Arseny Khakhalin
@khakhalin.bsky.social
1.1K followers 370 following 5.3K posts
Data Scientist in Berlin Former Bard College prof For my after-work alter-ego, see @elstersen.bsky.social Support Ukraine! 🇺🇦
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khakhalin.bsky.social
Minimalistic bifurcation :)

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
f = lambda x,k,a: (x if k==0 else f(a*x*(1-x), k-1, a))
y = [f(.21, 17 + i % 19, 2.5+1.5*i/10000) for i in range(10000)]
plt.plot(y,'.',markersize=1);
a bifurcation plot
Reposted by Arseny Khakhalin
coreyspowell.bsky.social
Astronomers have detected a dark blob of...something, billions of light years away. It's as massive as a million Suns & it emits no detectable radiation.

It might be a clump of dark matter, revealing new details about the structure of the invisible universe. 🧪🔭

www.ucdavis.edu/news/astrono...
Left, our best surface brightness model of the 1.7-GHz global VLBI observation used here, which has been reconvolved with the main lobe of the interferometer’s point spread function and added to the residuals (34 μJy per beam r.m.s.). For reference, red contours show the surface brightness at 2.1 μm observed by the W. M. Keck Observatory adaptive optics system30. The positions of two low-mass perturbers are each marked with a black X. The 2 × 108 M⊙ object first detected by ref. 24 is labelled , and the 1.13 × 106 M⊙ detection reported here is labelled . The zoomed-in region shown in the right-hand two panels is indicated by the black square, which has a side length of 60 mas. Top right, detail of the bright arc around , with the colour scale modified to emphasize the gap in the arc produced by the gravitational perturbation of . Bottom right, GI corrections to the lensing convergence (expressed in units of lens-plane surface mass density), showing a compact, positive feature whose position and mass are consistent with the independent parametric modelling results for . The dashed black circle has a radius of 80 pc and the lensed emission is indicated by the black contours.
Reposted by Arseny Khakhalin
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
The global whaling industry experienced a boom c. 1840-1950 as technology allowed whalers to hunt the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Under standard models, we would have expected krill populations to have *exploded*.

Instead, they DROPPED exponentially.

Let's talk about the KRILL PARADOX.
Change in distribution and abundance of southern right whales. (A) Shows historical and contemporary wintering distributions (Figure 1 from Carroll et al., 2018), and (B) shows decline in abundance and subsequent recovery (solid line is the mean, dashed line shows upper and lower 95% CI). Modified Figure 1 from Jackson et al. (2008). Contemporary sightings are divided into regions where large aggregations are seen during winter: Argentina (ARG), Brazil (BZL), South Africa (SAF), southwest Australia (SWA), south central Australia (SCA), and New Zealand sub-Antarctic (NZSA) and regions where sightings are typically of small numbers of individuals per year. The large aggregations are IWC management units and correspond to historical whaling grounds, although another 5 whaling grounds show little sign of recovery. Summer feeding areas are poorly described and so not shown.
khakhalin.bsky.social
the only type of books that's declining are cheap paperbacks. broadly, books are doing just fine. the UX of a paper book is just too good to compete with 🤷‍♀️
four charts
khakhalin.bsky.social
Same here, with a reversal on the last point: I can't afford to retire, and I don't think the option to retire will still be on the table once I get to this age, so I need a career that doesn't completely suck, and where it's possible to still be working in your later years :)
khakhalin.bsky.social
Yeah, ensemble model, totally. But one needs to really invest in prompts initializing different latent vectors of opinions and approaches to life. afaik that's how some business people are trying to tell now if a product will sell. person one would buy, person two as well, person three wouldn't etc
khakhalin.bsky.social
ah ok you're right, I withdraw it from the list then.
khakhalin.bsky.social
An UI with a lil political compass in the corner that changes as you type, except the coordinates are "likes" and "dunks" (or some other measure of ratio). As containment breach probability approaches 70% it turns red, at 80% it starts to peep.
khakhalin.bsky.social
The word "chocolate" is derived either from the word "cacao", or from a similar word meaning "bitter drink", but still referring to cacao: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocola...

