Softly, effectively, in the age of genAI

2026-02-05

This is Jessica. “Softly, effectively, and authoritatively” is how the US Federal Highway Administration suggests traffic control devices should communicate with us. I find myself wondering lately whether there is still such a thing, in this age of communicative abundance and … Continue reading → …

Sunstein on Kissinger: No opinion on the whole war criminal thing, but the generosity that he showed when talking about Star Wars [the movie, not the weapons program] was “incomparable”

2026-02-05

A colleague points us to this interview by Isaac Chotiner with law professor and public intellectual Cass Sunstein. I think that Sunstein’s fundamental problem is that he places too much trust in government and the authorities. For example, a few … Continue reading → …

Getting to the bottom of TMLE: influence functions and perturbations

2026-02-05

I first encountered TMLE—sometimes spelled out as targeted maximum likelihood estimation or targeted minimum-loss estimate—about twelve or so years ago when Mark var der Laan, one of the original developers who literally wrote the book, gave a talk …

Continue reading: Getting to the bottom of TMLE: influence functions and …

Paleontology R Packages to Benefit from Software Sustainability Institute Grant

2026-02-05

Palaeoverse, a grassroots organization that develops R packages for paleontology, has been awarded a Large Grant from the Software Sustainability Institute, via the Research Software Maintenance Fund, for the project ‘Converting Users to Contrib…

Continue reading: Paleontology R Packages to Benefit from Software Sustainability Institute …