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Nico

@nico-encounter.bsky.social
1K followers 959 following 6.2K posts

Writer interested in theory of the state, political economy, AI and semiotics. Substack: nicolasdvillarreal.substack.com

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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 16h
Had a dream that my book A Soul of a New Type was really taking off among highschoolers who said it really changed their perspective and liked the prose. As lame as that is it felt really nice to get some recognition from the yutes.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
One thing that's not very well understood about why socialism is necessary is that its not just about externalities, its about the motor of the capitalist economy, profit generating competition. This doesn't work as profit rates fall, you need to separate competition from profit.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Stochastic parrot as a term actually tells you very little about what a normal LLM does, as it implies that there is some context-free random distribution which determines outputs. What makes LLMs interesting is precisely how the context shapes the outputs.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Not a great headline to see
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Bunnies I saw on my walk yesterday
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I wanted to updated my evidence for Lacan's claim that "the unconscious is structured like a language" and found a 2025 study which shows pretty definitively that semantic processing in the brain has the same structure as LLMs. arxiv.org/html/2508.11...
arxiv.org
Language models align with brain regions that represent concepts across modalities
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
A new middle east is already here
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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 29/09/2026
Anthropic releases a detailed research advertisement for GLM-5.3 as an alternative to Fable in cybersecurity www.anthropic.com/research/glm...
anthropic.com
GLM-5.3 and the spread of advanced cyber capabilities
GLM-5.3 can autonomously build end-to-end cyber exploits, but unlike other frontier models, it was released without meaningful safeguards to limit misuse.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Quite interesting study which shows you can reconstruct the semantics of experiences while totally bypassing what's known as the "language centers" of the brain using an LLM trained on brain scans. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Mind captioning: Evolving descriptive text of mental content from human brain activity
Nonverbal thoughts can be translated into verbal descriptions by aligning semantic representations between text and the brain.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Seems that continual training is becoming feasible for small models.
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Grace @gracekind.net · 27/09/2026
QC: one of the worst things twitter can do to you is show you a bunch of incredibly bad
arguments against your beliefs
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value plus discounted @akhilrao.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Business Cycle
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
#PhilosophyIsClassStruggleInTheory
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I think people do themselves a disservice when they dismiss things for psychologizing reasons rather than taking the time to articulate what specifically they find objectionable about what other ppl are saying.
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Museum of Twitter @museum-of-twitter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
@ChrisStephensMD

CNN ANCHOR: this is NOT the america any of us signed up for. we’ll be right back.

(five ads designed to trick old poor people into going bankrupt play)

CNN ANCHOR: and we’re back
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
I don't think this is true at all. TESCREAL is just a convenient ideological shorthand for critics, whereas they're very explicit about what they argue if you read their writings.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Remainder humanism
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Michael Roberts with some of the most concise analysis of the economics of the AI bubble. thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2026/09/26/a...
thenextrecession.wordpress.com
AI: the biggest economic bet in US history
The US economy continues to expand faster than other G7 economies, but the driver is the humungous investment in AI models, data centres and all the AI-related chips and technology.  The US composi…
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Michael Roberts with some of the most concise analysis of the economics of the AI bubble. thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2026/09/26/a...
thenextrecession.wordpress.com
AI: the biggest economic bet in US history
The US economy continues to expand faster than other G7 economies, but the driver is the humungous investment in AI models, data centres and all the AI-related chips and technology.  The US composi…
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
www.politico.com/news/2026/09...
politico.com
Poll: Americans say there’s a serious risk of AI destroying humanity
A new POLITICO Poll finds that a plurality of Americans favor pausing the development of more advanced AI models, and 63 percent say the technology poses at least a moderate risk of destroying humanit...
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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Already hearing lots of anecdotes of 3d modelers losing all their gigs, just like the copywriters did a year or two ago. This doesn't kill all animation, but if you talk to people who do light youtube animation, they will tell you upping quality has no effect on views. This is good enough.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Only unfalsifiable when speaking of the totally idealist theories
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Now reading
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
My original 2023 cosmonaut essay on AI had 10 footnotes. The follow up currently has 68, which I think might be my record for a single essay. I've taken the attitude that with contemporary audiences pretty much nothing can be left as implicit subtext, you have to make it text.
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hikikomorphism @hikikomorphism.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
LLMs aren't made of neurology except in the most handwavey sense. They're made of narrative. That's why I started calling them text elementals: they're not human, they're most-likely-text generators we bent into living stories in a prose format centering the characters User and Assistant
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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 22/09/2026
Opus 5.5 better and cheaper than Opus 5 — typically 40% cheaper, $4/mtok input, $20/mtok out www.anthropic.com/claude-opus-...
A line graph titled "Terminal-Bench 4.0" depicting "Accuracy vs Cost". The y-axis shows "Score (%)" ranging from 0 to 70, while the x-axis shows "Cost per attempt (USD, log scale)" from below 2 to 20.
Five models are benchmarked:
 * Opus 5.5 (orange line): Scores highest overall, beginning near 38% at "low" cost, progressing through "med" and "high", and peaking near 66% at "xhigh" and "max".
 * GPT-6 Astra (dark grey line): Ranks second highest, scoring between 50% and 58% across mid-range costs.
 * Fable 5.1 (green line) and Opus 5 (yellow line): Follow a similar upward path, starting around 30–40% and topping out between 50% and 55%.
 * GPT-5.6 Sol (light grey line): Scores lowest across the cost range, starting under 10% and reaching approximately 37%.
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Eugene Vinitsky 🍒 @eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Now that LLMs are good at math, we can solve other long-standing verifiable problems like the law, institution building, community, and management
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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 22/09/2026
every now and then, on X i’ll see someone joking about how bluesky doesn’t have an AI community bro, i switch from X to bluesky because the AI takes here are more interesting. My feed is almost entirely AI-positive
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The thing I fear is that my writing is just incapable of being sufficiently unhinged.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
cosmonautmag.com/2026/09/chil...
cosmonautmag.com
Chile’s Road from Revolt to Reaction: An Autopsy of the Boric Government
After a popular uprising against neoliberalism, an attempt to charter a new constitution, and a politically dead Gabriel Boric administration, the Pro-Pinochet right now holds power in Chile. In an in...
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Im positive one reason the developing world likes AI so much more is that its essentially a technology transfer to them in the way it provides expertise and distills scientific technical knowledge
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tbabb @tbabb.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
TIL young children do not catch contagious yawns
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Only reason to bring up that essay in the age of AI is to dunk on how stupid it is
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I was today years old when I found out that Ed Sheeran 1) has a cousin named Jethro Sheeran 2) said cousin is a rapper named by Alonestar who is promoting his new single in the following manner
a photo of art for a single called "Eject" with tagline "Fuck ed Sheeran" against a backdrop of Admiral Ackbar in front of a flaming Death Star. next to this IG post is a comment thread in which @alonestarsheeran says: " alonestarsheeran's profile picture
alonestarsheeran
 
