iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Every time I encounter a "verifying that you are human" delay, I can't help but reading it as: "Are you even human, bro?"

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Will we ever have an AI powerful enough to come up with a new menu item at Taco Bell? Like an eight layer burrito?

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

It’s great that Americans will now have to pay five (rather than one) co-pays to prevent their children from catching awful diseases.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Philosophers should get free meals for life in the Prytaneion for writing on Substack.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

I agree with this, and it raises a fundamental worry for me. What if the net result of the ways in which LLMs increase productivity (the movement of dollars in the economy) actually be leads to a decline in the economic activity that increases human wellbeing?

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

If Christopher Nolan's version of The Odyssey isn't historically accurate, why did the Muse tell him to present it that way?

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Solar power IS nuclear power, I only just realized.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

I’m surprised that the democrats didn’t heavily invest in their own America250 show as counter-programming. Simply reading from the declaration, the first, the 13-15th, and 19th amendment and then having some music/fireworks would be very moving in this moment.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

If nominative determinism were true, I would be soaked in vinegar.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

I would suggest that, rather than adapting to AI, we should make AI adapt to us and our needs.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

In the name of efficiency, we've added a delay to any human being who wants to access a website so that we can verify that they are human.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

To describe a phenomenon as a cancer is an incitement to violence. [... ] But it could be argued that the cancer metaphors are in themselves implicitly genocidal. —Susan Sontag

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

I tend to be partial to mid-century abstract and minimalist book covers but some books these days do have beautiful covers.

Covers of the books “Aboutness” by Stephen Yano and “Thinking about Things” by Mark Sainsbury.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

My basic mental model for this now is: the US is at war with Syracuse in addition to its other commitments.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

The Trump administration keeps comparing themselves to the Athenians in the Peloponnesian war, the weak suffer what they must and all. If only there were an example from that war of an Athenian war of choice on a power halfway across the world so that we could learn from that experience.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

Wars should be entered into only at last resort, only with a just cause, and only with as clear an objective as can be formulated at the time.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

'And I'm gonna tell you workers, 'fore you cash in your checks: They say "America First," but they mean "America Next!"'.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

This morning I had a student I taught 17 years ago email to ask me a logic question and a student I taught last semester email me that they liked my courses and want to pursue philosophy of language further.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

It's already really weird to me morally that realists parrot the Athenian speeches to the Melians and on the Mytilenean debate in Thucydides. But, have they not read the rest of the book? Do they think the war and their conduct in it works out well for the Athenians?

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

So based on the DOJ’s recent record with regard to political prosecutions, what happens when Maduro is acquitted?

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

I thought at least some of the lessons of the Iraq war had been learned.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 01/01/2026

What fraction of the rest of my life will be spent turning off AI Assistants? (I'm not even a person who thinks these are utterly useless.)

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Alexis de Tocqueville just absolutely rinses Andrew Jackson.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Students using contemporary Scots poetry to illustrate principles of Classical Indian Philosophy of Language in their essays is an interesting cross-pollination.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Similarly, he notes that the senate is a dangerous mess but that nothing bad has happened because less populous states hadn’t ganged up.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

Tocqueville points out how dangerous it is to have a president who can stay in office without an effective majority in the legislature, but the notes that it’s not a big deal there wasn’t much for the president to do at the time.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I've been listening to Locke's Two Treatises (which I hadn't read in a long time), and some of the passages feel like the most damning criticisms of Trump I've ever heard.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

"Yeah, but what is truth? If you follow me." -- Lionel Hutz

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

One way for Labour to improve their polling position and display their moderation might be for them to reintroduce the long parliament's ban on Christmas, imposing fines for Christmas celebrations.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

I saw this plaque outside the library on a recent trip to Southampton.

Plaque Reading: "To commemorate the arrival aboard the "Habana" of 4,000 refugee children from the Basque region of Spain in May 1937 following the destruction of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War and to thank the people of Southampton and Britain who volunteered to care for them." Plaque dated 2007.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

We have finally learned what Meatloaf would not do for love.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

My Compositionality entry is out at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: plato.stanford.edu/entries/comp...

plato.stanford.edu

Compositionality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Guys repairing the roof in the office above me are listening to "Golden" from Kpop Demon Hunters at top volume.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

If a major studio were to release an AI generated animated movie, would it be copyright infringement for animators to re-draw it scene by scene with small changes and for voice actors to voice it and release it as their own work?

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

I woke up at the same time this morning (in Scotland), looked out the window, and had an urge to play this song www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAEp.... Hello Darkness, my old friend indeed.

youtube.com

Simon & Garfunkel - The Sound of Silence (from The Concert in Central Park)

YouTube video by SimonGarfunkelVEVO

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

One way to frame this is that Caldwell is proposing that the military should be an experiment in social engineering (so as to exclude people) and then writing as if that's what his opponents want to do.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 07/10/2025

Another use for LLMs/AIs: rather than go to the beach, and have to bring a suit and towel, and come home all sandy, you could have the AIs fabricate photos of you going to the beach, not look at them, have the AI post them on social media, and let LLMs write comments (that you don't read).

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Another use for LLMs, rather than solve a conflict with another person by discussion and compromise, you could have the LLMs propose a solution and then ignore it.

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 02/10/2025

I was about to do a task but was temporarily distracted by another task. In the interim, the first task was resolved on its own. Hurray for structured procrastination!

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Bryan Pickel @bryanpickel.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

It really hit me that I'm not in Scotland when it started drizzling and everyone started ducking into shops and protected places.

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