Marcus Helmer 🇺🇸
@wellactuarially.com
Fun lover. And by fun I mean building homes, protected bike lanes, funding transit and other things that are good for people. Also board games.
I tell my students: you wouldn’t get a robot to lift weights for you at the gym, but you would use a forklift in a warehouse.Consider which work is which.
Per Engzell@pengzell.bsky.social · 4d agoSome of our work is routine and can readily be done by machines. Much of it isn't. Knowing which is which is becoming increasingly important. An example...
RIP to one of the realest who ever did it www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie...
Patrick Stewart, ‘Star Trek’ Captain and ‘X-Men’ Superhero, Dies at 86
He’s forever known for playing Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier, whom he “admired for their morality, for their kindness, for their sensitivity, for their compassion.”
hollywoodreporter.com
Very spicy is a warning, but it is also a promise that I do not take lightly.
Concept I had the pleasure of painting for RuneScape: Dragonwilds by Jagex
If the Dodgers lose, LA should get a new mayor. If the Dodgers win, LA should celebrate by getting a new mayor.
I highly appreciate this directed graph showing which language is used to indicate incomprehensibility in different languages (eg, “it’s Greek to me”)
Michael Lugo@miclugo.bsky.social · 3w agowhen I can’t understand a language, it’s like *language from far away country* languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1024
It’s national coming out day and I’m still gay. Shout out to my LGBTQ followers, fruity straight guys, butch straight women with asymmetrical haircuts, people who are really into public transit, and everyone who likes disco music.
I look forward to finishing the actuarial exams so I can just study whatever math I want the rest of my life.
Hoping today's Padres game will be a palette cleanser for last night so I can immediately jump into being disappointed by Lions defense
Even a small amount of experience as a teacher really feels like a super power because I know the shape of good pedagogy. My self-learning is very effective as a result.
I got terrible advice like "Do 100 pushups a day in sets of 10", when I could not do 10 pushups. Awful no good advice that lead to me giving up on getting stronger. After years of learning on my own, I am no longer wasting my time. 💪🏻
I don't know how to plan for this tbh. Would love someone smarter than me in this regard to tell me how.
Ethan Mollick@emollick.bsky.social · last mo.Leaving aside Anthropic's incentives for publishing this research, there is no doubt that open weights models will soon create the same security threats that closed source models have been demonstrating, except without guardrails. We are close, so plan accordingly. www.anthropic.com/research/glm...
Ok, you at least have to remember your partner's phone number. I've met people who are *married* and don't know their partner's phone number.
William B. Fuckley@opinionhaver.bsky.social · last mo.i both think the cognitive offloading thing is real & in some circumstances harmful & also in other ones *the whole point* of technology. for the last ~15 years you have most likely 'cognitively offloaded' having to remember everyone's phone number to your contacts app. are you poorer for it?
Frog built a wet lab for the AI model. "There," he said. "Now it can do its own experiments." "What the fuck?" said Toad
This is bad and should be called out. I push back against accusing everyone that breathes for wanting to throw us under the bus, so it is credible when we call it out when it unambiguously occurs. This is an unambiguous occurrence.
Thomas [DARK MODE], DO 🖖@tom.medsky.social · 2mo agoMarcy Kaptur is the incumbent with a 5 point polling lead so I must assume she put out this ad because this is what she believes.
99% of ruminators quit right before they would have had a life-changing epiphany
My wedding band is a Möbius strip and I'm pretty jazzed about that.
Results are not really the point of mathematics. I've been thinking about this a ton. The community is the end result we are seeking with mathematics. What good is a corpus of literature no one understands?
Pekka Lund@pekka.bsky.social · 2mo ago25 Fields Medalists have basically declared they can't handle the change and neither will other fields. They seem to glorify slow progress and community over results. Combined with how the practical significance of results is now downplayed, they make it sound like others have been funding a hobby.
This seems particularly egregious considering that doing a proper lit review is precisely a domain where AI shines. This looks very intentional to me.
Zach Weinersmith@zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 2mo agoThis is a good article: www.scientificamerican.com/article/open... But, I keep seeing people use it to argue AI can't do stuff? It seems to me all it says is that OpenAI's PR people didn't do a proper lit review. Back when this stuff was just for nerds, that was standard protocol.
A ring built from the Julia sets found along the main cardioid of the Mandelbrot set. one of my favourite mathematical objects
Fun fact, tho not so much given the circumstances: Many large west coast SEIU local numbers are based off mergers. 1021 was 10 locals, now 1. 521 was 5, now 1. 721 was 7, now 1. Not 925. 925 is numbered after the 9 to 5 movement of women workers in the 70s, which Dolly wrote the song about.
SEIU Local 925@seiu925.bsky.social · 2mo agoWe’re not in the habit of recognizing celebrity deaths here at 925. That said, Dolly Parton is a national treasure and some folks here joke that Dolly is our Locals patron saint. After all her song “9 to 5” is our anthem. Today we remember all the love and kindness Dolly brought the world.
A very common DC tourist reaction to the White House is "oh, it's smaller than I thought." And damn right it is, as it should be.
I've got a lot going on in my life. But I think it be worth it to sink 100 hours of self study into systems engineering in the next year. But also, actuary exams are looming. The spectre of Exam 5 is giving me the heebie-jeebies.
Zoomer Antimillenarian@surcomplicated.bsky.social · 2mo agoI should really take a systems engineering design class at some point, shouldn't I?
Every day I go back to work and whisper to myself "Back to the spreadsheet mines"
