jacopo staiano

Hello, this is Yanis Varoufakis with a piece of news that would have been hilarious if it weren’t so scary. This morning, two policemen appeared on my doorstep to serve a summons ordering me to the police headquarters to be interrogated by the Greek DEA, our drug busting police department. Not as a witness, expert or not, but as the accused. Accused of what? Shortly after New Year’s, I appeared on a podcast organised by young people to answer their questions on everything that concerns Gen Z today: social media, the meaning of life, their job prospects, what I call technofeudalism etc. At some point, they asked me if I had ever used drugs. Determined not to do a Bill Clinton (remember the laughable “I didn’t inhale”?), I said I had. Apart from pot, I told them, I had one experience of taking ecstasy in Sydney 36 years ago. It was pleasant, I danced for 16 hours effortlessly but then, I added, it gave me a migraine for a week – and so I never used again. That was my introduction to making the point that, however pleasant drug taking may seem, there is a price to pay. And that the ultimate price is dependence, addiction – “the end of liberty”, I said emphatically. Do you see where this is going? Yes, the Greek police have opened an investigation of me under the charge of... aiding and abetting the narco-mafia. [Do me a favour folks: Please don’t tell Trump, OK?] Seriously now, at a time of war, genocide, stupendous exploitation and so on, my little trouble with the inane Greek police is neither here nor there. But it is important. Here, in Europe, many people still live under the illusion that we have liberty, rationality and freedom. We don’t. Dark forces are at work, pushing us into a postmodern version of the Dark Ages. So, beware, people! They are out to take away the last remnants of autonomy and freedom we have left. Resistance is, literally, existence.

Unpopular opinion -- I don't think we should accept papers in top AI conferences whose contribution is mainly experimental but don't provide the data and tools to reproduce the experiments. I have seen several papers with flawed results, but without code there's no way of telling

Video of how China’s trawlers are electrocuting the Persian Gulf & Iran's coast to death. Their industrial scale Pulse fishing kills everything—fish, babies, coral- leaving a dead ocean. These pirates need to be stopped before they leave the ocean lifeless

The latest trend among Israeli youth is to call their parents and mockingly ask for donations for the children of Gaza and record their parents' vile reactions. Why do Western states not ask themselves how the region is supposed to co-exist securely with a society like this?

🩸 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐥𝐚 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞 𝐚̀ 𝐥’𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐮𝐧 𝐥𝐨𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐫 Les procureurs de Milan viennent d’ouvrir une enquête glaçante. Selon plusieurs médias européens, des 𝐈𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐞́𝐬 auraient payé jusqu’à 𝟖𝟎 𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝐚̀ 𝟏𝟎𝟎 𝟎𝟎𝟎 € pour participer, dans les années 1990, à des « 𝐬𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 » autour de Sarajevo. Des voyages organisés pendant le siège de la ville, où des civils bosniens, 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐬 𝐞𝐧𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐬, devenaient des 𝐜𝐢𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐬. Des documents et témoignages évoquent même un tarif plus élevé 𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐮𝐫 𝐮𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐟𝐚𝐧𝐭, détail d’une cruauté qui dépasse toute compréhension. L’affaire, révélée par le documentaire Sarajevo Safari et désormais entre les mains de la justice italienne, ouvre une nouvelle page d’horreur dans l’histoire européenne récente. 🕯️ 𝐄𝐭 𝐬𝐢 𝐥’𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐢𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐞 𝐫𝐞́𝐩𝐞́𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐭, 𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐮𝐫𝐬 ? Sans affirmer, sans conclure trop vite, 𝐝𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐮𝐱 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐬 laissent aujourd’hui planer un malaise comparable autour de 𝐆𝐚𝐳𝐚. Des images, des vidéos, des témoignages fragmentés montrent des civils pris pour cible, des tirs depuis des positions dominantes, parfois accompagnés de rires, parfois filmés. Et il y a aussi ce dont on parle moins, ce que la honte et la peur étouffent : 𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐬𝐞𝐱𝐮𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐬. Elles existent, mais elles restent 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐞̀𝐭𝐞𝐬, 𝐭𝐮𝐞𝐬, parce que les 𝐟𝐞𝐦𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐧’𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐬 𝐞𝐧 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐫, et parce que le sujet, dans un contexte déjà saturé d’atrocités, est 𝐝’𝐮𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞́ 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐞̂𝐦𝐞. Tout cela se déroule à l’abri des regards et des médias, puisque Israël bloque depuis le début du génocide, l’entrée de la presse internationale. Quand on empêche la lumière d’entrer, tout peut se produire dans l’ombre. Quand tuer ou violer devient un acte banalisé, quand l’humiliation d’un peuple devient un spectacle, ce n’est plus seulement un crime, c’est la décomposition morale du monde.

I am an AC for ICLR 2026. One of the papers in my batch was just withdrawn. The authors wrote a brief response, explaining why the reviewers failed at their job. I agree with most of their comments. The authors gave up. They are fed up. Just like many of us. I understand. We pretend the emperor has clothes, but he is naked. Here is the final part of their withdrawal notice. I took the liberty to make it public, to highlight that what we are doing with AI conference reviews these last few years is, basically, madness. --- Comment: We thank the reviewers for their time. However, upon reading the reviews for our paper, it became immediately apparent that the four "reject" ratings are not based on good-faith academic disagreement, but on a critical failure to read the submitted paper. The reviews are rife with demonstrably false claims that are directly contradicted by the text. The core justifications for rejection rely on asserting that key components are "missing" when they are explicitly detailed in the manuscript. Some specific examples are (and many are even fake claims). Claim: Harder tasks like GSM8K are missing. Fact: GSM8K results are in many tables, like Table 2 (Section 4.2) and Appendix G. Claim: The method does not use per-layer ranks. Fact: This is the entire point of our method. The reviewer clearly mistook our method for the baselines. (Section 2, Table 1). Claim: The GP kernel is not specified. Fact: It is specified in Appendix E (Table 6). Claim: There is no ablation of the method's three stages. Fact: Section 4.4 ("Ablation Study") and Appendix J are dedicated to this. Reviewers have a fundamental responsibility to read and evaluate the work they are assigned. The nature of these errors is so fundamental, so systemic in overlooking explicit content, that it goes far beyond what "limited time" or "oversight" can explain. This work has gone through several rounds of revision over the last year. In earlier submissions, the paper usually received borderline or weak-accept scores. Numerous signs strongly suggest that some reviewers are relying entirely on AI tools to automatically generate peer reviews, rather than fulfilling their fundamental responsibility of personally reading and evaluating manuscripts. We strongly protest this. This is a gross disrespect to the authors. It is a flagrant desecration of the reviewer's sacred duty. It fundamentally undermines the integrity of the entire peer-review process. Given that the reviews are not based on the actual content of our paper, we have decided to withdraw the submission. We leave this comment so that future readers of the OpenReview page are aware that the items described as "missing" are already present in the submitted manuscript. These negative reviews for this submission are factually unsound and do not reflect the content of the paper. We cannot and will not accept an assessment that is not based on the work we actually submitted.