iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 28/09/2026

Leaving Brazil with 51 (!!!) more lifers (species I saw + identified for the first time in my life) 😍

Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I don’t mean this as a criticism of this piece, but this was obvious from the start. If you don’t know anything, AI is a substitute, not a tool. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | A.I. Has Made Me a Better Doctor. It’s Made Med Students Worse.

I’m confident in my mastery over what doctors do — and less confident about my continued mastery of an ever-evolving universe of facts.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 25/09/2026

Can't believe I have to stop looking at beautiful Brazilian birds all day and actually go to this symposium I'm here for

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 25/09/2026

If there was ever a bird that convinced me of the "birds aren't real" conspiracy it would be this one

Ridiculously picturesque Toco toucan on a tree with blue skies and cotton clouds. It's a stupidly built bird, seemingly more bill than face and more head than body. It doesn't just look like it shouldn't fly, it looks like it shouldn't even be able to perch on this tree. It's like a collection of toucan parts were balanced to create the illusion of a toucan for the precise second of my photo and then seconds later all the parts would come crashing down. This is, however, a real bird that I saw today in Brazil and it legitimately took my breath away. I don't even mean this metaphorically - I literally had to sit my butt down and catch my breath after seeing it because apparently I forgot to breathe.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 22/09/2026

The smallest Australian bird is the *weebill* 😭 Look at its tiny bill!

Small yellow-green bird with a tiny baby bill, practically the same size as its eye.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 22/09/2026

My godfather turns 90 this year so naturally I decided we needed 90 candles and a carefully-orchestrated plan to light them all simultaneously.

Six hands with long-wand lighters around a square cake with 90 candles, frantically trying to light them all and not burn ourselves. The candles were arranged in a grid of six 3x5 sections, and each person was assigned a section of 15 candles they were responsible for lighting. This mostly worked.

Cake with 90 lit candles - success!! It looks simultaneously like an impressive number of candles and also not that many for NINETY candles.

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

ACL 2027 @aclmeeting.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

ACL Sustainable Reviewing Policy: We are introducing changes in the @ReviewAcl reviewing and submissions. The changes will cap authors and introduce changes in the reviewing to keep our community sustainable. #NLProc #NLP

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Dan Hon @danhon.com · 31/08/2026

I think a reasonable position on the OpenAI huggingface thing is: * executing untrusted code is a bad idea * sandboxes frequently aren't, even with the best intentions * novel combinations of untrusted code are being generated at scale and being executed * consequences probably bad

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

If you thought my last post didn't have enough birds, or enough math, or enough math about birds, I have the post for you. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/08/14/f...

moultano.wordpress.com

Fairly Ranking the Most Brilliant Birds

Finding beautiful birds with data, and the ethics of converting preferences into math

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Jordan Boyd-Graber @boydgraber.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

I'm moving to Nanyang Technological University in Singapore to start a new lab! We'll still be dedicated to adversarial QA, human-computer collaboration, probabilistic modeling, and the other fun hijinx my students and I have been up to, but now (hopefully) bigger and better.

Jordan and his wife in front of Singapore Strait

Jordan and his daughters (faces blured) in front of Nanyang gate in Yunan garden.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 25/08/2026

Friend says to go to the climbing wall - trans climbing on Wednesdays at 7 at Rock Over near Victoria Station. She had a great time when she was last there.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 25/08/2026

Omg congratulations Rine!!! I'll be sorry not to see you in Montreal this year but what a great reason for it 🥰

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 24/08/2026

omg yayyyyyyyy congrats to both of you!

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 20/08/2026

Can't do this with a Polaroid camera cartridge because it would just get exposed as soon as you take it out :( Once it's in it has to stay in. The advice now seems to be either to acquire film at your destination, or don't load your film and ask for unopened film to be hand-checked at the airport.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 20/08/2026

Another fun fact: Airport x-ray scanners can damage unused film (worse with film that is unpacked and loaded into your camera, with the new fancy scanners where you don't have to take liquids and big electronics out, and with multiple exposures over longer journeys).

Side-by-side comparison of near-identical photos taken on damaged film and fresh film, of a kitchen with plates and plants and big windows showing fir trees outside. The damaged film looks pinkish, faded, fogged up, and somewhat overexposed. The fresh film has a more crisp and bright, higher-contrast photo, with a good mix of warm colours in the kitchen and cool greens in the leaves outside.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 20/08/2026

Fun fact I recently re-learned: Python's string capitalize function works by upper-casing the first letter and *lower-casing the rest of the string*. This means "hi this is Vagrant".capitalize() gives you "Hi this is vagrant" and not "Hi this is Vagrant"

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Naomi Saphra @nsaphra.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I've been unsettled lately when reading messages and papers. It feels like I'm dissociating. Everything seems a bit alien, even if it's completely human. I've had a realization: When our simulations finally exited the Uncanny Valley, they brought the Uncanny with them.

nsaphra.net

Life on the Uncanny Precipice | Naomi Saphra

We were wrong about the Uncanny Valley.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 10/08/2026

Look, if Italo Calvino had visited Vancouver then Invisible Cities wouldn't be about Venice

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 15/07/2026

I have recently discovered that football is amazing

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 09/07/2026

you're killing itttt 👑 congrats!!!

