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Ken Scambler

@kenscambler.me
202 followers 284 following 128 posts

Architecture, FP, compositionality.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Ken Scambler
Blakandblack @blakandblack.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A senator with a national platform who describes Indigenous Australians as "the most primitive race on Earth" is not merely expressing a view. She is issuing a permission slip, and the size of her audience determines how many people redeem it. blakandblack.com/2026/09/16/w...
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Asher Wolf @asherwolf.bsky.social · 26/07/2026
The instructions included a hidden white-font prompt to use the word Madagascar "in a way that makes no sense." So if their professor saw the word Madagascar, "I knew that they copied and pasted the whole thing, and just threw it in AI."
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Tony Martin @tonymartin.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
This lot are putting their money back into the comedy game and I salute them. theconversation.com/with-grouse-...
theconversation.com
With Grouse House TV, Aunty Donna make a bid to usher in the future of independent Australian comedy
With their new independent streaming platform, Aunty Donna prove the future of ‘cooked’ Australian comedy is online.
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 30/03/2026
"Something that used to be hard now takes no effort, therefore it is useful for me to consume your attention with it" No. No that's not true. It's clip art now, it's a Photoshop lens flare. Nobody needs to see it
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 30/03/2026
It's getting harder and harder to avoid slop sci-comm videos. So many impersonating famous physicists like Feynman, Susskind, etc. Always deceptively presented, with some give-away phrases like "inspired by" buried in the description. A pox on the greedy, lazy people inflicting this shit upon us.
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 22/03/2026
They should have renamed it "Department of Battles" since they haven't won a war for 35 years
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
In related news, my friend William Waites has come up with a simple 'agent framework' based on category theory. It lets you hook up LLMs or other agents and coordinate their activity. Other agent frameworks exist, but this one is typed. (3/n) johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2026/03/11/a...
johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com
A Typed Language for Agent Coordination
guest post by William Waites Agent frameworks are popular. (These are frameworks for coordinating large language model agents, not to be confused with agent-based modelling in the simulation sense.…
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Dane Owens @owendanes.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
Pretty crazy how important the blockade of a trade route is right now
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Here's how Hideki Yukawa predicted the mass of the particles that carry the nuclear force. It was a stunning episode in the history of physics, and the start of a new era. (1/9)
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Hey! Now you can read about my work on applied category theory here on Quanta magazine! And not just me, lots of folks.... www.quantamagazine.org/can-the-most...
quantamagazine.org
Can the Most Abstract Math Make the World a Better Place? | Quanta Magazine
Columnist Natalie Wolchover explores whether applied category theory can be “green” math.
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 05/03/2026
It's a lot of fun when the kids start getting into something that I'm into, and this week it's @felixcolgrave.bsky.social and Donks youtu.be/4gvSYEqOMn8?...
youtu.be
DONKS
YouTube video by Felix Colgrave
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 02/03/2026
Same with you @albomp.bsky.social - you could have just done your usual thing and hedged, and even that would have been better
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Bazecraze @bazecraze.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
This obviously very stupid but is it also smart? We’ll talk to some liars after this break.
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Colin Gorrie @colingorrie.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...
deadlanguagesociety.com
How far back in time can you understand English?
An experiment in language change
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Monoid Mary @argumatronic.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
> When I find myself impressed by the box performing a task correctly, it doesn't make me feel like I have hard-earned skills that are now irrelevant...It is painful [that] the things I am good at are engulfed by so much tedious junk that didn't need to be this bad.
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Hazel Weakly @hazelweakly.me · 03/01/2026
We really need to come up with better metaphors for AI agents than junior developers and interns. It’s far more of a reflection of how disrespectfully we treat those roles than it is a useful metaphor for how agents behave
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Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 10/12/2025
Go do more things than you really want to. It is now a good deed to just show up. moultano.wordpress.com/2025/12/09/t...
moultano.wordpress.com
The Dead Weight Loss of Entertainment
It is undeniably the best time to be alone in human history, but nobody is happy being alone. Why can’t we fix it?
