iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Oh that's an *excellent* read, very neatly tying the tech hype cycles into the capitalists' eternal search for new frontiers to exploit in the face of falling returns. I've been thinking about this↓ a lot lately, especially in light of the hyperscalers starting to issue debt in global bond markets.

screenshot of the piece (url: https://www.techpolicy.press/tech-hype-is-cannibalizing-the-future/ )

Planetary opportunity costs
There is a heavy collective cost to hype’s devouring of future possibilities. If it were only that the objects of hype tended to be delayed and disappointing, then the solutions would be relatively simple. We could try to be more cautiously optimistic about AI, trusting what Louise Amoore describes as the “promise to render all agonistic political difficulty as tractable and resolvable". We could ridicule specific failed innovations and entrepreneurs while believing that the princess is to be found in another castle, and that a different technical approach or a more likable genius will still deliver on the original promise.

But when we recognize hype as an ordinary, structural mechanism for extracting short-term profit at the cost of long-term stagnation, and for funneling societal resources toward recycled futures and away from alternative possibilities, the true cost of hype becomes apparent: it is a siphoning away of opportunity costs at the planetary level. When the Metaverse’s combined costs exceed

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

what are senryu but pre-internet tweets? it's like if "tweets" were called "drils" (and had an even shorter character limit)

screenshot from the english wikipedia article for senyru:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senry%C5%AB

Form and content
Senryū is named after Edo period haikai poet Karai Senryū (柄井川柳; 1718–1790).[2] A typical example from the collection:

泥棒を
捕えてみれば
我が子なり

dorobō o
toraete mireba
wagako nari

When I catch,
The robber,
my own son

This senryū, which can also be translated "Catching him / I see the robber / is my son," is not so much a personal experience of the author as an example of a type of situation (provided by a short comment called a maeku or fore-verse, which usually prefaces a number of examples) and/or a brief or witty rendition of an incident from history or the arts (plays, songs, tales, poetry, etc.).[5]

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Yeah, report in question is more "higher % of US says the economy is bad now vs % in 2008", not "majority thinks it's worse than 2008." (questions also are mostly forward-looking rather than "now" except "were you better off a year ago?," and threat of looming disaster is pretty obvious atm)

Index Questions
The Index of Consumer Sentiment (ICS) is derived from the following five questions:
x1 = PAGO_R = "We are interested in how people are getting along financially these days. Would
you say that you (and your family living there) are better off or worse off financially
than you were a year ago?"
x2 = PEXP_R = "Now looking ahead--do you think that a year from now you (and your family living
there) will be better off financially, or worse off, or just about the same as now?"
x3 = BUS12_R = "Now turning to business conditions in the country as a whole--do you think that
during the next twelve months we'll have good times financially, or bad times, or
what?"
x4 = BUS5_R = "Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely--that in the country as a whole
we'll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will
have periods of widespread unemployment or depression, or what?"
x5
= DUR_R = "About the big things people buy for their homes--such as furniture, a refrigerator,
stove, television, and things like that. Generally speaking, do you think now is a
good or bad time for people to buy major household items?"

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

i love learning about yet another precarious bottleneck that could toss everything into chaos with some minimal organization by bad actors, that also happens to be made actively worse by aggressive AI expansion

Already, domestic manufacturers can produce about only 20 percent of the transformers purchased in the United States; a half-dozen other countries, including Mexico, South Korea and China, supply the rest. The shortage has become bad enough that hyperscalers have begun paying to cut in line, ensuring that their transformers are built next. Even so, data centers, factories and solar farms have all faced delays coming online for want of transformers.

It’s a bottleneck and a choke point for the whole economy, with no relief in sight. Holt, from Siemens Energy, told me that wait times for large power transformers were still increasing. His hope was to one day return to prepandemic delivery times — of two to three years. Somehow, we’ve made the industrial equivalent of a Fabergé egg the linchpin of our civilization. What would happen if someone started breaking them?

It is difficult to overstate how completely the loss of the grid would disrupt life as we know it. In that first hushed moment after the lights went out, we wouldn’t even know that this outage was different from any other. Maybe we would lose power for a few hours. Maybe the ice cream would melt. The mood, at first, might be almost jubilant, as it was after the 2003 blackout in the Eastern Interconnection. At some point, though, the authorities would have to tell the public: The power won’t be restored for a very long time.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Okay this from the wikipedia article on it extremely checks out, because the only thing I could sort of think to compare it to would be like if there was a Metal Gear Solid game on the N64 but it didn't actually play like Metal Gear Solid

text from the hybrid heaven wikipedia article

Development
Hybrid Heaven took roughly three years to develop, with the battle system being the most time-consuming element.[4] Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka designed Hybrid Heaven as an answer to Konami Computer Entertainment Japan's Metal Gear Solid, an attempt to better their fellow Konami team's top tier title in development.[5] Elements of the game were inspired by the film Blade Runner.[4][5]

