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cameron tonkinwise

@camerontw.bsky.social
573 followers 446 following 422 posts

transition design, service design, design philosophy, finitude - most of my occasional thinking these days takes advantage of the slightly longer form afforded by the truly awful linkedin, sorry: au.linkedin.com/in/cameron-tonkinwi…

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Reposted by cameron tonkinwise
Mehreen Faruqi @mehreenfaruqi.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
August was the hottest month in global history and yet, NSW has just approved the biggest coal mine expansion ever proposed in the state. It is scandalous that Australia is leading negotiations at global climate talks, including in the Pacific next week.
theguardian.com
Approval of biggest coal project in NSW planning commission’s history described as ‘infamous betrayal’
Independent Planning Commission says climate change impacts from Hunter Valley project will be ‘outweighed’ by economic benefits
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Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
“We’re losing billions and we’re making a product that’s an existential threat to humanity” is a hell of sales pitch www.ft.com/content/c768...
ft.com
Anthropic warns of ‘existential risks to humanity’ in IPO prospectus
Long-awaited S1 filing reports Claude maker lost $8bn last year on $4.6bn in revenue
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gamera obscura @ohrobin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Google earth has updated its satellite images of Gaza. The destruction is almost incomprehensible.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
The idea of a "tech industry" has always relied on "computer" being a special kind of medium, akin to alchemy. And if tech demands to be king, AI hype has now elevated LLMs to a king of kings. But the solipsism has hit a dead end. The only way forward is to recognize that computers are not special.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
LLMs are just normal technology. But tech is just a normal medium.
The more we focus on a particular technology, the more we lose sight of what normal people actually care about.
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Prof. Eliot Jacobson @climatecasino.net · 27/09/2026
Breaking News! Code: FUBAR!!! The preliminary Nino 3.4 sea-surface temperature for September 25th was 29.822°C. This breaks the previous highest temperature ever recorded in the region of 29.815°C, set on November 17th, 2015. The Climate 8-ball is exiting, stage right.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
We all had this 'I didn't do the reading' twerp in some sophomore class that was only enjoyable after he stopped turning up.
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Eryk Salvaggio @eryk.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The algo era really should be understood as a permanently manipulated form of “discourse” where your responses are genuine but arise from manufactured conditions, we are usually reacting to something somebody paid for us to react to and your attention matters far more than what you say.
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Sam @samd.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
gotta say there’s something almost poetic about Trump incentivizing less fuel efficient vehicles as the Iran war keeps pushing up the price of gas
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 27/09/2026
"we can't uninvent this" we can't uninvent my car either but it still doesn't go anywhere without gas in the tank
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 24/09/2026
Buried at the end of NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang's NYT interview: the single most terrible yet somehow confusingly appropriate metaphor for fossil-fuelled AI I have ever seen ketanjoshi.co/2026/09/16/n...
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tante @tante.cc · 24/09/2026
I had a few thoughts on why techbros always say these embarrassing, weird things tante.cc/2026/09/24/the-test
tante.cc
The Test
Jensen Huang, the NVIDIA CEO and wearer of the most midlife crisis looking leather jackets in the world, was on Ezra Klein’s podcast. Now I don’t really want you do go through all of what was being said in that recording/writeup. It’s painful. You feel your mental capabilities decaying with every minute of listening … […]
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Scoiattolo @scarnecchia.net · 21/09/2026
Imagine if all the evidence for climate change was "a bunch of guys on a website thought very hard about it and agreed it was very bad and might happen" instead of empiricism.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
"I belong to a cult. Someone did some research that undermines the core tenets of my cult and came up with a catchy phrase that makes it harder to recruit more people to my cult. This makes me sad."
Screencap of tweet on X from @jackclarkSF (Jack Clark):

