iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 17h

“Of course”, the order on relations falls from the decategorification of squares, which are oriented. So it is, indeed, free in the formalism. What's added on top of proarrow equipments, in the nlab page, is the involution on relations.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 20h

Something popped back up from the back of my mind. Splitting random-number generators seem to be an example of linear comonoid. In that it's imperative that you don't use the same seed twice. And the natural associated monad is a linear reader monad.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Quick life update. After 11 years almost to the day, I no longer work for Tweag. It's a rather emotional moment for me, but it was time to move on.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Over 10 years ago, I wrote a sweet little article entitled “The tree machine” arxiv.org/pdf/1507.04589 (it was rejected for not being novel enough, but I still like it). Anyway, it wasn't until today that I realised that these machines are more or less a first-order system L.

arxiv.org

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.04589

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

In my – somewhat vain – attempt to understand what's going on in these days with remakes which often seem to be slightly worse that the original I found this video. It doesn't really help, but it's still rather interesting (if quite long) www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIHO...

youtube.com

Un-Artistic Game Remakes

Video game remakes offer a mixture of emotions from excitement to skepticism. Because while we love to see our favourite games reborn into the modern era, sometimes the delivery is...…

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

As a complement to this excellent (as always) video by the Map Men, linguists recognise that each individual speaks slightly differently. Your particular way of speaking is called your idiolect. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX21...

youtube.com

Why a Language Map of the World is Impossible

🦈 Go to https://surfshark.com/mapmen or use code MAPMEN at checkout to get 4 extra months of Surfshark VPN! See new episodes early and exclusive bonus content https://patreon.com/mapmen 📕…

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I'm not allowed to work out maths for another week or so. So just recording the question that this left me with: are operation which are independent from a choice of base (i.e. natural in the category of vector spaces) the same as those stable by invertible matrix (group) conjugation. Sounds likely.

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Gro-Tsen @gro-tsen.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

I'm not sure what the best answer is, but one thing I am sure about is that this is a great question, and we should encourage students to ask these sort of things. Definitions in mathematics have reasons: don't accept them blindly, but be willing to ask “why did we do this and not that?”!

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lpora.bsky.social @lpora.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Les questions importantes : tous les kebabs tournent-ils dans le sens direct ? Sinon quelle est la répartition des sens de rotation ? Y a-t-il des gens capables de reconnaître au goût un kebab trigonométrique d’un kebab horloger ?

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

When I speak Japanese, I experience the same sort of limits that computers have. E.g. I understand slower than people speak (when I understand at all), but I eventually understand. The longer the sentence, the later I understand. I'm being CPU bound. 1/2

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Enola Holmes 3. Well, it's about as well put together as the first two. However, the screenplay is significantly weaker (dare I say lazier?). So while it's still quite pleasant a watch (the children loved it), it doesn't have the charm of its predecessors. Ah well…

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

By the way, “effable machine” is the name of my next punk rock band.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

And, yes, of course I'll watch Hercule. Who do you think I am? Someone with any willpower at all?

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Watched “Agatha Christie's Seven Dials” the other day. I'd say it's certainly more Chibnall than Christie (in no way is it a bad thing), but I don't remember the novel; in fact I don't remember whether I read the novel.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

This video says a lot of what I have to say about the latest Ocarina of Time trailer, only better (except I'm not fond of the jump button; nothing wrong with it, but it takes some valuable real estate from items). www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lIb...

youtube.com

The Pursuit of Graphical “Realism” Is Dangerous | Design Delve

This video is brought to you by Crystals of Irm, an old-school RPG with a distinctive combat system and dungeon crawler elements. – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1971470/Crystals_Of_Irm/ In…

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Remind me a conversation with a young colleague. - Me: That's a very 21st century thing - Them: You say that as if you knew the 20th century. - Me: Well… - Them: Oh? Oh! Oh…

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Tom Pepinsky @tompepinsky.com · 16/09/2026

the hardest thing for the politician-bureaucrats to understand -- but which NSF staff *absolutely do* understand and always have -- is that you actually make scientific progress by giving young people money and promising not to bother them

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I'm realising that, in this context, “wrote” instead of “have written” is a bit of an Americanism. This is a lesson in how language works: I've been working a lot with Americans in the past few years, and my language shifted (especially as a non-native).

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I wrote a thing about coding agents+formal proofs of programs. + Non-local, non-sequential editing of proof files is a real improvement. - It has all the of the cost and none of the pain, and that's a big problem Click through for more thoughts in the full blog post.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Indeed indeed. Et c'est pour ça que peut-être, on pourrait considérer laisser les gens habiter où ils veulent, non? Tous les gens. Dans n'importe quel pays. Plutôt que d'imposer des permis de résidence qui font qu'à tout moment une vie peut être bouleversée par une décision administrative.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I think I found a neat use of relation equipments (as the Nlab calls decategorified proarrow equipments ncatlab.org/nlab/show/1-...). I'll also be needing an order on relation, I believe. Is it free in this formalism? 1/7

ncatlab.org

1-category equipped with relations in nLab

A 2-category equipped with proarrows is a 2-category together with a 2-category of “proarrows” which are intended to generalize the arrows of KK in the same way that profunctors generalize the…

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

This is angry, but seems like a reasonable take to me. Probably worth reading as an antidote to the marketing machine of genAI giants.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Ok, so now we know. The graphics are mostly nice but a little hit and miss. I like that they lean on the horrific elements but it's inconsistent, so it doesn't really work. They have the D-pad shortcuts from the mods, and the run button is a nice touch. 1/2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuFf...

youtube.com

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time – The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Direct 9.8.2026

Adventure through Hyrule and become the Hero of Time when The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time releases November 5, 2026, on Nintendo Switch 2. Pre-order today:…

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Gro-Tsen @gro-tsen.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

One way to illustrate the difference between computability theory and complexity theory: From the computability point of view, to give a proof of a theorem P (in ZFC, say), you need only give one bit of information, namely “P is provable in ZFC”, or even “P is decidable”, …

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Nicolas Holzschuch @nholzschuch.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

I feel the need to remind everyone that, according to Google ngrams, the word "fuck" was intensively used in the 18th century, but disappeared approximately at the time we stopped using the long s ("ſ"). The frequency of fuck when the long s was used connects with the frequency of suck afterwards.

