iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Nicholdav

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 7h

In our course and book _Calling Bullshit_, we posit that If something seems too good, or too bad, to be true, it probably is. Now as a college professor I'm pretty confident that overreliance can AI can harm our thinking ability, but just ten minutes of use? Let's dig into this this study a bit.

news.berkeley.edu

Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things - Berkeley News

A UC Berkeley researcher co-authored a study that raises profound questions about how we interact with artificial intelligence in education — and daily life.

461278373

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 5h

Maybe MeidasTouch can ask Judd about it bsky.app/profile/judd...

000

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 5h

WTF! bsky.app/profile/judd...

000

Reposted by Nicholdav

the abbot of unreason (an archaeologist) @merovingians.bsky.social · 6h

this might impact insurance rates more than the drone attacks because a hit below the waterline pretty much confirms the USN did *not* actually clear the Strait of naval mines

718024

Reposted by Nicholdav

Hansi Lo Wang (he/him) @hansilowang.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

My latest @npr.org story: If you have to use the U.S. Postal Service to return a mail-in ballot, USPS recommends mailing it at least a week before your state's deadline. And if you're mailing close to Election Day, stop by a post office to ask for a postmark to make sure it gets one on the same day

npr.org

Why mailing a ballot close to Election Day may get it rejected for a late postmark

If you're using the U.S. Postal Service to return a ballot close to Election Day, officials recommend getting it postmarked at a post office to avoid getting caught up in mail processing changes.

47240

Reposted by Nicholdav

joepampel.bsky.social @joepampel.bsky.social · 10h

<coughs in know-it-all> 😂

screenshot of Grok posting Elon's personal information after he asked it to shop for him.

2175

Reposted by Nicholdav

Itai Yanai @itaiyanai.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

1. CRISPR came from basic research on bacteria. 2. Optogenetics started with a discovery in algae. 3. The GFP protein comes from jellyfish. The biggest breakthroughs all trace to scientists following their curiosity, and this is one huge reason why we must keep funding basic research!

10610216

Reposted by Nicholdav

Neil Flanagan 🧱🗃️ @jgbollard.bsky.social · 12h

The water-counting thing means she is PILLED pilled

932550

Reposted by Nicholdav

Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · 13h

“Texas Tech’s censorship policy does not just affect the humanities. According to the AAUP lawsuit, medical students at the campus in El Paso are no longer permitted to learn about racial disparities in medical care or how to treat underserved populations.” www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...

1739369

Reposted by Nicholdav

POWERFUL CRAB FART🦀 @powerful.crabf.art · 16h

My wife has now been told from several sources that the Feds are going to immediately reject any science grant that says AI instead of SI. Our mad king at work

3267

Reposted by Nicholdav

Char @alphachar.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Today is #WorldMigratoryBirdDay, and to celebrate, we're launching a special Steam event called BIRDS OF PLAY, showcasing 140 bird games dedicated to our feathered friends! It kicks off at 6pm CEST, so come check it out here: store.steampowered.com/sale/BirdsOf...

store.steampowered.com

Birds of Play

Come on in and find exclusive demos, new releases, and plenty of discounts.

18143

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

followed by Fugazi! You love to see it

010

Reposted by Nicholdav

Ruha Benjamin @ruha9.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I’m in DC scheduled to give this talk today. But the organizers flagged slides in my deck that mention racism, structural gaslighting, New Jim Code and other themes that are off limits in the Land of the Free.

APA Women’s Leadership Institute event flyer with “keynote speaker” crossed out with a red X

729161215

Reposted by Nicholdav

Tyson Barrett @healthandstats.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Outside of the obvious open source problems with vibe coding, there is soooo much truth in the “now I have to read/review all of this stuff with my brain power when you used almost none at all” across all layers of work now. Feel this in my bones 😭

2489

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

this shit must hit so hard when it's 4012 and you're a high schooler studying Classical American Mythology www.amazon.com/But-Digress-...

cover of the book But I digress... with subtitle A collection of masonic musings and writings from doctor Jim Tresner

The background of the cover looks like fake marble and the foreground is a brown silhouette of an older man with glasses smoking a pipe

021

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

this is serious, former FEMA official Gregg Phillips is reporting he is not currently able to teleport into the panhandle

000

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

You give love, a bad Nate "shuttle your heart and you're too late" would actually be a good lyric though. Tom Waits wishes he had misheard that

110

Reposted by Nicholdav

🦇 Murphy @mjosmurphy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

I’m proud to be speaking at #EntSoc26, the Entomological Society of America Annual Meeting! Join me November 8-11 in Columbus, OH, to learn more about the behavioral genetics of beetle olfaction and pesticide resistance. www.entsoc.org/2026

172

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

The paper goes out of its way to say a "correct" (executable) Lean proof could result from a mistranslation of a bad natural language proof. The HN commentariat point out OpenAI's statements make that likely. Such "correct" "proofs" are about as useful as obfuscated code bsky.app/profile/pook...

