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Gerben Wierda

@gerbenwierda.bsky.social
35 followers 10 following 119 posts
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Why write something yourself if you point to something worthwhile already written? John Ganz (@lioneltrolling.bsky.social) writes an good short piece with some nice observations on how Marco Rubio misrepresents the ancient Greeks and what that illustrates. www.unpopularfront.news/p/the-greeks...
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
A very good perspective on the current 'theory-free' Generative AI by @doctorow.pluralistic.net. Worth your time if you are interested in insight in the current AI-developments. pluralistic.net/2026/10/06/n...
pluralistic.net
Pluralistic: Swapping money for expertise (06 Oct 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
That Türkiye and Australia (most plans to open new coal mines I have been told) host COP31 boggles the mind.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
(Generative) AI is a misnomer. LLM is a misnomer too. These are not 'language models' but 'token models' or 'text generators', so LTG (Large Text Generator) or LTM (Large Token Model). Useless? No. Economically viable? It depends. "Quantity has its own quality" and humanity needs to learn that.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Serious coding with LLMs. Lab notes 2026-10-01: Codex and Claude generate a shared analysis The third 'lab note'. More on the power and Achilles' heel of "brute force trial and error with token pattern statistics"
ea.rna.nl
Serious coding with LLMs. Lab notes 2026-10-01: Codex and Claude generate a shared analysis
The third 'lab note'. More on the power and Achilles' heel of "brute force trial and error with token pattern statistics"
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
This piece by Erik Larson is absolutely brilliant: erikjlarson.substack.com/p/can-machin...
erikjlarson.substack.com
Can Machines Follow Simple Commands?
Doomers Call Context-Insensitive Stupidity “AGI.” They’re wrong.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Serious coding with LLMs. Lab notes 2026-09-27: Codex succeeds, Claude reviews the result. The second 'lab note'. More on the power and Achilles' heel of "brute force trial and error with token pattern statistics"
ea.rna.nl
Serious coding with LLMs. Lab notes 2026-09-27: Codex succeeds, Claude reviews the result.
The second 'lab note'. More on the power and Achilles' heel of "brute force trial and error with token pattern statistics"
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Serious coding with LLMs. Lab notes 2026-09-25: Codex vs Claude Code, Usage Limit Resets Before publishing about my very serious LLM-coding experiment, I am publishing a few shorter 'lab notes'. This is the first one.
ea.rna.nl
Serious coding with LLMs. Lab notes 2026-09-25: Codex vs Claude Code, Usage Limit Resets
Before publishing about my very serious LLM-coding experiment, I am publishing a few shorter 'lab notes'. This is the first one.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Since I ignore X, I am not confronted with a lot of such slop. But via people commenting on it on on bsky, it still reaches me. I am reminded of ‘backscatter’ spam. Spammers would send mail, falsely claiming it came from you, to a nonexistent address so that the bounce would end up in your mailbox.
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Reposted by Gerben Wierda
Paris Marx @parismarx.com · 21/09/2026
one of the 21st century’s great tragedies is seeing a media industry gutted by decisions made by the tech industry elevate a bunch of industry shills as the people meant to help the public understand how tech works and what impacts it’s having on the world
one of the 21st century's great tragedies is that millions of smart people were convinced to bury their heads in the sand by either stochastic parrots discourse or Zitron-style capabilities denialism and haven't updated based on new evidence. nature is healing but it's so late.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
[4/4] He may be able to get a part of the angry anti-(meritocracy/neoliberal) element of the MAGA world behind him, and I think he could be a formidable 2028 contender if he gets the chance. And let's face it: he is simply correct in what he says about all the corruption and its consequences.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
[3/4] The one in US politics on the Democratic side who impresses me most in representing this anger, but then in a righteous way, is Jon Ossof. His campaign speeches of which I have seen some parts are extremely well set up and delivered (and psychologically extremely smart too).
