Paul Natsuo Kishimoto

This website, and my e-mail and other associated services, are now also available via a new domain: paul.kishimoto.eu.

Over the last year and a half, I've watched with growing horror as “vibe coding” and similar practices have grown from niche to widespread, especially within Free Software communities.

At the request of the IIASA Early Career Researchers (ECR) group and Capacity Development and Academic Training (CDAT) unit, I prepared and gave a 90 minute tutorial on “Moderation, facilitation, and public speaking”.

Last year I was fortunate to get to work with a new team of co-authors on a paper titled “Quantifying minimum mobility needs: the Who, the Where, and the Why.”

A parable Imagine you make a new acquaintance through friends, and through a brief conversation learn that the other person shares your love of food and cooking.

A talk given at the 2021 meeting of the International Symposium for Sustainble Systems and Technology.

This post expands on some text from the README of iam-units, in order to illustrate some improved ways to structure data and metadata.

In research with global scope and country- or country-group resolution, it's common to handle data with one or more [1] dimension(s) identifying a country (countries) for each observation.

Family and friends in Canada and the United States have asked about my situation here in Vienna during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a Technology & Policy Program student, you need to prepare a research thesis for your S.M.; if you're in another MIT graduate program, you will likely also need to prepare a thesis or academic publication at some point during your degree!

Bloomberg reports: Xin Guobin, the vice minister of industry and information technology [MIIT], said the government is working with other regulators on a timetable to end production and sales [of fossil-fuel powered vehicles].

I use LaTeX for my academic work.

Source: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (2006), via Imgur 1, 2.

I often feel that I spend too much time engaged in online political discussion.

Cansplain (v): (not to be confused with mansplain) to nicely explain something about the United States, to Canadians; vice versa.

Echoing Robert Stavins, I have only a narrow area of expertise,1 and it does not include political science.

My American friends, and friends in America, Think about your neighbours—women, the poor, immigrants, Muslims, Latinos, queers, trans people, and others.

Pokémon GO is sweeping the world, and generating a lot of interesting headlines.

"Salvation or Menace" by Chris Turner in The Walrus This is all definitely cause for optimism, especially the degree of agreement among panelists.

I view my teaching as a process of continual development, in which I seek to become more able to create authentic experiences for my students; respond flexibly to their needs; judiciously incorporate new technology, techniques and research; and convey to…

Following the good advice of an instructor from last term, I am resolving for 2015 to write for 15 minutes every day!

Reviewed:1 Erik Brynjolfsson & Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, W.W.

Reviewed:1 Duncan Watts, Everything Is Obvious (Once You Know The Answer), Crown Business, New York, 2011.

Source: Feng Li/Getty Images, via The Atlantic) The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

One of the ways terrorism works—yes—is by provoking a reflexive reaction whereby the targets, out of terror or anger, compromise their values.

I am in Beijing, China from 22 February to 15 July this year (with some side-trips) to do research.

Ms Adams, Ms Chow; I grew up in Mississauga, living and voting in Ms Adams' riding; for seven years while attending the University of Toronto, I lived in Ms Chow's.

Source: MarlaYuriko.

[Posting again after yet another year-long hiatus, some site updates, a new comment system, etc.]

Earlier today I made the case that "The Government of Canada" shouldn't be renamed on whim or even deliberately, and using "Canada's New Government" (technically correct in a very narrow sense) or "Harper Government" (mirrors vulgar usage, but inappropria…

In case you hadn't noticed, I am writing a series of daily posts on ~36 reasons to not vote Conservative this Election Day.

Twice is coincidence—thrice, a trend!

Who?

Shiny, innit?

By now you've heard that the next federal election will be on Monday, May 2.

This is the first entry in what will be a regular feature on life in Boston—including Cambridge & MIT—mainly aimed at family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, etc.

Getting Things GNOME!

Recently I have been working on two things related to achieving a client-server separation in Getting Things GNOME!

Some thoughts on the occasion of the G20 summit in Toronto.

My fourth Getting Things GNOME!

DBus is great, and so is Python—each for their own reasons.

The third week of my Summer of Code project (separating client and server parts of Getting Things GNOME!)

Following on my last week's work mapping the Getting Things GNOME!

Hello, Planet GNOME!

Recently several people have expressed frustration, within hearing range, over infuriating actions of large companies.

I have almost finished reading the brilliant book Beyond Growth by the economist Herman Daly.

I stumbled across a short but fascinating work by the 19th-century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer called variously the The Art of Controversy or The Art of Being Right.

Some time ago I stumbled across the following: Whoops, no Flash?

To avoid the taint of modernity, I'll lie and say that a friend once remarked, apropos of nothing, "'Welcome' mat in an empty field."

At the risk of stating the obvious, democratic government is unlike running a business in a number of important ways.