iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I wonder whether the “super intelligence” thing is a loyalty test for tech CEOs or whether Trump just dropped the A from ASI. I mean, it could also just be a genuine Super Idea…

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Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The political economy of a given age is defined by (a) what human skills are complementary to the dominant productive technologies of the time; (b) who has access to those skills. (During the era of neoliberalism, advanced symbolic analysis was the primary complement & higher ed controlled access.)

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

It's very easy to wear a suit and tie in any major city, even if the aesthetic has mostly disappeared from daily life, because there are people outside wearing pink tutus with Army boots. As usual, your liberation is connected to other people's liberation.

Bobby Mars on Twitter writes: "If you wear a collared shirt and nice shoes out to the bar in the rust belt, multiple people will ask you if you just came from a wedding. Aesthetic standards for men’s attire are horrendously low"

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Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Dancing very very VERY close to saying “OpenAI stole our almost-complete proof of Navier-Stokes from internal access to our ChatGPT sessions because they were desperate to scoop Anthropic” which is absolutely 100% a believable thing OpenAI would do right now cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

It's noteworthy that the winner in a democratic election ultimately is determined by who people vote for, during one event, with most citizens having one vote, the "winner" in a prediction market is ultimately determined by who people pay most for over the whole period up to that event.

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Nick Huntington-Klein @nickchk.com · 30/07/2026

One of my empirical-work econ takes is that I think academia should be *more* open to publishing work based on best-we-can-do weak data, as long as there's really no other way to address the question and that work is very clear about what it can and can't actually say.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This piece nicely illustrates how even getting to a monopoly is bad for nearly everybody. It also illustrates that the monopoly is also often really bad at what it’s supposed to do. A thing about AI is that it’s probably quite bad at at least a few things, so… newrepublic.com/article/2136...

newrepublic.com

There’s a Blue-Collar Hollywood—and the Paramount Merger Will Kill It

Hollywood isn’t all glamour. It’s thousands of line workers. And a Paramount takeover of Warner will make their lives even more precarious.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

A quite apt description of Trump‘s weaving was that he throws ridiculous stuff around and waits to see whether others run with it (the media, his underlings, …). If nobody does it was just a joke, otherwise it can create its own reality. Interestingly, both sides work best if he’s far out.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I wonder whether this is the first time fans of Blockbusters And Only Blockbusters encounters cinephiles‘ evaluations of their favorite work. Maybe the death of the cinema meant that most people had no idea people like the ones on letterboxd exists?

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

You have to appreciate the craftsmanship and violent playfulness in each of Emily Wilson’s sentences in her Odysseus review, www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... People seem to debate whether she’s right and whether she Agrees (with you stranger on the internet). Nonsense, just treat this as a rap battle!

lrb.co.uk

Emily Wilson · An Uncomplicated Man

As they say at the awards shows, I was humbled to learn that Christopher Nolan has read at least the first line of my...

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Switch the loudspeaker to politics and this is how half of the internet works.

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Nils Gilman @nilsgilman.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

I am always mindful of MLK’s profound observation that the hardest (and most unfair) part of any liberation struggle is that the oppressed are obliged not only to free themselves but also to free their oppressor.

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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Anthropic's new conceptualization of J-spaces in LLMs is very similar to how my "Intuition Behind how LLMs Work" blog post. (Since my blog post is oriented to a non-technical audience, I didn't derive the math. Wasn't interested in doing the math. Now we have the math.) medium.com/@mark-riedl/...

medium.com

The Intuition Behind How Large Language Models Work, Part I

Large Language Models (LLMs) are fancy artificial neural networks. But you don’t have time to learn the math or engineering. Unfortunately…

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 21/06/2026

I like to look at elections as both competition within the democratic system and contention thereof. It’s thus no surprise that parties find contestants of the system among non-voters. The question is whether the party & media landscape can separate both questions - and want to.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I often feel the problem with slop is the disconnect between attitudes of sloppiness and care. It's not inherently bad to do something sloppily, not everything deserves that we put ourselves into it. But right now genAI allows to do things sloppily that signaled care, eg, writing an essay or letter.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Kind of makes you wonder about the role of Harry Potter fan fiction in the training corpus.

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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 26/04/2026

the costs of child-rearing are straighforwardly measurable and quantifiable. the benefits of child-rearing are wooly and hand-wavy and entirely nonquantifiable. therefore child-rearing is irrational, as a matter of science. your arguments to the contrary are non-falsifiable.

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 19/04/2026

My own recommendation would be: decarbonize electricity production use antitrust to break up oligopolies permissive IP laws limited, strategic public funding of open-source alternatives

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Dr Robert Bohan @robertbohan.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

🧵 Paul Cadmus (1904-99) was the first fine artist to openly present a gay vision of the world in his time. His work included urban compositions referencing the old masters, portraits & astonishingly sensuous academic studies [1]

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Having a mind that works a bit different means that you have to find hundreds and thousands of small cognitive workarounds day by day. I wonder, when LLMs become perfect complements more often for me, can they at the same time also latch well onto normal minds? Only one group makes business sense.

