Josh Herritz
jherritz.bsky.social
Josh Herritz
@jherritz.bsky.social
Madison, WI
Reposted by Josh Herritz
Credit to Soglin for clocking the political mood.

But if you think candidates hand-picked by a 79yo, 5+ term mayor, who’s been *the* political establishment in Madison for 50+ years are “INDEPENDENT, NON-MACHINE” options…

I mean come on
March 27, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
I think American urban planners should aspire to something greater than administering zoning regulations to micromanage building design and enforce parking requirements.
Gonna have to change his name to “Sclerotic Planner”
March 20, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
This trend seems to be growing here.

False comfort that AI doesn’t work or that it isn’t getting better is pervasive on Blue Sky. As a result, people who could add important points of view to current discussions on the meaning & use of AI instead try to believe they don’t have to think about it.
Not to be a broken record, but AI critics who insist that AI "doesn't work" and is going to just disappear are misleading - that just isn't true, as controlled studies like this one show.

There are many issues with AI & many things that need critique, but pretending it is going away is not helpful.
Randomized trial AI for legal work finds Reasoning models are a big deal:

Law students using o1-preview had the quality of work on most tasks increase (up to 28%) & time savings of 12-28%

There were a few hallucinations, but a RAG-based AI with access to legal material reduced those to human level
March 20, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
Our Madison Common Council endorsements are out. Make sure to vote by April 1st!
March 15, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
There’s a lot of great stuff coming out about “abundance” and meanwhile the titans of the tech industry have embraced bizarro world degrowtherism, blocking housing in their backyards, destroying basic science research, and fearmongering about vaccines. Sad!
March 15, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
We will never know— we will never have the faintest idea— how much money is getting made in insider trading windfalls from people in Trump's and Musk's circles who have an hour of notice about the daily swings in tariff policy or the occasional announced *expectations* of such swings.
March 6, 2025 at 7:06 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
I'm not an economist but this looks bad!

www.atlantafed.org/cqer/researc...
March 3, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
Being able to procure parts for broken weather radar equipment seems important..
The Bay Area weather radar (KMUX) has been out of service for more than 24 hours now. An expensive broken part needs to be replaced and specially ordered, but that may not be possible due to ongoing freeze on government credit card spending, I’ve been told.
March 3, 2025 at 6:29 AM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
A first-ever analysis of fire death rates in modern four-to-six-story buildings with only one stairway shows that residents are not at greater risk, and such buildings could provide much-needed housing. @pewtrusts.org

www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-...
Small Single-Stairway Apartment Buildings Have Strong Safety Record
Policymakers could increase the supply of multifamily housing in their states and localities by revising outdated building codes that require more than one stairway in small apartment buildings. If en...
www.pewtrusts.org
March 3, 2025 at 2:28 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
Is this about the free markets or the personal liberties? It's all so confusing.
March 3, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
We went through this with zoning, and now we're going through it with building code: trillion dollar industries depend on these things, yet a bunch of precocious bloggers can swoop in and expose these institutions as full of pseudoscience. Does nobody do their job? @aarmlovi.bsky.social
March 3, 2025 at 4:36 AM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
YIMBYism is wild because you start to ask questions like “why was single family zoning created?” and “are our regulations for building safety based on any actual safety data?” and soon realize that ~85% of the rules governing our cities are based on nothing but tradition and vibes.
We went through this with zoning, and now we're going through it with building code: trillion dollar industries depend on these things, yet a bunch of precocious bloggers can swoop in and expose these institutions as full of pseudoscience. Does nobody do their job? @aarmlovi.bsky.social
March 3, 2025 at 6:09 AM
I miss this guy on the other site.
I’m not really surprised by anything the admin has done, but I expected the vibes to be closer to “private equity stripping a company down for parts” rather than “meth head stripping the walls for scrap metal”
March 3, 2025 at 5:23 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
I’m not really surprised by anything the admin has done, but I expected the vibes to be closer to “private equity stripping a company down for parts” rather than “meth head stripping the walls for scrap metal”
March 3, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
We're just starting to understand how AI "think" during inference.

Current large models often abandon promising lines of reasoning too quickly, "underthinking". When they get math problems wrong, it's often because they jumped away from correct approaches too early. Lots of room to improve this.
January 31, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
"Claude, here is a screenshot of all the various model names for ChatGPT. What do you think they stand for? Assume the worst about their naming conventions"

Claude is the model that pulls off humor the best.
February 1, 2025 at 6:30 AM
Meaty, thoughtful discussion that feels incredibly important and timely right now.
Tim Minchin on his viral speech, quitting social media and being kind
YouTube video by Channel 4 News
youtu.be
February 1, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
Super excited that this dude is running Congress.
Musk cannot tell what most people think is an extremist party or candidate. Example- here he is remarking on how reasonable Germany’s very far right AfD seems to him.
December 20, 2024 at 6:01 AM
That's saying something!
Wow...VERY Nextdoor out there in district 20.
tonemadison.com/articles/wev...
December 21, 2024 at 2:57 AM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
An amazing assembly of modern-day luddites in the comments and the replies. Really something to behold
Super excited to publicly launch "All Day TA" (http://www.alldayta.com), a product @joshgans.bsky.social and I have been working on with our team over the last year. Short version: if you teach in spring, you will want to use this! It's the future of higher education. A short thread: 1/x
December 15, 2024 at 1:20 AM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
Posted this at the old place, but thought folks on @bsky.app might like to know I finally met my "mother".
December 12, 2024 at 10:56 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
That'll fix housing costs!
December 7, 2024 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
One of my boring media hobbyhorses: People have tuned out of the modern Sunday show format (one host, multiple guests, panel) and whoever brings back the classic format (three reporters and one guest for 60 minutes) will get a big W.
December 7, 2024 at 4:05 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
I appreciate how this highlights the import of policing -- in my class on inequality and public policy, I ask students many opinion-based questions, but when I ask if hiring more police reduces crime, 95% say no. There's tradeoffs of course! But important we get these basic facts right.
I have an op-ed in the NYT today about how to reduce crime.

The key idea, based on decades of strong research evidence: focus on increasing the probability of getting caught, not the punishment.

www.nytimes.com/2024/12/07/o...
December 7, 2024 at 12:59 PM
Reposted by Josh Herritz
USDA should have implemented this more than a year ago, when the human health experts first started to call for it.

“USDA Announces New Federal Order, Begins National Milk Testing Strategy to Address H5N1 in Dairy Herds”
USDA Announces New Federal Order, Begins National Milk Testing Strategy to Address H5N1 in Dairy Herds
WASHINGTON, Dec. 6, 2024 - Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is announcing the start of its National Milk Testing Strategy (NMTS), w...
www.usda.gov
December 6, 2024 at 6:35 PM