The team wanted the battle system to capture real fighting's combination of thought and action.[4]

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

not sure what happens when hyperscalers saturate the global bond markets on a bet & lose; "too big to fail" in 2008 wasn't literal, but what if it is here? can Google crowd out global investment on bad bet, yet still be able to pay it off even if AI investments flop? horrifying implications if so!

screenshot of text from the article in the quoted post, with the 3rd paragraph (from the first quotation mark) highlighted

It also brings new risks. Chipmakers, data centre operators and their power providers are all borrowing from public and private credit markets as well as financing each other, making it hard for the pension funds and insurers who buy their debt to assess their true level of exposure to the sector.

The interconnections between borrowers, in a new sector whose long-term trajectory is still unclear, have sparked concerns that if one falters, others could be dragged down with it.

“Inevitably, this is a one-way bet,” says Scott Schulte, global co-head of investment-grade debt syndicate at Barclays. “As long as everything goes right, it’s good. But the minute there’s a problem anywhere . . . the ecosystem is so intertwined.”

more text from the article, with "buying up to 100 years of unsecured debt" highlighted

Alphabet sold £5.5bn worth of sterling bonds in February, part of a $31.5bn package that included a rare 100-year £1bn bond that some say rekindled interest in long-maturity sterling debt. Amazon also raised £4.25bn earlier this month, its first-ever sterling issue.

The unknowns of gobbling up new debt at such a long maturity are huge, some investors warn. “If you just take it at its face value, investors are buying up to 100 years of unsecured debt in a transformational technology,” says Peters of PGIM. “Not to overly simplify it, but 100 years is a long time. I don’t think it’s good risk reward . . . it’s unknowable.”

“The credit story in hyperscalers rests on a single consensus assumption, that operating cash flow triples from $600bn to $2tn,” Apollo’s chief economist, Torsten Sløk, wrote this month.

“If this doesn’t happen, then the risk is that the AI trade weakens, with credit spreads widening, capex plans getting cut and ultimately US GDP growth slowing,” Sløk warned.

text from the article, with the 2nd sentence highlighted

“New bonds . . . are increasingly a claim on the same AI investment cycle that has been driving equity return,” says Lucas Baynes, a senior investment strategist at Vanguard. In other words, the places investors can hide from the financial consequences of AI are getting fewer and further between.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

wow i had no idea doctor doom was romani in that case uncritical support to DOOM in his quest to destroy the fantastic four or whatever it is he gets up to these days

some text from wikipedia's article on dr doom:

Before leaving for America, young Victor uses his mother's inherited "magic potions and strange scientific secrets" to steal from corrupt aristocrats and give the proceeds to his own people as a Robin Hood figure.[138] Johannes Valentin Korff argues this makes Doom unusual for the period, being a "Gypsy" figure written as the protagonist of his own origin story rather than a supporting character or a hero's obstacle.[139] Korff places the choice inside a broader pattern at Marvel in the mid-1960s of building new superhumans out of persecuted backgrounds, pointing to Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver's same-year origin, in which they flees a village pogrom, and the 1966 debut of Black Panther.[140]

Korff also argues that the story avoids stereotyping vengeance as a trait unique to Victor's Romani heritage. Instead, violence is distributed across the entire cast; Latverians, Romani, Victor, and the baron are all trapped in an escalating cycle of revenge.[141] He connects this to how the story handles Doom's later authority, drawing on literary historian Klaus-Michael Bogdal's concept of the "Gypsy Empire," a stock setting in older fiction where a "Gypsy" ruler's menace comes from operating at society's margins. Korff argues Doom inverts that convention by ruling from the center of a modern state rather than its edges, so that his threat comes from an excess of science and civilization rather than a lack of it.[142]

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Over and over again these AI guys have proven themselves to have utterly childish worldviews, brains stunted by mindbending amounts of privilege. You'd almost feel sorry for them if they weren't actively destroying the lives of, in a literal sense, everyone. theasterisk.substack.com/p/the-effect...

text from the linked article, with the text "children are the ones running the show" highlighted

Also important:

>(quote block) "They would call us hysterical, or dramatic, and then they would go right back to defending their friends. They get to live in a world where their actions have absolutely no gravity, while we are crushed under the sheer weight of it. They get to sleep peacefully tonight. We get to stay awake, replaying what happened, while carrying a debt they don't even know they owe."

I have been called quite a few things including hysterical and dramatic. I’d like to focus on gravity, though. In Trauma Junkie, the gravity of sexual violence is outweighed by the act of making events and communities ‘funner’ (Brodski’s words, not mine, in this house we respect the English language).

Funner is a word that children use.

