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dubious blur

@dubiousblur.wtf
213 followers 1K following 370 posts

Infrastructuralist: systems, people, software, hardware. Nerdish, and autistic, but mostly harmless.

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Crowsa Luxemburg @quendergeer.bsky.social · 2h
kevin mitnick spent 5 years in prison for building programs that did this
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 16h
New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854
Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…
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Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
11. But the economics are clear, allowing people to continue to suffer without treatment and support is expensive and unconscionable. According to NHS England, not treating ADHD costs the UK economy ~£17 billion in lost tax, benefits, unemployment, health/social care/justice costs
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Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
9. Neurodivergent people who hack the gates and succeed differently, undermine the authority of those who guard orthodox ways of learning and succeeding. “How dare you challenge our house now we’ve let you in.”
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Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
7. Here's what makes certain people uneasy: To accept reality of ADHD is to accept the system itself is disabling, which means the structures must change, & that threatens those who benefit most from them. Easier to deny ADHD than to accept structural change
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Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
1. The independent Taskforce — commissioned by NHS England, backed by government — concluded ADHD is under-diagnosed, under-recognised and under-treated in the UK. Not over. The press has reported the reverse of the finding www.thetimes.com/uk/healthcar...
thetimes.com
ADHD label ‘risks lifelong harm to children’ as diagnoses surge
Landmark government review warns of a ‘tipping point’ as figures show the proportion of youngsters with an autism diagnosis has risen 40-fold
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Tim Clare @timclare.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Telling that Wes Streeting considers someone diagnosed with ADHD has been 'written off'. Also telling that the government commissioned a review in the face of independent reviews finding there is no overdiagnosis, just increased awareness & historic underdiagnosis of girls & women.
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Shubbabang @shubbabang.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Another classic, not sure if I've already posted this one here.
The image is a six panel black and white comic. 

Panel 1 - a girl sits at her desk in front of a computer, looking disheartened. She says, "I dont know if I should post this art, who would even want to see it?"

Panel 2- A new person bursts through the door in the background with a loud BAM

Panel 3- The new person pushes the girl out of the way, smushing her face in the process, while slamming their fist down on the keyboard. 

Panel 4- The computer shows that the art has been posted 

Panel 5- The person makes direct eye contact with the girl while pushing their finger against their own phone screen

Panel 6- A motion blur is added to the last panel, enhancing the impact of the new notifications on the new post. It reads, "(Friend) Liked Post just now" Followed by "(Friend) commented 'I FUCKING LOVE THIS AND I LOVE U'"

Underneath the last panel is a watermark that reads, Shubbabang
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mel in ballhalla 🏳️‍⚧️🔰♨️ @astruckpersonn.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
any time i see the “ai model escapes containment” headlines i think “they should lose their engineering licenses, that shit’s out of spec”
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Software engineering could and should be done with the same care as any other type of engineering. This is a post in honor of Margaret Hamilton (and also a subtweet of all vibe-coders everywhere).
Screencap

"“I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it — and those building it — would be given its due respect, and thus I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process,” Hamilton told El Pais in 2018. “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”"