Diagram from Google ngrams, showing the word "fuck" being used a lot from 1700 to 1805, and the word "suck" not being used at all in the period, and then being used after 1805.

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Dave Richeson @divbyzero.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

A hyperbolic one-handed clock. You can see hours, minutes, and seconds. jpivarski.github.io/hyperbolic-m...

jpivarski.github.io

One-handed clock — hyperbolic-map

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I only got around to read the blog post(s?) now. It's thoughtful, careful, and worth your time. Roberto Di Cosmo has, generally, had a bad habit of being right about things for the past 30 years.

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Emma Pearson @emmapearson.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Franglais language wars reach the vehicle hire sector 😂

A white Rent-a-Car van with the following text on the side, in French: 'But why write Rent A Car [in English]on your van when it means 'rent a car'? Because it's a semantic aberration and we'd made a bet with the marketing team to write 'semantic' on our vans. They owe us €5

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Somehow, the entire Japanese dub of “Yo soy Betty, la fea”, probably the most popular Columbian TV show, can be found on the Internet Archive archive.org/details/1_20... . It's a pretty good translation: the voices are, by some magic, recognisable!

archive.org

Yo soy Betty, la fea en Japonés - ベティ〜愛と裏切りの秘書室 : RCN : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

📺 Yo soy Betty, la fea (1999-2001) 👓✨📅 Año de estreno: 1999🎬 Creado por: Fernando Gaitán🎤 Año de doblaje al Japonés: 2004🔊 Estudio...

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Albireo (La forêt des Sciences) @foretdessciences.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

#ScienceEnVacances #4 ⛱️⛱️⛱️ Puisque nous en étions à puiser de l'eau de mer, enchaînons avec une nouvelle question bête, mais qui va s'avérer plus subtile que prévu ! Alors pourquoi la mer est salée ?💧🧂

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Thomas House @tah-sci.com · 18/08/2026

We're in danger of forgetting moral lessons because the context is higher tech. One in particular: The problem with putting people in the stocks wasn't mainly that some were innocent, but rather that the punishment was cruel, arbitrary and dehumanising. /1 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stocks

en.wikipedia.org

Stocks - Wikipedia

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

A side question is: why do bicycle make so many people so angry? It's not just on social media either, this shows up in traditional media, and in normal conversations. It isn't quite just bicycle. I think various kinds of scooters elicit similar feelings. It's not clear to me why.

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 13/08/2026

Reminder: 1. You don't need to have an opinion on everything, especially stuff you don't know enough about 2. You don't need to have a PUBLIC opinion on everything 3. It's okay to focus on one or two things and let others take up the slack elsewhere 4. It's okay to take a break when overwhelmed.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Memory lane moment. Do you remember these yoghurt pot figures from Marks and Spencer? I was quite fond of them as a kid. Their image stayed with me ever since. (screenshot from this video www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0cj... )

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The market is a remarkably effective, efficient, and scalable distributed allocation system. But it doesn't work with everything. Classic examples are things like lighthouse, there's not really a way to make money out of lighthouses, so there's no market for them. 1/7

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

So, a couple of weeks ago, Paramount announced a new Avatar series and it looks… good? It's visually different, it's tonally different. There's honestly a decent chance that it's actually good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rvks... 1/4

youtube.com

Avatar: Seven Havens | Official Teaser | Paramount+ (SDCC 2026)

Avatar: Seven Havens premieres October 9 only on Paramount+. Avatar: Seven Havens is an all-new series from creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. Set in a world shattered by a…

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

In his Haskell Implementors' Workshop talk, David Binder asked this question. And I must say that I'm a little dismayed, concerned even, that I immediately knew the answer. Link to the the talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk_P...

What is the difference between:

- a module without an export list (`module A…`)
- a module with itself as an export list (`module A (module A)…`)

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I want to explain what's going on here. Because it's quite interesting. The type of monads over the category of presheaves is given by class PMonad f where return :: p i -> f i (>>=) :: f p i -> (forall j. p j -> f q j) -> f q i (just follow the textbooks) 1/11

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Heard good (great) things about Pantheon several times. It's too early for a pronouncement, but it's got a lot of things going for it. But it's super weird to watch at times because it uses computer science/software vocabulary in a vaguely correct way. 1/3

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

This weekend, I discovered the opera Gianni Schicchi by Puccini. And simultaneously , I discovered that I could like Puccini.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Maybe the most prominent way in which the bad writing manifest is that it habitually takes 3+ text boxes to say something that only needs 1. It's very boring to read.

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Soudain un narrateur décrit votre vie et il n'y a aucun moyen de l'éteindre - tout le monde peut l'entendre. Pendant les courses, au travail, à la maison, avec des amis - la voix continue de raconter chaque geste. Quelle voix choisissez-vous ? Moi : Jean Rochefort

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Arnaud Spiwack @aspiwack.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

So… the adventure of Elliot. It's generally Zelda shaped, though more biased toward combat. Dungeon design is solid, but rarely great. The dungeons are relatively small and straightforward. But what I want to focus on today is how extraordinarily poorly written it is. 1/8

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