grand theft eigenvalue 🔆
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akhilrao.bsky.social
grand theft eigenvalue 🔆
@akhilrao.bsky.social
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akhilrao.bsky.social
dear diary: today ken rogoff agreed with me

www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/b...
The stock market run-up — the S&P 500 is still up about 14 percent this year despite the recent shivers — could foreshadow widespread economic gains. But Mr. Rogoff doesn’t think that is the case. “A big part of the high stock prices is not a reflection of high future growth,” he said. Rather, it is a sign that A.I. is expected to boost productivity and shrink employment. “The firms all think they’re going to shed a lot of labor, and that’s why the profits will be high,” he said.
November 25, 2025 at 11:22 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
ol milty f dropping truth: Value sometimes accumulates and sometimes doesn't
November 25, 2025 at 2:13 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
indeed! and yet,,, where there's a repeated interaction there's a folk theorem
Luckily for platforms like Wikipedia or Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, the prospect for longer-term crowdsourcing projects are not so bleak. Game theorists have found that systems where individuals can build up a good reputation, are (probably) not as prone to devastating attacks from within.
November 22, 2025 at 10:44 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
alas, we didn't do anything on dark skies. but you may be interested in these

iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3...

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Open access Visibility Predictions for Near-future Satellite Megaconstellations: Latitudes near 50° Will Experience the Worst Light Pollution Samantha M. Lawler, Aaron C. Boley, and Hanno Rein Published 2021 December 17 • © 2021. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. The Astronomical Journal, Volume 163, Number 1Citation Samantha M. Lawler et al 2022 AJ 163 21DOI 10.3847/1538-3881/ac341b Willingness to pay for a clear night sky: use of the contingent valuation method Stephanie N. Simpson & Bríd Gleeson Hanna Pages 1095-1103 | Published online: 16 Jul 2009 Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/00036840902817508
November 22, 2025 at 8:46 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
ecclesiastes 1:9
astronaut "always has been" meme astronaut staring at the earth: "vibe revenue is priced in until it isn't?" astronaut behind with gun: "always was"
November 22, 2025 at 5:16 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
in fairness,
two sides of the bus meme, both sides say "low priority for triage"
November 20, 2025 at 12:34 AM
akhilrao.bsky.social
sorry I meant Paul Samuelson's nephew
Jim Downey "Jeffrey Epstein? The New York financier?" meme from Conan, but the text says "Larry Summers? Ken Arrow's nephew?"
November 17, 2025 at 9:32 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
ceci est stationnaire
A highly erratic time series line graph showing Flow on the y-axis against Time on the x-axis. The most notable feature is a single, very tall, sharp initial spike at the extreme left of the graph, representing a maximum flow value much greater than all subsequent points. After this initial peak, the flow drops significantly and settles into a dense, highly variable and noisy pattern of rapid, high-frequency fluctuations and spikes that continue consistently for the entire duration of the time series. It's quoting a post of a different time series. Looks similar but it's not actually!
November 16, 2025 at 9:44 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
"yo"
Kendall Roy from Succession telling us he's twin track, he's dead but he's alive
November 16, 2025 at 4:00 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
the other aspect of this, and I think it applies more broadly than elite college profs or students, is that people are extremely earnest. necessarily quite different from the vibes around folks successfully shaping or wielding power in more adversarial settings. it's easy to become an earnest mark.
It’s all a bit humiliating—or it is for me. Because I did take time for this reporter, despite my misgivings. I even went so far as to write my thoughts out for him, on the chance they might be clarifying or useful. “The first thing to say,” I told him, “is that Africana Studies at Bowdoin is less a singular pursuit than a suite of scholarly disciplines, condensed around a set of objects and questions.” And then, warming to the pedagogical project, I talked about anthropology, art and architecture, music, religion, the history of science, whole grand traditions of invention and resolve. I talk about James Weldon Johnson, and Gwendolyn Brooks, and Charles Chestnutt, and Nella Larsen, and Hortense Spillers, and a good deal else and I mean… would you listen to how pathetic that all sounds?
November 8, 2025 at 5:19 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
any resemblance unintentional, etc
A five-panel "American Chopper Argument" meme showing two men, Paul Teutul Sr. (seated, grey goatee) and Paul Teutul Jr. (black goatee), arguing intensely in an office setting. Panel 1 (Sr.): Sr. is seated at a desk, leaning back with his arm outstretched, shouting: "INFINITIES ARE UNPHYSICAL, THE 2D REPRESENTATION IS INADMISSIBLE" Panel 2 (Jr.): Jr. is seated facing Sr., leaning forward, and shouting aggressively: "RETURN TIME SO LONG IT MIGHT AS WELL BE INFINITY" Panel 3 (Sr.): Sr. is shouting directly at the viewer with an intensely angry expression: "NOT GLOBALLY" Panel 4 (Jr. and Sr.): Jr. is standing, lifting a chair above his head as if to throw it. Sr. is shouting at him, and the text reads: "IT'S A VALID APPROXIMATION IN THE REGIONS OF INTEREST" Panel 5 (Sr.): Sr. is standing in a doorway, pointing emphatically and shouting: "YOU'RE KILLING THE INDUSTRY"
November 7, 2025 at 1:30 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
ceci est stationnaire
A highly erratic time series line graph showing Flow on the y-axis against Time on the x-axis. The most notable feature is a single, very tall, sharp initial spike at the extreme left of the graph, representing a maximum flow value much greater than all subsequent points. After this initial peak, the flow drops significantly and settles into a dense, highly variable and noisy pattern of rapid, high-frequency fluctuations and spikes that continue consistently for the entire duration of the time series.
October 26, 2025 at 10:18 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
hope springs eternal
A three-panel meme based on the movie Donnie Darko. Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal): "the bubble bursting might reduce GPU prices" Dr. Thurman (Katharine Ross): "relative prices?" Donnie Darko (looking dejected): (No text)
October 26, 2025 at 2:01 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
seems like there might be more alpha in zzzzzimberman tho ...
The tool gives corresponding (or last) authors the highest weighting: 100% of the citations that their paper accumulates contributed to their Sh-index. First authors receive the second-highest weighting, of 90% of the total citations. Second authors get a 50% weighting. Other co-authors get 25% if there are six or fewer authors, or 10% if there are seven or more authors, according to a preprint published in September1 by the tool’s creators.
October 25, 2025 at 7:36 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
sonnet 4.5 doesn't want to talk about this, it's dangerous
a normalized distribution function. P(lambda) equals 1 over pi times cos(lambda) over the square root of (sin i squared minus sin lambda squared)
October 21, 2025 at 7:22 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
this is a good point. "machines are accountability sinks" cuts both ways. I expect this to be a more general result
Snippet from Tao's thread: This can lead to some redundant effort by multiple researchers to search in vain for the same non-existent literature on a problem, if the repeated failures to locate that literature are never reported; or to mistakenly believe a problem to be open, when in fact no serious literature review was previously attempted, and a solution was in the literature the entire time. But when applying an AI-powered literature review tool systematically to a large corpus of problems, it becomes more natural to report both positive and negative results ("Of the 36 problems reviewed by this tool, 24 (66%) returned additional results that we determined to be relevant, while 12 (33%) only produced references that were already known to us, or irrelevant"), which could help provide a more accurate impression of what the extant literature on a problem actually is. (4/4)
October 18, 2025 at 1:41 AM
akhilrao.bsky.social
gonna depict the virtuous LP as buff cheems and the hated VAR as sad cheems is what
buff cheems is local projections, sad cheems is VAR
October 17, 2025 at 12:42 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
here, take this
Jim Downey looking surprised. "THE SOUTH SEA COMPANY? THE GOVERNMENT DEBT TRADERS?"
October 15, 2025 at 10:25 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
concerning levels of graduate seminar particles
Gossip as market infrastructure - Smith requires market transparency. Villagers' gossip is epistemological labor to restore information symmetry when one party is opaque.
October 15, 2025 at 5:42 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
lock in
a cute and slightly chonky little cat looking alert. text says "heavy breathing intensifies"
October 15, 2025 at 5:10 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
inspired ty
fancy Pooh meme. regular Pooh says "Inputs that deliver publishable outputs", fancy Pooh says "preferred calibration"
October 14, 2025 at 5:34 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
common mistake
Claude interface. Chat goes: View analysis Let me try a simpler approach: View analysis View analysis View analysis Ah, this is JavaScript not Python. Let me work with that:
October 13, 2025 at 5:49 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
the subtitle is wrong: it should read "in earth orbit", not "active". oops.
line of R code that reads `filter(ExpandedStatus == "In Earth orbit") %>%`
October 7, 2025 at 12:55 AM
akhilrao.bsky.social
anyway all the data here is freely available online thanks to @planet4589.bsky.social. took me a few minutes to make this. kinda interesting