My thesis is that in too many places in the TESCREAL diaspora, children are the ones running the show. Over and over again, when the safety and security of others are on the line, their responsibilities seem to be too adult of a puzzle for them.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

As a US citizen, reading even just this opening paragraph has me going "Oh, this is exactly what they said with Biden after he dropped out and his successor lost." Yes, he was all well and good and leftist, as long as you ignore all the things that made people hate him.

Time and again, this is what you would hear from ‘progressive’ voters during the local election campaign in the spring. From stalwart Labour members, let alone the countless voters that did abandon the party or simply stay at home. Never mind the Government’s straightforwardly left-wing economic agenda: the higher taxes for public service investment; the half a million children to be lifted out of child poverty; the generational advances in workers’ and renters’ rights. Forget about the long-fought for recognition of Palestine, the improved European relations, or the genuinely epochal decoupling from US foreign policy over Iran. No, this was Labour’s progressive nadir. The vibe was off.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

i wasn't planning to read any of that, but got curious off your post so skipped down to just the end, and uhhh big yikes if true

screenshot of text from the linked website:

"Eliezer Yudkowsky is a pedophile and has been luring children to him over the internet with his writing so he can have sex with them for at least the last fifteen consecutive years.

He has made every ongoing enterprise of which he is a part a party to this endeavor, and anyone who was aware of his tendencies and who spread his work or furthered any cause he was connected to is directly complicit.

I intend this to be taken as a statement of fact. I intend for as many people as possible to read it. I intend for this to cause him and those associated with him actual harm and financial loss.

I know it’s true and everyone should know it’s true."

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

not the point, but it is funny (in the bleakly stupid way that we've all come to expect) that “un-hyphenated Americans” does in fact have a hyphen in it

text screenshot with "un-hyphenated Americans" highlighted:

internal mission statement himself. That document describes the members as “un-hyphenated Americans” who hold a Christianity unblurred by modernist philosophy, and it says they intend to make that inheritance permanently dominant in American political and social life. Its stated objectives are explicit: preferential treatment for members in business, coordinated action on hiring, contracts, and leadership succession, and a standing list of men ready to be appointed and hired once a friendly regime exists. The religious qualifications are

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

(just thinkin aloud The UK gets compared to the con't & the US mostly, but Japan seems like a secret 3rd option that's also useful at times. Much of ↑'s true here too. "Colonial island power w/ a special relation to the US, aligned against the big (ex-)communist rival on the nearby continent"

...same time period. Even in US states continue to legalise e.g. cannabis, ditto Germany, something that feels a long way off here in UK. So there does appear to be something particular to Britain.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

what I wouldn't give It's neat how people have been wanting this for probably 2+ decades now and no high-profile dem has really done it. I guess you could say Walz started making an attempt with the "weird" stuff, but that got shut down quick.

Just go on the attack for once instead of sitting there trying to please your enemy who is in the process of trying to humiliate you.

(screenshot of a sentence from the article in the quoted post, https://www.welcometohellworld.com/i-do-not-believe-you-care-about-this/ )

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Reading this right after reading that liberalcurrents piece about how people should surrender themselves to leadership (as opposed to forming a collaborative democratic movement where you're part of the decision-making) really drove home how facile that argument was.

First, when people become part of a movement, they will often do so in order to give up their agency to the leadership of the group, feeling that being part of something is enough. This means that someone may enter a group with a specific set of values, but as leadership changes those values to suit leadership’s desires, the people find their own desires sublimated by leadership.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

honestly kind of funnier that China was trying several military things with it, also that "autonomous military drone swarm" for Russia

GTG-87001: Disrupting a Yemen-based guided weapons engineering cell using Claude to develop guidance software
GTG-17001: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to draft a fire control specification and acquisition documents for undersea warfare
GTG-27005: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to engineer an autonomous military drone swarm
GTG-17002: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to build targeting software for electronic warfare and air defense suppression
GTG-27006: Disrupting a Russia-based operation using Claude to procure mixed military and civilian goods
GTG-17003: Disrupting a China-based operation using Claude to collect intelligence on directed-energy weapons and their supply chain

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Given exposure to diversity reduces bigotry, what is the natural extension of that? Normally one has to experience something to form an opinion about it. The exception, of course, is that you can form opinions based on what other people have told you. Who benefits from telling people to be racist?

