Have been flossing for a week after a dentist appointment put the fear of God into me and damn, that shit is still bloody and painful. Hope it doesn't persist too long I guess?

Googling this, people say it subsides in a week, but I feel like the fundamental problem is that it's hard to get the floss into the cracks between the teeth, meaning that when they do get in it's with high speed.

Actually googling just now apparently the thing I am doing is a flossing mistake? I don't know how successful their proposed alternative is tho...

Epoch AI is the premier organization that tracks the trajectory of AI - how much compute is used, the role of algorithmic improvements, the growth in data used, and when the above trends might hit an end. In this episode, I speak with the director of Epoch AI, Jaime Sevilla, about how compute, data, and algorithmic improvements are impacting AI, and whether continuing to scale can get us AGI.

Transcript
YouTube link

William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896)
Acanthus original design

(Taken from @ marysia_cc on twitter, https://x.com/marysia_cc/status/1841750032535765407)

A thing I didn't realize would be a consequence of making a niche podcast is how much podcast spam email I get. Mostly of the form "bring my client as a guest on your podcast", sometimes of the form "use our social medium" etc. Examples that I've received in the last ~week at the end of this post.

IDK maybe this is unsurprising given that podcasts have an email attached to them. Interestingly it does seem to happen more now that my podcast is more prominent than it was ~2 years ago.

I made an episode about computational mechanics and I think it's cool and you should watch (or listen or read as the case may be)!

YouTube link
Transcript

Blurb I wrote:

Sometimes, people talk about transformers as having "world models" as a result of being trained to predict text data on the internet. But what does this even mean? In this episode, I talk with Adam Shai and Paul Riechers about their work applying computational mechanics, a sub-field of physics studying how to predict random processes, to neural networks.

ToC if that's interesting:
- 0:00:42 - What computational mechanics is
- 0:29:49 - Computational mechanics vs other approaches
- 0:36:16 - What world models are
- 0:48:41 - Fractals
- 0:57:43 - How the fractals are formed
- 1:09:55 - Scaling computational mechanics for transformers
- 1:21:52 - How Adam and Paul found computational mechanics
- 1:36:16 - Computational mechanics for AI safety
- 1:46:05 - Following Adam and Paul's research

Casimiro Sainz y Saiz

Ma petite clairère cachée / My little hidden clearing

found here

Overrated:
- Marcus Aurelius
- "Saint" Augustine of Hippo (are the haters Eastern Orthodox or atheist?)
- Cleopatra

Underrated
- Justinian I (who dislikes that guy?)
- Cicero

From an Edo encyclopedia of sea life drawn by the naturalist and samurai Mori Baien

#weebism