iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

This period of my life has taught me how important it is to make sure my attention is re-routed to specific activities. Not spiralling. Not doom scrolling. Random activity X that takes up all my time. (I’m also blessed with a job I like that is very demanding of my attention when I’m working.)

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Also dancing. Also Magic: The Gathering but only pre-releases where you’ve been too busy to look stuff up so you’re sitting there with 90 cards you’ve never seen and an hour to build a deck or two and then you have to work out how it works. I promise you will not be thinking about other things.

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I recommend experimental theatre for a very similar reason.

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Lionel @spiindoctor.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s almost as if a lot of reproducible “best practices” or whatevs don’t transfer across disciplines and are mostly developed in very narrow contexts (small enough data you don’t need to be good at computers, shareable data, etc)

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Reposted by Dan Simpson

I am also a bit skeptical that training on all the data in the universe is better than modeling and understanding signal processing (I also like that more).

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Reproducibility packages are a communication tool more than anything else. I wrote a bit about this, in a seasonally appropriate post, once upon a time statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/11/13/w...

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

What if it’s never decorative gourd season? | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

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Dreamer @elgatoesmio.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Open casket funeral? I don’t even want people looking at me when I’m alive

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I love reading modern C++ code because there are so many ways to say “I can’t be fucked working out what type this is. You do it.” SOFT!

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Reposted by Dan Simpson

Jen Taub @jentaub.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Alas, I'm toning down my profanity in every-day conversation (and the classroom). That said, I cannot resist reminding you all of this seasonal tradition. "It's Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers." www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/its...

mcsweeneys.net

It’s Decorative Gourd Season, Motherfuckers

For the seventeenth year: Welcome to autumn, fuckheads.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

With the warning that the photos in this thread quickly get explicit (so don’t click through if that’s not right for your situation), these are giving BLaB Hustler White-era. Perfection. (If you’ve never seen Bruce LaBruce’s photos, www.galeriephilippebober.eu/bruce-la-bruce)

galeriephilippebober.eu

Bruce La Bruce | Galerie Philippe Bober

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Like Sondheim wrote a whole song about it.

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Muppet Songs: Liza Minnelli - Copacabana

Are you suggesting this Lola is anything other than cishet. Not a queer or trans theme to be found. youtu.be/LCGSZmTsX7o?...

youtu.be

YouTube video by Muppet Songs

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Foreigner - Waiting For a Girl Like You

Also I can’t speak for your flavour of chaser, but for mine they think they’re like that but it’s more youtu.be/CRwU5SFx2ZU?...

youtu.be

YouTube video by Kentopole

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There’s a lot of discourse I could be engaging in. But I’ve worked two 14 hour days in a row so this is my hill.

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Also hear me out but sk8r boi is an answer song to Lola.

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AND it gave us weird Al’s Yoda. Which is, I guess, less convincing reason. But nevertheless.

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Also I’m constantly thinking about Joni Mitchell just fully rewriting a song at this and making it better. Queen.

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Reposted by Dan Simpson

Air gapping apparently wouldn't work in alignment tests because, I shit you not according to this OpenAI guy, one computer could run the CPU hot and tell the other airgapped one it is in trouble. I wish I could get paid $10m a year to say the stupidest cybersecurity thing you've ever heard

Tweet by Fireside Alpha, which reads:
OpenAI's Noam Brown says air-gapping the computers may not stop a misaligned AI, because two air-gapped machines can still talk by running a CPU hot and reading the temperature change.

There's a picture of a white guy with glasses, looking very concerned, under this text.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I had to think about endian-ness today.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Children should not see Patti LuPone.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I’m doom scrolling reels to get past an excellent but a lot play (Degenerates at playwrights horizon) and I think insta thinks I’m straight because it keeps talking about “average penis size” and like girl I’m focusing on the one in front of me not the running mean.

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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Lots of people replying that I'm erasing alien moms, and I'd like to take accountability for that. Shout-out to all the hard working alien mothers.

static.klipy.com

Star Trek: Borg Queen (Alice Krige)

Alt: The torso of the Borg Queen (Alice Krige) being lowered into her body.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

The full setlist was a journey.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Christeene is the best there is. Here is a clip of her doing Tori Amos’s Sugar with Joanie Drago (show coming at the Parkside) and James on vocals and guitars and five other people out of shot.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

If you’re in New York you’ve got two days to see this perfect fever dream of a play thetanknyc.org/calendar-1/2...

thetanknyc.org

QUEEN FOR A DAY — The Tank

A new play by Tyler Anthony Smith about Halston designing a gown for Elizabeth I.

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Mark Baxter 🏳️‍🌈🧂 @markgbaxter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

If you are in New York you have two more chances to see this show and you should absolutely go thetanknyc.org/calendar-1/2...

thetanknyc.org

QUEEN FOR A DAY — The Tank

A new play by Tyler Anthony Smith about Halston designing a gown for Elizabeth I.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

To be clear, I like my men like my bridges: structurally sound. But this is a real, amusing, phenomena. And they have these facial expression. And the bear is definitely licking the twink’s ear.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

When a twink shows up at a bear party.

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Dan Simpson @danpsimpson.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

I don’t have a dog in this horse, but I really like polars as a package. I use whatever is convenient, but polars is neat.

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Jeff Lockhart @jwlockhart.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

The fear, if they believe what they say, is intelligence itself. To be unable to anticipate, and thus helpless to stop, an intellectually superior being. By definition they can't give a practical scenario, because they worry they're too dumb to imagine and survive whatever it thinks up.

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Once again, there's a reason they won't spell out how we'd go extinct. Are we getting Jurassic Park'd because the AI is reinventing dinosaurs? Are they getting access to the nuclear codes and hypnotizing the president into using them? They are referring to bank/infrastructure hacks and exaggerating.

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But let’s pour one out for people who do the work of letting people be really fucking mad at them (privately and publicly) because that’s not the worst possible option.

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This “villain-era” thing is something I never see people talking about in academic contexts. But at some point, your job is to say various versions of no (or “absolutely not!”) to people who would’ve preferred you didn’t. Department chairs are the classic version of this. But it happens to everyone

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

When it comes to the (I don’t know? Sociology? Is that the polite word for it?) of the AI hype class, Emily and Alex have always had the view to read/hear (there’s a podcast if you’ve never you should). (I only parenthetical). (Can’t stress enough that their lens becomes more and more important)

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Reposted by Dan Simpson

As @alexhanna.bsky.social and I write in The AI Con (see Ch 6): even though the Boosters and the Doomers like to portray themselves as holding down opposite extremes of opinions on "AI", they are two sides of the same coin. thecon.ai >>

thecon.ai

THE AI CON

How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want

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Like it’s hard to regret my academic social media time: it got me a couple of jobs and, more importantly, a fiancé, but nope. Not again. There are simply no upsides.

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