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As expected, when the network entered the overfitting regime, the loss on the training data came close to zero (it had begun memorizing what it had seen), and the loss on the test data began climbing. It wasn’t generalizing. “And then one day, we got lucky,” said team leader Alethea Power, speaking in September 2022 at a conference in San Francisco. “And by lucky, I mean forgetful.”

Anil Ananthaswamy in Quanta. How Do Machines ‘Grok’ Data?

By apparently overtraining them, researchers have seen neural networks discover novel solutions to problems.

A fascinating article. Ananthaswamy reports that the researchers called what the networks were doing when the method turned from memorization to generalization as "grokking." He note the term was coined by specification author Robert A. Heinlein to mean, "understanding something “so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the process being observed."

The article prompted a couple of connections. First in 1960 Warren McCulloch gave the Alfred Korzybski Memorial Lecture, What Is a Number, That a Man May Know It, and a Man That He May Know a Number (PDF).

T. Berry Brazelton with others developed a model of Child development called Touchpoints, The TouchpointsTM Model of Development (PDF) by Berry Brazelton, M.D., and Joshua Sparrow, M.D. The article about AI points out that machines think differently than we do. But I was intrigued by an similarity in what the AI research call "grokking" and developmental touchpoints.

It is not enough to know the answer, instead machine learning and people learning must find a way to the answer.

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Jews will sit down to a Seder this year with many mixed feelings. The trauma of October 7; the humiliation, the anger, the desire for retribution, and justifications for the horrific violence in Gaza to innocent victims. And there may be added enthusiasm to utter, toward the Haggadah’s finale, just before the door is opened to welcome Elijah the Prophet: “Pour out Your wrath to the nations who do not know You.” But Tamares’ teaching should also be present: “Do not become like Pharaoh.” Dissonant as it may sound, in Tamares’ view, it’s the gift that Jews as inheritors of Torah are meant to bring to the world.

Shaul Magid in Religion Dispatches. To One Early 20th Century Anti-Zionist Rabbi Passover Isn't Simply A Celebration Of Freedom--It's a warning

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Trump is charged with falsifying documents to cover up his frantic efforts to prevent damaging disclosures in the waning days of the 2016 election. Specifically, the charges relate to the October 2016 hush-money payment Trump’s fixer paid a porn star who threatened to disclose their prior sexual relationship. During the federal trial of Trump’s fixer, Michael Cohen, it was established that Trump ordered Cohen to make the payment then repaid him with checks he recorded as legal expenses, when he was in fact repaying an illegal campaign contribution. Still unclear is whether Trump committed tax fraud by writing the checks off his taxes.

Dan Froomkin at Press Watch. Every report on Trump’s trial requires this basic explanation of the charges

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 Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim at The Intercept have sprung the style guide of the New York Times for talking about Israel and Palestine. If it weren’t so serious, it would be hilarious. It is sort of a Devil’s Dictionary in reverse, which punches down rather than up. It more resembles Bierce’s forays into horror fiction. So I thought I’d rearrange their fine column as a supplement to the Ghoul’s Glossary.

Juan Cole at Informed Comment. The NYT’s Palestinian-Israeli Lexicon: Special Edition of the Ghoul’s Glossary

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At its core, Comstockery maintains that individuals cannot and should not be trusted when it comes to sexual and reproductive matters; they need state supervision, surveillance, constraint, and punishment. Comstock laws were named for their progenitor Anthony Comstock, a 19th century Protestant crusader who was deeply ashamed of his own sexual desires and horrified by the non-reproductive sex acts of others. Comstock believed that the American public had “neither intellect nor judgment to decide what is wisest and best for themselves.”

Gillian Frank at Religion Dispatch. RESURRECTION OF ‘COMSTOCK LAWS’ WOULD THREATEN ACCESS TO ABORTIFACIENTS — BUT EVEN THAT FEAR MISSES BIGGER PICTURE

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When I was a young teenager my pro-abortion views were firmly established after listening to a New York state politician urgently argue in for legalizing abortion. He argued from the perspective of the great suffering prohibition caused.

I was quite sexually naive at the time, but my pro-abortion opinions survived a deep dive into Evangelical Christianity and a prolonged period of coming to grips with my own sexuality.

It has become almost a cliche to say of the deep impulse in conservative political authoritarianism that "the suffering is the point." The craven and corrupt Robert's court exposes their trust in cruelty.

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“In Auerswald’s view, it wasn’t enough to see the child in the context of the family. For him, children’s cognitive territories were shaped not only by their intimate relationships but by the environment they grew up in. I am always reminded here of writer Annie Dillard’s phrase, “The river fits and shapes its banks as the mind shapes its world” (1994).”

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Lynn Hoffman in Family Therapy: An Intimate History

In re Edgar Auerswald. 

