iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

i keep saying my brain feels so smooth now and chris is like, i'm not sure most people are going to interpret that the way you mean it if you tell them that

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

dude this is going to sound stupid but i went for a walk in the sunshine today, and it was hot, and the sun was shining right on my forehead and it was FINE, hell did not break loose in my head and it's been sooooo long since i could just ... do that

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

it is difficult to describe the level of relief this is

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

since i started migraine medication, a bunch of weird problems that i didn't know were related to migraines and would not have tried to describe -- and probably could not have very successfully described, had i tried -- to a doctor as a "symptom" of anything have magically resolved

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

sometimes you just gotta trust them instincts

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

i quit prealgebra halfway through senior year of high school because i had to sit next to these extremely noxious twin boys who were constantly bragging about their drinking and sexual activities. i hated them so much. just found out one was convicted of domestic partner abuse, and i thought, yes.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I was mostly winging it, but using (of course) How to Bake Pi as inspiration. It did also help that we used the Life of Fred math books for some time (many adults do not take them seriously, and that included me, but they actually worked very well through prealgebra) which covers a lot of set theory

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I'd say more "abstract algebra" than category theory per se, although I did want them to see how commutativity, symmetry, etc, are found in more contexts than those mentioned in elementary school texts. It has helped them both enjoy and make sense of later math more easily than most of their peers.

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neutral @neutral.zone · 02/10/2026

Also, the healthcare management industrial complex is itself a huge problem. Determining the best-supported next step for any given action is effectively subsumed as to whether we can justify, bill, authorize and complete patient care inside the allotted capacity.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

personally i think AI is likely to be a wash overall, as it makes some types of folly and error more likely and others less likely, depending on the users and circumstances. i know that i have an especially grim view of the human healthcare professionals because of their steadfast refusal to help me

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

on the folly side, we have things like antivaxxers and people who think they can cure cancer with large doses of vitamin C. on the error side, we have a great and diverse number of things from my doctor who didn't believe me that i had an infected C-section wound to incorrect medication dosages

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

when we talk about AI and its possible uses in healthcare, i am not really sure what to do with the fact that human folly and error were already such a substantial problem in healthcare that there were, for example, probably deaths in the thousands each year from fully preventable causes

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Tim Carmody @tcarmody.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This is the funniest thing I've seen today, possibly ever

A tweet by SarahStarberry that says "oh god read the vertical axis" on top of a chart measuring AI models' release dates and model numbers rather than any real capabilities

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Chris Martin @chris--martin.functional.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 30/09/2026

NEWS: I tried to do something on a web site and it did not work

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I Swear I Am Not Getting Off on Sharing These Lurid Details with You: My Substack Post on the Cornell Rape Case

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

my sons seem to think they have to decide on one career, and i'm like no no children i've had like 5

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

it's getting about time for me to take up a new career, and i'm thinking chestnut farmer this time

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

i wasn't, so thanks for this recommendation!

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

yeah, i've been really interested to see where his new project goes. i admit i still don't really believe in it, but i'm interested in seeing what he does.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

there's always been a warning that humans will learn to adapt themselves to the machine, and the threat has been believed to be something recognizably a Machine (a steam engine, a computer, maybe a Fordist assembly line). but the first tech we molded ourselves to may have been an alphabet.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

but human life has been getting more and more bounded and abstract to the point where it's become easy to believe that intelligence is coextensive with things that can be read and written, with abstract types of knowledge we invented, and it simply isn't, that couldn't possibly be the case

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

writing is such an obvious boost to our abilities that we've invented it a few times in the course of human history, and yet easy enough to do once you are intelligent enough that we've done it a few times and adapted it to our purposes many, many more

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

of course things that are entirely abstract and textual and that humans can understand from beginning to end seem difficult to us because we have to think about them and learn them consciously but also of course they are easier in some sense (e.g., to feed to a machine) because of those conditions

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

why would you assume that things we can do without thinking and don't really understand why or how because they took billions of years to evolve and exist in various ways across various species would be "the easy stuff?" sincerely, what the fuck

