iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/09/2026

This is literally your most recent post. I’m not a hater but your argument is internally incoherent to a degree you need to grapple with before logging on

don't think you know what a token is. Tokens are the model's output. Tokens are the logs.
The method vou use to direct the tokens

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 16/09/2026

when you have definitely not read the room

screenshot of an email from redacted: "hey the lab, we're doing a two day hackathon [redacted] it's september 27th/28th, trying to secure a venue ASAP. last two were tokyo [redacted] and mumai [redacted] down to talk? nick"

me: "absolutely not"

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 18/07/2026

As Miles Davis once said, the best gifts are the ones you don’t give (dm me if I know you and I’ll send you the address)

Invitation to my birthday with my address blacked out.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 08/07/2026

Wow this Marianne Amacher book from Blank Forms is pretty incredible as an archival document / artist book. (“Intelligent Life”)

[typewriter sheet with the following text:]

TY CHOLINE is very pleased with his most recent
script - REINDEER EARS!
He is able to HEAR as a
REINDEER HEARS. He's just finished simulating the intricate parameters shaping the REINDEER'S auditory neuroanatomy. He LISTENS to Bach now as a REINDEER. The BIO-MUSIC script is ready to be played on the Home Consoles - to "play" the music of Bach, Mozart, Blondie, whatever music or sound is selected, or spontaneously created, as a REINDEER would HEAR it.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 03/06/2026

bro you know you can drive to modesto

a questionnaire:
Should California continue with high-speed rail? If so, what route or scope would you support?
Matt Mahan:
It shouldn’t cost more to get to Modesto than it does to get to the Moon.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 03/05/2026

Get in losers we’re going to the pre raphealite cake truck

Mobile cake truck with crazy paintings of flowers and renaissance people in it

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 08/04/2026

Ah yes, you found him, Satoshi; the only person who wrote his thesis using C++

And Mr. Back's thesis project focused on
C++ — the same programming language Satoshi used to code the first version of the
Bitcoin software.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 27/03/2026

today in AI splam (slop + spam): many leaders at experimental art venues struggle with client acquisition

hi Andrew, many leaders at experimental art venues struggle with client acquisition, especially in Q1.

This may be a forward question, but is The Lab, San Francisco in the same boat?

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 03/03/2026

deeply hoping that claude, the "only safe AI," launched missiles against itself

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 02/03/2026

we're in the weird wide world of AI infecting and rotting dev documentation to the extent that it's making up its own variables in its own auto-generating help docs. given that AI "coding tools" are often driven by documentation, this is not a great sign. (note that this code doesn't run at all...)

A bunch of code that doesn't make sense and doesn't run

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 28/02/2026

Absolutely loving Ted Gordon’s book, “The Composer’s Black Box” — and also the incredible Alvin Lucier line he found and included as an epigraph in one chapter: Real echoes Direct imitation, without metaphor, Without metaphor, but with ambiguity (sketch for Vespers)

A book by Theodore Gordon entitled “the composer’s black box: making music in cybernetic America”. The image is of a number of electrical patch cables interconnecting a system of panels. It is a Buchla modular synthesizer.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 21/01/2026

Did they make white baby jesus saffron

A package of saffron with an illustration of a small white baby crawling out of a swaddling cloth

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 29/12/2025

Apparently they had to ban 8-13 year-olds from using this toy robot

Toy robot with a 14+ sticker covering the 8+ age recommendation printed on the box

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/12/2025

Every so often there’s a screenshot of my DMs that I feel compelled to post

An “experimental musician” at calarts michael bailey who writes:
welcome to the 30 year war of gentrification. And don't pretend that the Lab and Grey Area don't enable the toxic tech culture of selfish post-suburban sociopaths.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 02/12/2025

I am going off-main to note that I wish we had a city where actual grassroots cultural institutions that are not owned wholesale by billionaires and burners and bureaucrats had the respect of our political representatives. We can have that city. We need to fight for it.

An instagram post from the kitchen in nyc stating that Legacy Russell (ED/AD of the kitchen) has been appointed to a commission by Mamdani

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 01/12/2025

Leave Ashby and me alone for a few minutes and we’ll be reading in silence listening to music

A toddler on a comically large chair reading Brown Bear Brown Bear (upside down) while a 39 year old dad lounges on the couch reading some other book. There are two turntables in the image, one covered playing music and the other (the toddler’s turntable) unplugged

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 22/11/2025

sometimes the best reaper markers are the most honest ones (why do I not just go read a book every time I do a real-time summing bounce...)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 17/11/2025

Crypto bro boss level, insanity mode (not taking at a woman about crypto)

Soon the conversation turned to a tantalizing scenario — a beautiful woman approaches a wealthy crypto trader at a bar, showing an unlikely degree of romantic interest. Unfortunately, Mr. Kayll said, these interactions could be part of a so-called honey-pot scheme designed to lure the target into divulging compromising information.
"For you guys, it'll be a female — I'd send in a girl every time," he said. It would be unwise to "tell her what you know about Bitcoin."