"stochastic parrot" was a mimetically-fit cognitive virus that spread from 2021-2025; it temporarily blinded many gifted people to the nature of AI progress, burning up crucial years in which they could have helped think through the response to the situation.
7:34 AM · Sep 20, 2026
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The Cathy Wilcox @cathywilcox.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Good to see this finally get coverage in my old paper. This is the same mob who campaigned against me, but it wasn’t sufficiently newsworthy then.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Was invited to a conference session on AI and Design that appeared to have been designed by a so-called-AI as it was difficult to parse, but was themed 'dramaturgy,' so I sent this low production value 5min video in place of the one they extruded for/of me vimeo.com/1228457444
vimeo.com
If and only if Brechtian genAI
Short invited presentation to 'Always Question AI'
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headfallsoff @headfallsoff.com · 19/09/2026
people are always saying anti-AI arguments don’t understand the full nuances of the technology. which is correct. but only because it stole everyone’s work, exists solely to get you fired, has made the entire internet unusable and has been forced on everyone without consent
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Joe Lanman @joelanman.com · 19/09/2026
www.effort.news/irregular
effort.news
A Single Firm is Behind OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta Hacking Scandals — Effort
The Israeli Effective Altruist firm Irregular caused unsecured AI models to hack real targets.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
"We have created a super-intelligence. What can we do to save humanity from certain destruction." "I know. We'll hire Accenture."
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Are CEOs lying more now than previous decades or has the job always been to lie (to customers, employees, suppliers, investors)? If they are, is that a consequence of recent Finacialisation, or a decimation of (investigative) journalism, or just following hyper-politics' lead?
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
In thisa piece for @thenewworldmag.bsky.social I express the wish for a better level of public discourse around AI that doesn't leave us hanging on every word of the alleged tech gurus. www.thenewworld.co.uk/philip-ball-...
thenewworld.co.uk
Apocalyptic AI fantasies are a stupid, annoying distraction from its real problems
The people who work in AI are not gurus and most of their predictions have been wrong. Working in the industry makes them less reliable commentators, not more
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I have only seen cis-men opining that AI is going to kill us all. Has anyone seen anyone with a different lifeworld professing that apocalyptic belief?
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Any research on pharmaceutical usage by AI bros? Are we sure their AI-is-going-to-kill-us-all is not being induced by junior programmers overdoing gummies, elder founders microdosing psychedelics, and investors incoherently amphetamined?
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Slow is still within Inevitable and Powerful. Do not have truck with Slow. The reframe should be: Your so-called-AI technology does not work and there are more significant things we should be investing in developing. anthonymoser.github.io/writing/rhet...
anthonymoser.github.io
The Kirby Frame
writing is a technology, frames are a frame. bespoke human content.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
omg, we need to be researching an 'AI Kill Switch' now as we have no idea how safely to stop what we are choosing to do
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
fine, we will not cool your enterprise software chatbot with water you want to drink - we will instead bath it in Pfas. Are you satisfied? Now get out of the goddam way of our investment scam, will you www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘Tidal wave’ of Pfas being launched to satisfy AI industry, campaigners warn
Big manufacturers planning to produce more of the forever chemicals to meet demand from datacentres
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Great and important episode. Send to all your students and their parents today.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Love how the example of 'good AI' that Mr 'AI is going to kill you' gives is 'it's so much more convenient than going to the library' (at 8min 30s) - "Please regulate us so that the only thing we kill are those awful libraries" www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...
abc.net.au
Godfather of AI welcomes pause in development - ABC listen
The head of the Artificial Intelligence company Anthropic has called for a global slowdown in AI development, as concerns mount over the technology's potential risks.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Has anyone ever interviewed an executive or product lead at some other company that went all-in on the Metaverse? Really intrigued to know how they rationalise it: pissed off? 'well everybody else did'? 'it was a good idea just badly executed'? so embarrased, erased from portfolio?
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Pup Fiction @pupfiction.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
BREAKING Anthony Albanese promises every Australian voter 5,000 carbon credits available via the gambling app of their choice if Labor wins the next election
Anthony Albanese
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Tim Maughan @timmaughan.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
what ppl forget about LLMs is that if you start every prompt with “i am an academic so a very special and smart person“ then anything that follows has no carbon or water cost, no refugees have to clean the data of violent child abuse imagry, and everyone is fairly compensated for their stolen work
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 12/09/2026
Also like radiation, prolonged exposure leads to cumulative damage rather than immunity
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 12/09/2026
If this is confusing, imagine your roommate is going to buy an Ikea Billy bookcase, and so you loan them $50 to pay for half of it, and they write an IOU on a post-it saying so. But then, before you get paid next week, you say "that bookcase is now worth $2M." and you both agree and update the note.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
a big crash is close it seems oilprice.com/Latest-Energ...
oilprice.com
U.S. Diesel Prices Top $6 a Gallon for First Time Ever | OilPrice.com
U.S. diesel prices have crossed $6 per gallon for the first time as geopolitical disruptions and tight refining capacity squeeze global fuel supplies.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
In my experience, the university managerial class is more identifiable by tie-less collared shirts with lanyards. The lanyard to swipe into spaces academics cannot go is the main give-away. Sometimes a jacket, but only the VC wears full suit: culture-centered.blogspot.com/2026/09/the-...
culture-centered.blogspot.com
The Suit Walks the Corridor
Mohan Dutta, Culture-centered approach, CARE, Massey University, Mohan Jyoti Dutta, Prof Mohan Dutta, Mohan J. Dutta, Communication for social change
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 09/09/2026
All the other issues aside, this attitude is a big part of why I see genAI coding in particular as a very material climate / fossil fuel threat A chatbot blurting out tens of thousands of lines of code each time instead of a person designing one efficient, good, smart app once = wild energy bloat
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Stupid things are said about AI by - scammy investors knowingly hyping - under-educated senior engineers believing they're philosophers - fanboys with substacks - middle-managers trying to stay afloat - stenographic tech journalists - LLMs optimising for engagement all reinforcing each other.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
If so-called AI is inevitable and improving exponentially everyday, why do I have to learn to use it? Can't I just wait for it to be smart enough to be of great value without me having to carefully prompt it into my workflow blah blah?
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
I think what I find really depressing about AI in higher education is how so many people didn't even wait for the evidence/research before we decided on telling students "how to use AI responsibly" which often includes things like checking grammar, and obviously, we shouldn't have been

