Zotero Catalogue

Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer

A new book from Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence. On sale October 20, 2026.

1. New London play about Keynes. 2. Aphantasia, and looking at buildings. 3. AI and job growth in Africa. 4. On Nussbaum, opera, and liberalism. 5. Congress seeks to speed up energy permitting (NYT). 6. Teenager jobs have not disappeared altogether (NYT). 7. An Antikythera field trip and investigation.

Katie Wilson’s progressive agenda has been hobbled by a string of violence, a budget deficit and turmoil inside City Hall.

The official site of Tyler Cowen

A census database of all publicly-reported arrests and prosecutions connected to the Tor-Bitcoin drug darknet markets 2011–2015, and analysis of mistakes.

Dynamic scenes may be captured by a moving camera, multiple video streams, or images taken at different times. These observations reveal complementary aspects of scene geometry and motion, yet bringing them together requires establishing correspondence across viewpoints, capture times, and visibility changes. We introduce ARROW, a feed-forward model that unifies 3D reconstruction and 3D point tracking from arbitrary image sets. At its core is a novel order-invariant querying approach, which allows the association of queries with observations across arbitrary inputs. We show that exposing the model to more diverse sets of inputs during training results in improved task performance. Moreover, the resulting model is capable of generalization to a wider range of tasks including multi-view tracking. Trained with this strategy, ARROW establishes a new state of the art in 3D tracking on WorldTrack and TAPVid-3D and outperforms dedicated multi-view trackers on an adapted RGB-only MVTracker benchmark, while remaining competitive across 3D reconstruction tasks. Code and weights are publicly available.

Does working from home increase fertility? I study the 2020 expansion of remote work by comparing changes in births across U.S. college graduates whose majors differed in pre-pandemic teleworkability. Measuring exposure by college major avoids relying on occupations workers may have chosen in response to the expansion. Among married women, a one-standard-deviation increase in teleworkability reduced annual birth rates by 2 percent and increased full-time employment by 1.3 percent. I find no statistically significant effects on fertility among men or unmarried women, or on marriage or divorce. Accounting exercises suggest that increased employment can explain about half of the decline in births. The results suggest that returning to pre-pandemic telework levels would raise the total fertility rate by 0.09 births per woman.

Poolside is a foundation model company bringing intelligence to everywhere work gets done. Our mission is to drive abundance for humanity by creating artificial general intelligence.

Written with love, humility, and faith, this brief but poignant volume was first published in 1961 and concerns the death of C. S. Lewis's wife, the American-born poet Joy Davidman. In her introduction to this new edition, Madeleine L'Engle writes: "I am grateful to Lewis for having the courage to yell, to doubt, to kick at God in angry violence. This is a part of a healthy grief which is not often encouraged. It is helpful indeed that C. S. Lewis, who has been such a successful apologist for Christianity, should have the courage to admit doubt about what he has so superbly proclaimed. It gives us permission to admit our own doubts, our own angers and anguishes, and to know that they are part of the soul's growth."Written in longhand in notebooks that Lewis found in his home, A Grief Observed probes the "mad midnight moments" of Lewis's mourning and loss, moments in which he questioned what he had previously believed about life and death, marriage, and even God. Indecision and self-pity assailed Lewis. "We are under the harrow and can't escape," he writes. "I know that the thing I want is exactly the thing I can never get. The old life, the jokes, the drinks, the arguments, the lovemaking, the tiny, heartbreaking commonplace." Writing A Grief Observed as "a defense against total collapse, a safety valve," he came to recognize that "bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love."Lewis writes his statement of faith with precision, humor, and grace. Yet neither is Lewis reluctant to confess his continuing doubts and his awareness of his own human frailty. This is precisely the quality which suggests that A Grief Observed may become "among the great devotional books of our age."

Applied Computer Science: On Murder Considered As STEM Field—using information theory to quantify the magnitude of Light Yagami’s mistakes in 𝐷𝑒𝑎𝑡𝘩 𝑁𝑜𝑡𝑒 and considering fixes

