iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

this is the saddest thing I have ever seen

the saddest thing you ever saw:

"Only in SF can you go from
- prompting agents at 6pm
- to watching tech founders sing Linkin Park at 7 pm
- to a formal gala with a robot at 8 pm

And still make it home by 10 pm"

Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

there are four (4) races mentioned in the screenshot in the post to which you are responding. Thank you for supporting them!

Highlighted districts: FL-27, NV-2, SC-1, NY-21

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Headline makes it sound like the DCCC spent all their money on hookers and blow and now rent is due but the real reason is Trump and the Republicans are so toxic the DCCC thinks it can compete in districts Trump won by 13-20 points.

Specifically, Merz dedicates significant portions of the memo to four districts where the committee is desperate for more money in order to compete — all of which President Donald Trump won by double-digit margins in 2024:

— Florida’s 27th District (Trump +14.6)
— Nevada’s 2nd District (Trump +13.9)
— South Carolina’s 1st District (Trump +13)
— New York’s 21st District (Trump +20.7)

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

makes you want to swerve your car into the billboard just so you can feel *something*

NEBUUS > Token Factory AI inference at scale

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

here is an example. Our billboards are completely artless and soulless. It’s like driving through a draft agenda for the worst B2B conference you can imagine.

An example of San Francisco’s stultifying billboard scene: red-orange background, white text reading “Are your APIs ready for AI agents?” People are trying to drive home from a show at the Greek. It is late and they are already tired and these billboards seem specifically designed to put them to sleep.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I am Extremely Not Religious, have searched for and consumed approximately zero religious content in my entire life, and yet the YouTube algorithm keeps autoplaying stuff like this. This one is from yesterday after I searched for & watched a Tupac video:

screenshot of Youtube "Hillsong Worship Station": "featuring Hillsong Worship songs through the decades, this non-stop collection of worship moments is intended to build faith, declare the truth of who Jesus is, and glorify God"

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

the tafoya campaign's targeting is as bad as their messaging

Michele Tafoya has reached out to me via text message seeking fifteen dollars, a request I shall not agree to on account of my strong dislike of Michele Tafoya and her Nazi party full of Nazis.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

imagine having to pay college kids to be obnoxious in public on your behalf www.michigandaily.com/news/governm...

The Michigan Daily: "Conservative PAC offering College Republicans $200 to heckle at Abdul El-Sayed rally, group chat messages seem to show"

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Important reminder in the New York Times of the crucial role local newspapers play in maintaining a strong and virtuous community. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/u...

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

imo this (extremely basic and obvious, I thought) passage I wrote more than a year ago holds up quite a lot better than most of the 3-D chess political punditry we've seen since www.findinggravity.net/donald-trump...

That brings me to the big thing pundits like Cillizza who assume everything is advantageous to Trump and the GOP are missing: Donald Trump is in power now, and that affects how the public reacts to him.
When Donald Trump isn't president, when he's merely running for president, he benefits from public concern about all kinds of issues, from immigration to inflation, because he has no responsibility for them. He can talk about how bad things are, and that will resonate with a lot of people. Many of those people will assume Trump's "solutions" to those problems won't be as disastrous and inhumane as Democrats claim. "Trump won't really do all the crazy and evil things Trump says he will do" is a deeply entrenched assumption among a lot of voters. But when Trump is president, he actually does the crazy and evil things. And voters don't like them!

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

PULITZER COMMITTEE: *gives an award to a white guy for writing about white supremacy* BRETT STEPHENS: this is white guy erasure

Much the same goes for the Pulitzer Prizes. Of the past 10 years’ worth of winners for music and drama, nearly all have been minorities. Whether or not the winners are themselves minorities, they almost invariably win for work about minorities. For the prize in history, Kathleen DuVal won in 2025 for her history of Native American nations; Jacqueline Jones in 2024 for her account of Black workers in Boston during the Civil War; Jefferson Cowie in 2023 for his examination of white supremacy in an Alabama county in the 19th and 20th centuries; W. Caleb McDaniel in 2020 for his story of a former slave’s fight for justice in post-Civil War America; David Blight in 2019 for his biography of the abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

everything is proceeding as I have foreseen

National Journal today: "This midterm isn't 2018 all over again. It's 2006. Democrats are poised to win states they usually don't as Republicans run away from a deeply unpopular president."

Me, March 3: "2026 has a very 2006 'everybody fucking hates republicans but national media/pundits will be reeaaaaaaaalllly slow to properly understand that because of their priors about the two parties feel to it."

