Archive for the Travel Category
Château La Coste [jatp]
Posted in Kids, pictures, Travel, Wines with tags Ai Weiwei, Aix-en-Provence, Bob Dylan, Cabernet, Chardonnay, Château La Coste, clair obscur, contemporary art, Coteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, French wines, jatp, Languedoc wines, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, organic wine, Provence, sauvignon, Syrah, Vermentino, Yoko Ono on September 20, 2026 by xi'an
[Split] Frontiers in Statistical Machine Learning [reposted]
Posted in pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags AISTATS, Croatia, deep learning, generative models, ICLR, ICML, ICSDS 2026, JMLR, NeurIPS, satellite workshop, Split, Statistical frontiers, statistical machine learning, TMLR, UAI on September 19, 2026 by xi'an
In connection with the IMS conference ICSDS 2026, an IMS Frontiers in Statistical Machine Learning (FSML) satellite workshop takes place on Monday, December 14, 2026 (also) in Split, Croatia, the day before the main conference.
This year’s themes are generative and foundation models for statistics, and the science of deep learning. The keynote speakers are Yuxin Chen, Alexander Henzi, Andrej Risteski, Pragya Sur, Yan Shuo Tan, and Yuexi Wang.
There are two ways to present a poster, both non-archival:
– Workshop Track: short papers of 3 to 5 pages, work in progress welcome. Ten US$500 travel awards for students and postdocs.
– Fast Track: papers already accepted at NeurIPS, ICLR, AISTATS, ICML, UAI, JMLR, or TMLR since August 2025. No additional review.
The deadline for both tracks is Monday, October 19
FSML 2026 organizers are:
Yuansi Chen, ETH Zurich
Sophie Langer, Ruhr University Bochum
Feng Liu, University of Melbourne
Xinwei Shen, University of Washington
Susan Wei, Monash University
a journal of the plague, &tc, year
Posted in Books, Travel, Wines with tags BD, Black Plague, book reviews, bullying, campus violence, COVID-19, Daniel Defoe, drug trafficking, fantasy, gambling, Hugo Awards, John Scalzi, Journal of the Plague Year, Korea education system, Korea TV series, magic, paladins, South Korea, suyeongsaeng, teacher burnout, world building on September 18, 2026 by xi'an
From the Hugo Award package (leftover), I read the fifth and sixth volumes in John Scalzi’s Old Man War, namely The Human Division, and The End of All Things, the former a rather loose collection of short stories, and the later not even pretending. Efficient writing but nothing exciting. (Still part of his Hugo Award 2026 for series!) In the plane to Tokyo, I finished a new Kingfisher novel, Swordheart, set in the same universe as the Paladin series, which is similarly efficient but overly delayed by witty exchanges (in the least appropriate situations) and endless inner thoughts about romantic feelings! I also read a French BD, Tourner la page by Zep, whose drawings of Greek islands are nice but whose thriller scenario is rather conventional and predictable.
Watched at high speeds the Korean TV series Teach you a lesson (참교육), which addresses the woes of the Korean education system (bullying, teacher burnout, campus violence, gambling, gang links, teachers’ corruption, parents’ harassment, drug trafficking, suyeongsaeng) but is deeply flawed in supporting violent interaction with and generally extra-legal actions against delinquent high school students.
お山は晴天 [not!]
Posted in Mountains, Travel with tags birthday, bullet climb, dormitory, Fuji-san, Fuji-Subaru Line 5th Station, hiking, hostel, Japan, logistics, The Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, typhoon, volcano, weather, Yoshida trail on September 17, 2026 by xi'an
As a follow-up to the Akaike lecture, I was hoping to summit Fuji-san for my 65th B’day but it did not work out, thanks to a rain storm (remnant of a typhoon) keeping Fuji-san out of reach that day (and even blocking the access road for a few hours by causing a landslide). The warden were strongly discouraging all entries including mine’s, with reasonable arguments (that mountain rescue would be unavailable). I thus only experienced the less appealing aspects of Fuji’rism, from the predictable, gaudy souvenir shops at the stations, to some Western summiteers walking (and loudly talking) like decorated war heroes, to the crowded buses to access or leave the 5th station—I got stuck next to two French speaking Swiss boasting of their hike and travel experiences in Japan, entitled, obnoxious, and entirely oblivious to the fact that they were the loudest people on the bus!, to the noisy hostel where it seemed a group was departing every half-hour of the short night (even though in the end only four people got access to the trail and ended up turning back). With no glimpse of Fuji-san the entire stay. The title is a traditional sentence hoping for a clear day when summiting Fuji-san.
Nature tidbits [20 Aug 2026]
Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags book review, borders, bullying, China academia, climate change, data analysis, Elon Musk, Erasmus, EU, Europe, exoskeleton, flood, Fuji-san, global warming, healthcare, human genome, Middle East, MMR vaccine, Nature, NUTS, ocean surface temperature, p-value, Pakistan, QED Science, sustainability, sustainable aviation fuel, The Economist, Trump 2.0, US Senate on September 16, 2026 by xi'anIn this 20 August edition, a wealth of data analysis papers, with many highly informative graphs. A call for China to better balance recognition for its junior scientists, another call for (US?) universities to treat bullying complaints in-depth rather than as a public relation exercise. The “compulsory” current status of the Trump 2.0 wreckage of US science with the Senate blocking the appointment of politicians for grant reviews. And with the absurd, ungrounded, health threatening split of the MMR vaccine. 
Another “compulsory” entry on climate change with a scary graph on the ocean surface temperatures rising way way above the confidence band represented by the previous measurements over 50 years. An interview (why?) of a CEO of the startup QED Science that claims an ability to automatically rank preprints and select the top 1% (why?!). Coïnciding with me receiving an email with a review by Claude of our Bayesian Adversarial Privacy paper! A report on the (defunct Starmer) UK Government cutting on fundamental physics projects. An article featuring the predicted rise in the use of exoskeletons, which I read on my way back from the lodge on Mount Fudji that was renting an exoskeleton to help with the climb! With an optimistic view on the consequences on people’s health and muscles. A short book review on Slobodian’s and Tarnoff’s Muskism, concluding that Musk(ism) lacks a coherent philosophy. (A Musk-read according to the Economist!) A long comment on the sleepless summer of the heatwaves, which led me clearly more tired than usual at the end of the summer break. (With a lot of should. And a focus on methodology.) Another one on the Middle East prospects as a sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) hub, which sounds paradoxical in the current geopolitic situation. It made me wonder how sustainable are these SAFs? True, they recycle oils, gases and biomass, rather than extracting “new” oils, but they still pollute the air. And, true, they can fill empty returning tankers, but they divert investment and research from more renewable and less polluting alternatives. Among the actual scientific articles, a long review on the safety and security of LLMs in healthcare (but useless pictures). 
One on the massive floods that occurred in Europe in 1342-1343, possibly caused by volcanic eruptions plus Arctic sea ice retreat, nothing that could occur today of course! With massive socio-economic consequences. (And a great graph, except I do not see the point for the 2D projections. Or for modern state borders.) 
An analysis of intergenerational mobility in Europe with the unsurprising conclusion that it impacts innovation. (Go, Erasmus!) With a multivariate regression I did not investigate (using NUTS but not Andrew’s NUTS!). And graphs of intergenerational mobility per European country, with too many colours to be readable (and the regression line to make sense?). Another data analysis of the Pakistan Genome Resource, with distinctive traits of the many ethnicities of Pakistan. And the discovery of many clinically relevant genes (with a massive avalanche of p-values!).