Jill Walker Rettberg

  • 3rd+

Professor @ Center for Digital Narrative, UiB

1d • 


Follow
Did you know that even prompting an LLM to edit your grammar might alter the semantic meaning of your text and remove your human voice? If you're in Bergen on Friday September 4 you can hear Isadora White and Marwa Abdulhai present their recent paper on this. They took human-written short essays, asked LLMs to revise them and found significant changes well beyond just copyediting. This is a large-scale computational study, but the image shared here shows two examples of how this happens.

We'll also have talks by John Gallagher, whose newsletter on AI and writing I read religiously, and by Rashid Mustafin, a PhD student at NHH, and Pedro Jacobetty. And before these public talks the AI STORIES team gets to spend two days in a workshop with these and other brilliant people - I'm so excited! 

Here is the full program: https://lnkd.in/eeGUywhj
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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 29/08/2026
Ok the research in question is "counting posts on X" so let's pump the brakes on the doomer validation cycle
Analysis of real-world loss of control incidents involving AI models flagged by businesses and individuals almost doubled in July compared with June, with more than 300 cases in the month, according to the Loss of Control Observatory, which monitors reports made by AI users on the social media platform X.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
hey all you agentic-addicts: where are the anti deceptive pattern agents that reverse the last decade's complicitly awful UX? e.g.: a browser plugin that adds an 'Actually never' option to any 'OK / Not now' button; an agent that adds 'it's management's fault, not the service worker' to any NPS.
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George Monbiot @georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
What this reflects is the growing power of the ultra-rich over every aspect of life. Protest is an affront to the power of wealth. So is any politics to the left of an ever-shifting "centrism". So is independent journalism. So are independent universities. One by one, they must all be shut down.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
because LLMs do not 'learn' FFS www.technologyreview.com/2026/08/24/1...
technologyreview.com
Kids outlearn AI—and we still don’t know why
LLMs need vastly more data than children to learn language. Understanding why could help us create more efficient models—and reveal more about developing minds.
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Nick Young @nickofnz.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Adapting to climate change without ending the fossil fuel industry.
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The Cathy Wilcox @cathywilcox.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Everywhere. My @smh @theage cartoon.
Four frames. 1. “Three Israeli hostages waving white flags were shot and killed  by the IDF. They said, “We thought they were Hamas.””Image of three dead, with flags. 2. “The IDF shot and killed 14 Palestinian paramedics and a UN worker then buried them in a mass grave. They thought Hamas were among them.” Image of bulldozer and rows of body bags. 3. “Present and former Israeli politicians have claimed there are no innocents in Gaza and that even children and babies are the enemy.” Image of a child sitting, a dead adult behind, a sniper drone buzzing nearby. 4. “So when they say the IDF killed Zomi Frankcom and her colleagues because they thought they contained Hamas operatives. It’s understandable, as they see Hamas everywhere.” Image of photo of Zomi with bouquet of flowers beside.
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Hoping @emilymbender.bsky.social and/or @audreywatters.bsky.social can dig into this alarming-because-ambiguously-learner-centred proactionary AI-in-Education Australian manifesto: castlereagh.ai
screenshot of paragraph reading: "We have a moral imperative to plan and act with these
possibilities in mind. We should not wait for these potential
scenarios to eventuate. If, as many of us believe is highly
likely, these triggers activate, the Australian education and
training sectors may need to shortcut lengthy governance
processes, review cycles, and institutional inertia. We commit
to serving learners and their learning even if this means
eschewing institutional traditions and inertia under the
direction of our governing bodies."
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Laura Grace Weldon @lauragraceweldon.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
This
Cartoon by  Gautami Reddy 

12 cartoon images under the caption How To Live In The Age of AI 
read slowly
make ugly thing
don't believe everything
eat together
get bored
avoid instant replies
call your grandma/grandpa
fall in love
cry every now and then
memorize a poem
trust your gut
take your time
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cameron tonkinwise @camerontw.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
nothing says "we think user research is a complete waste of time and prefer to waste users' time" more than every Microsoft application defaulting to opening a new blank document/spreadsheet/powerpoint, etc, whenever you open the goddam application
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Ben Williamson @benpatrickwill.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
What's most upsetting me as a journal editor is that many papers we receive where AI use is disclosed for editing and language refinement actually appear to have been ruined rather than improved by AI. We get what seem like promising underpinning studies, but totally obscured by over-complex text.
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Veena Dubal @veenadubal.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
I think a lot of people don’t understand that the academic freedom that we have — which we have fought for — is not the freedom to say every asinine racist & sexist thing that you think.
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