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Amos T

@mossinante.bsky.social
279 followers 260 following 599 posts

Data scientist | Industry linguist | PhD Birds, plants, languages, transit, climate AGI is a scam, Gen AI is ruining lives now, not in some hypothetical sci-fi future Vancouver, BC He/him 🌈

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Reposted by Amos T
Tamara Kneese @tamigraph.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Once again it’s @timnitgebru.blacksky.app and @emilymbender.bsky.social bringing AI panic back down to earth. For the love of god people please listen to them
theguardian.com
Forget ‘superintelligence’: error-prone AI nearly sparked world war three this month | Timnit Gebru and Emily M Bender
The risks of AI aren’t what we think they are, as a recent security incident between China and the United States reveals
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There's a long discussion going on in my mentions about whether or not "LLMs" (quotes explained in a sec) apparently getting mostly* correct answers to arithmetic questions is "inconsistent" with the stochastic parrots metaphor. >>
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Dwayne Monroe @cloudquistador.eurosky.social · 29/09/2026
In this essay, a meditation on the death of the US tech industry: monroelab.com/2026/09/29/t...
monroelab.com
The Tech Industry: An Autopsy
The tech Industry, and the fields that grew from it, are dead.  The Industry, which, as Yasha Levine details in his book, ‘Surveillance Valley’, was always a tool of oppression, and never &#82…
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
There was a time when one could convince others (and oneself) that work in Big Tech was benefiting other humans. That time has long since passed.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
“Tech industry deception about the supposed threat of their generative AI tools is nothing new. It’s in fact a well-worn playbook. OpenAI was using it all the way back in 2019 when it released GPT-2 … but the media seems determined not to learn anything from their consistent pattern of deception.”
disconnect.blog
The media has the AI threat all wrong
Generative AI is harming people today. We don’t need to waste time fantasizing about science fictional scenarios.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Walking out of Coyote vs Acme and all I can think about is whether Roadrunner’s “Beep Beep” is somehow prenasalised, cos I hear “Meep Meep”
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Hosted an early mid-autumn 中秋节 dinner with meats and mooncakes on the equinox and not the actual night itself (with the full moon).
A dining scene featuring a blue bowl and a decorative Greek key pattern plate often used in Chinese households between patterned table mats. The plate contains sliced pieces of roasted meat (pork, chicken and duck). The blue bowl holds stir-fried gai lan with chili peppers.A white plate holding an assortment of six shortbread mooncakes arranged in a circle. The mooncakes vary in color and pattern, including a bright yellow lattice-pattern, a deep emerald green scalloped pattern, and a rich reddish-brown rosette one.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Started my day with a meeting in French with a group in Montreal. Didn’t have all the context beforehand. Got soooo confused cos I kept hearing them talk about their work in « Haïti ». It was only after the call that my boss clarified they were saying « IT » (not « TI »), referring to tech.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This was a really fun and thoughtful course! Jer’s a great instructor - you can read (or better yet, just ask him) about how he thought through the process of arranging close to 3,000 names on the 911 memorial in Manhattan.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Today’s quote takn out of context: "Not having the change in times twice a year is a good thing. But I think as we progress into the winter months and have prolonged periods of no sunlight in the morning … that might lead to issues with academics and depression." But academics are already depressed
cbc.ca
'Really need to rethink this': Manitoba wrong to choose daylight over standard time, sleep experts say | CBC News
Scrapping twice-yearly time changes in Manitoba is a great move, but staying on daylight time instead of standard time is the wrong choice, says a sleep medicine expert — especially for students.
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Vision Zero Vancouver @visionzerovancouver.ca · 16/09/2026
Our much-anticipated Vancouver City Council full term report card is here! 📝 We look back over 4 years of council votes and give the mayor and each councillor a grade, backed up by solid numbers. How did your favourite councillor do? visionzerovancouver.ca/2026/09/16/v...
visionzerovancouver.ca
Vancouver City Council Full Term Report Card
Vancouver heads to the polls in October to vote for its Mayor and Council, so we’re looking back on how all the incumbents voted on road safety measures over the full 4 year term.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
THIS. So much this. (And follow Timnit Gebru.)
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Would’ve been awesome to ride the very first R2 from Metrotown! Love Mayor Buchanan’s work to get the North Shore better connected by transit.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
www.spiked-online.com/2026/08/28/t... For the love of all things good, this is what the story should be. “The problem is: a super-intelligent AI doesn’t exist, and stubbornly refuses to emerge from large language models …
spiked-online.com
The myth of ‘rogue AI’
Scare stories about super-intelligent models escaping their containment have zero basis in reality.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Me: I love Fall more than Spring cos there isn’t stuff in the air to trigger my allergies Leaf blower industry: you sure about that
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
NGL that second last one sounds like the latest sexual fetish
A screenshot of a LinkedIn Post by Marijn Markus with the caption "New AI rate card dropped". The photo in the post shows a professional price list detailing coding and technical services. The rates increase as you go down the list.
The services and prices are: I Code Manually ($500); I Code, You Watch ($800); I Code, You Advise ($1000); I Code, You Help ($1500); You Vibe Code, I Help ($2000); You Vibe Code, I Advise ($3500); You Vibe Code, I Watch ($5000); and You Vibe Code, I Review ($8000).
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Reposted by Amos T
Tech Policy Press @techpolicypress.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
Last week, news stories announcing the shutdown of Amazon's Mechanical Turk were passed between alarmed data workers two days before they received direct notice by email. Krystal Kauffmann @krystalkauffman.bsky.social calls for lawmakers to protect AI's hidden workforce.  buff.ly/qOfG2tu
