Galen
@samgalen.bsky.social
PhD student @ UVa's Biocomplexity Institute, where I mostly do things relating to simulation of diseases and synthetic data.
It’s sports injury September everyone, so remember to get hurt in a not-life-altering-but-definitely-inconvenient way through your own hubris
September 17, 2025 at 1:24 PM
It’s sports injury September everyone, so remember to get hurt in a not-life-altering-but-definitely-inconvenient way through your own hubris
Neither my job is to punish the person using the computer for their hubris
Folks with computer jobs: does your job make the computer more happy, or more sad?
July 4, 2025 at 5:06 PM
Neither my job is to punish the person using the computer for their hubris
This is a great piece that reflects lessons I’ve also had to learn the hard way (though maybe not as bad as the author)
That said I’m not sure a 1:1 analogy to non-publication bias is entirely appropriate in the AI setting
That said I’m not sure a 1:1 analogy to non-publication bias is entirely appropriate in the AI setting
Wonderful piece illustrating how AI is a "normal technology" that has been marketed and used in ways that imagine it as something much, much more.
I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me www.understandingai.org/p/i-got-fool...
I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me www.understandingai.org/p/i-got-fool...
I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me
I used AI in my plasma physics research and it didn’t go the way I expected.
www.understandingai.org
May 19, 2025 at 2:05 PM
This is a great piece that reflects lessons I’ve also had to learn the hard way (though maybe not as bad as the author)
That said I’m not sure a 1:1 analogy to non-publication bias is entirely appropriate in the AI setting
That said I’m not sure a 1:1 analogy to non-publication bias is entirely appropriate in the AI setting
This seems like something Charlottesville folks should be concerned about - is Charlottesville PD participating in the record linkage program?
License Plate Reader Company Flock Is Building a Massive People Lookup Tool, Leak Shows
Flock, which has license plate readers (LPRs) all around the country, wants police to be able to “jump from LPR to person,” according to leaked audio obtained by 404 Media.
www.404media.co
May 18, 2025 at 12:22 PM
This seems like something Charlottesville folks should be concerned about - is Charlottesville PD participating in the record linkage program?
Charlottesville culvert grafitti
May 4, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Charlottesville culvert grafitti
Apparently Nathan Fielder got a pilots license and type rating on the 737?
Nathan Fielder is a pilot?
www.reddit.com
April 22, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Apparently Nathan Fielder got a pilots license and type rating on the 737?
They can’t actually have done the thing they said they did in the Rehearsal S2? Surely the flight purchases would have been flagged
April 21, 2025 at 10:12 PM
They can’t actually have done the thing they said they did in the Rehearsal S2? Surely the flight purchases would have been flagged
As someone who’s been coding in Python since version 2.7, it is kind of crazy to see how it’s slowly turned into Java
January 29, 2025 at 1:54 AM
As someone who’s been coding in Python since version 2.7, it is kind of crazy to see how it’s slowly turned into Java
They call it going Gwern-mode
January 13, 2025 at 6:28 PM
They call it going Gwern-mode
This was interesting- very much agree with the thesis. I focused on programming in college because it more clearly provided me with feedback about when I was doing something wrong (as opposed to math, where if you don’t know you’ve made an error it won’t necessarily become obvious)
Crisis of Confidence
Avoidance Machines, Part 2
open.substack.com
January 10, 2025 at 6:03 PM
This was interesting- very much agree with the thesis. I focused on programming in college because it more clearly provided me with feedback about when I was doing something wrong (as opposed to math, where if you don’t know you’ve made an error it won’t necessarily become obvious)
This does seem to be an example of statistical significance not necessarily corresponding to real world significance? The increase seems to be about 1/100 over baseline with moderate drinking
Surgeon General Calls for Cancer Warnings on Alcohol (Gift Article)
Dr. Vivek Murthy’s report cites studies linking alcoholic beverages to at least seven malignancies, including breast cancer. But to add warning labels, Congress would have to act.
www.nytimes.com
January 3, 2025 at 4:00 PM
This does seem to be an example of statistical significance not necessarily corresponding to real world significance? The increase seems to be about 1/100 over baseline with moderate drinking
You know what today is giving? It’s giving Tuesday
December 3, 2024 at 1:19 PM
You know what today is giving? It’s giving Tuesday
Not mentioned in the article is that the last author on the arXiv paper the meaurement tool is based off of is the same guy who wrote the AI gaydar paper like 7 years ago
www.404media.co/are-overempl...
www.404media.co/are-overempl...
Are Overemployed ‘Ghost Engineers’ Making Six Figures to Do Nothing?
