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Lauren Beldi

@laurenbeldi.bsky.social
510 followers 584 following 483 posts

TV news producer by night, sleepy by day. Journalist, knitter, painter, member of several shadowy cabals.

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Reposted by Lauren Beldi
Linda Holmes @lindaholmes.bsky.social · 20h
I heard about this man for the first time in my life today, in a completely different context unrelated to AI, and now here.
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the babahuck @tylerhuckabee.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
from 2001. no one’s doing product testimonials like this anymore. t.co/PEswCtbEZz
Toyota's unease at being associated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda is evident. In its September statement, the company said,
'Toyota does not have a sales or distribution channel in Afghanistan, and we do not export vehicles to that country."
Somewhat less laconic was Wade Hoyt, Toyota's spokesman in New York, who put the best corporate spin on the situation this week.
"It is not our proudest product placement," he said. "But it shows that the Taliban are looking for the same qualities as any truck buyer: durability and reliability."
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Daniel Kibblesmith @kibblesmith.bsky.social · 20h
I am once again asking anyone who interviews Wes Anderson to please finally ask him about Showa Era Godzilla.
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Peggy Sanders @peggysanders.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Yanis Varoufakis: Inflation is again being used as an excuse for acts of vandalism on some of Australia’s important institutions. #auspol www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
The interest rate rise is the wrong medicine and an even worse alibi | Yanis Varoufakis
Inflation is again being used as an excuse for acts of vandalism on some of Australia’s important institutions
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Submitting myself to the ~quarterly utter humiliation ritual of signing back up to a month of photoshop in order to push through a bunch of stationery work and remembering the days when my dad would bring home a burned CD of CS4 from his work and I felt like it was Christmas.
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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
with all respect: i'm losing touch with what AI does because i have no interest in it and it's not my business. nobody worries about me losing touch with developments in particle physics or artificial bull insemination. it's not my fault the richest guys on earth want me to make their toy my life
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JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This level of stupidity doesn’t just happen. You have to work to achieve it.
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Zach Everson @zacheverson.com · 01/10/2026
Here's a list of 64 previous botched executions in the United States. Christa Pike will make 65.
deathpenaltyinfo.org
Botched Executions | Death Penalty Information Center
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) is a national non-profit organization whose mission is to serve the media, policymakers, and the general public…
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8 Matts in a Duffel Bag @scratchbomb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
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Chappell Ellison @chappelltracker.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
today's hardware designers could never conceive of what Kazuo Kawasaki was doing in 1996
A colorful retro computer setup featuring a purple keyboard, a small teal touchpad, and a teal circular CD-ROM drive with a matching keypad-style controller resting on top. The hardware is arranged against a dark background in a vivid purple-and-turquoise color scheme.
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Human Rights Watch @hrw.org · 30/09/2026
The Trump administration’s decision not to invite the leading international election observation body to monitor US midterms fuels fears of serious election-related human rights concerns. This is the first time the US has declined to invite in OSCE monitors since they began observing US elections.
hrw.org
US: Trump Administration Rejects External Election Observers
The Trump administration’s decision not to invite the leading international election observation body to monitor crucial US midterm polls fuels fears of serious human rights concerns around the upcomi...
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Margaret Killjoy @margaret.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Reading, and writing, are holy. I love reading novels because they tell me something. They say: "this is what someone believed enough to dedicate months or years of their life to say." This is just as true for the trashiest pulp as it is for the highest literature.
