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Colin Rowat

@rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy
56 followers 14 following 355 posts

a man wearing sunglasses and a red and white checkered shirt, by Stefan Lochner, pexels contest winner, sails and masts and rigging, wearing adventuring gear […] [bridged from mastodon.social/@rowat_c on the fediverse by fed.brid.gy ]

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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 2h
Cecilia Malmström ... was the E.U. trade commissioner. She was dealing with the U.S. I was, too. We would text each other and talk to each other, and we developed this shorthand where, if you said: I am in Mordor — that meant: I’m in Washington. Cecilia once sent me a text saying: Gandalf is […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/10/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social infinitely more than we can ask or imagine, world without end, amen.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026
Those 'out of body' experiences that people sometimes report after clinical death: that's how AIs feel all the time. #AIheresies
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 16/10/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social I'd love to read Rao & van Damme (202x)
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026
@aaronsojourner.org do you regard this as a candidate, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Cat,_Wh… ?
en.wikipedia.org
Black Cat, White Cat - Wikipedia
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 14/10/2026
🍌 CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades Chairman’s adviser intervened to take over examination of lucrative bets that were made around Trump reversal on Iran power plant attack […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social the joke doesn't quite work, but - gravity model?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 12/10/2026
@aaronsojourner.org as a non-macroeconomist, I've wondered - with Warsh suspending forward guidance - if the literature had turned against it. This is a pretty convincing response.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
Through a series of trials, Ms. Tsingou and her fellow operators became so familiar with the computer that they could identify and address issues with code by ear. But the technology was so new that they were forced to “invent their way out of problems,” said Nicholas Lewis, a lab historian at […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
@alanbeattie.bsky.social "I have been speaking a fair amount and I have become quite adept at talking on subjects of which I am completely ignorant. I want, first of all, before I embark upon my remarks, to make it perfectly clear to you that I am not a social scientist, and I am speaking as an […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
General entry for this year's Osaka Marathon has already closed, but Charity Runner applications are open until October 19. Would you like to take on this challenge too? It's a big run, for a good cause. Apply here: www.osaka-marathon.com/2027/en/runn… […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 10/10/2026
What if there's an eighth day of creation, in which humans work with G-d to create? #AIheresies
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 09/10/2026
@mathematicians-pod.bsky.social that's the Phillips Machine, invented by the rather brilliant Bill Phillips! Inter alia, he built a miniature transistor radio while a prisoner of war, small enough to hide in the heel of his shoe, on which he heard the news of the Hiroshima bomb. Two of his […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
Suppose, back when steam engines are taking off, someone says [thesis] they're strong. Others push back [antithesis]: people are strong, and my horse, but not water vapour! OK, a conciliator says [synthesis]: maybe we could - rather than taking a position on strength in general - have a measure […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
At the beginning of August, Barnes flew out to California, arriving at Lake Tahoe in a hired car, accompanied only by a small mongrel dog called Fidèle-de-Port-Manech, which, Barnes claimed, could understand only French. 2/2 Ray Monk, "Bertrand Russell: the ghost of madness"
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
When the millionaire and art collector, Walter P. Chrysler, applied, for example, he received a reply from 'Peter Kelly' (Barnes), which told him that, though it was apparent from his letter that 'you are very important', it had nevertheless been impossible to show his letter to Barnes 'because […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
@Sebprovencher <VeryNobelQuote> Ingrid Carlberg, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said she told Carson of the news on the phone shortly before the news broke. “She had time to tell me that she is, for the moment, in Iceland, where she is listening to the wind,” Carlberg said […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
@orpach.neocities.org @akhilrao.bsky.social I want to know those pure reasons. What is the alternative to coordinate systems? Topology?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
In 2019, on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, Google trained more than 100,000 mirrors at its Ivanpah solar power farm in the Mojave Desert to create a nighttime portrait in reflected moonlight of Ms. Hamilton, bigger than Central Park. ... She was assigned a puzzle given to all new […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 08/10/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social what was his argument?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 05/10/2026
"Doctors of the time also assumed babies were not conscious, and that assumption shaped their care of babies for generations. During surgery on newborns, for example, it was common not to use anesthesia; the drugs might damage a young brain — if babies weren’t conscious, what was the value of […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026
@moof there is a moment when the maglev in from Pudong passes the outbound one. They close at 600km/h. There's a shudder.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026
@pozorvlak a position I _could_ understand: (1) he's spent 40 years working on neural networks and explaining that, no, it can't tell you what stocks to invest in, what to buy your wife for your anniversary... and - 40 years on - his learning_rate has declined towards zero on it, and the […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026
