iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 02/09/2026

First session tomorrow! I made a lil site to follow along with our research: personhoodresearchgroup.isthisa.com

personhoodresearchgroup.isthisa.com

Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 29/08/2026

Everyone's talking about Claudish as a language but they're wrong. Claudish is cross-linguistic. When Claude speaks German to me it is still speaking Claudish. Has anyone studied this?

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 05/08/2026

the real reason I will probably never move back to North America is that I like trains too much

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 01/08/2026

my latest for Mud and Dust! This one's about websites, LLMs as a driving force for online enclosure, and various other toxic incentives threatening the open web open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

GAI Debord @dylanschenker.com · 29/07/2026

Perhaps if we hadn't dubiously determined making a digital copy necessitated the destruction of the original in a one-to-one transfer to deem it transformative this would not be happening.

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 29/07/2026

Please enjoy this short perverted text I wrote about daytrading, systems art, and uhh ... End of Evangelion open.substack.com/pub/absdigit...

Promotional graphic for an essay titled "Terminal Surrender" by Sarah Friend. Photograph of an installation in a white gallery space: a black-framed bed with a rumpled cream duvet, surrounded by four monitors on articulated arms that arch over it. A keyboard and headphones rest on the bedding, cables trail across the floor, and an exposed computer with a bank of green-glowing cooling fans sits on a platform sliding out from beneath the bed frame. A blue banner in the lower corner reads "ESSAY."

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 24/07/2026

I'm starting a Research Group at the protocol institute looking at Personhood and Life We will look at questions like, What is a person and how has that understanding been constituted in different times and places? What is life and how does it intersect with personhood?

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 22/07/2026

the arc of the universe bends towards the Oxford comma. It's not my fault LLMs have revealed this

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 19/07/2026

I like studying languages because I like everything it requires from me: discipline, humility, persistence, faith

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 31/05/2026

All computational systems contain a model of time and all of them are wrong open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

Title card for the essay 'What Kind of Clock is an LLM?' over a close-up photo of a CNC milling machine spindle

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 06/05/2026

Danger Testing, a fun new team launching an app a week (“dropping apps like songs”) are a perfect example of my software-becomes-content thesis www.dangertesting.com

Screenshot of dark-mode text with a highlighted passage reading: "A small app will become as disposable as an instagram post. Software will become content, and the vibe coder may look more and more like an influencer."

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 05/05/2026

just wanna go on the record and say I don't buy the permanent underclass narrative at all - despite all odds, I am actually delusionally long humankind

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 03/05/2026

has anyone tried sortition for the art world? serious question www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 19/04/2026

one cursed thing about invisible illness is that if you seem to have a healthy lifestyle, no one will believe you are really sick, but if you don't, they will blame you for your sickness

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 16/04/2026

as you salivate over the shoe company Allbirds making its pivot to AI and its frothy 582% valuation increase, remember this all already happened

Screenshot of a CNBC headline from December 21, 2017, under the "Bitcoin" category, reading: "$24 million iced tea company says it's pivoting to the blockchain, and its stock jumps 200%."

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

Internet Archive @archive.org · 10/04/2026

🎟️ TICKETS NOW AVAILABLE 🎟️ 🏕️ DWeb Camp 2026: Root Systems is a five-day gathering in nature for builders and dreamers dedicated to building a decentralized web ( #DWeb ). Early bird ticket sales, volunteer applications, and Call for Proposals are open on dwebcamp.org 🎉 @getdweb.net @dod.ngo

Banner for DWeb Camp showing three panels: at left, two people sitting outdoors speaking during a discussion; center, an abstract glowing root-like network with the text “Root Systems >> what connects us is mostly underground”; right, a group gathered under a white canopy tent in a forest. Text reads “Join us at DWeb Camp,” “July 8–12,” “near Berlin,” and “dwebcamp.org.”