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👻🕯️ Human Depleted Big Natural Resources🕯️👻 @dagnificent.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
yes and: don't give up at the first, third, fiftieth teacher!! some very good doers are TERRIBLE teachers! don't be fooled by the goodness of the do!
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Tim Gaedke @timgaedke.com · 26/09/2026
talent is a lie
a cartoon picture of a frog throwing a crooked looking clay vase with the words “talent is a lie, just do it anyway”
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
We’re going to forget our addresses, phone numbers and basic math but don’t worry! Instead we’re all going to be able to *checks interview* think above the level of a transistor?
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James Fallows @jfallows.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I still pay for online sub to WaPo, out of support for handful of dogged reporters still there, and despite cravenness of owner, evisceration of whole sections, cheesy ed page, and all the rest. (Please, God, lead Bezos to sell the paper to someone who cares.) But stories like this ...
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Woodrow Peel 🆗🆒 @woodyluvscoffee.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My chakras have aligned against me
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Elizabeth DeLoria, Pope of Chili-Town @yourdadloves.me · 25/09/2026
This documentary is my Odyssey. Give it an Imax release.
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Royce Kurmelovs @roycerk2.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Newcastle University is facing a backlash from conservationists over the appointment of the heir to an Indian oil and gas fortune who runs a controversial mega-zoo as a professor of sustainability."
theguardian.com
Indian oil and gas heir made professor of sustainability at Newcastle University
Incredulity over role for Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest person, who also runs a controversial mega-zoo
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I’m really not sure that “goes rogue” is an accurate description of a behavior that is apparently both habitual and condoned
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More OpenAl Incidents
The company's A.l. went rogue this year at least four additional times, trying to break into government and university sites.
now
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J. P. Gownder (கவுண்டர்) @jgownder.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
AI's catastrophic potential is a self-serving story told by... AI CEOs, motivated by their own interests. By @tressiemcphd.bsky.social
nytimes.com
Opinion | A.I. Is a Threat, but Not in the Way You Think (Gift Article)
The threats from A.I. are real — and they’re ones we know how to deal with.
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jodyvanb @jodyvanb.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Watched a large raccoon cross the street ahead of us,tonight.Thought he was going to the community garden to pilfer some veg, but he squeezed into a storm drain, instead. When we got closer, we could see his little footprints. Wondering what’s going on down there. Raccoon FOMO.
A cast iron storm drain cover with the image of a fish on it. Below, on the street are wet footprints left by a raccoon, leading across the street to the other side where there is another storm drain.
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Ryan Marino, MD @ryanmarino.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I graduated med school in 2014. I was taught-and saw-how hard melanoma was to treat, like a death sentence Since then, new treatments have made it possible for people w/ the most advanced melanoma, like Jimmy Carter, to live to 100! We are killing ourselves by letting them destroy American science
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Ambassador Ken Fairfax (ret) @portlandken.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
The accounting is in: In Oregon there are 111 data centers. The TOTAL number of people employed at data centers is just 2,630, or 0.1% of the labor force. Those 100 data centers consumer 23% of all electricity used in Oregon. Meanwhile, electricity rates skyrocket as more centers are built.
opb.org
Oregon data centers by the numbers: 111 facilities consume nearly one-quarter of state’s power, according to new report
A first-of-its-kind report details the footprint of the controversial facilities.
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Colleen Mondor @chasingray.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Just once, I wish we would fully staff ATC and the technicians who keep it operating. Instead of always saying we need technology to address staff shortages, it would be great to address why we have staff shortages. Also, this use of AI is not smart for safety. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/18/u...
