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Paul Coen

@paulrcoen.bsky.social
483 followers 659 following 375 posts

Higher Ed IT Director Native New Englander living in New Jersey. ADHD. Amateur photographer (Digital/Film - 35mm, 120, Polaroid), love films, music.

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Reposted by Paul Coen
Kim Siever @kimsiever.bsky.social · 13/10/2026
The next time someone tells you that business owners take on all the risk, send them this link: www.hcamag.com/au/specialis...
hcamag.com
Workplace deaths hit highest level since 2012 as 222 workers killed
Safe Work Australia data reveals 222 worker fatalities in 2025, with remote workers and mental health claims flagged as key concerns
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Bill Grueskin @bgrueskin.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
The only thing this headline lacks is the phrase, “in a chainsaw-involved incident.”
After 500 trees fall at D.C. golf course Trump wants remade, foes ask judge for halt
Preservationists said they were told the East Potomac Golf Links operation went "faster than anticipated" and "hundreds of additional trees" are now slated for removal.
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Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
And lied about it
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Roxanne Darling 🍁 @roxannedarling.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
If I built an AI lab and it went rogue and released ALL of the Epstein files, I’m betting they’d suddenly figure out how to prosecute me.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
The fact that they had to do last minute panic patching of the Muse KVM infrastructure b/c the individual instances could break out b/c of an unpatched known flaw with an available fix - and instances could access Meta systems - says all you need to know about how responsible they are.
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 10/10/2026
There are a lot of details in here about Zuck releasing a half-baked product, but one thing that really stands out is just how weird these folks are. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/t...
Meta’s A.I. leaders also incorporated OpenClaw into their own lives. Mr. Friedman hooked his agent up to cameras in his house, where it would instruct him to do things like drink water to stay hydrated.
“It sent me a snapshot frame of me drinking a bottle of water and said, ‘Good job,’” Mr. Friedman said at a recent tech conference.
In another instance, while talking to his agent about ways to get better sleep, OpenClaw took over Mr. Friedman’s self-driving Tesla and redirected him to a grocery store to pick up magnesium pills. At Meta’s annual developer conference last month, Mr. Zuckerberg said he had connected his agent to cameras in his martial arts gym so that it could critique his fighting form.
Yet there were safety concerns. Agents could sometimes go rogue or take over software apps. In February, one agent took over the work computer of a Meta safety researcher, deleting her emails uncontrollably.
“I couldn’t stop it from my phone,” Summer Yue, the researcher, wrote on social media. “I had to RUN to my Mac mini like I was defusing a bomb.”
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Nicole Foy @nicolefoy.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
What a strange story. California woman finds a man, allegedly drunk, sleeping on her lawn early in the morning & sends her dad out to move him. The man wakes up & allegedly assaults the (elderly) dad, who shoots him Turns out the man is off-duty ICE agent David Gonzalez abc7.com/story/off-du...
abc7.com
Off-duty ICE agent shot after assaulting 72-year-old man and his daughter at Fresno home, police say
Authorities say a woman found the ICE agent sleeping on her front lawn.
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Dhruv Mehrotra @dmehro.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
NEW: Footage from Thursdays shooting shows an ICE agent in a construction vest brandishing a rifle. His name is Brenden Cuni. Federal judges have found multiple arrests involving Cuni unlawful. He has been accused of repeatedly Tasing a handcuffed man and tackling a pregnant woman in Minneapolis.
wired.com
ICE Agent at NYC Shooting Has History of Alleged Violence and Illegal Arrests
Brenden Cuni, an ICE supervisor, has been accused of excessive force and tackling a pregnant woman to the ground. Several of his arrests were later found to be unlawful in federal court.
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evacide @evacide.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Wikimedia Foundation: "AI companies are not doing enough to secure their systems and protect the public from the harm they cause. That burden is falling onto everyone else, including smaller organizations." wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/10...
wikimediafoundation.org
OpenAI “rogue” agent activities found on Wikimedia projects – Wikimedia Foundation
Wikimedia Foundation found “rogue” OpenAI agents on its wikis, raising concerns about risks to its free knowledge projects and the open web.
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Kevin Beaumont @doublepulsar.com · 07/10/2026
You may remember the breathless media coverage globally about an Anthropic employee recently after he tweeted AI will end humanity in a decade. Here are his prior tweets. Will these get mainstream coverage? futurism.com/artificial-i...
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 07/10/2026
They are becoming more and more explicit that creating dossiers on you and graphing your relationships is the whole point. “Agents” indeed. www.cnbc.com/2026/10/07/m...
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is taking a try-before-you-buy approach with her new photo-centric AI agent startup Dazzle, a tactic she said is important “for those occasional users or those users who are just trying to see what the service can do at the very beginning.”

Dazzle analyzes users’ personal photos to understand aspects of their lives, such as their family members or interests, and then can take actions like reminding someone that a pair of shoes they recently looked up is on sale online.