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Zeerak Talat زیرک طلعت (they/them) @zeerak.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Thrilled to have been awarded the Association for Computational Linguistics 2016 test of time award for my first ever paper, written with/under the guidance of @dirkhovy.bsky.social A couple of cute things about the paper/its genesis/its outcomes

Photo of a test of time award for the paper "Hateful Symbols or Hateful People? Predictive Features for Hate Speech Detection on Twitter"

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 05/07/2026

At defenses in my group we end with some advice for the research group. In my defense I told people to remember that *everything* is social and political, and my advice came with a Weizenbaum reading rec :)

Everything is social and political, accompanied by a screenshot of the paper 'On the Impact of the Computer on Society: How does one insult a machine?' by Joseph Weizenbaum.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 05/07/2026

This is the one book I wish literally everyone working in NLP/AI would read. All of Weizenbaum's work is so incredibly relevant even after 50 years that I end up highlighting every third sentence every time I read it. This thread contains some great examples.

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Pranav A @pranav-nlp.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

I am shocked and flattered that this paper won the Best Paper Award (Honourable Mention) at #FAccT2026!

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Pranav A @pranav-nlp.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

I will be presenting our work titled "Making a Name for Myself: On Academic Naming Policies and their Impact" this week at #FAccT2026. This paper talks about why names matter, why name change policies are important, how people benefit from it and what's still left to do.

Making a Name for Myself: On Academic Naming Policies and their
Impact
A PRANAV, Trustworthy AI Lab, University of Hamburg, Germany
VAGRANT GAUTAM, Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, Germany
MARTIN MUNDT∗
, University of Bremen, Germany
JORDAN TAYLOR∗
, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
ARJUN SUBRAMONIAN∗
, Queer in AI, USA
FRANZISKA SOFIA HAFNER∗
, University of Oxford, United Kingdom
DANIEL CHECHELNITSKY∗
, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
WILLIAM AGNEW∗
, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
ANNE LAUSCHER∗
, Trustworthy AI Lab, University of Hamburg, Germany

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

blair @blairaf.com · 02/06/2026

I'm looking for a new PhD student to come join me at UAlberta & Amii to study trans perspectives on AI policy & the future of AI as part of my new lab. The position is fully funded and offers access to a range of supports - more details in the poster below!

Flyer with qualifications and details for the PhD position.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 01/06/2026

I also don't teach something like this, but at Saarland CS there was a cluster that instructors could request access to for their students. Alternatively you could offer access to your home research group's cluster (which we had, and which was separate).

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

EACL 2027 @eaclmeeting.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Attention #NLProc researchers, the EACL 2027 website is officially LIVE: 2027.eacl.org! 🎉 🇬🇷 Join us in Athens, Greece (Mar 9-13, 2027) at #EACL2027 📅 ARR submission deadline: Aug 6, 2026. Open to all areas of CL/NLP + related fields. Stay tuned for the detailed CfP soon!

Picture of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 27/04/2026

Congratulations!!!!!! 🥳

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 26/04/2026

noooo heidelberg/hamburg 👀 or paris 👀

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Reposted by Vagrant Gautam

Ky @ky.fyi · 24/04/2026

I wrote about why I quit my job, and how weird and tiring tech feels these days.

ky.fyi

Do I belong in tech anymore?

On quitting, the spread of AI, and the loss of an ideal.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 26/04/2026

- Cafe / bookshop / board game bar with generously-sized tables, great coffee and cocktails, and excellent ventilation (sub-700 ppm CO2) - Trans-centred beach - Taxi service where I drive you from A to B without either of us uttering a word besides hi and bye

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 20/04/2026

From her incredible book, Automating Inequality

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 20/04/2026

Virginia Eubanks: I find the philosophy that sees human beings as unknowable black boxes and machines as transparent deeply troubling... The presumption that human decision-making is opaque and inaccessible is an admission that we have abandoned a social commitment to try and understand each other.

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 17/04/2026

need to be friends with them immediately

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 15/04/2026

imagine having a company called AllBirds, pivoting and changing its name to NewBird, and both before and after it's NOT ABOUT BIRDS!!!

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Vagrant Gautam @dippedrusk.com · 08/04/2026

this wording is going to be helpful for my reviews too, thanks!

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