iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Kevin J. Kircher @kevinjkircher.com · 06/10/2026

Something that has long bugged me about job-creation numbers is that, as far as I know, they usually don't include job *shifts* from one sector to another. Like, if a data center developer moves in and hires half the local construction workforce, those workers aren't building stuff elsewhere...

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Kameron Hurley @kameronhurley.com · 05/10/2026

For those of you with day jobs where you're forced to use LLMs or be fired, good tip I gleaned this weekend, which is to tell the LLM to stop referring to itself using "I" pronouns and to eliminate the praise and other attempts to humanize itself. You get a much cleaner interaction w/o the marketing

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

But even these flows, rapid enough to overcome the very slow geologic thermostat, are tiny compared to the sudden release of fossil carbon.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

This accounts for the rapid advances and retreats of ice sheets over the past 2 million years (though not for their timing). CO2 has oscillated dramatically on a 10K to 110K year cycle, due to some carbon cycle/ temperature feedback; probably this is in the oceans around Anrarctica.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

An increase in volcanic activity leads to (usually) a very gradual increase in CO2 concentrations which leads eventually to an increase in limestone formation at the ocean floor. On a very long time scale this equilibrates. But this equilibration can’t keep up with geologically rapid changes in CO2

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

🇨🇦 Mike O'Doyle 🇨🇦 @thetruemichael.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

I'm just old enough to remember the late 90s and from what I can remember, there was no alarmism at all coming from the scientific community - they just stated the facts - and less educated people were able to follow from the facts that it would all end in disaster - so they rejected the facts.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Did historical revisionism once have the decency to wait until all the witnesses were dead? Anyway it’s a weird feeling to have someone try to completely misinterpret things you’ve personally experienced.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Quark Bee @quarkbee.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Remember when people called it "surfing the web" because it felt so cool and exhilarating? Ain't nobody surfing Chat fucking GPT.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Apparently some young AI boostter said “people used to hate the internet in early days too” but nobody can remember that. Familiar feeling as a climate scientist. Lots of pressure in the 90s & 00s *not* to warn about climate change. Yet people who WEREN’T THERE insist we were paid to promote panic.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Min Hyoung Song @minsong.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

But weirdly AI is also making me question digital technologies all together. Holding a physical book in my hand feels like a luxury. I want to subscribe to physical magazines again and touch the smooth paper they come in. I want to hear the scratch of the needle make contact with vinyl.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Hey, I’m just asking questions. Ignorant questions, bigoted questions, questions that have been repeatedly answered for many years. Sorry, but I’m not listening to answers right now; I’m far too busy asking questions. It’s called being intellectually curious.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

I'll say it again: WE DO NOT NEED THESE COMEMIERDAS AND THEIR WASTEFUL LYING POLLUTING COMEMIERDA COMPANIES FOR A SINGLE THING. The internet is us.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Doctora Malka Older @older.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

even things like g**gle maps, which used to be AMAZING and now is obstructive, obfuscating, all but useless advertising and misinformation bullshit - even big coordination things like that CAN BE DONE without the comemierda companies - wikipedia, among others, shows that.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Social media also gives propagandists a great scaling tool. Goebels had to pay a lot of people to go to beer halls in every town and lie about the Jews. He’d be enabled by Zuckerberg today. 2/2

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Thread. Not sure I agree. The problem with mass media and social media isn’t that it creates cranks. It’s that it gives them a way to align their crankiness. If many people have crazed ideas aa if they have the SAME crazed ideas. 1/2

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Yep. Same for how people think Fox News "turned their friends/family mean & stupid." Sorry, but Fox News wasn't exactly subtle. If your loved ones were watching that stuff uncritically in the first place... I got bad news for you. It's not Fox News that made them like that. : /

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Today I'm learning that a lot of nice, secular, educated people were living alongside absolute nutjobbery their entire lives long before social media And just told themselves "But that's silly! No one actually thinks that."

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

The idea that "social media lets cranks find each other" is mostly just a sign that you didn't grow up with cranks. For those of us who DID grow up with cranks? Social media is the thing that lets you find people who AREN'T cranks.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Dustin A. Chacón @lingdustin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I've heard people make claims that AI would lead to a new Renaissance, but I didn't imagine it'd happen like this:

Screenshot of a Tweet from Pope Leo XIV. It reads:

"In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgen to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity."

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

David Haralson @laughlax.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Lots of concern about "what if we make a car that decides to lock us out and run people over", very little about "we keep running people over because we're not keeping our eyes on the road and our hands on the steering wheel"

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Could straighten it out more with a nonlinear x-axis, frankly.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

In the latest offense by AI, I put the url (sans https prefix) into the address bar and I got *an AI description of the page I wanted* and *not even an obvious link to the page*. It used to be that an implicit https or http prefix just took me to the page. Safari on IOS with Google search default.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Wife and I tuned in for the live stream of the debate among candidates for the at large town council here in Carleton Place, Ontario. It was boring. What a blessing it is to live in a place where politics is still dull!