Henry Joseph Darger Jr. ( DAR-ghər; April 12, 1892 – April 13, 1973) was an American janitor and hospital worker. He gained recognition only after his death for his vast body of visual art and writing. Darger was raised by his disabled father in Chicago. Frequently in fights, he was put into a charity home as his father's health declined, and in 1904 was sent to the then-named Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children in Lincoln, Illinois, officially due to his masturbation. He began making escape attempts after his father's death in 1908, and in 1910 was able to escape, walking much of the way to Chicago. As an adult he did menial jobs for several hospitals, interrupted by a brief stint in the United States Army during World War I. He spent much of his life in poverty and in later life was a recluse in his apartment. A devout Catholic, Darger attended Mass multiple times each day and collected religious memorabilia. Retiring in 1963 due to chronic pain, he was moved into a charity nursing home in late 1972, shortly before his death. During this move, his landlords Kiyoko and Nathan Lerner discovered his artwork and writings, which he had created and kept secret over the course of decades. From around the early 1910s to the late 1930s, Darger wrote the 15,145-page novel In the Realms of the Unreal, centered on a rebellion of child slaves on a fantastical planet. The chief protagonists are the Vivian Girls, who fight to free the children from the enslaving Glandelinians. Inspired by the American Civil War and martyrdom stories, it features lengthy, gruesome descriptions of battles, many ending with the mass killing of rebel children. Between 1912 and 1925, Darger produced collages, often only loosely correlated to the book. Later he made these with watercolors and traced figures taken from popular sources such as magazines and children's books. These paintings grew more elaborate over time, with some of his largest works exceeding 10 feet (3 m) in length. Little girls, often in combat, are a primary focus; for unknown reasons, they are frequently depicted naked and exclusively with male genitalia. Other writings by Darger include a roughly 8,000-page unfinished sequel to In the Realms of the Unreal entitled Further Adventures of the Vivian Girls in Chicago, a decade-long daily weather journal, and The History of My Life—consisting of a 206-page autobiography followed by several thousand pages about the destruction caused by a fictional Illinois tornado. Darger made no efforts to publish his work, and it was unknown to others until shortly before his death. He is frequently associated with the outsider art movement, which encompasses the work of self-taught creators outside the mainstream art community who frequently produce very singular and unusual work. His art was popularized by his former landlords and is now featured in many museum collections, with the largest at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City and the Intuit Art Museum in Chicago. Initial critical analysis of him and his work took a psychoanalytical approach, often focused on his many depictions of nude and brutalized children. Scholars have hypothesized several different psychological conditions Darger may have suffered from. Theories from earlier scholars that he was a pedophile or murderer have been discredited.

Pugwash seek a world free of nuclear and other weapons, mass destruction and war - whilst promoting peace, security, and human dignity.

A four-day workshop dedicated to the development of new divinatory practices.

An Explanation of Vision-Language-Action Models

A daily strip generated programmatically from LessWrong

Research is a messy enterprise, fraught with dead ends and missed opportunities. When research is successful, intellectual property law offers market-driven rewards. When research is unsuccessful, however, the investment is treated as a waste—an unlucky gamble in the horse race of innovation. But failed research investments are not valueless. Instead, they generate useful information that increases the odds of success on subsequent research efforts. From a social perspective, then, firms should disclose information about research failures so that other firms can avoid duplicative, fruitless lines of inquiry. Unlike with successful research investments, however, firms have no easy opportunity to capture the value of information generated by their unsuccessful research. Indeed, the law offers no coherent approach for harvesting the social value of the information generated by failed research efforts. As a result, discoveries of what “does not work” are not optimally disclosed. In this paper, we develop a simple sequential-stage model to identify the shortcomings of this one-sided reward system. We explore possible legal and institutional solutions to the problem, focusing on informal bankruptcy alternatives, patent-like “propertization” mechanisms, and prizes. Our results shed light on the potential and limits of these mechanisms for aligning private and social incentives for research.

Prior work has established that prepending Christian Scripture to a large language model alters its downstream moral choice behavior (McCaffery, 2026; Hwang, 2026b), but the mechanism has remained unclear. Using a 171-dimension emotion-vector basis extracted at Qwen 3.5 27B (following Lindsey et al.

Working papers exploring the intersection of Christian theology and artificial intelligence.

Government struggling to deal with worst crisis in months after being taken by surprise by massive demonstrations

Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981 – April 20, 1999) and Dylan Bennet Klebold ( KLEE-bohld; September 11, 1981 – April 20, 1999) were an American mass murder duo who perpetrated the Columbine High School massacre, where they killed 13 students and one teacher, and wounded 23 others. After killing most of their victims in the school library, the two died from suicide by gunshot. At the time, the attack was the deadliest high school shooting in United States history. The ensuing media frenzy and moral panic turned "Columbine" into a byword for school shootings, and the event into one of the most infamous mass shootings. Harris and Klebold met while attending middle school and gradually became close. By their junior year of high school, they were described as best friends who were dependent on one another. Early reports characterized them as unpopular and frequent targets of bullying; however, many peers later stated that the two were not near the bottom of the school's social hierarchy, as both had numerous friends and active social lives. Columbine High School was alleged to have an intense "jock culture", in which popular students—primarily athletes—received preferential treatment from faculty and peers. Harris and Klebold often wore black trench coats in their everyday attire; as a result, it was initially believed that they were members of a school clique known as the "Trenchcoat Mafia", a group of students who were said to rebel against the school's norms. This was later found to be unsubstantiated, as Harris and Klebold had little to no affiliation with the group. According to their writings, Harris and Klebold appear to have begun planning the attack by May 1998, nearly a year beforehand, although each had previously made references to a shooting. Over the following eleven months, they secretly built explosives and amassed an arsenal of weapons, planning to attack in April 1999, just weeks before their graduation. Both left behind journals and video recordings, created individually and together, that foreshadowed the massacre and provided insight into their rationale for the shooting. They intended for this material to be widely viewed and to inspire followers, although much of it has never been released by authorities. The FBI concluded in May 2000 that Harris exhibited psychopathic traits, including narcissism, unconstrained aggression, and a lack of empathy, while Klebold was described as an angry depressive with a vengeful attitude toward individuals he believed had mistreated him. However, since neither Harris nor Klebold had been formally diagnosed with any personality disorders during their lifetimes, these conclusions have been criticized and remain debated. In the years after the massacre, news outlets and commentators have attributed the attack to various motivating factors, including bullying, mental illness, racism, psychiatric medication, and exposure to violence in media. The exact motive for the attack remains inconclusive. Harris and Klebold have become figures in popular culture, portrayed, alluded to, and depicted in various media. Some perpetrators of subsequent attacks have cited the duo as an influence, a phenomenon commonly referred to as the "Columbine effect".