Source: https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007
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Nanoraptor @nanoraptor.danamania.com · 04/10/2026
A picture of a beige PC era screen with speakers and keyboard to suit, and the text "It's now preferable to turn off your computer"
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Alex von Tunzelmann @alexvont.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
So many people already dealing with parents/grandparents with the toxic combination of diminishing mental faculties, online radicalisation via social media and AI slop, and chatbot seduction. Unfortunately we are now all getting to see what happens when one of those cases is the president of the USA
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Nick Pettigrew @nick-pettigrew.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
I'm convinced AI is our generation's radium - a discovery with genuinely useful applications in specific, controlled circumstances that we stupidly put in everything from kid's toys to toothpaste until we realised the harm far too late where future generations will ask if we were out of our minds.
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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 01/10/2026
I went to Geneva a few weeks ago and spoke on a panel about the nature of time for a Geneva Watch Days event. While I was there, on a lark, I entered a competition to most precisely calibrate a Swiss watch. And today I found out that I won! 😃 www.instagram.com/reel/Dd6hUTB...
Me peering through a little magnifier at a tiny watch mechanism connected to some monitoring equipment, while making adjustments with a small screwdriver
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 27/09/2026
Transphobia is genuinely an elite fixation that is much less popular than most politicians and media outlets would have you believe.
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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A lot of the lobbying has talked about how important it is for Heathrow to be a hub aiport, and it has never been adequately explained to me why this should matter to anyone who does not own Heathrow
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Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
This whole issue is framed wrongly. As I've written: "Worrying that some migrants won’t pay their way is a displacement activity - an attempt to blame migrants for the failings of British capitalism." chrisdillow.substack.com/p/on-the-fis...
chrisdillow.substack.com
On the fiscal costs of immigration
Are immigrants a drain on the tax-payer? It's a silly question.
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yakhu @gremble.xyz · 17/09/2026
As a professional computer toucher and as someone that knows the field, it is crimes as marketing.
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dubious blur @dubiousblur.wtf · 17/09/2026
This this this!
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Technology Connections @techconnectify.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
As the opposite of a computer toucher, I sometimes worry that I'm not keeping up with the development of things. Luckily, I'm smart enough to realize that if the "most dangerous" LLMs need warehouses full of GPUs to function, they can't just "break out" and start running on random PCs.
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Cas Mudde @casmudde.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Which means 6 in 7 do not and many of them are more progressive than previous generations. Also, “white nationalism” might be a “phase” for some/many in this generation in the sense that “skinhead” was in a previous generation. Obviously, 1 in 7 is a concern. But it is no reason for moral panic.
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The more you insist that cars equal “freedom,” the more likely it is that you live in car dependency, which is the opposite of freedom.
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Ned Richardson-Little @historyned.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
My main two general takeaways as a GDR historian on this election (which will probably be painfully familiar to anyone who has followed me for a while) 1. Equating the AfD with a residual mass authoritarian personality is an oversimplification that obscures effects of post-89 social collapse...
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tranna scarenina @einegeniesserin.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
lrt: what absolutely kills me is at the beginning merz (through the adenauer stiftung) took a hard, systematic look at how centre right parties lose to far right parties, concluded (correctly!) that co-opting only sabotages yourself, said, "we won't do that then" and then immediately did that!!
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Sam Freedman @samfr.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
On the argument that Britain doing anything about climate change is futile because we're so small.
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dubious blur @dubiousblur.wtf · 30/08/2026
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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 20/08/2026
if spreadsheet people was ever meant as an insult, i am reclaiming it. my columns and rows are beautiful even if others don't see what i see within them
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Their frame: This is more efficient and effective. The report (denies the frame): No it is not efficient and effective, it does not work. My proposal (eat the frame): They are automating racism and want us to believe it is reasonable. mu.social/profile/anth...
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alj8.bsky.social @alj8.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
We’d be hearing a lot more about this from the Labour supporting Bluesky sensibles if this overt racism was about literally *any other* British politician
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T. Ryan Gregory 🇨🇦 @tryangregory.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Headlines: Such-and-such technology may someday be as smart as human brains! Reminder: *We already have human brains.* Billions of them. Most of them living in poverty and being exploited for the obscene benefit of a tiny number of the worst people in the world.
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Jake Wright @bcnjake.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
It’s like when you ask transphobes what percentage of the population is trans and their answer is something like 10% and it turns out they’re off by an order of magnitude.
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Maladroithe @maladroithe.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
Do you ever think you know a Normal Amount about a thing and then in casual conversation realize oh. this is my Special Interest isn’t it?
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
