Colin Megill

@seattlejs.com you guys delete all your old videos? was there a reason? was surprised

“Died of sadness,” according to family. An immeasurable loss.

Persepolis was read all over the world—a true international phenomenon. Assigned in every class subject under the sun. During the Obama years, West Point cadets were assigned the book. There's never been anything like it; never anyone like her. What an awful world that couldn't hold her longer.

What an opener www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY_O...

1/ Ukraine's incessant drone strikes on the Russian rear are causing deep concern among Russian warbloggers. One points out that the entire region's logistics depend completely on road transport and forecasts a "very serious situation" developing. ⬇️ bsky.app/profile/noel...

"In the American context, the idea of a small party unifying voters across left and right sounds like a pipe dream. But there is evidence it worked in Japan" www.techpolicy.press/japans-team-...

Reproducing all of Jürgen Schmidhuber’s papers (1990-2025) using an AI coding assistant. Cool project by Yaroslav! It even reproduced the “World Models” paper by me and Schmidhuber (2018) using a toy environment, with a full VAE + RNN world model implementation. Project: github.com/cybertronai/...

😄 A red notebook with the inscription "List of assholes 2026" was noticed on the desk of the head of OP Budanov.

Mushrooms along the Silver River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula for #MushroomMonday!

Well, it’s dark and rainy all the time now. But the mushrooms are thriving.

I cannot

@colinmegill.com made the grand reveal of Pol.is 2.0 - the new generation of the software that allows for people with different opinions to reach consensus, at #TICTeC 2025 - another great one to rewatch! youtu.be/Q8kMOg4EPQA

#NoKings event in Fairhope, Al. A woman was arrested for "lewd conduct" because she was dressed in penis suit with a sign that said "No dick-tator" 3 cops on a 53 yo woman.

Of all the clerics they could have popped, those ICE idiots had to hit Hot Priest.

New reddit alternative built on AT

‘Brexit is a tragedy and it will be reversed.’ 💥 #Heseltine is the best political communicator by a long way. His emphatic call for rejoining the EU cuts through the noise, grounded in truth, while the counterarguments cling to a dwindling minority of Brexit believers. 1/2

Stanford Engineering (@StanfordEng) launched an open-rank faculty search in design. It can place candidates in any department in our School of Engineering: facultypositions.stanford.edu/en-us/job/49... I'm thrilled to bring in more colleagues at the intersection of engineering+design!

I wrote something new! It’s a UI design history essay about Mac’s Control Panel, and it uses emulation in some… maybe new and maybe interesting ways? aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...

4.5 was the one they should have open sourced.

Bluesky's near-consensus that AI doesn't work and won't be a technology that has major knock-on effects on society is…not grounded in reality. No mater how loudly and repetitively people say it.

And now we have a panel 'Growing the Open Society: Tech and democratic innovation' with @fecampagnucci.com, @colinmegill.com from Polis (a real time system for gathering and analysing what real people think), and Lula Chen from MIT Governance Lab. #TICTeC

Fantastic panel at #TICTeC Day 2 ✨ @fecampagnucci.com ✨Lula Chen from MIT GOV/LAB ✨ @colinmegill.com from Pol.is

I might go as far as to say that the attempt to “get past” process is actually a part of that problem because it further undermines the attempt to have the conversation we need about process.

or thinking that what they believe is the answer will appear unattractive to the "hoi poloi" and therefore needs to be hidden. Making the case for why I think this is bad practice is hard to do briefly, but I think it is a strategic mistake.We cannot "get past" process. We must improve on it.

TICTeC day 2's plenary sees @fecampagnucci.com of @internetlab.bsky.social; @colinmegill.com‬ of Polis & the Computational Democracy Project; ‪@martintisne.bsky.social‬ of the AI Collaborative and our own @itscrowbot.bsky.social‬. Join the conversation: tictec.mysociety.org/event/tictec... ‬ ‬

deepmind.google/discover/blo...

not the wedge issue platform, the union issue platform at some point there's a tip-over

Older parents are constantly telling those in the early days to cherish it. But that can be very hard advice to follow when you’re in the thick of it. In the Wonder Reader, Isabel Fattal rounds up stories on the gems and the challenges of parenting:

I hardly ever draw on paper anymore and I miss it. I miss the results.

The 100 Men Vs 1 Gorilla debate

Lost a dear friend to cancer today, absolute force of nature. As a doctor, Dana was hope for many patients. Joyous, generous, humble. Impossible that she's gone, leaving behind a young daughter. We loved you Dana Lott — you'll be in our hearts forever. today.duke.edu/2019/09/blue...

Oh hell yes.

Bowling Green, Kentucky, is home to 75,000 residents who recently wrapped up an experiment in using AI for democracy: Can an online polling platform, powered by machine learning, capture what residents want to see happen in their city?

A fascinating democracy experiment in Kentucky saw good participation. There's still a debate though: can a self-selecting group of residents ever really represent a city's ideas? Great to speak with @politicsprof.bsky.social @bethnoveck.bsky.social www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/15/1...

Really interesting story about essentially using AI for participatory (non-AI) governance; a lot of stuff about participatory methods in AI is about using crowds or voting or things like that to design the AI itself, this is sort of the reverse. www.technologyreview.com/2025/04/15/1...