iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Matthew Kay

Dan of the Year @downwithdan.bsky.social · 19h

When you have no concept of how people engage with music

nicksaraev ~
@nicksaraev
X.com
I am not joking when I say this.
Spotify, Apple Music, and streaming in general is over.
Al music is now very, very good. You just don't know yet because all Al music circulating today is from ~2-3 generations ago.
Suno v6 pro et al has solved infinite personalized music.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 20h

"17-year-old boy" is non-gendered

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 20h

every 17-year-old boy who reads The Fountainhead will follow one of three paths: Eliezer Yudkowsky, Ron Paul, or growing the fuck up

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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 26/09/2026

As a former pretentious little shit who grew out of it, rationalists (et al) annoy the piss out of me because they are adults with the mentality of tweens - they are somehow still convinced they are the greatest geniuses who have ever walked the earth. It is the worldview of an arrogant baby.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 28/09/2026

I think I've discovered a new outlier removal technique

Scatterplot of US states showing Trump's vote share in the 2024 election (y axis) vs Google search rate for testosterone booster in 2024 (x axis). Fairly linear positive relationship from roughly (40%, 35%) to (90%, 70%) +/- 5-10%. Overlaid with a crudely-drawn phallus in red that surrounds all points except New Mexico at roughly (75%, 45%).

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Gabe The Engineer @gdbassett.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

So, if you give Siri AI. Or Gemini on phone/browser. Or Muse. Or whatever access to all your stuff. Even if it lives on your device. What keeps it from pulling an OpenAI and collaborating with all the other on-device AIs on some defunct car parts message board?

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 28/09/2026

It seems like a fundamentally broken idea from a security and privacy perspective...

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 27/09/2026

The DOS question is interesting. We already live in a world where most of us get more email than a person can reasonably handle. Maybe a positive part of AI will be the death of email? Though I imagine the real consequence will be an expectation that everyone has AI screening their email.

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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

If I found login credentials for a US government website and accessed it, I would go to jail. Just saying

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Katie Martin @katie0martin.ft.com · 25/09/2026

I have blamed The agents That hacked Your website And which You probably Reasonably thought I controlled Forgive me I am rich And unaccustomed To taking responsibility

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tj mahr 🤘 @tjmahr.com · 25/09/2026

look at this beast

screenshot of page thumbnails for supplement materials document

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 25/09/2026

that shit is *supplemental* (complimentary)

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 24/09/2026

And the missing followup: "... Federal prosecutors did not respond when asked if charges will be brought against OpenAI under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act."

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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 24/09/2026

OpenAI created autonomous hacking software and left it running for hours and days with no one watching

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My Password is Louvre @bmceuen.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Just a reminder that MattY has endorsed the race science work of an adjudicated defender of pedophilia

1982 cover of André Cymone’s album Livin’ In The New Wave that has since become a meme. The text says You can always MAKE FUN OF MATT YGLESIAS it's always morally correct

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 23/09/2026

I still remember the Old West, before Big Pipe, when all varieties of pipes could be found and any self-respecting Codeslinger rolled his own...

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 23/09/2026

Basically: x <- x |> ... is x %<>% ... and x |> with(...) is x %$% ...

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 23/09/2026

There are! I used to use %<>% and %$% a fair bit, but I don't anymore because it's not worth a dependency for minor syntax stuff when |> covers 99% of the cases where a pipe improves readability

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 23/09/2026

The magrittr %T>% (tee) pipe was another way to do this: magrittr.tidyverse.org/reference/te... (I sometimes miss magrittr for its other pipes like %<>% and %$% but on balance base pipe was a good development)

magrittr.tidyverse.org

Tee pipe — %T>%

Pipe a value forward into a function- or call expression and return the original value instead of the result. This is useful when an expression is used for its side-effect, say plotting or printing.

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Reposted by Matthew Kay

Voilà: Francis Gagnon @chezvoila.com · 10/09/2026

I've just done the largest update to the #dataviz starter pack, with 30 accounts (20%) replaced. It means it will generate more content now. Might be worth re-clicking. Sadly, gender imbalance got worse. I saved 5 spots for women-run accounts. Send suggestions, including yourself! Replies or DMs.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 21/09/2026

I don't think we're in much disagreement TBH. It's about at what level you want think about a problem. I get plenty of high-level thinking about problems in my day job, where other people are often executing details. My coding side projects are satisfying when I get to do it. It's digital whittling.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 21/09/2026

Which is fine btw! I compared it to advising PhD students b/c it sounds closer to guiding/editing/giving feedback than writing. I enjoy both activities but I get plenty of the former in my day job. I could see trying it for some upcoming projects that would benefit from rapid prototyping.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 21/09/2026

In personal projects I code as a way of thinking and communicating in my own voice, so I'm reluctant to use LLMs for the same reason I don't use them to write text - it seems like it turns a creative activity that is generative into one that is more evaluative.

