eɪdən ɪˈräsmɪs

We are living at a time when university leadership amplifies anti-intellectual tropes and technologies

These are very troubling times

There’s a widespread misconception that western society stagnated in the Middle Ages but actually they were just really focused on designing different little hats for people to wear based on their social station. “Modernity” came about when Italians set the hat stuff aside and invented modern racism

i realized my issue with audiobooks is that they are trying to transpose my voice in my head when i’m reading with that of the author or whoever is reading it. that — coupled with the pacing — is an unsettling experience for me. give me the old school radio adaptations over audiobooks any day

watching the Minecraft movie as someone who played v1.2 in 2010 and who had a Tenacious D phase is an absolute trip. why no Herobrine though

i mean they had to first hire a biology researcher in order to figure out why reinforcement learning wasn’t working which is an interesting way to think about general intelligence in general

also Demis Hassabis sees AlphaFold finally crack the protein folding and his colleagues are wondering what’s the next step and how they can roll it out as a service for researchers. he is like “why don’t we just throw ALL THE PROTEINS AT IT” and basically makes it all available open source style

i watched The Thinking Game which tracks the birth and rise of DeepMind and early AGI work. what a trip - the idea that this model learned to play Starcraft better than a pro and then it was good enough to tackle protein folding makes me want to take a course in biology instead of hire a DotA coach

witnessing white South Africans freak out because they don’t get special treatment at EU border posts makes the Billy Bragg line “the third world is just around the corner” so much more prescient tbh

#OtD 11 Nov 1975 Angola declared independence from Portugal after almost 500 years of colonial rule. The proclamation by the MPLA came after 15 years of war, which was a major contributor to the revolution in Portugal in April 1974. Learn more in our pod: workingclasshistory.com/2020/08/13/e...

digital minimalism, or trying to reduce the negative impact of the role of digital devices in our daily lives, is like recycling as the answer to plastic pollution. the problem is systemic and deeply political, not individual