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 07/12/2025
This startup, Axiom Math, seems to be trying to automate the "puzzle solving" aspect of math. I'll be glad if they transfer some money from investors to mathematicians. But I've got a bit to say about this. (1/n) www.businessinsider.com/axiom-math-s...
businessinsider.com
A 24-year-old Stanford Ph.D. dropout shares how she lured Meta's top AI researchers and raised $64 million for her math startup
24-year-old Axiom Math founder Carina Hong wooed top Meta researchers in a competitive AI talent market.
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
The main rule of quantum mechanics answers: if a system is in one state, what's the probability that it's in some different state? Shockingly, it's not zero! I explain this with minimum jargon, and fear not: I say what all the funky symbols here mean: ∈, ℂᵈ, etc. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0a8...
youtube.com
Standard Model - Part 4: Quantum Physics
YouTube video by John Baez
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Chris Martin @chris--martin.functional.cafe.ap.brid.gy · 02/12/2025
educational software is a funny concept because, as long as you avoid using software, it's very difficult to find something to do in life that you won't learn from
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
Multiple surveys are telling the same story: AI adoption has stalled. Census data shows ~11% of workers use AI, with rates falling at 250+ employee firms. Surveys show usage spiked then plateaued. Meanwhile Big Tech is planning $5T in AI spend by 2030 that needs $650B/year in revenue vs ~$50B today
economist.com
Investors expect AI use to soar. That’s not happening
Recent surveys point to flatlining business adoption
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Jon Eaves @joneaves.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
This is wild (via ajf) labs.watchtowr.com/stop-putting...
labs.watchtowr.com
Stop Putting Your Passwords Into Random Websites (Yes, Seriously, You Are The Problem)
Welcome to watchTowr vs the Internet, part 68. That feeling you’re experiencing? Dread. You should be used to it by now. As is fast becoming an unofficial and, apparently, frowned upon tradition - w...
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Moudhy Al-Rashid (she/her) @moudhy.bsky.social · 26/11/2025
I guess I now have to do a thread on shoes in ancient Mesopotamia in response to this (which happens to be from one of my favourite accounts). I’m not an archaeologist, nor do I really know anything about shoes, but let’s go on this journey together.
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
My series explaining the Standard Model of particle physics has 3 parts so far: 1) Particles 2) The Big Ideas 3) Qubits Next: 4) Quantum Physics 5) Spinors Then isospin, pions and more particle physics! Alas, I've been slowed down by our kitchen remodeling. I want to pick up the pace.
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 25/11/2025
Thoroughly enjoying this very approachable series from @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social on the Standard Model and quantum mechanics youtu.be/0yjxqMoX-y8?...
youtu.be
Standard Model - Part 1: Particles
YouTube video by John Baez
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 19/11/2025
If I paste a URL over text and it just replaces the text with the dead URL text, then your app is an old app, you're not paying attention and you can't deliver
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Rohan Pearce @rohan-p.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
important journalism from @theconversation.com theconversation.com/how-do-you-f...
Article headline: How do you fire someone into the Sun?
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 14/11/2025
"I realized that if I was going to keep doing hard things, and I am wired that way, they needed to be hard in a different sense. Hard, but harmless. Hard, but mine." mindthenerd.com/why-im-learn...
mindthenerd.com
Why I’m Learning Sumerian, and What It Taught Me About Hard Work, Burnout, and the Joy of Doing Useless Things
After burning out on a massive project, I started learning Sumerian, a language no one’s spoken in 4,000 years. What began as a useless obsession turned into a lesson on meaning, burnout, and the quie...
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 12/11/2025
Treaty yeah! www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11...
abc.net.au
Australia's first treaty with Aboriginal people becomes law in Victoria
Victoria's first treaty with Aboriginal people has been signed by members of the Aboriginal community, the premier and state governor.
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Cassie Selin @echidnite.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Oglaf is Australian!? I had no idea!
