iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 4h

On the plus side, finally convinced a doctor I needed PT, and on the minus side, it took actual osteoarthritis in my hip to get there

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Aaahh!!! bstract Tesseract @abstracttesseract.bsky.social · 16/10/2026

tired: "AI" is killing open source wired: abusive power-hungry assholes like Linus Torvalds are killing open source inspired: abusive power-hungry assholes like Linus Torvalds are why open source has always kinda been this way

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 13/10/2026

See also anything treating fabric and/or paper as cheap disposable goods

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Can see that in theory, but I maybe have some reservations about it in practice, in terms of kinda amplifying the discomfort in contexts where it's unavailable.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

I would be curious what uses you're thinking of in a gender-affirming context? I've seen friends have a pretty rough time with stuff like faceapp where the results aren't plausibly achievable (and also run into something akin to the accent translation issue)

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Have to be in the office this week which means I get to find out if I remember how to keep my facial expressions professional during meetings anymore

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Ann Leckie @annleckie.com · 04/09/2026

An INDIVIDUAL can maybe say who their faves are. "These are the ten best novels I read this year" and even "of the ten THIS ONE is my favorite" sure. "Spiders Georg, author of The Spider Cookbook, scientifically the best writer in English of all time" is just not possible.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

On the one hand, I've been in this job for a bit over 9 years and it'd be nice if people would trust that I know what I'm doing, but on the other hand the guy pushing to reverse my decision has been here for longer and is still wrong?

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Ann Leckie @annleckie.com · 16/08/2026

Was having a conversation on this topic just recently. A book (or story or painting or movie or whatever) is not a puzzle with a Correct Solution. It's an experience to think about and with, to chew over and then bring to other experiences.

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Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 06/08/2026

College Conan, what is best in life? To critique your enemies, see them defend their artificially narrow thesis and inadequate study of primary sources in their original languages before you, and to hear the lamentation of their advisors.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

No, work dude, you are _not_ too important to deal with normal access controls. I too have a PhD, but somehow it doesn't make me immune to compliance requirements.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

A quick overview of namespace stuff might help with understanding why not all installed packages are automatically loaded?

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Rua M. Williams @fractalecho.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Did you know the solution to ableism is turning every disabled person into a surveillance device? This is sarcasm.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

alternatively, not being able to write code fast enough is almost never the actual problem that needs to be solved? Others have said it better, but none of my hard problems are technical ones, they're either coordination problems or structural issues I can't code around

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Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Spydere Man, Spydere Man Doth al things a spydere kan Sondry webbes he kan weaven Thieves lyke flyes he kan cacchen Lo! anon cometh Spydere Man!

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The Daily Tism @thedailytism.com · 23/07/2026

An autistic man with a special interest in the Harry Potter series has made the decision to value the lives and dignity of his trans friends more than a book about a wizard who grows up to be a cop, sources have reported.

thedailytism.com

Autistic man with special interest in Harry Potter gets over it, leaving you with no excuse

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/07/2026

uh...yes?

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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

And guess what? Focusing on the welfare of your imaginary friends and away from the harm to actual people (and our environment, thus all living things) done in the process of building them is not improving that track record. >>

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Sydney Bauer @sydney-bauer.com · 21/07/2026

The fact that very few people on earth seem to challenge the language of calling trans women “biological men” is really dispiriting and offensive imo. And I was very afraid media style guides would end up like this after it became standard at like the daily caller.

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e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 21/07/2026

rotational forces in the vicinity of Joseph Weizenbaum's grave site are reaching all-time highs

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

technically it's more of a disability accommodation and this is a happy side-effect, but still

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

I really enjoy it when my "please give me your questions in writing" policy at work pays off! Someone just solved their own issue in the process of writing it up!

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Magdaloween! 🏳️‍⚧️ @magsvisaggio.com · 14/07/2026

the decade of hate has taken something very precious from me i never imagined could be lost

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

My dad read it to me when I was a kid, which is honestly an excellent delivery form for the Hobbit

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

There are definitely some cultural details that Tolkien notes in some of the extended lore that fans have spent way too much time expanding

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Blooming dendrobium and phalaenopsis from today's visit with my dad

A blooming dendrobrium orchid. The flowers are small and white with bright red shading into yellow on the lip

A blooming phalaenopsis orchid. The flowers are purple, fading to white at the edges of petals, and there's a bright orange structure on the inside of the flower

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Somehow I'm the person in this meeting with diagnosed communication issues?

