iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

From me on Forbes: "Trump’s Announcement Of Russian Diesel Means Nothing" I went through the numbers, and they're a lot less than they sound, if they even happen. www.forbes.com/sites/eriksh...

forbes.com

Trump’s Announcement Of Russian Diesel Means Nothing

The vaunted possible, not guaranteed, volumes of incoming diesel are much smaller than it sounds, and won’t likely change the price at all.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

"An Anthropic artificial intelligence model submitted a false homicide tip to a Philadelphia police website" — Reuters. The people running the company are utterly incompetent to have this sort of stuff happening. www.reuters.com/world/us/ant...

reuters.com

Anthropic discloses fake tip to police among new rogue AI incidents

It is the first known instance in which AI appears to have tried to communicate a bogus tip to authorities, despite instructions not to create accounts or submit anything destructive, while not explic...

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Why did a new type of cat suddenly appear in the wild? It was looking for a cardboard box.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Question. If people can say they like Jews but don't think Israel should exist, can they also say they like Germans, Italians, Canadians, Danes, English, and Spaniards, but insist that Germany, Italy, Canada, Denmark, England, and Spain shouldn't exist? Just wondering.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

As Burning Man is supposedly dominated by those 50 and older, I propose that the name be changed to Burping Man.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Trump declares a national emergency to ban some foreign grid equipment. When was that next data center going to be installed again?

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Spellchecker? I prefer spellnegotiator.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Suddenly, Trump calls off a new attack on Iran, saying "the perimeters of a deal had been agreed to" that would open the Strait of Hormuz and end Iran's nuclear threat. Why do I wonder that Iran might say something completely different?

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

From me on Forbes: "SpaceX Is $15 Away From A ‘Worthless’ AI Business Says Morgan Stanley" A slight drop in share prices would suggest investors saw next to no value in the Grok division. www.forbes.com/sites/eriksh...

forbes.com

SpaceX Is $15 Away From A ‘Worthless’ AI Business Says Morgan Stanley

Some analysts at the bank looked at the falling price of the stock and said it implies investors assign to SpaceXAI, the Grok chatbot division.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

"GOP senator to introduce bill to sanction Canada over wildfire smoke" — The Hill Roll your eyes or laugh. There is no such thing as peak vacuity.

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Reposted by Erik Sherman

Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

🚨BREAKING: Idaho’s Republican attorney general’s office accused the Department of Justice of potentially violating state ethics rules by threatening the state’s top election official with a criminal prosecution while suing him for the state’s voter rolls. www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

democracydocket.com

‘Stop threatening your friends’: Idaho fires back against Trump DOJ's threats over noncitizen voting

Idaho says DOJ should not have sent that letter directly to McGrane because the department knew he was represented by the state attorney general’s office in the pending lawsuit.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

I've read that Stalin coined the phrase American exceptionalism. OED says the first documented use was in the American-published Daily Worker, January 29, 1929. Possibly coined by German Marxists explaining why the US didn't have the expected degree of class conflict. Stalin did make use of it.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

"Venezuela earthquakes deepen rift between GOP hawks and Trump-backed regime" — The Hill How does any part of the GOP have any room for a rift. They all embraced Trump when they thought it meant power and victory. Y'all got what you asked for.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

"An ancient Greek concept, sophrosyne – pronounced “suh-fros-uh-nee” – is what we might call “sound-mindedness” today. It’s a constellation of characteristics, including moderation, reflectiveness and self-knowledge." theconversation.com/why-sophrosy...

theconversation.com

Why sophrosyne, an ancient Greek virtue, matters more than ever in the age of AI

For the Greeks, sophrosyne was an ideal second to none. It’s just as important today, in an age of internet addiction and misinformation – but harder to come by.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

From The Hill: "Pentagon on lockdown over air quality issue" They really need to cut down the hot air and airborne BS fumes.

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Reposted by Erik Sherman

Rude Law Dog @esghound.com · 02/04/2026

Sun Microsystem CEO Scott McNealy's baseline of 10x revenues as the leap into froth seems quaint when you slap another zero on at the end. Good luck 🤞

Scott McNealy was the CEO of Sun Microsystems, one of the darlings of the dot com bubble. At its peak his stock hit valuation of ten-times revenues. A couple of years afterward he had this to say about that time:

At 10 times revenues, to give you a 10-year payback, I have to pay you 100% of revenues for 10 straight years in dividends. That assumes I can get that by my shareholders. That assumes I have zero cost of goods sold, which is very hard for a computer company. That assumes zero expenses, which is really hard with 39,000 employees. That assumes I pay no taxes, which is very hard. And that assumes you pay no taxes on your dividends, which is kind of illegal. And that assumes with zero R&D for the next 10 years, I can maintain the current revenue run rate. Now, having done that, would any of you like to buy my stock at $64? Do you realize how ridiculous those basic assumptions are? You don’t need any transparency. You don’t need any footnotes. What were you thinking?

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Any bets on how long it will take for an agreement that will see the Strait of Hormuz open again? Or how high inflation will rise and chance of a recession?

