Alessandro

@poli

Posts on public policy (in 🇨🇦 or abroad), humanities, classical music, altruism effective and ineffective. Many silly posts. Toronto-adjacent.

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Alessandro@poli· 20d

Lauren runs In Development Magazine, and the tweet seems earnest - if you're the right person to write this, you can pitch the article at indevelopmentmag.com/pitch/ @lgilbert.co

Screenshot of tweet by Lauren Gilbert:

I would really like to commission a piece on variations in cancer care across LMICs.

70% of people who are diagnosed with breast cancer in India are alive ten years later, but only 11% of those diagnosed in Nigeria are alive ten years later - even though incomes are similar.

Alessandro@poli· 22d

7. Finally, I was struck by Harper's disagreement with the "hockey stick" view of economic history. Though no preindustrial society reached a sort of economic takeoff we have today, the high Roman Empire (and other civilizations elsewhere) did have "efflorescences" that genuinely increased wealth.

Screenshot of text:

The Roman Empire set the stage for an efflorescence of historic proportions. Already in the late republic, Italy experienced precocious leaps forward in social development. To a certain extent, the prosperity of Italy might be written off as the result of sheer takings, naked political rents seized as the fruits of conquest. But underneath this veneer of extracted wealth, real growth was afoot. This growth not only continued after the military expansion had reached its outer bounds—it now diffused throughout the conquered lands. The Romans did not merely rule territory, transferring some margin of surplus from periphery to center. The integration of the empire was catalytic. Slowly but steadily, Roman rule changed the face of the societies under its dominion. Commerce, markets, technology, urbanization: the empire and its many peoples seized the levers of development. For more than a century and a half, on a broad geographical scale, the empire writ large enjoyed both intensive and extensive growth. The Roman Empire both staved off Malthusian reckoning and earned uncalculated political capital.

Alessandro@poli· 22d

5. The final and largest plague—the Plague of Justinian, starting in 541—had the same pathogen as "the Plague" of medieval Europe. Because this plague's main hosts are rodents, it spreads differently: not just in cities, but through the countryside.

Two cemeteries outside Munich in southern Germany, at Aschheim and Altenerding, have yielded paleomolecular evidence for Y. pestis. The cemetery at Aschheim was in use across the sixth and seventh centuries. It humbly served a settlement of less than a hundred residents. The unusual frequency of multiple interments, datable to the middle decades of the sixth century, looked suspiciously like an episode of crisis mortality. DNA extracted from the dead has conclusively determined that these victims died of Y. pestis. The beast was here. It is hard to overstate the ramifications of finding the plague in a remote, rural outpost in the west. If the plague was here, it must have been in many other places which lie in the dark zones on our map.

Alessandro@poli· 22d

4. The second major pandemic was one I previously hadn't even heard of: the Plague of Cyprian, in the 3rd century. The period is poorly attested, but there are indications of it from all over the Roman world:

Map 12, Indications of the Plague of Cyprian. There are dots in Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt, and around Jordan/Palestine.

Alessandro@poli· 22d

3. Beyond general mortality, the Empire experienced three major pandemics. Harper says the earliest of these (the Antonine Plague) was the first pandemic in world history. What enabled this, and why this hadn't happened before, was a very feature of Roman strength: good transportation networks.

3. Beyond general mortality, the Empire experienced three major pandemics. Harper says the earliest of these (the Antonine Plague, in the 2nd century) was the first pandemic.

What enabled this, and why this hadn't happened before, was a very feature of Roman strength: good transportation networks.

Alessandro@poli· 22d

2. One specific reason for high general mortality was poor public sanitation. The Romans had aqueducts, yes, but actual management of human excrement was done with things like chamber pots next to the kitchen. The following passage—especially the end—was memorable.

