iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

> The decline is particularly striking among ninth-grade girls Because as we all know, ninth grade girls are famous for not caring what anybody things of them

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 7h

Oh come on. We've spent these kids' entire lives fighting to take back every step forward we made to advance gay rights over the prior twenty years, and it's a mystery why fewer of them are coming forward? www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/...

washingtonpost.com

Number of teens who identify themselves as gay or bisexual is in ‘free fall’

Conservatives have trumpeted the data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but researchers say the reasons for the decline are unclear.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

"Butlerian Jihad" is explicitly Dune, but "House of" didn't even originate with Dune. That's just... Feudalistic nobility? I don't remember House of Dornick specifically from Dune (maybe one of the later books?) but definitely not from the books that shall not be named (oh wait... Also a reference)

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Reposted by Jeff Beal

Make Some Noise @makesomenoise.dropout.tv · 07/10/2026

This is every tech bro ever 🤣🤣

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Parents should absolutely not have absolute power over their children

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Was seeing Paxton ads watching the Rams/Eagles game in deep blue Long Beach, CA today. Talk about wasted money.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The Book of Mormon says that argument ("contention") is "of the devil". When Mormons say they want to stop arguing and come together, they mean they want YOU to stop arguing and align with God. Which is to say, with them. (Source: was raised Mormon.)

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I think all American citizens share the responsibility for Trump. Whether we, individually, voted for him or not, we can't just absolve ourselves of responsibility for his crimes and transgressions because we voted for Kamala. His power is our power. His acts are our acts.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

This guy is stupid. Just a school yard bully we handed the nuclear codes to.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I think it's more accurate to say that guy's like Elon Musk think they are like the heroes in her book; the heroes in her book were actual inventors, not just investors. The worst villains in her book were the corporatists who lobbied the government for favors.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Not only did animals have to get *to* Noah's Ark, but after the ark landed, they had to get back to where they came from. Quite the migration! (Did a pair of tapirs swim across the ocean from South America and then swim back?)

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

How does *not using insurance benefits* constitute fraud?

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Justifying the arch as a military post puts Trump in his strongest position to justify the project in front of the courts. He did the same thing with the ballroom. Is it stupid if it works?

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

I tried explaining to somebody once that the entire concept of insurance was basically betting that something bad (health needs, car accident, etc.) was going to happen to you, and that the ideal outcome is usually that you lose the bet

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Take the hint. Which of those is most likely to be wrong?

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

The em dash — named for being the width of a capital letter M in traditional printing — is just good typography; don't assume it means something is written by AI

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I had to look at it for a long time before I could see an innocent way to interpret this picture.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

So, if I had to sum up why the AI Overlord PBKACs are having a hard time reining in their models, it's because for the last five years they've been over-promising to their investors and customers without listening to their engineers. But that's just a guess.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Guard rails can wait. If we can get this better model out, THEN my overlord PBKAC will stop using their keyboard to yell at me and I can finally have the peace and quiet I need to build the right guardrails... but then the new model gets good enough to escape the guardrails and here we are

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And the AI Model Overlord PBKAC tells the AI Developer PBKACs that the other model is better and we promised our investor PBKAC that we would have a better model in 60 days so now you need to make it happen. And the AI Developer PBKAC who wanted to build better guardrails decides...

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And then the investor PBKACs see that the numbers aren't getting bigger as fast as they were, so they need to do a bigger faster model so we switch back to that and they can get more dollars in their accounts again.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

And when we hear that a new AI model is better, do we cautiously wait to adopt it? NO! Because some other PBKAC is definitely using the better slop machine, so we have to keep up. And then our overlord PBKAC sends more money to the overlord PBKAC responsible for the better model

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Losing jobs is bad! So we listen to the overlord PBKAC and we use all the AI, so the overlord PBKAC keeps adding dollars to our bank accounts so we can send them to the landlord PBKAC. ...

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

For the last year or more, the tech billionaire PBKACs have been shouting that we other PBKACs need to move faster, that our jobs are at risk, that if we aren't the ones using the most AI, other PBKACs who do master AI will be able to do our jobs and theirs, so what do we do?

