Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 26/09/2026Overnight I trained a Jev-like model to output probability distributions over a set of 40 emoji, which runs in RAM at ~150ms per query. This was super easy and cost ~$10. It works pretty well on a weak training set, and with a day or two of work I could make this sing. 101319
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 24/09/2026we put a bit of world-building magic on our homepage today hiddendoor.co 111
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 01/06/2026Good morning, Brooklyn, it’s sidewalk chalk season and the kids are awesome. 2351
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 15/05/2026Hey Slack, what "AI abilities"? What are these features for? Why do I want them? How much are you going to try to charge me for these unnamed capabilities that I probably won't use? I am a customer and I have questions. 2161
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 02/05/2026Hey NYC! Please tell me we have already given this Bryant Park Lawnmower Roomba a cute & clever name. Patience & Lawnitude? Croton Clipper? Grassbuster? Help me out, New York. We need some (gender neutral) Dad Joke energy. 781
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 17/04/2026Startup advice: every company chat needs a #shouting channel 2441
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 14/04/2026I love New Yorkers, entirely unperturbed by art that’s just some giant butts. 0100
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 31/03/2026S2Vec is a vector embedding for geospacial information! Very cool work, this makes a ton of sense conceptually but I imagine the data gathering/cleaning/validating effort puts it out of reach for most non-Google entities. research.google/blog/mapping... 170
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 15/03/2026I fell in love with this Jenny Holzer piece at the @brooklynmuseum.org yesterday, in the exhibit celebrating 200 years of this wonderful museum. 172
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 02/03/2026Indeed! And also in a moment of cosmic justice I am debugging an error on @hiddendoor.co and randomly rolled this character who seems kind of awesome and I would play her? 140
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 01/03/2026The rest of the current exhibits are also a delight! I particularly loved Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya's Raise Your Voice. 060
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 01/03/2026They did a really lovely job sharing quotes from the artist, and had a documentary showing his process. This quote, in particular, helped contextualize some of his choices. In the model, both the original World Trade Center and the new 1WTC are present. 140
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 01/03/2026Today's joy was an adventure to the Museum of the City of New York to see He Built This City: Joe Macken's Model If you also have a special interest in NYC, infrastructure, models, maps, etc, I would highly recommend it! 1211
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 14/02/2026Here's a really not very good photo of one of my favorite effects, the actual flying monkeys that flew around the theater. I think they're balloon drones? The photo is also not good because the seats vibrate, the air moves, it's really cool. 100
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 14/02/2026I was also delighted and surprised to run into Gort there. Why is Gort at The Sphere? I don't know! 210
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 14/02/2026I went to The Sphere this morning to see The Wizard of Oz! It was a beautiful tribute to the original, a spectacular show of immersive theater, and evoked some questions of how to extend and care for a beloved film as it becomes a BIG experience; there were a few rough bits, and lots of wonder. 280
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 28/01/2026Spotify prompted me to try their new “prompt a playlist” tool and they BLOCK THE WORD “feminist”. WTF Spotify! 2214
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 08/01/2026I put this on LinkedIn because that's where I think folks need to hear it, but TLDR: if you're on X, GTFO. Sexually abusive content is not inevitable, it is a _choice_. If you stay on the platform, you are endorsing that choice. Link: www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... 517544
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 07/12/2025It turns out it is, indeed, THAT "Ex Lax". And boy were they proud of it, as you can see in the signs from this 1956 photo in the NYPL collection by Max Henry Hubacher: digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/78a691... And here's a 1949 photo with the arch: digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/bb5360... 121
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 07/12/2025Last week I was walking to the subway and happened to notice this sign above a door on Atlantic Ave, which says EX LAX INC 1151
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 09/10/2025“I fucking love tropes.” - @scalzi.com Strong start to NYCC with this incredible panel on SciFi tropes with @cjfarley.bsky.social, Emery Robin, Yume Kitasei, @scalzi.com and moderated by @juliesnyder.bsky.social 040
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 09/10/2025Sometimes being a founder means staying up too late doing arts and crafts. We'll be at #NYCC tomorrow with an exciting launch, come find us (or at least find our QR code to skip the waitlist)! 2122
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 26/09/2025Okay bluesky please help me solve the mystery of why there is a blank VHS tape in this Tokyo subway station bathroom! (Also if this message was meant for me, please try again, I accept USB keys, parchment scrawls, graffiti, Signal, I prefer to be in a comedy or spy movie no horror plz) 2164
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 13/08/2025I'm so excited that Hidden Door is out in the world today! We're thrilled to launch our roleplay meets fanfic platform, where we are making the tech, game, and biz in sync to let us all share more of the worlds we love, while rewarding the brilliant writers we admire. Check it out at hiddendoor.co 2317
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 19/07/2025Happy Saturday New York, I love you, I have some questions 0100
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 18/07/2025I try not to amplify the awfulness, but this is just a straight up John Wick villain move 051
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 17/07/2025Okay, can anyone explain these fliers that someone mailed to my Brooklyn office from Dallas, TX? (Is it an ARG?) 233
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 15/07/2025Trying so hard to not write back and tell them how to fix their error 3190
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 04/07/2025... "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus November 2, 1883 www.nps.gov/stli/learn/h... 1398
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 14/06/2025Just putting this screenshot here so I can point to it every time someone says “AI product design is not political” 1254
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 09/06/2025London's Phantom Peak is an incredibly underrated immersive show! It's like immersive theater meets LARPing meets a video game meets and escape room. Also, they have ice cream. 170
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 05/05/2025Today’s vibe brought to you by a Brooklyn hardware store window. 1190
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 22/04/2025MoMA has an excellent 500 error page. More art errors, please. 1183
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 08/04/2025Congrats to the Mayor of Bracket City on joining The Atlantic! ...seems right on point as a somewhat too intellectual competitor to the NYTimes Games. 030
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 04/04/2025For something completely different, the @hiddendoor.co team is in NYC this week, and today we took a trip to the Mossman Lock Collection and the Horological Society at General Society of Mechanics & Tradesmen of The City of New York in midtown. Highly recommended if you like obscure museums! 390
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 28/03/2025I just discovered that another Hilary Mason wrote this book and I NEED to get a copy www.biblio.com/book/morisco... 4160
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 27/03/2025I came across this old photo I look at the National Museum of Scotland and it feels appropriate 061
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 25/03/2025I'll leave you with two more etchings that capture a feeling of a city more than anything else, Night Windows (1910): www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/... Sixth Avenue and Thirtieth Street (1908): www.clevelandart.org/art/1964.115 030
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 25/03/2025Side quest: I've spent the last 24 hours being mildly obsessed with the work of John Sloan, a turn of the century painter who captured the vibes of NYC life in the early 1900s. 4273
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 14/03/2025Happy Pi Day, American nerds! This is a Brown Butter Apple Streusel from Four & Twenty Blackbirds (Brooklyn) 6272
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 06/03/2025For all my fellow transit nerds, I saw this still shrink wrapped test train on the A line today! 1190
Hilary Mason @hilarymason.com · 05/03/2025Delighted to see @amalelmohtar.com and @hels.bsky.social at Books Are Magic tonight to celebrate The River Has Roots 0211