Tom Weingarten
@tomprom.bsky.social
🤖 Director of Responsibility Engineering @Google DeepMind
👨🔬 Advisor @shiru_inc @redesign_science
Opinions posted here are entirely my own and do not represent Google or any organization
👨🔬 Advisor @shiru_inc @redesign_science
Opinions posted here are entirely my own and do not represent Google or any organization
Pinned
Tom Weingarten
@tomprom.bsky.social
· Jan 30
A multi-modal transformer for cell type-agnostic regulatory predictions
Javed and Weingarten et al. created a multi-modal transformer that learns generalizable
representations of genomic sequence and chromatin accessibility by utilizing a novel
masked-accessibility pre-tr...
www.cell.com
Excited to present the results of my 20% project in collaboration with @broadinstitute.org and @danafarber.bsky.social . In our new paper we demonstrate a long-range model capable of detecting regulatory elements at distances beyond a million base pairs.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
I was walking down a street in New York and I thought how lovely it was, with the trees and the light. Tried to take a photo and this came out. It’s incredible how blind we become to the ugliness of cars. They really do mess things up. Yet somehow we manage to filter them out.
September 22, 2025 at 4:10 PM
I was walking down a street in New York and I thought how lovely it was, with the trees and the light. Tried to take a photo and this came out. It’s incredible how blind we become to the ugliness of cars. They really do mess things up. Yet somehow we manage to filter them out.
Only surprised it's just 1100
🚶 Walkable cities boost activity
A new study tracking 2.1M US smartphone users found that moving to a more walkable city adds ~1,100 daily steps, with benefits sustained for months.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#SciComm 🧪
A new study tracking 2.1M US smartphone users found that moving to a more walkable city adds ~1,100 daily steps, with benefits sustained for months.
🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
#SciComm 🧪
Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity - Nature
By analysing the smartphone data of 2,112,288 participants, in particular observing and comparing the activity of the same individual in two different environments, we find that increases in the walka...
www.nature.com
August 17, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Only surprised it's just 1100
AI may bring many benefits to humanity, but none of them justify the slander of one of our greatest punctuation marks. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations
“In recent months, a curious fixation has emerged in corners of academia: the em dash. More specifically, the apparent moral panic around how it is...
www.mcsweeneys.net
August 9, 2025 at 11:36 AM
AI may bring many benefits to humanity, but none of them justify the slander of one of our greatest punctuation marks. www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/the...
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.
July 27, 2025 at 5:33 PM
My last living musical hero is still my hero but unfortunately no longer living. RIP to the great, great Mr. Tom Lehrer.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.
July 3, 2025 at 6:58 PM
I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Nature reports on how live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, and how scientists lack support to study the risks these markets pose. #medsky 🧪
Exclusive: Inside the thriving wild-animal markets that could start the next pandemic
Live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, yet scientists lack support to study the risks they pose.
go.nature.com
June 14, 2025 at 1:08 AM
Nature reports on how live-animal markets are a natural laboratory for viruses to evolve and spark deadly outbreaks, and how scientists lack support to study the risks these markets pose. #medsky 🧪
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
People really will get freaked out by the ingredients list on a jug of oat milk and then think they're only eating one chemical when they grill a steak.
Enjoy your heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons!! Worse than anything in oat milk, but still not that bad.
Enjoy your heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons!! Worse than anything in oat milk, but still not that bad.
May 9, 2025 at 9:43 PM
People really will get freaked out by the ingredients list on a jug of oat milk and then think they're only eating one chemical when they grill a steak.
Enjoy your heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons!! Worse than anything in oat milk, but still not that bad.
Enjoy your heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons!! Worse than anything in oat milk, but still not that bad.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.