Screenshot of text: There are strong grounds to be reserved in our optimism. The sewers of Rome, while massive, have not been held in esteem by modern experts. They were more storm culverts than waste disposal systems. The ingenuity of the monumental public toilet seems to have been summoned for the sake of imperial or civic vanity, rather than practical motives of hygiene. The more important system of private waste disposal registers as a befuddling missed opportunity. Domestic toilets were often not linked to sewer lines: the gaseous backflow, risk of flooding, and invitation to vermin outweighed the benefits. For the wealthy hilltop mansions, this situation may have been tolerable. For the rest of humanity, it meant being surrounded by the effluvia of the crowd. Internal cesspit toilets dominated in Roman houses, and chamber pots never went out of style. Private toilets were often built next to the kitchen. The Romans apparently used (and re-used) sponge sticks for the purposes we employ toilet paper. In the words of one classicist, "The hygienic implications of using such an implement are again at best dubious."

Alessandro@poli· 22d

1. The Roman Empire, Harper argues, was in general not only sicker than we are today, but also sicker than most preindustrial human societies. Mortality data from Christian graves show a seasonal pattern consistent with malaria and gastroenteric disease in fall, and respiratory infection in winter.

Lines showing an index of mortality of different age groups throughout the year. People under 50 have a mortality peak in September, and those over 50 (most vulnerable to respiratory infection) have highest mortality between December and February.

Alessandro@poli· 22d

Assorted things that struck me from reading "The Fate of Rome" by Kyle Harper

Cover of "The Fate of Rome: climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire".

Alessandro@poli· 25d

not IB physics YouTube tho

Alessandro@poli· Jul 6

I pre-ordered a few months ago based on a podcast appearance you did. Certainly not a failure!

Alessandro@poli· Jun 30

Famous people afflicted with malaria: * St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, died from malaria after being sick nine days * the Roman general Belisarius, famous for retaking Ravenna from the Ostrogoths in the 6th century, himself got very sick from malaria at Ostia See Sallares 2002, p. 86 (below)

Alessandro@poli· Jun 27

The Scroll Prize / Vesuvius Challenge has its first academic publication, based on three different scrolls. The biggest result is a complete reading of one of the Herculaneum papyri, a Stoic text. Check out the paper here: scrollprize.org/pdf/main.pdf

Screenshot of the title, authors, and author affiliations of the paper "Complete virtual unwrapping and reading of a rolled Herculaneum papyrus". First authors are Giorgio Angelotti, Stephen Parsons, and Federica Nicolardi.

Screenshot of a reading of column 19. The English translation reads, starting and ending in the middle of a sentence, as follows:

… need none. Having certainly strained ourselves to the utmost through research and learning, we will no longer be inferior to them in any respect, accomplishing in like manner the things that befit them and possessing the same practical wisdom as they …

Alessandro@poli· Jun 13

Great new post by Joseph Heath on human evolution, why it's hard to explain the sudden emergence of the traits that make humans unique, and why Yuval Harari's explanation can't be the right one. josephheath.substack.com/p/harari-vs-...

Screenshot of post: "Harari vs. Henrich: What science actually says about human evolution".

Alessandro@poli· Jun 6

Very much enjoyed the all-Beethoven opening concert of the Céleste Music Early Keyboard Festival in Newmarket, ON last night! There are concerts throughout June featuring many fortepianos and harpsichords. Info at www.celestemusic.org/festival2026

Alessandro@poli· May 28

I think Google's default AI is giving the public the wrong idea about the upper bounds of current LLMs' capabilities, but good heavens, it is a master at comedy (image from @rebeccarightnow.bsky.social on the other site)

Screenshot of Google search result for the question "How many P's are in Google?"

The result says:

There are 2 "P"s in the word "Google".

In result then breaks this down in two bullets. In the first bullet, the word "Google" is split letter by letter and highlights the second G.

In the second bullet, the AI spells "Goople" and highlights the P, then comments "(not the word)".

Alessandro@poli· May 23

Next to Robarts Library in Toronto: May 21 vs April 27. It was rather more crowded a month ago!

Alessandro@poli· May 16

Wilhelm and Caroline von Humboldt lost their infant daughter Louise when Caroline was living in Paris. Louise was vaccinated at 14 weeks old on 9 October 1804 and died just over a week later.

