brendan o’connor

re centrists complaining about the Mellon Foundation, if this at least this polarizes conservatives into restoring NEH / federal funding for the humanities, that would be nice

whybot prototype for kids

turing test I made for class

I am flabbergasted I am by how much vibe coding has expanded my capacities as a scientist and teacher.

In the last few weeks, I've mocked up class demos of a live turing test, generated cross-references for an encyclopedia, and prototyped new tablet tasks for developmental psych.

It's wild.

pointing at the hamburger menu icon in the top left hand corner of a mobile bluesky app screen

settings menu option circled

content and media menu option circled

autoplay videos and gifs toggled off

to turn off autoplaying video on the bluesky mobile app

select the icon in the top left corner

go to settings

go to content and media

make sure "autoplay videos and gifs" is toggled off

Paul's back and he nails it here

NLP+CSS Workshops https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-hand-fist-bump-1068523/

✨The NLP+CSS workshop is returning to ACL 2026!✨

And this year, we have a new shared task with prizes!

Website/CfP: sites.google.com/site/nlpandc...
Deadlines: March 5 (direct), March 24 (pre-reviewed ARR)

#NLProc #CompSocialSci #ComputationalSocialScience #ACL2026NLP
@aclmeeting.bsky.social

Part II: Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually. Three years ago I ruminated on why agent-based modeling never got any real traction in economics. It got a suprising amount of attention and I continue to receive emails about it to this day. I too…

"Why agent-based modeling could happen in economics. Eventually." Good piece by @mikemakowsky.bsky.social
economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/12/29/p...

I'd argue that the "new era of theory" is already underway, though, led not by economists, but by comp social sci/cultural evolution folks.

ah yes bsky.app/profile/dmim...

> looking like mostly on-paper, going forward

coding on non-internet devices may be an option to explore

computer labs? new portable option? i dunno but we need something

The next edition of the NLP+CSS will be at ACL 2026! It includes an open-ended shared task (work with the Opioid Industry Documents Archive) with travel grants as prizes!

Here at UMass Amherst CICS, we’re searching for TT faculty in NLP – see the link from
www.cics.umass.edu/about/employ...

I’m happy to answer questions of course, too!

and, whatever mechanisms that can aid *mentorship* and training of more junior reviewers. leading by example is one such avenue.

though, like everything, it could be the case that sheer scale destroys everything. if experienced reviewers are a small enough %age, nothing works well

as he said at the time -- the NCSA environment as incubator for Netscape builds on the "tradition" of university-supported student innovation that "has been a long-term positive aspect, and indeed a driving force, of the American economy" groups.google.com/g/comp.infos...

also they had REU grants specifically right around the time he worked there as an undergraduate programmer (reported as 1991-1994). i dunno if his personal salary/expenses were directly paid by an NSF grant, but the existence of the project & student staff was deeply tied to NSF funding streams

it's money well spent which, the article argues, folks like andreessen ought to know. SV companies need to support federal research funding for whatever the next important ideas will be.

re @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com on NSF support for the web www.liberalcurrents.com/marc-andrees... --

the NSF specifically gave $3.7M just for Mosaic
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

and $4.6M for a related effort
www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/...

and of course i'd want my review to not be bad since they'd see it and (potentially) know who i was!

the argument for full anonymity is this of course can lead to groupthink. true, but i feel motivation & whatever means can get more high-quality reviews is the most important desideratum now

i agree, huge change.

also as a reviewer, it used to be other reviewers on a paper were non-anonymous. when i was junior, i found this motivating and conducive to learning & community-building - i might see a review i admired, then learn more about the reviewer's work and their way of thinking.

The posting was just updated - applications due Dec 15.

Great connections between our linguistics department and the CICS NLP program (including Katrin Erk now in a joint appointment). Also happy to communicate with prospective applicants.

#nlp #nlproc (has a hashtag been canonicalized here yet??)

Here at UMass Amherst CICS, we’re searching for TT faculty in NLP – see the link from
www.cics.umass.edu/about/employ...

I’m happy to answer questions of course, too!

the way this is going the only trustworthy information will be from in-person interviews.

for annotation projects i find it much easier to trust small numbers of expert or local students annotators, compared to broad-audience online recruiting

bsky.app/profile/elis...

i can’t believe how terrible larry summers is

(1/2) 🎉 New preprint: "Contextual Morphologically-Guided Tokenization for Latin Encoder Models"
w/ @diyclassics.bsky.social @brenocon.bsky.social

The massacre of the ethics/safety teams and the internal reorientation away from anything that hinted at broader purpose (with exception for the more profitable bits of natsec) is a story that has yet to be properly told.

Your regular reminder that NSF is required by US law to support increasing the participation of historically less represented groups in science and technology fields

maybe that's "non-neurally represented information"

yeah! though i'm iffy on their concept of "information". their example of socially transmittable body attributes - for sure part of culture, i dunno information.