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

You will want to read Rebecca Traister today, of course. www.thecut.com/article/glor...

Back in 1968, while she ironed her clothes for the antiwar march and smoked a cigarette, Moses Znaimer asked the then-34-year-old, pre-feminist Steinem what she wanted to be when she “grew up.”

“Free,” she told him. “And old. And a little mean.”

Steinem was free. And she grew old. But she never actually got mean, at least as far as I could tell.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Here is a very funny post in which a Stanford professor who also works at Anthropic relies on Claude to generate a list of the most "AI-pilled" political campaigns, which he hypes as an example of how "AI is transforming politics" The 18th most "AI-pilled" campaign spent $26 on AI. Twenty-six!

Free Systems
Free Systems

1
36

SYSTEM CHECK
AI is transforming politics---and how we understand it
Claude now automagically tracks political campaign AI usage for me. This and more in this week's System Check.
ANDY HALL
AUG 16, 2026

AI has been accelerating steadily for a while, but even relative to that baseline, the last several weeks have felt different. Agents are demonstrating shocking capabilities to escape containment, coordinate with one another, and wreak havoc online. New model releases are coming fast and thick. And, closer to home, AI is getting better and better at helping me with my research. Right now is the most exciting period of time around AI and the study of politics I’ve experienced, even more so than the December-January Claude Code explosion.

Politicians are adopting AI

As part of my research agenda on building political superintelligence, I am constantly looking for data on how people are using AI for politics. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something new: I set up a daily task where Claude Code searches the web for relevant datasets and suggests ways to analyze the data with a Free Systems lens. I’ve been blown away by the ideas Claude has been coming up with. Here’s one.

Claude noticed that FEC disbursement data can track how campaigns are spending money on AI. There are a bunch of limitations, here–-expenses under $200 don’t have to be itemized (but can be), campaigns might be paying for AI in ways we don’t see flagged in the data, etc—but the patterns are super interesting even so! Here are the patterns, all suggested by Claude with only minimal iteration by me.

screenshot of a graphic this guy made, probably by asking Claude to make a graphic, hyping "The most AI-pilled campaigns of 2026." There are twenty campaigns listed, sorted by the % of their expenditures that go to AI tools. The *most* "AI-pilled" campaign spent less than $2,500 on AI. Two of the top twenty spent less than $100. Only six spent more than $1,000. This is just objectively very hilarious.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

My instinct is it's part of a broader trend towards people talking about everything as though they're discussing a book (or, more likely, a movie.) See also:

so much of the narrative is about "narrative"

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

let's check in on the most valuable opinion real estate in the world, shall we?

The New York Times
OPINION
DAVID FRENCH
Go Ahead, Sean Duffy. Let Your Daughter Go to Harvard.
August 23, 2026

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

here's an example from 2010: www.mediamatters.org/washington-p...

In short, it is wildly misleading to pretend that both parties are equally responsible for congressional gridlock. It just isn't an accurate portrayal of what has happened over the past two decades. If David Broder really doesn't understand that, how can he possibly be capable of producing meaningful political commentary?

I suspect that, on some level, Broder does understand that, but thinks that pretending that both sides are equally guilty is an important and noble effort to move beyond the “blame game” and usher forth a return to bipartisan bonhomie. It isn't.

The leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties aren't longtime best friends stuck in a spat neither wants to continue. They are competitors in a zero-sum struggle for political power. The everybody's-equally-guilty declaration that both sides have made mistakes in the past isn't a face-saving way to end the spat -- it merely incentivizes bad behavior. Republicans reap political benefit from their knee-jerk obstructionism without having to pay a price for it, because the public is constantly told by people like David Broder that they aren't any worse than the Democrats. The “both sides are equally guilty” approach thus incentivizes obstructionism and partisanship, just as privileging the lie incentivizes lying. In the end, David Broder's hand-wringing about partisanship and obstructionism actually contributes to the condition he denounces.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

any way, Mike Collins isn't some twitch streamer or whatever the fuck, he's the Republican nominee for United States Senate in one of the most important races in the country www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Collins, a trucking executive, has faced scrutiny over his own social media feed, where he has shared posts that were called racist and antisemitic, allegations he has denied. In 2024, he added approving comments as he reposted a video of mostly White college students confronting a Black pro-Palestinian protester, with one student making apelike sounds at her. Collins later said he disavowed any racism and did not see that as the “focal point” of the video.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

seems like it would be faster to list the mike collins staffers who *aren't* racists or anti-semites www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

