Garrett Wollman
@gwollman.bsky.social
540 followers 330 following 5K posts
@garrett_wollman from the Bad Place @[email protected] I make the network go, and stop, and go again at @csail.mit.edu. Not actually a colander full of beans. He/him (or they/them).
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gwollman.bsky.social
I gave up on trying to run my own feed generator and switched to a third-party service, so unfortunately all my old skating feeds have been deleted. New feeds published on my profile for #WorldFigure, #WorldSynchro, #EuroFigure, #GPFigure, and #JGPFigure, plus a feed that's all of those together.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
planetoffinks.bsky.social
One blessing we have is that these are the dumbest fucking people led by a dying old man whose brain was terrible even before it started melting.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
cstross.bsky.social
On pedocon theory: why movement conservativism is inextricably entwined with paedophilia (and why the POTUS is probably a paedophile too):
https://www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-to-talk-about-pedocon-theory/
gwollman.bsky.social
At least Pullman smells better than Clarkston.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
elfsternberg.bsky.social
There are three kinds of states in political science:
• supportive states that ensure citizens are educated, fed, and housed, prepared to raise economic activity,
• conqueror states that prepare citizens for war and war-supporting activities,
• failed states

www.axios.com/2025/10/10/f...
Scoop: Trump administration warns of "insufficient funds" for food stamps if shutdown continues
It's the administration's latest warning of painful consequences of a lengthy government shutdown.
www.axios.com
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
elfsternberg.bsky.social
With the elimination of both the Disease Tracking and the Morbidity and Mortality Report divisions at the CDC, this mass murderer is laying the groundwork to cover up the rise in preventable deaths his policies will ensure.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
elfsternberg.bsky.social
It's important to note that one of the Republican Administration's "Terror Memo" says that one of the signs of "sympathy with terrorism against the United States" is any action that would reduce any police department's funding.

slowcivilwar.substack.com/p/rubber-glu...
Rubber Glue Fascism
A close reading of "NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM/NSPM-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence"
slowcivilwar.substack.com
gwollman.bsky.social
Ate lunch really early and feeling a bit out of sorts.
gwollman.bsky.social
Well I guess our regional optical network no longer runs through 32AoA.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
jdnicoll.bsky.social
American parents, distract your kids from the US' imploding ag sector by reading them The Death of Grass.
washingtonpost.com
In an unusual acknowledgement, the Trump administration said that its immigration crackdown is hurting farmers and risking higher food prices for Americans by cutting off agriculture’s labor supply.
Trump administration says immigration enforcement threatens higher food prices
U.S. farmers face labor shortages and potential food price hikes due to Trump’s immigration policy, the administration acknowledged in a Federal Registry document.
wapo.st
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
kbspangler.com
We need money to live, obviously, because capitalism, and plants and art supplies aren't free, but money for money's sake feels...I dunno. Hollow.

Scrooge McDuck had the right of it--if you're going to hoard money, turn it into your literal playground.
gwollman.bsky.social
Just trying to be unhelpful with the RNG?
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
sherylnyt.bsky.social
BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
gwollman.bsky.social
I used to meet grad students all the time at work (it's part of the job, or was) but now I'm only in the office twice a week and we do everything we can remotely anyway. Most of the lab social events are on days when I'm working from home (like Fridays).
gwollman.bsky.social
Tbh I followed you because you posted about Readercon *and* sounded like an interesting grad student.
gwollman.bsky.social
Nearly a whole day of carbohydrate-based junk food, with a little fat mixed in for good measure, from mac & cheese to hot chocolate to corn chips to enchiladas to warm chocolate pudding. Starch and sugar, sugar and starch. A far fry from my usual diet for sure.
gwollman.bsky.social
Especially when it's all email-to-unencrypted-voip-to-email-to-EMR-ingest.
gwollman.bsky.social
My primary care is at MIT Health, they're a Cerner shop, and when they refer out to MGH or Mt. Auburn they're literally faxing documents around, in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-five. But my doctor has an affiliation with a practice that is on BILH's Epic so she can see my MGH labs.
gwollman.bsky.social
Except that Epic has federation! MGB and BILH can interchange data just fine. But it's only with other Epic customers, not with Cerner or MediTech.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
phillipisola.bsky.social
Over the past year, my lab has been working on fleshing out theory + applications of the Platonic Representation Hypothesis.

Today I want to share two new works on this topic:

Eliciting higher alignment: arxiv.org/abs/2510.02425
Unpaired learning of unified reps: arxiv.org/abs/2510.08492

1/9
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
microsff.com
An alien fleet appeared in Earth's orbit, and broadcast a message:

"Having studied you furtively, we now seek formal contact, and want to meet your greatest thinkers..."

A long list followed.

"How do we tell them?" world leaders wondered.

Topping the list were the names Calvin and Calvin's Dad.
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
faineg.bsky.social
there’s this weird idea a lot of people seem to have about how all of us writers and artists must secretly want to use AI and are merely resisting temptation for ethical reasons, and like, no, it’s not hard for me to resist drinking the bowl of Piss With Glass In It actually
Reposted by Garrett Wollman
faineg.bsky.social
it’s said all the time but I think we should continue to hammer home how insane it is that we got dead-eyed bros trying to sell us robots that will free us from the supposedly cruel burden of “creative careers” instead of the actual cruel burden of “doing menial household chores”
sethdmichaels.bsky.social
AI HUCKSTER: "i built you a machine that reads books for you."

ME: "can you build me a machine that unloads the dishwasher for me so *i* can read a book?"
gwollman.bsky.social
Back when we had a competent federal government, I had fantasies of nationalizing Epic so that at least every provider could use the same EMR rather than having my records fragmented in six different ones.
gwollman.bsky.social
Hoping after my cataract surgery I'll be able to read codices comfortably again even when they're not in unusually large print.