Being homesick for a place that doesn’t always know what to do with you is a strange experience. I’ll probably write about that more someday. For now, some thoughts on Hoosiers, curiosity, and the silly business of being alive.
jordanthayer.com/on-being-a-h...
I tried explaining the concept of school resource officers and 'lock down' drills that are just active shooter exercises to the other academics in my lab last week.
Holy shit, I'm the proverbial boiled frog. As angry as I am about US gun laws, their shock and disbelief at our reality was jarring.
I caught a snowflake on my tongue this morning.
The tech industry has problems with consent, and AI boosters more pointedly so?
Nothing makes you feel like an academic quite like sudo apt install texlive-full
Julmust is pretty good. I lack the words to describe its taste effectively. It's sweet, but not like cola.
Also, as an enjoyer of regional sodas, my new home having a seasonal drink that's effectively part of the national identity is awfully nice. They really know how to make a gal feel welcomed.
Happiness is a warm paper. Fresh off the printer.
It's weird. I revisit each of these about once a year, or every other year. Each one reminds me of some significant time in my life, or major life experience or super important person.
The games, of course, are great on their own, but the nostalgia isn't strictly speaking for the game.
Lunchbox, derogatory, remains an all time great (ab)use of the English language. It is the perfect mixture of legible and nonsensical.
I left my house for the last time this morning. There are many things I could say about that, but here's the big one:
Every time I feel panicked, or like I've made a huge mistake, I just take five minutes to read the news. I still feel mildly panicked of course, but boy howdy, not about leaving.
I'm sure there's a STRIPS search joke in there somewhere, but I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.
After ~10 years in industry, I'm returning to academia as a postdoc at Linköping University. Back to heuristic search algorithms—including how LLMs can provide search guidance or help define domains.
Really looking forward to returning to teaching and fundamental research.
And additional thanks to @techbash.bsky.social for putting on such a lovely conference. There are still a few days left, and I'm really looking forward to the remaining talks.
Thanks to everyone that attended my AI workshop yesterday. I really appreciated the questions and discussion.
This is absolutely fucking delightful and I need to share it with the handful of people who will get it.
It's Jordan, dressed up like Pam Poovey from Archer. She's standing in front of a mirror taking a selfie so you can see that the bun in the back is all done up. Jordan has a small dolphin puppet on with the mouth open, is wearing a pearl necklace and earrings, and has a black shirt and cardigan on.
Happy Halloween everyone.
A brief reminder as our current hellscape careens off the fiscal cliff:
If you see someone stealing food, no you didn't. Couldn't have possibly been what you saw. This is America, the land of plenty. Who would need to steal food in one of the richest nations on Earth?
a trans girl in vermont was kicked off her swimming team and committed suicide and at the very same time, the discourse in d.c. today is about whether the democratic party should’ve abandoned her sooner in order to win votes
a day in an american life
Jordan poses in her new apron. It is a blue denim looking apron with an owl in white piping on the front. The owl has a ladel and a chef's hat. The text "Cookoff Champion" is centered beneath the owl.
Won the office chili cookoff. Guess it's time to enter my tradwife grifting era.
Somehow not how I remember Bubble Bobble...
An image advertising a talk at TechBash 2025. Jordan Thayer will be speaking on "Off the Shelf AI" starting at 9:00am on Tuesday the 4th of November, 2025. The event is held in Mount Pocono Pennsylvania.
Hey, good news, I'll be giving a tutorial on off the shelf AI tools (the non-generative stuff) at @techbash.bsky.social this year. We'll talk about machine learning, optimization, planning systems, and a little SAT solving. Looking forward to seeing some of you there!
The cover art for a laser disc game titled "Thayer's Quest". It has a man with brownish orange hair in a bob, wearing a tunic, with his back to the viewer. He stares off into the distance at a desert and a decaying tree.
From now on, whenever I embark on something particularly amazing or silly, this is how I will be referring to it.
Agentic coding tools (and LLMs more broadly) have all the energy of an undergrad who is more interested in a passing grade than actually correct systems or mastery of the underlying concepts, and I am sick to death of pretending that's not the case.
Thanks to everyone who attended @kcdc.bsky.social and a special thanks to the folks that put it on. That quality of conference is a huge amount of labor, and it was an amazing event.
If I didn't see you there this year, here's hoping I see you there next year!
I'm speaking at KCDC! AI for highway Maintenance Thursday, August 14, 2025 at 1:15 pm Presented by Jordan Thayer
Just a couple more days. I'm driving out tomorrow, but my talk about highway maintenance will have to wait until Thursday. In the interim, I'll be speaking about data structures and Big O notation and wandering around the hallway track. Please come say hello!
I'm speaking at KCDC! Data structures crash course Wednesday, August 13, 2025, 8:00 am Jordan Thayer August 13 - 15 KCDC 2025
I suppose I should use the little title card generators they gave me too. I'll be giving that Data Structures talk on Wednesday. I'm really excited about it. Still can't believe it gets accepted, so quick, before they realize their mistakes.
In a week I'll be out @kcdc.bsky.social. I'm giving a workshop on data structures and a talk on how AI planning approaches can be used to plan for highway maintenance. There's a big slate of content I'm really excited for. You can get tickets here: www.kcdc.info/tickets
Hope to see you there!
In less contentious and depressing conversations, I gave an internal talk on how I use LLMs for the work I do that's not writing source code, like blogging, presentations, and planning how to work events: youtu.be/e5wCxM8zA60?...
I took some time out of writing about AI in our industry to write about marginalization. It's got a super uplifting title, but I promise it's not just venting or bitching. It's an anectdote laden discussion of being othered and advice on how to avoid that.
jordanthayer.com/every-day-br...
So, I also got rolled up in this. I have a fantasy novel and a set of open letters about the trans experience published under a pen name that are no longer discoverable.
Many of the things delisted here weren't anywhere near pornographic, they were just queer or discussed heavy topics.