Abstract text from this paper: "The Role of Diversity Exposure in Whites’ Reduction in Race Essentialism Over Time"

Despite multidisciplinary theorizing on the consequences of the changing racial demographics in the United States, few studieshave systematically examined how exposure to racial diversity may impact White individuals’ lay beliefs about race. In a long-itudinal study, we explored whether living in a racially diverse environment with a high multiracial population was related to Whiteindividuals’ endorsement of race essentialism and its downstream consequences. Endorsement of race essentialism decreasedover time, and greater diversity of acquaintances over time was associated with this decrease. Race essentialism reduction alsocorresponded with a decrease in modern racism and social dominance orientation, and an increase in cognitive flexibility, overtime. These findings are consistent with the idea that a racially diverse social context can shape endorsement of race essentialismand lead to social and cognitive benefits for White individuals.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

The new Zelda design is definitely also in conversation with Japan's iconic fantasy art of the 90s as well (of course itself influenced by stuff mentioned in that video there), largely contemporaneous with the original OoT, as seen for example in the Legend of Mana/聖剣伝説 games' various arts.

drawn art of three people shown at a distance, standing on a log in a swampy forest-looking place that's rife with detailed lush greenery
overlaid is the text "聖剣伝説２ Secret of Mana"

six people in colorful fantasy garb standing before a great tree that stretches up and out of side outside the image as a flock of red birds flies by, with intricate detail on basically everything, even in the distance

several people (and a strange cactus creature) in vibrant, arguably over-designed fantasy outfits standing on a large, winding tree branch, heavily mossed, with a landscape extended out into the horizon, where a giant tree grows

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Yeah, I similarly got the impression it's supposed to look "sturdier," like old woven armor, to fit with how it basically *is* your armor (as it upgrades to the red and blue tunics later etc).

a photo nabbed from this wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_armour

it's of an empty, straw-yellow suit of armor displayed against a white background. the armor itself seems to be almost woven out of straw for the most part, with metal inserts, rather than fully metal like you'd expect from chainmail or plate armor

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

that's right, we haven't entered the AGI era... because we never left!

text overlaid a screenshot of ragnarok online detailing an agi (short for agility) monk build
-can level solo, good pvm farmer
-built-in teleport and warp
-self Agi+bless
-agi and small vit investment for survivability
-good against undead/demon with passives + offensive blessing

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

It's valuable in the same way as knowing why clean water comes out of your faucet, more or less. Particularly when you consider instances where the faucet *stops* giving you clean water.

a version of that drake yes/no meme template but it's a girl with sunglasses instead of drake

across the top: Learn to code

first panel, with the girl's "no" gesture: to get a job.

second panel, with the "yes" gesture: so you better understand the world around you.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

This quote from Moulton is so emblematic of the reactionary centrists: -Americans are facing real challenges (true) -Democrats are too focused on bullshit and worried about offending certain people (true) -Thus, we should throw trans people the bus (SO false) Mfkr YOU are one of the "challenges"!

screenshot of text from the article with the noted section highlighted:

Seth Moulton joined that chorus, telling The New York Times, (highlight start) “Democrats spend way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. (highlight end) I have two little girls. I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

it's trite by now, but that's ofc also a big reason the rich & powerful degrade so quickly to the level we see from our high-profile billionaires/CEOs. their problems all get solved, their whims all get carried out, people around them all suck up to them. which is mostly a less poetic way to say:

screenshot of a tweet from back in 2019 by "Thing Bad@Merman_Melville"

Being a billionaire must be insane. You can buy new teeth, new skin. All your chairs cost 20,000 dollars and weigh 2,000 pounds. Your life is just a series of your own preferences. In terms of cognitive impairment it's probably like being kicked in the head by a horse every day

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

This bit about childhood test scores being used as a tag is also a good example of how it works in some existing racially-homogeneous countries. It might seem insane that people care about what high school a 50y/o went to, but hoo boy do they ever.

screenshot from above linked paper:

Suppose test performance is strongly correlated with what school one’s parents could get one into, which is itself downstream of how well placed they are in the credentialing system. This hypothetical system could appear meritocratic. However, it functionally could play the same role race now does. One’s scores are hard to change. They are easily observed by relevant decision makers. And via an inegalitarian education system they are passed down from generation to generation. Race, or at least something playing a similar functional role, would have found its way back into our mode of social organizaton.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Excellent paper & worth the read even if you're already familiar with and agree with its central point. This paragraph (while not specifically about gender) is also a great summation of why systems of power react so violently to trans people trying to exist; people can't be allowed to change tags!

white-text-on-black screenshot of a paragraph in the linked paper:

Critically, in the sorts of models here, inequitable bargaining conventions should be unstable if actors can easily change their tag. If this were possible, then upon the emergence of an unfair outcome, we would expect members of the disadvantaged group to simply switch tags. Why be part of a disadvantaged group if you can join an advantaged one? Upon doing so, they could garner bargaining advantages for themselves. But if all disadvantaged members make the switch, the model reverts back to a single-group model, where fairness tends to be the rule.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

sorry, best we can do is Parasite Steve...

video game screenshot of a monsterous humanoid with the text "Lvl 80 Parasite Steve"

