angela zhou

Normative framework of bigger tech

(aka, me trolling the tech audience)

The Untold Saga of What Happened When DOGE Stormed Social Security DOGE has ignored urgently needed reforms and upgrades at the Social Security Administration, according to dozens of insiders and 15 hours of candid interviews with the former acting chief of the agenc...

The DOGE team was acting like “a bunch of people who didn’t know what they were doing, with ideas of how government should run — thinking it should work like a McDonald’s or a bank — screaming all the time,” former SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek said.

sure looks like systemic risk for selling gpus to me

Why this convention center expert is calling LA's expansion plan a disaster "If you think that somehow a bigger convention center is key to downtown revitalization, or is going to do wonders for local job creation, or economic development? The answer is, you've got to be kidd...

Last week, convention center expert Heywood Sanders wrote this about LA's expansion plan: "the likelihood of any significant increase in the city’s convention business is effectively nil."

So I called him up to talk me through his analysis — and what he told me makes LA's plan seem *even worse*

As someone currently on probation at Princeton, what also stands out here is the sham faculty governance on display:

Faculty panel reviews all the evidence n decides there is no grounds for suspension.

Admin overrules their decision n Provost Kavita Bala calls for significant disciplinary action.

We're going to need a new example :)

Do you have any other recommendations/ is there a good list around? :D

The opportunities and risks of the entry of LLMs into mathematical research in one screenshot. I think it is clear that LLMs will make trained researchers more effective. But they will also lead to a flood of bad/wrong papers, and I'm not sure we have the tools to deal with this.

Cities Need a New Model for Incentivizing Responsible AI | TechPolicy.Press Emily Royall makes the case for cities to set AI benchmarks in procurement to drive accuracy, security, transparency, and accountable public sector use.

"...a coalition-driven approach to AI contracting has the potential to flip the script – where public authorities set the terms and use their purchasing power to demand performance standards and quality control."
www.techpolicy.press/cities-need-...

Is Jimmy Kimmel actually reading at stories tn or was that a social media intern joke

The boycotts work, kids, & represent our most direct weapon against fascism in this moment. Time to *expand* them & leverage their impact against this increasingly dangerous regime.

Very excited that my paper with @katakeith.bsky.social is now out in @polanalysis.bsky.social. We investigate whether LLMs actually follow the instructions/definitions provided in codebooks, propose some diagnostics, and release a new evaluation dataset.
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Bluestockings Cooperative Bluestockings Cooperative: Established in 1999, Worker-Owned since 2021. Located at 116 Suffolk Street, New York, NY 10002. One of NYC's only queer, trans, sex-worker run bookstores.

Everyone, I wanted to let you know about the sad news that despite everyone's best efforts Bluestockings will close at the end of the year: www.bluestockings.com - I want to thank every single person who sent books to them through my book drive [will share more later]. A tremendous loss to NYC.

a picture of idyllic woods + pond. overlaid text reads "GROUNDED AI - TOUCH GRASS"

it's time to launch

i'm stressed . tech culture has gone too far . it's time to move to a small hut in the mountains

Direct File died under Trump. Meet the creators planning for its second life After building the IRS’s free electronic filing tool, the Economic Security Project’s Future of Tax Filing fellows are writing a playbook for it to “come back someday” — and pushing for more.

“I hope that [future administrations] pick the tax work back up where it was, which was a lot of momentum. And I hope they take that same energy across the rest of the government. I’m a firm believer, government can be a force for good in people’s lives."

Shot/chaser from today's NY Times:

1. Trump's Medicaid cuts are taking away housing from homeless people: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/u...

We need new rules for publishing AI-generated research. The teams developing automated AI scientists have customarily submitted their papers to standard refereed venues (journals and conferences) and to arXiv. Often, acceptance has been treated as the dependent variable. 1/

settings > content & media > autoplay video & gifs = off

YouTube video by U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Beats to Relax / Be Safe To - We're Safety Now Haven't We

Once again, asking the lofi girl team to establish a playlist for PSA lofi music - www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PYm...

What do you mean ?

YouTube video by 3Blue1Brown Exploration & Epiphany | Guest video by Paul Dancstep

An outstanding new @3blue1brown.com guest video by Paul Dancstep on Sol Lewitt's incomplete open cubes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BrF...
For more on the "mistake" discussed at the end, see Rozhkovskaya & Reb (2015) "Is the List of Incomplete Open Cubes Complete?": link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Wanna chat with an experienced learning theory researcher? We have open office hours online with four awesome folks, Surbhi Goel (@surbhigoel.bsky.social), Gautam Kamath (@gautamkamath.com), Ayush Sekhari, and Lydia Zakynthinou)!

Book a slot and ask them anything!
let-all.com/officehours....

I keep citing CGM and fingersticks as examples of unobserved confounders for longitudinal treatment policies, and am really curious to try out a CGM ! (not diabetic just curious) they're so fascinating!

submitted an r&r 😭🫠🫣🙈 *dies of accumulated stress and uncertainty and continuously reciting editorial guidance to myself ricocheting around my brain* 😶‍🌫️😮‍💨🫥☠️

When is a tent too big? Regarding Abundance Conference 2025

I wrote up my thoughts about Abundance Conference publiccomment.blog/p/when-is-a-...

Academic authors, here's a peek into the black box of journal publishing from an journal editor if you can bear it:

blog post: connections between survey statistics and experimental design.

split-plot designs are analogous to cluster sampling.

blocking is analogous to stratification.

featuring an experiment by Arjun Potter and colleagues at NM-AIST !

Survey Statistics: connections to experimental design
statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/09/02/s...

I wrote something about statistics under authoritarianism