nytimes.com
F.A.A. to Roll Out New A.I. Tool for Washington Airports
The tool, called SMART, will crunch scheduling and weather data to predict and avoid delays. It will be deployed in the Washington region’s three major airports next week.
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ActivistChecklist.org @activistchecklist.org · 19/09/2026
Read this before upgrading to iOS 27 if you have an iPhone 15 or newer that supports "Apple Intelligence." New AI features might send your data (like Signal messages) off your device to Apple's servers It's absurd that we have to work so hard for our privacy :(
eff.org
How to Limit What Apple’s New Siri AI Can Access in iOS 27
Apple’s new operating system is here, and along with it comes a new version of Siri, dubbed with two very familiar letters: AI. As the name suggests, this Siri power-up resembles an AI chatbot more th...
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Going to be saying “Pitipiwpiw wiw wiw” a lot in the next few forevers
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Not a cat, Corel has lied to me
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the original Aloof Wife @cpi.pinball.horse · 15/09/2026
Not even joking here, we are all slowly rebuilding a social ecosystem devastated by austerity, oligarchy, and the pandemic. When you show up to events that speak to you, you are reinforcing the scaffolding of our shared reality. We build shelter for ourselves and structures for the future.
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Ozma @rowyourbot.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Don't forget to get a covid and flu vaccine!
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Viktor Winetrout @viktorwinetrout.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I feel pretty good actually
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Pleased to say none of these quarter-million emails have found me, let alone found me well.
Screenshot of my mail app telling me I have a quarter million unread emails.
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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
The Onion has created a machine that will kill everyone on Earth that is coincidentally running out of money and the only way to slow it down is if my staff and I take a six-week vacation to Cabo San Lucas.
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Ben Paddon 🎃 @benpaddon.net · 13/09/2026
An AI flyer is a brown M&M test. If your event or business is cutting corners by using an AI flyer, where else are you cutting corners? What else are you cheating out on? Why should I be bothered to go somewhere you couldn't be bothered to promote with a little of your own personality?
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public health guy @publichealthguy1.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
more speculation than substance here. while it makes sense to take reasonable precautions w/ unknowns, i'm just not convinced LLMs are anything like the major bioweapons catalyst it's being hyped as. (plus you can't ignore that this is good PR for anthropic. "see! we can regulate ourselves" etc.)
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PBS News @pbsnews.org · 11/09/2026
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said the agency that regulates television "threatened" the show and that an interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, will not air on television but on YouTube. to.pbs.org/4h1MubS
pbs.org
Kimmel says Talarico interview won't air on TV under regulatory pressure from FCC
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel said the agency that regulates television “threatened” the show and that an interview with James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas, will not air on television but on YouTube -- thus bypassing any co...
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Christi👻n Rinc🎃n @christianrincon.com · 11/09/2026
Billionaire bot from Futurama (robot wearing a top hat and monocle)
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Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Bragging about an "exclusive chat" with a blatant PR operation is so funny
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Hildur Knútsdóttir @hildur.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
It's so embarrassing to sleep badly. "Oh, having a home where I feel perfectly safe, with an expensive, comfortable bed with three different types of pillows and the perfect comforter in a dark, quiet room which is also at the perfect temperature just isn't enough for me, actually."
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daryl "rupert pumpkin" b 🏳️‍⚧️ @hypercubexl.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
GDT's reddit AMA spitting fire www.reddit.com/r/movies/com...
reddit comment: 

