iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

Love this (No) Limits story about Natalie Grabow who has continued to learn new sports over the course of her life and at the age of eighty completed the Kona Ironman. Amazing mentality, amazing role model. Image: Ezra Shaw / Getty Images for Ironman via The Athletic / New York Times.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Ah, no, neither Modi and the Indians nor anyone else has the right to surveil me in my home and watch me in my bathroom. (Since when do US diplomats get to use American women in their bathrooms as bait or tools of appeasement.)

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

For more on emergence and computation in nature, please visit my website. Unfortunately my research website, Bluesky and x accounts, and substack continue to be censored and edited by a third party without permission so I cannot vouch for their content at this time. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Wondering what your view is @govmlg.bsky.social on a person‘s right to privacy in his or her home, and especially when it involves multi-year high resolution video surveillance her bedroom and bathroom, not to mention a civilian committee of discussants.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

A dewy Verbascum thapsus spotted on the Picacho peak trails this afternoon.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Please note my email, website, x, Bluesky and substack accounts are still under third party control without permission. Image: Still from The Lives of Others

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Congratulations to John Clarke, Michel H. Devoret and John M. Martinis for winning the 2025 @nobelprize.bsky.social for their work on macroscopic quantum tunneling and quantisation in circuits. Preliminary thoughts are up at my blog. jessicacflack.wordpress.com

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Tomás Sánchez is a Cuban painter. His works are often in my mind. This painting, I believe, is from his 1948 “Enchanting Forrests” series. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

For science related issues, I can be reached at the email on my website. In addition, I post often abt my work, and that of others, on Babel Blog. The latest post is on Borges, Oulipo + the impoverishing power of being able to see everything everywhere all at once. jessicaflack.wordpress.com

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

After ~23 years at the Institute—as grad student, postdoc, + professor—I’ve elected not to pursue renewal of my faculty contract. My last day was August 1st. There are fundamental science advances on the horizon. . .more @ Babel Blog. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog Image: Turrell Blue Day. JCF

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

On Babel Blog—Borges, Oulipo, and the impoverishing power of being able to see everything everywhere all at once. This post isn’t abt Oulipo per se but abt value in boundaries + constraints, when self-imposed or cooperatively adopted, rather than imposed by others. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 07/08/2025

Any potential project is at least a year off + there are no guarantees given continuous petty nonesense. Delays serve to aggravate, undermine confidence in skills, + push start dates further into the future. Had decision-making been intelligent, projects could be starting now. 🤨 rubegoldberg.org

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

After ~23 years at the Institute—as a grad student, postdoc, and professor—I’ve elected not to pursue renewal of my faculty contract. My last day was August 1st. There are fundamental science advances on the near horizon. . .more at Babel Blog. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 27/07/2025

Spotted on the Picacho Peak trail—Galadriel with her quiver and a snow leopard. She was out of breath with glossy pearls of sweat beading above her brow. 🤨

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

delight I felt as a child watching an evening performance of Midsummer's Nights Dream at Virginia's Lime Kiln Theater. Santa Fe Opera is truly magical. On my to-do list is the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland (as well as a visit to the nearby Rogue Brewery). Image:Lime Kiln Theater website.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Thinking this morning about memorable + enjoyable performance venues. I loved watching Buena Vista Social Club on a warm summer night while picnicking in Atlanta's Chastain Park ampitheater (I lived in Little Five Points). I often recall the total... Image credit: JCF, Santa Fe Opera

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

...negative liberties naturally and profoundly incentivizes behavior that contributes to the social good while protecting individual rights. More at Babel Blog. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog (scroll down). Image: Composite made by JCF. See website for information.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Perspective on rights that emphasize individual liberties are sometimes equated with selfishness or described as anti-social. It is precisely the opposite for the concept of negative liberties. Continued... Image credit: Isaiah Berlin by Steve Pyke, National Portrait Gallery

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

New posts on Babel Blog. jessicaflack.wordpress.com/blog 1. Reasoning + discreteness 2. Shannon, hourglass emergence, flourishing 3. Weaver's 3 communication problems 4. Euler's formula and causal horizon 5. Bistable images and tbe common now 6. Laughlin's protectorates and hourglass emergence.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Fitness—including walking outside in 'natural' areas—is likely the most underused yet effective medical intervention available—and for a range of ailments from mental health to cancer. Want to improve public health while decreasing healthcare costs? Start thinking outside box abt food + fitness.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

1. Subfivisions and other housing projects that backup against National Forests increase fire + flood risk. Playing fields, dog parks, and small, produce-producing farms could provide multi-functional buffers. Think about how space might be intelligently reorganized +

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Especially given the 911 system in PA was down statewide yesterday. Now restored.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Fermented coconut thickened with tapioca. This is store bought (as my kitchen is ill equipped at the moment for more serious cooking). It can be used with or in place of cream and eggs to make ice cream. One of the best textured ice creams I've made was a fennel pollen ice cream that used this...