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

~100% chance this'll be useless to you, but it was such a gamechanger for me maybe it'll help someone stumbling on it in the replies: I had bad lower back+hip pain for years, & turned out to be from tight+atrophied abdominal/psoas muscles; occasional deadbugs & this stretch got rid of it in weeks.

a diagram explaining the "dead bug", a low-intensity exercise for abs and other "front" core muscles

step 1:
lay on your back on a firm surface (bed can work if mattress isn't super soft), extend arms and thighs straight forward so they're perpendicular to the ground, with knees bent so shins are parallel to the ground.

step 2:
long, slow inhale while trying to keep your ribcage fixed so your lungs expand down and back/to the sides instead of pushing out your chest. as you do this make sure your lower back is pushed firmly into the surface you're laying on, potentially curling your butt and shoulders up a bit to make sure your back itself is flat.

step 3:
either simply hold the position for a minute or two while breathing slowly & deliberately to ensure your back stays flat, or for a harder version, alternate slowly lowering(extending) your left arm/right leg and right arm/left leg while keeping your lower back firmly on the ground (simple but tricky)

a demonstration photo of a woman doing a stretch. you kneel down on both knees (in a typical toes-on-the-ground sytle instead of your feet being face-down like a lot of yoga poses as I understand it), then lean back to put your hands on your ankles, arch your back, and push out your hips to stretch the muscles around the pelvis and abs etc.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I do think "Jolene" would make a great youkai, along the lines of like a kuchizake-onna or hasshaku-sama

(fake) screenshot of a yokai.com article

女離婬
じょりいん
Translation: One who seduces away from women

Habitat: Rural and urban areas with sufficient human population

Appearance: Like a terrifyingly beautiful woman with fiery auburn hair, flawless ivory skin, and eyes green like emeralds. Its smile is said to make those who look upon it feel as though they're outside on a perfect spring day, while its voice soothes and lulls listeners to complacency like the pitter-patter of soft summer rain.
Behavior: Little is known, as Jolene sightings are exceedingly rare and almost no documentation exists. From what does exist, it is generally assumed that its beauty is such that merely looking upon it steals the heart of any who are attracted to women.
One account involves a woman who is desperately afraid that her lover would be stolen away by Jolene; the lover had been stricken by its beauty and become obsessed, speaking the name "Jolene" even while asleep.
It remains unclear whether Jolene actively tries to steal people away or just enjoys sowing discord between couples. Some theories go that it merely enjoys interacting with humans and its effect on people is entirely unintended. Some go further to speculate that that explains how rare it is, on the assumption it usually avoids contact for fear of causing trouble.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

(from wikipedia,) apparently nazis used it originally as "the true German font," but abandoned it later because it was impractical, after which they called it "Jewish letters" and banned it. (which sure is emblematic of fascist governance) That said I think that looks more like the NYT font?

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

there's probably a whole genre of comics out there with that concept they could adapt too, if they're too afraid to do an original

volume 1 cover of Beast King & Medicinal Herb, featuring a lion man walking up a set of stairs amid green grass, with a distant town in the background

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Yeah I hear that latter point a lot and it's like, c'mon the Japanese and Chinese constitutions are 1) online, 2) available in English, and 3) affirm the equality of citizens regardless of ethnicity.

Article 14. All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.

Article 4 All ethnic groups of the People’s Republic of China are equal.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Wow the other one's a MUCH better title. I read it under the "Why[...]?" one, which frames the whole piece around the question raised near the end of it (in img), so all I could think was "well the answer's pretty obvious, why not say it?" Which isn't an issue under the "menace to society" title.

If there is a question to ask, then, it is this: Why does Musk get a pass? Why do politicians, journalists and commentators treat his far-right racist radicalism as a sideshow rather than the core of his political, ideological and industrial project, seen in everything from his deep support for Donald Trump in the United States and Restore Britain in Britain to his decision to construct a massive pollution-generating data center in predominantly Black Memphis, Tenn.

Musk spends a large part of his free time fomenting violence and spreading the same hateful ideology that motivated some of the deadliest shootings and attacks ever to happen on American soil. It is that fact, and not the cars he builds or the rockets he launches, that ought to define his place in public life.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

According to Circana themselves, apparently to GTA6, Nintendo, and subscription stuff. In general from an outside-the-US perspective, I'd assume a fair chunk is going to Japanese and Chinese games as those (much-less-suicidal) companies continue ramping up efforts to expand internationally.

