase 4 of the Russo / Ukraine war has been underway for many months. I
ought to have started a new thread and explained why I thought so back when
the Kur...
Zelenskyy tells it like it is…
-
Global Cooperation Davos 2025: Special Address by Volodymyr Zelenskyy,
President of UkraineJan 21, 2025 This article is part of:World Economic
Forum Annual...
Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01
-
[You can follow me on social media: @rodneyabrooks.bsky.social and see my
publications etc., at https://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks] This is my
seventh ann...
Fragmentation in academic leadership
-
[image: On the top half, green flowing river water, and on the bottom,
fractured rock.]Academic leadership is essential, impossible. Credit: Bernd
Dittrich...
Papert’s 8 Big Ideas (Lithuanian Translation)
-
Translation by Marius Narvilas Aštuonios didžiosios konstrukcionizmo
idÄ—jos Dr Seymour Papert 1999 Pirmoji idÄ—ja – mokytis darant. Visada
išmokstama ger...
On taking first steps into a new orientation
-
This is a follow-up to my post On improving a computing model. My posting
to this blog has slowed down a lot over the last few years. One reason for
that i...
Experts vs. Imitators
-
If you want the highest quality information, you have to speak to the best
people. The problem is many people claim to be experts, who really aren’t.
Saf...
Marble Maze Modules
-
Beyond the Marble: How Modular Mazes Build Skills and Spark Wonder Building
a marble maze is more than just a fun challenge—it’s a gateway to exploring
a w...
Return to 4th grade Code Club
-
One of my high school seniors wanted to do a service project teaching
coding to elementary students. He loved our field trip to the elementary
school that ...
Wellness: Bad Stress: Philosophy – Stoicism
-
In a previous post, I mentioned that I started researching wellness a few
months into the pandemic when I noticed my physical and mental health
declining. ...
Podcast: David Harvey’s Anti-Capitalist Chronicles
-
Dialectical analyses of the capitalist totality through a Marxist lens.
David Harvey’s Anti-Capitalist Chronicles is co-produced with Politics In
Motion, ...
Dreamtime (fragment)
-
Erin Riley is producing an exhibit of my TurtleArt and ArtLogo programming
at Greenwich Academy in March of 2020 and is helping, along with Zoë
Hedstrom...
ScreenTime
-
It is pretty easy to add a rectangular fly screen to a sash window. But
the problem with sash windows is that the maximum they can open is half,
and th...