Rob Weir

@UN @UNHumanRights @volker_turk Where was your protest when Iran was executing protestors?

.@unhumanrights chief @volker_turk urges Israel to repeal law passed by its parliament reinstating the death penalty, in terms applicable almost exclusively to Palestinians. “The death penalty is profoundly difficult to reconcile with human dignity.” ohchr.org/en/press-relea…

@emollick Worth looking at cheating scandals in professional chess tournaments and the steps taken in response. Remember, within the usable lifetime of an academic building, small, perhaps wearable portable inference will exist.

My prediction for the latest trend in academic buildings: Faraday cage testing halls (including bathrooms) with no signal for assessment.

@emollick At least ensure they are all tagged PDFs. That should help both vision-impaired humans as well as LLMs.

The fact that every scientific paper in 2026 is still uploaded only as fully formatted PDFs to academic archive sites that often limit downloads tells you everything you need to know about how quickly the scientific system is adjusting to the potential of AI to accelerate science

@emollick Seems like a variation on the old fallacy of the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_th…

This is true, but ARC-AGI-3 is also a test designed so that AI gets zero today, just as the earlier ARC-AGI tests were designed . Those tests were then mostly saturated with a year or two. The thing to watch with ARC-AGI-3 is whether we see the same progress.

@michaelshermer @SwipeWright And would you knowingly fly an airplane designed by someone who thought aerodynamics and engineering could be genderqueered?

@michaelshermer @SwipeWright A thought experiment: would anyone consent to heart surgery by a surgeon who believed that there was no fixed biological reality and that human anatomy was subjective, social construct?

Such articles @SwipeWright are of the postmodern movement of the 1990s that assert science is socially embedded & culturally biased, which has some truth to it (everything is socially embedded) but used to argue "I don't like X science finding, therefore it is biased & wrong." Just because, say, relativity theory is embedded in European cultural history doesn't make it wrong. Ditto hundreds of other theories, including the binary nature of sex.

@emollick Or prediction markets.

The easiest way to make money fast from a superhuman artificial intelligence would be in the financial markets, almost by definition. So the first lab to develop one, if AGI is possible, would almost certainly keep it quiet for as long as they could. Beats charging for API access

@cboyack Taylor Swift would become the Pied Piper.

What would happen if every 15-year-old spent a week shadowing someone they admire instead of sitting in a classroom?

@SwipeWright @aClassicLiberal Send a signed copy to Justice Jackson.

🚨NEW: Last year I published a paper detailing the gamete-based definition of the sexes and debunking common activist objections to it. This year, the journal published a critique of it rooted in "feminist epistemology." They invited me to respond. It's now published. The final paragraph of my response (not shown in the screenshots) is: "The renowned geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky wrote that 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,' highlighting evolution as the unifying framework that makes life’s diversity, complexity, and interconnectedness comprehensible. I contend that a parallel statement applies similarly to reproductive biology: Nothing in the biology of the sexes makes sense except in the light of gametes." LINKS Mahr's critique of my paper:link.springer.com/article/10.100… My response to Mahr:link.springer.com/article/10.100…

@travis4nh Geez. Even I understood it as a joke and I'm one of the densest libertarians in the state. A joke in bad taste? Yes, IMHO. But if we hounded out of office everyone with bad taste, who would be left? Hmmm...perhaps that plan might just work...

> I am a New Hampshire resident and someone who has spent years engaged in advocacy, public policy, and the work of protecting and amplifying the voices of marginalized communities. Imagine saying that without any shame at all. Extraordinary.

@technoascetic @travis4nh I doubt trigger-happy cops are sensitive to which side of a property line the acorn is falling, so the point is not relevant. But you sue the person who misjudged, obviously.

@WhyNotLib @travis4nh who do you sue when the acorn startles the cop into mag dumping you?

"it should be legal to fire a gun into the air, because it's a lot of fun ... and if you do accidentally hit someone (quite unlikely!), they can sue to be made whole" discuss

@technoascetic @travis4nh And it is hardly the case that with the government's protection of private property that they'd send a cop out to investigate an acorn.

Some folks are like that. Other's have real lives. If a person walking down the street happens to have their foot cross 1% onto my property, they have trespassed. But the transaction costs of litigating that exceed any possible benefit I'd receive. Ditto with acorns. Bullets, on the other hand, that may be worth pursuing.

@travis4nh Depending on the size of the lot, of course. The point being you can initially sue based on the trespass. There are also private nuisance suits possible.

@travis4nh It seems the personal injury would be very rare but a trespass to property would occur in nearly every case.

@RVJ2022 @travis4nh And let's not forget, government inspection regimes are not free. We all pay for such programs in the form of higher prices for goods and services.

The field for private safety certifications is open to competition. If there really is a market for lower-barrier, less-expensive programs you could make yourself rich implementing such a program. But if you try to compete with the government in, say, agricultural or building inspections pr auto safety, you and your customers will be put in prison.

1/ this seems like...a suboptimal libertarian talking point? "under regulation, barn collapses are prevented, but under libertarianism EVERYTHING IS A TORT, so 16 people can each pay $20,000 to sue the same bankrupt barn owner who has no assets [ other than a collapsed barn ]"

@travis4nh Underwriters Laboratories (UL) is another example of a private organization doing well-respected safety testing.

I use the example of Kosher food certifications. Government cannot regulate here since they are essentially religious purity tests. And yet there are legions of private inspectors as well as associations of them with their own certificate marks that consumers who care know to look for.

@CAgovernor @JenSiebelNewsom Lessons #1: The tax advantage of moving to other states.

Starting in the 2027-28 school year, California will offer a new personal finance course to high schoolers and require it for graduation beginning with the 2031 class. Every Californian should leave high school with the tools to manage money, avoid debt, and build wealth.