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Wheeler's it from bit paper. philpapers.org/archive/WHEI...

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

The long term solution to protection against privacy + other civil liberties violations can't be $200M ranches w 6 ft walls + security forces. It has to be rooted in intrusion detection tech, social norms, enforced laws, + default private infrastructure + building materials. x.com/C4COMPUTATIO...

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

Juxtaposed they remind us to have humility, that what matters is how we treat each other, and that our lives must be lived on many scales at once—to cast our vision near and far. jessicaflack.wordpress.com Image: composite made by JCF—info on website.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

As Feynman wrote in a poem read in an address to the National Academy in 1955, “I. . .a universe of atoms. . . an atom in the universe.” This line of Feynman's + his poem as a whole provide perfect context for two of Richard Wright's 4000 haiku. . . ht @proffeynman.bsky.social Image credit: TBD.

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Happy Fourth of July! Every year in recent memory the celebration of the fourth has been different. Below, a lush scene on the return portion of a run in the southern ln rockies to an ~11,500' highcountry lake just below a mighty peak on a Fourth of July during the pandemic.

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

One of my favorite conservation ideas that greatly benefits humans, wildlife, and ecosystems, and generally enjoys bipartisan support—highway and busy road wildlife crossings. 🧡 Forrest Service Report: www.fs.usda.gov/psw/publicat... Photo: NBC Los Angeles.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

This morning having come across some posts from the Tanzania Wildlife Management Authority 🤔, I was inspired to try to remember my Kiswahili, which I studied at Cornell for several semesters + also of course used in Tanzania, but its now ~30 years w no practice. Had to cheat w a translation app—

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

So many beautiful places in the world to inspire great work. Thanks to those asking abt health issues. No changes to report despite having been robbed of daily backcountry runs and hiking in tbe wilderness, as well as daily time in a real gym, for more or less 2 years (imagine that for yourselves)

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Under what conditions does collective intelligence improve individual as well as societal welfare? Answering this question requires taking seriously complexity of individual + collective behavior. In this @PNASNews paper, led by @WolframBarfuss

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, —William Butler Yeats, whose birthday was June 13, 1865, and his poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, posted tbis morning in memory of Cormac, who died on June 12, 2023.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

Who is ultimately responsible for failure to harness this massive potential? At various times over its history (northern) New Mexico has had the highest density in the world of PhDs per capita. Yet it is one of the poorest states in the nation with the worst education record.

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

I think Prince—who I suspect understood well the present moment—might need his own nebula. m.youtube.com/watch?v=bm03wq

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

The joy of sports is derived in large measure from "escaping constraints" or "realizing potential". On some level these expressions emphasize opposites but they are also about deviations from starting points. Ancient Greek Theater of Epidaurus. Credit: unknown

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

In the 1930-40's, Turing introduced as part of a machine taxonomy, B-machines, which incorporated reinforcement learning, + O-machines, NN w oracles—a weak form of what could be called global recurrence—with 'truly' universal computation as his goal. More on Babel.Blog Jessicaflack.wordpress.com

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

The playful, irreverent, infinitely curious, pattern-finding mind in its labrynthine exploration of idea space discovers integrating questions and produces creative, surprising, generative science, as illustrated in different ways by Shannon, Feynman, and Murray.

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Today on my run I was reminded of @sfiscience's Murray Gell-Mann + his taxonomic obsession with particles, languages, + birds. A hedgehog disguised as a fox captured perfectly by Gould in this excerpt from his essay on Nabokov, "The Paradox of Intellectual Promiscuity." Image

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Through hourglass emergence, complexity begets complexity...is one of my favorite sayings. A cell is a blob of cytoplasm with a few organelles floating about—or so the textbooks teach and you probably learned in school. More on Babel Blog at jessicaflack.wordpress.com John Wheeler by R.P. Matthews

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Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

It's not transformative AI models + other tech that's the problem. AI can facilitate flourishing if we hold to account those who use it to exploit others + if we are intelligent abt regulation. Problems will occur if development + use of AI is by people + firms who think "you can just do things"

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

An innovation is on the near horizon—which if deployed creatively and sensibly—can help reduce competition between neighbors, disincentivize aggression, and facilitate flourishing. Image: Juergen Freun, WWF.

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 02/06/2025

Louise Glück on the incontestable power of perspective. From Poems, 1962-2012. Spring: the unforseen flooding the abyss.

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Five of his students were American. The other three were from Australia, China, and Peru. Murray's PhD supervisor was an Austrian-born American theoretical physicist. A collaboration that brought Murray great joy during his later years at the Institute was with Russian linguists. Photo credit: TBD

Jessica Flack @c4computation.bsky.social · 30/05/2025

Murray had eight doctoral students (according to Wikipedia) and from him and them came some of the 20th centuries most important work in physics, work that quite possibly will also underlie some of the 21st centuries most important, generative work in science.