Melancholy-fueled insights on #NeurIPS2026: - Few reviewer responses; one was clearly copied-and-pasted from ChatGPT - Reviewers contradicting themselves, mentioning stuff that's not in the paper - 3/10 papers in my AC stack w/ hallucinated refs. Sic transit gloria mundi.

New blog post, this time quite personal: "40 Bits of Advice That, in Murky Light, Might Pass as Wisdom" #AcademicBlogging bastian.rieck.me/blog/2026/40/

Part 2/2: A huge thank you to our speakers, mentors, participants and sponsors. Looking forward to more exciting talks, projects, and social events over the coming days! #MachineLearning #GeometricDeepLearning #SummerSchool

Part 1/2: 🚀 Two incredible days at #LOGML2026! ☕ Registration & welcome breakfast 🎤 Inspiring talks 📌 Poster session 🧗 Bouldering social ⚽ Football, food & great conversations It's been amazing to see researchers from around the world exchanging ideas and building collaborations.

New 📘 in @pnas.org: A new visualization method developed by IICD researchers in the Blumberg grp could improve the analysis of high-dimensional datasets and help scientists identify new cell types: bit.ly/4eZqbCF @columbiaseas.bsky.social @columbiacancer.bsky.social @pseudomanifold.topology.rocks

I recently learned that my research was featured in an article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on math for cutting pizzas www.sueddeutsche.de/projekte/art... It‘s unfortunately paywalled, if you want a copy dm me :)

Wie man mit Mathematik eine Pizza aufteilt

So teilt man Essen gerecht, auch wenn die Esser unterschiedliche Dinge mögen – oder im Hyperraum unterwegs sind.

sueddeutsche.de

The ELLIS Annual Report 2025 is out now, providing a comprehensive overview of our efforts to secure European sovereignty in AI through scientific excellence and cross-border institutional collaboration. 👉 Download the full Annual Report 2025 here: https://bit.ly/4azeyAV

(but I am not someone who insists on the title, so if you have ever been someone who calls me simply "Shane" I would love you to continue to do so)

(I have developed a knee-jerk response of correcting people calling me "Father Shane" because they've incorrectly done so for *YEARS* and the instinct still kicks in before I have to be like "oh, wait, no, NOW that's appropriate")

a) still getting used to being called "Father Shane" b) *especially* weird to call someone and introduce myself as "Father Shane" c) I have adopted the zoomer slang of "fr" as "for real" c.5) abbrevation is "Fr. Shane" d) (I read it as "for real, Shane") e) texting a fellow priest, I said "fr, fr."

Wonderful to see the GTML 2025 proceedings out in the world. My thanks to the co-organizers, the speakers and authors, and everyone who took part in Leipzig. It was a privilege to bring you all together. #geometry #topology #machineLearning

Neil Lawrence@lawrennd.bsky.social · last mo.

Volume 325 Proceedings of Geometry, Topology, and Machine Learning 2025 proceedings.mlr.press/v325/ Is now available on PMLR.

So glad I was permitted to contribute to this. A truly wonderful workshop by Michael Bleher and many others. Thanks for having me! #geometry #topology #machineLearning

Neil Lawrence@lawrennd.bsky.social · last mo.

Volume 325 Proceedings of Geometry, Topology, and Machine Learning 2025 proceedings.mlr.press/v325/ Is now available on PMLR.

📣 LOGML'26 Speaker Series 🎤 @PascalWelke (Lancaster University Leipzig, TU Wien) He combines graph mining and graph theory to develop expressive graph representations. 📍Imperial College London 📅13–17 July 2026 🔗 logml.ai #LOGML #SummerSchool #GeometricML

With more and more proofs being coauthored by AI, I am often reminded of this wonderful short story: www.uncannymagazine.com/article/proo...

Proof by Induction - Uncanny Magazine

Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here an...

uncannymagazine.com

this is a link you can click to watch me (and several other Jesuits!) get ordained to the priesthood in the near future if that is the kind of thing you think you might like to watch

Jesuits West Celebrates 2026 Ordination

With gratitude to God, the Society of Jesus announces the Ordinatio...

youtube.com

some more media spots from which I feel obliged remove the previews because they're using the same enormous picture of my face but if you want to read about me or listen to me talk here you go Jesuits profile: www.jesuits.org/profile/shan... AMDG Podcast: open.spotify.com/episode/6xfS...

New blog post: Some Comments on “Magnifica Humanitas” In which I comment on the recent encyclical by Pope Leo XIV from the perspective of a machine learning researcher. bastian.rieck.me/blog/2026/ma...

Is it an unwritten rule that frontier AI companies have to pick their name out of Tolkien's legendarium? What comes after "peak Tolkien?" Star Wars? Game of Thrones? Something else?

The hike vs helicopter framing assumes choice. For dyslexics & ADHDers like me, AI is the wheelchair, not the helicopter; not skipping the climb, making the climb possible. Your 'cannot abdicate responsibility' line holds. carlmfreeman.substack.com/p/nobody-kno...

New blog post: Scholarship in the Age of AI In which I use the recent debate on arXiv policies to ponder what it means to be a scholar now. Feedback always welcome! #Academia #AI bastian.rieck.me/blog/2026/sc...

After a certain age, discovering new music gets harder. Siri didn't understand my query, said "Hold my beer!", and served me "Birdie" by "NOVA Rei." (Can you guess what I wanted to listen to originally?)

Did anyone else notice a move of generic AI slop to platforms like Zenodo? I used to get endorsement requests for arXiv, which I did not feel comfortable with, and now I am noticing more and more "weird stuff" (consciousness + topology + quantum whatever) hosted on Zenodo.

https://media1.giphy.com/media/NTur7XlVDUdqM/200.gif

media1.giphy.com

Gladiator vibes...good evening, y'all!

Some respite before the heat starts again. Good morning, everyone!

Remember when I was first becoming a Jesuit and gave away a bunch of my stuff? Well here's your chance again! All of this is free to a good home if you pay shipping. (Note the Majora's Mask has a cracked case.) DM me if you are interested. Serious inquiries only! Needs to go in the next week-ish.

📣 LOGML'26 Speaker Series 🎤 Soledad Villar @soledadvillar.bsky.social (Johns Hopkins) Her research spans equivariant ML, GNNs, with applications to computational biology. 📍 Imperial College London 📅 13–17 July 2026 🔗 www.logml.ai #LOGML #GraphML #GeometricDeepLearning #SummerSchool

The Boston TAG Party (August 18–20) is open for submissions! openreview.net/group?id=TAG... Submit your work in topology, algebra, and geometry.

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Papers are tactics. Grants are strategy. — Sun Tzu, thinking about CS conference outcomes.

Walking to the office always gives me Lord of the Rings vibes. #Fribourg #Freiburg