Reposted by Matthew VaronaMatthew Kay @mjskay.com · 12/07/2026politicians want everyone to speak well of terrible people who died because many of them are terrible people who will die 1004930953
Matthew Varona @matthew.wiki · 25/06/2026"Large Language Lovers: Lived Experiences of Negotiating Agency and Platform Control in AI Companionship" Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2601.13188 Project site: zixin.ca/ai-companion Digital zine: zixin.ca/data/pdf/ai-...arxiv.orgLarge Language Lovers: Lived Experiences of Negotiating Agency and Platform Control in AI CompanionshipIndividuals are turning to increasingly anthropomorphic, general-purpose chatbots for AI companionship, rather than roleplay-specific platforms. However, not much is known about how individuals percei... 010
Matthew Varona @matthew.wiki · 25/06/2026I'm at #FAccT2026 to talk about AI boyfriends! How do AI relationships start? How do people maintain these relationships in the face of OpenAI's guardrails and model updates? Come to our talk tomorrow morning to find out—and find us at the conference if you want a copy of our ZINE! Links and info 👇 120
Reposted by Matthew VaronaAndrea Lathrop @cabernet.bsky.social · 13/02/2026... what? fuglede.github.io/llama.ttf/fuglede.github.iollama.ttfllama.ttf is a font file which is also a large language model and an inference engine for that model. 171
Matthew Varona @matthew.wiki · 20/01/2026there are only two options: a nested Venn diagram or the layers of hell from Dante's inferno 010
Matthew Varona @matthew.wiki · 09/10/2025Unreasonably excited to present THEORY IS SHAPES at alt.vis this November! Read on to find out what the "BLT Sandwich Theory of Visualization Consumption" (and other shape-based shenanigans) can teach us about theorycrafting in research 🥪🧲🧊♾️ 1105
Reposted by Matthew VaronaDave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 22/01/2025Now is a great time to read WIRED magazine’s 2015 feature story, “The Untold Story of Silk Road.” There were good reasons why Ross Ulbricht was serving a double life sentence. www.wired.com/2015/04/silk...wired.comThe Untold Story of Silk Road, Part 1How a 29-year-old idealist built a global drug bazaar and became a murderous kingpin. 711807846
Reposted by Matthew VaronaErica Wilkinson @everywhereerica.bsky.social · 14/01/2025I don't know how many of y'all are watching the migration of American TikTokers to RedNote, but it's the most fascinating thing I've EVER SEEN HAPPEN ONLINE. 🧵 23581092575
Matthew Varona @matthew.wiki · 11/12/2024I had a similar (but less detailed) spreadsheet for when I was deciding between PhD programs - glad I'm not the only one who does this 😅 also I agree that coming up with category weights, even if seemingly arbitrary, was helpful for thinking through what mattered most to me! 020
Reposted by Matthew VaronaJoe Davies @joewdavies.bsky.social · 11/12/2024If you're interested in animating gridded data into discrete bins using webgl feel free to reuse our library: github.com/eurostat/reg... The example shows a population grid of Europe being rolled out, and then groups the cells according to their populations. #stats #webgl #cartography 05613
Reposted by Matthew VaronaFrank Elavsky (he/him) ⌁ @frank.computer · 27/11/2024"How to make a good talk (and why are academics so bad at this)?" I wanted to give advice to an undergrad based on what I think is missing from (or wrong about) most advice out there on giving a talk. Would love to hear people's thoughts on this (especially academics hehe).frank.computerHow to make a good talk (and why are academics so bad at this)?Some guidance based on what I think a lot of academics fail to realize about what makes a good talk. 4276
Reposted by Matthew VaronaDr. Casey Fiesler @cfiesler.bsky.social · 27/11/2024Hi, so I've spent the past almost-decade studying research uses of public social media data, like e.g. ML researchers using content from Twitter, Reddit, and Mastodon. Anyway, buckle up this is about to be a VERY long thread with lots of thoughts and links to papers. 🧵 59959450
Reposted by Matthew VaronaMartin Wattenberg @wattenberg.bsky.social · 23/11/2024The Gini coefficient is the standard way to measure inequality, but what does it mean, concretely? I made a little visualization to build intuition: www.bewitched.com/demo/gini 1020157
Reposted by Matthew VaronaKai Kupferschmidt @kakape.bsky.social · 20/11/2024“The majority has spoken, and researchers are moving en masse” to Bluesky, says @shaine.bsky.social. Couldn't help myself and had to write about science twitter, X, bluesky and "the migration"... www.science.org/content/arti... 🧪science.orgLike ‘old Twitter’: The scientific community finds a new home on BlueskyAfter recent changes to Elon Musk’s X, a gradual migration turns into a stampede 12880250