iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Not saying Anthropic or OpenAI are sure things, but this analysis by John Gruber of Anthropic's IPO prospectus sounds very similar to bearish 1997 Amazon IPO analysis. Of course it's also similar to the telecom and broadband bubble companies of the same era, so… daringfireball.net/linked/2026/...

daringfireball.net

Anthropic’s IPO Prospectus Is a Fucking Doozy

Link to: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/anthropics-ipo-prospectus-shows-sweeping-ai-vision-surging-costs-2026-09-28/

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 22h

Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, socialized healthcare, and a great team of doctors and nurses, there's a very good chance I'm one more round of chemo and a surgery away from going from Stage 4 cancer to No Evidence of Disease.

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Stefan Hostetter @steho.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Truly worth digging into. The Toronto of the past that is based on car commuting and sprawling single detached homes votes overwhelmingly against Chow. The Toronto of the future feels very differently.

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Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

There is a moment at the very very end of Abdul El-Sayed's podcast with Ezra Klein (book recommendation section) where he talks about the idea of "speaking truth to pain" and this will be staying with me for an extremely long time. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/25/o...

But there’s also something about truth to pain. We talk a lot about truth to power, but I think it’s actually a lot harder to speak truth to pain. I say that as someone who went to medical school, realizing that in a lot of our politics right now, we’ve got to get a lot better at speaking truth to pain if we’re going to get through some of these challenges that we have.

What does “truth to pain” mean?

It’s one thing to look power in the eye and say: You’re wrong about this. But there’s a way in which pain is very difficult to reason with. Because when somebody is in their pain, they’re in their trauma. They see that pain, and they may not see what’s causing it.

I remember just very explicitly being in a trauma ward with a gunshot wound patient and watching this big guy with his hand on his gunshot wound. All the folks are trying to pull his hand off his pain, that point of his gunshot wound, this clear vulnerability.

And this emergency room doctor had the presence of mind to be like: Everyone, stop. And she looks him in the eyes, and she’s like: I get that really hurts, and I’m so sorry that you’re here. You don’t want to be here. We don’t want you to be here. But if you don’t let us fix this, you could die. So I’m going to take your hand, and I’m going to move it off, OK? Because I need to get there so that you can live.

She was speaking truth to pain. He understands he’s at the hospital, he needs care, but he also doesn’t want anybody to touch the wound. Which is a natural thing. And I think it is a really great metaphor for how we think about a lot of these challenges we talked about today.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 29/09/2026

His “Anthropic is evil because they are trying to be righteous” is right up there for me too. They tend to discuss potential risks more dramatically than necessary, but it’s better than companies like Palantir or Anduril who lean right into it (and Thompson seems to have no issue with).

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 29/09/2026

Two new AI tells I'm seeing everywhere lately: • "Two x, One y" (e.g. "Two Sources, One Shared Trait") headlines. • "Eyebrow" text above every headline (e.g. "The Studio" text in the attached screenshot).

Screenshot of a AI-generated web page layout.

Eyebrow header text: The Studio

Header text: Hive was built for the kind of unhurried appointment that's becoming hard to find — a quiet room, real coffee, a conversation before scissors ever touch your hair.

Body text: Founded by Ava Marin in a converted bungalow off Plant Street, the studio takes its name from the small, devoted teams of artisans she trained with in Milan. The work is collaborative. The room is calm. The clients are seen by name.

Everything we use — from the low-ammonia color line to the bond-building treatments to the chairs themselves — was chosen for the long view. Hair you can grow out gracefully. A space that ages well.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 28/09/2026

Billionaire Dunnig-Kruger is a hell of drug.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 28/09/2026

The main reason it should be in Montreal every year is so that it's convenient for me to attend in person. I'm sure the UCI would agree with this ;)

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 28/09/2026

This is really impressive!

