iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Peter Butler @peter-butler.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Yes. He does! In many ways, it’s a boring old story of an American type. A guy with writing talent — at least enough to be internally consistent and *prodigiously* prolific — has earned a bunch of followers through hard work, good timing, and the *gestures sweepingly* of SV and the internet.

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

here's their sort of logic at work either AI will kill us all, or AI will solve climate change so climate change isn't really a problem bsky.app/profile/rach...

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I get the vibe you were on the late-90s, early-00s Internet, niche blogs, chat groups, all that? I was. And my feel of all this is there but by the grace of God go I.

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Like, it’s an *ask* to have people understand that many of these very powerful and clearly very smart and very public people are also pretty close to the 2026 version of, say, the Hare Krishnas.

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For sure. It’s very hard to have people follow along that many of these these doomers also believe the machine god side, and indeed believe the one because they believe the other.

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A key to explaining it is to lay out the flip side of this confounding apocalyptic idea — the sincere belief LLMs are on the verge of creating a machine god that will solve all human problems & be a literal fountain of youth to the chosen. It’s the utilitarian greater good that justifies all this.

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My favourite dad game is turning The Wheels on the Bus into a naptime call and response game based around animal sounds. When the little boy is too sleepy to tell me what sound the elephant on the bus makes, that means he’s ready to be put down in the crib.

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Also, isn’t it fascinating that a 2020s movement like this is so fundamentally rooted in the medium of text, and really not any of the modern communication types we’ve been so worried about for so long. Its gospel is not tik tok. Not tweets. Not misinfo vids. It’s text & 2000s-style chat groups.

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Here’s to the rationalists one day being looked back upon as the Hare Krishnas of the late 2020s.

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And really, this one has a lot of potential. A lot. Like, a lot a lot.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It really has been a while since we’ve had a new good ol’, corn-fed, made-in-the-U-S-A cult, so there’s something morbidly fascinating about seeing one explode into moment in time when people lack the context to recognize it for what it is.

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Traditional vices bad actually.

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

Adam Roy @adnroy.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I never thought of myself as a moralist, but now that I'm being subjected to a dozen gambling ads every hour I'm ready to go smash up a casino like a 1920s temperance crusader.

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It is, I have to say, incredibly annoying that AI safety includes both some quite serious risks, some plainly massive economic and political force, and, yes, some genuinely serious people, but mixed across it some very bizarre cults with the most deranged ideas you have ever seen in your life.

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

Justin Ling @justinling.ca · 17/09/2026

Over the last two weeks in Europe, I heard lots of solidarity around Trump's threats against Canada — and painfully little recognition that the American president is an existential threat to Europe, too. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...

thestar.com

Justin Ling: On his latest trip abroad, Carney needs to warn Europe: Trump is coming for you next

During my own recent Euro trip, I kept meeting people terrified by the U.S. president's autocratic turn yet blithe to the threat he poses to them.

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

John Michael McGrath @jm-mcgrath.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Americans serving cope in response to Max's use of "mandate" here. Like, yes, Trump did not win 50%+1 of the vote. YOU STILL RE-ELECTED HIM AFTER A COUP, WORDPLAY CHANGES NOTHING

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

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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When they say they think it can cure cancer, they mean they think it can cure death, they just know that’s a touch too kooky to say out loud.

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To understand how someone can keep working at a project they sincerely believe has a 10%+ chance of killing everyone on this planet, you have to understand that they sincerely believe the balance of that 100% is that they find the fountain of youth for themselves, personally.

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They all want to be exactly that weird, is the point.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16/09/2026

When I was a kid, I thought Caligula's horse was a story about the unique oddness of one Roman emperor.

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

yeah, this stuff is far from my area of expertise, but i have yet to see anyone convincingly explain how the causal chain is supposed to operate here. it feels like the "AI will kill us all people" spent too much time watching Terminator 2 and the Animatrix.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

At its best, the internet is an astounding, awe-inspiring thing, man.

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Ed Tubb @edtubb.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I'm teaching myself a golf swing. Today was great; I was all over a range marker waaaay beyond my distance. So far, I needed to check. Tonight, I can report, in this year of our Lord, 2026, the marker I hit is 3D-modelled in Google Earth & an accurate 175 to the mat. The internet is *wonderful.*

A blue cone from a Google Earth image, representing a driving range marker.

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Emily St. James @emilystjams.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

No “it’s not REALLY a comedy!” discourse has confused me more than the “Widow’s Bay isn’t a comedy” discourse. Few shows have made me laugh as much as that one and from a wide variety of joke types!

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

The fallacy that University leaders pushing AI are falling into is thinking that the point of undergraduate research is to find things out. It isn't. What students find out is typically already generally known. The point of undergraduate research is to learn how to find things out.

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Whatever you may feel about the validity of the AI risk discourse, it is so deeply *funny* that this is the guy these AI CEOs need to jump to their side at this moment.

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Ned Resnikoff @resnikoff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

FWIW, this is close to the basic thought I had that sparked my wish for a polling tool. (I would personally rank the explosion in renewables as likely to be the more consequential revolution.)

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

It seems to me like recent advances in renewables and medical technology are as likely to transform human civilization as AI but the former two sectors have less flamboyant hype men.

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John Scalzi @scalzi.com · 14/09/2026

I'd love for someone to provide a coherent explanation of how they believe LLMs are meant to cause human extinction. Like, by what plausible mechanism do they do this, and how?

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Reposted by Ed Tubb

Elsewhere on Bluesky folks are noting that The Kids These Days aren't much into Douglas Adams. As someone who is much into Douglas Adams (and in fact wrote an intro to new edition of his works) allow me to remind folks that it's not actually surprising when The Kids aren't into decades-old stuff.

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And he’s not the patient who has spent the longest in seclusion at Waypoint. That’s Camelott Hamblett. He’s been locked up alone for 20 years and counting.

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