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Jeff Berardelli @weatherprof.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

It’s official: It’s now the hottest El Niño ever recorded and we are still 2 months away from peak, with nowhere to go but UP! So what does it mean for winter across Florida & the southern US? Here’s the details… (records go back 170+ years) #elnino

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

People loving obviously garbled pseudo-photographs of their own city or town are commonplace these days.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 30/09/2026

I think if you want a demo of the mechanics of how AI doom-hype detracts from the climate push, listen to this Al Gore interview w/ @heatmap.news, where he dismisses the climate impacts (using a spurious comparison, imo) but treats the chatbot doom as serious and real heatmap.news/podcast/shif...

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

They compared high meat intake and low meat intake cohorts within each country. Again, you could look at the published research and try to figure it out yourself. As a climate scientist I am tired of people just assuming that scientists are oblivious and missed obvious possibilities.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

You could look. The link is provided.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Interesting, but diet was one of the included factors

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

André Picard @picardonhealth @picardonhealth.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Postmedia closes printing plant, shifting a host of northern Ontario papers to digital-only: North Bay Nugget, Sault Star, The Sudbury Star, The Timmins Daily Press, The Elliot Lake Standard, Espanola's Mid-North Monitor. Cochrane Times-Post will cease publication. www.baytoday.ca/local-news/1...

baytoday.ca

11 jobs lost as Nugget presses go silent

Postmedia says it will close its North Bay printing facility on Oct. 31, a move expected to affect 11 employees in printing and distribution as the company shifts several northern Ontario publications...

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

ΜΑΝΟΣ ΤΡΑΧΙΑΣ™ @trahias.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Cyril Cox (Canadian Artist, born 1958) "Late Afternoon Light", 2022. Acrylic on Canvas, 48 × 36 inches. Private Collection. #art #painting #artist #BlueSkyArt

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

Tom Di Liberto @tdiliberto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Spent some time with BBC's The Global Story podcast talking about El Nino. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou5w...

youtube.com

Why El Niño 2026 has scientists worried | The Global Story

YouTube video by BBC News

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

New Jersey getting hammered. That thing is spinning in place, not moving anywhere.

Radar showing wheel-like structure of storm

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

But though I think Gates means well, I also thonk he’s not as clever as he thinks he is, and I think the pitch goes beyond self-serving and into disingenuous. I doubt the huge systems being built out even *can* be of use in this way.

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Reposted by Michael Tobis (mt)

ClimateBook @climatebook.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I not only doubt that any build-out of A.I. datacentres will "solve" climate change, I see no indication whatsoever that any A.I. company is even making a moderate effort at doing something useful. If A.I. were going to be useful for something like revolutionary photovoltaics,

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Even the math applications seem to have amounted to a brute force search through a very large but finite set of possibilities if I understand correctly. At least that’s what I’ve been able to glean. If understand right, the actual superintelligence was provided by human mathematicians.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

I could imagine being wrong about this and am open to correction. But I think using scientific breakthroughs to excuse the financial and resource excesses currently happening is not remotely valid. If someone can correct me on this I’d appreciate it. Else I’d appreciate you correcting Mr Gates!

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Obviously computation is important to scientists and engineers, and machine learning especially so. But these expensive and (purloined) data-intensive platforms are a different beast. The main practical advantage of them in science is helping non-native speakers write grants and reports in English.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

And I mean to include what I’d call real engineering, based in mathematics and physics. Developing commercial software was always only tangentially related to what I’d call engineering, which is is based on at least two years of university calculus (through diff eq) and specialized physics.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

And I think that scientific and engineering breakthroughs are being trundled out as an excuse for all the oversaturation of our daily lives with very shabby AI of the last few years. But I could be wrong. Can someone tell me what fraction of the increase in computation has been directed to science?

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Although there’s been all too much hype in the academic supercomputing world for a long time, there are also real breakthroughs to be had. But I think the architecture of these machines is not a close match to the GenAI platforms. And the skills to make use of them are very far from “vibe coding”.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Thanks to @climateball.bsky.social for pointing me to this snippet from Bill Gates. youtu.be/wk-gs1KuqTg?... I think Bill has swallowed some of the hype here. I believe genuine science and engineering applications of large scale computers don’t justify the massive buildout of “data centres”.

youtu.be

Bill Gates on how we can use AI to help solve climate change

YouTube video by Reid Hoffman

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Using their gas turbine powered computing farms… I don’t think so. There are a thousand emission pathways and we have alternatives for almost all of them.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

No but the AI bros are making it sound unnecessary. As if some superintelligence could change the rules. They’ve been reading too many Marvel comics.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

It blows my mind that any responsible adult takes this seeiously.

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Michael Tobis (mt) @mtobis.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Any AI that “solves climate change” any way other than “stop emitting greenhouse gases, obviously, you idiots” is impossible. There isn’t some magical solution that no human has any inkling of. Just stop burning fossil fuels. No need for á supercomputer to figure that out!

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