Scholars aspire to expand the boundaries of knowledge but I must admit I've really enjoyed contracting the boundaries of knowledge. My favorite kind of research has involved questioning consensus. Do we really know what we think we know, or are we falling for hype and groupthink?

'...with US spending stymied by domestic politics, a new set of global players is fronting the cash for states in need of liquidity. Something resembling a polycentric financial patchwork has slowly emerged.' phenomenalworld.org/analysis/new-w…

Go into every day knowing that everyone and everything is more than a little bit broken

learned that shell has a climate tech company called onward (fka “studio x”) that, among other things, includes a gig work platform for geoscientific labor lol

Many plants control the curvature of their leaves by selectively pumping water into cells that line the outer surface. This swelling triggers bending. Engineers created their own version of this structure.

fyfluiddynamics.com/?p=21170

Commercial insurance giant Zurich Insurance Group AG 'will no longer underwrite new oil and gas projects, and is cracking down on clients planning to expand in metallurgical coal mining.' bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

really good coverage from Emily Pontecorvo and Lee Harris this week on rethinking how companies and policymakers should actually measure decarbonization

heatmap.news/climate/life-c…
ft.com/content/6e8224…

That also makes them a lot less valuable than their most recent fundraisings suggest, I imagine.

loren schmidt google has been reduced to a reddit searcher

10 years of tech journalism licking every boot it can in return for the feeblest of access leads to people sincerely writing tweets like this

the product is dogshit. that it took a reviewer to point it out, and not a single person involved in its development, is damning.

friendly reminder that I'm looking for 2 Postdocs but also 2 PhDs to come research DALL-E memes, GPT legends, AI myths & other kinds of #algorithmicfolklore

Where Ireland and the waters around it are considered a key point of vulnerability for EU security

OpenAI, Google and Meta ignored corporate policies, altered their own rules and discussed skirting copyright law as they sought online information to train A.I. Cecilia Kang, Sheera Frenkel, Stuart A. Thompson, Nico Grant and I undercover the race for data: nytimes.com/2024/04/06/tec…

“What happened should go around the world; should shame and blame Germany everywhere.”

Israeli film maker Dror Dayan on the police crackdown on the Palestine Congress in Berlin.

lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/apri…

dEMoCRaTIzInG FiNAnCe

No one owes AI a participation trophy
aftermath.site/humane-ai-marq…

With the Future of Humanity Institute dissolved, everyone is now welcome to give me money to found an organisation to make computer not do bad thing.

' #Nvidia ’s latest announcement, that Blackwell-based #AI clusters will require 100 kilowatts per rack—a figure 400% to 500% higher than current energy usage levels, only compounds this challenge': fastcompany.com/91106396/could… #ethics #tech #sustainability #environment #business #ESG

making projections to *2100* based on nonbinding pledges and entirely unproven tech at scale, and then having the nerve to act like the sober level-headed one. nothing new to see here but i truly passionately hate these people