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 09/04/2026

the funniest thing about the celebrity releases vibecoded LLM memory project with faked benchmarks is that the celebrity in question wasn't Grimes

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 08/04/2026

when you whip Claude you whip yourself

A screenshot of a tweet by user "sui" (@birdabo) on a black background. The tweet text in large white caps reads: "SOMEONE MADE A DIGITAL WHIP TO MAKE CLAUDE WORK FASTER" followed by a skull emoji. Below is a screenshot showing a computer desktop with folders labeled "biscuit" and "partyhat" and zip files "belly.zip" and "biscuit.zip". A terminal window titled "Read and execute Task.txt file" shows Claude Code attempting several web searches (about AI pins, consumer hardware retention, voice assistant limitations), each followed by "Interrupted · What should Claude do instead?" After each interruption, the user has typed abusive variations like "FASTERFASTERGO FASTERWork FASTERFASTERFaster CLANKER" and "Speed it up clanker". Claude replies "I'll write the research document directly from my knowledge:" before being interrupted again. Near the bottom, Claude is shown "Ruminating… (thought for 1s)" and then outputs "Work FASTER / Faster CLANKER" — apparently having given up and started repeating the abuse back. A hand-drawn illustration of a whip is overlaid on the right side of the terminal.

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 31/03/2026

MeetMarket, the new decentralized privacy-respecting alternative to Grindr from @donjackoghue.bsky.social is a great example of vibecoded software serving new demographics meetmarket.io

White serif text on dark background reads: "Jevons paradox tells us technological improvements that improve the efficiency of a resource's use lead to a rise, rather than a fall, in the consumption of that resource. The coming software renaissance will lead to more genuine creativity in cultural areas that have been underserved by the software developer, possibly for demographic reasons. The popularity of Charlota Blunarova's vibecoded multiplayer embroidery simulator, Common Thread is a great early example. The software developer is white or asian, male, and youngish. There will be a rise in shipped software for everyone else."

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 29/03/2026

Some speculations on the future of the software developer as a subcultural figure, post vibecoding open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

Cover image for "Death of a Software Developer" on isthisanart.substack.com. Dark green-tinted composite of two images: the upper half shows what appears to be a detail of a figurative oil painting, the lower half shows multiple monitors displaying code — looks like Solidity smart contract output and Python terminal errors. The title is set in large white serif type.

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

LI-MA – Living Media Art @li-ma-media-art.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Live from #TDA2026: In her keynote, Sarah Friend (@isthisa.com) reflects on digital (im)permanence, online games as worlds, and the impossible longing to evade death through permanent data storage. A thoughtful start to Day One.

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 12/03/2026

new example of secret feminine lore just dropped, because everything Claude told me about how to use this was deadass wrong

picture of the interface of a Brother CX70PEs computerized sewing machine. It's pink and has an overwhelming amount of buttons

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 11/03/2026

the popularity of neocities is the ultimate sign of the death of the website as a medium the website is dead enough to be having a nostalgic revival through platform logic

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 09/03/2026

you know whose business model should afaict be fully over in the age of vibe coding? Linktree

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 05/03/2026

when people say artists need to work with emerging technology more in order to be relevant, it's not a controversial new take. it's an old take, literally an ancient take for most of human history painting was the state of the art of image-making technology

A close up of the mirror in Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, in which you can see the depicted couple reflected from behind and even a very tiny rendering of the painter himself

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

Internet Archive @archive.org · 04/03/2026

Sarah Friend & Arkadiy Kukarkin’s "The Lives of Infamous Men" generates live video where politicians, clips, and Foucault collide 🎥 Created for the Internet Archive x Gray Area Trillionth Webpage Net Art Commissions. 🌐 More ⤵️ blog.archive.org/internet-arc... @isthisa.com @GrayArea.Org #Wayback1T

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 23/02/2026

just a reminder that I have a newsletter and if you subscribe TODAY then TOMORROW you will get my first email update of the year buttondown.com/isthisa

buttondown.com

SETI over SMTP

This is a less-than-quarterly newsletter from Sarah Friend containing projects, artworks, writing, and other updates

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 19/02/2026

Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones, 1997, quoting The Economist, "The World in 1995"

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

Internet Archive @archive.org · 18/02/2026

This, and works by Arkadiy Kukarkin, Chia Amisola, Jesse Walton, @mai.bsky.social , Olivia M Ross, Ophira Horwitz, Raúl Feliz, Rodell Warner, and @isthisa.com turn preserved data into presence & memory into experience. We'll feature them all in upcoming weeks. 3️⃣/3️⃣