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

hold up and let's look at these unquestioned assumptions, mr rationalist

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i recently read something in which a bunch of bay area EA/rats are interviewed and one of them is scott alexander and he says, "oh yeah we did all the hard stuff already with AI so now it's just finishing the easy stuff, the lizard brain stuff" and i was like hold up

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

well this thread really took a turn

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

for a really long time now my head has been in this constant state of hyperarousal, hypervigilance, just pop-pop-popping, always a hair's-breadth away from pain, and that's starting to fade and idk but i am kind of excited to see what's it like to have a modicum of chill for once in my life

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

anyway, it has helped a lot to do research i wouldn't otherwise have had the patience or mental wherewithal to do, given everything. for the first time in my life i have been given a medication that so far seems appropriate to my status and my brain feels sort of ...good?

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

sort of like that one episode where that chatGPT model kept overusing "goblin" this Claude is obsessed with hemicrania continua.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

you can't use it stupidly, you have to use it smartly, because it does weird stuff. it gets hung up on weird things, like my Claude currently believes i have hemicrania continua (i don't and i'm not totally sure why it thinks so?).

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i have the medical thread going because i have some unusual things wrong with me and my doctor charges me $200 per visit to have absolutely no idea what is wrong with me and not do any research in between times whereas with Claude i can tirelessly search through medical research to find answers

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

welcome to the "neither a phobe nor a phile be" club

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i have a long, ongoing thread with Claude about medical/health stuff and one adorable thing it keeps doing is having absolutely fuckall idea of time lapses. it keeps talking about "those calls you're going to make on Monday" when that Monday passed like 3 weeks ago.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

my husband and i both use Claude routinely, although for different purposes, and every time i see people talking about "AI," both pro and con, i just have no idea what anyone is talking about. nothing anyone says seems to line up with mine or chris's actual experience of using the thing.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i probably should have realized it sooner is the thing but it wasn't a big problem until this year, for various reasons. i keep thinking back to how much his current struggles seem like me at his age and how i had no help at all dealing with it, and i hope having sympathetic support helps

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i keep feeling awful that my son seems to have inherited my ADHD and is kind of suffering from it right now and jesus god it hurts seeing him suffer and then otoh reminding myself that when i was his age my parents were just shitty to me whereas i am showing up to give him appropriate support so idk

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Last Will and Testament Moss @williammoss.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

American CEO: “We can’t control it!” American CEO 2: “It will destroy us all!” American CEO 3: “The apocalypse!” French CEO [hitting a Gauloise, exhaling slowly]: “C’est une issue de skill.”

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

have recently discovered that United Healthcare has really terrible mental health coverage, specifically, and, well, that does make some events easier to understand

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

ah yes my old friend matt "women just like to do housework they don't really need to do, can't explain that" yglesias

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

i think to most people these are the same thing

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bob @bob.feed.hella.cheap.ap.brid.gy · 23/09/2026

the america A/america B thing is really people who have bullshit jobs and people who don't

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

i really did not expect to get mad on the internet today, sorry

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

i did not expect, though, that i was going to have to argue with people who espouse "to each according to their need" why a mom who has to arrange childcare in order to give a talk at a conference should get a larger stipend than speakers who do not have to do that this is how you lose diversity!

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

believe me i've spent my appointed time being mad at Linda Hirschman

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

we will spend time physically weak and dependent on care from others, whether husband or aunties or ideally a combination and that we will spend a lot of lives being less able to make big money because we will be doing unremunerative but important care work for the preceding and next generations.

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

and that's a valid fear, but it's also opened up a big hole for some of the stupidest counter-arguments you've ever heard to wander into, because most women do understand in their gut that, sexually, even with the pill we are not the same as men and bear an unequal burden and if we bear children

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

not to paint with too broad a brush here, but liberals and feminists have been too reluctant, since Eleanor Roosevelt's time, to focus on the special role women do play in the family and in society. the fear has been that in talking about women as *different* you would also be saying *unequal*

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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

i'm not sure that discussion is on the table in 2026, though, a time when guys whose job is tweeting and youtubing weigh in on whether postpartum psychosis (except they do not know the difference between that and PPD) is real and most men get their news from those men

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