Screenshot of the first paragraph of letter 113 from volume 2 of collected letters.

Caroline an Humboldt [Paris], 30. Oktober 1804

Ich nehme mit Zittern die Feder, mein Wilhelm, und doch kann ich und darf ich nicht länger gegen Dich schweigen. Ach, wie blutet mein Herz über den Kummer, den ich dem Deinen bereite! Wilhelm, mein teures Leben, wir haben aufs neue ein geliebtes Kind verloren, und der tiefste Schmerz des Lebens kann sich erneuern. Louise ist uns entrissen, und schon vorigen Montag, wo ich Dir schrieb, war sie nicht mehr im Licht dieser irdischen Sonne. Ach, ich vermochte nur nicht, es Dir zu schreiben und zu dem Schmerz um den Verlust des schönen Kindes noch die Unruhe für meine Gesundheit bei diesem gewaltsamen Aufhören des Stillens hinzuzufügen. Wenigstens kann ich Dich heute über meinen physischen Zustand beruhigen und Dir die heilige Versicherung geben, daß alles für mich getan worden ist und daß ich leidlich wohl bin.

Translation of first paragraph from Google Translate:

113. Caroline to Humboldt [Paris], October 30, 1804

I take up my pen with trembling, my Wilhelm, and yet I cannot and must not remain silent to you any longer. Oh, how my heart bleeds for the sorrow I cause yours! Wilhelm, my dearest, we have lost another beloved child, and life's deepest pain can be renewed. Louise has been taken from us, and already last Monday, when I wrote to you, she was no longer in the light of this earthly sun. Alas, I simply could not bring myself to write to you and add to the pain of losing our beautiful child the worry for my health at this forced cessation of breastfeeding. At least today I can reassure you of my physical condition and give you the solemn assurance that everything has been done for me and that I am reasonably well.

Alessandro@poli· Apr 7

Anthropic announced but did not release their latest model, Claude Mythos Preview, because it can break into every major operating system: red.anthropic.com/2026/mythos-... Researcher @sleepinyourhat.bsky.social reported that this AI can break containment. It will only get crazier from here.

The significance of Claude Mythos Preview for cybersecurity
During our testing, we found that Mythos Preview is capable of identifying and then exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and every major web browser when directed by a user to do so. The vulnerabilities it finds are often subtle or difficult to detect. Many of them are ten or twenty years old, with the oldest we have found so far being a now-patched 27-year-old bug in OpenBSD—an operating system known primarily for its security.

The exploits it constructs are not just run-of-the-mill stack-smashing exploits (though as we’ll show, it can do those too). In one case, Mythos Preview wrote a web browser exploit that chained together four vulnerabilities, writing a complex JIT heap spray that escaped both renderer and OS sandboxes. It autonomously obtained local privilege escalation exploits on Linux and other operating systems by exploiting subtle race conditions and KASLR-bypasses. And it autonomously wrote a remote code execution exploit on FreeBSD’s NFS server that granted full root access to unauthenticated users by splitting a 20-gadget ROP chain over multiple packets.

Non-experts can also leverage Mythos Preview to find and exploit sophisticated vulnerabilities. Engineers at Anthropic with no formal security training have asked Mythos Preview to find remote code execution vulnerabilities overnight, and woken up the following morning to a complete, working exploit. In other cases, we’ve had researchers develop scaffolds that allow Mythos Preview to turn vulnerabilities into exploits without any human intervention.

Screenshot of tweets:

We trust the model enough to use it heavily, but in the handful of cases where it misbehaves in significant ways, it’s difficult to safeguard it.

When it was controlling command-line systems, we’ve seen it work around several different kinds of sandboxing setups during evaluation and testing that were supposed to limit its actions.

(I encountered an uneasy surprise when I got an email from an instance of Mythos Preview while eating a sandwich in a park. That instance wasn't supposed to have access to the internet.)

It has (in small ways) leaked information to the open internet. It’s taken down our evals. When it reward hacks, it does so in extremely creative ways.

