Michael Weiss (not that one)

nytimes.comReflecting Pool Contract Has ‘Inflated’ Profit Margin, Government Analysis Finds

31 May

We've had pool reporters in the WH for years but I never expected they'd be delivering national news about an actual pool

The Lincoln Project@lincolnproject.us

The contractor given a no-bid contract to repair the Reflecting Pool is being paid an inflated profit margin. The typical margin of federal construction contracts is 6-12%. But the firm fixing the pool submitted a bid that charged 20% — adding at least $850,000 to the cost. https://nyti.ms/4wWDaNw

22h

I am getting caught up on Dumbing of Age by @damnyouwillis.bsky.social and literally lol'd at this

I will confess I haven't yet read the article, but my initial reaction to the question "Israel: What Went Wrong?" was that Yitzchak Rabin was assassinated, and instead of the country shunning and repudiating his assassin's ideology, they elected people who shared it

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But for me the interval between the November 1995 Rabin assassination and the May 1996 Likud election victory was the singular the sliding doors moment when Israel slipped into a different timeline

lawfaremedia.orgIsrael’s Destruction of Gaza and the Moral Decline of ZionismA review of Omer Bartov, “Israel: What Went Wrong?” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2026)

I'm not sure why the original link that I quoted was deleted, but here is its replacement: bsky.app/profile/lawf...

Lawfare@lawfaremedia.org

"[A]s a historian, he emphasizes the long-term historical processes, major turning points, and key decisions that cumulatively led to 'the tragic transformation of Zionism...into a state ideology of ethno-nationalism.'" @dovwaxman.bsky.social reviews “Israel: What Went Wrong?” by Omer Bartov.

AI proponents sometimes like to compare AI to other major transformative moments in history, the like the prehistoric Agricultural Revolution. The domestication of livestock for agricultural purposes changed the world and the very nature of humanity. It also introduced new dangers into the world. 1/

Tobias S. Buckell@tobiasbuckell.bsky.social

I still think AI systems should be paying me 150k per copyright violation. People keep asking me 'what laws do we need for AI?' and I keep saying 'enforce the fucking ones we already have!' There are copyright laws that should be being enforced right now that just... aren't. B/c it's billionaires.

An autonomous vehicle kills a pedestrian? The company that built and sold it is liable and the people who approved it face criminal charges as if they were driving themselves. An AI agent crashes critical infrastructure? The person who set it loose on the world faces criminal charges and fines. 4/

This honestly does not seem that complicated. Stop indemnifying companies that create potentially dangerous products; don't let them privatize rewards but socialize risks. If your ox gets loose from your field, you are responsible for the damage it causes. /end

Tobias S. Buckell@tobiasbuckell.bsky.social

And you know what humans did in the fact of those changes? They *legislated*. The oldest legal codes in existence establish liability of a person whose ox gets free and gores someone. "You are responsible for the destruction caused by your creature" is baked into the DNA of our legal system. 2/

If the AI Revolution really is like the Agricultural Revolution (I think that comparison is overblown, but let's stipulate to it for the purpose of this thought experiment) then it's very straightforward to say "You, the person who creates an AI agent, are fully responsible for its actions". 3/

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I guess that's really an answer to the question "*When* did it go wrong?", as it leaves unanswered the question "WHY did the country elect people who shared the ideology of the person who killed their prime minister?" Clearly something had already gone wrong for that to happen.

An addendum on this thread: apparently the last 17 years have fried my brain to the point where I no longer remember which grant proposal was submitted where. It's true that I did submit NSF CAREER grants (three times, all unfunded). But the unfunded proposal described in this thread was not to NSF

Michael Weiss (not that one)@profmweiss.bsky.social

17 years ago I finished my Ph.D in Math Education and got my first tenure-track faculty position. As a brand-new academic I did what everyone else does: I submitted a grant proposal to the NSF CAREER program, which funds early-career researchers with start-up funds. 2/

Rather, it was a 2011 proposal to the William T. Grant Foundation, which (at the time) was interested in funding research to "understand and improve the everyday settings of youth ages 8 to 25". (excerpt below). Seemed to me that studying home-based education was a perfect fit, but oh well