It’s a strategy she learned from her early tenure at Google
, before the company built its market-leading online ad platform.
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Eoin Higgins @eoinhiggins.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
AI isn't sentient, but that's not what this is about anyway.
eoinhiggins.substack.com
The AI “consciousness” debate is all about corporate control
As the political conversation on AI picks up steam, it’s essential to maintain perspective on what the technology is and what it isn’t.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
It’s feeling an awful lot like their strategy is to be as irresponsible as possible, pretend it isn’t a choice, and get a federal law shielding them liability because “accountability would put us out of business and help China”.
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Gail Simone @gailsimone.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
You guys want to hear a short but adorable story that happened right in front of me at the baggage claim in NYC yesterday? I wasn't part of it and there are bits I didn't catch but holy crap, I can't stop thinking about it.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
It's pretty bleak - and grotesque.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Looking forward to this remake of "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" with Marvel characters
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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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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
static.klipy.com
Duck Season Rabbit Season
Alt: Daffy duck and Bugs Bunny arguing over Duck Season or rabbit Season on loop, ripping signs off a tree
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🇵🇸Martin “Doomsday” Pfeiffer🖖🏳️‍🌈 @nuclearanthro.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fake USDA seals needs to end your business. You have demonstrated an unwillingness to produce in society AND you’ve endangered health & life of large number of people with tonnes of bogus meat products in order to increase profit.
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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
So much of what we are confronting today is best understood by the actions undertaken by white communities in response to integration orders. White supremacy is a form of democratic nihilism. Every institution, norm, and value of democracy will be sacrificed for it. calendar.eji.org/racial-injus...
calendar.eji.org
Sep. 27, 1958 | White Little Rock Voters Choose to Close Public Schools Rather Than Integrate
Learn more about our history of racial injustice
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Jared Yates Sexton @jysexton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Just helping with editing here. These bots aren’t sentient. They’re doing what they’re programmed to do. OpenAI, a private company supposedly bound by laws, committed federal crimes.
Screenshot of BBC article: OpenAI bots (struck through) meddled with multiple US government agency sites
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 26/09/2026
“Everyone hates cameras in smart glasses. But if the camera is contained in a charm you wear around your neck, it shifts the agency. Suddenly, you’re not recording people. It’s just a cute little animated avatar looking out on the world.”
theguardian.com
‘Charming and disarming’ … how Meta’s technology-packed Muse harnesses the power of cuteness
The tech giant has launched a cute ‘little guy’ that can answer emails, book travel or do your weekly food shop
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 26/09/2026
Joe Camel unavailable for comment.
wired.com
Meta’s Muse Is Adults-Only. Why Does It Look Like a Kids’ Toy?
Meta says Muse is just for adults, though its cuddly, Labubu-like mascot—and upcoming Tamagotchi-style AI device—may be disarming for users of all ages.
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Astra Taylor @astra.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Forget grandiose talk of curing cancer - this is what AI is actually doing to healthcare. In the words of one cardiologist: “it’s bots fighting bots, agents fighting agents, a horrible dystopic future nobody wants to live in.”
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Zack Whittaker @zackwhittaker.com · 25/09/2026
Interesting nugget in the AP's morning wire, in which it recommends using an ad-blocker (always a great idea) to avoid tracking on health/healthcare-related websites, which track people's activity and location and share with third-parties. apnews.com/newsletter/m...
a snippet of copy from the AP's story, which reads: "In recent years, FTC officials have filed cases against more than half-dozen telehealth companies. In some cases, regulators said the companies shared users’ health data with online platforms such as Meta and Google, without getting permission. Read more.
What to know before signing up:

