iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Well crap. I'm currently at my usage limits for multiple LLM sites (including a paid subscription) and simultaneously running a local LLM on my gaming PC. At some point, I became an AI guy.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

When AI concludes that humans make mistakes and thus the world would have fewer mistakes without humans, you all are going to treat it like some inevitable techno facial endgame This is wrong Aquinas got there 600+ years ago But he still gets a pass on calling for the termination of our species

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Develop a product with no possible pathway to profitability. …* Profit * simultaneously convince people your product is the foundation of civilization and that it is rapidly morphing into an angry god requiring the nationalization (buy out) and regulation of the entire industry by government.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Yep. This is the model I’m trying to get off the ground. Give it away. If you love it but the upgraded features.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Alternatively we are seeing the schelling k-group for less in demand public goods production contract dramatically so that we can finance projects with Patreons. That makes niche public goods that can’t turn a profit but are still might be super useful possible.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Jesus the guy who famously was like “stop fishing, leave your nets behind, we’ve got bigger fish to fry…human fish…metaphorically…but also stop actual fishing.”

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I really wish I was in the classroom this semester. Being an Associate Dean sucks because I get less of work that brings me meaning…I get other meaningful work but it is different.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This is a step beyond the clicker craze from 15 years back. Uses open ended data, summarizes themes in qualitative data, facilitates discussion (students may be called upon to describe relevant experience or problems), makes reflective class writing meaningful.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This could be really easy: Set up a google form linked to a google sheet to get data Write my PowerPoints with sections for new input (i.e.[relevant experience from student]) on the slides Claude reviews slides and google sheet and adds in relevant info (or deletes callouts) I teach new slides

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Thinking out loud. This seems like a way to work with in class writing (and reading quizzes) that would feel meaningful. It may also be helpful to generate muddiest point discussion questions. Possibly a way to identify who has relevant experience to bring in to the conversation.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Attended a really good session on the state of ai adoption at universities that polled the audience for stories and anecdotes in different areas and generated state of the industry take aways in real time. Got me thinking about generating slides for class in real time. Need to sit with that…

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

People would benefit from studying game theory. An equilibrium outcome doesn’t have to be good it only has to be better than how people assess the alternatives they control. Promising a better outcome if everyone shifts is a heavy lift.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Not sure where you got stupid…but yeah, people hate change and when they are feeling anxious they double down.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

This has been my read of this “movement”. It isn’t an anti-AI backlash. it is the same anger that blocks wind and solar farms and more mundane development. When people are feeling vulnerable they hate change…which frequently keeps them in the same precarious place. Less a virtue than a tragedy.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I will also flag that being a political scientist at a business conference has only been a net positive this year. Last year (and my entire career) it prompted snide derision. Not any more. Turns out your entire business model hinges on political forces and you can’t pretend it doesn’t any more.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I spent 5 hours today networking. I’m not getting good but I am getting better. This has been a rollercoaster of existential crisis as I’ve tried to work out if I’m capable of doing this. Turns out I’m pretty experienced at nodding along and drinking wine.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I write lovecraftian fiction, but this project is a nonfiction book on negotiations for my day job.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

First draft is done. 92k words (76k written in the past 12 months). I have some editing to do over the next two weeks, but every chunk has now been written.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

What is the term for citations that pile up in your works cited as you write but end up not being needed in the final version of the paper? We have the term "missing citation" for the opposite problem. Maybe "legacy citation"?

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Reposted by Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks)

Dan Hon @danhon.com · 09/08/2026

actually HTML is pronounced "hotmail"

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Thanks. I'm crashing after a crazy, intense experience and trying to make sense of things, including the realization that some of his dark personality probably stemmed from an unstable mix of love and fear.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

A friend observed that "you spend your entire life trying to figure out your relationship with your parents, and that doesn't stop when they die." These last couple of weeks were a reminder that this process is very much ongoing. Glad he was there for me. I needed him.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I've always admired how cool he could be in a crisis. He was always on offense, while I only ever play defense. He could walk into any situation convinced he was right and knew best. He could destroy you with a look. It is withering, it is cruel, and it is laser sharp.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I am not a spiritual person...but...I don't know how else to describe these past 3 weeks other than possession by the spirit of my father. I changed my walk, my facial expressions, my communication style. I became that man because my son needed a man like my dad, and all he had was me.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I have a very complicated relationship with my dad, who passed away in 2019. I hate so much about him: his anger, his stone-cold eyes, his hair-trigger temper. But recently my son was in the hospital under the care of a surgeon who didn't believe in pain management...and I needed my dad.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

You know you are an academic when your child spends 3 weeks in the hospital with a collapsed lung, and you somehow knock out 100 hours of work on your book project because people don't expect you to work and therefore cancel all your meetings. He is fine. Worst 3 weeks of my life. It was bad!

