Ben Schmidt
@bschmidt.bsky.social
VP of Information Design at Nomic building new interfaces to embeddings; former history professor/digital humanist. Bsky for humanities/dataviz-y things, @benmschmidt@sigmoid.social for techy stuff, the bad place for business.
https://benschmidt.org
https://benschmidt.org
I'll stay committed to the bit even if it doesn't work:
September 28, 2025 at 12:28 PM
I'll stay committed to the bit even if it doesn't work:
Ten-year changes in majors by field -- when I first made this for the American Historical Association in 2018, history had the bottom slot, so slightly nice to see that it's rising.
September 28, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Ten-year changes in majors by field -- when I first made this for the American Historical Association in 2018, history had the bottom slot, so slightly nice to see that it's rising.
@pengzell.bsky.social asks about the social sciences, which I haven't looked at in a while. Indexing these against 2008 rather than peak, and struck that economics has been on a downslope for 6 years now, while psychology, the worst discipline, continues to rise rapidly.
bsky.app/profile/peng...
bsky.app/profile/peng...
September 28, 2025 at 2:59 AM
@pengzell.bsky.social asks about the social sciences, which I haven't looked at in a while. Indexing these against 2008 rather than peak, and struck that economics has been on a downslope for 6 years now, while psychology, the worst discipline, continues to rise rapidly.
bsky.app/profile/peng...
bsky.app/profile/peng...
Some more granular disciplinary data, by raw number of majors, showing the span since the 1990s. Most of the humanities are at about the same raw counts they were in the early 1990s. (And also the early 1970s, for that matter, although it's not in this chart because the data's harder to harmonize).
September 28, 2025 at 2:28 AM
Some more granular disciplinary data, by raw number of majors, showing the span since the 1990s. Most of the humanities are at about the same raw counts they were in the early 1990s. (And also the early 1970s, for that matter, although it's not in this chart because the data's harder to harmonize).
Despite the gutting of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the dept of Ed *did* manage to release 2024 college major counts in the usual format, so I can run it through the same code I do every year. First off, the change since peak of the largest fields -- another year of drops.
September 28, 2025 at 2:20 AM
Despite the gutting of the National Center for Educational Statistics, the dept of Ed *did* manage to release 2024 college major counts in the usual format, so I can run it through the same code I do every year. First off, the change since peak of the largest fields -- another year of drops.
They’re cleaning up at the Herald Square station and briefly scraped the place back into December 1979. Hard for me to imagine living in such a two-tone world.
August 22, 2025 at 2:18 PM
They’re cleaning up at the Herald Square station and briefly scraped the place back into December 1979. Hard for me to imagine living in such a two-tone world.
I've been waiting for a cross-temporal spatial model like this a while, there's a lot of interesting visualization one can do! That said, who knows how useful these specific embeddings are. I used to tell graduate students never to use a plate carrée if they wanted to be taken seriously. And lo:
August 15, 2025 at 1:37 PM
I've been waiting for a cross-temporal spatial model like this a while, there's a lot of interesting visualization one can do! That said, who knows how useful these specific embeddings are. I used to tell graduate students never to use a plate carrée if they wanted to be taken seriously. And lo:
Also I always have trouble believing those numbers because it's only the final release for every year but the current -- but I guess in 2024 at least the new preliminary releases for completions for 23-24 came *after* the final release of 22-23 data… but will we even keep getting the final versions?
August 10, 2025 at 3:17 AM
Also I always have trouble believing those numbers because it's only the final release for every year but the current -- but I guess in 2024 at least the new preliminary releases for completions for 23-24 came *after* the final release of 22-23 data… but will we even keep getting the final versions?
"We do not accept AI-generated content into our visual library" cool Getty images, I guess it's just that "demaerre" took two almost identical robots into an elevator for a photo shoot, but one has three dots on its right arm and one doesn't.
August 5, 2025 at 11:37 AM
"We do not accept AI-generated content into our visual library" cool Getty images, I guess it's just that "demaerre" took two almost identical robots into an elevator for a photo shoot, but one has three dots on its right arm and one doesn't.
It's fun that the Fortune article saying historians are the #2 job affected by AI includes what's clearly an AI-generated stock image of a creepily female robot "teaching" (i.e., looking at a computer) while the real teacher gets fired.
August 5, 2025 at 11:33 AM
It's fun that the Fortune article saying historians are the #2 job affected by AI includes what's clearly an AI-generated stock image of a creepily female robot "teaching" (i.e., looking at a computer) while the real teacher gets fired.
IDK if $75m is a high enough price to get out of them, but honestly I think maybe it's ok? If not Waltz, they're saying it would have been the guy who spent his time as ambassador trying to convince the Germans they should give the far-right another go.
July 24, 2025 at 5:51 PM
IDK if $75m is a high enough price to get out of them, but honestly I think maybe it's ok? If not Waltz, they're saying it would have been the guy who spent his time as ambassador trying to convince the Germans they should give the far-right another go.
C'mon everybody why did we even make a social network exclusively for leftists with graduate degrees if we're not going to make #facultybratsummer a thing.
June 25, 2025 at 2:50 AM
C'mon everybody why did we even make a social network exclusively for leftists with graduate degrees if we're not going to make #facultybratsummer a thing.
Yeah Polanyi is definitely the minimal "if you're serious you do have to read this" book here One of the engineers DM'd me earlier today
June 20, 2025 at 9:13 PM
Yeah Polanyi is definitely the minimal "if you're serious you do have to read this" book here One of the engineers DM'd me earlier today
My dad recently made sure that I took possession of his prized possession, the pre-first edition 1944 mimeographed wartime DoE.
