Sneaker Company Allbirds Plans to Pivot to A.I. Yes, A.I.

Hint of the AI bubble, number 9,477,615,337: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/15/u...

Book highlight that says: "A not-wholly-unfair analysis of academic publishing would be that it is an industry in which academics compete against one another for the privilege of providing free labour for a profit-making company, which then sells the results back to them at monopoly prices."

Enjoyed reading "The Unaccountability Machine" by Dan Davies: at turns thoughtful and hilarious. Goes deep into cybernetics, history, neoliberalism, and accounting (!).

A friend sent me this quote which is pretty funny and on target unless you're an academic; then the joke is on you (and me).

Did Electricity Cause a Tech Bubble? What investors can learn from the frenzy around the new technology a century ago

The link to the article: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...

Picture of giant incandescent bulb from 2014.

Article excerpt: Did Electricity Cause a Tech Bubble? What investors can learn from the frenzy around the new technology a century ago ADRIENNE LAFRANCE NOV 10, 2015 TECHNOLOGY Silicon Valley often finds itself faced with a difficult question, one that’s asked so often it’s practically a parlor game: Are we in a tech bubble? In other words, is the volume of money pouring into technology companies sustainable, or are we on the brink of a dot-com-esque collapse? In The Atlantic’s recent survey of dozens of tech thinkers, entrepreneurs, and executives, there was a curious response to this question that came up more than once. This isn’t a bubble, more than one respondent insisted, in the same way that there wasn’t an electricity bubble a century ago: People might have said it was a bubble at the time, but they were wrong. That’s a compelling comparison, and it requires a bit of unpacking to properly assess. Was there an electricity bubble? Did people at the time even claim there was?

When I'm writing about electricity and the changes it wrought, I think about this article often by @adriennelaf.bsky.social .... written in 2015, more than a decade ago (!), this opening paragraph still rings true for AI as it did for dot coms, cloud computing, social media, crypto:

Map from Our World in Data showing the highest-income countries in the world, with Guyana highlighted.

Did you know that Guyana has a GDP per capita of more than $70,000? Me neither! Statistics say this is from oil extraction, but what is Guyana like?

To compare: US $72k, Saudi Arabia $63k, Germany $62k, Australia $60k, Japan $46k.

Plot from @ourworldindata.org , ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-...

Another profile in memoriam. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/31/m...

Opinion | Technology Weakens Our Minds. We Can Fix This.

Excellently written and argued, as always by @author-calnewport.bsky.social. (One author where you can't ask, 'where does he find the time?'.) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/o...

I was featured on a short podcast episode for Ask MIT Climate talking about the grid of the future, sometimes (micro), and community choice aggregation. climate.mit.edu/podcasts/e5-...

I highly recommend The Soul of a New Machine if you haven’t already read it.

House is so good. I actually went to high school school with the kids of the family building the house, and Bill Rawn and Apple Corps are all great characters.

Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer Prize-winning author who expanded nonfiction’s reach, dies at 80 - The Boston Globe Mr. Kidder’s best-selling books, such as “Among Schoolchildren” and “The Soul of a New Machine,” expanded the range and popularity of narrative nonfiction.

I met him in high school at a book signing, and read his first five or six books before the even more recent and successful ones. I still think about the people he wrote about all the time. Rest in peace. www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/25/m...

After Cosmic Crisp, Scientists Unveil an Apple for the Climate Change Era

Enjoyable on multiple levels: the thought, the patience, the local economy, the apples, the many adjectives for flavor, all to adapt to climate change and global competition. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/21/u...

Strong evidence in favor of academic conferences:
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/18/t...

Opinion | The Scrappy Mayor Showing Democrats How It’s Done

Liked this. Running on basic competence in government and anti-corruption draws a nice contrast with incumbents in both parties. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/17/o...

Dorkapalooza: The Oral History of the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference This is how the revolution was quantified

Daryl Morey, MIT graduate:

"Bill [Simmons] famously coined the conference name of “Dorkapalooza” and sadly then called me Dork Elvis, which has stuck with me and is a little frustrating. You don’t get to pick your nickname." www.theringer.com/2026/03/06/n...

Just Put It On a Map An underrated strategy for urbanist persuasion, powered by open source tools

This visualization tool for urban land value is pretty neat, though the Azure data feed for some cities are presently disrupted (maybe a temporary cyberattack I heard mentioned this morning).

open.substack.com/pub/progress...

College students can ‘call a boomer’ from a new phone booth on Comm. Ave. Here’s the idea behind it. - The Boston Globe The BU Pavement Coffeehouse was a natural location for the phone booth, with its college-age clientele and high foot traffic.

"The goal, according to Matter Neuroscience, the company that set up the phone connection, is simply to get younger and older people to talk to each other ... to provide a connection between two groups that studies show are the loneliest in the United States."

www.bostonglobe.com/2026/03/11/m...

My students know that I still teach using his 2008 book! statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2008/12/04/s...

Nice to see this 10th anniversary conference for David MacKay's untimely death. I generally do not believe that anyone remembers our work after we die, but it also helps to be a "smart, generous, and committed person". statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/01/r...

Map showing Everett and proximity to Boston

This photo essay (by bicycle!) has everything you probably wanted to know about energy infrastructure in Everett, MA: histecon.fas.harvard.edu/climate-hist...

A bucketful of memories Some bikes are more meaningful than others.

A celebration of the family cargo bike. open.substack.com/pub/nminus1b...

Locally yes, but my point is that this may shape how policymakers in DC and financial institutions in NY think about response elsewhere to sea level rise through mechanisms like property losses, damage estimates, insurance costs, coastal defenses, migration, and abandonment.

Striking illustration showing that the *only* coast on earth that has accurate measurements of sea level rise is the Atlantic coast in North America. Is this why decision-makers in Washington DC and New York City don't feel the same urgency as everywhere else? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/c...

I quite enjoyed “North Woods” by Daniel Mason. A celebration of Western Massachusetts history, forests, and birds.

The definition of corruption: "noun: dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery."

If proficiency cannot be effectively measured, then maybe we should not be teaching it either.

That's probably why grade deflation or standards have to get monitored and enforced from the top, as I think Princeton is doing.

Harvard students think it’s unfair ‘when they work hard and don’t get an A,’ internal report says - The Boston Globe Last academic year, A's made up 60 percent of all course grades given to Harvard undergraduates.

A Harvard colleague calls grading there: "Fifty Shades of A". www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/12/b...

Just another perfect day, I love MA.

A giant sphere of flesh in Central Park towering over the city like a big gross meatball. This was made by redditor kiwi2703 to show what it would look like if you combined every human on Earth into a ball, and it’s clearly a bad idea

Within 18 months all white collar workers could be replaced by a 1km sphere of flesh in Central Park