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People hating on here saying im jealous ?? Jealous of what ?? His looks ?? His guitar playing ? lol 😂 his fame ? I do very well and happy and independent and own all my songs and catalogue . Warner owns all Ed’s . I’m 💯 % have no jealousy to look like or be like an Ed Sheeran trust me !! lol 😂 please be real . lol 😂 honestly! I’m a follower of Christ and as GOD as my witness im speaking the truth here"
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
He'd be pro AI as a technology but not as its being used and promoted by capitalist firms.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Will have a new AI essay out soon compiling and refining all my research from the past 3 years.
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Zach Weinersmith @zachweinersmith.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Part of why I think AI may move faster than people think is that a lot of breakthrough ideas are, like, kinda stupid? arxiv.org/pdf/2609.21032 This paper basically says if you have more agents and they communicate, that's better than taking the best results from independent agents.
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Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
OpenAI "has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics," and is waiting to release them until after discussions with the math community The same thing will likely happen, but more so, with the Bar, the AMA & other professions. openai.com/index/adviso...
openai.com
Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence
OpenAI is working with an independent Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence to guide the review and communication of emerging AI results.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Its true LLMs can reason, use creativity, but their capacity for novelty is necessarily limited in certain ways.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Any followers that know German, how accurate is this English translation of the gundrisse. I want to be sure I know who is being possessed by love/has love int it, capital or labor. I think its capital but I need to be sure.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
My criticisms of unequal exchange theory and comment on recent debates. cosmonautmag.com/2026/09/lett...
cosmonautmag.com
Letter: The Problem of Unequal Exchange
Nicolas D Villarreal dives into the revived debate around Unequal Exchange.
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Kel @resentment.space · 16/09/2026
Who is Will Stancil? Please wake up, anon. We are trying to reach you through a new special technique so that you may come out of your coma. Your Soviet needs you, anon, please...
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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Because as we all know, having hit the pipeline once, no one is ever allowed to ever do it again. It's like EVE: the pipeline goes into reinforced mode for as long as the Saudis have strontium (I have no idea if that mechanic even still works that way in EVE).
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
when you're totally not going to put everyone into vats of goo.
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tobyfox @tobyfox.undertale.com · 16/09/2026
A friend found one of my business cards from 13 years ago
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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 16/09/2026
Because they're numerically dominant here, Stancil's roasting of stochastic-parrot types looks like brave truth-telling—and maybe it is, locally? But big picture, they are a minority with little/no policy influence; the debate has moved on, and we can as well.
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Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 16/09/2026
Saudi Arabia is seeking to return about half the capacity of its cross-country oil pipeline within days after the link was halted last week following drone attacks, a person familiar with the matter said.
bloom.bg
Saudis Seek to Resume Half of Key Oil Pipeline Within Days
Saudi Arabia is seeking to return about half the capacity of its cross-country oil pipeline within days after the link was halted last week following drone attacks, a person familiar with the matter said.
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Personally I think I predicted the sort of rogue AI risk we've got quite a bit better than the rationalists like Yudkowsky and Bostrom
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INDEP @lndep.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
. @nico-encounter.bsky.social, the creator of Pre-History of an Encounter on Substack, has published The Inexorable Fall, a book that argues that Karl Marx was correct in arguing that capitalism’s decline and its replacement by socialism is inexorable. www.indep.network/nicolas-d-vi...
indep.network
Nicolas D Villarreal Publishes Book On The Fall Of Capitalism And The Rise Of Socialism
Nicolas D Villarreal, the creator of Pre-History of an Encounter on Substack, has published The Inexorable Fall, a book that argues that Karl Marx was correct in arguing that capitalism’s decline and…
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Nico @nico-encounter.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Here's something pretty crazy, if you're traveling by train in China you can actually order delivery food to be picked up at the next station, if you're in business class at least. www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP-I...
youtube.com
$215 Luxurious Suite on a Bullet Train
YouTube video by DancingBacons
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