techpolicy.press
Mechanical Turk is Closing. The Workers Who Built AI Are Still Here
Data workers will lose a vital source income when Amazon's Mechanical Turk shuts down. Krystal Kauffmann calls for lawmakers to protect AI's hidden workforce.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Country known for denying being at war while at war denies being at war; makes jibe based on outdated mall intel. www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
cbc.ca
America 'not at war' with Canada, insists U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent | CBC News
United States Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent insisted his country is "not at war" with Canada, then proceeded to mock the threat Canada could pose to his country with "submarines from the Edmonton m...
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Cynthia Erivo was truly amazing. And the new PNE arch is stunning. But it felt like a mismatch. Quiet intimate moments weren’t possible cos of screaming fairgoers and competing music from outside (tho the fireworks were nice). Was the old amphitheatre more sheltered from the rest of the PNE?
Audience watching a Cynthia Erivo concert under a purple lit arch The stage at the new PNE arch in Vancouver lit in shades of brown, with the North Shore mountains in the background
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
Was sick this week so of cos I ended up on YouTube looking for videos in different langs. Found this Lithuanian guy who looked a lot like James Norton and now YT is recommending me videos of both of them at the same time
Screenshot of Youtube thumbnails of a reel featuring James Norton and a video on How to Talking about your Daily Routine in Lithuanian by Lithuanian with Paulius.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Thought it would be too cloudy in Vancouver to see the partial lunar eclipse but the sky decided to be kind
Partial lunar eclipse with most of the moon coloured red
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GRIDS Vancouver @grids.reillywood.com · 25/08/2026
Fun little website. Vancouver results so far:
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Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
This woman has never been in a classroom in her life
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Hummingbird silhouette through the curtain
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Mooncakes (the southern Chinese kind) really are the unholy/unhealthy trifecta.
An orange box of mooncakes with the Health Canada label marking them as high in saturated fat, sugars and sodium
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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 20/08/2026
they've done the bouba/kiki test on chocolate shapes now, i love linguistics
medium.com
Research Investigating the Relationship between Shape and Taste of Chocolate Pieces Printed by a 3D…
This is Shigeo YOSHIDA, a Senior Researcher at OMRON SINIC X (OSX).
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Love that they released a blooper reel, not so happy about the main reason why they had to. youtu.be/5G2xDe-h-H0?...
youtu.be
Mamdani releases blooper reel after accusations his foreign language video was AI
YouTube video by The Independent
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Spotted today at Broadway and Cambie: a flying loo, but thankfully no flying poo
A blue portable toilet being lifted by crane above a construction site
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
"Please be assured that we take the accuracy of our documentation very seriously, and we are truly sorry that this occurred” says company which is happy to use shitty text simulators (and who knows how good the speech recognition is for Australian English) www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...
abc.net.au
Doctor forced to apologise after AI makes 'scary' error about illegal drugs
Artificial Intelligence is listening to many people's medical appointments, but it is not always hearing things correctly.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Linguistics 101: as per Saussure, we split up the signifier ie. the word “tree/arbre/Baum” from the signified, ie. the concept of a tree. Text-based LLMs operate purely on signifiers (just the text) with no corresponding signifieds (concepts).
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 08/08/2026
exactly 💯 on LLMs: they simulate the output we call language, not the cognitive capacity we call language!
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
Happy to leave Meta products to the bots and people like this
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Thank you 404 Media for all the work you do. It really shouldn’t have taken a publication for Google to roll back a feature that never should have existed in the first place
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GRIDS Vancouver @grids.reillywood.com · 28/07/2026
I thought this was a typo but no, the (mostly) beloved 24-hour bakery/cafe is getting into real estate development, neat
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Maggie Harrison Dupré @mharrisondupre.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
NEW: A large trove of Claude-generated documents have been exposed to the web and indexed by Google. We reviewed what appear to be real medical records, the full names and phone numbers of school-aged children, and company documents marked for internal use only. futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
A Whole Bunch of People's Claude Chats Are Publicly Accessible Online, and There's Some Wildly Private Stuff in There
A trove of documents generated by Anthropic's Claude were indexed by Google. They included medical records and student information.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Yesterday’s sunset from Kitsilano Beach. #vancouver
Striking sunset over Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver, featuring vibrant orange and red cloud streaks above the ocean and mountains on the horizon.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
Today’s example of GenAI nonsense. Cos people obviously sit in the water when they sit on the toilet. Unsurprisingly, the linked Spruce article says nothing about this point. #AIFail #googleFail #whyIsThisEvenInProduction
Screenshot of a Google query:
why does my toilet not flush fully for me but not my partner

The Al Overview reads:
“When a toilet flushes inconsistently between two people, the issue almost always stems from the timing of the flush or a difference in the volume of water manually pushed down the drain. Because the physical plumbing remains identical for both of you, personal flushing habits or anatomical differences are the core causes. 

