In this post we will see how to extend reverse mode automatic differentiation to a language with first class function types, function application and lambda-abstraction. This method is not new, but we will give a new derivation of it by showing how it arises universally from noticing that the category of “additive lenses” is cartesian closed. In the end we will see that this idea sounds like it should revolutionise machine learning, but then doesn’t.

Some interesting ideas, although I won’t claim that I understand them all.

see: https://zenodo.org/records/18625249

Disco is taking out the bad and keeping only the good.

I had heard of Disco, but it does really seem like it sparks joy. Perhaps I should give it a try.

The problem with utopia Specifically with respect to status.

I really try to not care about status, but to not care is not not be human, it seems.

Nothing in life is certain except death, taxes and the second law of thermodynamics. All three are processes in which useful or accessible forms of some quantity, such as energy or money, are transformed into useless, inaccessible forms of the same quantity. That is not to say that these three processes don’t have fringe benefits: taxes pay for roads and schools; the second law of thermodynamics drives cars, computers and metabolisms; and death, at the very least, opens up tenured faculty positions.

via: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reversible_computing

I kept hearing moms were lonely, so why wouldn’t they text me back? Here’s what I learned, trying to make mom friends and (eventually) succeeding.

When a black man lives the same day over and over again, he tries changing his behavior to survive a police interaction.

“Better run, better run, outrun my gun…”

see: https://github.com/p2r3/bareiron

Two options:

1. don’t be controversial, i.e. assimilate
2. don’t get famous

Not only can misogynistic men still get laid, but the declaration that misogynists and incels are one in the same (or that a man who hates women must only feel that way because he can’t get any ass) reinforces the, dare I say, sexist belief that a man’s ability to obtain sexual partners is indicative of his moral value. It also directly confirms the idea that women are “vending machines who dispense sex for good behavior,” which this exact cohort of feminists have repeatedly countered.

Most theories and hypotheses in psychology are verbal in nature, yet their evaluation overwhelmingly relies on inferential statistical procedures. The validity of the move from qualitative to quantitative analysis depends on the verbal and statistical expressions of a hypothesis being closely aligned—that is, that the two must refer to roughly the same set of hypothetical observations. Here I argue that most inferential statistical tests in psychology fail to meet this basic condition.

see: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/jqw35_v1

via: https://www.scattered-thoughts.net/reads

These are books (and not-books) that had some lasting impact on me long after first reading them.

Kinkykikker explores the conversation every long-term couple dreads in this story on the realities of when passions fades while the love endures.

Put policy aside and think like the median voter: which candidate fucks?

Unfortunately true.

This took way longer than I thought, but considering that I didnt even know whether this is possible or not, it’s definitely a big win

Technical Minecraft is awesome.

If you’re building a new CI system/IaC platform/Make replacement: please just let me write code to dynamically create the workflow/infrastructure/build graph.

What would we see when a star collapses? How does a black hole appear? How is the event horizon formed? All these answers in 11 minutes!

Insanely beautiful visualizations.