April is too early for good Milky Way photography, but during my last trip to the desert I decided to try it out anyway. Right now the Milky Way doesn't rise above the horizon until about 3 am, and even then it's sort of dim. Still, I was out there anyway at 3 am, so ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
This is a typical weekend crowd along the Seine checking out the famous green bookstalls. These days about half the stalls sell mostly the same mass-produced bits of tourist stuff, but the other half still have interesting specialties (music, art, Romanian poetry, whatever) and are fun to browse around in.
In case you're interested, Bob Carpenter has a short technical explanation of how modern Large Language Models (like GPT-4) work: In a nutshell, language modeling is the simple task of predicting the next subword (“called a token”) based on the previous sequence of subwords. The state-of-the-art had stalled for years on n-gram models that use ...continue reading "A quick primer on how LLMs work"
Here is James Fallows: I think this interp is correct. —Thomas gets all the attention. —But Alito is the one who has defined, and utterly discredited, the current court. Both are resentment-driven. But Alito is resentful about ... what, exactly? https://t.co/9RJIs1DEpv — James Fallows (@JamesFallows) May 1, 2023 Alito has always been by far the ...continue reading "Sam Alito is a hack"
This is a pair of sculptures by Fred Eversley in the Orange County Museum of Art. Eversley, originally an engineer, did most of his work in Venice (California), though he now lives in New York. He is, according to the David Kordansky Gallery, "a key figure in the development of contemporary art from Los Angeles ...continue reading "Lunchtime Photo"
My doctors have been insistent that if I spike a fever above 100.4 I should get myself down the ER. Last night that happened—though just barely. The ER thermometer clocked me at 100.6, and that set off a truly impressive blitzkrieg of testing. I didn't really understand it. They took blood tests by the dozens; ...continue reading "Health update"
I had a bit of insomnia last night and produced this fine reenactment of old-school blogging: This chart shows the change in federal spending during every postwar administration.¹ For example, Eisenhower's first budget clocked in at 18.14% of GDP while his final budget set spending at 17.38% of GDP. So over the course of his ...continue reading "Raw data: Who cuts spending more, Democrats or Republicans?"
In the New York Times Magazine this weekend David Wallace-Wells has an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci. I knew David a little bit when I was at the Washington Monthly and I've followed him with admiration ever since, so I was surprised at how combative the interview was. In one sense, David was just asking ...continue reading "Two takeaways from an interview with Dr. Fauci"
My doctor was happy to see me today because apparently I'm one of his few CAR-T patients who's currently lucid. The others are staring blankly at the ceiling and trying to remember who the president is. But I'm not out of the woods yet. If I start posting charts of, say, oatmeal consumption vs. AAA ...continue reading "Mental health update"
Today I learned that archeologists recently dug up the bodies of some soldiers who died in the Battle of Camden in 1780: The battleground remains have been determined to belong to 12 Continental soldiers, one British loyalist and one British regular. Thirteen were honored as heroes in ceremonies planned by countless volunteers, both civilian and ...continue reading "Weren’t redcoats the bad guys?"
I'm not sure why this amuses me so much, but it does: This is from a study comparing human doctors to GPT 3.5. The methodology was sort of fascinating: the authors collected 195 questions and responses from real doctors on Reddit and then fed the exact same questions into the chatbot. Then they jumbled up ...continue reading "Health care pros prefer AI to human doctors"
Exciting news today: the Fed has released its report on the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. You're already salivating, aren't you? I've read through it, but I want to say up front that it presents me with a problem. I've taken a very public stance that SVB didn't really do anything seriously wrong, and this ...continue reading "Federal Reserve fires a blank at Silicon Valley Bank"
This is Charlie in our Australian willow tree, probably watching for the squirrels that zip up and down it all the time. As you can see from the look of the bark, it's an excellent climbing tree for any cat with even a hint of athleticism. Charlie has that. Hilbert doesn't.
Wages are up! This time I have to concede that there is indeed upward movement in total compensation. Real comp is still negative over the past year, but it's been positive for two quarters in a row now. Apparently this means the Fed is certain to raise rates yet again at its next meeting. Considering ...continue reading "Total compensation rose slightly in the first quarter"
Both core and headline PCE inflation were down in March: Headline PCE was way down in March, and even on a trendline basis was only barely above 2%. Core inflation was more stubborn, coming down to only 3.4% and remaining around 4% on a trendline basis. (On a year-over-year basis, headline inflation was 4.2% and ...continue reading "PCE inflation drops sharply in March"
The macroeconomic dynamic duo of Christina Romer and David Romer has a new paper out. It starts with a question: This paper revisits one of the fundamental questions of macroeconomics: Does monetary policy matter? I didn't even realize this was an open issue. Luckily, the answer is "yes," and R&R go on to estimate the ...continue reading "Has the Fed affected inflation yet?"
This is a little waterfall just off Angeles Crest Highway about halfway to Mount Wilson. I'd like to return to this spot, as well as to Colby Falls, when the spring runoff is heavy, but I have a feeling I won't be up to driving soon enough. Maybe next year.
As I was puttering around the BEA's release of GDP data, I noticed that it included the most recent PCE inflation indexes too. However, it's quarterly, not monthly, so we have to wait until tomorrow for the March numbers. Or do we? If we know the quarterly indexes from last year and the quarterly growth ...continue reading "Placeholder inflation forecasting post"
The first-quarter GDP number was released today, and it's not great: The Q1 number clocked in at 1.1%, which is pretty anemic. Unfortunately, I can't think of any good reason why this should improve next quarter, when the Fed's interest rate hikes are going to start kicking in and personal savings will be even further ...continue reading "First quarter GDP grew at an anemic rate"
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