John R. Lawson
@johnroblawson.bsky.social
Senior AQ Scientist, Bingham Ctr \\ Research Asst Prof in Math & Stats, Utah State \\ Vernal, UT \\ Musician \\ Meteorologist making risk-based ozone predictions \\ I study LLMs, chaos, information, uncertainty \\ We are rust worshipping rain. 🇺🇸 🏴 🇬🇧
If you use Perplexity, watch out for their increasingly scammy behaviour including their refusal to refund a mistake I literally have receipts for. “Big AI” will get its comeuppance soon and academia will pick up the pieces by optimising for truth, not greed.
November 21, 2025 at 5:31 PM
If you use Perplexity, watch out for their increasingly scammy behaviour including their refusal to refund a mistake I literally have receipts for. “Big AI” will get its comeuppance soon and academia will pick up the pieces by optimising for truth, not greed.
Did you know… I used to be a meteorologist 😅
November 4, 2025 at 8:54 AM
Did you know… I used to be a meteorologist 😅
Addison Rae’s 2025 album is full of clever decisions incl. from the two MxM producers. These trio of women should forge long-term collab!
“In The Rain” only has two bass drums per two bars (standard 4/4). Parallel 4ths and various modes. Shifting entire orchestration down a semitone in Diet Pepsi…
“In The Rain” only has two bass drums per two bars (standard 4/4). Parallel 4ths and various modes. Shifting entire orchestration down a semitone in Diet Pepsi…
November 3, 2025 at 11:19 PM
Addison Rae’s 2025 album is full of clever decisions incl. from the two MxM producers. These trio of women should forge long-term collab!
“In The Rain” only has two bass drums per two bars (standard 4/4). Parallel 4ths and various modes. Shifting entire orchestration down a semitone in Diet Pepsi…
“In The Rain” only has two bass drums per two bars (standard 4/4). Parallel 4ths and various modes. Shifting entire orchestration down a semitone in Diet Pepsi…
Worst aspect is making LLM tools look like web browsers, or my insurance company’s chatbot. Prompt/content engineering is increasingly becoming my job, and it’s creative, unpredictable (!), jaw-dropping (sublime & ridiculous!) — if academia is fumbling in the dark, we’ve mainstreamed an experiment!
Becoming skilled in anything, is the ability to see a new problem and go "this reminds me of this previous problem, which I solved this way"
Even with a calculator, the person using the calculator benefits from experience in solving problems.
They have not outsourced problem-solving itself.
Even with a calculator, the person using the calculator benefits from experience in solving problems.
They have not outsourced problem-solving itself.
November 3, 2025 at 12:38 AM
Worst aspect is making LLM tools look like web browsers, or my insurance company’s chatbot. Prompt/content engineering is increasingly becoming my job, and it’s creative, unpredictable (!), jaw-dropping (sublime & ridiculous!) — if academia is fumbling in the dark, we’ve mainstreamed an experiment!
Watching GitHub CoPilot CLI agent try to commit on my behalf & repeatedly forget to “git add” first. It’s silly/inefficient but impact is relatively low. But writ large, if one deploys an AI-driven systems lacking a suitable penalty, “if it breaks, it breaks” creates amplifying, unforeseen ripples…
November 3, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Watching GitHub CoPilot CLI agent try to commit on my behalf & repeatedly forget to “git add” first. It’s silly/inefficient but impact is relatively low. But writ large, if one deploys an AI-driven systems lacking a suitable penalty, “if it breaks, it breaks” creates amplifying, unforeseen ripples…
The genius of Left Behind by Slipknot is how atonal yet dissonantly melodic it is at times
November 1, 2025 at 12:10 AM
The genius of Left Behind by Slipknot is how atonal yet dissonantly melodic it is at times
Reposted by John R. Lawson
This photo of rookie Yesavage casually walking off the mound as future Hall of Famer and helmet-less Ohtani is still in motion striking out is everything. #WantItAll
October 30, 2025 at 2:02 AM
This photo of rookie Yesavage casually walking off the mound as future Hall of Famer and helmet-less Ohtani is still in motion striking out is everything. #WantItAll
I’ve got some Teesside dialect I can give you son, ha’way then you daft melt
Vance says it is "totally reasonable and acceptable" for people to not want to live next door to people who speak a different language than they do
October 29, 2025 at 5:15 PM
I’ve got some Teesside dialect I can give you son, ha’way then you daft melt
I’ve got that horrible feeling a spam filter has blocked emails from AMetSoc for a while now, not for first time, and I’m going to be mortified if a paper review has gone through the cracks.
October 29, 2025 at 4:01 PM
I’ve got that horrible feeling a spam filter has blocked emails from AMetSoc for a while now, not for first time, and I’m going to be mortified if a paper review has gone through the cracks.
Stochastic sampling of anthropologic states unfortunately led us to discovering an efficient way to democratise interpretations of truth (“all stupidity counts one”) via popularity contests, and throw the idea of fact-curation to the wind. Truthiness now defined by aesthetic, rhetoric, advertising.
Unfortunately, the extremely public genocide in Gaza broke the social contract by proving that people can just murder others under very obviously bogus pretenses and nothing will happen. No one's afraid of bad optics anymore. Trump just kills fishermen, Rio police razes neighborhoods, and that's it
October 29, 2025 at 3:18 PM
Stochastic sampling of anthropologic states unfortunately led us to discovering an efficient way to democratise interpretations of truth (“all stupidity counts one”) via popularity contests, and throw the idea of fact-curation to the wind. Truthiness now defined by aesthetic, rhetoric, advertising.