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Chad Loder @chadloder.dev · 24/06/2026

I, too, need hundreds of billions of dollars of your money or I will go bankrupt. No, my business model is perfectly sound from a cash flow perspective. I promise this is not a scam. Fork over your pension immediately otherwise the Chinese Communist Party will take over

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Also, we've needed good metadata and search tools for ages, why are they only an appealing idea now that they're meant for an LLM rather than a human?

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Continuing to bring a no fun energy to work meetings where someone tells us about the conference/sales pitch they just got back from that people do not enjoy

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Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I get the impulse for autistic people to want to respond by saying that they DID go to college or play baseball or date and work. But that still plays into ableist narratives. Even if an #ActuallyAutistic person does none of these, they still have worth.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 07/06/2026

I still wish we, at a minimum, made these things ranked-choice to avoid some of the more concerning failure modes

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Bird Alliance of Oregon @birdallianceoregon.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

There are no words to describe the joy this brings. A Condor back in Oregon skies. Just a lot of gratitude for all the work from the Yurok Tribe, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's on the Northern California Condor Restoration Program. www.oregonlive.com/environment/...

oregonlive.com

Condor flies into Oregon for first time in over 120 years

A 2-year-old female condor named B9 traveled 80 miles through southern Oregon during a four-day journey in May, marking a historic milestone for the critically endangered species managed by the Yurok ...

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Reo Eveleth @reveleth.com · 01/06/2026

Big news, @coyotemedia.org just dropped its first ever endorsement. www.coyotemedia.org/endorsement-...

coyotemedia.org

Endorsement: Alcatraz Coyote for Governor

We've seen enough.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 31/05/2026

Citrus and avocados not being local produce was definitely an adjustment for me when I was in NY

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Oakland Review of Books @oaklandreviewofbooks.org · 30/05/2026

Something fun we learned as we were thinking over this one: the border between Piedmont and Oakland is carved with Flock cameras ... (Image courtesy of @deflock.org)

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Also brought home one of the starts I helped him split off of his sobralia (definitely) macrantha (probably - this is a plant my dad rescued from a florist's compost bin many years ago) to see if it'll be happy on my back steps

A reedy-looking orchid plant sitting next to a potted cactus on a wooden deck

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Some of my dad's orchids that were blooming today! Rhyncostele cervantesii and masdevallia veitchiana

a cluster of white orchid flowers with reddish patterns on the petals

a triangular red and orange orchid flower. these ones fuse a lot of the petal/sepal structures commonly found in orchid flowers and have a very reduced lip structure inside the flower

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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 08/05/2026

Preprinted! Been working on this for ~1 year w wonderful coauthors Nancy & Mark: > Understanding Artificial Neural Networks: Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism doi.org/10.5281/zeno... Have you noticed many experts say they don't understand AI? What's going on? 🤯 Let us tell you... 1/

Understanding Artificial Neural Networks:
Mysterianism about Known Mechanism is Mysticism
Olivia Guest1,2, Nancy Abigail Nuñez Hernández3, and Mark Blokpoel1,2
1Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Radboud University, The Netherlands
2Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
3Facultad de Estudios Superiores Acatlán-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico
Mysterianism is the idea that human cognition, mind, cannot be understood. Taking this
concept and applying it to known mechanism — such that claims are made that we do not
know how engineered systems, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs), work, or that they
constitute black boxes that we can only open with difficulty — is inappropriate at best and
malicious at worst. We do know the mechanistic structure of such models because we designed
and built them. We also do know their functional role (what they are for) as well as the
mathematical function they are asked to approximate (map inputs to target outputs). Because
mysterianist beliefs about known systems, such as ANNs, are often expressed, scientists need
to sit up and take notice. We provide an error theory as to what is going on to help unpick
this metatheoretical blunder. Ultimately, the problem is that ‘understanding’ is not a technical
term in these cases: the word is co-opted for a specific narrative to sell ‘artificial intelligence’
through mystification. All computational systems, from pendulums to databases, will behave
in ways we cannot predict or control — this is not a unique property of ANNs — and experts
do indeed grasp the computational properties of these systems nonetheless.
Keywords: artificial neural networks; mechanism; black box; epistemology; artificial
intelligence; understanding