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 14/11/2025

Fundamentally, Lurie and Trump both elevate people with little to no experience so that they have political pawns who owe their careers to them and are functionally paying off that debt through whatever votes are asked of them missionlocal.org/2025/11/alca...

Mission Local article: In text exchange, new D4 supe writes of paying workers 'under the table, skimping on taxes
New texts raise more questions about Mayor Daniel Lurie's vetting of newest supervisor,
Beya Alcaraz
by JOE ESKENAZI
November 13, 2025, 5:25 pm
Mayor Daniel Lurie and his District 4 Supervisor appointee Beya Alcaraz take a merchant walk on Irving Street on Nov. 7, 2025. Photo by Junyao Yang.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 03/10/2025

The Lab is restoring the main auditorium of the San Francisco Labor Temple, built in 1914. Among other things, this is where the 1934 vote to join the longshoremen in a city-wide general strike was held. It will be the largest, longest-running space in the Bay Area dedicated to experimental work.

An image of two beams opening into a large hall with 17 foot ceilings. The wood flooring is covered by linoleum about halfway through the space.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 26/09/2025

Cory, and I mean this sincerely, go fuck yourself

Cory, 31, Tenn., white, Republican, construction I believed Trump was focused on lowering drug prices, prescription drug prices. I have a chronic condition. I'm a Type 1 diabetic. And since he has taken office, my medications have tripled in price.
Again, I don't know if that's a correlation to where I live or my insurance but it's gotten to a point where, for a disease I did not cause and do not have any control over, seeing a very high increase in the prices that I'm paying.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 19/09/2025

Gavin Newsom’s son is also named Hunter???? You can’t make this up folks

fledgling conservatives in red states. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, said at a news conference on Tuesday that his 14-year-old son, Hunter, had called him from school the moment he heard that Mr. Kirk had been shot, anxious for news of his condition. He had been an admirer.
Conversations with his son served as "a reminder of how many young people were impacted by this death in a pretty profound way," Mr. Newsom said.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 11/09/2025

god bless our local news missionlocal.org/2025/09/s-f-...

subject line: "City finally awards trash can contract"

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 30/08/2025

We’re all dreaming a dream Brittany don’t ruin it for us

An email:

From: Brittany Gibson
Sent: Friday, August 29, 2025, 12:36 PM
To: DL WHO Wranglers
Subject: Pool 3 - Music selection
Adding some color on the music today at the White House, correspondents have heardBowie, the Beatles, Michael Jackson, Andrea Bocelli and "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables. The music is still playing.
White House did not share additional information on who
President Trump is currently with while playing the music, but said that he has policy meetings and a media interview on his schedule today.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 29/08/2025

I’ve had this longstanding belief that it’s impossible to truly evaluate the importance of a presenter / space / organization in isolation. Starting to put these ideas into more concrete thoughts, as we received $150k recently to support a project with this aim in mind. These are a few napkin notes.

Notes app screenshot:

Compost metrics
Key point being that these are necessarily network metrics. It is impossible to evaluate a single organization's programming in isolation.
Non-temporal metrics:
Connectedness: metric of redundancy / ubiquity of artists with other organizations or presenters. Can show strong "scene
presence"
Novelty: the inverse of connectedness in that there is a % of artists who are frequently a part of programming
Temporal metrics:
Seedlings / incubator: the first entry-point for an artist to a connected network, leading to the artist having a high level of connectedness

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 12/08/2025

Wading into the discourse to say that $850 is fairly low overhead (the lab’s is $1150) and if you don’t expect someone working a full night of “sound & lights” to get paid $400 gross including workers comp, taxes, etc, then uh good luck with the solidarity I guess

Just a settlement sheet showing a pretty bad turnout and bad payment too

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 09/08/2025

we caught a mouse so we named it gpt5-mini and released it into the wild* *the chatgpt office a couple blocks from my house

A photo of a very small mouse inside a green translucent trap

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 29/07/2025

out of curiosity I attempted to try out microsoft 365 copilot chat and I don't think I've ever encountered a more "graphic design is my passion" wait screen from a 3 trillion dollar company

A "coming soon" screen for Microsoft 365 Copilot with a bunch of text boxes that look warped and pixellated in crazy ways saying things like "generate a powerpoint presentation from the contents of this document" (the product doesn't exist yet)

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 11/07/2025

I'm trying to figure out the math but I didn't go to MIT Total 2024 OpEx was $4.3B. Their net return on investments in 2024 was ~$2.2B (wow), and 8% tax on that would be $174M. That's 4% of OpEx, not 10%. Am I missing something? 2024 Treasurer's Report: facultygovernance.mit.edu/sites/defaul...

