iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, wait 25, years then strip down to your nudey judeys and grind your junk against the fuselage

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Hisham Zerriffi @hishamzerriffi.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Pew tested AI synthetic surveys against actual survey data. Conclusion: “This experiment taught us that, at this time, AI models are not an adequate replacement for traditional polling on topics of broad public importance.” This is an all time bad idea. No need to hedge with “at this time.”

pewresearch.org

Can AI Stand In for Human Survey-Takers? Not Really

Synthetic surveys using digital twins do a poor job estimating the public mood and are especially error-prone for some subgroups, including Republicans and Black adults.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

absolutely insane. even a marginally functional judiciary would look at this and have *no choice* but to conclude criminal theft. it will take active convolutions — or some kind of blanket boomer-kowtowing to tech as above the law by fiat — to rule otherwise

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Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026

11/ Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. ‘Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,’” former executive Eric Schiff said.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

and there it is folks, you're 41 years old and you arrive live at an organic derivation of the fanny pack

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I need to bring a small amount of stuff with me all day, but don't wanna lug a whole backpack; oh nice here's a small crossbody sling that if you can get over the idea you have a purse is perfect; but actually it's so hot that I wonder if I could just shorten the strap and wear this around my waist—

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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 23/10/2023

when wikipedia launched, the idea that an encyclopedia could be reliably maintained by the public was a joke. now, it's a marvel, a remarkable resource, virtually the only website that remotely delivers on its potential and practically the last pleasant browsing experience on the internet.

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Relentless Picnic @relentlesspicnic.com · 16/09/2026

is this whole thing just a little joke about the historiography of the bronze age collapse? did nolan direct a laughably bad fight scene on purpose? is the erosion of the law of zeus a kind of code for sexual violence? part 2 of our odyssey discussion, free to all. www.patreon.com/relentlesspi...

patreon.com

Nolan's Odyssey (part 2) | Stanley Picnic

Adam, Erikk, and Nick continue their discussion of The Odyssey, which took place in the immediate aftermath of first seeing The Odyssey (202

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

in conversation I always bring up the amazing detail you posted about how sales of the *iliad* also rose! appreciate you always, levi.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

we are building the jankiest, least efficient, most unabashedly brute force spaghetti at the wall rube goldberg nonsense you could imagine and branding it like it's chessmaster skynet

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

but whatever road gets you there, probably. bonus incentive that we hear about all these gods zooming around in disguise.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I like the what-if-they're-a-god part more as either a deeper gloss on the lived experience of being human together — daimonic and mysteriously-guided creatures that we are — or, as a kind of theological adjunct to a rule that'd exist anyway, if your culture values travel and seafaring logistics.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

possible sign of the fall of civilization? in the 8 centuries from homer's dialect to paul's koine, we go from xenia --> philoxenia. my imagined evolution being: the state of affairs btw. guest-strangers used to imply one of love, and now you gotta spell it the fuck out

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Relentless Picnic @relentlesspicnic.com · 08/09/2026

we talked at some length about nolan's (and homer's) odyssey — way before the internet became saturated by thinkpiece after plodding thinkpiece. it just took us a really long time to get it out to you. here's part 1. parts 2 and 3 to come. www.patreon.com/relentlesspi...

patreon.com

Nolan's Odyssey (part 1) | Stanley Picnic

Earlier this summer, Adam, Erikk, and Nick saw The Odyssey separately, and then came together to talk things out. This discussion took place

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

oh and then you got - bobby oppenheimer (string bean purportedly building bomb big as a damn bus) youtu.be/JwPuQ4hGDUc?...

youtu.be

Bobby Oppenheimer is that you?

YouTube video by Misguided

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

nb: - joshua oppenheimer (brilliant director of 'the act of killing', its sequel, 2024's 'the end', & nothing else) - noah oppenheim (disgraced former president of nbc news, wrote that terrible show where de niro's the president) - lance oppenheim (director: doc on the villages, this forthcoming)

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

my buddy quit reading the odyssey halfway through, then lost his life savings on kalshi– betting penelope would marry one of the suitors before odysseus returned. he thought he was being smart by not betting on a specific suitor–now his wife is leaving him. brutal beat

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

This is pretty fucking wild. I had assumed in a worst case scenario he would target blue zip codes and toss ballots based on technicalities but this is even worse than I imagined.

