iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by John Laudun

angela zhou @angelamczhou.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

blog: I argue that we need auditable AI now, because current AI developments threaten auditability of AI systems for ordinary regulatory compliance, and we can't figure out “what to do next about AI” without common knowledge about AI (mis)alignment. separatedhyperplane.substack.com/p/we-need-au...

separatedhyperplane.substack.com

We need Auditable AI to figure out “what to do next about AI”

Mandatory, not voluntary, third-party governance, accountability, and transparency

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 06/09/2026

I recently came across @typst.app, a markup language that successfully splits the difference between the ease of writing markdown and the power of LaTeX. I was up and running with lecture notes within an hour or two, having come up with my own template, working with an LLM to brainstorm dimensions.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

I have to admit that Gemma 4 (E4B Instruct) comes awfully close to frontier models on most tasks for which I seek LLM input. It runs comfortably on an M5 MacBook Air with the stock 16GB of RAM.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Way to be customer-oriented, @nationalcarrental.bsky.social: a 169-page user agreement?

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I want to believe that local LLMs can be as productive as so-called frontier models, but, dang, did Llama 3.1 fail hard this morning when I prompted it to “provide the total number of possible unique outcomes for the following dice rols: 2d6, d6 x d6, and d66.”

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

The amount of cross-posting the modern internet wants is crazy-making: Academia.edu, @researchgate.bsky.social, @linkedin.com, @orcid.org … The same goes across multiple domains. I really long for the federated conception of the internet. Even @doctorow.pluralistic.net ends up cross-posting!

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

I honestly don't think it should be this hard to view recent transactions on an Apple card from your Mac.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

Qwen 3 does a nice job of taking the title page from a JSTOR PDF and turning the citation information into a bibtex file you can import readily into your reference manager. (I use @zotero.org.) That saves some serious time. (Claude also does this easily, FTR, Qwen 3 4B runs easily on my laptop!)

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Reposted by John Laudun

Operation Democracy ✊🏼 Free DC! @democracyop.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Wow. I mean, this shit isn’t really surprising coming from Texas A&M, but it’s still disturbing.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Apparently @americanairlines.bsky.social was okay flying a plane into Cincinnati with the incorrect safety cards but not out again. The upshot is my wife is now stuck in Cincinnati because that delay meant the flight is now delayed by weather.

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Reposted by John Laudun

AAUP @aaup.org · 27/05/2026

“What we’re highlighting is that there’s a broad number of faculty who have significant, significant concerns about their ability to teach, research, do public-facing work without punishment or restraint.” —Daniel Martinez HoSang, Yale AAUP President @yaleaaup.bsky.social @aftct.bsky.social

insideinvestigator.org

Survey finds Yale faculty self-censoring, fear political consequences

Read More at Inside Investigator >>

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

I am not that smart, but somehow I find it easier to set up and use API keys for LLMs in Python than in any of the GUI apps I have downloaded and tried. I suspect it might be that most apps want you to subscribe to their infrastructure as opposed to using stuff to which you already subscribe. Sigh.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

For those who hadn't already seen this: Quanta has a nice oral history, or at least reporting with lengthy quotations from people on the ground, about how LLMs took over NLP.

quantamagazine.org

When ChatGPT Broke an Entire Field: An Oral History | Quanta Magazine

Researchers in “natural language processing” tried to tame human language. Then came the transformer.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I get the Vance move to support Orban, both want to players in the threatening global oligarchy, happy to get scraps from the high table. But what's up with Albania making Eric Adams a citizen? That came out of nowhere.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 10/02/2026

Sometimes I agree with Reddit.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Well so much for replacing humans with AI because AI never sleeps …

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

When @dmimno.bsky.social crosses over, he crosses over big:

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Sometimes you find yourself caught in a loop…

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Has anyone else encountered "ChatGPT" can't count. In trying to develop a corpus of generated texts — to see if we can turn up emergent folklore — I have a prompt that asks GPT to return 100 items. 3.5 Turbo returned 308. 4.1 returned 102. If this is a known thing, links to discussion pls!

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

So I decided to move my blog to @wordpress.com, but it feels like I'm getting nickel and dimed. Do I really need to be a business in order to get better permalinks?