Anatomical Differences and Buoyancy
* Water Displacement: If one person is heavier or has a higher body mass, sitting on the toilet causes them to displace more water, bringing the water level in the bowl higher. This higher resting water level means that the flush has less "work" to do to get waste over the internal trap.”

The AI summary goes on but the last point about water displacement comes with a link to a Spruce article titled ”Why Won't My Toilet Flush? 6 Causes and Solutions”.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Truck on Georgia St with a blinding roof mounted light in broad daylight. Why. How is this safe for anyone else.
Truck at a traffic intersection with a blinding roof mounted light in broad daylight, around other cars
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Denis Agar (he/him) @denisagar.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
Join me in asking the Canada Pension Plan to NOT invest in high-risk gas projects that violate Indigenous rights, undercut Canada’s climate obligations and undermine my retirement security. win.newmode.net/shiftaction/... #cdnpoli #pensions #bcpoli #LNG @shiftaction.bsky.social
win.newmode.net
New/Mode | Make your voice impossible to ignore
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Mathematical proof that stopping prompt injections is a never-ending task when you’re interacting with a system using natural human language. As a linguist, I feel partly validated, partly omg we’ve been saying this from the start www.nist.gov/news-events/...
nist.gov
NIST Mathematical Proof Supports Transition to a Continuous-Monitor-and-Update Security Model for AI Systems
The proof extends to AI the logic used by famed mathematician Kurt Gödel, whose incompleteness theorems have had a profound effect on math for nearly a century.
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Mihai Cirstea @mihai-cirstea.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
In the past 3 weeks ABC has tweeted about " #publicsafety " 16 times. Yesterday they voted against a critical, data-driven measure that would objectively save lives. 12 pedestrians were killed on Vancouver streets last year, the most in almost 2 decades. Sim and ABC don't care about your safety.
screenshots of 16 tweets from May 18 to June 9 from ABC Vancouver containing the hashtag #publicsafety
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 06/06/2026
Conscientious objection should be absolutely normalised, independent of religion. www.businessinsider.com/worker-got-r...
businessinsider.com
She won an exemption from using AI at her tech job. The Pope's remarks could fuel similar appeals.
Legal experts say employers must take AI-related religious objections seriously, as a 2023 ruling raised the bar for denying such accommodations.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
CBC News tried to explain Marco Rubio’s “new” Chinese name but failed to mention that the old & new names are actually pronounced the same due to a tone sandhi rule that changes the 3rd tone lǔ to a 2nd rising tone lú since it comes right before another 3rd tone (bǐ)
Screenshot of a CBC News story trying to explain Marco Rubio’s so-called new name in Chinese with his old and new names represented innChinese characters and pinyin
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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 01/05/2026
RightsCon update: www.404media.co/china-pressu...
404media.co
China Pressure Canceled World’s Largest Digital Human Rights Conference
RightCon's organizers said Beijing was upset over over the inclusion of speakers from Taiwain.
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PC Gamer @pcgamer.com · 23/04/2026
The study's authors said they tried to inform LLM providers about the vulnerabilities exposed in their research, but they didn't receive a response.
pcgamer.com
AI is 10 to 20 times more likely to help you build a bomb if you hide your request in cyberpunk fiction, new research paper says
After jailbreaking AI with adversarial poetry, researchers reveal what they call a "critical gap" in current AI safety practices.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
Sakura season in Fairview Vancouver
Pink cherry blossom trees in full bloom along a quiet street with parked cars. A sign reads “No exit except bicycles”Pink cherry blossom trees in full bloom along a quiet street with parked cars.
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Amos T @mossinante.bsky.social · 05/04/2026
Yes. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
Blinded by the headlights? Transport Canada wants to know | CBC News
A London, Ont., optometrist says she's hearing more concerns from patients about difficulty driving in the dark and headlight brightness. Transport Canada is asking drivers, pedestrians and cyclists ...
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 30/03/2026
Over at the newsletter I wrote about the unholy scourge that is "CEO said a thing!" journalism:
karlbode.com
"CEO Said A Thing!" Journalism
"CEO said a thing!" journalism involves parroting the claims of a business leader or executive with absolutely no context, correction, or challenge whatsoever, no matter how elaborate the delusion.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
And for info on how to watch the good one ( @ghostdoc2026.bsky.social ), see notaidoc.com
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Michelle Cyca @michellecyca.com · 23/03/2026
"The panic now visible in British Columbia is not evidence that reconciliation has gone too far. It is evidence that reconciliation has begun to have material consequences." @khelsilem.bsky.social in @macleans.bsky.social: macleans.ca/politics/can...
macleans.ca
Canada’s Reconciliation Panic - Macleans.ca
Indigenous peoples are gaining territory and political and economic clout. Not everyone is ready for what that will mean.
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