iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 16h

Good stuff. I agree with your thesis!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 16h

not sure I’ve ever smashed the ”preorder” button harder

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Reposted by Christopher Mims

Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 18h

Holy slime mold! This is tomorrow, 10/6!! See you soon!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 16h

This feels like one of those “small” engineering changes that could unlock 10x the market, easily

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I mean I wrote a whole book about this so believe me I know -- otoh I've been messing with stuff lately that has caused me to update some of my priors

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I want this!! sadly it is the opposite of my reality in this area (it is hell)

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

well I'm currently fighting our expense reporting system (for example)

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

no fair, this is *my* strategy

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

lol. truth. you can build in checkpoints; the best systems are gonna ask permission before doing anything substantive

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

so interesting. for security reasons? Feels like cleaning up an inbox is what these Claude cowork-esque things were made for

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

journalist request: Are you, like me, ever annoyed that your work accounts are the one place you can't use AI to automate precisely the kind of tedious, soul-sucking tasks where it could be of the most help? If so, I would like to hear from you. (DMs open)

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I was talking with my teen about this today and I was like "a lot of this stuff assumes being 10% more efficient at everyday tasks, at the risk of a bot getting it completely wrong, is appealing to most people"

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I use this trick for finding things I know are in interviews but can’t remember the exact phrasing of!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Thank you for this tip. I have a talk coming up for which I have note but not slides…

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

ive done this at points in the past, it helps!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Well you’re gonna love this one. It’s got so much context without being tedious

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I must say spending much less time on social media has done WONDERS for my mental health and overall outlook. And I seem to be better informed than before, and have more agency. It’s almost as if there’s an ideal dose of it and it’s been designed / stumbled into a form that is not good for us…

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I also wonder if it’s “dead” on here precisely because the discourse has been spiraling for so long. Technical AI discussions on X aren’t dead. Reddit is doing fine. instagram is ok if you curate it carefully. Even Substack is thriving!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Yeah. It makes me think about the reasons that Reddit works, when it does. Is the Casio Watches subreddit full of dorky bonhomie because of affordances or moderation or because it’s a monoculture? Maybe all three.

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

You’re welcome! Did you go tawdry or military history?

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

…and fresh guardrails. What would a social network without rancor look like? How would you create such a thing? How would you algorithmically or through design enforce such a thing? Would anyone even want it, in 2026? I’ve no idea.

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

…has cost me ever since. Not posting anymore (just friendly replies like this; I hope this comes across as earnest and not pedantic or rude) has granted me fresh perspective. it’s made me realize Old Twitter will never come back without a fundamental rethink of the design of these systems…

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I was there and it was wonderful. I joined Twitter at my first SXSW, which was one year after it launched. I made friends, I got jobs. It gave me so much. But then the wider public joined up and humans do what they do. I feel like not admitting that these systems tend in a particular direction…

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The Greatest Fury, which is quite good tho if you just want to read a fun true crime romp that paints the city in vivid colors I’d actually recommend this instead en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_...

en.wikipedia.org

Empire of Sin (book) - Wikipedia

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Just wait until all the food is cell cultured in big vats, we won’t even have to eat substitutes anymore (it will still be vegan in the sense that no animals will be harmed)

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Am currently reading a history of New Orleans and practically everything wonderful about that city has a similarly complicated history

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

I feel the same but isn’t arguing what text based social media is for, given its design and affordances? Like, if we wanted something different, we’d have to decamp to a different platform with fundamentally different features, no?

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

another thing he misses is that modern arms mean being smart and accurate is way more important than doing a hundred pushups or whatever made up measure he thinks matters

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

this is the thing about automation, as every automation Knower will tell you: you automate the repetitive tasks; the more variability and idiosyncracy there is (aka the real world) the fewer zeroes you get after the decimal on reliability, pretty soon the results are unacceptable

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

there are going to be so so so many stories of disasters when agents with full access to users' everything make huge mistakes there is no harness or minder on earth that can catch every single edge case

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

now I'm extra glad I didn't write about them when they were pitching themselves as a "tech company" (somehow)

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

love Peter Watts, didn't know about this story tho. ty for the pointer!

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

this is the best short science fiction I've read in years

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

tech journalist who talks to everyday users as often as he can: you are absolutely correct

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

ah but some of us are using it to do less work while remaining the same level of productive (alas this is always only a temporary state)

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Heartbreaking. I once attended one of his talks and got the chance to tell him he was my inspiration for writing about climate change. He said something like “oh no!” and laughed. He was so kind to a (at the time) young writer.

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Alphafold was instrumental in the mrna Covid vaccine right?

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

oh damn, right up my alley, ty

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Good piece. Also this reminds me I’ve been wanting to say that you’re one of the reasons I gladly pay for an Atlantic subscription.

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Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

but worrying about superintelligence helps us ignore any responsibility we might have for present dangers! You’d take that from us??

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