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>Let's all work together

Nah

I'd like to add that "DEI" is, in this administrative environment, often reduced to a collection of terms searched for and flagged without regard for context. Such that "diversity" might be flagged in a grant application that has nothing to do with racial or ethnic diversity.

USDA is doing the same thing with ag funding, though I don't think the same level of chaos is appearing because there are still at the moment competent people below the true-believer management. But not for long, as soon as they complete their return to Kansas City, inevitably losing DERP holdouts (exactly as happened during the last Trump admin).

mold_aidon U.S. science is in chaos

Perhaps better than "if I don't like it, it deserves to have its funding cut"

mold_aidon What the Fuck Happened to Nerds

Yeah, exactly, "man hands on inhumanity to man" and all that. I have to admit I was a little surprised when I saw it firsthand, myself, so it's not like I was any less naive about it.

mold_aidon What happened to nerds?

oooh pinched a nerve among the xkcd fans I guess

mold_aidon What happened to nerds?

They seem like entirely different things to me, in the sense that I wouldn’t expect a writer, or a baker, or a chef to have typical ethical behaviors as a group.

Shouldn't you? Bakers and chefs aren't just "interested in nerdy stuff like chemical reactions," they make food for people. Writers have ethical obligations, both individually and as a group?

I don’t know why you’d think “being interested in nerdy stuff like computers” would somehow translate into virtuous behavior.

The cultural perception of nerds being relentlessly bullied for the crime of having imaginations/GPAs/acne, I think, presented a culturally sympathetic view to the extent that the latent bro-ism caught some off guard, like we'd expect them to emerge from sweet gentle Stranger-Things style basement nerds to adulthoods as, say, Randall Munroe or something

mold_aidon Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

not to mention the vaguely desperate "Minecraft in Education." Pity the short-lived "Dwarf Fortress: Education Edition" never caught on

mold_aidon Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

yeah I'm seconding all of that, esp. the critique of edtech

mold_aidon Reading for pleasure is sharply down among schoolkids, report shows

I'm definitely on the "it's the devices" train, but reading instruction in school in the US after high school really breaks students into an absolute exhaustion with the practice. Not to mention they're still reading the stuff I read in the '80s. Certainly some exceptions but I do not think secondary instruction has the right take on this.

mold_aidon How Fear and Social Pressure Are 'Overarming' the U.S.

It's actually not worth remembering that, even in the context of this study.

mold_aidon Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

Why wouldn't the political coalition of teachers not be a "real" teacher-related reason? It is not illegal, at this point in time, for teachers to oppose AI for political reasons.

As others note, there are a lot of reasons for teachers to refuse or hate AI, though in my experience most don't know shit about it and just want students to stop using it as an expedient. I, for instance, take a look at the tiny Dell cubes that have barely powered our Windows workstations and hilariously bedraggled Prometheus units and anticipate "well, we can't even afford to update these pieces of shit, so I suppose as a 'Microsoft shop' we'll be on a upgrade path to CoPilot-enabled cloud computing or some bullshit like that, then it'll really be all over" so my primary concerns are infrastructural. But god yeah the AI writing I get, jesus. These kids think they're driving around in the AI equivalent of Lambos, but free tier CoPilot is a used 2017 Chevy Cruze.

mold_aidon California’s university system went all in on AI, now it's tearing itself apart

AFT is in fact pro-AI

mold_aidon WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

>You could argue peer review has become a mechanism to encourage incrementalism. That it doesn’t reward big leaps. And the public isn’t getting ROI on science funding compared to 50 years ago.

Are you arguing that or not

Also: tenets

>some might say theology - of the field

Some might, I'm sure! Are you saying that?

mold_aidon WH proposes rules giving political appointees final approval on research grants

How would you handle non-competitive grants

mold_aidon Anthropic surpasses OpenAI to become most valuable AI startup

>Calling this a "tupper ware" seems a bit emotional

Calling this "emotional" seems a little weird

mold_aidon The Current Crisis: What's Happening to Science in America

Are you saying Derek Lowe is lying, or is working for the Chinese government?

