iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Ai is more like a digestive system than a Mind. It's not Artificial Intelligence, it's complex, multi-system, data processing that produces some useful outputs, and a lot of slop. It's all about reprocessing and extracting value (and crap) from what is ingested. Do your bowels "understand" cookies?

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Unlike the bullshit term "AI", "large language model" is "load bearing", as Claude insists on babbling. So can we just agree that it isn't ideas, or understanding, or minds, or reality that's being modeled, it's patterns in cribbed language? That's where the "intelligence" is. The rest is noise.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

"[Trump] is following in the grand tradition of American leaders starting wars with people they don’t understand, then wondering what went wrong."

nytimes.com

Opinion | Canada Said No to America. It Will Reverberate Far Beyond Its Borders.

Mark Carney has chosen suffering, but he did what Canadians elected him to do.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Trump wants the benefits of being a reliable ally, a good president, a successful businessman, and a likeable human without being any of those things. And he gets away with it. He is, however, definitive proof that the American political system is broken.

cbc.ca

Trump says Canada 'wants the benefits' of being a U.S. state in his 1st comments since trade talks broke down | CBC News

In his first comments since trade talks broke down, President Donald Trump said Canada "wants the benefits" of being a U.S. state "without being one." The president's brief post on his Truth Social pl...

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Old people don't run (or ruin) America, capital does. Age limits would be a band-aid: you'd just end up with 50-year-old billionaire-backed politicians, instead of 70-year-old ones.

writing.yaschamounk.com

Samuel Moyn on Why Old People Are Ruining America

Yascha Mounk and Sam Moyn also discuss whether some people deserve to have more votes than others.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 08/06/2026

Watching Apple Keynote for the first time in years. Very cool how they're automating dystopia and making it so convenient. With Apple AI none of us will have to waste consuming time thinking or doing boring, slow interactions with reality! Not available in the EU! Siri, plan my move to France.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

The great Lise Doucette hosts BBC Newshour and covers the Venice Biennale and The Booker Prize in the culture segment. Refreshing change from the usual obsession with obscure music.

bbc.co.uk

BBC World Service - Newshour - Available now

Available episodes of Newshour

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

At the very least, AI is weaponizing the Bullshit Industrial Complex.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

This probably suits Trump just fine. The American right loves doing business with military dictatorships. See Franco, Stroessner, Ayub Khan, Park, Mobutu, Suharto, Idi Amin, Marcos, Pinochet, Zia, Saddam, Mubarak, Musharraf, Sisi. Not to mention the Shah.

reuters.com

Iran's Guards seize wartime power, weakening Supreme Leader's role

Iran no longer has a single, undisputed clerical arbiter at the pinnacle of power — an abrupt break with the past that may be hardening Tehran’s stance as it weighs renewed talks with Washington.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Given how ubiquitous the Dunning-Kruger effect is, we need to check what we think we know before forming opinions. Journalists could start by asking basic questions: "How big is Greenland, Donald?", "What's the definition of "tariff", "Is the the 'free market' free?" 'Why does anyone need billions?"

politico.com

The Psychological Quirk That Explains Why You Love Donald Trump

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

It's great that Carney said out loud what has become clear to everyone in the last few decades: that the world order as it stands is something of a sham. What he didn't dare say is that any political system that can be led by an ignorant, bullying, corrupt clown like Trump is not fit for purpose.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

"Europe’s liberals are mandating assimilation programs for immigrants in the name of secularism; bolstering the military in service of European cooperation; restricting migration in order to protect tolerance; defying European legal precedents in the name of preserving the larger European project."

persuasion.community

What the Dutch Election Says About the Future of Europe

Fortress Liberalism is on the rise.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

AI paranoia is often just more hype that overestimates the power of the tech. But huge insidious risks WILL come with blind adoption. See: "Gradual Disempowerment: Systemic Existential Risks from Incremental AI Development."

arxiv.org

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

Let's be truly Canadian about this. If you try to see everything, even sports, as a non-zero-sum game, you realize that everyone who watched the post-season got to see some superb athletes do some amazing things. And the players all got very well paid to play a ball game. A win all around.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

"The invisible Hand of Big Tech" - Brazilian groups are leading the way in criticism of Big Tech Platforms. As good a use of google translate as I can think of.

apublica.org

Projeto: A Mão Invisível das Big Techs

Investigação transfronteiriça inédita mostra como Big Techs usam lobby para influenciar leis e frear regulação em todo o mundo

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 21/10/2025

Pissed that the terrific writing and political drama of the first 5 episodes of season 3 of The Diplomat takes a cheesy turn towards soap opera in episode 6 and beyond. Why does this always happen in mainstream American TV?

indiewire.com

‘The Diplomat’ Review: Season 3 Struggles to Define the Relationship in a Snappy Yet Stifled Return

As their professional prospects improve, Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell's power couple is forced to confront the deleterious state of their union.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Sounds like a stupid conspiracy theory, but I wouldn't put it past big media to have concocted all this to reassure an increasingly distrustful readership. Or past the administration to throw them a bone for being good boys and girls. It smells of "I'm shocked, shocked!..."

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

Don't want to be spoilsport, but come on, isn't this a little bit too on the nose?

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Reposted by JWB

Cambridge University Press @universitypress.cambridge.org · 08/10/2025

💬 Open communication is key to reaching people in highly polarised situations, reveals a new study from researchers @unistuttgart.bsky.social, published in @bjpols.bsky.social. Read more 🔗 cup.org/4mYfFxn

Two individuals seated at a table, each with a coffee cup. Text "New research" that talks about open communication with polarised audiences.

Quote by Simon Stocker from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, stating "Only a minimal intervention in the form of an open-ended question makes a positive contribution under such polarised conditions." The text is set against a plain background with quotation marks at the top.

Cover of the British Journal of Political Science, published by Cambridge University Press, featuring a green background with small images of political scenes below the title text.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

"a story of a Democratic establishment cynically weaponizing identity politics to stop a Sanders-led populist takeover of the party, a tactic Democratic elites have utilized frequently to protect themselves." Sounds pretty close to the mark.

newrepublic.com

What Is Ezra Klein Thinking?

The New York Times columnist is asking the right questions, but pushing the wrong answers.

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

Foroohar rightly argues that "most Americans really have no idea what socialism is, given that much of what passes for it in the US would be considered middle of the road in much of Europe."

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JWB @jwbsalevi.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

At 80, Douglas Hofstadter is still helping us see the world's patterns in fresh - and fundamentally human - ways. Take that, #AI.

theatlantic.com

My Life in Ambigrammia

The esoteric art form that revealed a new kind of beauty to me

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Reposted by JWB

Katie Drummond @katie-drummond.bsky.social · 23/09/2025

I loved talking to Signal's @meredithmeredith.bsky.social, who is such a consistent, clear voice of sanity (and always a great interview). We talked about (of course) SignalGate, what AI means for Signal, why tech bros continue to be such a disappointment, and much more. Read, listen, etc!

wired.com

How Signal’s Meredith Whittaker Remembers SignalGate: ‘No Fucking Way’

The Signal Foundation president recalls where she was when she heard Trump cabinet officials had added a journalist to a highly sensitive group chat.

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