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Reposted by John Laudun

The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

🔥POWERFUL AD ABOUT ICE AGENTS: “What will you say when your kids ask you about your day? A mask can’t hide you from your neighbors, your family, God… you can walk away, but the shame will follow you home.”

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 26/11/2025

Much the same thing is happening in the USA, but R1s are not protesting since they gain from it.

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Reposted by John Laudun

Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people. —Harry Truman, 1952

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

@zotero.org has many followers but has not posted anything? Mike check?

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

@pbs.org's various Youtube channels are well worth checking it. Here's one from PBS Terra: www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxp...

youtube.com

These Ancient Footprints Rewrite North American History

YouTube video by PBS Terra

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

I would like Apple News better if I could follow the WSJ reporting and never have to see a WSJ opinion. Anyone know how to do this?

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Loading a 482MB audiobook onto my phone, I thought to myself, "Well, that would have fit on a CD." And I realized I have a host of obsolete measurements in my head: 4.7GB on a DVD. 360k on a single-sided floppy. What measurements do others still carry around?

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

Well played, Best Choice. Well played.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 25/08/2025

I remember Henry Glassie once exclaiming that the phone book — remember those? — should include the times one was available to be phoned. I am reminded after a series of texts from an eager grad student starting at 10:30 last night. Different bio-clocks; different assumptions.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Why oh why is it so hard to add an essay published in a collection (edited by someone other than the essay author) to @zotero.org? A "Book Section" does not have a separate field for author. What am I missing?

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Helluva cover. I think I'm more interested in David Golumbia's book — because I think it offers greater insight — but that doesn't mean this book doesn't do some necessary work:

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

For those not familiar with Knowledge Commons, they offer an impressive array of features — digital repository, blogging, microblogging, and more — and at little to no cost. And they are building a foundation for the long haul.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 20/08/2025

Is it weird that I am regularly surprised that macOS can't remember where I prefer windows when I switch from the docked monitor to just the laptop. It's always just one screen, and I pretty much put my windows in the same place (and size). This is something the OS should just do. @sixcolors.com

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

I've always enjoyed teaching Dick's "A Maze of Death" in my course where we explore disembodied AI. The readings stretch from Forster's "The Machine Stops" to Leinster's "A Logic Named Joe" through Ellison's "I Have No Mouth" and, of course, "The Forbin Project" to whatever texts are current.

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Reposted by John Laudun

Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 18/08/2025

Nathan is trying to create a sputnik panic single-handedly, and I am here for it even if I'm actually more scared of most of these logos than of China

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

This may be the article I now forward to people when they ask about AI/LLMs. (I'm assuming the author adopts the metaphor "bag of words" with full awareness of the term's history.) www.experimental-history.com/p/bag-of-wor...

experimental-history.com

Bag of words, have mercy on us

OR: Claude will you go to prom with me?

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

I'm just going to pin this here: Microsoft Office's so-called "safe links" are a real PITA, especially in the era of Zoom meetings, etc. They mess that up regularly. (Purposefully?)

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

There's a new, and very distinguished CTO for the Library of Virginia. Is it @scottbot.bsky.social you ask? Why, yes, yes it is. Congrats!

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 28/07/2025

I'm a folklorist in a film, or symbologist if in a Dan Brown novel, and I can instantly decode obscure characters and cryptic passages. I'm especially fast when I have absolutely no idea of the context.

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 24/07/2025

Conservatives can't decide: abolish the U.S. Department of Education or have it authorize the takeover of public higher education by the "right kind of people." Republicans used to be for what made the country economically strong. They appear willing to sacrifice strength for "correctness."

lailluminator.com

Louisiana to join conservative higher education accrediting body • Louisiana Illuminator

Louisiana will join six other university systems in the South to form a new alternative accrediting body favored by conservatives

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

I'm really enjoying some of the interesting approaches to network analyses by @notdavidyt.bsky.social. This one on character appearances across a long-running series is very compelling: www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIZn...

youtube.com

Every One Piece Character in One Massive Chart

YouTube video by Actually Not David

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John Laudun @laudun.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

It's not a story line (narrative framework?) that I find particularly compelling, but damn do I dig the vibe this game has … www.backerkit.com/c/projects/j...

backerkit.com

Last Train to Bremen

A storytelling game of four doomed musicians and their poor decisions.

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