In May, another Collins ex-staffer, William Paul, confronted Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York) at a bar, hurling antisemitic insults at him in an exchange that was witnessed by a NOTUS reporter. He served as Collins’s digital director in 2025, according to the federal employee tracker LegiStorm. Paul, who is also the son of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and did not respond to a request for comment, previously apologized on X for his conduct and said he was seeking help for his drinking problem.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

mike collins seems to be on a mission to personally employ every nazi south of the Mason-Dixon Line

In July, Collins replaced his subsequent chief of staff Kip Talley after Slate reported on his participation in a group chat that included Nick Fuentes and Richard Spencer, both of whom are white supremacists and antisemites. In the chat, Talley detailed his efforts to help Charles Johnson — who ran far-right websites and has promoted conspiracy theories including Holocaust denial — in jail. (Johnson was jailed for civil contempt after defying discovery orders related to a suit that found him liable for defamation and racketeering.) Johnson told The Post that “a lot of people were concerned about my well being” while he was in jail.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

oh okay good clarification, important nuance

Parra said he is not a white supremacist because it goes against his religion and he has a Colombian father. “I do think that the white race contributes more to the world,” he said.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The Log Cabin Republicans' judgement remains below reproach www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwat...

Last month, the Log Cabin Republicans, an organization that claims to “[represent] LGBT conservatives and straight allies who support fairness, freedom, and equality,” announced that far-right commentator Isabella Riley Moody had been named to its 2023 class of Outspoken Ambassadors.

The choice of Moody to serve as an ambassador for a gay conservative organization was rather unconventional, given that Moody is a virulent homophobe who brags that the word "f*ggot" is part of her "everyday vocabulary" and wishes that the country was a more "homophobic society."

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

gonna have to go ahead and disagree with matt

"Canada does not have nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons or relevant delivery systems"

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Who among AI *proponents* is doing interesting thinking/writing/work focused on the prevention of negative consequences of AI? things like (see attached): (Not looking for an argument about whether these and other concerns are real!)

* rapid replacement of the entire corpus of human-generated written content (and the knowledge it contains) with machine-generated versions of it
* development & control of AI by some of the worst and most irresponsible people and companies in the world, which have an established track record of, at best, indifference to the harm they cause
* crowding out of human art
* j o b s
* and more!

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Is that what you think you've been doing here? nicely offering a differing opinion? You've been a prick since you wandered in here. Which is fine; you aren't very good at it so it's mostly been amusing, but don't act all aggrieved that I've responded in kind.

just a screenshot of this exchange, which you can read by scrolling up

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I retracted that slur almost immediately I can't abide tuna salad though

also celery is good. I apologize to celery.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

speaking of accountability, this offer stands

Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser Aug 26, 2019
OK I gotta go be productive but in conclusion: Yes I absolutely would go to Bret Stephens home, drink his wine, eat his chicken marsala, and then tell his kids why he sucks.

Absolutely.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

bedbugs is of course an inner circle hall of fame tweet but this was probably one of my 5 favorites of mine:

tweet from me, 2019:

Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser Dec 28, 2019
Bret Stephens is mediocre even at being terrible. He’s a dull person’s idea of an interesting writer, a dumb person’s idea of an intellectual, a sociopath’s idea of a man of virtue, and a legacy’s idea of someone who succeeds on merit.

He is celery. Racist celery.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

1) Barkan says after 2020 debate "Trump absolutely steamrolled" Biden 2) Barkan points to Telemundo "poll" to support his position 3) Telemundo "poll" wasn't a poll. It was just unscientific Twitter clicks. 4) Barkan claims Twitter polls are valid. Guy was a journalism professor!

A 2020 Ross Barkan tweet described in the body of this post.

Screenshot from an article in The Independent that notes the Telemundo "poll" was actually a "Twitter poll" and that Telemundo anchor warned viewers "This isnt' a scientific poll."

2020 Twitter exchange described in the body of this post.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

try to imagine a more mundane lead anecdote. you can't do it.

In President DONALD TRUMP’s analog world, White House aide NATALIE HARP isn’t just personally important to the president -- she’s one of the most valuable gatekeepers in his orbit.
Nicknamed “the human printer,” one of Harp’s chores is to literally print out things for Trump’s review, making her among the most direct pipelines to the president. Harp routinely fields social media posts, articles and other ephemera people are desperate for Trump to see.
Recently, one person hoping to put something in front of Trump told West Wing Playbook they texted the material directly to Harp.
“Printed,” Harp replied, said the person, who was granted anonymity to preserve their relationship with her.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

San Francisco Chronicle: "social media was abuzz with commenters discussing the look and who gets to ride it" Commenters: this thing is ugly af

SF Chronicle: "Social media was abuzz ... with commenters discussing the look and who gets to ride it."