So cacaoless chocolate is 100% like pigless pork. But thank god for now EU parliament isn't trying to ban it haha
khakhalin.bsky.social
One of the coolest German-specific tastes is Waldmeister syrup. It's popular, green, traditional, reminds every local of childhood, sold in every store.

The problem is that sweet woodruff is toxic. So for years now it's 100% synthetic!

But no Waldmeister lobby to bribe the parliament I guess.
Waldmeister syrup Waldmeister in the wild
khakhalin.bsky.social
Not only that they think that it contains meat, but also that they are harmed by the result of this "mistake", and the current (pretty good) regulations on disclosing the content of every product, and showing allergens in BOLD, are not enough.
khakhalin.bsky.social
Both obviously! Dementia, and a custom videofeed to keep the nominal leader in a virtual reality world. There were reports of Fox recording custom segments for him specifically, just as a way to brief and prep him, as it was the only media he would consume, and it was years ago, before ai videos!
khakhalin.bsky.social
EU is not nearly as green and reasonable as some people like to believe it :(
khakhalin.bsky.social
This is so cringevil. They already banned plant milk to be called milk, now one also can't say "soy sausage".

So we can have herbal tea, white chocolate, gluten-free bread, buckwheat beer, fishburgers, peanut butter, coconut milk and potato patties. But no soy patties, god forbid, no oat milk.
annastrolenberg.volteuropa.org
Today the EU parliament voted to ban the word burger if they are made with plant protein, instead of animal protein. 🤦🏻‍♀️
 
They claim it’s to stop consumers being ‘confused between meat and plant products’ - solving a problem that nobody had!
 
This new rule leaves a bad taste in the mouth…
khakhalin.bsky.social
Wait till you learn about Mozart Kugeln!
Reposted by Arseny Khakhalin
khakhalin.bsky.social
Are you saying that when a nice woman on the street gives me a flower for free and then asks for a donation, it's the same as selling me a flower I didn't need??
Reposted by Arseny Khakhalin
timkellogg.me
we need more of this
jefferyharrell.bsky.social
I posted this last night cause I kind of wanted to bury it. I got cold feet about putting it out there.

embedding-space.github.io/sparse-netwo...

The subject is WHY neural networks work, and I think the answer I offer is kind of interesting. Maybe even a little correct, possibly.
A line chart titled “Accuracy vs. Sparsity (Iterative Magnitude Pruning)” showing model accuracy as weights are pruned. The x-axis represents sparsity from 0% to 100%, and the y-axis represents accuracy from 0% to 100%. A blue line with circular markers shows that accuracy stays around 80% from 0% to roughly 90% sparsity, then drops sharply toward 55% near 100% sparsity. A dashed red horizontal line labeled “80% target” runs across the chart near 80% accuracy, indicating the desired baseline.
khakhalin.bsky.social
Which you can also frame as an investment
khakhalin.bsky.social
Some people just forget how to math
khakhalin.bsky.social
ok maybe not 5, more like 3-4, but still
khakhalin.bsky.social
Confusingly, the name of "Diella" is applied at once 1) to the generated avatar, 2) to the chatbot operating on the gvt website since January, and 3) to the announced AI-driven procurement system that is supposed to fight corruption. Of course there's zero transparency / observabitiliy narrative
Diella (AI system) - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
khakhalin.bsky.social
The weirdest thing to me is how happily everyone is discussing it, even though it's like 5 different products that are only _promised_ to be in the same trench coat, with zero control obviously
khakhalin.bsky.social
A curious PR stunt: in Albania, the leader of the ruling party, Edi Rama, named an AI-generated video avatar a member of a new government (minister). Edi Rama rules Albania since 2013, and his regime is described as "democratic backsliding" towards authoritarianism. 1/2
Opinion | Albania’s mischievous AI stunt
Can a cabinet-level bot root out corruption?
www.washingtonpost.com
khakhalin.bsky.social
Is double-clicking on that the same as zooming in?
khakhalin.bsky.social
Wow, so despite all the ruckus, right-wing policies, and expensive higher education, UK is the only European+ country that doesn't suck at integration?? (The chart on the thumbnail shows PISA math scores for natives (blue) vs immigrants (green) vs their kids (orange))
khakhalin.bsky.social
Weiße Schokolade, Kräutertee, glutenfreies Brot … Das ergibt überhaupt keinen Sinn!