Hello! Did you intend the ending of Pan’s labyrinth to be real or in Ofelia’s mind?

Guillermo Del Toro's reply: 

My interpretation, and it's exclusively mine, is that it's real.

Because there's two things. One is what people call “The Shining Question.” The Shining Question is, Who opens the door for Jack to get out of the fridge? And Ofelia is in an attic with a guard outside her door, and she draws the door with the magic chalk, and she shows up in the labyrinth. So, the only way she could have gone into the labyrinth is the magic chalk. And the flower is real at the end. The flower that blooms in the dead tree. And the reason I think it’s real is because—and this is why I'm in favor of the human factor in art—I think that art does transform the world. You know?

Think about it for a second. One of the goals, with all this movement, is to make you believe that art is vulgar. That art is nothing special, and anybody can do art. That is like me telling you that I'm faster at running than Usain Bolt but I “run” in my motorcycle. Well, that's not the same. That’s not the same at all.

Art is important, and they want you to believe it isn't. It's part of the idea of control. The goal is not to have artificial intelligence. The goal is to foster natural stupidity. The goal is to foster you not looking for answers, and to trust yourself entirely to an engine. Look at the way we are dipping our toes into these things. We are starting to ask the machine, Is this true? For now, there's a correlation between reality and what the answers of the machine are. For now. But soon, we won't even investigate further. We will be told it's true. And if the machine is in the hands of somebody who should not be trusted, then your reality has been completely and utterly fucked. Because your intelligence ends at the question. You don't seek the answer. It's given to you.Q: You recently mentioned that AI creates 'semi-compelling screensavers' and that you'd 'rather die' than use it. As a filmmaker who relies heavily on practical effects and creature design, what do you think is the biggest thing lost when a computer generates an image instead of a human hand?

GDT:

The three quarters of the process that gave you the chance to think of the idea that people don't think about without that process. Meaning, AI can get you to the middle really fast, but there's a dialectic with the process that gets you to that top 10%. I'll give you an example with the Pale Man.

We sculpted it as an old man, with a face. And then I said, Let's take out the face. This happened because I saw a photo of a manta ray and the poster for Don Coscarelli’s Phantasm. That combination, which happened at two different times during a week or a month, are not permutations that are chemically part of an equation. They are alchemy. And then I said, Take out the face, and then I said, Let's put the eyes on the hands. This triangulation happens because I spent a month or two months living with the idea of this creature. And it's not linear.

AI is like a super-fast engine that makes semi-sentient permutations of things that are already done. Creation is things that have never been done. Coming to exist.

And the second thing is the loss of the apprenticeship that one has as an artist. You're never a master; you're always an apprentice. This is a kinship I have with, for example, Chris Nolan. When he showed me The Odyssey, there’s a scene when Matt Damon is floating in the stormy ocean and I asked him—because we were talking about practical effects, and how great it is and that we both always use a maquette or a model—and I asked him, How did you do it? He said, “We put him in a storm in the ocean.”

And you're gonna find that 30% of a great image occurs accidentally. You know, either a drop of water hits the lens, or the camera shakes. I remember when in 1993, '94, Jim…
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 09/09/2026
The last few days is like a DDOS attack from these companies 🙄 I just finished drafting an op-ed and then see another OMG Machine god is going to kill everyone 😱 post Ok walk me through the step by step action this super intelligent chatbot takes to render everyone us extinct?
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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
So many people don’t get how “I don’t have much money but I’m gonna put the tiny bit I have into at least something” is so much more appealing than “lol spinning the free art slot machine fuck me and fuck you dumb shits” is.
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Trevor A. Branch @trevorabranch.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
This is seismic news for fisheries scientists. Northern cod is *the* iconic symbol of total fisheries collapse due to overfishing (and other factors) *and* the iconic symbol of a complete failure to recover for decades afterwards. This is like announcing the complete recovery of bison on land.
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Sold and handled repairs for expensive fountain pens. Got that job first day of undergrad, later left it to be in charge of programming for a giant outdoor screen. Saw a lot of kids movies. Got paid to watch a lot of YouTube.
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tunes to make you run away @whippoorwont.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
"people are anthropomorphizing LLMs because they are so astonishingly good at processing human thought and language" people will anthropomorphize a chair if you put the stitches in the right place.
chair with a "face"
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This stuff always reads like the monologue in Frankenstein where Frankenstein is building the monster a wife but then stops because it would be *too powerful* because he’s just *such an amazing scientist*. I guess he doesn’t performatively beg for regulation because he can’t monetise the wife.
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ACARS Drama @acarsdrama.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Air to Ground Message: EMERGENCY SNACK KIT NEEDS REPLACEMENT Area: Austin, TX, USA Type: Bombardier CRJ700 A: #ae1da417fc0 F: #f13b6758adc
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Lauren Beldi @laurenbeldi.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Okay okay I’m doing the bloody cards
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Meowdelyn🏳️‍⚧️ @meowdelyn.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
These "our AI is alive, and also a little scary. Maybe even sexy?" Posts get a lot easier to understand when you frame them as guerrilla advertising, rather than sincere suprise or a desire to inform.
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