It's honestly so crazy to me that we're facing a technological revolution that could displace millions of jobs in the middle of a housing affordability crisis and every day we talk about whether a trans woman is playing sports or if someone has a non-Anglo name.
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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
what a line from a reform prosecutor who won yesterday:
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Chris Dillow @chrisdillow.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
This is Packard's The Hidden Persuaders for the 21st C: whereas our preferences then were shaped by advertisers, now they are shaped by algorithms. Both undermine the neoclassical fiction that preferences are autonomous: laurenleek.substack.com/p/temperatur...
laurenleek.substack.com
Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same
What 640 London shopping streets, 4,000 Billboard hits, a million films and synthetic AI personas tell us about why everything is flattening into sameness and how to regulate the algorithms behind it.
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Talia "ATTACK DOGS is out now!" Bhatt ⚢ @taliabhatt.itch.io · 12/08/2026
Not a single progressive movement has ever "gone too far".
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 13/08/2026
Call me a luddite but I don't actually want to live in a world with *both* digital telepathy devices and huge no-bid contracts going to electroshock torture device companies.
condu.it thought to text company website.Complaint technologies electroshock torture bands and vests.
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The Editorial Board @editorialboard.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The thing about the very obscenely rich is that they have no idea what $10 can buy, and they have no idea, because they are compete detached from reality. They are insane *as a consequence* of being very obscenely rich, and no society can function when crazies have that much power.
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East Anglia Bylines @eastangliabylines.co.uk · 11/08/2026
🌳 🌺 🦇 A 12-year study by Suffolk Wildlife Trust at Broxted Solar Farm showed renewable energy generation improving biodiversity, with e.g. meadow pipit numbers doubling. Over time, 41% biodiversity net gain was recorded under the solar panels. www.suffolkwildlifetrust.org/news/new-rep...
suffolkwildlifetrust.org
New report of Suffolk solar farm showcases ecological best practice | Suffolk Wildlife Trust
Pioneering 12-year study carried out by Suffolk Wildlife Trust at Broxted Estate & Solar Farm Suffolk demonstrates how renewable energy generation and biodiversity restoration can be achieved together...
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Best use of Strava? Mollie the hamster runs almost 10 km every night.
runnersworld.com
A Physicist Rigged His Pet Hamster’s Wheel to Upload to Strava. It Runs Surprisingly Far Every Night
Meet Mollie, the 10-month-old hamster who’s been logging serious mileage.
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Vajra Chandrasekera @vajra.me · 07/08/2026
heartened by the students here and amused by the "conscientious objector" language—as direct an acknowledgement as you could wish that recruitment into slop culture is an ideological war of conscription
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
"The class atmosphere became tense as more students pushed back against this required use of generative AI. They wanted to know what their classmates thought rather than what a large language model produced in response to prompting; they wanted to wrestle with difficult readings and complex ideas"
insidehighered.com
Students as Conscientious Objectors to Gen AI (opinion)
We should listen to them—and treat their objections with respect.
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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
I'm minded to rename the culture wars 'The Edge Case Wars'... Brexit: c.1.4% of all voters swung the vote to Leave. Pre-Brexit sovereignty complaints: Clinical Trials (that the EU then fixed) ECHR migration 'rage' cases: just 16 lost over many decades Covid vaccine harm: c.0.05% of the vaccinated
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Erik Nordman @eriknordman.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
🎂Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom was born on this day in 1933! Ostrom was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Economics for her research on "collaborative governance, especially the commons." She showed how communities of users could work together to sustain their shared resources. 1/9
Elinor Ostrom receiving the Nobel Prize in Economics. She is a older white woman with gray hair and glasses, wearing a long batik dyed dress, and holding the certificate and medal (in a box).
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Looking forward to the following installments in this series of documentaries, like "Clinical depression, or just lazy and dramatic?" and "Is cancer really fatal, or do people just not fight hard enough?" #ADHD #channel4 #FFS
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Lisa Rullsenberg @rullsenberg.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
I work in disability study support. I hate the effect on students + colleagues that 'just asking questions' has after programmes like this. Families who don't want to believe in ADHD, students stuck waiting on diagnoses, doubters feeling emboldened to say "it's a bandwagon". This prog is DANGEROUS.
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Looking forward to hearing @channel4tv.bsky.social justify this unfathomably reckless and damaging title, let alone anything else. The journalistic equivalent of throwing a hornet's nest into an A&E ward, to 'raise awareness of injuries'.
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
New longer post about this, because it's worse than I feared theneuroscienceofeverydaylife.substack.com/p/some-quest... #ADHD #Channel4
theneuroscienceofeverydaylife.substack.com
Some Questions for Channel 4, about their documentary ‘The Great ADHD Myth?’
Channel 4 have announced a new documentary exploring the ‘myth’ of ADHD. There are so many questions they need to answer about this incredibly reckless endeavour.
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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Only just found out about this For the record, you don't get multiple genetic markers and one of the most effective medications known to science with 'social constructs' Channel 4, this is, in scientific parlance, an absolute fu*king disgrace that will genuinely endanger lives #c4 #ADHD
New Channel 4 documentary, The Great ADHD Myth?, seeks to determine whether ADHD is a genuine neurodevelopmental disorder, or a social construct
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Andy Downing @andydowning33.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
reading and nodding along in agreement
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