iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 23h

I teach a course that includes a couple weeks on moral justifications for free expression, including the philosophy that shaped the 1st Amendment. It’s awful watching those justifications being routinely dismantled.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 23h

And yes, I know the argument that AI will transform jobs and not completely wipe them out…in the long run. But in the short run, I think people need to learn about Engels’ Pause and think about what it’s like to be at the start of a repeat.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

So…AI hype is the only thing propping up the US economy…until the data centers get built and the construction work and other jobs go away and the economy just collapses. Fun times!

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Ugh. My latchkey kid self is just screaming.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Has American news media always been this bad? Or is this just the end result of 30-40 years of badgering by conservatives screaming “BIAS!!!” at every anodyne statement? It’s like they’re crouching in a position of learned helplessness.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Reminded of a recent exchange I had with a journalist who insisted ad blockers are just for freeloaders and I was just ignorant.

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Reposted by Michael S. Kirkpatrick

Kevin Collier @kevincollier.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

Cyber people have said forever that ad blockers are a crucial security tool but I don't think it's ever been so explicit as this.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 15/10/2026

I also liked the statement of using their patent to stop others. This is a good response.

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Reposted by Michael S. Kirkpatrick

Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 14/10/2026

Aaron Swartz, coding prodigy and hacktivist who helped develop RSS and was a co-founder of Reddit, died by suicide after facing $1 million in fines and 35 years in prison for felony charges, just for downloading pdfs of research papers with the intention of making them accessible to the public.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Setting aside KS and AL, does dual citizenship of Native Americans shape this in any way? E.g., does sovereignty lead to disengagement and underrepresentation? (Sincerely asking bc I don’t know how tribal law and status interact w federal politics.)

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

And yeah, to be clear, I agree with your main point that cops that give these orders DGAF about civil rights. But I sure wouldn’t go quoting case law to someone with state-sanctioned authority for violence.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Glik is 1st Circuit, doesn’t apply. Fields v Philly (law.justia.com/cases/federa...) covers 3rd. No SCOTUS case exists, bc there is no split. Better advice is to follow ACLU guidance (www.aclu.org/know-your-ri...) and walk away + report later. Refusing orders is dangerous, even if they are bad.

law.justia.com

Fields v. City of Philadelphia (3d Cir. 2017)

Third Circuit holds that the First Amendment protects the act of photographing, filming, or otherwise recording police officers conducting their official duties in public.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

A wonderful and insightful thread. It’s important to recognize that the asbestos analogy *does* consider benefits of genAI. The key is net result of the calculus: do the harms outweigh the benefits and to what magnitude?

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Yes, yes, yes! We are turning so much control over basic life to such systems with no adequate evaluation of the impacts.

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Reposted by Michael S. Kirkpatrick

The C Programming Language @c-official.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

In C23 variables have pronouns and misgendering is undefined behavior. And no you can't just always use they, smartass. It literally won't compile

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Reposted by Michael S. Kirkpatrick

c @3boxesofsighs.bsky.social · 11/10/2026

sky as rothko

stratosphere paying homage to rothko’s painting style in layers of white/blue/grey

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Being recognized as “fundamentally transformative” speaks to one of the four factors (purpose of use). Being “substitutive” speaks to another (market effect). We’ll see what happens when those collide. (And for the record, I’m not justifying this as moral, just my understanding of the legal.)

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

There’s still a lot in flux, but ND will probably not stop it. Based on the Bartz analysis, model training is fair use (though saving the works as a library is not). Future cases may end up with different analyses, but that’s where we are for now.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

The other fun part is when people apply something like CC-BY and then say, “Oh wait, I didn’t mean you could do that!” Even more fun is explaining that using CC-BY-NC-ND doesn’t prevent use in model training. 😬

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Random comment, but this just reminded me of the film Perfect Days, which is focused on a man who cleans public restrooms in Tokyo. (Beautiful film, highly recommended.) Yeah, it turns out that you can have nice public resources…if you employ people.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Can you really blame utilitarianism when that bad analysis just depends on naive positivism? Of course everyone wants the best net outcomes, which I will selectively define as I see fit.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Great thread of quotes. I haven't read the original article yet, but adding it to my never-ending list.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I agree w the original authors that "stochastic parrot" is an apt metaphor to help understand mechanics of LLMs. But that's all it is, a descriptive metaphor. It's not (to me) a reason to deny their utility. Bc complexity will always produce emergent behavior. And sometimes that behavior is helpful.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Any complex system, through random interactions, will exhibit behavior that is neither controlled nor predictable. That LLMs produce plausible and often correct text based on probability distributions is just such an emergent property. Is there any reason to think it should work? No! ...but they do.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

The "stochastic" is the more important word. I've also seen gotchas of "LLM output is better than just random chance, so it can't be stochastic." But nothing about "stochastic" means just flipping a coin randomly. Complexity theory has long since established that emergent properties exist.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

This thread links to Meg Mitchell's post (read that!), but I just want to add that I think people spend too much time on the wrong word of "stochastic parrots." As Mitchell points out, "parroting" doesn't mean "verbatim playback." But I think a lot of people use that as some sort of gotcha.