000

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Then why do you fail to get what the math community is saying? It's the same thing other communities are saying: open source software, video game devs, interactive fiction, visual art, music, lit, academic pre-print servers Dumping AI slop into them is sociopath behavior bsky.app/profile/lmes...

100

Reposted by Nicholdav

Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

“Perhaps the most relevant issue is that by releasing this trove of material in this manner, the companies are in the process of destroying the ecosystem that made it possible for this work,” she said." To me, this is the crux. Science is a human, community endeavor. They are destroying science.

nytimes.com

‘Breathtaking,’ ‘Devastating’: Mathematics Reels After New OpenAI Release (Gift Article)

Hundreds of new A.I.-generated findings moved the frontiers of higher math in a single day — dispelling any doubt that the field is forever changed.

48841

Reposted by Nicholdav

ve, the ghost of info past @vortexegg.com · 08/10/2026

We have invented the mythical man month from classic software engineering book Don’t Invent the Mythical Man Month.

3467111

Reposted by Nicholdav

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 09/10/2026

OSSOFF: Mike Collins is one of the most extreme members of Congress. He's a Trump puppet election denier. I want to hear if Mike still believes the 2020 election was stolen. What do you say Mike? COLLINS: ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...

17644241061

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

nasal-demons.html www.catb.org/jargon/html/...

catb.org

nasal demons

000

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

They're the same picture.jpg bsky.app/profile/moh-...

000

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

"But I can also get it correctly add giant numbers", yes, you have done the same thing as math people generating Lean proofs, except you don't understand basic math or how programs work

100

Reposted by Nicholdav

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Makes me think of @olivia.science's points on specification. The literal transformers spec ("Attention is all you need") is a model for translation. The onus is on AI bros to prove that models generating unreadable Lean proofs are something besides bad translations. karagila.org/2026/openai-...

karagila.org

OpenAI, the Partition Principle, and mathematics

By the time I got out of bed yesterday, I had three people ask me if I'd seen the OpenAI announcement that the Partition Principle does not (...)

322

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Computer, please tell me I am smarter than Terry Tao terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/a... bsky.app/profile/davi... I know you're trained to tell me whatever I want to hear, but please tell me what I think about this paper I haven't read is true. Problems are solved when code runs. pimbook.org

terrytao.wordpress.com

AHM Statement on OpenAI’s October 6 Release of Mathematical Documents

[This is a guest post by the Association for Human Mathematics, reposted from their statements page. This blog post was initially written in a different file format and converted using AI. — …

200

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

karagila.org

OpenAI, the Partition Principle, and mathematics

By the time I got out of bed yesterday, I had three people ask me if I'd seen the OpenAI announcement that the Partition Principle does not (...)

322

Reposted by Nicholdav

Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Software engineering could and should be done with the same care as any other type of engineering. This is a post in honor of Margaret Hamilton (and also a subtweet of all vibe-coders everywhere).

Screencap

"“I fought to bring the software legitimacy so that it — and those building it — would be given its due respect, and thus I began to use the term ‘software engineering’ to distinguish it from hardware and other kinds of engineering, yet treat each type of engineering as part of the overall systems engineering process,” Hamilton told El Pais in 2018. “When I first started using this phrase, it was considered to be quite amusing. It was an ongoing joke for a long time. They liked to kid me about my radical ideas. Software eventually and necessarily gained the same respect as any other discipline.”"

Source: https://news.mit.edu/2026/margaret-hamilton-computing-pioneer-dies-1007

141039323

Reposted by Nicholdav

Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

More CIHR musings, because I think we don't actually know what's going on in important ways that might influence how we think about prospective solutions. These are questions CIHR could answer if it wanted to.

