Automating the Pointless Argument: a short story about fake news, public discourse and structured data

Lucy’s performance review wasn’t going well. “I appreciate you’ve done some quality work this year. That latest batch of medical research updates for example. Must’ve been hella difficult to decide what is and isn’t true for the media and the public, you sure did a good job. But…” There was always a “But”. “TruFact’s workload …

Could an auto logic checker be the solution to the fake news problem?

I got interested in Wikidata and wrote an article about it for The Conversation. Don't read too much into the 'fake news' angle, which is there because it's a current trend. I think this sort of tech has the potential to change how we discuss things with one another on a much deeper level.

Learning quantum mechanics the easy way

I wrote a browser game called Quantum Marble Maze, and this post is about it.  If you haven't played the game, you might want to do so before reading further.  Or you might like to read this first: up to you. It all started with an unfortunate injury.  Sliding down a chute of glacial meltwater …

Data mining for the taboo: searching for what isn’t there

"there are [...] unknown unknowns – the ones we don't know we don't know" (not originally Donald Rumsfeld) "the main dangers lie in the 'unknown knowns' —the disavowed beliefs [...] we pretend not to know about" (Slavoj Žižek) Most search engines try to find text that exists, but what about searching for text that doesn't? Lest someone …