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 30/06/2025

The design on this dose of hops goes hard

A very medieval image of hops being harvested on a package of hops

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/06/2025

looking forward to finally finding out what this word means @katerhoades.bsky.social

A title page of a book with the word FERDYDURKE on it in all caps

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 05/06/2025

After a decade long hiatus, excited to once again be relaxing, not worrying, and having a homebrew

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 04/06/2025

Trying to describe Curtis Yarvin to someone and visited his Wikipedia and it’s so funny that Nick Land gets “co-founder” status. Imagine devoting your life to reading Kant super well just to be on Moldbug’s bio when you go fash.

Curtis Yarvin
Article Talk
Curtis Guy Yarvin (born 1973), also known by the pen name Mencius Moldbug, is an American neo-reactionary political theorist and software developer. 11121131 He is known, along with philosopher Nick Land, for founding the anti-egalitarian and anti-democratic philosophical movement known as the Dark Enlightenment or neo-reactionary movement (NRx).

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 28/05/2025

I've tasked an LLM* with coming up with a set of phrases that are very similar to the previous phrase, then I'm using an encoder to find the most similar phrase in the collection to the one I secretly hope it will eventually land on. *llama2.3 running locally on my gamer pc

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 18/05/2025

update: found all the code for a piece with chris mann and a goldfish-controlled synthesizer system

$\ Control shape determines probs. of preset depending on each gang \ Willy the Goldfish swims into : VIOLIN/CLARINET \ get preset number depending on probabilities 100 choose$

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 16/05/2025

crate digging is a colonizer mindset, you heard it here first

(New York Times font)
The Ethicist
Is It Ethical to Buy Used Books and Music?
The magazine's Ethicist columnist on what consumers owe to artists.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 14/05/2025

Interactive brand moments??? Count me intrigued!!!

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 07/05/2025

feeling like bernie sanders right now as within 15 minutes after sending an email about the NEA cuts we received over $1K (so far) from a TON of people giving $3, $10, $25. like, the number of donors in 15 minutes far exceeds our usual end of year appeal. it adds up folks!

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 03/05/2025

Thank god at least one MOC read Adorno in grad school

Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine, who serves as the top Democrat on the House subcommittee overseeing the N.E.A., said in an interview that Mr. Trump was
"making a broad-based attack on the arts, both for form, and content." She cited his

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 02/05/2025

The NEA just sent out an email announcement to many organizations stating that current grants had been terminated. Among the many focus areas for the NEA now are to "foster AI competency," "make America healthy again," and "empower houses of worship to serve communities"

This is to inform you that the above referenced National Endowment for the Arts award has been terminated, effective May 31, 2025.

The NEA is updating its grantmaking policy priorities to focus funding on projects that reflect the nation's rich artistic heritage and creativity as prioritized by the President. Consequently, we are terminating awards that fall outside these new priorities. The NEA will now prioritize projects that elevate the Nation’s HBCUs and Hispanic Serving Institutions, celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, foster AI competency, empower houses of worship to serve communities, assist with disaster recovery, foster skilled trade jobs, make America healthy again, support the military and veterans, support Tribal communities, make the District of Columbia safe and beautiful, and support the economic development of Asian American communities. Funding is being allocated in a new direction in furtherance of the Administration’s agenda.

Your project, as noted below, unfortunately does not align with these priorities:
Purpose: To support a residency and commissioning program.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 01/05/2025

Lucille Bluth Voice: “How many dolls could the children be given Michael? 30 dolls?”

Trump, on Tariffs, Says
'Maybe the Children Will Have 2 Dolls Instead of 30'
At the end of a cabinet meeting, the president allowed for the possibility that trade war could disrupt supply chains.

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 29/04/2025

Looking forward to the Vichy SF response, i.e., our mayor sending the highest number of police to the district with a very large immigrant population 🫠

Just another garbage nyt headline:

LIVE 6m ago
President Trump Signs Orders Ramping Up Immigration Crackdown
One order instructs his administration to "pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures" against so-called sanctuary cities.
See more updates ›

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 29/04/2025

Tfw you just learned the cost of a banana

A small child eating a banana whole without peeling it

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Andrew C. Smith @andrewchristophersmith.com · 25/04/2025

just spending the evening reading about the visual culture of warty hogs

A page of a book describing warty hog cave paintings

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