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

But they forget that they are also PBKAC! When they use their keyboard to fire off an email to invest in this company or divest in that one, they are still PBKAC! And their judgment is just as subject to human frailty as the PBKAC who mistook their CD tray for a cup holder.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

What is PBKAC? It is the Person Between the Keyboard and the Chair. In other words, PBKAC is us; the human element. The people promoting AI sometimes think that PBKAC is the rest of us, and that by replacing us with AI they can fix all software problems forever,...

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

PBKAC has been the source of virtually every bug, defect, or intentional hack ever created in software. Some think that AI will eliminate PBKAC completely, but that is impossible; PBKAC is everywhere. PBKAC will not go away.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I write software for a living. I've been doing this for 26 years. IMO this article doesn't touch on the biggest, most important, and most consistent problem in all of software development: PBKAC www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/t...

nytimes.com

Why It’s Difficult for Tech Companies to Rein In A.I.

Researchers say artificial intelligence is developing faster than the systems put in place to monitor and control it.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

As if the great writing isn’t reward enough, I got to play a part in making a cat happy

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I’ve been meaning to subscribe almost for the soul purpose of reading your Dungeon Crawler Carl take, but you published that just as I was starting the books and I didn’t want spoilers.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Absolutely. I went to one council meeting (I think a month or two before they kicked you out) and I don't think I can express how it felt to stand there as a dad and say "this thing you are doing will hurt my children" and for them not to care? At all? They are monsters.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Just because it happens in an ER and shares a single actor doesn't make it a reboot.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Trump's first bad choice left him with only bad choices

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

> Is it someone who is unafraid to say that trans girls shouldn’t participate in girls’ sports? Fuck off. That's not moderation, just fascism against a smaller out group

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I hear there's lots of money in cults.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I don’t trust any tech billionaire a lot, but Musk’s alignment here should make us all suspicious. What’s the ulterior motive? What’s going on behind the scenes? Are they trying to justify lower earnings than they bragged about or something else?

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I also think that it would be *more effective* at gaining votes if the checks show up before the election. The fact this isn't the plan seems like an indication that it is not a real plan even if they do win. (As if we needed more than "Trump is saying it" to know it's a lie.)

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

... But I struggle to point to the effects of that in much of what I use. Is my phone better? My browser faster? Are the services I depend on to run my company's software more reliable or cheaper? No. It is seemingly the contrary and many things are worse

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I use AI almost exclusively at my work. Sometimes it works; sometimes I still wonder if it really saved me time. I also think a lot about the software we use every day. The boosters of AI say this is a productivity revolution unlike anything we've seen before...

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

But what if that well has run dry? The early 2000s saw a lot of real estate speculation, which we saw implode in 2007, and the following ten years were kind of sluggish. Now, we're supposedly in the middle of an AI "boom" that sometimes seems to be driven more by inflation than anything else

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I was struck by the idea that American corporations were struggling to show profit at home, and desperate to seek other means to boost their bottom line, and how the explosive "prosperity" we experienced during most of my lifetime seemed to be built on lies and manipulation

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Earlier this year, I read most of Naomi Klein's book "The Shock Doctrine" (still need to finish it) in which she writes about how American corporations and government conspired to extract profit out of developing nations from the 70s through the 90s

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Confirmation bias is a hell of a drug, but I keep thinking that most investors are desperately looking for places to put their money and are thus susceptible to compelling, yet unsubstantiated, stories of a new wunderkind who will show them the way www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

theatlantic.com

The 24-Year-Old Who Lost Billions

Leo Aschenbrenner claimed to know the future of AI.

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

This is kind of the sales pitch. And it’s stupid

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

I think that when historians are writing about our time, there will be entire chapters titled things like, “How could they have been so stupid?”

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Anybody who is willing to destroy our wilderness and natural beauty because they're afraid of a few people crossing the border needs to get their head examined. (Yes, there probably are more than a few people crossing the border, but not here.)

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

They left the corpse outside the bedroom door. Did they hope we would trip and fall to our deaths? Or was it merely a message and a warning?

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Jeff Beal @jbbeal.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The avocado begged for mercy, but the cats were relentless. They batted it all around the house, sometimes pausing to let it rest, and then pouncing and gouging chunks of leathery skin and tender flesh from the fruit with their extended murder mittens

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