Not only is this system astonishingly untested, USPS has simultaneously implemented an
impracticable zero percent failure rate.
13 When ballots are submitted to USPS in large-volume
batches, if any one ballot in the batch cannot be verified against the Portal, all ballots in that
batch will be rejected. For example, if a state election official brings a batch of 10,000 ballots to
USPS and USPS is unable to match just one of those ballots against the Portal – because, for
example, someone has recently changed their name after marriage or they’ve moved – then
USPS would refuse to mail the remaining 9,999 ballots as well. As the whistleblower notes,

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Spencer Ackerman @attackerman.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

More of your wealth than ever goes to them, less of it than ever goes to you. It's a class war. But only one side is waging it

ft.com

US corporate profits surge to record as worker payouts wilt

Pre-tax earnings hit highest share of national income since aftermath of second world war

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 28/08/2026

kind of incredible that with the right affect, vicious partisanship can be read as magnanimous understanding

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David Dayen @ddayen.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

LOL they literally settled as I was typing. Only $17 billion but product changes are major: •limit minors’ access to 2 hours/day •blocks from midnight-6am •Notifications blocked between 10pm-7am & during school hours •concealing likes for minors •banning beauty filters •can deactivate the news feed

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mark leidner @markleidner.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Poem for a Friend I Don’t Talk to Anymore

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 22/08/2026

the average tech exec and venture capitalist and honestly an alarming amount of bay area software engineers have close to zero interaction or connection with regular people, and the richer they are, the more isolated they've become. They have built rationalizations for everything.

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Philosophers often bring up the "principle of charity": a willingness to assume good faith in an interlocutor and treat them accordingly. It's good to do in many circumstances. But it is worth formulating a principle of not being a fucking mark. If not during the rise of fascism, then when? 12/

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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 15/08/2026

we know LLM companies are fueled by plagiarism on the supply side, but this raises the worrying question of how much plagiarism defines the demand side as well

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Avery Edison @averyedison.com · 27/04/2026

Something to bear in mind as things get harder, from a 2009 Metafilter post from someone who lives through Sarajevo.

Metafilter post from Dee Extrovert part 1: Well, unlike the majority of you (l assume), 1 actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.
Of those who couldn't leave my city, Sarajevo:
Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the "long haul" - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.
Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of "preparation" to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don't know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity.
Today, that still feels like it's worth something.

Metafilter post from Dee Extrovert part 2: But here's the main point: "Preparing" for the disaster really didn't do anyone much good. Those who
"prepared" ate a little better for a while. They stayed warmer for a few extra days. They enjoyed the radio for a while longer (via batteries.) But in the end, they ended up hungry, cold and bored too, just like the rest of us. Guns and weapons helped no one directly and were even of little to no use in the defense of Sarajevo, since they were toys compared to the shells, bombs and high-powered armaments of the attacking forces.
The worst parts of war were psychological - the fear, anxiety, boredom, loneliness, paranoia, bad dreams.
Respite from those things came with sharing food with a neighbor, finding a piece of clothing that would fit someone you knew, commiserating with others in your position, figuring out how to make make-up from brick or french fries from wheat paste and spreading this newly-acquired war knowledge around the mahala.
We knew who had extra food and supplies. For the most part, they weren't attacked or hassled or bothered. Contrary to what these survivalists say, those in dire times generally hold on to their personal sense of pride even more than they do in normal times. I'd take a bite of a friend's salad without bothering to ask in normal times. I'd never have done that in wartime, no matter how hungry I was.

Metafilter post from Dee Xtrovert: Well, unlike the majority of you (l assume), 1 actually lived several years in a period of savagery and killing, during which nothing - food, water, electricity, phone, clothing, sense of safety, school, the ability to go out in public, etc - was available, except during totally unpredictable, brief and sporadic occasions.
Of those who couldn't leave my city, Sarajevo:
Some people (very few) were prepared for what they thought would be the "long haul" - this tended to be a couple of months. These people were widely seen as lunatics and dangerously pessimistic ones at that.
Most people were not at all prepared. This included my family. Many of those - like my family - considered the idea of "preparation" to be an affront to the decency we felt most people possessed. Were we wrong? Well, I don't know. We suffered greatly; my parents were killed. But speaking only for myself, I never felt I cheapened my soul by betting on calamity.
Today, that still feels like it's worth something.