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
[2/4] while the ordinary people get stiffed (low hourly wages, 0-hour contracts, stiffed by Uber, pissing in bottles at Amazon, less money for their children's education, etc.). Trump rode the wave of this anger in 2016 and 2024. But now his extreme self-dealing and corruption makes him vulnerable
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Having seen a few parts of his speeches, I have been quite impressed by @ossoff.bsky.social Worldwide in the western nations, people are angry about how the neoliberal 'meritocracy' has been deeply unfair (self-dealing (executive pay, rich becoming richer (tax breaks...)) [1/4]
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Wait. Trump enacts tariffs. Ordinary people pay. The tariffs are ruled illegal. The companies like Walmart, Home Depot, etc get those billions refunded. They thus simply make extra profit. A standard US pattern where government in the end is there to let the have-much fleece the have-less.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Trump doesn’t want allies or friends. Like a mob boss, he understands vassals, enemies, and competitors. The (former) allies and friends have no desire to be demoted to vassals. They will thus have to become competitors or enemies for now.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
NO TO LOW TAXES (for the rich) YES TO FAIR TAXES (for everyone)
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Founders generally have an idea and want to make it successful and so make money. The financial world only wants to make money. Pure money making is so disjunct from reality that it has little to stop it from turning ugly.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Trump backs away from a pledge. Again. With someone like that in control of the US Executive, and no sane people to reign him in, the world learns: 1. nothing the US says can be relied on. 2. Whenever saner people are in charge of the US, no deal can be trusted beyond the next presidential election.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
This article from @baldurbjarnason.com from 2023 is as relevant and insightful (and funny) today as it was already then. Even if the output of the models has become better. softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme... Human Intelligence is a far more important topic in the AI-debate than most people think.
softwarecrisis.dev
The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models rep…
The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 23/06/2026
Those that (have to) think about the role of AI in organisations could do worse than to read this very good piece by Henry Farrell @himself.bsky.social from last month (i.e. read this piece it is a wonderful take with true depth and still enjoyable): www.programmablemutter.com/p/ai-isnt-ma...
programmablemutter.com
AI Isn't Management. Try Explaining That to Matthew Prince
At last we have created the Corporation That Eliminates Middle Managers from classic management text Don't Eliminate the Middle Managers!
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
How on earth does the US Population accept this?? www.reuters.com/investigatio...
reuters.com
Under the Trump crypto playbook, the family always wins. Investors don’t
Risking little of their own money, the US president and his sons have added at least $2.3 billion to the family fortune from their main crypto ventures, while the investors they've wooed have taken a ...
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Anthropic/OpenAI may be spending more than $1000 for every $100 you pay them Coding with LLMs (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) is often presented as the 'killer app' for Generative AI. But looking at data, it seems the one piece of the puzzle missing is actual cost. A quest into getting a less muddy…
ea.rna.nl
Anthropic/OpenAI may be spending more than $1000 for every $100 you pay them
Coding with LLMs (Claude Code, OpenAI Codex) is often presented as the 'killer app' for Generative AI. But looking at data, it seems the one piece of the puzzle missing is actual cost. A quest into getting a less muddy picture about what is going on, with surprising results.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Re: Iran war: Why does nobody talk about either windfall profit taxes or even better agreeing world-wide to an oil price cap (make it illegal to buy/sell above a certain price where there still is enough profit)? Why is the market holy? It isn't in many other situations. Why is it here?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
including those megachurches that operate as businesses and sell 'Jesus will make you successful' and how the US culture understands freedom as pure individual freedom, ignoring collective 'freedom' (and 'gain').
