iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 05/08/2025

Funny, even on here, I still refer to things as "tweets" when I think about them.

Reposted by Etienne Posthumus

Craig Reynolds @craigreynolds.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

“Boids Demo Reel” survived as a videotape cassette on my bookshelf for many years, then was digitized for a documentary around 2010. “Breaking the Ice” was on broadcast quality reel-to-reel videotape until 2023 when Tom McMahon and others worked on a remastering for the 50ᵗʰ SIGGRAPH conference.

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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 01/07/2025

This @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social video is absolutely INCREDIBLE. The numbers he cites, the strategy and results they produced — it’s the future. When have you heard *any* campaign talk about this, ever? (Video split in 2 to fit in Bluesky’s limits)

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 30/06/2025

Having a bad day? World politics getting you down, heat too much to bear? Behold the Singer-theremin-hurdygurdy magic.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 27/06/2025

I just bought a 2nd-hand Volkswagen car, and I am gob-smacked that you can not download the user manual as a PDF anywhere. Been scouring forums, various sites, pages and pages of search engine links, but, nada. "official" VW position? You should order the dead-tree version from a dealer for €€€€

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Daniel Bellingradt @dbellingradt.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

A printed ❤️ symbol from a 1702 text about the Holy Trinity.

A page from a 1702 German publication with the title "Reimb Dich, Oder Ich Liß Dich, Das ist: Allerley Materien, Discurs, Concept, und Predigen, welche bißhero in underschiedlichen Tractätlein gedruckt worden" (vd18 10307974). The author explains on this page, and on pages before and after the Holy Trinity. Part of the detailed explanation if a human heart, made of a V (in German printing a "U") and a three as a cap. In the text, the "V" stands for the Latin "unum" (meaning: one, as in: together as one) and the number 3 is of course the Holy Trinity.

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 24/06/2025

I'm reading Bartz v Anthropic, of course, from a very practical, interested perspective. ("What can libraries let me do, and how exactly can we stay out of jail?") The first thing I notice: I didn't realize Anthropic had rolled their own GBooks. Doesn't sound prohibitively $$$. 1/3

Instead, Turvey and his team emailed major book distributors and retailers about bulk- purchasing their print copies for the AI firm’s “research library” (Opp. Exh. 22 at 145; Opp. Exh. 31 at -035589). Anthropic spent many millions of dollars to purchase millions of print books, often in used condition. Then, its service providers stripped the books from their bindings, cut their pages to size, and scanned the books into digital form — discarding the paper originals. Each print book resulted in a PDF copy containing images of the scanned pages with machine-readable text (including front and back cover scans for softcover books). Anthropic created its own catalog of bibliographic metadata for the books it was acquiring. It acquired copies of millions of books, including of all works at issue for all Authors.2

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 26/06/2025

I am really quite charmed with MonsterUI monsterui.answer.ai It feels like that moment when Bootstrap came out way back when, and made everyones lives easier. See this great video tutorial for why: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVWA...

youtube.com

Making.a MonsterUI blog with Isaac and Audrey

YouTube video by Isaac Flath

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 17/06/2025

Curious about ICONCLASS? 👉 You can still register for the two-part online workshop “Iconclass - Content Classification and Technical Features” on Monday, June 30 and Tuesday, July 1 (10:00 - 13:00) nfdi4culture.de/events/detai...

nfdi4culture.de

Two Part Workshop "Iconclass – Content Classification and Technical Features” - NFDI4Culture

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 08/06/2025

Off to Bertinoro, Italy today for: International Semantic Web Research Summer School Knowledge graphs for reliable AI 2025.semanticwebschool.org Looking forward to being a participant, and not a tutor or speaker. Fun!

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 07/06/2025

And as background music at high volume: "Levi Schechtmann, born in 1999 in Hamburg, is a German pianist redefining classical music by fusing it with hip-hop, electronic beats, and contemporary sounds." open.spotify.com/album/3BHHdM...

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 07/06/2025

Trying Claude Code this evening, instead of going Tango dancing. #nerd It's just too tantalizing. First thing is trying to understand an existing codebase from an opensource project I wanted to read ages ago.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 06/06/2025

Last weekend I was at a festival in Welkom, Vrystaat. Most of the people there would readily identify as "Afrikaners". Early afternoon, not many people there yet. The cover band plays the iconic "Pata, Pata" by Miriam Makeba, and the few people bop happily. Gave me the feels.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 05/06/2025

Just back home from the trip to SA, next week I will be at 2025.semanticwebschool.org Really looking forward to meeting new people and the intense week.

2025.semanticwebschool.org

ISWS 2025

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Dr Ella Hawkins @ellamchawk.bsky.social · 29/05/2025

I’m currently on maternity leave. Biscuit-making opportunities are proving hard to come by, but I should have a couple of new sets to share soon. If you’d like to see more in the meantime: - ellahawkins.com - Instagram – @ellamchawk - Facebook – Ella Makes Cakes Happy National Biscuit Day 2025! 🍪

A mosaic of 15 small images of biscuits. Some of the biscuit sets pictured look like Elizabethan embroidery, and one is inspired by 18th-century trade cards. One square shows a close-up image of a biscuit being painted by hand.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 29/05/2025

This Way Up in Cape Town

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Reposted by Etienne Posthumus

Rhianna Pratchett @rhi.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Happy Glorious 25th of May! GNU Sir Terry Pratchett. How do they rise up? #Glorious25th #Discworld #TruthJusticeFreedomReasonablyPricedLove #Speakhisname

A mug of tea with a lilac blossom pattern on it, alongside lilac and Terry Pratchett pin badges.

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Dr Nechama Brodie @brodiegal.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

I do love a good fact check.

