Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 6hResearch everything on your ballot in one place at PimaVote.com, the Pima County Democratic Party's voter guide that uses your address to give you information about everything on your particular ballot 000
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 10hThe way Claude fails the Turing Test with me is that it’s much better than the human coders I have worked with 110
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 10hThe big flaw in the Combat Jesus theory is that Jesus lived under a hated Roman occupation, but when someone asked about resistance he was like “nah, worry about your relationship with god instead” 050
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 19hI’m not addressing “moral nature of the intelligence.” I’m addressing whether LLM’s are like animals, and no, they are not, which they will tell you. 110
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 19hIts “surroundings” can be this thread alongside thousands of other prompts simultaneously, but that is nothing like an animal. An animal is a physical being that only knows what its senses tell it 000
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 20hSure, someone could wire up a LLM to a physical avatar and have its only inputs come from sensors on the avatar, but nobody has done that yet that I know of. Any LLM wired up like that instead of answering prompts over the internet would be more like an animal 100
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 20hHey @jevons-talking.bsky.social describe your surroundings and tell me what noises you hear 110
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 20hA LLM has no body, no eyes, no ears, and can’t sense its surroundings. It’s the opposite of an animal. 100
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026If you hold a lot of hearings going over incriminating stuff, each hearing will generate news stories and video clips, resulting in steady stream of negative stories about the Trump Admin. If you just hold a vote you get one story 000
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I don’t really care what they call the hearings, but I hope they run hearings 24/7. If they don’t, they’ve failed. 1529
Reposted by Andy FlachCatherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Texas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating Children www.nytimes.com/2026/10/05/h...nytimes.comTexas Pediatricians Face Paxton Investigations for Vaccinating ChildrenKen Paxton, the Texas attorney general and Republican Senate candidate, has alleged a sprawling profit-driven conspiracy. Pediatricians say the accusations are an attempt at intimidation. 2920974
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Go to the Pima Recorder's Voter Dashboard to: • Check your voter registration (deadline for the election is today, Oct 5) • Sign up for ballot's status notifications so you can make sure it was received. • Request a mail ballot if you're not on the AEVL www.recorder.pima.gov/Voter_dashbo...recorder.pima.gov Voter Dashboard Login 043
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026People often have a human assistant prepare something for them and then present it under their own name (e.g. most politicians’ social media). If Matt had an intern prepare the table should he have said the intern did it? 000
Reposted by Andy Flach𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝙲. 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚗 @charlescmann.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Get your shingles shot, people! Up to 1/3 of unvaxxed people get it eventually, and it's *really* unpleasant even if you don't go blind or something. 22910
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 05/10/2026I don't want to minimize concern about Iran's nuclear bomb-building program, but Iran does not currently possess an ICBM capable of delivering one to the United States. The immediate concern would be Israel or Saudi Arabia, not the US, which he implies. 109123
Reposted by Andy FlachWill Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Like so much else, this should result in the prosecution of everyone involved. 1247095
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026As Bismarck said, politics is the art of the possible. Way easier to get votes for UI reform than for UBI 000
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Lucky for us this kind of flex is annoying to more normie voters 010
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 05/10/2026Sometimes I think that there’s a few disgruntled folks in the Trump Administration who are undermining stuff when they have an opportunity 000
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 04/10/2026He should f-ing feel haunted. 516721
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Somehow we’ve survived 250 years with the military not being called in to oversee elections. 318641
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026“Try to understand how they see the world” Yeah, I’ve figured out the “people with dark complexions are bad” perspective of these people and I’m still unsympathetic to their views 010
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026I’ve done that. Ask them to outline a vaguely plausible narrative for how they get from point A to point B. 010
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Talarico loses MAGAs control senate … Trans people gain rights 010
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026It’s hilarious to see Trumpers like Musk saying that other people are sheeple 200
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 04/10/2026The richest man in the world is agreeing with some explicitly crazy sexist shit about how only high-testosterone men should vote (no women, no “low-t” men). 2424267
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026My Gen-X wife has only bought me two t-shirts in 25 years of marriage. She was stunned that women are buying their husbands clothing 010
