Recently added blogs

Preference data is a staple in the final step of the LLM training pipeline. During RLHF, we train a reward model by showing pairs of chosen and rejected model outputs so that it can teach …

I love that Steve Thomason photo, at Far Ings Tileries. As I said when learning to make the dirt, 3 ties, some broken concrete: I love this study: “I’m not a very good modelmaker and …

Once upon a time, CN had a railway roundhouse in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Eclipse morning at Chaos Manor South.The eclipse it came, and the eclipse it went, muchachos. This is your Old Uncle's short account of what Miss Dorothy and I saw eclipse Monday. This was, by the …

A calendar of the month's best and brightest astronomical sights.

I’ve recently become fascinated with the Contessa di Castiglione. The fascination was a long time brewing. Because for the longest time I hadn’t been. And yet I had been aware, for many years (decades, really), …

Elizabeth Smith has always been something of a loner. Despite having the perfect marriage and job and a seemingly perfect life in the affluent Harbor Town neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee, she always feels a little …

Love Is a Ball (1963). I thought I had seen every 1960s romantic comedy until the blandly-titled Love Is a Ball popped up on the cable channel Screenpix. It stars Charles Boyer as Etienne Pimm, …

This will be a graduate course at the University of Notre Dame. Course title: Gödel incompleteness Course description. We shall explore at length all aspects of the Gödel incompleteness phenomenon, covering Turing’s solution of the …

Last time I presented a class of agent-based models where agents hop around a graph in a stochastic way. Each vertex of the graph is some ‘state’ agents can be in, and each edge is …

I’ll be teaching a bowl carving course at Peter Galbert’s school in Rollinsford, NH, just 12 miles from the Maine coast, August 12-17, 2024. Pete and I have talked about this possibility for a couple …

Stanley Block Planes with Richard Gilbert’s Patented Lateral Adjuster A question about these Stanley block planes made in England comes up once in a while. Here is some information. Here is a #60 1/2 and …

Close your eyes and picture a river…go on, do it! What did you see? Did you picture a clear, deep mountain stream? A raging river in a steep gorge? A creek with grassy banks and …

In the last couple of years I have developed a complicated relationship with my phone. Whether it's scrolling past an endless wall of hate on Twitter or feeling my mood buckle under the weight of …

Today my son saw a Marshmello clip on Spotify and asked why he was wearing the marshmallow helmet. I explained that some artists like to wear a mask to keep their actual identity private, but …