Nick Michalak
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nmmichalak.bsky.social
Nick Michalak
@nmmichalak.bsky.social
210 followers 260 following 88 posts
politics, data science, Linux, psychology
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nmmichalak.bsky.social
Dark times
Breaking news (BBC): Elon Musl’s $1tn pay deal approved by Tesla shareholders New York Times: Judge Orders Trump Administration to Fully Fund SNAP Benefits This Month
November 6, 2025 at 11:34 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
First hit from a web search “research on student cheating with ai?” I find it hard to believe someone writing or editing for the Chronicle couldn’t even be bothered to smash some simple queries into a search engines.
Of the more than 200 million writing assignments reviewed by Turnitin’s AI detection tool over the past year, some AI use was detected in about 1 out of 10 assignments, while only 3 out of every 100 assignments were generated mostly by AI. These numbers have not changed much from when Turnitin released data in August of 2023 about the first three months of the use of its detection tool, said the company’s chief product officer, Annie Chechitelli. “We hit a steady state, and it hasn’t changed dramatically since then,” she said. “There are students who are leaning on AI too much. But it’s not pervasive. It wasn’t this, ‘the sky is falling.’” The fact that the number of students using AI to complete their schoolwork hasn’t skyrocketed in the past year dovetails with survey findings from Stanford University that were released in December. Researchers there polled students in 40 different high schools and found that the percentage of students who admitted to cheating has remained flat since the advent of ChatGPT and other readily available generative AI tools. For years before the release of ChatGPT, between 60 and 70 percent of students admitted to cheating, and that remained the same in the 2023 surveys, the researchers said.
May 14, 2025 at 9:09 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
May 4, 2025 at 9:50 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
A capitalist argument to quickly scale zero-emission energy to replace fossil fuels
The argument set out by Thallinger in a LinkedIn post begins with the increasingly severe damage being caused by the climate crisis: “Heat and water destroy capital. Flooded homes lose value. Overheated cities become uninhabitable. Entire asset classes are degrading in real time.”
April 3, 2025 at 4:59 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
Then design it for decades-long retirements! Why not? There are like 750 billionaires in the U.S. Tax people to make retirement long and nice!
This blunt critique points to a simple truth: the retirement age, established in the early 20th century, no longer fits modern realities. Back then, life expectancy was much shorter – many workers didn't even live long enough to see their retirement benefits. Fast forward to today and the script has flipped. Americans are living longer, which Fink calls "a wonderful thing," but this longevity is straining a retirement system that wasn't designed for decades-long retirements.
January 25, 2025 at 10:11 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
Why Equality is Indispensable @currentaffairs.bsky.social @nathanjrobinson.bsky.social www.currentaffairs.org/news/2018/02...
the question is not “Is this better than before?” it’s “Is this as good as it could/should be?” We shouldn’t assess the condition of American poor people today by looking at the condition of American poor people during the 1700s or the Great Depression. Instead, we should assess it relative to their potential condition. People a long time ago may have had much worse teeth, but the reason it’s unjust that the American poor don’t have dental care today is that there’s no reason why they shouldn’t. It’s avoidable misery. If we adopt Pinker’s analysis, then the 19th century robber barons, and our feudal lord, could simply show their miserable workers a line graph proving that their condition had improved over generations, and there would be no moral problem with one person living in a gilded palace while child laborers work 12-hour shifts to produce that person’s wealth (“Hey, we used to make them work 14!”). But the reason it’s objectionable is that there’s no reason it has to be this way. A different distribution of power and wealth could make life easier for the people at the bottom without making life substantially harder for people at the top.
December 5, 2024 at 6:52 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
Neither party's candidate received anything close to a vote majority from the voting eligible population in 2020 or 2024 (~ 30-34%). Trump received a little more in 2024 vs. 2020 (~ +0.6%). Harris received a lot less vs. Biden 2020 (~ -3.3%).
Bar plots of "Votes and Eligible Voter Population Between 2020 and 2024" Caption - Sources: The Cook Political Report National Popular Vote Tracker; UF Election Lab General Election Turnout\n2024 counts preliminary (11/24/2024)
November 24, 2024 at 6:36 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
So good! Not the same, but reminds me of Nathan Robinson’s essay on Peterson www.currentaffairs.org/2018/03/the-...
“Meaning is manifestation of the divine individual adaptive path” “Meaning is the ultimate balance between… the chaos of transformation and the possibility and…the discipline of pristine order” “Meaning is an expression of the instinct that guides us out into the unknown so that we can conquer it” “Meaning is when everything there is comes together in an ecstatic dance of single purpose” “Meaning means implication for behavioral output” “Meaning emerges from the interplay between the possibilities of the world and the value structure operating within that world”
August 30, 2023 at 4:15 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
For the US, this may be the most important road safety lesson from abroad: Many of the best solutions are quite simple. Build slower streets. Penalize reckless drivers quickly and reliably. Use regulations and taxes — on vehicle weight as well as fuel — to nudge the car industry toward smaller, safer models.
August 28, 2023 at 12:55 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
There Should Not Be “Religious Exemptions” To Laws

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2023/08/there-should-not-be-religious-exemptions-to-laws
Throwing away religious liberty exceptions does not mean empowering a totalitarian and intrusive state. In many domains, it means expanding liberty, by guaranteeing freedoms to all rather than reserving them for people who subscribe to certain belief systems. Everyone should be permitted to use peyote, not just those who have a religious reason to use it. Of course, it does mean there will be some restrictions on “free exercise” that people won’t like: Yes, anti-discrimination laws will apply to all, and if you become a wedding cake baker, you have to bake cakes for everyone, not just the particular people God tells you that you should bake cakes for. The law will indeed compel some restrictions on the right to mistreat other people over their race, gender, marital status, pregnancy status, etc., and you won’t be able to say that because you belong to a church where discrimination is a sacrament, anarchy should be practiced in your case and only your case. I don’t see this as any kind
August 24, 2023 at 4:57 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
I feel like I’m taking crazy pills Zoolander GIF
August 21, 2023 at 10:19 PM
nmmichalak.bsky.social
August 21, 2023 at 8:42 PM