iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

this Ezra Klein & Bill Gates AI interview. woof.

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 27/09/2026

i haven't been practicing my picture-making nearly as much this year (it's been a year where a lot has been disrupted), but here's a few photos from recently

120

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 27/09/2026

Prior to smartphones with GPS, I had multiple bad experiences with professional taxi drivers. In addition to all the many other benefits, phones+GPS created a far better taxi. Gig work lacking health care? Not great. But that's a failure of our political system, not a failure of the GPS satellites.

020

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 27/09/2026

I heard Opus 5.5 got good at motion graphics. I gave it my PDFs of the brand guidelines for my theater and asked it to make a tool to help me generate clips for social media. It gave me back a ~1MB standalone HTML file that accepts photos and videos and generates stuff like this:

220

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 25/09/2026

There's no doubt that Meta is tremendously successful as a company, but *how* they do it gives off such loser vibes.

010

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 25/09/2026

Meta's current focus on their new AI agent is (ironically!) much less interesting to me than their new VR glasses. Meta is a gross company that I don't like, but good VR at an affordable price is intriguing. I think it's the one thing that could clearly change the game for the economics of theater.

110

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 24/09/2026

i'm, uh, in this movie? i might go see it next Friday night? i haven't seen it yet, so i don't know if i did a good job newnextfilmfest.com/film-2026/li...

newnextfilmfest.com

Little Doors

Preceded by "Roterfluss"

160

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 23/09/2026

one nice thing about using @qlab.app to run your doorbell is that, when you discover how package delivery guys tend to be Very Impatient and like to Mash That Doorbell A Lot, you can just adjust the cue programming to prevent them from triggering the doorbell sound faster than your desired rate

051

Reposted by Chris Ashworth

The Voxel @voxel.org · 22/09/2026

Nevermore, from Orange Grove Dance October 1 – 18 voxel.org/events/never...

001

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 22/09/2026

We have reached the point in software capitalism where @qlab.app is now getting support requests from people who assume they need to "renew" every year and are wondering if they need to pay us again for the program they bought last year. (They do not.)

153

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 21/09/2026

I think this example hints at a new job category. The whole deal with AI is that it does not take as much training as I have to translate organizational needs into software. Companies and orgs have these needs and don't know they can now be solved. Relatively little training opens up new jobs.

130

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 21/09/2026

i love food. and i even like cooking! but *planning* a meal is an unbearable task. mental agony.

120

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 19/09/2026

there's a phase of dementia where you can't force them out of their house yet but where you spend SO much time feeling crazy yourself while you try to make any of it make sense. (and where you also spend so much time cleaning up disgusting things.)

151

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 18/09/2026

my mental image of AI developments recently has been: a bunch of us all standing on our desks, watching the water rise up around us, waiting to see how high the automation level reaches individual workers hoping to keep our head above water, looking for ways to get higher up in the building

010

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 16/09/2026

chatted with the really nice nurse who did my blood draw this morning. she was the only one staffing the lab. yesterday had 75 patients. started her day today at 3am. has 4 separate jobs. i'm sure this does not reflect anything concerning about the U.S.

020

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 14/09/2026

a piece of art i have always wanted to make is a warehouse containing 720 stopped clocks and each one lights up during the one minute that it is accurate (twice a day)

0262

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 13/09/2026

people seem to read "AI will be doing [X]" as "a dumb and lazy human hands over *the entire process of doing [X]*, and the AI does [X] badly" when people use AI well, it does not tend to look like this. it often looks like "AI does [incredibly tedious task] that is part of doing [X]"

001

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 12/09/2026

this morning: spent 30 minutes adding a digital program feature to our @voxel.org backend to offer easy mobile-friendly programs for each show this afternoon: went to a regional theater show with a $95 ticket and a digital-only program... in PDF that is not formatted for mobile (it is unreadable)

1101

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 12/09/2026

me? oh not much, just reading the last 15 years of tax filings from my home-town regional theater and feeling melancholy projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/o...

000

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 12/09/2026

have we considered whether calendars are a tool of the devil

020

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 12/09/2026

been thinking about this poem a lot since Berry died I never felt much resonance with the story of Adam & Eve gaining forbidden knowledge and thereby losing paradise, but this poem finally unlocked it for me

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry.

041

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 11/09/2026

I think one of the stressful things about discussing AI is trying to thread the needle between "can do truly terrible things" and "can do truly incredible things". Both are true, but it's hard to say opposite things at the same time; it can feel like you aren't honoring the one you're not saying.

130

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 10/09/2026

"Well young man... when the models were _first_ invented, they took up ENTIRE ROOMS! To achieve the same amount of artificial intelligence that you now have in your wrist watch!"