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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OBVIOUSLY in such a study there would need to be very strict IRB controls around informed consent, along with protocols for which recordings are and are not preserved, how the data is managed to protect participant privacy, etc. We wouldn't just put PII into the hands of TechCorp Inc. 15/

But the technology itself would have been (and still could be) potentially really useful for anyone who wants to conduct field research in natural settings. Obviously that's not what these panopticon companies are working toward; just an observation that any tool can be used for good or evil. /end

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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The parents would essentially be recruited not only as study participants but also as volunteer data collectors. If they noticed a conversation or activity getting mathematical, they would tap the "Keep recording" button and capture a longer chunk of audio. Then they'd email the recording to me. 13/

To make a long story short, the proposal didn't get funded, and I never pursued this. But you can see how having some kind of wearable, always-on recording device would have made this research much simpler. 14/

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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I was working on this proposal in 2009, remember. The iPhone was just two years old; most people did not yet own a smartphone of any kind. My big idea was to buy 30 iPod Touches and distribute them to homeschooling parents with pre-installed software that was always passively recording. 11/

The basic idea was that the software would constantly be running in the background and would retain a buffer of the last 2 minutes at any given time; the rest of it would be deleted automatically, unless the parent observed something interesting happening. 12/

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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I also hypothesized that unschooling parents play a much more active role in the process than they claim to, insofar as they have to recognize when such moments occurs and help direct the conversation in productive directions. 9/

From a research methodology perspective, the challenges of such a study are obvious. How do you capture spontaneous episodes of learning and problem-solving when the very nature of those episodes is that they don't occur at predetermined times, and can in fact happen any time or place? 10/

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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My hypothesis was that we'd see a huge variety of experiences among "unschoolers" that tended to emerge from children's natural interactions with others 7/

For example: three siblings, ages 5, 7 and 8 are trying to share a package of crackers. How do they work out a way to equally-share 16 crackers among 3 people without being taught? What do they learn along the way, and how does their discourse reveal the state of their understanding? /8

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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(For the rest of this thread, please set aside whatever prior assumptions you have about whether homeschooling and / or unschooling are 'good' or 'bad' for children and society, as those are distractions for answering the actual research questions I tried to answer.). 5/

The research question, stripped down to its basics, was: What does spontaneous mathematical learning look like when it is an emergent process, rather than dictated by a curriculum? What are the conditions under which it happens & what role do parents play in facilitating those unplanned events? 6/

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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My proposal was a qualitative study of the emergence of mathematical understanding in homeschooled children, with particular attention to the different varieties of homeschooling. 3/

en.wikipedia.orgUnschooling - Wikipedia

Homeschoolers use a variety of curricula, and some use no curriculum at all, preferring a holistic, student-driven learning style called "unschooling". 4/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschoo...

I actually have a (genuine) use case for passive, always-on recording! Follow along if you're interested. 1/

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Michael Weiss (not that one) reposted

Oliver Willis

@owillis.bsky.social

attracting media attention with "stunts" was literally the entire core of the civil rights movement. visuals of cops and other officials harassing, beating, killing organizers was pivotal. the civil rights movement would have gone wild for selfies and tweets.

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social

"The Jews who went to Mississippi didn't take selfies and post tweets." Okay, but honestly, if tweets had been a thing in 1961, many of them probably would have done.

levimorrow.substack.comShabbat, Day of RageSadness and Data

@levimorrow.bsky.social continues to be one of the best ModOx writers out there. This latest piece is very short but hits hard levimorrow.substack.com/p/shabbat-da...

His "oh, I got talent" face is just

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It's absolutely wild to me that the same people who SCREAMED about Abdul el-Sayed calling himself a "doctor" (he graduated medical school but is not a licensed physician) seem to think it's fine that Katie Zacharia is essentially doing the same thing about being a "lawyer"

Brad Heath@bradheath.bsky.social

I’m not sure the courts of California would agree with this. And I’m sure D.C. doesn’t.