Circana projects U.S. video game industry spending to rise +3% to $62.8 billion in 2026, surpassing the current all‑time high of $61.7 billion set in 2021. This growth is expected to be fueled by the second year of Nintendo Switch 2, unprecedented anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI, and continued strength in subscription‑based content.

https://www.circana.com/post/circana-forecasts-a-transformative-year-for-video-games-in-2026

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

It's a good question, but I'm not sure if we'll have game-industry specific numbers until the next CESA report. I figure it probably mirrors the general market trend with most big companies at least dabbling, most SMEs not. Anecdotally I hear places have started to cut back on it w/ the price hikes

Chart from the below link showing AI adoption rates at various enterprise sizes; 1000+ employees at 72%, 300-999 at 45%, 50-299 at 30%, and under-50 at 15%.

https://www.generativeai.tokyo/media/ai-adoption-survey-2026-sme/#i-1

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Worth pointing out that specific report at least is "corporate creatives" (>90% of respondents are marketers at companies of unspecified industries), not games specifically (Fwiw from my PoV here, AI [esp image gen] is viewed poorly among JP fan communities too, just not as vehemently as EN spaces)

text from the linked site. English summary: 92.3% of respondents are marketers, 7.8% are creators; overall the survey is aimed at corporate marketers & "creatives"

調査名：AI×クリエイティブに関する調査

調査対象：企業のマーケティング・クリエイティブ担当者（宣伝・広告・ブランド・事業企画）

役職構成：経営者・役員17.5% ／部長以上27.3% ／マネージャー23.5% ／一般職31.8%

企業規模：100名未満35% ／ 100〜499名20% ／ 500〜999名13.3% ／ 1,000名以上31.8%

職種：マーケター92.3% ／クリエイター7.8%

有効回答数：N＝400名

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

Tangentially, this reminds me of Chapanglish(?? not sure if there's a name for it), where you take grammar words/some adjectives from English and use hanzi/kanji for most of the nouns and verbs to write mostly-mutually-intelligible sentences between Japanese & Chinese (& often Korean) speakers.

screenshot of the following text:

我学過一点点中文
And 我発見 many 名詞 in
中国語 and 日本語 are 同一,
but 文法 and 副詞 are 完全 different.

So my 提案 is 借用some
副詞 from 英語, then
中国人 and 日本人 can 相互
交流 with 中学生 level 英語
and 漢字.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

Solid post. This has been my take as well; data center backlash is far from the perfect shape for an anti-AI movement, but it's also probably the best available atm. And crucially, while it's at best a stopgap measure… that may still drag things out long enough to pop the bubble & open more doors.

screenshot of text from the essay in the quoted post, with a few sentences cut out by me, indicated by ellipses, for it work more cleanly as an excerpt.

Silicon Valley runs on futurity. The metaverse felt like the future for a couple years. So long as the metaverse had the aura of futurity, investor dollars flowed. Then the whole thing faltered and fell apart. The same thing happened to Web3 and a lot of other speculative technological futures. The AI industry knows this. [...]

Slow the pace down, and you lose the aura of futurity. And then the whole house of cards collapses.

Local opposition to data centers creates a ton of friction for the AI industry. They were not expecting this, and they don’t seem to know how to handle it. It’s a good leverage point for fighting the broader AI industry.

People really hate the AI future right now. And people have no place to put that hatred. [...]

And they see that this handful of shitty dudes has all the money and all the power and AI is getting stuffed into every product and some of it is kind of cool, though a lot of it is annoying, but it isn’t as though anyone can do anything about it.

[...]

Data Centers aren’t the perfect vehicle for all those sentiments. But they are a perfectly functional vehicle. David Sacks (or whoever replaces him as AI Czar) isn’t going to listen to you, because David Sacks (and that whole odious crowd) doesn’t care about democracy to begin with. And your member of Congress probably isn’t going to listen to you, because they’re worried about facing an avalanche of AI political spending in 2026. Also, even if they did, lol Congress doesn’t pass laws anymore, and any worthwhile law they did somehow pass would be vetoed by Trump or overturned by the Court.

But your state and local reps really might listen to you. [highlight start]AI isn’t primarily a zoning issue, but treating it as a zoning issue is one of the few ways to voice productive, collective dissent.[highlight end]

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Meanwhile that recent paper that dug into the nitty gritty of grocery inflation showed that yes actually the *spread from the average* was much much higher than it's been historically. People even *within each decile* are experiencing price inflation in very, very different ways.

chart of 10th percentile hourly wages in terms of purchasing power of groceries (food-at-home) from 2020-Q1 through 2023-Q3.

it shows a red line as the mean, a yellow dashed lined above and below as the 25th/75th percentiles, a blue dotted line above and below to show the 10th/90th percentiles, a purple dashed line showing the 50th percentile, and a solid black line showing CPI, i.e. "inflation" in general.

until late 2020, all the lines are grouped very tightly around the mean, and are above the baseline. starting in late 2020 however, the blue and yellow lines start departing from the mean significantly.

the red line stays above the baseline for almost the entire graph, but the bottom yellow and blue lines fall below the baseline for most of the graph (down below 80% of baseline for blue/90% for yellow), and the top blue/yellow lines reach above 130%/110% by 2023.