mold_aidon Anthropic's growth is 'just the tip of the sphere' for AI rally

CNBC copyeditors not believing their luck with this quote pull

mold_aidon Negation Neglect: When models fail to learn negations in training

Interesting to read the preprint as a measure of inductive bias and "belief rate." I assumed it would be about inability to use negation as a organizational pattern in argument. Really want to see more studies about informal reasoning patterns and their success in these contexts

mold_aidon I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit

I've seen people try to argue for resources using reasonable but abstract arguments, and it just never works. The fact of the matter is that I want $200/month, on top of my other asks, and that comes out of somebody's budget. I just don't see folks snapping their fingers and $200 a month (discounted for now!) appears. Good for the other guy I was replying to if that's the case! I just don't see it though.

mold_aidon I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit

>You can't justify $200/month in spending to your boss?

No. What? Of course not.

>Many people charge more than that per single billable hour.

hrmmmm not so sure about the work that "many" is doing there

mold_aidon I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit

What sort of bad faith would even apply here? idgaf if poster x or y has psychosis or not. "$200 a month is classic addict behavior" seems pretty spot-on to me though, I just don't want to have to pay it, too.

mold_aidon I think Anthropic and OpenAI have found product-market fit

I don't know, "workaday professionals will find $200/month a particularly good deal, such that there will be widespread adoption" sounds either credulous enough to support the diagnosis or dishonest enough to dismiss. I am a "knowledge worker" who is doin' fine, has a lot of templated written work/report writing, and there is no way in hell I am justifying that kind of spending to my boss or my family.

mold_aidon My two-part desk setup (2025)

I mean I love this kind of stuff but honestly the answer here is "have a huge honking office." I have a digital/reading split and there's actually a technical term for it: a mess.

What I like to do is think of the office less as a discrete space and more like a colonial, expansionist government - if I have sat in a chair for any amount of time, anything in a five-foot radius starts accruing stacks of books, paper pads, that kind of thing. My wife loves this! Sometimes it gets cold in a room and I leave it for a while and when I return months later it's like discovering an office from the past

mold_aidon Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

Both happen at the same time, by the same people. The reason for usage differs by major, but usually it's an expedient to either get past tasks that represent busywork or just the cheating you've seen described. Students have explained to me how much they hate in the same explanation of what they do with it.

(just FYI: There's no "traditional learning" to return to; you will definitely hear a lot of faculty going to "paper and pen" situations - kinda uncritically, if you ask me! - but I ask folks to remember that writing itself is a technology, and the media/means historically associated with it are technological advances in their own rights).

mold_aidon Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

Would you prefer the harsh unpopular truth of Erich Schmidt, or a sweet (unintentional)lie of Wozniak?

Not really a lie (unless you think the students are not intelligent?); regardless, usually you don't get "harsh truths" at these ceremonial, epideictic events. Though I guess funerals in the Schmidt family must be a lot of fun. "We begin with the airing of grievances. Then let's bury this piece of shit"

mold_aidon Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

>If I need to change non-standard lightbulbs (e.g., G9, MR11, A19), I'm taking a picture and asking my AI what kind are they.

Did you just tell a "how many X does it take to change a lightbulb" joke about yourself?

mold_aidon Apple unveils new accessibility features

How is it that you know they are blind?

mold_aidon FiveThirtyEight articles on the Internet Archive

In a sense, nothing - and any other website should be archived, too.

In another sense, it's a journalistic source with information and commentary on past elections. Even aside from the political context that muddies the waters around or outright denies results, matters of public discourse on the web should not be ephemeral or subject to the decisions of the publication - they should be archived.

mold_aidon Polypad

An edtech product that illustrates mathematical relationships through colors and shapes.

mold_aidon AI is a technology not a product

I think this really gets at it: people are so terrified of not knowing what to do, of not knowing whether their solution is "good," that they'll pay a monthly fee for a machine to tell them it's ok, ironically bypassing human judgment in the end. Drudgery or judgery, those are the two task contexts in which AI products* excel.

* It's lovely to have the opportunity to disagree with both Gruber and the "the whole thing smacks of politics" HN commentariat, pulled daily between "it's just a tool, like a hammer, which also kills people, stay with me here" and "AI puts an expert in your pocket; soon, the expert will live in your eyes"