Jack Rusher
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jackrusher.com
Jack Rusher
@jackrusher.com
4.1K followers 320 following 870 posts
Ex-Bell Labs/AT&T Research'er making art & technology in Berlin.

🐘@jack@jackrusher.com
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jackrusher.com
Jack Rusher @jackrusher.com · Apr 15
Intro. I’m a multifaceted weirdo, so in three parts:

① Homeschooled child prodigy, early/pre-web Internet’er, contributed to software used by ~2/3 of the world. Worked at multiple labs, including Bell/AT&T. Many successful startups.

Currently building tools to move forward science and computation.
jackrusher.com
It’s a real shame that the incompetence of the American Federal Trade Commission has done so much damage to the rest of the world. I wonder how much Microsoft, Google, and Meta spent in bribes to avoid being broken up, and for Meta to be allowed to buy Instagram and WhatsApp…
February 11, 2026 at 4:52 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
quinnslobodian.com
FT outdone by ABC on this one abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory...
February 10, 2026 at 1:31 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
inconvergent.net
current status at the office of geometry
a bright white light between a cyan and magenta glass plate seen from inside a glass teapot. cyan volume light on the left and magenta on the right
February 9, 2026 at 2:00 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
jennschiffer.com
“In October, one of Discord’s former third-party vendors suffered a data breach that exposed users’ age verification data, including images of government IDs.”
February 9, 2026 at 3:31 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
thomasp85.com
Genesis 4563 (2019)

#rstats and #ggplot2
February 9, 2026 at 4:22 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
klillington.bsky.social
And here is my story: ‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September

www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...
‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September
Seamus Culleton has been in a detention facility in Texas for nearly five months despite having no criminal record
www.irishtimes.com
February 9, 2026 at 9:21 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
clojureberlin.bsky.social
We are having a casual Get Together this Thursday 12th of February (I know it's short notice). No talk lined up, just casual chat.

clojure.berlin/events/2026-...
Get together drinks @ Trespassers
clojure.berlin
February 9, 2026 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
ferrisjabr.bsky.social
The oldest known image of an owl:

More than 30,000 years ago, someone skillfully scratched the figure of a long-eared owl (Asio otus) into the soft outer layer of the walls of Chauvet Cave, France. The owl is looking backward over their wings, head turned 180 degrees
carnegiemnh.org/ancient-owl-...
Photo of the described owl art. It looks like muddy scratch marks on a mottled brown cave wall. The head is very round with two upright lines for ears and a line in the center for a beak. Numerous parallel lines suggest plumage on the wings.
February 8, 2026 at 6:08 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
byjp.me
I absolutely *love* that switching my PDS (to npmx.social) has had no impact whatsoever on:
- My Bluesky account
- My websites hosted with @wisp.place
- My @rocksky.app music scrobbling
- My development on my own ATProto apps
- …etc
February 8, 2026 at 9:13 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
toxi.mastodon.thi.ng.ap.brid.gy
#releasesaturday — This week I've working on extracting, refactoring & generalizing the minimal column store database I've been using for my personal knowledge/media management toolset and I'm happy to share it with the world:

https://thi.ng/column-store […]

[Original post on mastodon.thi.ng]
TypeScript code example from the package readme (too long for alt text, link to original: https://github.com/thi-ng/umbrella/tree/develop/packages/column-store#basic-usage)
February 7, 2026 at 2:57 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
daveliepmann.com
The developer of a code counting tool ranked popular proglangs by density. I am not surprised that "according to the data, if you want the highest ratio of human thought to keystrokes, the winner is the 60 year old concept, Lisp running as a modern JVM language Clojure."

boyter.org/posts/boiler...
Clojure and indeed all lisp style languages are the final boss of density here though. Almost every line is an expression of business logic. I never really got into it myself, but looking at these results are starting to make me rethink that decision. If you compare Clojure (77.91%) to C# (58.4%), it seems the average C# developer writes 20% more redundant code every single day just to satisfy the compiler. Even with tools like resharper and LLM’s to help thats not a insignificant amount of effort.
February 6, 2026 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
restofworld.org
For the first time, Waymo has disclosed that it employs workers in the Philippines to monitor and support its driverless rides, which are marketed as fully autonomous.

The revelation pulls back the curtain on the manual labor still underpinning the technology www.linkedin.com/feed/update/...
𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐨’𝐬 “𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐬” 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞 For the first time, Waymo has disclosed that it employs workers… | Rest of World
𝐖𝐚𝐲𝐦𝐨’𝐬 “𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐬” 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐞 For the first time, Waymo has disclosed that it employs workers in the Philippines to monitor and support its autonomous driv...
www.linkedin.com
February 6, 2026 at 3:20 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
chriskrupenye.bsky.social
Find the paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

And here is an accessible explanation in JHU's Hub: hub.jhu.edu/2026/02/05/a...

We are grateful to CIFAR, @jhu.edu, and @templetonworld.bsky.social for providing the funds to enable this discovery!