June 20, 2025 at 3:05 PM
My dad recently made sure that I took possession of his prized possession, the pre-first edition 1944 mimeographed wartime DoE.
Yeah as we moved into neural-network OCR I wrote a little about some of this. You get very weird effects when applying more holistic rules. sappingattention.blogspot.com/2016/12/ocr-...
June 19, 2025 at 1:52 PM
Yeah as we moved into neural-network OCR I wrote a little about some of this. You get very weird effects when applying more holistic rules. sappingattention.blogspot.com/2016/12/ocr-...
FWIW the fact this post is from ten years ago actually matters! OCR has gotten better and newer versions of ngrams don't seem to have the effect at anywhere near the same size. (Meanwhile Google has gotten far sloppier about the library science size, so the new versions are useless for research).
June 19, 2025 at 1:48 PM
FWIW the fact this post is from ten years ago actually matters! OCR has gotten better and newer versions of ngrams don't seem to have the effect at anywhere near the same size. (Meanwhile Google has gotten far sloppier about the library science size, so the new versions are useless for research).
Man rock critics can bring it.
May 22, 2025 at 1:37 PM
Man rock critics can bring it.
Fun fact all the abstract images of embeddings in this paper are just rotated versions of a map we made of a Huggingface dataset. (Jack had a Nomic affiliation for a bit last year, was one of the authors on the Nomic Embed paper)
May 22, 2025 at 1:32 PM
Fun fact all the abstract images of embeddings in this paper are just rotated versions of a map we made of a Huggingface dataset. (Jack had a Nomic affiliation for a bit last year, was one of the authors on the Nomic Embed paper)
Gotta steer more into the fact that "climate fiction" was clearly in the prompt.
May 20, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Gotta steer more into the fact that "climate fiction" was clearly in the prompt.
This led me to look up chairmen of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which led me once again to be dumbfounded about something @dael.bsky.social first told me, that the Outerbridge Crossing, a bridge between NJ and Staten Island is named after a dude named 'Outerbridge'.
![Wikipedia page of Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge
text:
Eugenius Harvey Outerbridge (March 8, 1860 – November 10, 1932) was a businessman and promoter of patent fiberboard, and the first chairman of the interstate agency known then as the Port of New York Authority. The Outerbridge Crossing, a Port Authority bridge, was named for him.[1]
Biography
Eugenius was born on March 8, 1860, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Bermudians Alexander Ewing Outerbridge I and Laura Catherine Harvey. His sister, Mary Ewing Outerbridge, was the founder, in 1874, of American lawn tennis which was the progenitor of modern tennis. His other siblings include Albert Albany Outerbridge, Sir Joseph Outerbridge (1843–1933), August Emelio Outerbridge (1846–1921), Harriett Harvey Outerbridge, Alexander Ewing Outerbridge II, Laura Catharine Outerbridge and Adolph John Harvey Outerbridge (1858–1928).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:r36govxkk4hmrcqlrjmbrjtl/bafkreicqbvncznmyrd2sdqj2dcburumuiobauomploht6hqb6rgrema6su@jpeg)
May 16, 2025 at 8:54 PM
This led me to look up chairmen of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which led me once again to be dumbfounded about something @dael.bsky.social first told me, that the Outerbridge Crossing, a bridge between NJ and Staten Island is named after a dude named 'Outerbridge'.
Maybe the White House Easter bunny?
May 16, 2025 at 8:51 PM
Maybe the White House Easter bunny?
Interesting. Lowering myself into this rabbit hole for a minute, there definitely *is* stuff in here that would be of some use for training AI systems: computer code (which is probably more valuable than text), full dumps of internet sites, and recent television shows.
May 13, 2025 at 7:55 AM
Interesting. Lowering myself into this rabbit hole for a minute, there definitely *is* stuff in here that would be of some use for training AI systems: computer code (which is probably more valuable than text), full dumps of internet sites, and recent television shows.
Idk the context but of the three answers to whether Gaza is a genocide the third is the most terrifying—AIs trying to destroy the meaning of words to avoid taking a controversial stance
May 11, 2025 at 1:00 AM
Idk the context but of the three answers to whether Gaza is a genocide the third is the most terrifying—AIs trying to destroy the meaning of words to avoid taking a controversial stance
This short piece about Worcester is a really great piece of writing -- incredibly specific and local, but also a microcosm of 2025. I've been turning it over in my head all day.
www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-ne...
www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-ne...
May 10, 2025 at 12:36 AM
This short piece about Worcester is a really great piece of writing -- incredibly specific and local, but also a microcosm of 2025. I've been turning it over in my head all day.
www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-ne...
www.welcometohellworld.com/they-dont-ne...
If jet travel were invented today, it would be rightly viewed as completely unacceptable to fly. Nomic sometimes trains AI models, but when I dig into the numbers, I'm convinced that our primary carbon impact is flying human beings between SF and NYC.
www.founderspledge.com/research/cli...
www.founderspledge.com/research/cli...
May 6, 2025 at 10:36 AM
If jet travel were invented today, it would be rightly viewed as completely unacceptable to fly. Nomic sometimes trains AI models, but when I dig into the numbers, I'm convinced that our primary carbon impact is flying human beings between SF and NYC.
www.founderspledge.com/research/cli...
www.founderspledge.com/research/cli...