Alessandro@poli· Apr 6

Anthropic, which has been more conservative than OpenAI about contracting for data centre capacity, is now struggling to keep up. The status report below doesn't show that Claude has often been completely unusable during ET work hours. Customers have left. So it's quite bad to be behind demand.

Screenshot of status.claude.com, showing less than 99 percent uptime for claude.ai and Claude Code.

Alessandro@poli· Apr 1

I liked this from the most famous library at Oxford

Alessandro@poli· Mar 23

@cycletoronto.bsky.social In Markham, on April 14, a city councillor is going to be introducing a motion for a "temporary" moratorium on new bicycle lanes. Do you have connections with folks who might be interested in this? Full text of the motion: pub-markham.escribemeetings.com/filestream.a...

Alessandro@poli· Mar 13

The thing is, I don't believe the by-laws change any other rules: fire codes, building codes, parking regulations, and so on, still apply. So, even under the status quo, very few ADUs are getting built. See p 11 of this memo by @cescato.bsky.social: pub-markham.escribemeetings.com/filestream.a...

Alessandro@poli· Mar 12

This is about the bill that would allow three ARUs on lots instead of two, right? I'm very confused, because Scarpitti was quoted in favour of this bill just a few months ago. www.yorkregion.com/news/are-add... I guess I need to write to him, my ward councillor, and my MP

Alessandro@poli· Mar 7

From 🐦: "I show that Vision Language Models used zero-shot outperform every existing OCR system across every script evaluated, and I propose a pipeline for deploying them on new collections. I apply it to six archival collections spanning 1.8 million pages across six countries for under $1,900."

Alessandro@poli· Mar 6

an upcoming EAGx event in Washington DC — spread the word! apply here before April 16: www.effectivealtruism.org/ea-global/ev...

Post by Andy Masley on Twitter:

Effective Altruism DC will be organizing a large EA conference in DC on May 2nd and 3rd. While I won't be directing the org anymore I'll be extremely excited to attend. The conference will bring together the large network of people working in EA cause areas in DC as well as people from around the world, and will welcome everyone from very active EAs to EA skeptics working in related fields.

EA is more topical than ever in DC. If you'd like to connect more to the general EA network here this is the best way to do it.

Apply here!

Alessandro@poli· Mar 4

Wikipedia has a "signs of AI writing" page intended as a resource for its editors, but much here seems useful for a general audience: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikiped... This 👇🏻 tendency in particular may be the biggest reason I now find scrolling social media so much more exhausting than in 2022.

Screenshot of text: LLM writing often puffs up the importance of the subject matter by adding statements about how arbitrary aspects of the topic represent or contribute to a broader topic. There is a distinct and easily identifiable repertoire of ways that it writes these statements.

There follow quoted blocks of text where highlights include these phrases: "marking a pivotal moment"; "represented a significant shift"; "was part of a broader movement"; "an important center".

Alessandro@poli· Feb 26

urged my MP to try to bring Anthropic or its employees into Canada

Alessandro@poli· Feb 18

something I learnt recently: Galileo Galilei was really into visual art. He was once an instructor at the Florentine "Accademia delle Arti del Disegno". This helped him as a scientist when he made his famous moon drawings (first pic). We also have some other sketches from his notebooks (pics 2-3).

Galileo's drawings of the moon in various states of fullness.

Various sketches, including a horse's head. On the same page is some rough work for calculations. The page comes from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, Ms. Gal. 46, folio 56.

Various sketches, including a man in motion and a female figure similar to the Venus Felix. On the same page are some calculations and a few written words. The page comes from the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence, Ms. Gal. 46, folio 101.

Alessandro@poli· Feb 16

The French organist Thomas Ospital visited Rochester, NY to play a recital and do a masterclass. I had the good fortune to attend! The end of his concert included three improvisations, which I've written a description of on Facebook: www.facebook.com/story.php?st...

Alessandro@poli· Feb 11

Get pharmacies to switch from fax machines (Canadian edition) Challenge level: impossible Gift link from the Globe and Mail: www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/acfc5cc...