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
The earliest settlers that went to America from Europe were a mix of adventurers looking for economic gain and (extremist) christian fringe. And taking. that step required a deep individualism in both cases. It seems to me that explains quite a bit of US culture.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
We should give #Trump a prize for pushing the world away from #fossilfuels. Maybe a small golden #windmill?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
What did #MAGA expect? It was always ‘big money’ (especially big fossil) first. ‘America First’ was just how it was sold.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
We seem to definitely have arrived in the age of ‘frequently wrong and never in doubt’, both on the machine and the human ‘intelligence’ side
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
About as good an idea as Zuck’s metaverse
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
One could easily get the impression that the MAGA-internal fight over the war against Iran is between antisemites and islamophobes…
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Which, by the way, doesn't mean I do not find some things these systems do mind boggling, given it comes from something as dumb as token statistics.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
As long as Google Translate translates "at every moment, they calculate a set of statistically likely next tokens" into the Dutch equivalent of "at every moment they build a scent of statistically likely next tokens" (and much more like this) I am not afraid Generative AI will take over the world.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Single-representative district-based democracies are extremely vulnerable to modern modes of manipulation. If you want districts, make them large enough to have multiple representatives so that gerrymandering (for whatever reason, racial, partisan) becomes very hard.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
All that redistricting/gerrymandering in the US only shows that the US has a technically free (still), but not a fair vote.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
Is it just me, or is the Pentagon’s demand to be able to use AI for ‘any lawful use’, while at the same time the US administration fighting against any laws on AI weirdly dissonant? Or telling, maybe?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Barbarians are on the rise everywhere. edition.cnn.com/2026/03/01/a... "[allow] men to beat their wives so long as they don’t break bones or leave visible, lasting wounds"
edition.cnn.com
Taliban gives green light to domestic violence, bans dissent, and makes sodomy punishable by death | CNN
Taliban authorities in Afghanistan have issued a draconian decree that makes sodomy punishable by death and allows men to beat their wives so long as they don’t break bones or leave visible, lasting w...
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
E.g. in the end: get in and destroy the installations and confiscate the materials? And if they succeed in Iran, will they address North Korea afterwards?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Am I alone in suspecting that Trump/Hegseth's power-oriented vision on the military (and in general, anti-woke, testosterone-driven masculinity, etc.) has enabled the hawks in the Pentagon to get approval for making an end to Iran's nuclear program by force?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Why has this video only a million views and not 100 million? Oh wait it's only three days old. I laughed out loud. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...
youtube.com
A Day in the Life of an Ensh*ttificator
YouTube video by Forbrukerrådet - Norwegian Consumer Council
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
One of the best and nicely in-depth essays I have (just) read around the (Gen)AI hype. I've made some like comments on psychology here and there. Baldur's piece is where I would point people in many cases for some solid background. www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/trustin...
baldurbjarnason.com
Trusting your own judgement on ‘AI’ is a huge risk
Writing at the end of the world, from Hveragerði, Iceland
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
The key to real intelligence might be imagination Just copied from an earlier version on LinkedIn, a short article describing the key role of imagination in intelligence and why that may mean that self-driving cars require true intelligence and more than just reacting to sensors.
ea.rna.nl
The key to real intelligence might be imagination
Just copied from an earlier version on LinkedIn, a short article describing the key role of imagination in intelligence and why that may mean that self-driving cars require true intelligence and more than just reacting to sensors.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 17/02/2026
The FCC’s — formally for late night shows not existing — ‘equal time rule’ has been enforced by CBS. Which makes me wonder: why hasn’t this rule been enforced for talk-radio ever? youtu.be/oiTJ7Pz_59A?...
youtu.be
Rep. James Talarico On Confronting Christian Nationalism, And Strange Days In The Texas Legislature
YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
Oh boy.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
I am hereby adding my voice to @garymarcus.bsky.social : "counterfeiting people" should be outlawed world wide, and as soon as possible. garymarcus.substack.com/p/we-urgentl...
garymarcus.substack.com
We URGENTLY need a federal law forbidding AI from impersonating humans
Daniel Dennett was right
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
When #SCOTUS is asked to rule on actions of the #Executive, they work under the 'presumption of the regularity of the president's actions'. But what they have to confront now is that the presumption is just a presumption, and that there can be situations when that presumption is wrong. Will they?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Yep. The reaction to ICE should not be hot. Protesters need to channel their anger into being 'cold as ice'
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Protesters against ICE should be cold as ice, not hot as ICE. Don't fall in the trap being set up. Don't get hot from anger, get cold. ice cold.
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
Because it is well known that Trumps often says what his last contact told him. And since Trump is incapable of apologising, who will do it for the US?
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Gerben Wierda @gerbenwierda.bsky.social · 24/01/2026
So #Trump betrays the allies that fought with the US in Afghanistan after 9/11 (and all the veterans and the bereaved) and the US invoking #NATO article 5, by lying that they did not fight. I wonder: who told him that lie? Hegseth, maybe?
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