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Daniel de Kadt @dandekadt.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Repeat after me: There's no genocide happening in South Africa. White people have on average longer life expectancies, better educational outcomes, higher incomes, more wealth, better healthcare access, and more local and international mobility than any other racial or ethnic group in the country.

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Carolyn E Holmes @carolyneholmes.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

The amazing thing is the way that the truth is blended with falsehood. True stories of crime, but with collapsed timelines and fake statistics, real rally clips assembled over 10+ years that make these songs feel ubiquitous.. This is lies through curation.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 15/05/2025

Next week I will be in Johannesburg, and the following weekend in CT. Will be on vacation with two young adults and one old toppie. (who still likes to boogie) Any tips for cultural events, music venues, festivals etc. ?

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 15/05/2025

www.dailymaverick.co.za/cartoon/sett...

Cartoon by Zapiro in the style of Gary Larson showing similarities between the "White Afrikaner Refugees" and the native Idaho residents. Published in dailymaverick.co.za 2025-05-14

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Sooz Kempner @soozuk.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

His bank accounts here in the UK have been frozen. This is his home country. Never shut the fuck about this.

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Reposted by Etienne Posthumus

Carolyn E Holmes @carolyneholmes.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

How did we get here: Afrikaner Refugees edition. A 🧵 (backed up by research)

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 14/05/2025

More, most excellent Afrikaans content: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOEc... Crank up the volume, and enjoy. (ons is nie almal so nie)

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Reposted by Etienne Posthumus

Jesse Harber @harber.co.za · 14/05/2025

Extraordinary to see the gap between how both pro- and anti-Trump Americans are talking about Afrikaners, and how almost anyone talks in South Africa. Antis, I know you think you’re helping but we generally frown on racial abuse in South Africa, even against your political opponents.

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 13/05/2025

International scientific collaborations that involve the US are complex now, but a good start is to assume you're collaborating with the 18c. The state is largely hostile to science. Economic theory is mercantilist. Travel is difficult. Research funding depends on the goodwill of quirky aristocrats.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 13/05/2025

OK, enough moaning from me. What are Afrikaans people actually like? Like this: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kLt... Beautiful doccie about some real people.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 13/05/2025

How is it possible that people in the USA that consider themselves good people, can allow an actual genocide to take place, while putting on a show about a fake genocide from SA and shipping off some other desperate people from one continent to another? Does not compute. Heartbreaking.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 13/05/2025

Watched this lecture last night: www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_ed... Incredibly clear and entertaining lecture by Richard Feynman, still useful today, explaining the nuts and bolts of our universe.

youtube.com

Gravitation' by Richard Feynman [1080p HD Video with clear audio]

YouTube video by ThinkOf

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 13/05/2025

Dis altyd beter in Afrikaans. 🤣 Die Groot Tsek. Na die land van Trompie Mammon.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 30/03/2025

It feels so silly saying anything "normal" in these times, and yet this is what we must do. Keep on doing what we do, spread the understanding, build stuff, maintain "normality" for what it's worth. Reminder: "Do not go gently into that good night. Rage, rage, rage against the dying of the light."

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 12/05/2025

Not all Americans are stupid, racist, greedy, lying, hypocritical fuckers. Nor are Afrikaners all backwards, dimwitted, religious twats. Some of them are friends and family, and I love them dearly. My heart goes out to the contingent of true mensch people in both camps hanging their heads in shame.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 12/05/2025

How can you so blatantly be a horrible person? It can't just be utter stupidity.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 05/05/2025

Reading through arxiv.org/pdf/2504.04584 BARQ: A Vectorized SPARQL Query Execution Engine Insightful sharing from the authors explaining the new architecture of Stardog

arxiv.org

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 02/05/2025

After being fairly rattled by this: ai-2027.com - I am re-reading the The Hyperion Cantos by Dan Simmons. (from 1990!) He was eerily prescient in his tales with regards to the AI clades, and other things like social media and communications forms. Hard SF for The Win! 🤖💀😍

ai-2027.com

AI 2027

A research-backed AI scenario forecast.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 02/05/2025

Friday moment to share some African joy. If you were ever curious for some excellent contemporary Afrikaans music: open.spotify.com/playlist/0PN...

open.spotify.com

Dissie Kakkie

Playlist · epoz 🔥 · 94 items · 26 saves

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 01/05/2025

Whoo-hoo! Redis is open source again. antirez.com/latest/0 In the early days, I was an enormous Redis fan-boy. It was just so incredibly useful. In the past few years I have sorta just stopped using it as other things proved even more userful. But looking at the huge range of new features...

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 28/04/2025

Ooof! This post hits me in the feels. Bit moist around the ole peekers as I type.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 24/04/2025

Listening to the "Voëlvry" CD, music of the alternative Afrikaans movement in the 90s, and it hits me: seems like the same vibe we had then as the folks in the USA are feeling now. Authoritarian, racist, conniving, lying, opportunist greedy peeps rising to power and then refusing to let go.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 24/04/2025

Know what? For me the "hood" over here has pretty much become what I missed on Twitter. I am getting almost the same value and feels from years gone by over there. The transition has happened! Happiness is.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 24/04/2025

Something I suffer from with software is this: "Give someone a hammer, and everything looks like a nail" It is a bit of a bad habit which is _very_ hard to kick.

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Etienne Posthumus @epoz.org · 23/04/2025

"Afrikaans is a karos under which all her children have to lie, and where there is often a wrestling match when someone feels they are not being properly covered." www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/... Absolutely adore this essay.

dailymaverick.co.za

Afrikaans is a kraal with many huts... as well as some village idiots

It is not the village idiots who are going to take Afrikaans off life support and bring it back to life. It is the flower seller in Adderley Street, the street sweeper in Kariega, and the cattle farme...

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