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Steve Huntsman @stevehuntsman.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Prospect that LLMs will be a failed tech for a long time is underestimated. Nobody is doing the fundamental work necessary to build reliable systems out of unreliable parts. Math and coding scale weirdly and not all well. After a trough of disillusionment we *may* get the Enterprise computer

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Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Trump restarted bombing, and what did he get for it? -Hormuz closed, more economic damage -Lost Oman, which was working with the US before -A vote of no confidence from Saudis -Worsened munitions shortage -More US casualties -No concessions from Iran -Now poised to surrender My latest, in @ms.now

ms.now

Opinion | Iran’s Hormuz deal with Oman has Trump poised for the big surrender

Nicholas Grossman: Trump started bombing Iran again to keep it from having control over the Strait of Hormuz. That gambit failed — again.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

It is probably not great when the barista at the hospital Starbucks greets you with “the usual?” And it only took 15 straight days standing watch over a kid with a collapsed lung.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Today I crossed the projected word count for my book project. I've got maybe 1500 more words to write, which is a surprisingly accurate projection on a 92k word manuscript.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I was worried PS would edit out my nonrestrictive comma in the sentence "However, the Bureau’s decision to pilot new questions followed a denunciation of the binary sex/gender classification by the singer of popular music, Taylor Swift." Apparently, Tay Tay is the only singer of popular music.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

I realize anyone who has been following me on this site (or god forbid, the other place) will find it laughable that I am optimistic...but the internet is not real life. I'm a fucking unshakable rock of stability, hope, and even joy when it actually counts.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Being an academic means having a half-baked idea in your early 20s (before your brain has fully formed and you don't know anything about the world) and spending the next 40 years trying to figure out the ways you might have been right but were mostly wrong.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

When I die, I want people to say three things about me. 1) he was kind when he didn't have to be, 2) he was relentlessly (even pathologically) optimistic, 3) he could write one banger of a footnote. The slideshow should be just screenshots of footnotes and my kids.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

At this point one of 2 things are happening. 1) OpenAI is prompting for this behavior 2) OpenAI is lying about model behavior. Regardless this whole story is a headline generating op by OpenAI that makes it sound like they invented consciousness.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Publishing is hard. It is crazy hard. Normally, projects are measured in years. Sometimes projects span a decade (we politely call these research agendas). But in very rare instances, if you are lucky (or alternatively cursed), a project might span a career.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

I still don't believe this project will see the light of day. I poured 40 weekends and W Th evenings for a year into it, but it has been a hard road. I've sent the book proposal to probably 30 publishers and tried to package the core idea as an article 4 different ways, with maybe 15 rejections.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Also, I should flag that I came up with the thesis for this book project in my first semester on the tenure track. If all goes well, it will see publication 20 years later, when I am an Associate Dean and winding down the research phase of my career.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Also, I really need DJT to figure out what the hell he is doing with Iran so I can finish a 1500-word 2026 Iran war mini case/illustration.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Sometimes writing goes faster when you obsessively document every single thing you do. 11 months ago, I started a book project with 30k of crap notes. I've worked like mad this year and now have 90k of polished social science prose for an August 31st deadline. Will it matter? 🤷‍♂️ Did I do it? 👍

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I’ve recently downloaded grammarly (setting aside all sorts of reservations out of a desperate need to stop humiliating myself in public). So many more mistakes than I ever realized. Such a gut punch…but it spell checks in Excel so I can’t go back.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Reminded of a Fox News screed from 20 years ago on poor people with refrigerators. It was wildly out of touch with 2005…but a good chunk of their audience grew up before the great society and in the shadow of rural electrification so in an objective sense near universal refrigeration is a big deal!

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Aaron Bady @zunguzungu.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Not to be the wokest and most conspiratorial minded person the world has ever seen, but there is something about how the results of the CDC's "corporations can do whatever the fuck they want" policies have gotten turned into "someone from Mexico is shitting in your food"

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

“Familiar claims”. Go to hell Washington Post. Glad I canceled my subscription.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Found a really cool Easter egg (recipe) during a rewatch of Arrested Development. Excited to try this out tonight!

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I should be better…but I’m not. I can’t be. I’m a fucking idiot and I should never have chosen a career that requires me to use words. That was my ego and I should have beaten it down when I was 18 and saved myself constant humiliation.

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Brian Urlacher (aka Grant Forks) @grantforks.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I should have a thicker skin…but it’s never thick enough. To just exist in the world I have to assume that every person I interact with thinks I’m a fucking idiot because I spelled something wrong that they mastered in second grade. And the part that hurts is that they are not wrong. I’m broken.

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