iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Use powers of two when your algorithm depends on it. Use powers of ten for everything else, including measurements of bulk data.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The quip is funny and fair, but it is a fascinating book nonetheless, even if some (but only some) of the more bizarre experimental paradoxes are now better known via Kahnemann.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Why has no supervillain ever threatened to crush (slowly of course) our plucky librarian hero between rolling stacks, only for the tables to turned with a lame pun flourish such as "now that's what I call a final chapter"? I'd watch that movie.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Kids, don't forget your sunscreen! That's it, you gotta really slather on a two-inch layer of tungsten cream.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s heartbreaking how often life seems to throw new obstacles in the way of your family just getting on with an ordinary day. I feel for you man.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Gervais nailed it in Extras when he had Winslet playing herself acting in a Nazi movie “just for the Oscar”. Later, emceeing the award ceremony where she won a gong for The Reader, he got to crow “see, I told you!”

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Orange monsters: the cause of, and solution to our problems.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

10,000 hours now feels like only 6,854 hands. The ceiling can easily hold that.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Substitute “improve the speed of builds” and it’s the same story!

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

What process of selection is he referring to?

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

You responded to my ignorance very diplomatically. :) I was only loosely relating the two notions of acceleration, but, as you say, not really the same.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

IIRC Pinker makes a similar argument in the Language Instinct: rather than brain evolution having slowed as society filed off the roughest edges of Darwinism, it has accelerated because of the increased rewards of navigating ever more complex society.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I was very drunk when I wrote that book.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Or by a prerecorded message during a phone call to customer service. A real apology is a commitment to do better, whereas recording the word “sorry” is essentially a commitment to disappoint.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Now you need some cat-6 cable—unless you’re planning for fiber everywhere.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

So Trump is King America before Christ. That‘s not entirely wrong.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

@vermontgmg.bsky.social I agree with your AI piece. IMHO the main reason AI is useful in software is that the entire loop—define success, experiment, evaluate, iterate—takes place in a computer, so it is fast and lowish-risk, but in medical/legal work a mistake may cost you your client and license.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

By the time you get to Andover this will seem acceptable.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

It’s the same critique I have of LLMs for software engineering: the real product is insight; the code is just a residue. For throwaway work where only results matter, LLMs are useful, but for serious work they often delay the acquisition of understanding without making the need for it go away.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Read Nicholson Baker’s thrilling “Double Fold” to find out! (No. The answer is no—at least for periodicals transferred to microfiche.)

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Oh, Spelling Bee: no TROUBADOR nor RUBATO, but BURRO? This is supposed to be the New York Times, not the Sonoran Agricultural Digest. Come on.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Only in the US does someone with 2 more years in office get called a lame duck. I suspect it’s a testament to how absurdly drawn out election campaigns are here. Elsewhere and historically it referred only the finals weeks after having lost an election.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Welcome to my subway commute!

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Sitcom idea: Nurse Coach/Coach Nurse. A husband and wife team: he gives first aid to sport advisers, and she trains frontline medical staff through hard days. Hilarity ensues.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

If he was really bating you he would have mentioned the Dark Ages!

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

They’re like bored teenage boys.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Then you'll love Hugh Laurie's delta bluesman voice in St James Infirmary (enters at 3m45)--the very same Hugh Laurie as in Blackadder the Third. A many of many talents--he even pronounces his R's now. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzDV...

youtube.com

Hugh Laurie - St. James Infirmary

YouTube video by Emil Bah

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

I assume that's Little Sister on the right.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Maybe eventually, but I’m still not seeing that standard out of Jetski. I probably owe it to myself to try Claude on the weekend.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Maybe I’m using (Google mandate) the wrong agent tools, but my overwhelming feeling is the quantity of slop will be the high order bit overall.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

It seems to me this could go either. It's about the ratio of benefit to attacker vs. defender. I can use power tools to reinforce my house but you can use power tools to drill into it. It may just come down to the relative patience, skill, and resources of the two parties--just like before.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

If Tesla can make a fortune on self-crashing cars, why not a self-quacking doctor?

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

I agree, but why is a pile of meat conscious? Or any matter at all? Physics doesn't even have the beginning of idea. It's the deepest mystery there is, besides existence itself.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

My read of those charts is that, in AI economics, we have absolutely no idea what will happen a century from now. I think one could make the much stronger claim that we really have no idea what will happen even 5 years from now.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

If only we had a word for someone who makes Graham jokes!

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Most Americans have home AC already, so heatstroke is a smaller political issue here and rarely a danger for “rich voters”; it’s the least well-off that suffer.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Or, you know, we elect enlightened governments that plan and subsidize widespread installation of insulation and solar-powered AC. I know these are dark times but the problem is not unsolvable.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

TIL that two Norwegian Americans in 1896 were in fact the first to row the Atlantic, in a tiny (18’) open boat. Without supplies they had to beg passing ships. Insane! bsky.app/profile/dexe...

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

“In this case ME!” Trump’s register is always 95% deranged despot and 5% pathetically insecure child.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Fundamentally, the proto-English cared more about interior decor than family gatherings.

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

The pen may be mightier than the sword, but the pencil is the more formidable weapon for non-metaphorical combat. Ouch. Feel better!

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

My hasty saccadic brain misread as ”death ray” and I was already on my way to Wikipedia’s article for “gamma spiral“ before I thought wait a second…

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Alan Donovan @adonovan.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

It did take 30 years for stock prices to recover after the Wall Street Crash, and it’s in character for Trump to care only about the view from where the billionaires stand.

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