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Joey Alexander - Angel Eyes

Chris' Jazz Cafe

Joey Alexander, piano/mellotron Kris Funn, bass Jonathan Barber, drums

A beautiful performance. Joey Alexander is very musically imaginative.

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Research has shown that parenting that supports autonomy, encouraging children to make their own decisions and take responsibility for their actions, is linked to better psychological wellbeing in adolescents. Conversely, excessive parental control is associated with higher levels of emotional distress and lower levels of life satisfaction among adolescents.

Fiorentina Sterkaj in Attention To The Unseen, first in The Conversation. Young people are getting unhappier – a lack of childhood freedom and independence may be partly to blame

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The clinical description of PTSD captures the experience of, for example, a soldier who goes back home … Trauma in Palestine is collective and continuous. PTSD is when your mind is stuck in a traumatic loop. In Palestine, the loop is reality. The threat is still there. Hypervigilance, avoidance – these symptoms of PTSD are unhelpful to the soldier who went home, but for Palestinians, they can save your life. We see this more as ‘chronic’ traumatic stress disorder.

Samah Jabr quoted in an article by Bethan McKernan in The Guardian. ‘Chronic traumatic stress disorder’: the Palestinian psychologist challenging western definitions of trauma

Chair of the Palestinian ministry of health’s mental health unit says the clinical definition of PTSD does not fit the reality in Gaza

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Faith Ringgold opened the door for younger artists — for artists after her, Black artists in particular — to carry their message through these alternative kinds of media.

Adrienne Childs quoted in an obituary written by Andrew Limbon at NPR. Faith Ringgold, quilt and visual artist, dies at 93

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Israeli military says Iran has launched drones at Israel, will take hours to arrive

Joseph Federman, Associated Press at PBS.

Earlier today Reuters reported that Jordan had closed it airspace:

Al-Mamlaka quoted Haitham Misto, the chairman of Jordan's Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission, as saying interference in Jordanian air traffic had affected its GPS system, prompting planes in the area to use alternative navigation systems.

Rebecca Picciotto at CNBC. Iran has launched drone attacks at Israel, U.S. officials say

Picciotto points to Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Israel Katz' post at twitter.com that Israel will attack in Iran.

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Arsenii Alenichev, Patricia Kingori, and Koen Peeters Grietens in Africa Is A Country.

If generative AI is an ugly reflection of our societies, then simply looking away will not help. If anything, we invite readers to approach biased AI-generated images not just as “technical glitches” to be fixed but as a sign of ever-manifesting inequalities and racialization that need to be urgently addressed.

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Steven Salaita essays (in 2018) what a principled anti-Zionism would look like.

I was very interested in the image illustrating the essay, especially because of South Africa prosecution Israel at the World Court. The credit:

POSTER DESIGNED BY MARC RUDIN PUBLISHED BY THE POPULAR FRONT FOR THE LIBERATION OF PALESTINE (PFLP) CIRCA 1988. (SOURCE: PALESTINE POSTER PROJECT ARCHIVES)

The Palestine Poster Project Archives is remarkable. It contains over 230 works produced by Mark Rudin. It contains over 20,000 posters by over 4,000 artists. The biography of Rudin is from an online archive of his work with over 700 items. The Wikipedia article for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is an entry for finding out about that organization.

One poster showed how hazy my understanding of history in my lifetime is.

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Even when AI systems aren’t exaggerated, it’s worth remembering there’s a vast industry of hidden workers, who are still propping up many high-tech AI systems often for low wages. (This has been well documented by academics like Kate Crawford and in books like Code Dependent by Madhumita Murgia.) In other words, when AI seems too magical, sometimes it is.

Parmy Olson in Bloomberg. Amazon's AI Stores Seemed Too Magical. And They Were.

The 1,000 contractors in India working on the company’s Just Walk Out technology offer a stark reminder that AI isn’t always what it seems.

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Capitalism has always relied on social processes of abjection, and frequently they have been secured and perpetuated in and through systems of forced labour and migrancy. However much we tend to think of these periods of coerced labour as critical to capitalism’s historical establishment, the current era makes it clear that unfree labour is not a relic of the past. Indeed, capital is not only increasingly reliant on migration, but specifically on the transnational flow of people who are deprived of full citizenship, people who to varying degrees comprise an unfree global workforce. 

Susan Ferguson and David McNally in OpenDemocracy. Capitalism’s unfree global workforce

Neoliberal migration and border regimes instantiate a de facto forced labour regime. Migration is increasingly key to providing capital’s precarious workforce, but unfree labour has long been central to global capitalism.

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The main focus of the course is the ways in which global economic systems and political interests both manufacture and protect different forms of vulnerable, precarious, and forced labour. Drawing upon examples from across the world, the course specifically focuses on labour in three major categories: supply chain work, migrant work, and sex work. It also considers the limitations of popular approaches and ‘solutions’ focusing upon the politics of rescue, and contrast these popular approaches with alternatives based upon models of worker rights, collective organising, and decent work.