Max Kreminski

congratulations, super well deserved!

poems are generated via the Savelost algorithm: given an input text, we repeatedly "compress" it by erasing a single letter at a time

a text embedding model is used to evaluate deletion candidates & choose the one that least disrupts the "meaning" of the original input

bsky.app/profile/maxk...

remember that day vividly, vividly remember that day vividly,vividly remember that day vividly,vividy remember that day vividly,vivid remember that day vividy,vivid remember that day vivid,vivid remember thatday vivid,vivid remember thtday vivid,vivid remember thday vivid,vivid rememberthday vivid,vivid remembertday vivid,vivid rememberday vivid,vivid rememberay vivid,vivid remembery vivid,vivid remember vivid,vivid remember vivid,ivid remember vividivid remember vividiid remember vividid remember vividd remember vivid reember vivid rember vivid reber vivid reer vivid ree vivid re vivid r vivid vivid vivid vivd vid vd d

Remember that poetry is like a baby Remember that poetry is like baby Remember that poetry is like baby Remember that poetry s like baby Remember that poetrys like baby Remember that poetry like baby Remember that poetrylike baby Remember tht poetrylike baby Remember th poetrylike baby Remember th poetryike baby Remember th poetryie baby Remember th poetrye baby Remember th poetry baby Remember t poetry baby Remember poetry baby Remember poetry baby Remember poety baby Remember poet baby Remeber poet baby Remebr poet baby Remeb poet baby Reme poet baby Ree poet baby Re poet baby R poet baby poet baby poet baby poe baby pe baby e baby baby baby bab bb b

remember to pass the throne to your younger brother remember to pass th throne to your younger brother remember to passth throne to your younger brother remember to passt throne to your younger brother remember to pass throne to your younger brother remember to pass throne to your youngr brother remember to pass throne to your young brother remember to pass throne to youryoung brother remember to pass throne to youryoun brother remember to pass throne to youryou brother remember to pass throne to ouryou brother remember to pass throne to uryou brother rememberto pass throne to uryou brother remembert pass throne to uryou brother remember pass throne to uryou brother remeber pass throne to uryou brother remebr pass throne to uryou brother remebrpass throne to uryou brother remerpass throne to uryou brother remepass throne to uryou brother remepass throne to uyou brother remepass throne to you brother remepass throne to yo brother remepass throne to y brother remepass throne to brother remepass throne to brother remepss throne to brother remeps throne to brother remep throne to brother reme throne to brother ree throne to brother re throne to brother r throne to brother throne to brother throne to brother throne o brother throne brother throne brother throne broter throne brotr throne bror throne bro throne br throne r throne throne thone thoe tho to o

remember that I myself tended that wound for you remember that myself tended that wound for you remember that myself tended that wound for you remember that myself tended that wound foryou remember that myself tended that woundforyou remember that myself tended that woundfryou remember tht myself tended that woundfryou remember th myself tended that woundfryou remember th myself tended that woundfrou remember th myself tended that woundfro remember th myself tended that woundfo remember th myself tended that woundf remember th myself tended that wound remember th myself tended tha wound remember th myself tended ta wound remember th myself tended a wound remember th myself tended wound remember th myself tended wound remember t myself tended wound remember myself tended wound remember myself tended wound remember mysel tended wound remember myseltended wound remember mysetended wound remember myseended wound remember yseended wound remember yseened wound remember yseeed wound remember seeed wound rememberseeed wound remembereeed wound remembereed wound remembered wound rememberd wound remember wound reember wound reembr wound reemr wound reem wound ree wound re wound r wound wound wound wond wod od o

😶‍🌫️ Remecarving: or, Forgettings

a collection of 829 computational poems, each depicting the gradual algorithmic *forgetting* of a sentence found in Wikipedia that exhorts the reader to remember

last-minute entry for NaNoGenMo 2025!

github.com/NaNoGenMo/20...

Beyond the Artifact: Power as a Lens for Creativity Support Tools | Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology

great paper! reminds me of some recent work in creativity support tools research on designing for "vertical movement" and "horizontal movement" between tools dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1...

so if you want a relatively straightforward prompting-based method i think unfortunately some kind of combinatory approach that incorporates an outside source of randomness/control is still as good as it gets

yeah, everything better seems to involve either:

- complex sampling techniques – e.g., beam-searching for diverse strings in token sequence space dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

- finetuning – e.g., "forcing diffuse distributions" arxiv.org/abs/2404.10859; our recent COLM work arxiv.org/abs/2503.17126

Luminate: Structured Generation and Exploration of Design Space with Large Language Models for Human-AI Co-Creation | Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

also check out Luminate! rough process:

1. ask LLM for list of "dimensions" that stories might vary along (eg tone, genre, protag)

2. ask LLM for list of "values" each dim could take (eg protag -> young boy, old woman…)

3. generate stories with diff value combinations

dl.acm.org/doi/full/10....

i think a big driver of this (and reliance on AI in “evaluative” situations broadly) is that the evaluator’s goal is often less “make the right call” than “avoid being responsible for making the *wrong* call”

lmao

i'm kind of a doomer about this too but the x-axis *does* seem to mysteriously end right around the year 2020