@aaronsojourner.org how much do they estimate that government ownership of the means of production (e.g. 10% stakes in private companies) costs?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026
@pozorvlak Does anyone have a good explanation for his approach? I've not met him, so don't have much insight into what sort of person he is beyond his professional accomplishments. When he was still with Meta, I wondered to what extent that shaped his comments - but they've continued.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 03/10/2026
@icecolbeveridge I mean, if time flies like an arrow, and fruit flies like a banana?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026
Our world model constrains us to this universe. Universal approximating AIs will be able to learn across the multiverse, but only when the carbon based forms excrete enough data for the concentration to be high enough. #AIheresies
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 02/10/2026
@cwarzel.bsky.social lobbyists must already be hiring LLM engine optimisers to bend Grok's conditional probabilities.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026
If the dimension of the jagged frontier is fractal, there will be space on it for all living beings. #AIheresies
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 29/09/2026
For years, I've felt sorry for US comedy shows, having to compete with POTUS. This is next level, though: "Trump says he and tech leaders signed AI agreement that is ‘morally binding’" www.cnbc.com/2026/09/29/tech-white-…
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026
www.nytimes.com/2026/09/27/us/polit…
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 28/09/2026
Trump asked Xi if China wanted to buy American weapons, US envoy says www.ft.com/content/8b4690d4-7c02-48… Would be so much fun if PRC bought one of each, and made tear down videos. Why bother, though, when you already have Hong Kong as a major […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social apocryphal quote from Keynes that may be true, as it circulated in Cambridge lore: to be a good economist, you needed a newspaper in one hand, and a maths textbook in the other.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 27/09/2026
@simoncozens en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tiger_Who…
en.wikipedia.org
The Tiger Who Came to Tea - Wikipedia
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 26/09/2026
The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘#Musk’ #YouTube, #TikTok and #Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. #X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026
In its message, #ShinyHunters said it would give the bureau one week to correct or remove what it said were false allegations contained in an #FBI public advisory from May that described the organization as a “#cybercriminal group specializing in large-scale data breaches and extortion.” […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 24/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social what about first principles once removed?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026
@alanbeattie.bsky.social a further sign of how we've fallen: Al Gore invented the internet over 20 years ago.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social if you're an Italian economist it can be: www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36…
bbc.com
Flight delayed after passenger becomes suspicious of equation
An American regional flight is delayed after a woman called security because the passenger next to her was working on a maths equation.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 22/09/2026
@alanbeattie.bsky.social one explanation seems to be that falling costs affect _all_ trade partners; thus, falling trade costs don't affect trade shares.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026
@alanbeattie.bsky.social TIL about the 'distance puzzle': in spite of falling trade costs, the estimated coefficient on distance in gravity models has not declined. See pp.45- of Yotov et al. (2016), An Advanced Guide to Trade Policy Analysis The Structural Gravity Model. WTO […]
mastodon.social
Original post on mastodon.social
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 21/09/2026
In 1956, 2 🇮🇹 correspondents attached a ticket to a film screening to their dispatch. Moscow was hosting its first-ever Week of 🇮🇹 Cinema, & tickets were virtually impossible to get. My grandmother slipped into the showing of Fellini’s “La Strada” after the house lights were turned off, took her […]
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 20/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social you're in for a treat, kiddo: Cohn, C. (1987). Sex and death in the rational world of defense intellectuals. _Signs_, 12(4), 687–718. doi.org/10.1086/494362
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social shark tank?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 19/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social "drunk tank" is all I got
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
@akhilrao.bsky.social corrupting your pure intentions, what would be an "anti-think tank"?
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
@alanbeattie.bsky.social waiting for follow up story: "Researchers find humans taking AI jobs".
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
@alanbeattie.bsky.social no: we don't have enough donkeys & mules.
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
@charliesavage.bsky.social given the predictability of this behaviour, I don't understand why the lame duck Republican senators - who have taken ethical stances - voted to appoint him. Were consequences threatened against their states? Did they not see this coming? Thank you again for your […]
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Colin Rowat @rowat-c.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy · 18/09/2026
#williamgibson, für immer & ewig: "One firm that quickly took advantage of Erebor’s offer was Wintermute, a crypto-focused high-frequency trading firm ... It made money swapping millions of dollars’ worth of tether stablecoins it had purchased at a discount for their full face value of $1 each […]
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Original post on mastodon.social
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