174

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Everyone who listened to this went on to form a MIDI covers band (2 guys)

000

Reposted by Nicholdav

Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Powerful statement from mathematicians around the world. “We urge mathematicians to discontinue their work with OpenAI and to return to a vision of science that centers human understanding.” The backlash to AI is only just beginning. terrytao.wordpress.com/2026/10/07/a...

6433166

Reposted by Nicholdav

Andrew Lawrence @ndrew.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

they did the thing

an october 11 2025 post from me reading: every single tech idea is like “soon our robots will be capable of playing catch with your kid, freeing you up to spend more time working on your employers’ spreadsheets”

253162103707

Nicholdav @nicholdav.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I should start my discussion by acknowledging limitations and caveats? I think you mean

010

Reposted by Nicholdav

David at FOIAball @foiaball.com · 08/10/2026

30,000. Thirty Thousand. That's how many AI game recaps FanWord wrote for college sports programs last year. www.foiaball.com/p/fan-word-a...

foiaball.com

AI has already been writing all your school’s sports stories

FanWord produced 30,000 AI game recaps last year.

312252

Reposted by Nicholdav

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 08/10/2026

if you define programming as "developing a theory of the system and how it relates to the external world" then it's immediately obvious these tools are harmful, and equally obvious that they are not "good at coding"

gist.github.com

"Programming as Theory Building", P. Naur (1984/85)

"Programming as Theory Building", P. Naur (1984/85) - naur-1985.md

112230

Reposted by Nicholdav

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 08/10/2026

it's good to see this laid out clearly, but i'm once again going to point to Peter Naur's 1985 essay "Programming as Theory Building"

The present discussion is a contribution to the understanding of what programming is. It suggests that programming properly should be regarded as an activity by which the programmers form or achieve a certain kind of insight, a theory, of the matters at hand. This suggestion is in contrast to what appears to be a more common notion, that programming should be regarded as a production of a program and certain other texts.

6415147

Reposted by Nicholdav

The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Sometimes my wife and I like to send each other text messages as though they’re democratic fundraising messages, and I believe she has produced the jewel of the form.

, it's
and I
have some personal news to share with you.
Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I feel deeply that we should have salad tonight
This year has been challenging in many ways, and I have immense gratitude for the kindness and support of family, community, and people like you who have continued to stand by me through everything. It means the world, and I wanted you to be among the first to know that squash is in the oven and kale is in the fridge.

As many of you are aware, ve been navigating one of the most challenging periods of my day while waiting for dinner.
Facing baseless federal hunger brought on by not eating since lunch, fighting for the working kids of this country, and now caring for a mean toddler and helping him grow up in a world that isn't always easy. But it has also reminded me exactly why I do this work and who I do it for.
I will never stop working to eat dinner. I will never stop fighting for what is right, even when there is also some feta in the fridge. And I will never stop being so very thankful that you are by my side in this important work and that there is tahini in the pantry for dressing
With love and gratitude,
stop to end

188111421867

Reposted by Nicholdav

The Spaceshipper 🚀 @thespaceshipper.com · 07/10/2026

According to MIT News, Margaret Hamilton died at the age of 90. "A profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program". This famous photo 🔽 inspired the For All Mankind character Margo Madison.

Margaret Hamilton, but the famous 1969 photo that inspired the For All Mankind character Margo Madison is in the quoted post.

1632641218

Reposted by Nicholdav

bryan newbold @bnewbold.net · 07/10/2026

ah damn, RIP Margaret Hamilton. she took safety-critical software engineering seriously, and got people to the moon and back. news.mit.edu/2026/margare...

old photos of a woman (Margaret Hamilton) standing next to a tall stack of books (printouts of Apollo space mission software source code)

101143764732

Reposted by Nicholdav

Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This looks great. "This raises the question of how nascent multicellular groups gain the capacity to evolve as Darwinian individuals" - a profound question.

2255

Reposted by Nicholdav

Molly Redden @mtredden.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

Abbott continued, “ProPublica bought it hook, line, and sinker.” But of course, we didn’t take Kao’s word, either. Over many months, we reviewed a trove of evidence gathered by the FBI and interviewed dozens of people connected to the story. Then we published the receipts.

propublica.org

The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way

After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...

014134

Reposted by Nicholdav

ProPublica @propublica.org · 07/10/2026

Thread 👇👇

330792