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Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
arXiv will no longer accept review articles and position papers unless they have been accepted at a journal or a conference and complete successful peer review. This is due to being overwhelmed by a hundreds of AI generated papers a month. Yet another open submission process killed by LLMs.
blog.arxiv.org
Attention Authors: Updated Practice for Review Articles and Position Papers in arXiv CS Category – arXiv blog
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Jon Eaves @joneaves.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
I hope this is just the beginning. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10...
abc.net.au
Australian-first treaty legislation passes in Victorian parliament
Historic legislation has passed that will see the creation of an Indigenous council that will be consulted on laws and policies affecting Indigenous communities.
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John C. Baez @johncarlosbaez.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
It's our best theory of elementary particles and forces. It took centuries of genius to discover that the world is like this, and it's absolutely shocking. But nobody believes it's the last word, so we simply call it The Standard Model. I will try to explain it... www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yjx...
youtube.com
Standard Model - Part 1
YouTube video by John Baez
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 19/10/2025
all the anxiety human evolution developed to help me spot bears now kicks in when i have to answer emails
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Alexandru Nedelcu @alexn.org · 07/10/2025
REST vs GraphQL
Meme showing a bell curve with GraphQL at the peak and REST at both extremes (low and high IQ), featuring cartoon characters representing each API type.
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kuraine @lena.fyi · 03/10/2025
just a reminder that bandcamp friday is tomorrow & streaming services are interrupting music streams with ai generated shit, flooding the database with artists that don't exist in any way other than profiting the platform owners so instead of paying a monthly fee, buy an album or two each month ok
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 27/09/2025
Typeclasses in Java! youtu.be/Gz7Or9C0TpM?...
youtu.be
Growing the Java Language #JVMLS
YouTube video by Java
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 24/09/2025
I'm not very plugged into British politics, but isn't Farage the leader of a fringe extremist party, with no actual power? Why on earth are you all treating him like he's the PM?
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 07/09/2025
Bluesky was really on top of the spam followers for a while there, but it looks like online mosquito season is back
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Jon Eaves @joneaves.bsky.social · 04/09/2025
This is fucking fantastic analysis. Have a read. hachyderm.io/@shafik/1151... Links to the original article - mikelovesrobots.substack.com/p/wheres-the... via my terrible Discord crew
mikelovesrobots.substack.com
Where's the Shovelware? Why AI Coding Claims Don't Add Up
78% of developers claim AI makes them more productive. 14% say it's a 10x improvement. So where's the flood of new software? Turns out those productivity claims are bullshit.
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David Buchanan @retr0.id · 03/09/2025
bad news: computer science has run out of verbs buffers must now be ensorcelled and desorcelled
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Hell Frasier: Bloodline @babadooknukem.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about
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Very Sane AI Newsletter @verysane.ai · 14/08/2025
There is some confusion about whether or not we understand LLMs. The answer is yes and no, but mostly no. It's a complicated enough question that it seemed like it needed an article. www.verysane.ai/p/do-we-unde...
verysane.ai
Do we understand how neural networks work?
Yes and no.
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Cameron Patrick @cameronpat.bsky.social · 14/08/2025
telling that people who are professionally Very Computer so often want Less Computer in their lives
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Stellbound: Stellraiser II @antlervel.vet · 13/01/2024
JUDGE: As for the issue of bail? ME: Bail, your honor? PUBLIC DEFENDER: Oh. You can—you can pay gems to speed up the jail timer. JUDGE: Did defense counsel not explain the gem packages yet? PUBLIC DEFENDER: *sigh* For $49.99 you get 2200 gems plus 500 free. That’s the most popular option
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Ken Scambler @kenscambler.me · 08/08/2025
There's a brand of creepy animatronic AI toys called "FurReal", but the writing is all squished so it looks like "FurKed", so every time I see them in a store I think "Ugh, that's FurKed". And now you will too
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emily s. @emily.news · 07/08/2025
忄 is 心 but it's been radicalized by the far left
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Sunny Weather @somehowcreative.bsky.social · 07/08/2025
This is a good visualization of when people say that AI saves them time.
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radical lisa loebotomy @nfornihilism.net · 06/08/2025
hard to take melbourne seriously when one of its major attractions is a low bridge that people can't stop driving into
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The Onion @theonion.com · 05/08/2025
Australia Admits All Those Animals Made Up theonion.com/austral...
Australia Admits All Those Animals Made Up
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