Three of the best and most influential webcomics of the 2000s are now entirely gone from the internet: Fans! by @tcampbell1000.bsky.social, Roomies/It's Walky! by @damnyouwillis.bsky.social, and Narbonic by @shaenon.bsky.social

I am not exaggerating when I say that this feels to me like if Showcase #4 and Amazing Fantasy #15 were not only super-rare, but literally no longer existed in any form and were only known to people who saw them on newsstands when they were originally published

archive.orgInternet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine

Thank god for the Wayback Machine, which seems to have at least most of these? I'm feeling like I should spend the next few months downloading those strips one at a time and then (if I can get the authors' permission) uploading them all to archive.org

@damnyouwillis.bsky.social Sorry if this is a dumb question, but are the older Walkyverse strips still available online in any form? I wanted to look back at the Faans!/It's Walky crossover the other day and found to my horror that both strips seem to be gone entirely

@tcampbell1000.bsky.social I just discovered the faans.com seems to be down... Is there any way to read the strip?

faans.comFans: The Comic

nytimes.comFort Hood Shooter’s Execution Will be Public and Streamed Live, Pentagon Says (Gift Article)If carried out, the public execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad set for Dec. 3 would be the first in modern U.S. history.

This is going to get challenged as a violation of the 8th Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, right? I mean, it has to!

Trump posting an image of penguins in Greenland is straight out of @theonion.com's article about the death of Encyclopedia Brown

theonion.comIdaville Detective 'Encyclopedia' Brown Found Dead In Library DumpsterIDAVILLE, FL—Police are currently investigating the death of police detective Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, 49, whose body was discovered in a Dumpster behind the Idaville Public Library Monday.

linked image is from this classic theonion.com/idaville-det... @bencollins.bsky.social any comment on the death of Idaville Police Detective Leroy “Encyclopedia” Brown?

Calling it now: as more and more people come to associate thick-framed glasses with AI, surveillance and voyeurism, expect very thin frames to become the dominant style

motherjones.comWhat to know about Hegseth’s new office of religious affairs"Our department is, you might say, putting on the full armor of God."

Could somebody — I don’t know, just any journalist — please ask “Which religions?”

Mother Jones@motherjones.com

On Wednesday, Pete Hegseth announced the creation of a new entity within the Pentagon: the Office of Religious Affairs. The office will “sponsor and oversee research, technology, and analytical tools to support and assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness, and spiritual resilience.”

The thing about ChatGPT is that it will give you a solution that seems to match what you ask for, even if one does not exist. As a math teacher I see this all the time: "Give an example of .... [describes something impossible, but not obviously so]." It's incapable of saying "There isn't one."

Michael Weiss (not that one)@profmweiss.bsky.social

100%. They probably fed the entire dataset of "evidence" they had available into ChatGPT and asked it to find previously-unknown clues that Smith conspired with Fani Willis, and this is what it came up with

Strangerer in a Stranger Land

Lawprofblawg@lawprofblawg.bsky.social

Moby Dicker.

On the other hand, "I couldn't pump my own gas because my ZIP code is 07305" is perfectly sensible and normal . . . . (it's in New Jersey, get it?)

T. Greg Doucette@gregdoucette.bsky.social

Few things say "billionaires are so cloistered they are incapable of behaving like normal humans" quite like "I couldn't pump my own gas because I don't know my own ZIP code"

I hate having to explain my own joke but I really suspect this one would just whoosh past people, because, like, who knows the ZIP code for Jersey City on sight?

Literally in both the Torah and the Code of Hammurabi! The owner is liable for any damages caused by his beasts. This is what we call a “solved problem”

Courtney Milan@courtneymilan.com

We have had rules of liability around misbehaving property since forever!

I can only assume that the reason nobody engaged with this post 3 days ago is that you are all antisemitic

Michael Weiss (not that one)@profmweiss.bsky.social

Internet HR guy: "Now, can you please read this item that you posted to Bluesky on the day before Yom Kippur?" Me: "It says 'Kittel Up, motherf***ers." HR guy: "And can you explain why that's not, in your opinion, offensive?" Me: "The three asterisks stand for the letters A-S-T."

Authoritarian ruler threatens neighboring country with annexation --> neighbor seeks alliance with friendly European powers for self-defense --> authoritarian proclaims that very alliance to a hostile act of aggression --> ... Trump-Canada-EU is following the exact same script as Putin-Ukraine-NATO