planet4589.org/space/gcat/i...
A scatter plot titled "Starlink Satellite Altitude by Launch Date" shows the mean orbital altitude (in kilometers) of active Starlink satellites against their launch date, ranging from early 2020 to mid-2025. There are 8229 satellites represented. The Y-axis, "Mean Altitude (km)", ranges from approximately 150 km to 550 km. The X-axis, "Launch Date", spans from 2020 to 2025. The data points are clustered at several distinct altitude bands. Early launches in 2020 show satellites at various altitudes between 300 km and 550 km. From late 2020 to mid-2021, a prominent cluster appears around 550 km. A denser band of satellites also emerges just below 550 km starting in late 2021 and continuing through 2022. Beginning in late 2023 and especially into 2024 and 2025, a significant shift is visible. While a cluster of satellites remains around 550 km, many newer launches are concentrated at lower altitudes, specifically around 400 km and then a very dense band appearing around 350 km. There are also many satellites launched in 2024 and 2025 that are at altitudes around 275 km. Some data points are scattered below 200 km, particularly for early 2020 launches and a few in late 2024 and 2025, indicating either deorbiting or initial deployment orbits. The data is from Jonathan McDowell's General Catalog of Artificial Space Objects (GCAT).
October 6, 2025 at 11:02 PM
akhilrao.bsky.social
preference drift in this type of cybernetic system, directed or otherwise, seems ever more interesting
Because these AI models are trained on such vast corpora outputs which are novel to them should mostly be actually novel, the question is how to get those outputs. My theory is that models will perform a kind of iterated tuning to extend their training distribution in a particular direction. Similar to how new music genres are made when a band cultivates excellence at the edge of the distribution of existing music, I think models will perform novelty search by going out to the edge of what is known and applying relatively objective standards to what they find there. People aren't really doing this right now because the best AI models are proprietary and expensive to tune.
October 2, 2025 at 12:35 PM