Eli Sennesh
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elisennesh.bsky.social
Eli Sennesh
@elisennesh.bsky.social
Abolish the value function!
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Had a great time visiting Berkeley's Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience!

archive.org/details/Redw...
Eli Sennesh: Oscillations, but not Spike Rates, Encode Predictive Processing : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
Talk by Eli Sennesh of Vanderbilt University.  Given to the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience at UC Berkeley.Abstract: The appearance at the...
archive.org
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
Not saying we want to live in that exact world but the exec branch claiming the right to tell Congress its laws don’t exist is not really tenable either.

Especially when we have a Supreme Court that is playing Calvinball where Trump always wins
February 10, 2026 at 2:19 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
There is a world where Congress has a constitutional law office that issues a counter-memo, and the Capitol Police go enforce the law and force their way into these detention camps for Congressional oversight
BREAKING: On February 2, Sec. Noem issued a memo asserting the lapse in appropriations for DHS meant there is no Sec. 527 — the provision protecting congressional oversight visits to immigration detention facilities — and she was issuing a new (third) policy requiring seven-day notice for visits.
February 10, 2026 at 2:19 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
AOC on DHS Warehouses: I think every American should be alarmed. They are building—and have built—a black box system that disappears people, both immigrants and U.S. citizens alike.
February 10, 2026 at 1:30 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
FYI Americans: if you had Canadian grandparents/parents: you may be Canadian
February 10, 2026 at 2:12 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
“The verticality is just jarring to me, those long lines are out of scale, it is architecturally jarring”

“This building is too tall, it is an attack on my lifestyle”

NIMBYism is the last grasp of boomers who don’t have any productive hobbies so they want to make everything worse for everyone
February 10, 2026 at 12:17 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
The current NIMBY speaking literally just said “I live right next to this parking lot and it gives the area a real neighborhood feeling”
February 10, 2026 at 12:04 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
I need someone to write a doctoral thesis on the politics of groceries in the 2020s.
I really don’t want to do another round of inflation discourse, particularly as a practicing economist, but like, this was $54. And, like, i’m not exactly splurging here. Store brand cheese and pickles? Crackers? Lunch meat? A pound of chicken?
February 9, 2026 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
What this ad doesn’t show: Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans. I wrote to them months ago about this. Their answer? They won’t ask for your consent.

This definitely isn’t about dogs—it’s about mass surveillance.
x.com/Phil_Lewis_/...
x.com
February 9, 2026 at 10:42 PM
So one of my takes about supposed "PMC vanguardism" or whatever is that it would be a lot better if it actually pursued straightforward, on-the-ground PMC class interests, such as...

Passing the OFFICE SPACE Act of 2026 imposing real labor laws on white-collar work.
February 10, 2026 at 1:41 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
This is about LLMs and comparing activations to large-scale recording in brains
neuroAI comparisons of ANNs to brains do have a range of problems. Even more than I had realized. And I was worried before: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
February 9, 2026 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
Whenever I see "natural" in reference to human health, I reach for my gun.

Suffering from infectious disease is "natural." Being parasitized by fly larvae is "natural." Dying of malnutrition is "natural."

Every human life saved by science is a middle finger in the face of a cruel, heartless world.
The golden rice situation makes me *SO* sad.

It's estimated a THIRD of people worldwide are Vitamin A deficient, which can cause permanent damage to the eyes — in many cases full-on blindness.

We created a perfect solution to this problem, but oh no, it's "unnatural"
Same anti-science people who'd rather see people starve, than endorse GMOs. Because, hurr durr, Capitalism bad, science bad, therefore, hurr durr, golden rice bad and an unnatural abomination!
February 9, 2026 at 9:26 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
I struggle to grasp the appeal of "I believe in nothing, but specifically the kind of nothing that also forbids hedonism," but I admit is definitely a growing belief set.

"Hey, what if I adopted judgemental moralism from religion but without the promise of eternal life? Wouldn't that be fun?"
February 9, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Kids?
I think some of this is downstream from the pressure we put on kids to believe that any failure will fuck them for life
February 9, 2026 at 9:32 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
Political maturity is admitting this is all true
Yes. People love to paint Corbyn and Starmer as opposites but there are throughlines over their tenures atop the Labour Party: corrosive, faux macho bullying, horrible appointments made for loyalty rather than competence, a sneering indifference to racism & gaslighting of its victims
(If No.10 and its outriders had an ounce of self-awareness, they’d be asking themselves why the government’s flaws are uncomfortably similar to the Corbyn leadership’s flaws)
February 9, 2026 at 1:38 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
Here’s the situation in the Twin Cities:

Random Bovino-style tear-gassing: Way down

Relentless persecution of immigrants: Unchanged

Thuggish violence against observers: Way up
February 8, 2026 at 9:30 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
neuroAI comparisons of ANNs to brains do have a range of problems. Even more than I had realized. And I was worried before: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
February 9, 2026 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
thorne: you can't feed 8+ billion people without high tech industrial agriculture

degrowthers: you don't have to feed 8+ billion people if there aren't 8+ billion people
a man in a leather jacket is smiling in front of a building with a sign that says opening on it .
ALT: a man in a leather jacket is smiling in front of a building with a sign that says opening on it .
media.tenor.com
February 9, 2026 at 8:55 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
After Colossal Failure, Golda Faced the Truth. Netanyahu Learned How to Bury It ☠️💢
www.haaretz.com/opinion/2026... 🧵
By Aluf Benn
February 9, 2026 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
This is exactly right, a version of A Christmas Carol that paints Scrooge as entirely justified in feeling the way he does. In fact, the three ghosts visit Bob Cratchit to teach him his family only suffers because he's so dumb and doesn't make anything of himself. Stop begging and start grinding!
“And Tiny Tim, who DID die, and had it coming every minute of his life…”
February 9, 2026 at 8:26 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
So much political discourse can just be demolished by "what would be the physical logistics of this"
February 9, 2026 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
I'm just a liberal squish, but I think America should not have concentration camps.
ICE has now spent over half a BILLION dollars just on purchasing warehouses around the country to convert into detention camps.

If these mega-camps are utilized to the full capacity ICE intends, they'll be the largest prisons in the country, with little real oversight. www.ajc.com/politics/202...
ICE to begin detaining immigrants inside Social Circle warehouse in April
Homeland Security plans to build warehouse detention facilities in other cities being met with opposition.
www.ajc.com
February 9, 2026 at 7:17 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
An underrated good the next Democratic administration could do with virtually zero actual political blowback from voters would be to come in with anti-trust laws like a wrecking ball and break up media and tech companies. It would fuck up The Other Side, too.
Brendan Carr is also very excited for more local broadcast TV consolidation at the hands of the right wing!

You know, to improve competition, something Carr (who has rubber stamped every desire media and telecom giants have ever had) genuinely cares about
February 9, 2026 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
Oh my gosh, the immediate about-face is just hilarious. I guess a tankie like him couldn't find it in himself to defend someone like Chomsky anymore.
February 9, 2026 at 4:36 AM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
"the mission of SpaceX remains the same. I can be trusted with your money despite just revealing a massive part of my sales pitch is technologically unfeasible for the foreseeable future."

Musk is a blight on the economy and, honestly, even on SpaceX.
BREAKING: “in my 24th year of my quest to settle the planet Mars, I have just been informed of a basic fact of celestial mechanics.”
February 9, 2026 at 5:19 PM
Reposted by Eli Sennesh
Mrs. Claus's love child with Homestar Runner
February 9, 2026 at 7:51 PM