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Steve Randy Waldman @interfluidity.com · 19/03/2026

one way to understand all this is the world’s largest petrostate kneecapping its lowest cost competitors, potentially for years, all in the name of protecting the security of their region.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Seems like the people who didn’t like win-win if sometimes the other guy wins more have no problem with lose-lose as long as they can make sure everybody loses more than they do.

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

this war is bad bad for Europeans Still not fully sunk in

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Albert Pinto @70sbachchan.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

unbelievable

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Software is so much about understanding systems and finding ways to make them simpler and easier to manipulate. What I like about agentic coding is that it’s now easier to do this for smaller systems and thus maybe keep them more complex than it was possible in the past.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

I have the feeling the right struggles epistemologically with understanding emergent change. It’s inherent to the idea that „the right“ is partly defined by a preference for authority.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

The purpose of a war is what it does

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Kevin Elliott @kjephd.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

This is a clear sign of contempt for the American people and democracy. It's a categorical refusal to submit his actions to public scrutiny.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 28/02/2026

So, what does „no domestic surveillance“ mean for us Europeans, Mr Altman?

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

So, if this is more than social media post, does it mean NVIDIA is not allowed to do business with Anthropic any more? That sounds neither smart nor legal…

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Hegseth didn’t seem the guy to use the Oxford comma to me.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

How much of AI will be rent-seeking, the same old game? I guess it depends on what practices it finally supports. Genuine R&D? Actual growth. Advertising, lawyer-ing, academic games dislodged from outcomes, entertainment? Rent seeking. AI just as earlier tech just raises the bar in a zero-sum game.

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Brett "Solidarity 2026" Banditelli @banditelli.org · 13/02/2026

I saw a live birthed harbor seal pup for the first time in my life today. I thought it would be horrifying because I have a weak stomach, but it turned to UNGODLY CUTE very fast! Using this thread for some moments in the minutes after. All shot on my z8, edited on phone for now. 🦭 🦑

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Becky Hammer @beckyhammer.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Disturbingly detailed analysis of my first rewatch incoming

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

„Global Conflicts“ is trending and all I find is seemingly US posters posting about Europeans apparently hating them. This is not the way. It‘s first and second order propaganda. Block. Mute. Ignore.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

Maybe some of us are pushing the idea of thinking from first principles too far. Jokes aside, it’s fascinating how the frames we are used to think in in our professional life can become a permanent overlay in other areas - and how that is sometimes not helpful.

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Sean Casten @seancasten.bsky.social · 20/12/2025

This Yglesias piece in the NYT is horrifically bad. Almost every "fact" it cites is provably false. At best it is cocktail party banter from a pundit who knows nothing of energy. At worst, it was cut/paste from oil industry talking points. So, a rebuttal: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/18/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Obama Supported It. The Left in Canada and Norway Does. Why Don’t Democrats?

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

Apropos of nothing, the cost of the Federal Chancellery in Berlin, the world‘s largest government headquarters, was 368 million Euro (inflation adjusted). The main building has nine floors with for example a large banquet hall on the fifth. There are 300 offices and 13 winter gardens in the wings.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

I really liked the UN speech by Finland‘s President Stubb. It’s a fascinating genre I had mostly forgotten about. The speechwriting is impressive, clearly setting it‘s core concepts, using a simple structure (intro, two parts with three sub-points each). m.youtube.com/watch?v=ECaq...

m.youtube.com

Finland’s President Delivers Most Inspiring, Powerful UN Speech Yet on Multipolar World Order | AC1G

YouTube video by DRM News

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Venkatesh Rao 🔹 @vgr.bsky.social · 20/07/2025

Raise weirdness till it’s fun Lower standards till it’s done

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Whenever I read about the lopsided economics of AI, I dread what will happen once the honeymoon will have ended and companies need to make money again. I hope efficiency will be at a level by then that the 20€/month price bracket will work out without brutal enshittification or privacy nightmares.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

One of those "back when I was a kid" musings: It's quite remarkable how much teenagers these days are marketed to. When I was that age in the 90s, the only places you saw any ads made for you was when buying one of those slightly cringe (print!) magazines or watching TV.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

That might be the costliest episode of hyperfocus in human history.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 08/04/2025

Sure we have a crisis but also: these are the fun days where people are still throwing shit at the wall to figure out what The Narrative will be.

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Living in Taipei I have spent hundreds of hours trying to understand China-US-Taiwan relationships. It‘s a small price to pay as others have dedicated their lives to this. How utterly reckless and bizarre to not give any of this even a minute of thought. www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

washingtonpost.com

Inside President Trump’s whirlwind decision to upend global trade

Why did Trump impose tariffs? Inside the advice that shaped his decision.

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Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

1. @alisongopnik.bsky.social, Cosma Shalizi, James Evans and myself have a new piece in Science on "AI" Large Models, pushing back against much of the collective wisdom about what they can and can't do. Official below, unpaywalled at henryfarrell.net/large-ai-mod... . So why this now?

science.org

Large AI models are cultural and social technologies

Implications draw on the history of transformative information systems from the past

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Ben Sahlmüller @bensahlmueller.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Pump and dump, only it‘s the whole economy.

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