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Reposted by Michael S. Kirkpatrick

Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

My theory: More than critiques of circular financing, or of dubious product functionality, "stochastic parrots" undermines the foundation that the entire AI boom is built on: The story that the AI industry is building an unfathomably powerful machine god.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

There's also a compounding factor that parents are less likely to be able to pay. SA-12 shows debt per borrower increased by 39% from 2007 to 2025 (again, incomes haven't kept up). So while it's true real COA has decreased (slightly) in the past few years, the soaring before that hasn't been undone.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

From 1995 - 2025, real median income (per FRED) increased 30%. During the same time, real COA increased by 101% (CP-3). The problem with the "costs are falling" narrative is that magnitude matters. In CP-4, changes per decade were 40%, 33%, -3% for published tuition. COA would be even larger incr.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Looking at the report, I will concede the point on this fact: the real cost of attending college has decreased, particularly in the years since COVID. So, yes, it is true that claims that costs are still "soaring" are false. But flipping narrative to "costs are falling" is a bit of overstatement.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Some have answered about A/D but more important is what the two lines mean together. Yes, falling A/D means most money going to over performers (ie, tech). But couple w stable/rising index means those over performers are overvalued and a correction (crash) may be coming soon. So…

static.klipy.com

Hold On To Your Butts - Jurassic Park

Alt: Hold On To Your Butts - Jurassic Park

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

…ah, there it is. Omitting room & board, as well as out-of-state trends is a pretty big omission.

Highlighted text indicates this analysis is “focusing on tuition and academic fees,” is “not including room and board,” and the public college data “only applies to in-state residents.”

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I really wish people understood that stochastic processes can produce correct predictions, but that does not add any evidence of reasoning or judgment that is worth trusting with important decisions.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I can only speak for myself. I whitelist any site based on (a) no auto-playing media, (b) no significant screen real-estate takeover [sticky positioning], and (c) no tracking.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

In other words, my hostility is primarily aimed toward the ad networks, not the content providers.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

My turn to add the "not trying to be aggressive but..." disclaimer on that last [unnecessary] sentence, bc I already understand that. My points were also a thread, not a book. Char. limits shortened "did NOTHING OBSERVABLE to stop bad ads" to "did NOTHING." Forced brevity kills context and nuance.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

All fair points. I was reacting to the framing of "two things" being the cause. I've also seen two decades worth of pro-ad arguments that never even acknowledge the validity of concerns, just blanket statements that ad-blocking is evil freeloading.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

And you know what NEVER happened back then? Right in the middle of a paragraph or sentence, some flashing, screaming annoyance jumps up and says, "LOOK OVER HERE! AND GOOD LUCK FINDING THE TINY X TO MAKE THIS GO AWAY!" Content providers did NOTHING to stop malicious ad design and atrocious UX.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

This take is memory-holing so much of the history of ads. Ads were huge security vulnerabilities (unverified code running on your computer installing drive-by downloads). They also were (and still are) just flat-out anti-user hostility. I grew up in the era of printed newspapers & evening TV news...

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

…and there’s the part I was waiting for that 99.9% of people will miss. Discussions produce learning but not assessment. Writing does both. Get rid of writing and you need new *and completely unmanageable* assessments. 45-minutes for each student’s oral exam would be 50+ hours for me.

“Last semester I permitted my students to use A.I. tools on their final essays in accordance with specific guidelines. Each then had a 45-minute oral exam in which I could audit their understanding of their claims and push them further in their analyses. I was reassured by the results.” The words “each” and “45-minute oral exam” are underlined.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Having said that, though, Fellowship remains the best of the three movies and anyone who says otherwise is just wrong. Of the books, I’d have to go with The Ring Goes East. Meeting Faramir, trying to save Smeagol, the stack of Shelob. Such great parts. And no Tom Bombadil.

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Michael S. Kirkpatrick @kirkpams.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I remember being so excited when the movies came out and then being *so irate* at the opening monologue of Fellowship. The Black Riders were so terrifying in the book because you didn’t know what they were…and they just gave it away! Killed one of my favorite parts.

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