Charl P. Botha

🚨 Today (Fri 23rd) is the last chance to download the full 109 page BBS collection on 'conscious AI and biological naturalism', including target article, 50 commentaries, and my author response. Don't miss out (& do click 'save pdf')! doi.org/10.1017/S014...

Get this PDF while you still can (until October 23). If you're interested in consciousness science, his 2025 article, the 50 commentaries (many of them by luminaries in the field) and his reply (all included in the PDF) are super worth your time!

This is Pele, my new rendering library for diagrams and charts, compatible with the latest Mermaid syntax. - 100-500× faster than mermaid.js - 6× smaller bundle - No dependencies - Easy to theme - Responsive to device width - Open source (MIT) Try it at pele.run

My support for bluesky/atproto is pretty much explicitly a "political" project. It is bad for a small number of (mostly right-wing) people to literally own all the sources of media. Open-source algorithms + the ability to move your account without negative network effects opposes this.

1/2 🎇 Good news! 🎇 The kind people at Behavioral and Brain Science have made the new collection on "Conscious AI and biological naturalism" #OpenAccess for a limited time: target article, all 50 commentaries, & my response. Go to the link and click 'save pdf': doi.org/10.1017/S014.... Do share!

Hello everyone from the Southern-most tip of Africa! (L'Agulhas, Western Cape, South Africa)

I love this so much. Basically: do whatever you want, use whatever you want, but as a maintainer I must not be able to tell it wasn't written by a human.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature. Ralph Waldo Emerson

Back on my literary bullshit #SylviaPlath

The contagion of fear bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/09/13/t...

Your intellectual fly is open bcantrill.dtrace.org/2025/12/05/y...

Our life is frittered away by detail... simplify, simplify. Henry David Thoreau

The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself. Henry Miller

"The Greeks sprinted in their Olympics, though they had, long before, domesticated the horse. Maybe we too will come to value the sport of understanding with our own brains." -- Harvey Lederman (Professor of Philosophy, UT Austin) in "ChatGPT and the Meaning of Life" scottaaronson.blog?p=9030

I've been unsettled lately when reading messages and papers. It feels like I'm dissociating. Everything seems a bit alien, even if it's completely human. I've had a realization: When our simulations finally exited the Uncanny Valley, they brought the Uncanny with them.

Researchers at the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark have conducted multiple landmark, population-wide studies tracking hundreds of thousands to over 1.2 million children using national health registries to examine potential links between vaccines and autism. Every major study found no connection.

After years of #kindle devices, I got the Boox Go 6 gen1 in July of 2025. This is a fine device, but it can get cripplingly slow due to only 2G RAM. However, thanks mostly to the fantastic #koreader but also to OLauncher, disabling Google sync, 2 day power-off timeout, the #boox is now snappy!

For @obsidian.md on my iPhone, I had unison + fsmonitor running between gdrive and icloud on macbook for a few months. Worked well, except that macbook needs to be up. Decided to get an Obsidian Sync subscription a few weeks ago. Works fantastically, thanks @stephango.com you and team are amazing ❤️

Obsidian 1.13 is now available to everyone on desktop and mobile! - Added search and keyboard navigation to settings - Images are easier to resize and zoom - iOS share sheet lets you save content from other apps without opening Obsidian - Many bug fixes and performance improvements

A study reveals how blind and low-vision users use agentic programming to create personalized assistive technologies, producing 37 bespoke tools to address unmet needs. This approach democratizes technology creation and empowers users to envision tailored solutions. https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.21760

Today during our meeting walk to the beach, @enginerd.co.za and I ran into a Cape dune mole-rat! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_du...

"How We Built Our Knowledge Base" - fascinating post by Cerebras www.cerebras.ai/blog/how-we-...

This is really very exciting, an **open weights** model at this size (2.8T) that scores 57 on Artificial Analysis's combined intelligence index. Congratulations MoonshotAI with the release of #Kimi #K3 and... WHOOOHOOOO!

saberzero1.github.io/motions/ super happy to see this, will try out ASAP and report back! #obsidian #vim

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC... "... health-conscious population, moderate egg consumption was associated with a significantly lower risk of Alzheimer's disease. These findings suggest a potential neuroprotective benefit of nutrients found in eggs when consumed as part of a balanced diet."

Dan Luu is one of my favourite current practitioners of the scientific method in software and tech. His pieces are often built on a core of measurements and experiments, a form I really enjoy!

The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. -- Plutarch

Based on what I'm saying with GLM 5.2 implementation inside DwarfStar, there is 90% of probability I'll merge the branch I'm developing. Right now it is probably the best model available to run on a 512GB Mac Studio system.

Had to check after a lovely Father’s Day lunch with tiramisu dessert: Can boozy food take you over the limit? I used tiramisu, trifle and a Breathalyser to find out www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle... @theguardian.com

Look, I really love #databricks but I'm finding it hard to deal with the fact that they shipped Lakebase apparently without the ability to control which workspace users can or can't create 💰-guzzling Lakebase compute instances! community.databricks.com/t5/lakebase-... #dataengineering

Muve to the beat. Muve the conversation. Muve mountains. Today @eurosky.social announces mu.social, a new microblogging app to experiment with the future of social! 🪩💖

#TIL: the word "doofer" in British #English. (Covered by Simon Pegg and Henry Cavill in one of those fun YouTube segments) - basically a "thingamajig". I'm definitely going to start using that down here! www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/e...

As long as you live, keep learning how to live. -- Seneca (when you live past the half-century mark, this reminder is most welcome)

Download and read the new open access Databricks handbook "Databricks Data Intelligence Platform: Powering the Agentic Era" as PDF or epub! link.springer.com/book/10.1007... #dataengineering #databricks

Now I too have a #blog with #bluesky comments! charlbotha.com/2026/06/14/b...