iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I don't think you're being cynical at all.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Reading to my daughter was one of my favorite activities even if I had to read Goodnight Moon over and over again.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I had to contact tech support about something last week. It was done through an AI chatbot and I didn't have any choice in the matter. So yeah I used it and yeah it sucked. To be fair tech support with humans can suck too sometimes but I would have preferred that anyway.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Thanks for explaining this. I'm an Army brat so I understood the significance already but I don't think a lot of people did so. Only thing I would add is that Hegseth was never given a company command which for a combat arms officer means he was judged to be unfit.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I don't think there will be any logical explanation. More a case of a narcissistic sociopath experiencing rapidly advancing dementia.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You would have thought even if Schmitt didn't know this someone in his office would have. I mean Missouri shares a border with Iowa!

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

True but that's not specific to genius. Lots of ways people justify thinking they're more important than others.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Sometimes there is someone who clearly is a genius at a young age (e.g. Richard Feynman who had theorems named after him while still a teenager). But the other part of genius is knowing it's boundaries and that being a genius at physics or music doesn't make you a genius at everything else.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I wonder if the people who were listed as being members of some of these orgs without their knowledge or consent would have some legal recourse for financial damages.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

My dad was a career enlisted man in the US Army and mom an immigrant. I was the first in my family to graduate from a 4 year college and got a Phd. in physics. It happened because my parents really valued education even though they never had the opportunities but they made sure I did.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I haven't seen any of my conservative leaning acquaintances trying to defend this one but there do seem to be plenty of bot accounts trying. Which may convince people from far away but isn't likely to help Whatley in his Senate race.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

In my field (solid state physics) there are certain narrow cases where it's useful but these are very different from what most people think of as AI and it has nothing to do with general LLM output.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A million dollar net worth isn't what it used to be. In many metro areas owning a modest house is enough to put someone in that bracket but it doesn't mean enough cash to have much of an influence on politics. Of course this can also be viewed as a sign of how unaffordable housing is in many places.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

So much for the Purcell principle.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

I mean sometimes it's necessary but it hardly seems to be something to be proud of.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Inequality didn't stop growing in 1997 though. Sure some ups and downs but it's a lot worse now that it was 30 years ago.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

There are heavy lift helicopters that can carry a big load but they are short range.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Oh for sure. And it's easy to waste huge amounts of time which I don't have doing so.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I disagree with him a lot but still find his viewpoints informative because they reflect what some nontrivial portion of the population also believes.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I'm half Asian and not originally from the south but after 36 years living here I catch myself saying y'all sometimes.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

By the same token the existence of small bible colleges with roughly the same number of students as Bates (or even Liberty University which is enormous) would establish a countervailing narrative. I don't think either argument accurately reflects the state of academia as a whole.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

My state University has 80 times the enrollment of Bates (probably more than all Ivy's combined) and I still wouldn't try to generalize from my experiences (very different from his) to academia at large.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

You know what's kooky? Legacy admissions which Dartmouth had 30 years ago and still has.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I read it. I can't speak to the environment at Bates but it's completely irrelevant to my experiences as an academic in a physical science.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Archers had to be trained extensively from an early age. So much so that skeletons of archers from then are asymmetric. I suppose the equivalent today would be realistic computer sims that 5 year olds would start training on.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Your assertion #2 is wrong. Most surveys show the vast majority of Americans agree someone with a net worth of 10 million is rich. Of course people with 10 million often don't feel they're rich but for a lot of them it won't matter how much they have it will never be enough.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Obama also had the advantage of running against a party that oversaw the Great Recession. Candidate quality matters but so does the national environment and Obama had a huge tail wind at his back in 2008.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Isn't this overlooking the role played by share buybacks? Which presumably would go away with gov't single payer.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Sure. But remember the old saying "Guns or butter"? That aid allows Israel to apply more resources to it's civilian sector. And while $7 billion isn't a lot for the US when adjusted for the pop difference between the two countries it's equivalent to $250 billion. Which is a lot of butter.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

This is not entirely true. The largest recipient of US foreign aid is Israel. It's around $7 billion/year to a country with 1/37th the population of the US and has a first world standard of living. But yes for developing countries your statement is correct.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Leaving the percentage aside I think foreign aid has mostly been a good investment for the US. Most but not all.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I have a low opinion of MAHA but there are major problems with some aspects of our health care system. Insurance in particular can be enraging and for good reason.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I lived in the NE when I was younger and winter was fun for me because I loved to ski. I did spend time in Boston and for sure the traffic was nasty but that's true for places like Atlanta too.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

From the southeast I can sincerely say I hate summer. It's hotter than hell for 4 months. You can't be outside without being soaked in sweat in 10 minutes. And while it cools off a bit outside at night the mosquitoes will eat you alive. Winter is much nicer.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

That wasn't the only race they lost.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

That's why Republicans gave themselves the power to overturn elections. Still waiting to hear your explanation of how Republicans reversed things in 96.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Oh bullshit. Dems swept G, LG, AG and SOS. In aggregate more voters pulled the lever for Dem candidates in both the state Senate and the House.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

You. "But by running good candidates the GOP reversed those numbers on 96."

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Ah no. That's not what happened. Republicans won 8 of 12 seats in 94 during the big backlash against Clinton. The parties split the 12 seats evenly in 1996. Amazing how confidently wrong you were.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Plus as I noted above gerrymandered state legislatures can tilt the field in other ways.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

3/3 disqualify ballots with a simple majority (it used to require a unanimous vote). They don't intend for Dems to ever win a close election again. What qualifies as close is yet unknown. Cooper may win by so much they won't try it but who knows with this bunch.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

2/3 members. The majority used to be decided by the governor. But since D's hold that office the R legislature changed that to the state auditor (they had to go pretty far down the list of officials since D's swept all of the major offices. They also passed a rule that the county boards can

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

1/3 The state legislature and the US house seats are brutally gerrymandered in NC. And because of that the R's here just gave themselves the power to overturn elections. I don't know if they'll try to fuck with Cooper and Whatley but the mechanics of it work like this. County election boards have 5

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

With the caveat that my experience has been with state schools I saw no evidence of this. I will note Dartmouth had legacy admissions during the 90s which favored mediocre white kids.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

A huge swath of the population will vote their prejudices before anything else.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Proposition 187 wasn't the only reason California went from a GOP leaning state to solid Dem. But it played a role and it was pretty mild compared to what's happening now. So Dems might have a chance at a trifecta in 2028 where comprehensive reform could be passed.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Some areas of the NC mountains have experienced a building boom over the last few years which has done little for affordable housing because much of the new construction is high end vacation homes. It has in fact driven up prices even for lower end housing.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Building more at the high end doesn't help the low end if the new high end inventory is vacation homes. Granted this is more of a local problem in areas where people want to take vacations but it's a significant factor in those areas.

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Emil Briggs @emilbriggs.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I was trying to explain to some non physicist friends why a super cooled fluid can freeze all at once rather than gradually. Same concept applies that change doesn't have to be linear.

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