On Friday night, a 22-year-old drove through a popular night spot in the college town of Santa Barbara and started shooting.

Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger (July 24, 1991 – May 23, 2014) was a British-American mass murderer who perpetrated the Isla Vista attacks, where he murdered six people and injured fourteen others, before he fatally shot himself. The murders he committed, his suicide, and his manifesto have been named as early influences on the incel and manosphere subculture. Born in London, Rodger relocated to California with his family as a child. The son of British filmmaker Peter Rodger, he grew up in a privileged household. Rodger struggled with social isolation, mental health issues, and rejection. As a teenager, he was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS), but did not meet the criteria for an autism diagnosis. He started treatment and received special education resources and therapy for most of his life. He endured bullying during his time in middle and high school. Several incidents of Rodger's strange behavior during his time in Isla Vista, California, along with videos and other writings that mentioned violent intentions, worried his family and acquaintances. On May 23, 2014, Rodger murdered six people and injured fourteen others using knives, semi-automatic pistols, and his car as a weapon in Isla Vista near the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Rodger first killed his two roommates and their friend in the apartment they shared, ambushing and stabbing them one at a time as they arrived at different times. Hours later, he drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house, where he intended to murder its occupants but was unable to enter the premises. Rodger instead shot at three women from the Delta Delta Delta sorority who were walking near the Alpha Phi sorority house, killing two of them while critically injuring the third. He later drove by a nearby delicatessen, shooting and killing a man inside. Afterward, Rodger drove around Isla Vista, indiscriminately shooting and ramming pedestrians with his vehicle. He exchanged gunfire with sheriff's deputies twice, getting shot in his hip. Shortly after, he crashed his vehicle into a parked car. As police examined the vehicle, they found Rodger dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. Before starting the attacks, Rodger uploaded a video to YouTube, announcing his intention to "punish" women—as well as the men to whom they were attracted—for their lack of interest in him. He also e-mailed a 137-page manifesto—in which he described his major life events, personal struggles, and frustrations at having remained a lifelong virgin—to several of his family members, acquaintances, and therapists. In the years following his death, Rodger's attacks became a topic in conversations about mental health, online radicalization, and misogyny. He is cited as an early figure of the incel and manosphere subculture, being referred to as a "saint" in internet forums. Rodger's attacks have often been praised by incels around the world. He has both influenced and been referenced by perpetrators of other copycat killings, with some referring to their actions as "going E.R." Rodger’s killings have sparked social media campaigns such as #NotAllMen and #YesAllWomen and have contributed to ongoing debates about toxic masculinity, gender-based violence, and the influence of internet forums in radicalizing young men who intend to commit copycat crimes.

Parents do it all wrong. Death to striver culture; you should be culturemaxxing.

The screens got cheap. The shared experiences got expensive.

It's not just cost, it's also convenience. Once a more convenient alternative has arisen, people usually can't go back to the less-convenient, often more-social, version. Consider DoorDash et al—people are paying more so they don't have to leave their house. Picking up your own food isn't any harder than it ever was, but a more convenient alternative made it unbearable for many. They will claim that they're so busy now, they don't have time to do it themselves, but shouldn't this technology result in more free time, not less?

Young Americans today spend 70 percent less time attending or hosting parties than they did at the beginning of the 21st century. Why?

Is starting a family truly “Inconceivable”?

characterized by rapid and unpredictable changeableness of mood; very lively and quick; changing often : very changeable… See the full definition

Finalist #2 in the Book Review Contest

A guest post by Drew Housman

A loyal AI for your mail, calendar, and everyday work. Runs locally on your Mac.

"Bookland" is a fictitious country that exists solely in the European Article Number (EAN) barcode system, where it serves as the unique prefix of published books regardless of their country of origin. The codes "978" and later "979" were designated as Bookland prefixes in the 1980s to allow the EAN namespace to catalogue books by International Standard Book Numbers (ISBN) rather than requiring a separate or redundant EAN numbering system. Bookland does not represent a real geographic location.

A failed entrepreneur's reflections on never giving up, market research, and corporate challenges.

A generalist software engineer's blog on random startup, business, and tech topics.

Cloudflare's pay-per-crawl lets publishers charge AI bots. But it will struggle overcoming issues with pricing, bot-blocking limits, and incentives.