iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 8h

(ht to @digifox.binaryden.net for this memetic response which I had never seen before today).

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ponder @ponder.ooo · 29/09/2026

person talking to computer, saying "will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?"
computer replies ">you got it, boss"
person replies "oh my god."

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 17h

"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." Open the models, release the weights! That is the path to better security for all of us, not this fear mongering. For reference: Damien is an OpenSSH maintainer.

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Erica Windisch @ewindisch.ontological.observer · 20h

My former boss is currently at Anthropic and hiring. I assume publicly disagreeing with the org won't do me any favors... but neither will quietly allowing cybersecurity to be outlawed. Companies that can't secure their systems are lecturing us on cybersecurity and taking tools from defenders

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 19h

New frontiers in philosophical pessimism: I had a big breakthrough in a meeting when one of my reports told me he could no longer conceivable of this much unalloyed good in the world. me: What if there is a finite amount of good and we've actually exhausted it? Like ... Peak Good?

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 20h

Imagine if tools did what their users wanted, rather than some of the wealthiest corporations in the history of human capitalism. PS Infosec works by making tools broadly available for the public to defend itself, not by a priesthood who gets to anoint things as safe.

anthropic.com

GLM-5.3 and the spread of advanced cyber capabilities

GLM-5.3 can autonomously build end-to-end cyber exploits, but unlike other frontier models, it was released without meaningful safeguards to limit misuse.

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Erica Windisch @ewindisch.ontological.observer · 20h

I reported vulnerabilities to the Linux kernel and OpenZFS assisted by GLM-5.2. Anthropic's cyber program and refusal responses are detrimental to global information security. Defenders depend on GLM because they can't depend on Anthropic.

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Amrk @amrk.bsky.social · 23h

Peter Magyar is currently enacting a Liberal Currents fantasy where he amends the constitution to ban anyone associated with the old regime from ever holding office again and is somehow polling at 68% (he won with 53%) and I’m not saying that’s possible anywhere else but Dems should like, ask him

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

On the plus side, if they make one of the seven employees Claude, they're well on their way to a corrupt council of robot elders.

Corrupt council of robot elders (Futurama).

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Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 29/09/2026

If you can volunteer to canvass, please do so! I have never canvassed, but I really admire those who can and do. I *do* write postcards or letters to voters every election. Please consider doing this. Thousands of writers writing hundreds of targeted postcards can make a difference!

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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I don't understand the need to say dickwad CEOs can't make good stuff. This is the world we live in. A lot of my favorite things in the arts and sciences come from absolute bastards. The real argument should be about how to channel dickwaddery into good social outcomes, not whether the stuff works.

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Dan Diamond @ddiamond.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Russell Brand, who's awaiting trial in London next month on rape and sexual assault charges, will moderate a panel at DC's MAHA summit tomorrow on reforming a U.S. health agency

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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

“Since you guys can’t figure out how to build a sandbox and are now threatening our bag, we’ll do it for you” - Nvidia paraphrased

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Gotta be careful when you let Glonzo out of his cage.

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Dr ShinyGoth @ghostingdani.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Theory: people think dogs are Jesus and cats are Bast and this is both accurate and a problem.

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Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert · 28/09/2026

The thing that worries me most lately is that many people who know that “fascism is bad, actually” have also convinced themselves that AI tools must be eschewed as fake or impure. In a self-reinforcing loop, there is relatively little AI tooling and infra by “fascism is bad” folks.

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm sad to see LC fall for this. These ideas are fundamentally illiberal, and if implemented would result in yet another form of regulation which _guarantees_ that only the incumbents in the space can afford to comply. Maybe get Techdirt or the EFF to write a rebuttal to this essay?

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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I wonder what it would be like to write the same column, over and over again, endlessly. Seems like it’d be boring. But maybe it brings one comfort, like having your parents read you the same story every night before you go to bed.

Opinion
Opinion by Megan McArdle
The Great Awokening is over.
This lesbian bar shows why.
A meltdown over masking shows where cancel culture is now.
Today at 07:00 ET

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Friendly Pumpkin @pumpkinpal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Look if we don't maintain LinkedIn as a place for people to Linkedinpost they're going to start howling "What my father's untimely death taught me about inside sales" at people on the subway

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James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The GOP cut funding to the IRS because *audits work* and they fundamentally don't believe rich people should have to play by the rules.

Line chart titled "Revenue per audit," subtitled "In-person audits, 2010-2014." It plots average revenue and average cost per audit by taxpayer income percentile, poorer to richer, from the 0–5th percentile to the top 0.1%. Source: Boning et al. 2023, "A Welfare Analysis of Tax Audits Across the Income Distribution."

Across the bottom half of the income distribution, revenue and cost track closely, both around $3,000–$6,000 per audit. Above the median, revenue pulls ahead of cost: about $10,000 vs. $5,000 near the 90th percentile, and about $17,000 vs. $8,000 at the 95th–99th. At the top, revenue jumps to about $31,000 for the 99–99.9th percentile and about $90,000 for the top 0.1%.

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Micah @rincewind.run · 27/09/2026

I know quite a lot about the colorado river situation and all of its associated problems for personal reasons and I can state with confidence that data centers are not a meaningful contributor to the issue

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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I like that in becoming a nazi, you get glowing coverage as a brave iconoclast, and then when you stop being a nazi, you’re get glowing coverage as a brave dissident. Money coming and going. Only way you lose is having normal opinions like “racism bad” bsky.app/profile/trac...