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026

Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 27/09/2026

Both the women's and men's World Championship races were stellar this year. They should probably just hold them in Montreal every year from now on.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 27/09/2026

Morphine somehow has a new album coming out this year?! 2026 may redeem itself yet. youtu.be/UqIfuVG4xUo?...

youtu.be

Morphine - Cocoon (Official Music Video)

YouTube video by Morphine (Official)

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 27/09/2026

I’m curious about the economic impacts on small towns. Do we know what percentage of discretionary consumer spending is being siphoned out of communities by online gambling? My lazy napkin math estimate is something like 2-3%, which would be bad news for local businesses.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 26/09/2026

Just finished the second episode of 70 Up tonight. It was so wonderful to see Peter back for the final installment, and Nick's segment was predictably tear-wrenching. What an incredible accomplishment to pull off this documentary series over the course of 63 years.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 26/09/2026

I have been doing this wrong for 35 years. 🤦

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 25/09/2026

A woman in a colon cancer support group I belong to posts about four of these a day. While I'd usually scroll right past them and roll my eyes, I'm genuinely happy for her. It might not be high art, but it's clearly bringing her a lot of comfort.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 24/09/2026

I'm a bit of an anxious patient at the dentist, so I tried doing breathwork during my appointment yesterday. Ended up so relaxed that Oura thought I was taking a nap.

Oura app screenshot showing that it detected a nap during the time I was in the dentist's chair.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 24/09/2026

The best/worst part of waiting over an hour in the rush line to see John Wilson's The History of Concrete (and not getting in 😭) was telling passerby that yes, we were all standing in line to see a documentary about concrete.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 23/09/2026

You haven't lived until you've loaded software off a cassette tape.

A vintage RadioShack TRS-80 desktop computer, featuring a silver monitor displaying a video game, an integrated keyboard, and an external cassette storage device on the left.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 23/09/2026

I do worry that frontier models will end up locking us into today’s languages and libraries. Why build new software infrastructure when coding agents are dramatically better with the tools that already have millions of examples in their training data?

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 22/09/2026

I think you could reanimate an 18th century president who had never even experienced electricity or indoor plumbing and they wouldn't sound this dumb talking about AI.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 22/09/2026

Well, maybe "really good" is premature, but it WORKS now, which is something.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 22/09/2026

OK, Siri is really good now.

A screenshot of a conversation with Siri. The user asks, "When did I buy my iPhone?" and Siri responds with the purchase date and location of an iPhone Air. The user then asks, "What was the previous iPhone I purchased?" and Siri correctly identifies it as an iPhone 15 Pro, providing the purchase date. (This alt tag was also generated by Siri)

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 21/09/2026

Yeah that one was fun! Episode 8 ("Orders of Magnitude") is probably the best episode of the season, so you still have that to look forward to.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 21/09/2026

I'm sorry but this show is criminally under-appreciated. Easily in the top 10 of the century so far. I should start a rewatch in protest. www.nytimes.com/shared/v1/cl...

A screenshot of the NY Times Top 100 Shows of the 21st Century list.

96 HALT AND CATCH FIRE
2014–2017

This drama began in the early days of the personal computer revolution — before social media, before FOMO, before A.I. angst — to tell the story of a quartet of tech pioneers who looked at those clunky beige desktop boxes and saw a kaleidoscopic future. Computers were “the thing that gets us to the thing,” the latter thing being connection, empowerment, even a new kind of art. What began as a familiar tale of business-suite intrigue — “Mad Men” with processors — became a rich, heartfelt, human exploration of the costs and rewards of work and the necessity of failure. Its portrait of ’80s and ’90s techno-optimism may seem quaint now, but its rendering of the love of creation remains bleeding-edge. — James Poniewozik

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 21/09/2026

Found an AI slop genre that infuriates me even more than AI restaurant images: concert posters. Even though this is only a local bar band of middle-aged dudes likely happy to just get out of the house, concert posters have such a rich history. It would be sad to lose that to slop.

Very obviously AI-generated concert poster for a local rock band.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 20/09/2026

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is pretty fun, and has space spiders.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 20/09/2026

Apologies in advance if Brad²ford makes this part of his mayoral campaign platform.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 20/09/2026

Thinking about moving because my neighbourhood makes it hard to justify buying an e-cargo bike. My grocery store and local restaurants are 400m away, doctor is 600m, even my weekly hospital visits and the lakefront are only 1km through the park. High Park is TOO convenient of a neighbourhood!