A screenshot of an academic paper. It reads: Abstract A " 'quine" is a deterministic program that prints itself. In this essay, I will show you a "gauguine": a probabilistic program that infers itself. A gauguine is repeatedly asked to guess its own source code. Initially, its chances of guessing correctly are of course minuscule. But as the gauguine observes more and more of its own previous guesses, it detects patterns of behavior and gains information about its inner workings. This information allows it to bootstrap self-knowledge, and ultimately discover its own source code. We will discuss how-and why-we might write a gauguine, and what we stand to learn by constructing one. CCS Concepts: • Computing methodologies → Philo-sophical/theoretical foundations of artificial intelli-gence; Theory of mind. Keywords: reflection, probabilistic programming ACM Reference Format: Kartik Chandra, Amanda Liu, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and Joshua B. Tenenbaum. 2025. Gauguin, Descartes, Bayes: A Diurnal Golem's Brain. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward! '25), October 12-18, 2025, Singapore, Singa-pore. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/ 3759429.3762631 1 A Way of Knowing From time to time, we all have crises of identity-moments of radical and overwhelming uncertainty about our selves. I' don't know whether the doubts that seize us can really be externalized in language, but if I were to try, I would express them as questions, questions like: Who am I? What am I? What kind of person? What kind of mind?

This may just be the best CS paper I’ve read this year. Just read the abstract and first para of the intro! The rest of the intro is really wild too, but very very good:

dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

i think of these as “target callers” and have been contemplating ways to autodetect them (see thread) bsky.app/profile/maxk...

when im forging the thesis: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!!

when it inevitably incubates the antithesis: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.

Experimental Games Showcase SUBMIT YOUR GAME TO THE

Submissions to the Experimental Games Showcase at GDC are now OPEN through October 24, 2025! Please send us the weird shit you're working on! More info about the session and where to submit can be found on our NEW website here www.experimentalgamesshowcase.com

ya i’ve only gone a couple times but it’s so huge that i mostly just find it draining

🫡🤠

tempted but not sure, soooo much travel coming up this fall. UIST + Portland + Northwestern for sure, plus maybe COLM EMNLP AIIDE NeurIPS. hbu

wait this is kinda profound tho. a trace of the true self remains in the false self

howdy

A anti-correcting spellcheck? Work in progress

#vispo #autocorrect #spellcheck #texteditors

One thing I learned about myself while doing labor organizing is that my own political pessimism was less an expression of "the pessimism of the intellect" and more a highly-refined fear of the vulnerability that comes with any kind of uncertain endeavor. A sophisticated form of cowardice.

Blog | Introducing Early Access · Hidden Door We love stories! Books, movies, TV shows, comics, games: we love them all. But the thing about them is, well, they end—and when it’s over, it’s over. But what if you want to hold onto the magical feeling of that world? That experience of reliving the

We’re launching early access 🔥today🔥!

Hidden Door is where roleplaying meets fanfic. Rise from the beyond to wreak vengeance in The Crow, go rivals-to-lovers in Pride & Prejudice, lean into after-dark vibes with Courtship & Crimson, and so many more!

yeah, the currently online version is correct as of the last time i checked! didn't see that correction language tho, points for internal consistency i guess

How Pac-Man Eats (book review) — Manchester Game Centre In this blog post, Man Met Game Centre member Rob Gallagher reviews How Pac-Man Eats by Noah Wardrip-Fruin.

i’m biased bc Noah was one of my phd advisors, but i still think his take on “alternative”, “expansive”, and “inventive” approaches to relating mechanics and meaning (from How Pac-Man Eats) provides a good theoretical framework for addressing these questions manchestergamecentre.org/blog-db/2021...

what provokes that kind of reflection, though, seems really hard to predict. so it's very unclear to me that this particular mode of engagement will reliably push people more in one direction than the other, especially when you change the framing around the basic interaction

i think it also depends on whether we stop at "wow, cool!" or actually start reflecting on how the experience of the riff relates to that of the original work. the Nighthawks instance was presented as "wow, cool" but it got *me* thinking about the scene from literal angles i hadn't considered before

as an artist i’d much rather a world where people are making all kinds of stupid riffs on my work a few decades or centuries or millennia from now… than a world where people have Figured Out The Meaning + stopped really engaging with it

this is why i tend to think of it as good to get people *playing* with art by whatever means. mere defamiliarization of the monumental is sometimes enough to revive the meaning-making process around a work previously thought to be Fully Understood & thus interpretively ~dead

obviously not all riffs on monuments are equally good or interesting – a riff that serves only to reinforce the original received meaning of the work, for instance, might do little of note. but even *careless* riffs can serve to get the blood pumping again through a monument’s calcified veins

one thing i’ve always appreciated about artists as a group is their irreverence. art history is full of explicit challenges to the monumentality of past monuments; when artists play around with or riff on monuments, they paradoxically *reinvigorate* these monuments, imbuing them with new life