iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 1h

The "play minecraft" thing with America.gov is weird in part because today Google bragged about Gemini powering it, but if you ask Gemini itself to play minecraft, it gives you a decidedly unweird answer.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 1h

Even if AI music becomes "good" somehow, I can't imagine many people at all will actually want to listen to it. www.aaronrosspowell.com/3mhyoj4qqr22p

aaronrosspowell.com

Who Is AI Music For?

Google's music-making AI makes songs. I just can't figure out why anyone would listen to them.

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Craig Johnson @cajohnson-craig.bsky.social · 2h

these people think that culture is a product individuals stare at culture is a shared phenomenon! people watch shows because their friends are watching the shows! that has gotten more fragmented in the last few decades, but i don't think we'll end up in a fully bespoke AI landscape

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 12h

look, if you're worried about being remembered, don't try to pursue immortality or whatever, the smart move is to start selling substandard copper and then make sure anyone who complains deposits a physical copy of that complaint in a site that will later be archaeologically significant

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 4h

If you're in DC, you should go to this. (There's a link to register in the first reply.) I can't make it, so my colleague Michael Brodrick is hosting the conversation, but @uncanonical.net and I recently talked with Berkowitz for my other show, and he was great, and his book an important one.

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Thomas Zimmer @thomaszimmer.bsky.social · 4h

MAGA is ideologically and psycho-politically incapable of moderating. It is a hysterical movement that exists in a constant state of imagined emergency. There is no room for compromise or restraint. Every crisis, every defeat only heightens their sense of being under siege.

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 5h

I read this relationship not as proceeding from real facts about the economy, but as a sign that trads have been susceptible to the nostalgic but empirically quite shaky critique of global liberalization as having put an end to some golden age of male breadwinning.

cosm.aei.org

Young Men’s Earnings over the Long Run – An Update

Let me start with the chart: Median pre-tax earnings of men ages 25-29 rose 24...

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Walter Olson @walterolson.bsky.social · 5h

"We find a significant and highly robust empirical relationship between gender conservatism and protectionism," since 2008, extending across parties and sexes and "robust to the inclusion of controls meant to isolate gender conservatism from other expressions of conservatism."

cambridge.org

Gender-Role Traditionalism and Opposition to Trade in the United States | PS: Political Science & Politics | Cambridge Core

Gender-Role Traditionalism and Opposition to Trade in the United States

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 6h

Can I just say "All of STP's Purple except Pretty Penny?"

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Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 16h

I believe fraternity hazing and military hazing and sports team hazing where men abuse each other is acclimating them into a broader culture of abuse where they will then believe it is their right to abuse other more vulnerable people. It’s so insidious. And that’s also why I think men defend it

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 8h

This is not the rebuttal you imagine it to be, but instead just a restatement of my point.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 8h

That's not the argument he's making.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 8h

I'm struck by how people keep making arguments against AI that are also arguments against, e.g., hiring a plumber or paying a mechanic to fix your car or using GPS to navigate across town.

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brendan @schlage.town · 21h

ha I feel this with @leaflet.pub as well! quick to get a fun doc editor / blog app; *big* lift to get close to google docs / substack parity …but on the flip side now we *are* close, for docs *and* blogging…which feels great! big shout out to @roomy.space for making so much progress here 🙌

meri.leaflet.pub

(Re)building Roomy in 6 months

A recap on my engineering and design process

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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 11h

This is the state of the subfield of ethics in analytic philosophy.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 11h

Moe's Books in Berkeley is pretty great.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

Now I want a 2028 presidential ticket of Eric Schmitt and Naomi Wolf

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

I think this "you dream of labor" argument, common among some corners of leftism, is based on a confusion/conflating/equivocation between "labor" and "work." www.aaronrosspowell.com/3mrvmcx2gek2j

aaronrosspowell.com

Distinguishing Labor from Work

We should get rid of the former, if we can, but we should absolutely keep the latter.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

I'm sure Jerry Bruckheimer can come up with a plan.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

That's where I'll need modern science to provide me with a solution.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

No, everyone would just adjust their sleep schedules to the time zone instead of the sun. Indexed on my home time zone being where the sun is overhead at noon, of course.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

Jet lag is dumb and there should be a single global time zone so I don't have to deal with it.