the same basic chart as the previous image but 50th percentile wage. it looks very similar except the red line for the mean falls below the baseline at the end of 2021 and never goes back above it, meaning people in the middle of the income distribution were even more likely to lose purchasing power than the lowest 10% of wage-earners

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

On top of the HUGE precarity aspect (this autocorrect thinks precarity isn't a word btw; I wonder why?): Everything I've read about how good the economy is doing has utterly refused to engage with the idea of what the standard deviation might be. Mode, median, & average all fail to tell that story.

example chart from wikipedia showing the difference between an average of 100 with a standard deviation of 10 (tall, narrow band that's almost entirely between 80 and 120) and a standard deviation of 20 (short, wide band that goes from <0 to 230+)

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

"Clearly this must mean there is something to differentiate it meaningfully, like it being a worker co-op or something? Let's just check out the wikip---oh wow. i'm shocked. it's private equity again."

screenshot of the wikipedia article for 7 brew:

n September 2025, the private investment firm Franchise Equity Firms acquired 7 Crew, 7 Brew's second largest franchisee, which is expected to increase its size by over 200 locations. Taco Bell, Jersey Mike's, and Walmart also started business relations with the company in 2025.[3][5] On September 24, 2025, 7 Brew announced that it would be partnering with American channel Dude Perfect, with plans for appearances in their content as well as a Dude Perfect-themed beverage underway.[6] It opened its 500th location in Toms River, New Jersey, in October 2025. [3]

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Overreaction is always the correct response to AI b/c companies need to be scared off it, but poking through Cygames' tech conference slides on AI, the example use cases are stuff like "improving the search feature of our internal wiki" and "tagging player feedback so it's easier to look through"

screenshot from a CEDEC 2025 presentation slide showing two example searches, one for "summer vacation days," one for "requesting AA batteries," and how the AI-enabled search function will turn up the internal knowledge-base articles even if they don't have the exact phrasings used in the searches
(it's in Japanese, but examples are natsuyasumi turning up the article for kakikyuuka, both ways of saying summer vacation, and tansandenchi turning up the article for kandenchi, the former being AA batteries specifically and the latter being batteries in general)

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

You never gotta hand it to the Catholic Church, but as far as documents from the leader of an organization over 1 billion strong go, this one seems impressively good. www.vatican.va/content/leo-...

104. From this follows a simple but compelling consequence: we cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool “to be used well,” since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person. For this reason, ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it. [126]

111. I wish to address a special appeal to those who develop artificial intelligence. In one sense, technological innovation can represent human participation in the divine act of creation. Developers, therefore, bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity. Just as the creator of an artistic or literary work must consider the values it conveys, so developers are called to embed values in their projects with due seriousness: with transparency, responsibility toward affected communities and careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.

9. In light of these two images, the Holy Spirit challenges us today regarding our relationship with technology and the ongoing digital revolution. Scientific discoveries are talents entrusted to humanity so that they may bear fruit (cf. Mt 25:14-30). Technology has the power to heal, connect, educate and protect our common home; but it can also divide, exclude and generate new forms of injustice. In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil. In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it. Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.

89. Living out justice in the Church means purifying ecclesial relationships and structures from distortions that give rise to inequality, lack of transparency and abuse of power. In this regard, listening to the victims of spiritual, economic, institutional, sexual and power-based abuse, as well as abuses of conscience, is an integral part of a journey toward justice, which includes acknowledging the harm done, just reparation and taking steps to prevent it from happening again. Every power is at the service of communion and mission. All authority is at the service of the People of God. This ministry of service is expressed not only through our faith celebrated and lived in the Sacraments, and in the adoption of a synodal style, but also in the concrete sharing of goods. Following the example of the early Church, ecclesial resources need to be shared so that no one among us may be in need (cf. Acts 4:34), and so that their administration may support the mission of proclaiming the Gospel to the poorest. Regular assessments of the exercise of ministerial responsibilities should be encouraged, not as judgments on individuals, but as tools for learning and correction oriented toward mission. [116] Only to the extent that we are open to the action of the Holy Spirit will these principles of Social Doctrine become incarnate in ecclesial life. In this way, the Church will be able to bear credible witness to society that seeking the common good together, with shared responsibility and fraternity, is not a utopia, but a real possibility. [117]

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

The Battle Hymn's good, but I love the First Arkansas vers. (regiment of people who'd escaped slavery). Good to remember it wasn't just the North freeing people, people were fighting for their own freedom too. "They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin" www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwSZ...

FIRST ARKANSAS MARCHING SONG
by Captain Lindley Miller

Oh, we're the bully soliders of the "First of Arkansas,"
We are fighting for the Union, we are fighting for the law,
We can hit a Rebel further than a white man every saw,
As we go marching on.

