TARA Round 1, 2026 — Last call: 9 Spots Remaining 𝗪𝗲'𝘃𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗱 ~𝟳𝟱 𝗽𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗶𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘀 across 6 APAC cities for TARA's first round this year. Applications were meant to close in January, but we have room for 9 more people in select cities. 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝗰𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Manila, Tokyo & Singapore 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗱: → Apply by March 1 (AOE) → Attend the March 7 icebreaker → Week 1 begins March 14 TARA is a 14-week, part-time technical AI safety program delivering the ARENA curriculum through weekly Saturday sessions. It's designed for people who can't relocate or pause their careers for full-time programs. Apply here: https://www.taraprogram.org/

Me: "Well at least this study shows no association beteween painted houses and kids' blood lead levels. That's encouraging!" Wife: "Nothing you have said this morning is encouraging NIck. Everything that I've heard tells me that our pots, our containers and half of our hut are slowly poisoning our baby" Yikes touche... (Context we live in Northern Uganda) Thanks @Lead Research for Action (LeRA) for this unsettling but excellently written report. Our house is full of aluminium pots and green plastic food containers. Now to figure out what to do about it! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pqRUeejiRCX2bXekeZnL0zGi34zbK23w/view

This is more of a note for myself that I felt might resonate/help some other folks here... For Better Thinking, Consider Doing Less I am, like I believe many EAs are, a kind of obsessive, A-type, "high-achieving" person with 27 projects and 18 lines of thought on the go. My default position is usually "work very very hard to solve the problem." And yet, some of my best, clearest thinking consistently comes when I back off and allow my brain far more space and downtime than feels comfortable, and I am yet again being reminded of that over the past couple of (deliberately quieter) weeks. So, yeah, just a thought, but if you're feeling like you're banging your head up against a problem, maybe (counter-intuitively) consider doing way less to solve it for a while

On alternative proteins: I think the EA community could aim to figure out how to turn animal farmers into winners if we succeed with alternative proteins. This seems to be one of the largest social risks, and it's probably something we should figure out before we scale alternative proteins a lot. Farmers are typically a small group but have a large lobby ability and public sympathy.

alignment is a conversation between developers and the broader field. all domains are conversations between decision-makers and everyone else: “here are important considerations you might not have been taking into account. here is a normative prescription for you.” “thanks — i had been considering that to 𝜀 extent. i will {implement it because x / not implement it because y / implement z instead}." these are the two roles i perceive. how does one train oneself to be the best at either? sometimes, conversations at eag center around ‘how to get a job’, whereas i feel they ought to center around ‘how to make oneself significantly better than the second-best candidate’.