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BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I would like media that only ever reinforces my ideological perceptions in the most tediously didactic way possible rather than seeking to either entertain or challenge me, and will pass this off as insightful criticism.

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Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

a lot of people genuinely seem to think the point of fiction is to be didactic about their specific ideological worldview instead of telling a story which is fine, but not really something that mass market publishing works on

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ae @aelkus.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

similarly, the most proximate cause of antisocial abuse on the Internet is the failure to punish antisocial abuse on the Internet, rather than any assumptions we make about the people doing the abusing bsky.app/profile/them...

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dame @dame.is · 28/09/2026

"their material conditions & lack of power caused them to send a death threat to a random stranger on the internet" that sounds smart and insightful but it's actually dumb and entirely speculative

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Kate Sills @katelynsills.com · 29/09/2026

Neither Conor nor Chris Rufo have anything to do with rationalists or post-rats as far as I know, but this is a pretty good example of the type of dynamic I'm talking about. Rationalist circles are full of Conor types who I genuinely believe are fundamentally incapable of keeping track of bad people

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

Yes, but I don't want to spend my one uninterrupted day in Munich heading to get socks.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 29/09/2026

Checked my bag to Munich, made it through security, am comfortably waiting at the gate to depart, and I'm quite certain now that I forgot to pack socks.

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Jacob Grier @jacobgrier.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Delighted that my article makes a cameo in this claim that @liberalism.org is a conservative op. Yep, that's exactly why I left DC think tanks to spend nearly the past two decades in Portland, Oregon. Playing the long game.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

I'm pretty sure the guy just saw tobacco in the title and thought he knew plenty to opine from there.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

This whole thread, if you know anything about me, is very funny.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

I have clear memories of my dad reading LotR out loud to my brother and me when we were kids and just going all in on the songs and a Tom Bombadil voice, and me being at precisely the right age where this was the most cringeworthy embarrassing thing ever, and which I'm sure was dad's intention.

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Noah Berlatsky @nberlat.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

if trump thought he'd rigged the midterms, he'd be saying things like, "we have rigged the midterms" because he pretty much can't shut up about it when he thinks he's done something clever.

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Mom for Gliberty @fakegreekgrill.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I've never even met a person that doesn't think the rise in identification was caused by the social influence of stigma decreasing over time. The disagreement is over whether the "ideal rate" is whatever happens with no social stigma, or whether Trumpian bigotry was required for some reason.

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Paul Gowder @gowder.io · 28/09/2026

Seriously though WHY. Meta isn't the VERY last company that I would trust to touch any serious aspect of my life, but that's only because Palantir exists.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

Taken seriously, what you've mounted is an argument for full service everywhere at reductio levels. So not pumping your own gas, not pushing your own shopping cart, not putting a ticket into the machine at a parking garage, etc. Lots of things you don't pay for someone's labor for that you could.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

10% off is huge. So (1) it would mean grocery stores selling at a lost and (2) it's large enough that effectively everyone will take the option of self-scan. The result will be closing self-scans and grocery prices going up to reflect the increased cost of labor.

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 28/09/2026

It really gives the game away when the anti trans orgs are calling the election of the neo nazi party in Germany a "glimmer of hope."

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

Grocery profit margins are razor thin. This policy will lead to an increase in grocery prices. Maybe people are okay with that to keep a particular kind of job around, but we should be clear that this is asking customers to pay more for their family's food to subsidize one small labor sector.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

Just as I'm going on the road for 10 days. So I have to bear the frustration of waiting.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

Today on the show, @aselrod.bsky.social joined @uncanonical.net and me for a conversation about dirtbagism and how to do better.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

Though I don't know what "Shaped who I am" really means, so I just went with my favorite nine games.

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Aaron Ross Powell @aaronrosspowell.com · 28/09/2026

Well this is sure to turn Malik Nabers around on my fantasy team.

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