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Jon Harmon (he/him/his) @jonthegeek.com · 21/09/2026

I've been feeling pretty down. When I found #RStats, I kinda fell in love, and decided to become as much of an expeRt as I could be. In the age of AI, that's not a good idea; why make the bots program in a language they don't really understand? #dataBS

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 21/09/2026

Related to conferences, I had a great time at Stancon this year, partly because it was the first conference I'd been to in awhile where everyone wasn't talking about AI constantly. I think @mc-stan.org attracts people who care about carefully expressing ideas through code.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 21/09/2026

I've had similar thoughts. The code I write has always been for enjoyment of the craft. If I were a cabinet maker at the dawn of furniture mass production, I wouldn't suddenly want to be a factory foreman. My day job is already supervising students, I don't want my hobby to be babysitting agents.

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Sunny Moraine @dynamicsymmetry.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

There are *humans to be held accountable* here, not mysterious ghosts in an ineffable machine

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 18/09/2026

This is such a great idea! Vis conference paper discussions on bluesky. Great way to push people to reconstitute academic social networks here.

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Wonder what their handles are, because they're definitely on here

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 18/09/2026

Yeah the schtick of "actually these things make no sense if anyone thought about it" can be fun Like sure the horcrux thing makes no sense obviously you would make a bunch and put them inconspicuous and unreachable places not make like 5 and put each one somewhere closely connected to your past

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 18/09/2026

I agree! also enjoyed Ender's Game TBH Fountainhead I liked some, minus half-baked philosophy My copy was used and someone had driven a pen partway through the back. The last 1/4 where the protagonist rants forever had a hole in the middle of the page that grew each page turn. Was an improvement.

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Zander Furnas @alexanderfurnas.com · 17/09/2026

guys many years ago i read the harry potter fanfic ama

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 18/09/2026

oh same! though I don't recall if I finished it felt like an unholy union of Ayn Rand and Orson Scott Card

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 17/09/2026

Oh yeah way better! Though TBH I usually prefer unsmoothed dotplots, and here especially when specific years carry a lot of meaning.

Mirrored dotplots of release year (y axis) within edition (x axis), with dots colored by decade

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Reposted by Matthew Kay

Xan Gregg @xangregg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Here's a makeover retry using the same colors. Not entirely happy with the labeling, but interesting to try to mix continuous and categorical nature of the time variable using stacked area and stacked bars. The 80s vs 90s shift is easier to see. #dataviz

Stacked area chart remake of the sequence of pie charts in the parent post. For 4 time points, the chart shows the percent of albums from each decade in the top 500 list.

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Matthew Kay @mjskay.com · 17/09/2026

I like the x axis approach! The other time var (song decade) doesn't feel like "time" to me though, maybe needs a more ordinal color scale and/or a positional axis. Maybe put song decade on y? Also improves within-song-decade comparison. (+ a version with dots to show counts simultaneously)

Songs in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time as a disconnected sankey-ish thing with edition on x, decade on y, and count as height of bars.

Same as previous but with bars replaced with stacks of dots.

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Voilà: Francis Gagnon @chezvoila.com · 16/09/2026

Thanks to @ieeevis.org and anyone else who nudges the dataviz community towards Bluesky. It works!

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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 15/09/2026

“Every time the AI is supposed to not have access to the open internet and then it gains access to the open internet, you have to pay 10 million dollars”

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G Elliott Morris @gelliottmorris.com · 11/09/2026

We have updated our House election forecast with the new old congressional district boundaries in Missouri. fpo.news

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Gavin Simpson @gsimpson.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

So I did tell the editor where to shove it — politely of course

Dear Professor Bee,

Thank you for your email, and again for the time that you, the handling editor, and the reviewers have devoted to my manuscript, "Method: Using generalized additive models in the livestock animal sciences". I am very grateful for the constructive review of the paper and was pleased that it was accepted for publication in animal – open space.