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fluids_guru @fluidsguru.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I don’t understand the hand-wringing reaction to claims that nueral networks have a 10% chance of destroying civilisation. Fossil fuel companies have a 100% chance of initiating a mass extinction event. Maybe we could address that?

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 18/09/2026

Good rules by Robin Sloan for using AI to build personal software (which everyone should be doing, it's a lot of fun). www.robinsloan.com/lab/ask-for-...

Rules for personal software produced with the help of AI agents:

1. You must actually and consistently use anything you build for two months before posting about it.

2. Ideally, never post about it. (I know I am breaking this rule, but my purpose is pedagogical, and anyway, I’ve got more apps I didn’t tell you about.)

3. Don’t let the AI agent name the app. You pick the name.

4. Don’t distribute the app, not even for free. Don’t post the code on GitHub. This is not software for glory; it is software for you.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 18/09/2026

Don't worry, it never comes up again.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 18/09/2026

As a lifelong fan of Star Trek, I'm so bummed that this season of Strange New Worlds feels like such a wasted opportunity. So many good actors, so many awful episodes.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 17/09/2026

Oh yeah, Netherlands was a complete miss on my part! I haven't been to NZ yet, but I wouldn't be surprised they are top tier.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 17/09/2026

New daily affirmation just dropped.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 17/09/2026

I really wish AI doomers would look more at the Industrial Revolution and 20th-century automation to see how AI adoption is actually likely to play out. We're very much in the "where does the steam engine go" phase of things right now.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 16/09/2026

I still think it would be fun to own a bike shop slash cafe slash cool hangout spot, I would just need to be rich enough that I never need the shop to turn a profit.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 16/09/2026

Had a call with a bike shop today about a project, owner mentioned that he used to work in tech. Me: "That's funny, opening a bike shop is my escapist career fantasy." Him: "It was mine too. Now my fantasy is selling the shop and going back into tech."

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 16/09/2026

This is amazing, something I've wanted for years. Thank you!

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 15/09/2026

My personal rankings: 1. Australia 2. Japan 3. US 4. Sweden 5. Denmark 6. Germany 7. Canada 8. England 9. Switzerland 10. France (thank god they have pastries)

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 15/09/2026

Nobody has done more to turn people against AI than Google AI Overviews and Microsoft Copilot. It’s many people’s only exposure to LLMs, and they are not wrong to walk away thinking they suck.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 15/09/2026

I'm also going to go out on a limb and assume you don't weigh 4000 lbs like the average American car, greatly reducing the damage you can do if you misjudge your rolling stop.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 15/09/2026

🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀫🀆🀆 83% done with chemo. Responding so well that the oncologist & surgeon are starting to talk about one minor surgery to finish things off instead of two major surgeries. Trying not to get my hopes too high, but it's hard not to think about having a normal life by the end of the year.

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hikikomorphism @hikikomorphism.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

"The idea becomes the machine that makes the art" -Sol LeWitt, 1967

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 14/09/2026

Working on the Randonneurs Ontario calendar for 2027, I’ve got 33 brevets planned for the Toronto chapter, with 4 full Super Randonneur series for Paris-Brest-Paris qualification. That’s a crazy amount of events. If you like cycling long distances, join us! www.randonneursontario.ca/calendar/tor...

randonneursontario.ca

Toronto Chapter Calendar | Randonneurs Ontario

View upcoming brevets and populaires from the Toronto chapter of Randonneurs Ontario.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 13/09/2026

It's nice when a Spanish rider on a Spanish team wins the Spanish grand tour. France and Italy, step it up!

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 13/09/2026

Just crossed 1,000 commits to a project I've been working on for several months where I've looked at less than 1% of the code, and is more performant, secure, and maintainable than anything I've built on my own.

Github screenshot showing 1,010 commits to a git repository.

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Mark Allen @markallen.io · 13/09/2026

This would be amazing. Do it.

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