@jhuartssciences.bsky.social
Evidence for representation of pretend objects by Kanzi, a language-trained bonobo
Secondary representations enable our minds to depart from the here-and-now and generate imaginary, hypothetical, or alternate possibilities that are decoupled from reality, supporting many of our rich...
www.science.org
February 5, 2026 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
housegoblin.bsky.social
sorry for being cringe I'm trying to enjoy being alive
February 2, 2026 at 5:50 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
inconvergent.net
more testing
four teapots (magenat, cyan, yellow, white) around four glass pillars. illuminated by a grid of cubic lights. black and white tiles. the light is foggy
February 5, 2026 at 8:37 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
alexis-verger.cpesr.fr
No, DeepMind has not solved the protein folding problem.

#Alphafold predictions are valuable hypotheses and accelerate but do not replace experimental structure determination.
realitycheck.bsky.social reality check 🤔😕😢 @realitycheck.bsky.social · 7d
Human chemists spent their entire careers trying to solve the protein folding problem.

DeepMind's AlphaFold solved it in a couple of years, creating an enormously valuable data set for other scientists to use.

The scientists who made it their life's work to solve protein folding? Moving on.
February 5, 2026 at 8:49 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
dstibbardhawkes.bsky.social
Difficult to resist the urge to tweet 'told you so' every I see a headline like this. And so I've decided not to resist that urge at all!

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
February 2, 2026 at 7:15 PM
jackrusher.com
Using PGA2D to illustrate using Coxeter groups to create Platonic solids via reflections.

#clojure #geometer
February 5, 2026 at 4:18 PM
jackrusher.com
“Whatever pleasure we derive from the radio or however wireless and the radio may have added to human life, Marconi’s share was practically negligible.”

worrydream.com/refs/Flexner...
The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge
worrydream.com
February 4, 2026 at 9:24 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
mattielubchansky.com
found a stack of these cleaning up my studio the other day. as ever!!!
a protestor holding up a smartphone with a cop’s arm around his shoulder. text reads PICS OF FACES GO TO DATABASES! CAREFUL WHAT YOU POST!
February 3, 2026 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
golan.bsky.social
A nice writeup about my students' exhibition of #generative #plotter art at the @bantamtools.bsky.social Machine Arts Gallery in Peekskill, New York! art.cmu.edu/news/student...
From Code to Gallery: “Drawing with Machines” Class Exhibits with Bantam Tools - School of Art | Carnegie Mellon University
The exhibition at Bantam Tools’ Machine Arts Gallery marked a new professional milestone for the advanced students of Professor Golan Levin's course on computational drawing.
art.cmu.edu
February 2, 2026 at 11:42 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
lemonodor.bsky.social
I ran across this classic Drew McDermott piece from 1976, "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY". I forgot what a fun writer he is. dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10....
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MEETS NATURAL STUPIDITY Drew McDermott MIT AI Lab Cambridge, Mass 02139 As a field, artificial intelligence has always been on the border of respectability, and therefore on the border of crackpottery. Many critics <Dreyfus, 1972>, <Lighthill, 1973> have urged that we are over the border. We have been very defensive toward this charge, drawing ourselves up with dignity when it is made and folding the cloak of Science about us. On the other hand, in private, we have been justifiably proud of our willingness to explore weird ideas, because pursuing them is the only way to make progress. Unfortunately, the necessity for speculation has combined with the culture of the hacker in computer science <Weizenbaum, 1975> to cripple our self-discipline. In a young field, self-discipline is not necessarily a virtue, but we are not getting any younger. In the past few years, our tolerance of sloppy thinking has led us to repeat many mistakes over and over. If we are to retain any credibility, this should stop. This paper is an effort to ridicule some of these mistakes. Almost everyone I know should find himself the target at some point or other; if you don't, you are encouraged to write up your own favorite fault. The three described here I suffer from myself. I hope self-ridicule will be a complete catharsis, but I doubt it. Bad tendencies can be very deep-rooted. Remember, though, if we can't criticize ourselves, someone else will save us the trouble. Acknowledgment-- I thank the AI Lab Playroom crowd for constructive play. Wishful Mnemonics A major source of simple-mindedness in AI programs is the use of mnemonics like "UNDERSTAND" or "GOAL" to refer to programs and data structures. This practice has been inherited from more
February 3, 2026 at 6:41 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
dubroy.com
What I'm doing now
→ dubroy.com/now/

Note: I have availability for consulting projects in 2026. If you know of something interesting, please get in touch!
Freshly baked pita breads cooling on a black wire rack on a kitchen counter, with a light blue kitchen towel on the left and fresh parsley on the right. The pitas are puffy and golden-brown with a light dusting of flour on their surfaces.
February 2, 2026 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
martin.kleppmann.com
Exciting news for the local-first community!

1. Local-first Conf Berlin is back on 12–14 July: www.localfirstconf.com

2. The nice folks at @cultrepo.bsky.social have made a documentary about the movement: www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8...
Local-First Conf 2026
Join us for the third edition of Local-First Conf. Connect with a rapidly-growing community in an intimate setting. Berlin 12-14th July 2026.
www.localfirstconf.com
February 1, 2026 at 12:41 AM
Reposted by Jack Rusher
nohr.se
Take me down to the Parallax city where the far moves slow and the near moves quickly
February 1, 2026 at 3:40 PM