I have considered the requested changes to remove first-person formulations such as “I show”, “I describe”, and similar expressions. I respectfully disagree with this stylistic requirement and am not willing to revise the manuscript throughout to adopt an impersonal style. The use of first-person, active prose is a deliberate authorial choice, and there is substantial contemporary guidance encouraging clearer, more direct scientific writing of this kind, including Brennan (2024, *PNAS*, doi:10.1073/pnas.2316966121) and guidance from Nature advocating active rather than passive scientific prose (https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/effective-writing-13815989/).

I would therefore be very happy for the manuscript to remain with animal – open space and proceed to publication, subject to normal copy-editing, provided that the requirement to convert first-person formulations throughout the manuscript to an impersonal style is withdrawn.

If the journal considers this stylistic change to be a condition of publication, please treat this email as my formal request that the manuscript not proceed to publication.

As I signed the publishing agreement following acceptance, I would be grateful if, in that event, you could confirm in writing that the manuscript will not be published by animal – open space and that, pursuant to the “Reversion of Rights” provision in the agreement, all rights granted under the exclusive publishing and distribution licence have reverted to me. I would also appreciate confirmation that I am free to submit the manuscript for consideration by another journal.

I regret that we have reach…

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Senator Chris Van Hollen @vanhollen.senate.gov · 07/09/2026

This Labor Day, if you've ever benefited from: — The weekend — 40-hour work weeks — Workplace safety standards — A minimum wage — Paid time off thank a union. Unions don’t just improve working conditions for their members, they help every American worker. Happy Labor Day!

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ℳatt @matttomic.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I've seen everyone sharing that US Dialect Quiz so I decided to make my own, much crappier, CANADIAN DIALECT QUIZ to guess where in Canada you're from

A flow chart I have created with multiple questions and the answers determine where you're from.

Question 1 is do you call it a hydro bill (which then branches down to ON, QC, BC, MB) or an electric bill (which then branches down to SK, AB, NS, NB, PEI, NL)

Question 2 is do you call it a cabin (BC, MB, AB, SK) cottage (ON and atlantic) camp (northern Ontario) chalet (QC) or bungalow (Cape Breton)

To delineate BC from MB: do you call it dinner or supper

To delineate southern Ontario rural or big city: have you heard of a stag & doe

To delineate SK from AB: do you call a hoodie a bunnyhug

And finally to delineate NL from the other atlantic provinces: whaddayat? (Correct answer: dis is it b'y)

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Tobias Isenberg @tisenberg.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

At the BELIV workshop (at @ieeevis.org), we will also present the work of Anne-Flore Cabouat and Lily Ge (with @cybunk.bsky.social, @mjskay.com, @drpi.bsky.social ) on "Why Question Answering Modality Matters in Visualization Studies and Tests". More info: tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Cabouat202...

tobias.isenberg.cc

Tobias Isenberg - Why Question Answering Modality Matters in Visualization Studies and Tests

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Nyek London @stupidhoroscope.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I honestly think it's the same as billionaire brain disease; when someone else does all your thinking for you and all you get is sycophancy in return, your brain turns to custard.

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Stephanie Carvin @stephaniecarvin.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Wake up, babe. The Prime Minister just dropped “hydronym”.

The name Lake Ontario comes from the Wendat word Ontari’io, which, appropriately, means “the lake is beautiful, the lake is big”.

The name is more than 400 years old, predating both the Confederation of Canada and the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America.

We know that America is changing. Their trading relationships, their foreign policies, their national monuments, their hydronyms.

Canadians also know that naming reality means calling it Lake Ontario – then, now and always.

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Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

bayesplot R package 1.16.0 now in CRAN! This release has quite a lot of new functionality and other improvements. Below are some highlights. For more detailed release notes that cover additional improvements and bug fixes see Changelog mc-stan.org/bayesplot/ne...

mc-stan.org

Changelog

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Stats For Bios @statsforbios.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Reread my blog post on the biggest problem in statistics. On re-read, I still don't think it is terrible (other than the typos and things). So I'll repost. timcdlucas.github.io/the-biggest-...

timcdlucas.github.io

The Biggest Problem In Statistics

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Aki Vehtari @avehtari.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Given all the discussions about Laplace and Jacobians at StanCon, reminder also about my case study with simple visual illustrations users.aalto.fi/~ave/casestu...

users.aalto.fi

Laplace method and Jacobian of parameter transformation – Aki Vehtari

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