"I can't believe I've seen this piece of shit in persoooooooooon"

"Looks like a turd painted gold, literally"

"hey Siri, show me the hideous cousin of the cybertruck"

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

this is the worst color-coding I have ever seen in my entire life

a color-coded election results map from Center for Urban Research
at the Graduate Center / CUNY.

the color-coding key indicates that an area in which the Democratic candidate won 85% of the vote would be a lighter shade of blue than the shade of red in which a Republican candidate won 55% of the vote. And other similar stupidity.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

oh don't worry it can still shock the hell out of people when wet. just don't submerse it in water for unspecified reasons

The device must come in contact with the subject’s skin.
The device is not effective through clothing or hair and can be degraded on individuals and animals that
are extremely hairy.
The user and other officers can touch the person the device is applied to without fear of feedback.
The device can get wet but can’t be immersed in water. The effectiveness of the device does not change
or diminish when the subject or user are wet.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

"we aim to create a safer world for everyone involved. We believe this technology can ... create a more amiable atmosphere for the general population" <moments later> "we know some of you will be tempted to use this as a torture device"

we aim to create a safer world for everyone involved. We believe this technology can lower liability, lessen risk, and create a more amiable atmosphere for the general population and those who protect and serve us.

The G.L.O.V.E. SHALL NOT be deployed for any of the following:
• Verbal defiance or belligerence
• Punishment
• Torture
• Horse play

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

oh no problem here, nobody's ever heard of a whole mess of cops fucking a guy up

No more than two (one pair or equivalent) of G.L.O.V.E. devices should be applied at one time to a single
subject.
No more than 15-second activation duration should be deployed for a Level 2 ROE event.

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

the Painful Electric Shock Glove user manual goes out of it's way to note that it should not be used for torture

The G.L.O.V.E. SHALL NOT be deployed for any of the following:
• Verbal defiance or belligerence
• Punishment
• Torture
• Horse play
Avoid using the G.L.O.V.E. against certain portions of the population to include:
• The elderly
• Small children
• Pregnant women
• The severely handicapped

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

Here's me a couple years ago (and quoting me 13 years ago) making that argument at greater length: www.findinggravity.net/mitch-mcconn...

Me in 2013, as quoted by me in 2024, as linked by me in 2026:

Remember the 2000 election, in which — for the purposes of discussion — George W. Bush won 271 electoral votes and Al Gore won 266? Had Gore carried Mississippi, with its seven electoral votes, he would have been president. And yet, quite rightly, nobody says "Mississippi determined the outcome of the 2000 election," because there was never any realistic chance Gore could have won Mississippi. Instead, people credit, or blame, Florida and, to a lesser extent, states like New Hampshire, Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas — states where the outcome was close, where Gore could have won.

The same principle applies to congressional gridlock. Members like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) deserve the condemnation they receive for their cruelty, divisiveness and stunningly bad policy preferences, but they aren't the people most directly standing in the way of bipartisan action to fix urgent problems — not any more than Mississippi deserves credit for deciding the 2000 presidential election.

Snowe and Collins and Brown and a few dozen House members from swing districts, on the other hand — they might reasonably be expected to act in a bipartisan fashion to support reasonable solutions to huge problems. They portray themselves as moderates, they represent middle-of-the-road constituents — and yet they've embraced the radical ideology and party-first mentality they claim to oppose. All indications are that Rep. Broun is simply a fool. There's no reason to believe he knows any better. Olympia Snowe, on the other hand, does know better, or used to, yet she falls in line with her party. That's the very essence of "partisanship."

Meanwhile, the Brouns and the Snowes enjoy a symbiotic relationship: The so-called moderates mainstream the nonsensical policy positions peddled by the far right, and the extremist shrieking of the far right distracts public attention from the cruc…

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Jamison Foser @jamisonfoser.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

the group in question says it's going to spend $15 million over the next two years against the entire "Democratic Socialists of America movement" -- less than half as much as a single PAC spent to lose a single primary just this week they don't have the juice with anyone but the New York Times

NYT headline: "Moderate Democrats Prepare for 'War' Against an Ascendant Left / One moderate group says the progressive wins are 'deeply troubling' and is planning a $15 million effort against democratic socialism"

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