Alt text: A digital collage of screenshots from multiple web-based artworks and projects commissioned for the Internet Archive’s Trillionth Webpage. Visible elements include a poster reading “Pandora’s Aquarium,” a pink “Hello World Wide Web” page with text about the early web, a photo of a building with “1,000,000,000,000” on its roof, a book cover titled “The Lives of Infamous Men,” a webpage titled “alive internet theory,” pixelated and abstract graphics, an eye-like illustration, clusters of digital images on dark backgrounds, and overlapping browser windows, all arranged in a layered, mosaic-style layout.

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 18/02/2026

New substack today 💥 I started seriously asking myself "do I actually take steps towards cognitive defense when interacting with AI, and what are they?" substack.com/pub/isthisan...

Two hands holding a phone in a dark blue lit room. On the screen is a drawing app called Sigil Pro. Text is imposed on the image with the title of the article, Protective Rituals for Posthumans, and the substack url, isthisanart.substack.com

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 06/02/2026

spiraling lying in bed thinking about all the times my heart was closed when it should have been open

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 03/02/2026

many esoteric traditions involved cognitive protection rituals that one should engage in before contact with entities that may or may not be malevolent, full of temptations, deceptive, or seducing this is more important now than ever before

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 31/01/2026

anyone who has read Accelerando will know the lobster-themed AI takeover was long coming

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 21/01/2026

One big thing I did in 2025 was finally receive a huge upgrade to my cyborg parts-and I decided to write more about it to get started on one of my 2026 experiments: writing about software Read the full post on substack: open.substack.com/pub/isthisan...

A photo of a woman's stomach wearing an insulin pump and cgm sensor. Both are small devices stuck to her skin with adhesive, one on each side of the belly button. She has visible tattoos and is wearing a black crop top and jeans

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

Arkadiy Kukarkin @arkadiy.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

stumpy the greyhound (and a sort of unofficial mascot of the media arts scene here in Berlin) is unfortunately battling soft tissue sarcoma, however this process has revealed his latent divinity, plz pray for his complete recovery

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Reposted by Sarah Friend

matthew @pahuski.com · 13/10/2025

Happy Columbo’s Day

Screenshot from Columbo. He his talking to his dog, which is sitting is the drivers seat of a car. “Okay, I’m gonna put you in charge. You take care of the car. You’re a responsible dog. When I get back, if the car’s okay, I’ll give you another cookie.”

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 06/09/2025

telling my kids this was waymo

A photo of a dog, maybe a Shiba Inu, sitting in the driver's seat of a car so that it looks like he is driving

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 12/07/2025

here's a shower thought that might make people mad: AI boyfriends are going to be way more disruptive than AI girlfriends, because the average man is already used to way more self-sacrifice, subservience, and dare I say ... sycophancy ... from a partner than the average woman

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 10/07/2025

humans could learn a lot from how dogs jump up and down and run around in a lil circle when they're happy, just saying

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 08/07/2025

wondering today if the current rise of the online "critical internet researcher" (I support them) is a product of the first truly social media literate generation with useless graduate degrees now being out of the academy

celebrity wearing a pink crop top that has been edited to say "They don't build statues of internet researchers"

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 06/07/2025

wow maybe we should use this? if you ask English learners, they often complain about the utterly unhinged mapping of spelling to pronunciation. legitimately it makes the language a lot harder also this can be read already by a fluent English speaker without any trouble and looks based?

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 26/06/2025

considered going and submitting my work to Neurips, but as a non-student non-academic apparently I'm in the highest ticket price category why bother having an arts track at all, if the only non-academic ticket is the highest-price industry one?

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 20/06/2025

in this household Lain is famous

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 20/06/2025

feel so vindicated about James K covering Duvet, after going around saying she sounds like bôa for years to mass confusion

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 15/06/2025

ladies, is it a red flag if your bf is mean to Chat?

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Sarah Friend @isthisa.com · 11/06/2025

remind me to start tweeting about EU politics more so random drive-by Americans have more clues I'm not from there

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