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Cameron 🇺🇸🗽🦅 @cameroncorduroy.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

talking about water use policy is impossible because "AI data centers use a lot of water to cool the computers" sounds way more believable than "they're draining the Great Salt Lake so the Governor of Utah can sell alfalfa to Saudi Arabia" and yet

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Faine again does really good work weaving together the receipts about these parties but pointing out a real problem -- not that it's edgy sex, but that a group sex party with simulated rape on the table between your coworkers is probably not consensual at all. Particularly if the boss is there.

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Lilian Edwards @lilianedwards.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The BBC's reporting of these "rogue AI" stories has been credulous to the point of execrable. Where are their competent tech savvy staff?? @billt.bsky.social @zsk.bsky.social

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RazvenHK @razvenhk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Most of you will know & remember when the Hong Kong police raided book stores for "seditious books", but did any of you know that the pro-CCP side celebrated the book stores closing and whipped themselves into a frenzy calling a routine closing sale as "last minute profiteering"

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SE Gyges @segyges.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

anyway he has me blocked now so we can commemorate the last time i will probably ever talk to dustin again

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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

why is the water thing the only thing anyone cares about when it's the only argument against this stuff which isn't real

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

This is another great, approachable explainer on “the rationalist wackos who have managed to take over much of the AI industry, and who now have tons of money and political power.” www.iankduncan.com/personal/202...

iankduncan.com

Sex, AI, and the Apocalypse - Ian Duncan

How a community devoted to thinking clearly incubated salvation stories, abusive experiments, race science, and an affection for autocracy, and why that history matters now that its alumni are asking ...

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Ben Schwartz @benschwartz.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

You can always tell when a Republican gets a new billionaire sponsor who has a single, very, very specific issue they would like the American people to hear about.

The image is a tweet from Sen. Tommy Tuberville that reads: "Democrats are the party of Radical Islam, illegal aliens, and furry pilots. Lord help us."

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Many complex feelings. On its face, a very bad ruling because its clearly a result of Trump being upset Anthropic told him no. OTOH, Anthropic thinks they are building the Unborn God, so this should be what they want.... right? No killbots, no terminators, no dogs with tiny dogs that shoot lasers.

cnbc.com

U.S. appeals court upholds Pentagon designation of Anthropic as supply chain risk

In a 2-1 decision, a federal appeals court upheld the Department of Defense's blacklisting of Anthropic.

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Stop giving money to publications whose idea of news is the most brain wormed contrarian in their group chats. Read about reopening the Golden Door. Liberalism (fighting). And about every monkey's paw wish to read theory in one dreadful apotheosis. They have the juice.

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Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真) @lizthegrey.com · 26/09/2026

My God, I can actually give Opus 5.5 open ended assignments like "make this code run as fast as its C equivalent, or tell me why it can't be done" and leave it for several hours -- and it actually works and has done the job. And not by cheating with cgo either.

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Ami Fields-Meyer @fieldsmeyer.com · 25/09/2026

We were mid-handshake and he pulled me in and grabbed tighter and got upset and raised his voice and said: "What are you talking about man?! Those aren't real people. They're illegal aliens!"

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Alex Gibney @alexgibneyfilm.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

The trailer for my new film, "Musk," has just been released.

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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Ha ha that’s gross and should make everyone uncomfortable, anyway, Rahm presided over a Chicago police black site, lied about what it was and then I sued the Chicago police for its records that proved it:

theguardian.com

Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people

Exclusive: Lawsuit exposes scale of detention at off-the-books interrogation warehouse while attorneys describe find-your-client chase ‘from a Bond movie’

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Rainbows End had it too. Also what do people think I'm doing in Ingress at the Fitzgerald Marine reserve at 3am? ARG make it go foom!

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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

There are like 500 of these books and they all exist in an alternate universe where trying to win over white working class voters is a Bold Forbidden Insight rather than the guiding ideology of the entire party.

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Anna Gifty @itsafronomics.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026

lol the vibe shift in AI hype feels like a ploy by U.S. tech bros to permanently keep out competitors. They are cosplaying concern so they can "regulate" their competitors out of existence. It's not about safety. It's about money.

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Brandon Downey @bdowney.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Could you make Alpha Centauri cursed? Of course you can! p(d00m) for Planet?

Give me a mockup of a 21st century of Alpha Centauri where various tech company CEOs and tech philosophers (think Yudkowsky or Thiel) are all the faction leaders. It's a bit of a parody, but have them each representing their philosophy in the screenshots. [faction leader view]

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ponder @ponder.ooo · 26/09/2026

"pacing the frontier" quite seriously means seizing control of a field of science and forcibly restraining the advancement of human knowledge. it is a direct attack on science itself

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Elizabeth Spiers @espiers.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Ok so anyone who is treating Yudkowsky as an expert should be forced to explain Roko’s Basilisk and why he took it seriously

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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Listen, I just think it's weird that the same people who are saying they're worried that AI is going to wipe out humanity are also eager for military contracts that will give AI control of weapons.

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Dr. Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com · 26/09/2026

i drank a miller high life today. can i get a column in the atlantic now

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Anna Bower @annabower.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Wild stuff. Sheri Mecklenberg, career prosecutor accused of misconduct in Broadview 6 case, resigns from DOJ. The NYT obtained her scathing resignation letter, in which she says the U.S. attorney directed her to bring felony charges over her objection. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

nytimes.com

Read the document (Gift Article)

Sheri H. Mecklenburg resignation letter

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