May 4, 2025 at 6:21 AM
I think a lot about what Carl Sagan said in one of his final interviews.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Some stats from 100 days in on congestion pricing:
- Complaints about car-honking are down 70%
- The Holland Tunnel has 65% fewer delays at rush hour; time to get thru it is down 48%
- 6 million fewer cars
- Half as many traffic-related injuries
- 1.5 million more visitors to BIDs year over year
- Complaints about car-honking are down 70%
- The Holland Tunnel has 65% fewer delays at rush hour; time to get thru it is down 48%
- 6 million fewer cars
- Half as many traffic-related injuries
- 1.5 million more visitors to BIDs year over year
How Well Is Congestion Pricing Doing? Very.
One hundred days in, honking is down; bus speeds are up.
www.curbed.com
April 15, 2025 at 7:22 PM
Some stats from 100 days in on congestion pricing:
- Complaints about car-honking are down 70%
- The Holland Tunnel has 65% fewer delays at rush hour; time to get thru it is down 48%
- 6 million fewer cars
- Half as many traffic-related injuries
- 1.5 million more visitors to BIDs year over year
- Complaints about car-honking are down 70%
- The Holland Tunnel has 65% fewer delays at rush hour; time to get thru it is down 48%
- 6 million fewer cars
- Half as many traffic-related injuries
- 1.5 million more visitors to BIDs year over year
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
conventional wisdom is that travel times haven't fallen in the congestion relief zone, according to readings from congestion-pricing-tracker.com. but it's not true anymore, and it was only ever true because google maps interpolates historical data.
February 24, 2025 at 2:06 PM
conventional wisdom is that travel times haven't fallen in the congestion relief zone, according to readings from congestion-pricing-tracker.com. but it's not true anymore, and it was only ever true because google maps interpolates historical data.
After 9 great years in Google Cloud, I'm very excited to start a new role as Head of Engineering for the Responsibility organization at Google DeepMind. Although new beginnings are always difficult, I'm comforted knowing it will be a very chill and normal time to begin this challenge.
February 16, 2025 at 4:24 PM
After 9 great years in Google Cloud, I'm very excited to start a new role as Head of Engineering for the Responsibility organization at Google DeepMind. Although new beginnings are always difficult, I'm comforted knowing it will be a very chill and normal time to begin this challenge.
God I needed this
A paper in Nature reports that the loggerhead turtle can learn and remember the magnetic signature of an area and does a ‘turtle dance’ when in a location that they associate with food. https://go.nature.com/4jSQEDo 🐢 🧪
Learned magnetic map cues and two mechanisms of magnetoreception in turtles - Nature
Loggerhead sea turtles, which undergo long-distance migrations, can learn magnetic signatures associated with different geographic areas and have two different magnetic senses, each based on a different underlying mechanism.
go.nature.com
February 13, 2025 at 12:16 AM
God I needed this
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Making LLMs run efficiently can feel scary, but scaling isn’t magic, it’s math! We wanted to demystify the “systems view” of LLMs and wrote a little textbook called “How To Scale Your Model” which we’re releasing today. 1/n
February 4, 2025 at 6:54 PM
Making LLMs run efficiently can feel scary, but scaling isn’t magic, it’s math! We wanted to demystify the “systems view” of LLMs and wrote a little textbook called “How To Scale Your Model” which we’re releasing today. 1/n
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Research in Cell Genomics led by @danafarber.bsky.social's Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD, presents an AI transformer model developed in collaboration with Google Advanced Sciences which can predict gene expression. https://bit.ly/42zNVsj
January 29, 2025 at 7:30 PM
Research in Cell Genomics led by @danafarber.bsky.social's Bradley Bernstein, MD, PhD, presents an AI transformer model developed in collaboration with Google Advanced Sciences which can predict gene expression. https://bit.ly/42zNVsj
Excited to present the results of my 20% project in collaboration with @broadinstitute.org and @danafarber.bsky.social . In our new paper we demonstrate a long-range model capable of detecting regulatory elements at distances beyond a million base pairs.