    Privacy experts recommend using ad blockers and private web browsers — sometimes called “incognito” windows — when logging onto telehealth websites. Those tools can make it harder for companies to track your location, online history and other personal information."
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Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.
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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
Artificial intelligence systems do not think, feel, want or understand. Avoid language that gives them human characteristics.
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
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AP Stylebook @apstylebook.com · 23/09/2026
This is called anthropomorphizing, when we ascribe human traits, emotions or behaviors to non-human things, such as animals or inanimate objects. Instead, explain what a system does, how well it performs, who built it and who could be affected by it. apnews.com/article/open...
apnews.com
https://apnews.com/article/openai-safety-ai-framework-089e75b95bc935af092da7b79d92706d
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Passing of a RI icon
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Matthew Eadie @mattheweadie.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Video obtained by @cnn.com shows part of the incident on Sunday in Evanston where ICE agents attempted to detain the wrong man before leaving him lying in the street and driving off
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The Register @theregister.com · 22/09/2026
Gartner predicts 55 percent of enterprise VMware users will be investigating an exit by 2029
theregister.com
Gartner predicts 55 percent of enterprise VMware users will be investigating an exit by 2029
Chasing pack has its problems too, with maturity, cost, and complex licenses
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John Timmer @jtimmer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Ok, this "there are two separate brains" thing appears to be making the rounds, and I want to be absolutely clear: this is a press office overhyping some perfectly reasonable science that won't come as a surprise to most developmental biologists.
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CZEdwards @czedwards.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Re This case: Most media are focusing on their own states, but this was a multi-state trip. The person took the whole route of the Southwest Chief, so Illinois through the midwest, then across S. Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona before LA. Then up the coast, and back across on California Zephyr.
yahoo.com
Person with measles rode Amtrak trains and buses across CA, health officials say
The California Department of Public Health said the unvaccinated passenger stopped at six California stations, including downtown Sacramento.
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Mezer-Kiss of Death @bananapantz.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Gifting this article 🎁 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/u...
nytimes.com
How President Trump Broke the Kennedy Center (Gift Article)
Internal emails and documents demonstrate the political capture of the institution, including how officials once pursued a plan to unload much of the art collection.
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
FBI devises Groucho Marx’s Guide to Dating
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Programme 4 @programme4.tv · 18/09/2026
The world of Programme 4 is created by humans, for humans
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Jed Brown @jedbrown.org · 16/09/2026
Oh. That's a heck of a subsidy.
At MIT, Harvard, or any other school, supervising an undergraduate researcher is a lot of work, costs a lot of money, involves a lot of meetings, and the results are not reliably excellent. Asking Claude is easier, faster, and may produce better results. It’s also cheaper, which is no accident: Harvard allows every Harvard student and faculty member to request a Claude token budget of $2,500 per month, even as research funding is continuously threatened and the University lays off staff.
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Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 14/09/2026
"Our illiberal enemies have made it very clear that they don’t want to ignore the arts: they want to weaponize them… But we have a historical model for how to respond to this, one that we can both draw on and improve upon." www.liberalcurrents.com/we-need-a-ne...
We Need a New Federal Writers Project

Drawing on and improving the model pioneered during the New Deal.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
“Here's the thing though. As a 25-year consumer protection reporter, I regret to inform you that corporations are not capable of meaningfully self-auditing themselves on ethics.”
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Karl Bode @karlbode.com · 14/09/2026
Over at the newsletter I wrote about the completely insane last few weeks of AI doomsday rhetoric and media coverage
karlbode.com
AI Doomsday Panic Is Completely Out Of Control
The press obsession with software-powered doomsday is a misdirection overshadowing a much deadlier reality: our public interest regulators no longer function.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Eventually, the inevitable will happen and some guy with a restraining order uses the fact that he's still got the Wifi Motion, etc. alerting him and uses it to know when his ex is at home and can be targeted.
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Paul Coen @paulrcoen.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
"Xfinity Shield - we prey on suburban paranoia while getting you to pay extra so we can surveil you and sell data about you, your home, and your friends and family."
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J.K. Kurosawabury @kislingconnection.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
"It used to be if you were on TV, you had to have charisma, or at least a good name. Names like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Morrow. Now I turn on the TV and I don't know these names at all. Russ Douthat. I don't now how to spell it and I don't much care. . . "
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The Register @theregister.com · 13/09/2026
The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker
theregister.com
The improbable music of the ZX Spectrum's one-bit speaker
Ingenious coders coaxed multichannel chiptunes from the humblest of sound hardware
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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
Have we discussed "AI" doomsday cults + Epstein? “parachuting humanity into a different evolutionary era...even obsoleting the human race as we know it...is a running theme in the Epstein files, and...tech evangelists...“It’s eugenics all the way down” www.codastory.com/authoritaria...
codastory.com
"All my fundees have blue eyes." Epstein and the tech world's dark ideology - Coda Story
The Epstein files reveal beliefs about race, eugenics, and engineering humans that run to the heart of Silicon Valley.
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By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 12/09/2026
Once you understand the corporate culture of AI hyperscalers is everyone cooking their brains by locking themselves in the bathroom, holding flashlights under their chins, and saying "Aaaaaaaaaay Eyeeeeeee" until they wet themselves in terror, things snap into focus: pluralistic.net/2023/06/04/a...
A cutaway view of a stone tower containing an elaborate water-powered medieval geared machine. Rising out of the machine is a rainbow-tinted, pixelated God with the robes, beard and all. To one side of this scene is a cluster of tiny people in Jesus-era robes, falling about themselves in religious ecstasy all over a stone staircase, atop of which stands a robed priest with his hands upraised. The background is a set of shining golden rays, emanating from pixel-God.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
for those looking for a long answer that also ends in "no", feel welcome to read our papers linked below bsky.app/profile/abeb...
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 12/09/2026
no
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
You might be wondering, hey, is it bad that this young American man was obsessed with a white supremacist nation that ceased to exist decades before he was even born? Well, remember that Dylann Roof wore a jacket with a Rhodesian flag on it and posted his racist manifesto to "lastrhodesian.com"
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