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Big Wombat

@diprotodon.bsky.social
235 followers 762 following 100 posts

Quotidian desk jockey (he/him)

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Reposted by Big Wombat
Micah @rincewind.run · 8h
I appreciate bluesky's periodic dedication to reminding us of the purity of text-only posting by breaking all images on the site
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 28/09/2026
This sums up my own experience in recent years. My theory is that there are so many genuine existential crises right now that people's instinct is to treat even low-stakes issues (movies! fandoms! personal preferences!) like existential crises. Makes having a normal conversation almost impossible.
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Elise Thomas @elisethomas.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
I was chatting to a friend who is 23 and doing her undergrad degree. She was saying that she and all her peers are using AI for assignments, but they also all believe their tutors are using AI to mark them. AI is assessing AI. What even is the point at that stage? www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
As more Australian universities use AI to mark students’ work, is it creating creating a ‘slop-cycle’?
Educational institutions find themselves suddenly confronted with a fork in the road
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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Meta Muse appears to read your Apple messages and upload them to the cloud even if you explicitly tell it not to: appleinsider.com/articles/26/...
appleinsider.com
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Boak & Bailey (Jess & Ray) @boakandbailey.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
BLOG POST: Does your AI-generated beer app actually contribute something? Is it meeting a real need, or providing new information? Or did you just get excited about being able to make something with zero effort? boakandbailey.com/2026/09/ai-h...
boakandbailey.com
AI has made it easier than ever to make apps nobody asked for
We’ve been inundated lately with AI-written press releases about AI-built tools and websites focused on beer and pubs. Who is asking for this?
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Peter Anderson @zerogeewhiz.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Incredible. The billionth example of AI doing what it's supposed to do because what it's supposed to do is incredibly poorly-defined and does not worry about basic identity concepts like consent and data security.
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Rebecca @rebeccakell.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Northwestern University's Nobel winner got a private bike rack.
Bike at a rack that has a sign saying "Reserved for Sir Fraser Stoddart 2016 Nobel Laureate Chemistry Bicycle Parking
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Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
General reminder, gang: @cartoonist.coop has multiple pages of tutorials on building your own site. Do not sign your productive output over to corporations who consider you acceptable collateral damage in their pursuit of profit. cartoonist.coop/resources/
cartoonist.coop
RESOURCES – CARTOONISTS UNITED
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Amy Hoy @amyhoy.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
yeah. you can’t beat both being able to see information and controls and also directly interact with them without intermediation (mouse, voice) the idea that there’s a next Hot New Intertace is an illusion sorry yall. magic rectangle is here to say
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marshmele @michelegoo.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
changing my name to chatgpt to see if i can hack into a govt website with zero consequences
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Sato Juniper @satojuniper.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The Noongar people In the south-west of Western Australia described six seasons, Birak, Bunuru, Djeran, Makuru, Djilba & Kambarang. We're now well and truly in Kambarang, which brings lots of glorious flowers of every colour and texture you can imagine, everywhere, & animal activity. My favourite.
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Damon Young @damonyoung.com.au · 22/09/2026
If you're a social media manager and you know nothing about the history of English, just say "Shakespearian English" when you're taking about Shakespearian English. Memorable. Simple. And technically correct.
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dr. rich traditions, JD @helldude.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
it's weird that ai got too dangerous to keep advancing right around the time money got more expensive to borrow
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Samhain Night @samhainnight.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Thread
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Micah @rincewind.run · 22/09/2026
"emma frost thinks miss piggy is the most magnificent creature alive" completely tracks actually, this is perfect
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John Timmer @jtimmer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Ok, this "there are two separate brains" thing appears to be making the rounds, and I want to be absolutely clear: this is a press office overhyping some perfectly reasonable science that won't come as a surprise to most developmental biologists.
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Astronomer Royal for Scotland | Catherine Heymans @astroroyalscot.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
NASA picture of the day today is a real 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿beauty! This is a composite image of the ~5000yo Callanish Stones on the Isle of Lewis. The amazing Giuseppe Petricca has only gone and photographed the Sun at noon there, every few days, for a whole year. #Dedication 🔭🧪👌 ℹ️: science.nasa.gov/image-articl...
The imposing Callanish Stones stand talk with their shadows spanning out across the glass.  It's a super clear sky, but looks cold. Above the central stone is a strange figure-of-8 shape of dots.  This is the location of the Sun, at noon, on various different days across the year.
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Nat Guest @unfortunatalie.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
"My house and his house are two different houses, territories overlaid and overlapping. Our topographies don’t yet mesh; we are both creeping around each other’s edges, living together but apart." My first few weeks with a cat. nothingbutawordbag.substack.com/p/where-a-ca...
Substack preview. Art of two black cats, voids against a floral sofa. Text: Where a cat could sit - on learning to live alone together
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Naomi Kritzer @naomikritzer.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
No one is disposable, including the canary ❤️🦜✊
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John Holmes @jhaue.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Sydney cockatoos reveal how animal culture helps them adapt to city life phys.org/news/2026-09...
phys.org
Sydney cockatoos reveal how animal culture helps them adapt to city life
Sulfur-crested cockatoos are surprisingly smart. In Australian cities such as Brisbane and Sydney, they've learned how to turn on drinking fountains by twisting the handle with their feet. In Sydney, ...
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Absolutely! Canberra currawongs sing differently to Melbourne currawongs
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They Might Be Giants @tmbg.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
People ask “Do you still play Don’t Let’s Start?” And the answer is YES.
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Alex Holcombe @alexh.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Consequences of the flood of AI manuscripts: "An early-career researcher at an unbranded institution loses the one mechanism that ever let them be read on merit — anonymous review of the work itself, however badly it functioned in practice.
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 21/09/2026
I have an AI booster in family circle who has explained to me that AI could lift the “drudgery” of writing… and then proceeds to list the fun parts of writing. Which leaves me to like format the book and do intense copy editing on some shit I didn’t even write?
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jenny tightpants @jtp.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
"i have created the machine that thinks." you fucked up a perfectly good graphics card is what you did. look at it. it's got anxiety
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Joe Bak-Coleman @jbakcoleman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
We can simulate fish schools or ants in ways that solve complex problems (gradient detection, bridge building, nest selection) but no one would create this weird soul/no-soul dichotomy to argue they these that multi-agent swarms of extremely simple rules are “thinking”.
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The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 20/09/2026
Elite was released 42 years ago. This space trading open world game is considered to be the forerunner of many modern games, as well as being an important milestone in the history of space sci-fi. Art by Philip Castle🔽
Box art by Philip Castle.