000

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 10/09/2026

due to the magic of ✨the internet✨, i am regularly notified that someone in Britain (who mistyped their own email) will be receiving a parcel of soap from a company named "Smol", whose notifications can not be replied to nor disabled. today's delivery of soap will be between 10:35am and 2:35pm

260

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 10/09/2026

It's fascinating how the general vibe of Apple leasing hardware is "oh hey, that's a nice option" but of software doing subscriptions is "money grubbing greedy sneeds". (I am not necessarily saying I have a different reaction.) I guess it's the optional part, but also seems something more than that?

200

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 09/09/2026

it never pays to not procrastinate!

010

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 09/09/2026

and, like: network effects, economies of scale, regulatory capture, switching costs, acquisitions, etc, etc. (my initial example of people's limited attention isn't even high on my own list, but I suspect still higher than the difficulty of writing code)

020

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 09/09/2026

this is a hopeful vision but I don't understand the prediction; it's not clear to me that the difficulty of making software is by itself a top 5 reason we have monopolies

131

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 09/09/2026

in grad school i once put off an overwhelming assignment long enough to benefit from the prof realizing it was too big & cancelling it. I declared to my officemates: it never pays to not procrastinate! this strategy has proven effective enough to reach for that motto at least a few times a year

041

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 09/09/2026

my 5-year-old nephew runs around screeching "the PERFECT CRIME, mwa ha haaaa" about any old thing, which now every adult and teenager in his orbit has also picked up

040

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 08/09/2026

the number of atoms in the universe is well below 2 ^ 300 substantially all software is a combination of far more than 300 independent choices about how to make it this suggests the configuration space of "useful software" is truly astronomical AI making code faster barely makes a dent

020

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 07/09/2026

this is not a fully formed philosophical thought, but sometimes i'm just like "okay free market capitalism, i'll grant you the need for competition, but how about it's 'ALL OF US' against 'ALL OF THE SUFFERING ARRAYED AGAINST US'" instead of us against each other (boring; petty; wasteful; selfish)

011

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 07/09/2026

todaybordayyy... issss... a laybordayyyy

030

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 03/09/2026

pro: after 9 years of having to drive my kid to school every single day because Baltimore City had no bus service, my 9th grader can finally take a city bus to school con: the city bus runs consistently 10-15 minutes late and she can't get to school on time {don't-know-what-i-was-expecting.gif}

220

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 02/09/2026

listen. it's VERY simple. A goes to B, B goes to G, D goes to 2, C goes to 1, and E goes to 3. in short, E, C, D, A, B is now 3, 1, 2, B, G and please don't keep asking

292

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 02/09/2026

i've spent 30 years of my life learning to organize electrons into useful arrangements, and sometimes i wonder ... sigh. I just wonder about that sometimes.

051

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 01/09/2026

there's an awful lot of grief in the air, friends

000

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 01/09/2026

For the past...10 years? 15 years? More? My personal home page has been exactly one Wendell Berry quote, which I found in the appendix of a book. chrisashworth.org

"Live a three-dimensioned life; stay away from screens."

040

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 01/09/2026

Rest in peace fellow Kentuckian Wendell Berry. He wrote one of my favorite poems.

030

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 01/09/2026

thank you PNC for whatever you did here; i'm sure we must have wanted it

screenshot showing a bank fee of $209.39 for a mysterious "corporate account analysis charge"

100

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 01/09/2026

apparently my daughter's best friend described me to their peer group today as "the gayest <airquotes> straight </airquotes> man you'll ever meet" (the friend is queer; gonna read this as a compliment)

130

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 30/08/2026

Given that AI is automation, & automation tends to be owned by capital, it's understandably viewed with suspicion & hostility in a society where we experience powerlessness and harm from capital. But capital doesn't *just* do harm, and I find it hard to unwind that thread in this conversation. 1/7

100

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 29/08/2026

As I read this 2025 working paper (on Expertise as a predictive model for how employment is affected by automation - www.nber.org/papers/w33941), I'm struck by several typos and copy-edit slips which AI could quickly flag for clean-up. I wonder if these human errors now qualify as comforting? 😅

000

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 29/08/2026

my spouse attempted to add our daughter's "circus camp" to our shared calendar. due to a wild bug in the calendar app, it has not just added the event, but it has added an additional copy of the event...on every day to the end of time. by next summer our daughter has hundreds of "circus camps" a day

110

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 29/08/2026

i'm (obviously!) not an expert in economics but right now it feels a little like in 2020 when a bunch of us became HIGHLY MOTIVATED to learn at least the basics of pandemic science on that note here's an interesting paper about the value of labor when tasks are automated www.nber.org/papers/w33941

100

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 29/08/2026

the world's a mess, but we're making art anyway (i'd strongly encourage you to check out all three of these shows) (i'm co-directing the last one)

020

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 27/08/2026

meeting with a tax specialist about a specific kind of filing and i'm completely mystified by what they think our job categories might be

210

Chris Ashworth @chris.ashworth.io · 26/08/2026

Desperately Trying to Amortize Violence into Boring, Non-Violent Chunks: One Species' Attempts to Reduce Toil & Suffering (or: "Healthy Human Governance, Can We Do It???")

000