Posted on Jan. 28th 2009. 1696 favorites

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

the boomer-spirited gentlemen in charge of axios dot com are some of the dumbest most credulous AI idiots there are. they fill the sweet spot of complete and total worship of wherever the money goes, coupled with technological illiteracy on like an identity-deep level

Top AI architects say their technology has arrived at a threshold once confined to science fiction: the singularity, when machines begin accelerating their own evolution, Axios' Ina Fried and Zachary Basu write.

- Why it matters: If these moguls are right, we may be entering the most consequential technological transition in human history — the opening stages of an "intelligence explosion" that transforms civilization faster than humanity can understand or control.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

pov you are in méxico listening to early-00's renditions of finnish folk music

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Ed Zitron @edzitron.com · 07/08/2026

AI is the true demonstration of the excesses of capitalism and a gratuitous example of how much money companies have access to versus regular people, and how credulous some people can be as a result of the powerful spending lots of money. bsky.app/profile/emil...

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Mark @samueltwain.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

this is what every damn Monday feels like fellas, join the club

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I guess the most generous theory is, charli knew the next album would be a letdown regardless, that it would be the end of the fame she experienced, struggled with, and ultimately professed to love, and so she made something fully phoned-in, dull, asinine, & faux-pretentious, but had fun doing it?

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Garth Marenghi's Catbus @catbus.phd · 10/04/2024

remembering the greatest interview of all time

An interview with the guy who yells MORTAL KOMBAT in the theme for Mortal Kombat

interviewer: I see. will you do it over the phone?
guy: would i do it over the phone? absolutely.
interviewer: let's hear it.
guy: Mortal Kombat!

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

"democrats, let republicans decide who you elect this year"

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

once after an absolutely brutal day, @juskewitch.bsky.social invited me out to a bar in adams morgan, a neighborhood he knew I hated but lord i needed it. so i called an uber and texted adam: "ebenezer's on his way." and he was like "ok chill dude." but i wasn't being glib. he really was coming.

a screenshot of the uber app indicating a driver named EBENEZER was 1min away from picking up a passenger from his DC locale. imposed atop this screenshot is an incoming text message from @juskewitch.bsky.social, reading: "No fucking way."

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

alex don't fuck this up alex please

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

When Dems attack Trump's corruption, is that "leftist" or "moderate"? It's neither. People need to stop trying to map everything on to these ludicrously simplistic little templates, which are just designed to facilitate factional infighting and build online followings.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

simply place the soldering iron where you need to solder, then pull the trigger. it will feed the solder into your project. have a look!

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Dara Lind @daralind.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Bro what about the 75 billion-with-a-b dollars Congress gave you last summer

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Tim Ellis, TDSB Ward 2 candidate 🍁 @djdynamic.ca · 08/07/2026

"They just want to turn it off." A fascinating story of the librarians who have started teaching classes showing people how to remove AI "features" from their phones and apps. www.bangordailynews.com/2026/07/02/m...

bangordailynews.com

These Maine librarians are helping patrons resist AI and Big Tech

Despite breathless reporting on how AI is going to change the world, Hannah Cyrus, a Bangor librarian, said that, in her experience, most library patrons aren’t finding it helpful.

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

*my phone dings* *i take a big gulping breath as I prepare to scream the magic words"

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

rehashing a complaint from the last world cup, which I see has still yet to be addressed

a thread from the old site:

so in soccer, instead of stopping the clock during the match, some unseen forces keep track of how much non-game time elapsed as the clock kept running, then they add it on at the end in whole-minute increments, then, during that "stoppage" time, some even more unseen forces keep track of new non-game time, and add it on in their minds (?), with no announcement of how much or how long, until suddenly at a seemingly arbitrary moment, the ref just says the match is over? this is the best system?

I don't know how you people live like this

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Erikk Geannikis @erikk38.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

𝖌𝖔𝖔𝖉 𝖑𝖚𝖈𝖐 𝖙𝖔 𝖆𝖑𝖑 𝖖𝖚𝖊𝖊𝖗𝖘 𝖇𝖚𝖙 𝖜𝖊 𝖉𝖎𝖉 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝖊𝖗𝖗𝖆𝖓𝖉𝖘 𝖙𝖔𝖉𝖆𝖞 𝖘𝖔 𝖜𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖓 𝖘𝖙𝖆𝖞 𝖎𝖓 𝖙𝖔𝖒𝖔𝖗𝖗𝖔𝖜 —ojibwe saying

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