A multi-modal transformer for cell type-agnostic regulatory predictions
Javed and Weingarten et al. created a multi-modal transformer that learns generalizable
representations of genomic sequence and chromatin accessibility by utilizing a novel
masked-accessibility pre-tr...
www.cell.com
January 30, 2025 at 4:51 PM
Excited to present the results of my 20% project in collaboration with @broadinstitute.org and @danafarber.bsky.social . In our new paper we demonstrate a long-range model capable of detecting regulatory elements at distances beyond a million base pairs.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
This is actually super-helpful and a huge relief. www.thecity.nyc/2025/01/28/h...
Recycling in NYC Is Easier Than You Think: A Guide for the Confused
Where do pizza boxes go? What exactly is rigid plastic? How clean do empty jars need to be? Relax, experts say.
www.thecity.nyc
January 28, 2025 at 3:08 PM
This is actually super-helpful and a huge relief. www.thecity.nyc/2025/01/28/h...
New Bleecker St Breakfast at chloe is phenomenal
January 20, 2025 at 10:52 PM
New Bleecker St Breakfast at chloe is phenomenal
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
"At the time of writing, nearly thirty people work in Checking at The New Yorker, almost all of them full time. It is labor, at scale, that produces accuracy."
www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...
www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...
What’s a Fact, Anyway?
Journalists put more stress on accuracy than ever before. The problem is, accuracy is a slippery idea.
www.newyorker.com
January 11, 2025 at 6:45 PM
"At the time of writing, nearly thirty people work in Checking at The New Yorker, almost all of them full time. It is labor, at scale, that produces accuracy."
www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...
www.newyorker.com/news/the-wee...
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Most succinct fact-check I've read of how LA Fire Dept's budget wasn't recently cut -- in fact, the opposite -- from @politico.com. But that misinformation spread anyway. www.politico.com/news/2025/01...
January 9, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Most succinct fact-check I've read of how LA Fire Dept's budget wasn't recently cut -- in fact, the opposite -- from @politico.com. But that misinformation spread anyway. www.politico.com/news/2025/01...
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Is NYC's congestion fee a regressive tax? No. Driving into Manhattan is expensive even w/o the fee, so very few low-wage workers do it. Plus the money will be used to improve the transit systems they *do* use paulkrugman.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...
Lessons From New York’s Congestion Fight
“Car brain” is part of a broader syndrome, which we can’t ignore
paulkrugman.substack.com
January 6, 2025 at 2:33 PM
Is NYC's congestion fee a regressive tax? No. Driving into Manhattan is expensive even w/o the fee, so very few low-wage workers do it. Plus the money will be used to improve the transit systems they *do* use paulkrugman.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Ugh this is so sad. Maybe not her most powerful, but to me, her most moving poem is this one
December 10, 2024 at 3:17 AM
Ugh this is so sad. Maybe not her most powerful, but to me, her most moving poem is this one
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
Have crowds actually changed—or is it simply that the words we use to describe them have altered over time? @adamgopnik.bsky.social writes about how crowds persist as historical agents and have become a field of study.
What’s the Difference Between a Rampaging Mob and a Righteous Protest?
From the French Revolution to January 6th, crowds have been heroized and vilified. Now they’re a field of study.
www.newyorker.com
November 22, 2024 at 10:54 PM
Have crowds actually changed—or is it simply that the words we use to describe them have altered over time? @adamgopnik.bsky.social writes about how crowds persist as historical agents and have become a field of study.
Reposted by Tom Weingarten
The usual suspects are out there yelling "There are 23 million government workers! Fire most of them!" No awareness that most work for local governments, and most of *them* are schoolteachers. Federal employment hasn't grown since the 1950s
November 23, 2024 at 2:06 PM
The usual suspects are out there yelling "There are 23 million government workers! Fire most of them!" No awareness that most work for local governments, and most of *them* are schoolteachers. Federal employment hasn't grown since the 1950s