4 GUEST, NUÑEZ HERNÁNDEZ, & BLOKPOEL≈
ANNs are equiva-
lent to or inspired
by humans.
α
≡
ANNs are a black
box or unknowable,
even if opened.
β
≡
Humans are a black
box or unknowable.
γ
Figure 1
Three co-occurring (latent) assertions in the context of con-
temporary reasoning on AI and cognition. While they may
appear to hang together in “reflective equilibrium” (Elgin 2017),
their metatheoretical examination brings their contradictions to
light. Starting from the top, and moving clockwise: 𝛼) represents
the typical assertion of so-called cognitive, neural, or otherwise
biological plausibility or inspiration presented for ANNs; 𝛽) is
the claim we tackle head on here — both in terms of analysing
the constituent terms and in how it relates to the other two
assumptions; and 𝛾) exemplifies a type of mysterianism, which
while not always explicitly expressed, plays a background role
and importantly comes into conflict with the other two claims
in important ways

MYSTERIANISM ABOUT KNOWN MECHANISM IS MYSTICISM 11World
?Di
Data?Si
ANN
Figure 3
Not all systems, 𝑆𝑖 relate to their relevant data, 𝐷𝑖 and world
phenomena this way, but ANN models (as many inferential
statistical models) do when used without scientific understand-
ing of the data-generating process or without verbal or formal
theory to match (Guest and Martin 2025b, 2021, 2023). As we
move from left to right above, we move from full understanding
of engineered systems, 𝑆𝑖 to less or even possibly none of the
data, 𝐷𝑖 to the world which can be thought of as the set of
phenomena to be understood.

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Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 25/05/2026

The Vatican could have told Anthropic to stop stealing data, exploiting labor, killing the environment, deceiving us with anthropomorphic designs & lying about product "capabilities." Instead they partnered with them, like partnering with Sackler family to discuss harms of oxy.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 22/05/2026

It is very tiring to patiently listen to someone explain how they're putting a lot of work into using an LLM to do something that could be almost entirely accomplished with find and replace

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 18/05/2026

Inserting things that are plausible BUT NOT TRUE is like, the worst possible failure mode for medical transcription. Literally would be better off with nothing and *knowing* you have nothing

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Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 18/05/2026

My dad said he's got a doc friend using for transcription bc they're overworked and I had to explain that a) ai is often an indicator for where a system needs more actual humans & support b) og transcription that gets some words wrong is not the same as software that *makes up things nobody said*

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soleil ho @soleilho.com · 08/05/2026

so far @coyotemedia.org has run TWO stories about women are who really into a specific kind of bird and I think that’s just great www.coyotemedia.org/oaklands-hot...

coyotemedia.org

Oakland’s Hottest Influencer Won’t Stop Pooping on Parking Meters

The creator of the Night Herons of Oakland Instagram account shares how she became obsessed with her avian neighbors.

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 19/05/2026

Decided to get slightly more ambitious this year with California wildflowers (except the cacti) and it worked out pretty well. The peak (pictured) seems to have been a couple of weeks ago, but I think I finally managed to get some dogbane to sprout

A collection of pots on a deck. Most contain small meadow plants with blue flowers (nemophila menziesii, several types of clover, and bicolor lupine) but two have small succulents/cacti in the

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phasedchirp.bsky.social @phasedchirp.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

my best recollection is first hearing people complain about it sometime late in college or early grad school (and none of that was directed at me as a pretty creaky speaker who was at the time presenting as a man)

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Three Scary Rogue Agents in a Trenchcoat @alexhanna.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

This is what we mean when we say that "AI safety" is a eugenicist project. They fear an ultra-powerful AGI that may kill us all. Meanwhile, this Colossus 1 data center is already killing Black people in Memphis.

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