CHORUS: Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
Glory, glory, hallelujah,
As we go marching on.

See, there above the center, where the flag is waving bright,
We are going out of slavery; we are bound for freedom's light;
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight,
As we go marching on.

CHORUS

We have done with hoeing cotton, we have done with hoeing corn,
We are colored Yankee soliders, now, as sure as you are born;
When the masters hear us yelling, they'll think it's Gabriel's horn,
As we go marching on.

CHORUS

They will have to pay us wages, the wages of their sin,
They will have to bow their foreheads to their colored kith and kin,
They will have to give us house-room, or the roof shall tumble in!
As we go marching on.

CHORUS

They said, "Now colored brethren, you shall be forever free,
From the first of January, eighteen hundred sixty-three."
We heard it in the river going rushing to the sea,
As it went sounding on.

CHORUS

Father Abraham has spoken and the message has been sent,
To the prison doors he opened, and out the prisoners went,
To join the sable army of the "African descent,"
As we go marching on.

CHORUS

Then fall in, colored brethren, you'd better do it soon,
Don't you hear the drum a-beating the Yankee Doodle tune?
We are with you now this morning, we'll be far away at noon,
As we go marching on.

CHORUS

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

a non-zero amount of the time when you see "American" for a menu item in Japan, it means "we took some stereotypical US food like a hamburger or a hot dog & used that as a topping" one exception is American Dog ("corndogs") a non-food one is 'merican Sack (the A is dropped; means "brass knuckles")

photo of a typical pizza with pepperoni, sausage bits, mushrooms, spicy peppers, and also sliced hotdogs. below is the text "Spicy American" in both English and Japanese, and in smaller Japanese text "pizza". there's also a "Hot" backed by an image of a flame to further denote it's supposedly spicy.

an advert's photo of five corn dogs served on a plate, with the unopened packaging they'd come in also pictured tiny in the corner. it says there are 5, totaling 400g, and the product name is "American dog" in both English and Japanese

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

Good read concisely covering the trend of the US using its financial/economic sway in increasingly destructive (and self-destructive) ways--and how it's been a very bipartisan effort. (Which seems likely to be increasingly unpopular w/ their own voters, going by reactions to the ban of Chinese EVs)

Structurally, America’s economic weapons have pushed its adversaries into hardening their own financial systems, accelerated the development of substitutes for American products, and forced its allies into self-sacrificial choices while offering them nothing in return. Chokepoints captures how America’s effort to maintain its global economic dominance over the past decade has backfired, leaving it more isolated and in control of a shrinking share of the global economy—reliant on undependable policy tools to preserve its edge.

And yet the book is seemingly intent on arguing the opposite. Fishman appears determined to find a logic to his colleagues’ actions that could redeem their broader strategic wisdom. “The United States has used its hold over these chokepoints to pioneer a new, hard-hitting style of economic warfare,” he declares at the beginning. By the end he concedes some setbacks but still suggests that sanctions could be expanded to pursue climate goals and regulate the responsible use of artificial intelligence.

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Oh yeah that's what I meant by "in this form;" was thinking of "form" more in terms of the relationship between fandoms and publishers, & the sort of public awareness of it all. The actual fanworks stuff has been around for 100+ years (just was mostly women & thus largely ignored bc sexism).

text from: https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/uip/jfv/article-abstract/76/3/50/390075/Before-Fanfiction-Recovering-the-Literary-History

Alexandra Edwards's Before Fanfiction: Recovering the Literary History of American Media Fandom works to bridge the existing gap between literary studies and fandom studies by challenging what Edwards calls the fandom creation myth to instead center women's participation in early fandom from the 1880s to the mid-1940s. In taking a mixed methodological approach—incorporating historical analysis, archival research, feminist analysis, and case studies—Edwards presents readers with evidence that what contemporary media scholars see as fandom practices were taking place long before the (male-dominated) science fiction boom of the 1930s or the (women-led) rise of Star Trek fandom in the 1960s and 1970s. Literary fans, particularly female readers, were participating in acts of racebending (imagining existing characters as a different race), zine-making (creating unofficial fan magazines with original stories and artwork), shipping (pairing two characters together romantically when they are not paired together in the text), and writing fan mail to authors...

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hugbee.bsky.social @hugbee.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

foreign policy, Israel, Palestine, Middle East, Arab, uncommited, international, killing... none of these words come up at all. "foreign" by itself comes up twice, both in reference to foreign election interference/disinfo campaigns. only "deaths" mentioned are the ones on January 6th. disgusting

(bold text) Countering Misinformation and Disinformation

(normal text) American elections are now influenced by more than American interests. There is an obvious
and conscious effort by foreign and domestic actors to shape electoral choices through
misinformation and disinformation directed at American voters

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