iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Also, I didn't cross check, maybe some of those are on there

Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The Deuce, Maniac, GLOW, Ramy, Rome, Flight of the Conchords, The L Word, Firefly, Bored to Death, Show Me A Hero (honestly anything David Simon, but that's a copout) Some of those are just prestige TV, some are weirder. Boston Legal would be an interesting show to include, but it hasn't aged well.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Maybe I'm used to band/album lists. Compared to bands, there aren't as many good TV shows, factually speaking. But yeah, more weird stuff is what I'd like to see, & AT is a good shout. More daring stuff, like the OA is one of the few on here that are like that.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

So LLM bosses are crying out for a halt on AI dev while their own products continue to function and degrade human existence. Hm. You know, I'm 99% sure these guys read Slate Star Codex in the good old days. Yet they seem to have entirely forgotten Meditations on Moloch, the magnum opus of SSC.

slatestarcodex.com

Meditations On Moloch

I. Allen Ginsberg’s famous poem on Moloch:What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and u…

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

There needs to be a word for when GenAIs are having a noticeable bad effect on what you're doing, on a particular day. "Sloppy"? Too much potential for ambiguity. "Slopridden"? "I'm having another slopridden day. That's the third this week.

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Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS) @improvingpsych.org · 02/09/2026

Congratulations to the project “The Advantage of Big Team Science: Lessons Learned From Cognitive Science,” which received🏆2026 SIPS commendation! It offers a synthesis of strategies for successfully navigating the BTS landscape, including logistical, ethical, and epistemological challenges.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Show me a hero, and I'll show you a perverse incentive structure

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Stats For Bios @statsforbios.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Reread my blog post on the biggest problem in statistics. On re-read, I still don't think it is terrible (other than the typos and things). So I'll repost. timcdlucas.github.io/the-biggest-...

timcdlucas.github.io

The Biggest Problem In Statistics

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Belarius @belarius.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I am very pleased to share that I have co-authored a preprint about hardening online studies against bad-faith actors. I was tempted to give it the subtitle "Adventures in CSS Criminality"; I instead trust that the Real Ones will know a fellow choster by their works. osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Dr. Abigail Desmond @abigaildesmond.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Why don’t all animals use tools? Great question. So, we wrote a paper about it. 🐹🛠️🐜📡🐙🧰 If you like archaeology, technology, game theory, cybernetics, behavioral economics, and/or crazy critters great and small, this is the paper for you. www.animalbehaviorandcognition.org/article.php?...

animalbehaviorandcognition.org

Why Don't All Animals Use Tools? — Animal Behavior and Cognition

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I felt like I was contributing something important as a reviewer; it felt meaningful to be interacting with the authors and the topic. Through my work as a reviewer I am contributing to a piece of work that will truly advance our knowledge of the field. Reviewing hasn't ever felt this worthwhile.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Recently finished reviewing a stage 1 @pci-regreports.bsky.social RR. Great experience. Not my first PCI recommendation process, but some things stood out. It felt like this is what reviewing ought to be. Ideally, all the time.

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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

This is a beautiful read even if you haven’t read Piranesi. But all the more if you have.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

registered a while ago, but then had to go to an unexpected appt. Just learned there'll be no recording... why? :(((((

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Super interesting! Food for thought in future ManyManys work... I can imagine our fish colleagues tearing our their hair Yes That's What We've Been Trying To Point Out For Decades

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Tho as far as I know that's not been tested

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

O does seem to be correlated with intelligence in the primate species we've looked at, so I think that link is pretty strongly evolutionarily conserved in our clade. I think the hypothetical resource scarcity link is stronger in less long lived, possibly less social species.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Neat new paper on primate neurocognitive evolution, featuring the @manyprimates.bsky.social MP1 data!

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

A lot of people came together (as did monkey data) to make this project possible, but particular appreciation goes to first and last authors - Jolene van der Mescht and Alex Weiss!

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Females were lower in dominance than males (pictured). Openness was lowest in captive females, and age declines in O were stronger in the captive group vs. the wild.

Male vs female differences in J. macaque dominance

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

We tested effects of age, sex and living environment (wild and captive groups), as well as interactions, on personality. We found that captive macaques were higher in dominance and friendliness, and lower in anxiousness than their wild counterparts.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

New paper fresh into In Press status, in Animal Behaviour: "Personality, age and sex differences in wild and zoo-housed Japanese macaques" doi.org/10.1016/j.an... Wee thread:

doi.org

Redirecting

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

It could have been Bleats! Or Biscuits! (b'skeets)

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

relevant: bsky.app/profile/nkal...

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

This is the most disturbing thing I've read in a while

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

What's the sort of thing people say that's in line with this view? Not sure if I've heard this, but I haven't been looking for it

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Cool phylogenetic study of adult play

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Hooray, its out! A lot of time and effort went into this, much kudos to @epronizius.bsky.social @mamsmandrill.bsky.social @vaidis.bsky.social et al

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

This is a good way of reframing. I'm going to keep it in mind

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Tay (Antonio J. Osuna Mascaró) @biotay.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

1/2 Meditation has significant effects on the brain within 2–3 minutes, peaking at 7–10 minutes, regardless of the individual’s level of experience. The study used breath-watching (Isha Yoga) and EEG in 103 participants (paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 10/04/2026

i will stake a strong claim and say that it is almost never a bad idea for you, a grad student, to roll up to a conference and just introduce yourself to people you'd like to talk to. profs absolutely love talking to students. just go for it!! we're nice!

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RedruM @dorsalstream.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me. It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake

By A Horse

Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food.

I am thinking I would like to try cake.

Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape.

Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy.

Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much.

I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on."

Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

More than just emotions, but... yeah

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Having spent many years living alongside degus, this is so clear. Glad its been proven.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Definitely agree, re: knowing the animal's history. Re: climbing, I really think of dogs as not-climbers, so I'm not sure what to do with that line of inquiry

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Hmm, coming back to this ... I'm always skeptical of random online animal vids, but there is some impressive stuff happening here that I can't immediately discount. And it seems like good faith - the person doesn't seem to have our perspective so that makes me think its unlikely they're gaming it

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

100 points to whoever guesses what set me off this time

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

It seems like every year or so I post about how E.M. Forster's sci-fi chestnut "The Machine Stops" (1909!!) foresaw an awful lot about our burgeoning dystopia. I'm compelled to post about it more and more, since it somehow only seems to become more prescient. www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7...

en.wikipedia.org

The Machine Stops - Wikipedia

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

This is a basic and crucial point for any discussion of LLMs’ use in teaching research or writing. Whether it can ape us, fool us, or get facts right or wrong is, in the end, irrelevant. The LLM is not the thinker we are trying to encourage; the LLM is not the writer that we are trying to improve.

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

How so? I don't use bots for writing, but these 2 sound like different steps in the same process

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Drew Altschul @dremalt.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fi... it always comes down to this

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