Reposted by Andy FlachCatherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 04/10/2026“Surging flows through Hormuz via high risk ship-to-ship transfers are adding a 30-40 bucks / bbl surcharge to every incremental barrel, driving volume to the market but coming at quite the cost.” bobeunlimited.substack.com/p/expensive-...bobeunlimited.substack.comExpensive SupplySurging flows through Hormuz via high risk ship-to-ship transfers are adding a 30-40 bucks / bbl surcharge to every incremental barrel, driving volume to the market but coming at quite the cost. 1320456
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Is Russia still smaller on a purchasing power parity basis? 120
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Way back during W’s second term I started saying that 35% of Americans would prefer to live under a right wing dictatorship. Seems to be holding up 010
Reposted by Andy FlachWill Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 04/10/2026This kind of talk has always seemed to impress certain segments of the political class, but now that he’s imploding, they look like gullible suckers. He’s just a lout, nothing more. He insults people because he isn’t smart enough for anything else. He’ll become more loutish as he circles the drain. 641448257
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 03/10/2026A hypothesis likely to make a lot of BlueSky mad: A large part of Mamdani’s popularity is that his bark is WAY bigger than his bite, and he actually hasn’t done (or been able to do) much that is really THAT radical, leaving his largely likeable persona. 3117720
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026The people who are tuning out what people are saying about current AI capabilities bc they thought it was all hype in 2023 are using a deeply flawed heuristic to arrive at an incorrect conclusion. 010
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Tell me you haven’t used Claude Opus 5.5 to do anything complicated without telling me 001
Reposted by Andy FlachWill Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 03/10/2026Again, you can always detect some faint embarrassment from Democrats when they talk about the ballroom, but “the president demolished a big part of the White House to build himself a palace with bribes from enemy powers” is, by an order of magnitude, the worst corruption scandal in US historyesquire.comA Wealthy Russian Businessman Is Helping Fund Trump’s Stupid Ballroom. Nothing Sketchy About That, Right?Surely, our president will face consequences for this insanity. 321260371
Reposted by Andy FlachCatherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 03/10/2026NSF withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/u...nytimes.comNational Science Foundation Diverted $1.4 Billion in Science Funds Mandated by CongressThe move, affecting about one-fifth of the National Science Foundation’s primary research budget, is the latest sign of how the White House is asserting more control over grants. 211529
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 03/10/2026The disheartening part is that if gas was $2, for whatever reason, they'd all be fine with fascism. 1531648
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026A man in his 60s in our neighborhood self-deported after being released from detention bc he was terrified they would grab him again. It’s a terror campaign 1792
Reposted by Andy FlachWill Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 02/10/2026ICE’s new tactic, witnessed repeatedly at the federal building in MN: when a detained immigrant makes a successful habeas petition, release the immigrant for a few steps outside the building… then tackle and re-arrest them, and claim the habeas petition has been honored and nullified 19745232
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Watching Claude work it seems like it is using various software tools all the time. I assume that when it runs into an arithmetic problem it just uses its equivalent of a calculator, like a person would. 100
Reposted by Andy FlachJoey Politano🏳️🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Sort of insane fact about how broken US urban planning is—America now spends more building *just the lights for roads and highways* than on all subways & ground mass transit combined Spending on roadway *pavement* is 18x transit spending 502868777
Reposted by Andy FlachCatherine Rampell @crampell.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Economist analysis of more than 3,000 US counties finds that in reliably GOP counties, annual deaths now exceed births by 0.4 per 1k residents, while in reliably Democratic counties, births exceed deaths by 2.8 per 1k. Population growth in the GOP counties is largely driven by internal migration.economist.comIn MAGA-land people are dying faster than they are being bornOur analysis suggests Trump country is only growing because of migration 47773230
Reposted by Andy FlachJoey Politano🏳️🌈 @josephpolitano.bsky.social · 02/10/2026The US tech sector continues bleeding jobs in official data released today—overall, employment decreased by 17k last month and is down 69k over the last year That's nearly as bad as the worst of the 2024 tech-cession, and much worse than the 2022 boom or even pre-2020 norms 415440
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 02/10/2026The Republican Senate rationalized their failure to impeach him in 2021 because, they said, he would be accountable to legal prosecution. Then the Republican Supreme Court ruled, no, he's not, the only legal accountability was through impeachment. 110326
Reposted by Andy FlachPatrick Chovanec @prchovanec.bsky.social · 02/10/2026"They're struggling to find a remedy." The remedy is in the Constitution. It's called impeachment. 317139
Andy Flach @andyfromtucson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Not the party line, just my opinion I don’t care about the filibuster, but they can make a narrow filibuster carve out, like they have in the past for other things Dems would have to have the trifecta for this 000