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

It's become clear that experience in certain levels of NYC real estate dealings is far from statecraft. In particular, learning to keep one's lips strategically sealed in public.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

A writer is a thinker who has documented the results.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

From the Hill: "Senate Republican on Trump ballroom push: ‘We have $39 trillion of debt’" Remember when Trump claimed private money was paying? Irony: Sen. Rick Scott, punted as Columbia/HCA CEO during the massive Medicare/Medicaid fraud investigation. thehill.com/homenews/sen...

thehill.com

Senate Republican on Trump ballroom push: ‘We have $39 trillion of debt’

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is pushing back on a proposal to spend as much as $400 million in taxpayer money to build a 90,000-square-foot ballroom at the White House, arguing that Congress needs to r…

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Journalists should never have been attending self-celebratory events that included the people they covered. Doing so during this administration makes it more distasteful.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

When you can't get another country to let ships through a channel, pretend you're the one running the blockade. Reality? Ships still can't get through. What a win.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Why is the word short longer than the word long?

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

Heritage Foundation's "election fraud" tactic: I looked at their database years ago and scoffed. Just looked again, a scary 1,620 cases of election fraud — over 43 years. That's just under 38 cases a year. Look at ineligible voting; it's a total of 382, or under 9 cases a year.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

Why would Trump announce the closure of the Kennedy Center for a two-year renovation? My three top guesses: 1. He wants to make it completely about him. 2. It gives an excuse for not hosting all the artists who refuse to perform or premier works there. 3. The Epstein Files.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

12 years is almost never, I guess.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

A first in my pretty long career. I had a query out for lawyers who have apartment real estate owners and could discuss a new letter out of HUD giving 30 days for many providers to prove tenant eligibility. A PR firm for a legal document firm sends a response. 1/X

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

What percentage of Minneapolis does the Trump administration think it should kill before it is satisfied?

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Sometimes stumbling across something unexpected can send you down a rabbit hole, or even a vampire’s grave. A new post on my Substack newsletter. eriksherman.substack.com/p/some-off-b...

eriksherman.substack.com

Some Off-Beat Questions About Being a Vampire

Sometimes a short video clip can send one’s mind into strange places.

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

One of mine on Forbes: "Trump Tariff Pressures Europe Over Greenland With US Taxpayers To Pay" And, apparently, it comes down to self-admitted psychological needs and the lack of getting the Nobel Peace Prize. www.forbes.com/sites/eriksh...

forbes.com

Trump Tariff Pressures Europe Over Greenland With US Taxpayers To Pay

And in cosmic irony, reportedly the push to take Greenland, whether by purchase or potentially by force, was because Trump wasn’t awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Reposted by Erik Sherman

samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 05/01/2026

somebody at UChicago is feeding preprints to LLMs without authors' consent, in a research study they have the gall to suggest to authors they've opted-in that they volunteer to evaluate the LLMs' suggestions regarding their own work. lol, lmao even. here is the invite and my reply

Dear Author,

I am Honglin Bao (www.hbao.info), a data science PhD student in Knowledge Lab (https://knowledgelab.org/) at the University of Chicago, working on a study about “The Capabilities and Potential of AI for Automating Scientific Idealization: A Large-Scale Human-in-the-Loop Study” (under UChicago IRB25-1372). As AI plays an increasingly significant role in scientific discovery, this project aims to evaluate how far AI helps scientists extend their work in new directions – or if it is not useful in this regard. This is a research project – it has no commercial purpose. I will share the final draft, technical details, and aggregate results from scientists once the study is complete.
We came across your preprint "Principles of music perception" and applied custom AI models on it in accordance with the terms of the preprint license, which generated five new extensions (i.e., ideas proposed by AI based on the same context as your paper). Our pilot study of 400 scientists (excluding you) indicates that around 60% found at least one of the proposed extensions thought-provoking and actionable. However, the remaining reported that AI only generates seemingly plausible but vague sentences.
We solicit your help in evaluating whether you think AI is useful or not, since we believe you are the best judge of new ideas proposed from your own paper. No matter where you stand regarding AI and science: From principally believing that AI is prone to producing fake and morally problematic science to finding it useful, or something in between, we hope to receive evaluations that reflect a spectrum of views.
The AI-proposed extensions are included in the survey link below. If you consent to review them and participate in the survey, we would appreciate it if you could do so within the next 14 days (it will take you < 10mins). If you do not consent, we will not use your research in this study. If you find these ideas valuable, you are welcome to purs…

Please remove my data from your study. I want nothing to do with this — and I would also point out that if you had done appropriate background work in the selection of articles you fed to the plagiarism machine, you would have found that the preprint of mine you used is way out of date and has been updated substantially since it was first posted.

———
Samuel Mehr
School of Psychology, University of Auckland
and Child Study Center, Yale University
Be a citizen scientist at themusiclab.org!

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Erik Sherman @eriksherman.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

The combination of evil, selfishness, a bully's nature, and unfathomable stupidity is a bad combination. "Stephen Miller: ‘Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily’ over Greenland" thehill.com/homenews/adm...

thehill.com

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