"We have data on the performance of >50k engineers from 100s of companies. ~9.5% of software engineers do virtually nothing: Ghost Engineers.”
www.404media.co
November 27, 2024 at 6:43 PM
Not mentioned in the article is that the last author on the arXiv paper the meaurement tool is based off of is the same guy who wrote the AI gaydar paper like 7 years ago
www.404media.co/are-overempl...
www.404media.co/are-overempl...
There’s nothing quite so psychically destabilizing as a piece of equipment on which you rely daily breaking.
It can be kind of nice in that it reminds you of how much these objects mediate your experience, though in practice I’m stressed and can’t think about anything else until it’s fixed
It can be kind of nice in that it reminds you of how much these objects mediate your experience, though in practice I’m stressed and can’t think about anything else until it’s fixed
November 25, 2024 at 8:54 PM
There’s nothing quite so psychically destabilizing as a piece of equipment on which you rely daily breaking.
It can be kind of nice in that it reminds you of how much these objects mediate your experience, though in practice I’m stressed and can’t think about anything else until it’s fixed
It can be kind of nice in that it reminds you of how much these objects mediate your experience, though in practice I’m stressed and can’t think about anything else until it’s fixed
Start your week off right by having to do emergency OS reinstall and restore from backups on Sunday night
November 25, 2024 at 3:52 AM
Start your week off right by having to do emergency OS reinstall and restore from backups on Sunday night
I’ve gotten the sense that for people most prone to concern about seed oils, they actually might be doing this?
Mostly this comes from reading from what I now would recognize as a right-wing adjacent money blog in 2014 where one of the money saving tips was to drink oil instead of bringing snacks
Mostly this comes from reading from what I now would recognize as a right-wing adjacent money blog in 2014 where one of the money saving tips was to drink oil instead of bringing snacks
here’s my question for people obsessed with avoiding seed oils. how much oil are you using, exactly? like, i will totally buy the idea that some oils are worse for you than others, but unless you’re consuming half your calories in oil, what does it really matter?
November 24, 2024 at 4:16 AM
I’ve gotten the sense that for people most prone to concern about seed oils, they actually might be doing this?
Mostly this comes from reading from what I now would recognize as a right-wing adjacent money blog in 2014 where one of the money saving tips was to drink oil instead of bringing snacks
Mostly this comes from reading from what I now would recognize as a right-wing adjacent money blog in 2014 where one of the money saving tips was to drink oil instead of bringing snacks
An ad campaign that probably would have killed in mid-2010s San Francisco is a series of billboards saying “Dependency Hell is Real”
November 18, 2024 at 7:56 PM
An ad campaign that probably would have killed in mid-2010s San Francisco is a series of billboards saying “Dependency Hell is Real”
Seems to be that the next thing in the self-optimization community is regularly donating blood to clear out the toxins
November 12, 2024 at 11:23 PM
Seems to be that the next thing in the self-optimization community is regularly donating blood to clear out the toxins
Call me O. Winston the way I’m hitting these links
November 12, 2024 at 2:31 PM
Call me O. Winston the way I’m hitting these links
It’s interesting (to me at least) that even though it’s pretty common to use AI/ML as a way of prioritizing items for further investigation, there’s no super popular formalization that really reflects that
November 12, 2024 at 1:05 AM
It’s interesting (to me at least) that even though it’s pretty common to use AI/ML as a way of prioritizing items for further investigation, there’s no super popular formalization that really reflects that
I spent about 3 months in Texas this summer and got more amber alerts than in the past 3 years in Virginia so this article rings true.
‘Stop This’: What Tired Texans Wrote to the FCC
We got the complaints about a pre-dawn 'Blue Alert' that pissed off a lot of Texans.
www.404media.co
November 7, 2024 at 3:36 PM
I spent about 3 months in Texas this summer and got more amber alerts than in the past 3 years in Virginia so this article rings true.
First laptop sticker courtesy of Boot Boyz Biz
March 11, 2024 at 2:32 AM
First laptop sticker courtesy of Boot Boyz Biz
The two times I slept through class/missed an exam in college were both the Mondays immediately after DST
March 10, 2024 at 2:35 PM
The two times I slept through class/missed an exam in college were both the Mondays immediately after DST
Though the article suggests this type of event was somewhat common, this does not strike me as one of Reed’s better moments
Have I mentioned that in 1965, the guy who would become OR GOP chair in 1978, mentored two young white nationalists who terrorized the city wearing brown shirts and jackboots? open.substack.com/pub/sethcotl...
Speaking at Reed College in 1965, a Portland Nazi floated the idea of building a barbed-wire topped wall along the entire Mexican border. The audience erupted in dismissive laughter. Not so funny now.
Sometimes history does more than just rhyme
open.substack.com
March 6, 2024 at 5:25 AM
Though the article suggests this type of event was somewhat common, this does not strike me as one of Reed’s better moments