iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Mike Headley (He/Him)

Special Submissions Call! Undercity Magic! The Castle gates are open for a special submissions call from 9 October to 13 November! The theme?? Undercity Magic!

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

I can't help but think that the big publishers could, in fact, be doing more for 1) their authors, and 2) (more importantly), THEIR FUCKING STAFF. Like. The death of books has been a myth for over a decade. There's MONEY to be made in books. So anyway. I'm skeptical of all of em.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

In general, in my experience if someone is going "It should be simple to grow bigger and earn more money..." I find they're DOGEing themselves and not understanding that hard problems are, in fact, hard. There's SO MUCH that goes into running big companies. And yet, AND YET...

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

I dunno. Specifically, I don't want to Dunning-Kruger myself here. I don't know anything about KKR, I'm just skimming a 300 slidedeck for investor day 2024 look I could get stuff wrong. Business isn't as simple as "You have 500 billion, give more" because they do own a LOT of companies...

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

You're telling me that in an industry with as much cultural cache as publishing, *BASED IN NEW YORK CITY* your starting wage is fuckin FORTY-EIGHT-THOUSAND-DOLLARS? That would have been starting professor pay at my community college. Fifteen years ago. IN FUCKIN KANSAS.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

The point is, they deal in *BILLIONS*. That is the order of magnitude you're dealing with here. And look I know "we own 500 billion dollars in financial assets" is not the same as a checkbook. I know profit is not the same as revenue and fixed costs go up, etc etc etc. But STILL...

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

To be clear, I'm not an expert in corporate finance or the byzantine corporate structures that can exist. I know KKR lists 2700 employees in their presentation and I somehow doubt the 1500 S.S. employees are part of that.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

OKAY BUT WAIT ONE LAST THING. ONE JUST TINY TINY LAST THING. Simon and Schuster has ~1500 employees. They got bought by KKR Investment in 2023 for like a billion dollars. KKR, according to their investor presentation day 2024, manages over 500 *billion* in assets.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 5h

Anyway now I'm grumpy and I've got shit to do. I'll ttyl.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

The staff have gotta be PISSED.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

I'm gonna give commands to a thing that can hallucinate and expect it to do the same thing every time when THAT'S NOT HOW THEY WORK. "Oh you just need to give a very clear prompt and set up the atlas and etc etc" If I need that level of precision, you know what I use? Code.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

OKAY BUT A PERSONAL SOAP BOX FOR A SEC - Even our CTO at work was like "We want to automate the boring stuff" BITCH HOW THE FUCK DO YOU AUTOMATE *SHIT* WITH A CHAT BOT? (Also I'm not asking; if you come in my mentions well actually here's how I will absolutely block you)

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

"HHHmmm what does this SQL thing actually DO-" "It stores structured data at scale at speed and it powers everything we do." "So tell me about this Python is it like an animal-" "I can script stuff. Computer do things fast."

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

I also love how this implementation is emblematic of everything I hate about AI. They bought Claude licenses. Then t hey were like "Okay guys lets come up with use cases on how to implement it" YALL. GOOD PRODUCTS DON'T HAVE YOU HAVE TO SIT DOWN AND FIGURE OUT A USE CASE.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

Gosh. Why is my skepticism of trad pub increasing as of late. Why could it possibly be? (OKAY TO BE CLEAR: I think the people in trad pub are underpaid because massive conglomerates want ~profit~).

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Reposted by Mike Headley (He/Him)

Baldur Bjarnason @baldurbjarnason.com · 10h

“There's little that's "inevitable" about AI | deadSimpleTech” deadsimpletech.com/blog/llms-arent-… > The inevitability of LLMs, therefore, is of a piece with the inevitability of chemical weapons. Weak players who are fighting other weak players might well find some use for them.

deadsimpletech.com

There's little that's "inevitable" about AI | deadSimpleTech

The glib response here would be to say that no technology is ever inevitable and that everything is contingent. This has the advantages of being technically true and sounding wise, but unfortunately t...

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

Happy birthday! I hope you treat yourself, avoid any sort of existential N-percent life crisises, and have a lovely day. I appreciate all you do.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 6h

O M EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE THAT'S SO EXCITING!

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

If you want to know what kind of person I am the other day at the dayjob I was in the elevator pretending to be Godzilla and the door opened right and the maintenance guy got on. And then as the doors closed he was like. "...was that Godizlla?" And I was like "TOTALLY WAS!" "Nice."

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I mostly am joking. I definitely am beyond presenting myself as a professional on the internet. I mean ffs this isn't LinkedIn. I am who I am. I squee at doggo pics.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Me: "Just be cool, just be cool, you're trying to present yourself as a professional on the intern- EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE LOOKIT DOGGO PIC SO CUTE.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Ooof. I'm sorry. I don't pretend to know what it's like, by my cyclothymia is like a bi-polar cousin? And it's some shit. So I know bipolar just sucks more. Sending you care.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

YEP. For sure. If we somehow had the world of abundance where we could only work 3 days a week they'd be like "sweet now we're going to charge you to rent shows from us so we can harvest your data to raise your rent."

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

This reminds me. I was telling a co-worker "Yeah I think my boss's boss has learned not to talk to me about AI." Coworker (Appreciatively): "That's because you walk around with a Fuck AI sticker on your notebook."

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Oooo that word is fun to say. Thank you!

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Yeah. If I was her I'd be getting papers ready now because the fact that he's so self centered and just doesn't seem to get it. Ugh. I'm furious FOR her.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I thought that was a wrist thing but I'll take a look and do some digging. Thank you!

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Friends, I need help. My character has like a metal ring worn around their arm. I keep calling it a circlet. Circlets are worn around the head. What's a ring like thing worn around an arm. It's not a bracelet. I don't think it's a bangle. What is it? @hillarymonahan.bsky.social ideas?

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Reposted by Mike Headley (He/Him)

Django Wexler @djangowexler.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Actually, re: bot vs. spammy human, I feel like the Poe's Law of the AI age is that sometimes it's hard to tell humans from AIs, not because the AIs are so good but because some of the humans are so bad.

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Okay but wait. Which is it Django? BEES MADE OF POPCORN? Or POPCORN MADE OF BEES?

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

HOLY CRAP MELISSA WHAT A FRIGGEN TAGLINE

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I hope you're avoiding the crud and that release day went... well sort of smoothly?

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Aside @scistoryteller.bsky.social I ended up picking up a "notebook" esque roll thingy based upon your suggestion for my colored pencils and IT WORKS SOOOOO NICE. Thank you!

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

See this is why I don't do oceans. Sure we THINK it's extinct but do we REALLY know? (Yes, we actually do know)

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Mike Headley (He/Him) @mikeheadley.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

*offers non-space-invasive internet hugs if you want em* Hope it is something that will pass.

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Reposted by Mike Headley (He/Him)

tracey 🌱 🔜 gateway fate 203 @sheepskin.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

gaia online making anti-genAI posts i knew we could always trust u

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