The image is dominated by the game's title, "ELITE," rendered in a bold, golden 3D font with large, stylized wings, resembling a prestigious pilot's insignia. The scene depicts key elements from the game:

    The Cobra Mk III: The sleek, saucer-shaped ship in the foreground is the player's starting vessel, the legendary Cobra Mk III.

    Coriolis Station: The massive, geometric structure is a Coriolis space station, the rotating hubs of trade and commerce where players would dock.
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Fade In @fadeinpro.com · 20/09/2026
When I was a little kid, I dreamed of one day just constantly fucking selling people stuff. www.tomshardware.com/video-games/...
tomshardware.com
Microsoft patents system to freeze games and inject ads during downtimes — watching commercials earns ad-free playtime credits
Is this patent a sign of things to come?
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Smooth Dunk @smoothdunk2.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
when ai leaves u behind
7 panel comic.

Panel 1:
A Red Guy with AI across his chest looks like he’s about to run away. A Yellow Guy stands next to him. Red Guy says “I’m the future, buddy. You comin’?”
Yellow Guy replies “Nah”

Panel 2: 
Red Guy is almost out of the panel. He leans in and says “Enjoy getting left behind, pal”
Yellow Guy replies “ok”

Panel 3:
Yellow Guy stands alone.

Panel 4: 
Close up on Yellow Guy, there is a quiet “huff-huff-huff” noise coming from behind him

Panel 5:
Yellow Guy turns to look behind him

Panel 6: 
Close up on Yellow Guy’s face as if from the point of view of an attacker.
Yellow Guy yells “Jesus Christ”

Panel 7:
AI Red Guy is now chasing the Yellow Guy. 
Red Guy: “Use me”
Yellow Guy “No”
Red Guy “USE ME”
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Chris Adamson @invalidname.me · 19/09/2026
The Ford app just added AI. This is the greatest thing ever.
Ford app AI prompt, with the user-entered text "Write a 150-word story about Sailor Moon and Hatsune Miku kissing."Under the gentle glow of a moonlit Tokyo skyline, Usagi Tsukino stood atop a quiet rooftop terrace, the night breeze catching her golden twin tails. Beside her, Hatsune Miku adjusted her glowing teal ribbons, a soft electronic melody humming faintly from the synth display at her wrist. The vibrant city buzzed far below, but above the streets, the air was peaceful and still.
Turning toward each other, Usagi smiled warmly, her bright eyes reflecting the starlight. Miku stepped closer, her digital glow softly illuminating the space between them. Without a word, Usagi leaned in, and their lips met in a sweet, tender kiss that seemed to bridge magic and music into…one perfect harmony. As they pulled back, blushing beneath the moonlight, Miku shared a soft, cheerful smile.
Now that the magic and music are in harmony, is there anything I can help you with regarding your Mustang Mach-E
today?
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Sandy Horne @sandyhorne.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
A cockatiel seen in the Quorn area.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Every chatbot prompt box says "check answers for accuracy." But increasingly, "humans in the loop" refuse to do that. Instead, they become complicit in the AI industry's project of destroying the provenance of information. But you are person, and it is an app. It can't take responsibility for you.
productpicnic.beehiiv.com
Assigning agency to AI means surrendering your own
Claude is not a colleague, collaborator, or sentient being. It is a SaaS product.
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I've spent a lot of years studying a lot of collapses, and the truth of the matter is that they're always mundane: mild climatic shifts that reduce crop yields, a dumbass in power who makes some terrible decisions, neglecting things that obviously matter but the will to fix them can't be summoned.
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Patrick W. Reed @patrickwreed.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
There's something to be said about how in the US CS Lewis is seen as a writer of Christian apologetics above all else & as a result Narnia is *only* seen as allegory, while in Britain he's seen as an author of beloved children's books, & we find the whole "the lion is Jesus" stuff a bit embarrassing
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Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans) @iwriteok.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This is a great example of one of the ways AI is actually going to endanger / kill huge numbers of people. Shitty chatbots cause their special sort of brain rot to the people who package intelligence for our shot-callers. They take the bad ideas from there. www.cnn.com/2026/09/18/p...
It was only just before the planned operation that officials dug deeper into the report put together by a special operations command analyst and found it had been generated with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) — and that a chatbot the analyst had used inaccurately identified the material the ship was carrying. CNN was not able to learn what the misidentified cargo was.