Blows my mind. The waste of money, energy; the staggeringly consistent incompetence… If you’re going to cosplay a LLM that’s actually just Microsoft Graph + Grammarly’s stunt double, maybe don’t shoehorn it into every piece of IP you own. Dreadful, and damaging abuse of the term “AI”.
October 29, 2025 at 3:10 PM
Blows my mind. The waste of money, energy; the staggeringly consistent incompetence… If you’re going to cosplay a LLM that’s actually just Microsoft Graph + Grammarly’s stunt double, maybe don’t shoehorn it into every piece of IP you own. Dreadful, and damaging abuse of the term “AI”.
Reposted by John R. Lawson
Given higher than usual confidence of rapid intensification (RI) from analyses of an exceptionally favorable environment & with the aid of newer hurricane models (HAFS) & Google DeepMind, NHC was able to skillfully predict Melissa's RI days in advance.
October 29, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Given higher than usual confidence of rapid intensification (RI) from analyses of an exceptionally favorable environment & with the aid of newer hurricane models (HAFS) & Google DeepMind, NHC was able to skillfully predict Melissa's RI days in advance.
Reposted by John R. Lawson
TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
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The official home of the Python Programming Language
www.python.org
October 27, 2025 at 2:47 PM
TLDR; The PSF has made the decision to put our community and our shared diversity, equity, and inclusion values ahead of seeking $1.5M in new revenue. Please read and share. pyfound.blogspot.com/2025/10/NSF-...
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Reposted by John R. Lawson
Retired Army Sgt. Brian Wofford spoke to me this morning at the Oklahoma City #NoKings protest. Didn’t expect him to be carrying his DD214 so I asked some warmup questions like when he got out and whether his injury was service-related.
He paused while describing the car bomb in Iraq to say this:
He paused while describing the car bomb in Iraq to say this:
October 19, 2025 at 12:42 AM
Retired Army Sgt. Brian Wofford spoke to me this morning at the Oklahoma City #NoKings protest. Didn’t expect him to be carrying his DD214 so I asked some warmup questions like when he got out and whether his injury was service-related.
He paused while describing the car bomb in Iraq to say this:
He paused while describing the car bomb in Iraq to say this:
So: this year I Prevail lost a clean singer, promoted rhythm guitarist to co-lead vox, lead guitarist plays an octave down to double the bass line, but the bassist often is playing synth. Got it. Remaining question— who’s baking the cookies between songs!? (If you haven’t seen the videos…)
October 13, 2025 at 12:59 PM
So: this year I Prevail lost a clean singer, promoted rhythm guitarist to co-lead vox, lead guitarist plays an octave down to double the bass line, but the bassist often is playing synth. Got it. Remaining question— who’s baking the cookies between songs!? (If you haven’t seen the videos…)
In LaTeX, the symbol for "in" ($\in$) can be typeset in opposite direction by reversing the command term ($\ni$). It's the little nerdy things!
October 13, 2025 at 12:13 PM
In LaTeX, the symbol for "in" ($\in$) can be typeset in opposite direction by reversing the command term ($\ni$). It's the little nerdy things!
My dog is an Anti-fart activist, which is exactly the kind of far left extremism I expect from a Husky.
October 11, 2025 at 2:02 AM
My dog is an Anti-fart activist, which is exactly the kind of far left extremism I expect from a Husky.
If someone wants to get rid of you and you give them the stage in the name of “free speech”, don’t be surprised when you’re done in by Darwinism. No. Be intolerant of intolerance: this is a mandate as liberals. Free speech doesn’t tend to infinity as much as rose-tinted worldviews wish it did.
October 11, 2025 at 1:55 AM
If someone wants to get rid of you and you give them the stage in the name of “free speech”, don’t be surprised when you’re done in by Darwinism. No. Be intolerant of intolerance: this is a mandate as liberals. Free speech doesn’t tend to infinity as much as rose-tinted worldviews wish it did.
Reposted by John R. Lawson
can you imagine sitting in that audience as a three-star flag officer — decades in the service, multiple post-grad degrees and a virtually unequaled level of command expertise — and being forced to watch this dunderheaded dry drunk give an off-brand jordan belfort seminar?
September 30, 2025 at 12:30 PM
can you imagine sitting in that audience as a three-star flag officer — decades in the service, multiple post-grad degrees and a virtually unequaled level of command expertise — and being forced to watch this dunderheaded dry drunk give an off-brand jordan belfort seminar?
Reposted by John R. Lawson
Funny how the guy yelling about professionalism looks like a middle manager at Men’s Wearhouse.
September 30, 2025 at 12:42 PM
Funny how the guy yelling about professionalism looks like a middle manager at Men’s Wearhouse.
Fuck you, we aren’t done “with that shit”.
September 30, 2025 at 12:49 PM
Fuck you, we aren’t done “with that shit”.
Oooh yeah this is a sweet re-recording.
September 27, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Oooh yeah this is a sweet re-recording.
You know, this all feels like when the staff put the lights on for a few seconds at a nightclub’s closing time. Yeah yeah, we get the hint, we’re drinking up.
NEW: Hours before a new entry ban is supposed to go into effect, the federal government officially acknowledges for the first time that the restrictions do NOT apply to people who currently have H-1B visas.
Link: www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...
Link: www.uscis.gov/sites/defaul...
September 21, 2025 at 3:29 AM
You know, this all feels like when the staff put the lights on for a few seconds at a nightclub’s closing time. Yeah yeah, we get the hint, we’re drinking up.
Reposted by John R. Lawson
But he did, took it down after six minutes but……..
September 21, 2025 at 1:06 AM
But he did, took it down after six minutes but……..