The report, according to one of the sources, was “entirely false.” But it also “almost started a war,” the source said. Any US operation against a Chinese vessel could have risked spiraling into an armed conflict between the two nations.
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Mike Batt @mikebatt.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
A little conversation I had on Twitter 🙂
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Elias Greig @eliasgreig.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I keep seeing articles about men worrying they won't pass on their genes, and I don't understand why the media won't tell the plain truth: as a man hoping to sire children, the most important thing to do is artfully assemble a bower and surround it with a collection of startlingly blue objects.
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Alexander Laufer @alexlaufer.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Even just replacing "AI" by "software" paints such a different picture. "our software broke out and hacked some organisations". Who's reponsible now?
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 19/09/2026
Journalists reporting on people who reject AI like they're doing a piece on some weird cult rather than the mainstream opinion among the vast majority of young people around the world www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...
abc.net.au
Young people pushing back against artificial intelligence
AI may be here to stay, but the generation that will inherit the results of the guidelines set for its use has something to say about that.
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Kristina Killgrove @killgrove.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is a good deep-dive into AI slop invading what used to be legit media sites. One thing I’m seeing more and more: slop outlets churning archaeology stories from 1-5 years ago and presenting them as news. 🏺🧪
futurism.com
How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month
Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.
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Stephanie 🍉 @ageofoddish.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
mmygod
the slut gnomes of false berlin jeopardy bluesky posttoday's jeopardy categories. the last 2 are "false berlin" and "bizarre little men"
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William Butler Yeets @yeets.biz · 19/09/2026
i need to know what happened
sign in a restaurant "due to recent events Bigfoot discussions are no longer permitted on the patio"
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Foucault's Pudendum @kaitave.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The same cover, but with the "say 'i am alive'" AI meme pasted on top of it after 10000 hours in MSPaint
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Victoria Strauss @victoriastrauss.com · 18/09/2026
Guidance from the Anthropic settlement administrator for non-US authors on what tax documentation to provide
 Dear Claimant,

We are writing regarding your questions on the tax section of the allocation form. If you are a US resident, provide your Social Security Number on the submission page. We will then issue required tax documents. You may complete the allocation form without providing your Tax ID number, but your payment may be delayed.

If you are not a US resident, provide Form W-8BEN: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf This allows you to certify nonresident status. Upload your documentation in the update information portal. You will need your claim number and the email address used to submit your claim.

Regards,

Settlement Administrator
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
This is almost certainly true btw. Addams Family pinball? You have a chance. Funhouse? You have a chance. Dr. Who? I will beat your ass
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I challenge the BBC to hire me as the showrunner: I whose only familiarity with the characters or the storyline is having played the pinball game a lot and almost certainly being better at it than anyone you know
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John Wiswell @wiswell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Looking for a free way to support your favorite authors?
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Dan Hon @danhon.com · 16/09/2026
This turned into today's newsletter episode! thingsthatcaughtmyattention.com/e/s21e30-dan...
thingsthatcaughtmyattention.com
Dan, stop encouraging it
This newsletter covers the host Dan's podcast series "How People Work, Live," featuring interviews about workplace dynamics and professional skills, alongside a deep dive into an unsettling emerging…
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Justin Hendrix @justinhendrix.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
A "radical intentionalist," writes Eryk Salvaggio, treats an AI model as a 'mind' to be interpreted rather than a product that was designed. It is "a strange and dangerous relationship for designers to have with a product they are literally designing," he writes — and worse as a basis for policy.
techpolicy.press
To Make AI Rules, Policymakers Must Resist the Influence of ‘Radical Intentionalists’
In industry rhetoric, a radical intentionalist stance dominates any interpretation of model behavior, writes Eryk Salvaggio.
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Elizabeth Sandifer @eruditorumpress.com · 15/09/2026
The problem is that "while you weren't looking the tech industry was comprehensively taken over by a cult based around a piece of Harry Potter fanfic" is self-evidently an absolutely ridiculous claim that can't possibly have happened, which is a real problem given that it 100% did happen.
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